Island Redoubt

by David Roy

  As the waiting lorries continued to spin noxious fumes into the night air, sergeants hurried round trying to take a roll. Officers huddled in brisk conferences, fingers jabbed at maps in the morning gloom, as the air of expectancy took hold of all but the most lacklustre imaginations. This was a battalion used to war and the ways of war and yet this all seemed new and unexpected. Maybe their skills had been dulled by weeks of relative peace, or maybe their skills had never been sharp enough in the first place. Few would deny that they lacked the vigour and even valour of their foes. Perhaps their only hope lay in the fact that they were now called upon to defend their homeland - a homeland which had once seemed impregnable.

  Around the square, engines clunked into gear and, with a whine, lorries pulled away jerkily as if unsticking themselves from wet tarmac. The soldiers were thrown off balance as they lurched off into the uncertain morning.

  ‘Does anyone actually teach these fuckers how to drive?’, asked Tony of no-one but himself. His answer - silence - was only what he expected. Sam looked down at his boots, dull and black, the brass butt plate of his rifle held between his feet. This mixture of despair and fear were nothing new but familiarity did not make them welcome. To fight the Germans in France or Belgium was one thing but to fight them in Britain was quite another - more daunting and more terrifying. The stakes were too high; too high for him to really appreciate the enormity of the task. And even though his home was across another channel some way to the west, that aqueous ribbon would offer scant protection if the mainland fell.

  He shook his head and gulped, never looking up or catching anyone’s eye. His thoughts were all that he had left, all that he could keep to himself. He wasn’t his own man in any other respect. He glanced to one side without lifting his head and saw the truck behind rolling along. The driver’s pale, blank face was framed in the square pane of windscreen, the partially blacked-out headlights jinked and swerved just as the lorry did. Each soldier was an island of his own thoughts, impregnable in one respect and vulnerable in another and even the hardest man there probably though about home and wished for his mother’s reassuring embrace. ‘It’ll be all right, son.’

  The streets were blacked out and empty. The population was moving north by whatever means was available to them, although some must have harboured thoughts of a swift return.

  As they closed in on the battle the familiar sounds of fighting reached their ears and became louder and louder, more and more ominous. Sam thought of the reality behind these abstract and distant noises. He knew what a mortar did to flesh and bone, just as he knew that you couldn’t fight the dreaded Stuka.

  Houses were boarded up, shops too. It was…. what day was it? No-one would be opening their shop that morning. No bread was baked, no vegetables delivered. No papers, nothing. Was this the end? It was the end of something….

  Sam was hauled unceremoniously from his reverie as the truck skidded to a halt.

  ‘Stukas!’, came the cry and the tailgate came down with a thump. They jumped from the truck, one soldier twisting an ankle, another stumbling and being jumped upon in the darkness. Curses rent the air as the scream began. The angel of death swooped down, wailing, intent on wanton destruction and the men ran for their very lives, blindly and not knowing where the bombs would land. Three loud bangs behind them, masonry collapsing with a crunching landslide roar, a discordant explosion and choking dust. The ingredients of hell in England’s green and pleasant land stirred up by a giant hand. Confusion and death. Someone had died. Must have. Above them the planes levelled out and soared away like bats. Then the 109s came in, spitting bullets, chipping the road in little dusty pock marks. Bones and muscle torn asunder. It was indiscriminate and impossible to defend against. Worse - it was impossible to fight back. You lay still and took it, hoping to be alive when the noise stopped and the dust settled like a fine, close-fitting veil. Then you could breathe again uncurl and know that your mother wasn’t there. She would not hold your hand and make it better - not this time.

  ‘You okay?’, said the voice. Sam looked up but didn’t recognise the speaker, only the outline of the uniform. ‘Okay? Can you hear me?’, it came again. He’d just answered, hadn’t he? Hadn’t he? He shook his head and sat up. This was France, wasn’t it?

  The speaker reached down to help him to his feet. ‘You okay mate?’ It was a Belfast voice - strong and reassuring. The man smiled. ‘You’ve been knocked about a bit.’ Sam nodded and as he did so it came back to him - the Stukas and the MEs. And this wasn’t France, either. They’d just come from Weymouth. Bloody Weymouth. He’d been to the NAAFI last night. Still had that beery taste in his mouth or was it dust? He looked around and saw men gathering, orders being shouted. Take hold - make order from chaos and be bloody quick about it. There was a crackle of flame that made him turn and survey the damage behind him. A burning truck. A few others shot up. A soldier sprawled in the road and another hanging half way out of the cab of a Bedford. A rifle lay beside him - his rifle or he assumed that it was - and he picked it up absent-mindedly, brushing dust from the dark wooden stock.

  ‘Beattie!’, came a distant voice. No-one he knew. But it came again more insistent, impatient. ‘Beattie! Over here!’ He walked over to the figure who was calling. He wore three stripes. He had a ‘tache and a steel helmet. Bill something. The figure looked at him quizzically as he approached. ‘On foot from now on’, he said.

  ‘Sergeant Hewson’, muttered Sam.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re Sergeant Hewson’, said Sam.

  ‘I know’, said the sergeant. ‘Now get your act together and get fell in.’ Sympathy, Army style.

  They could have looked beaten before the real fight had started but that wasn’t allowed to happen. The men were harangued by their NCOs and marched purposefully with their heads up and their minds keen. Officers at the front occasionally turning around, regarding their men with scorn, benevolence or indifference, the ragged thump of boots, a murmur of conversation and a wary glance at the sky - the micro-facets of a battalion closing in on its enemy. Sam’s senses had returned and he wasn’t entirely sure that that was a good thing. The numbness and disorientation from the air attack had been a safe and comfortable retreat from the lunacy of his present predicament.

  The sounds of battle intensified by footstep increments and wisps of black cloud wound their way through the sky like disintegrating serpents fleeing a storm. Up ahead orders were being barked out and the companies being sent off to take up positions at junctions, hillsides, the edge of a wood. Sam recognised the three pips and a crown of a brigadier and the red tabs on his battle dress. He had a steel hat like the rest of them, a pistol in its holster and a clipped moustache. He was young, probably newly promoted and exuded zeal and fervour like an evangelist. There was no part of his make-up that would tolerate anything other than utter and instant obedience - he believed in what he was doing and inspired others below him to believe also. He was a leader - a real leader and not some superannuated time-server who had floundered between the wars after the hell of the trenches. A terse set of orders was given to the CO and a pat on the back but no smile. Then they were led to a field next to a road on a slight rise and told to dig in. Here they would fight and here they would stop the Germans - that at least was the gist of the orders they had received. As they dug away at the dry clay a section of pioneers dismounted from a truck and they began digging pits for the anti-tank guns which arrived, towed behind Bren gun carriers. How quaint they appeared compared to the angular, purposeful German troop carriers.

  Every so often they would be warned about German aircraft flying over and behind their little rise the anti-aircraft batteries would open up. The black puffs that appeared in the sky looked harmless from the ground and indeed rarely seemed to hit their target or, if they did hit, then not with enough power to cause any damage. Did one shell in a thousand bring down an aircraft or was the ratio not even that good? Luckily most of the enemy planes seemed to more important t
argets but now and again the Messerschmitts would sweep in loud and low, machine guns hammering at the men who ran for their lives or simply ducked down into their trenches and hoped for the best.

  The men rested once their toil was done. Some dozed in the sun and others cleaned weapons, played cards or chatted. Soldiers were soldiers - give them time on their hands and they would occupy it. They all knew that the fighting would start soon enough. The platoon commanders were summoned to the OC who had in turn been briefed by the CO. Upon their return, small huddled groups of sergeants and section commanders learnt the news - the Germans in the form of a panzer-grenadier division - were coming this way.

  Sam watched as a battery of twenty-five pounders towed by angular Quad tractors rumbled past and then as soon as they had gone a truck turned up with hot food. By platoons they were allowed down to get a meal, each man making up part of the Oliver Twist-esque queue, a silver-grey mess tin held before him like an offering for a mundane god who smelt of grease. They shuffled forwards and then, upon receipt of some unidentifiable but welcome sludge, shuffled away again, their heads bent in supplication as spoon met lip. The pattern was repeated for each platoon under the perfect blue June sky until the truck was ripped apart by a shell from a five-centimetre cannon. The first tank appeared and then another and another, about two thousand yards away, bursting through a low hedge and clipping the wall of a white farmhouse which subsequently collapsed. Orange gun flashes and then the bang-whoosh of their shells punctuated their steady, grinding progress.

  Meals forgotten, men ran for cover, some dragging the wounded and dying with them. Sam watched in horror as one corpse seemed to come apart as another frantic soldier pulled it to ‘safety’, as he thought it. Even as they watched, the tanks making a course straight for them (now followed by armoured half-tracks and crouching infantry), more Stukas fell from the sky. Their target was the gun battery that had passed by minutes before, but which was now out of sight. The whistling bombs emerged from the siren scream and plunged into the road. The resulting cacophony spoke of destruction and of shells being expended, wasted, as fire swept through their position. Ted could scarcely imagine anyone surviving the inferno. The twenty-five pounder guns would make no contribution to the survival of the nation.

  At about a thousand yards out the Vickers guns opened up, tentatively spraying the German infantry with .303, whilst the anti-tank guns launched shell after shell at the panzers. Some of these bounced off and sped skywards like dull rockets but a few - and just enough - caught the tanks on the flange between their turrets and their hulls. The metal crabs would stop suddenly, rocking infinitesimally on their springs. Those crew who tried to escape were gunned down. The gloves were off - no rules prevailed. Marquis of Queensberry be damned; gentlemen look away.

  But still the Germans pushed forwards, their tanks edging closer, finding their range and blasting the British positions. The men of the fusiliers now began to take proper aim with their Lee Enfields and Brens. Their sharp snap and rattle became the sounds of the battlefield. From his command post the Colonel desperately called up an artillery barrage but none was forthcoming - it was down to his soldiers to halt the tide. Bullets zipped across the battlefield, some as single projectiles some as long bending chains. A man fell here and another there. The fusiliers held their ground and the Germans still came at them.

  Through the cacophony and the cloying smell of cordite Sam became aware of men around him becoming casualties. A muffled groan or a flailing arm could be the only signal and yet there was no option but to fight on. Thoughts of King and Country were now at the back of every man’s mind. This was pure survival. The green-clad Germans were no more than 300 yards away, their faces distinguishable as pale blurs underneath their square helmets. They too were determined and they too were scared. They had more than met their match (as they had expected) and no swift capitulation was handed to them. The German commander called in some support from Stukas - why waste more lives than he had to? His British counterparts had no recourse to such prompt and devastating support. The inter-service co-operation practised in Sennelager and honed in Poland, France and many other countries paid off as the crank winged-dive bombers screamed down in a near vertical dive. The sound alone was like express death, the bombs merely a confirmation of that. Three bombs each a thousand pounds tore open the fusiliers’ line and they had no response worth making. Two companies withdrew under heavy fire, taking more casualties and the remains of the regiment became trapped and were taken prisoner.

  Living to fight another day

  ‘I could eat a horse’, said Tony.

  ‘There’s one in that field’, said Ronnie, pointing at a grey animal, which was indeed a horse. The Dubliner followed the direction indicated by the other man’s finger and shook his head.

  ‘Somehow it doesn’t seem that appealing any more. Maybe a bowl of stew with big lumps of bread.’

  ‘Aww. Stop’, said Sam. ‘Me stomach thinks me throat’s cut.’ As if to prove the point his stomach rumbled mightily, like a volcano.

  ‘Or bacon and egg’, continued Tony.

  ‘Steak, potatoes, carrots, peas and gravy’, said Tommy.

  ‘I’d make do with bully beef, to be honest’, said Bill. ‘Anything.’

  ‘Bread and butter. Big doorsteps of bread’, said Tommy.

  ‘With jam’, said Sam. The conversation stopped for a minute as the men dreamt of their favourite foods. Food, through its total absence, had replaced sex and football as the staple of their discussions. Tony let his head fall back and emitted a big Irish sigh.

  ‘Anyone got a fag?’, he asked, with no real hope of success. In any case it would be a poor substitute for food. The rest of the section’s shaking heads dashed his hopes for nicotine salvation. ‘Ah well. It’s bad for you, anyway’, he said, philosophically.

  ‘Rice pudding’, said Tommy. ‘I never used to like it but I could just murder as rice pudding, right now.’

  ‘Pregnant’, said Tony.

  The war seemed remote as they sat in the copse. No-one bothered them and the soldiers took advantage of the unexpected respite - sleeping, or writing letters, talking about food and for a lucky few, smoking. The Germans, only miles away, had paused to lick their wounds. The few tanks in the country had taken a bit of a beating - a surprise to both sides - although their Stukas, acting as airborne artillery had more than compensated. Sam didn’t talk, enjoying the peaceful breeze whistling through the trees, the sun on his face and the smell of flowers - things that one normally took for granted. He looked down at his hands, grimy and calloused and idly wondered if he could pick them out of a line up as being his. His rifle lay across his lap - he intended to clean it - and his back was supported by a tree. He was nestled between two roots, the massive, rough arms of a rustic throne and for a moment he was bathing in contentment - that illusory, transitory feeling of having survived and yet knowing that that very survival would be tested and tested again.

  ‘A penny for yer thoughts’, said Tony. Sam took a deep breath and looked at the friendly, comforting face of his oldest Army friend. They really had been through thick and thin together - mostly thin, admittedly.

  ‘My thoughts? I don’t know what I was thinking, now that you ask.’

  ‘Do you want to know what I was thinking?’

  ‘No’, said Sam deliberately not asking. Tony noticed the mischievous twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Bastard. I’m goin’ to tell you anyway.’ He smiled. ‘I was wonderin’ if we were goin’ to make it.’ He paused to let his meaning sink in. ‘Survive. Y’know?’

  ‘I know. Is it best not to think about it? Make the best of the times when you do survive?’

  ‘I could desert. Go back to Dublin. No-one'd get me. Ireland isn’t at war with anyone.’

  ‘Have you thought about it?’

  ‘Oh aye. That bastard chief clerk told me that he didn’t expect to see me again when I got leave after France.’

  ‘Is that why you came b
ack? To prove him wrong?’

  ‘Nah. I just came back. It never really occurred to me seriously to desert - I just, sort of, think about the fact that I could.’ They lapsed into silence again.

  A soldier with a Bren gun walked across their field of vision. His head was bowed slightly as if deep in thought. Beyond him another figure came, approaching at sixty degrees and striding with great purpose. He had a cane under his arm and a precise destination in mind - or so it appeared. He also had the insignia of a Brigadier.

  ‘You men’, he said. ‘Unit?’ They told him. Sam and Tony were standing now. ‘Who's your CO?’, he demanded. They told him. ‘And where is your CO?’

  ‘Don’t know, sir’, said Tony.

  ‘And how many got back here? Who’s in charge?’ Tony looked around in a panic.

  ‘Couple of hundred here, sir. Two companies. And….’ He looked around for the most senior person he could find. ‘I don’t really know who’s in charge but that’s Sergeant Hewson over there. He’ll know, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Corporal’, said the Brigadier. He was already striding towards the sergeant, the latter asleep against a neighbouring tree.