by David Roy
‘I suppose I am, sir.’, said Hewson. He kept his face immobile, his look impenetrable. He was not cowed in any way. His own officers did not have that effect upon him and this enemy officer was no different. The German was clearly unimpressed at having to speak to an NCO but began his complaint along lines that Hewson was expecting.
‘I have heard a rumour that German paratroops have been murdered’, he said. Hewson raised his eyebrows but didn’t speak. He’d have to play this cool. ‘I have heard that it was this regiment which was responsible and that the paratroopers were shot in the air.’ Infuriatingly for the German officer Hewson again didn’t speak.
‘Well!’, he demanded.
‘Well what?’
‘I demand to know the truth! I need to speak to an officer. I demand it!’
‘You’re not in a position to demand anything. An officer would be no more likely to talk about our defensive tactics than I am.’ The sergeant’s tone was firm but reasonable. Tony, still standing next to him, was impressed with his calm authority. Inside however the sergeant was worried. He was as aware as anybody that with the ‘fluid’ situation of the battle that these prisoners could gain their liberty with great ease and that the men of the Fusiliers were now or could certainly be construed to be at some future date, war criminals.
‘This matter will be investigated, Sergeant’, said the German. ‘Once we have defeated you’, he added. He looked Hewson directly in the eye and then turned his attention to Tony for a moment although the latter only warranted a sadistic sneer. ‘Very soon this island will be under German control and those involved in war crimes will be sought out and brought to justice.’ Again, the sergeant said nothing. The officer turned on his heel and strode off.
‘Shit’, said Hewson matter-of-factly. ‘It’s not been a good day really.’
The Germans organised themselves in ranks on the road under the supervision of their NCOs and officers, with the Fusiliers hanging back and letting them give their own orders. They set off, heading away from the coast. The sun shone and the birds still sang in English.
Perhaps then it was birdsong which caused it. Or perhaps it was the respite from fighting and death. Maybe it was pre-arranged. Maybe it was just the most natural thing on the world to them. But whatever the reason, the German prisoners began singing. They sang at the tops of their voices as if their survival depended upon it and it was a grand accompaniment to the rhythmic crunch of their boots. For the Fusiliers it was alarming, beguiling, even if the words were totally meaningless. It was in this way that they had marched into Poland and France, every soldier singing. They sang lustily, every word loaded with meaning and memories, shared culture and belief. Shared aspirations for their Fatherland and their Fuhrer and each man believed in both. They were transported to some other place where they could be strong again, seemingly captivated by their power and yet each taking pleasure from the discomfort they caused their captors. They weren’t really defeated at all.
After a few minutes they took cover as an unlikely air battle began between some Stukas and three British Skua dive bombers. Two of the most ungainly, slow aircraft in either country’s arsenal fought a dual, making awkward turns, climbing laboriously and firing quick bursts from their lacklustre armament. Only in a dive did either aircraft excel and then neither had a clear advantage over the other. The guards were torn between watching the event and keeping a wary eye on their captives but the latter had no such worries and enjoyed proceedings up to the point where the four forward firing guns of a Skua caught and downed a Stuka. If the Fusiliers had thought about celebrating this little victory they never got the chance as a flight of Bf 109s arrived and downed all the British planes. They watched as a few parachutes opened, remembered the last time they had seen parachutists and hoped that these men would fare better.
They regained their feet, the Germans giving their captors sideways looks as if to say, ‘we are winning you know.’ And then the singing began again, with its haunting, powerful melodies. Strident and yet melancholy, they seemed to sing about things which transcended mere life and death in a way which no British soldier could understand. They were true warriors and not just men in uniform. In their songs at least, they welcomed death and the chance to serve a greater good. As darkness overtook them the column stopped and they tried to find places to sleep. There was nowhere that offered any degree of comfort and the warmth of the almost cloudless day had guaranteed a freezing cold night. There were no officers to make decisions and the highest rank amongst the British was an English sergeant-major seconded from another infantry battalion. The German officers looked to him to solve the problem and he could find no solution at all. Eventually, prisoner and guard alike just found anywhere to lie down close to the road and did their best to sleep. A few British sentries prowled around but the Germans made no attempt to escape - no matter how well their campaign was going overall, they knew they were still captives a long way from the nearest friendly forces.
The side of the road and further into the fields and woods were strewn with dark humps like gigantic molehills. Each hump was a man, sometimes shivering under a greatcoat and sometimes shivering without one. The sky above was clear, the moon full and bright and cold. Now and again the prowler sentries would meet and chat or share a cigarette but otherwise there was silence, apart from the heavy snores of the men who could sleep. Soldiers' ability to do this despite noise, cold, hunger or whatever other adversity was thrown in their path increased with their length of service. Some men could sleep in or even on tanks that had their engines running, indeed the grills above a tank engine stayed warm for hours and hours after the vehicles engine was turned off, making this a prime wintertime bed. Others slept in damp holes as soundly as if they were in their cots. Some could sleep standing up or on the march. Tony could remember a time when a soldier had fallen from the canvas roof of a truck because the driver had taken the vehicle without realising that a solder had decided to kip on top. He broke both his legs in the fall. He himself struggled to sleep anywhere but in a proper bed.
The cold had seized his bones and made them shake but even this generated too little heat to keep him warm. The muscles in his back ached as if from some sort of exertion and no position he twisted himself into would allow him to drop off. He listened jealously to the snores around him, some of which he thought were coming from Corporal Gwilt and decided that the time was right to give the man a slight kicking. Despite the cloud which had just drifted across the moon he could just discern the elongated ‘S’ shape of the recumbent NCO and directed a hefty kicked at his groin before sauntering off into the enveloping darkness and seeking out a sentry. Gwilt let out a muffled howl and grasped his traumatised nether regions. His agonies only brought displeasure as anonymous voices, many of them German, told him to shut up.
‘Here mate, you go to bed. I can’t fuckin’ sleep’, said Tony to the startled sentry. The hapless soldier, a survivor from another company, which had been almost destroyed in the previous fighting, dropped his illicit cigarette and scrambled on the ground to retrieve it.
‘Are you sure?’, he said from below. His accent was softer - Bangor, educated.
‘Aye. Get yer head down.’
‘Well here, have this’, he said offering his cigarette.
‘Ta.’
Tony tramped around, carefully avoiding the prone figures that mapped out the flat, sleepable spaces next to the road. He walked to the furthest extent of their makeshift, open-air dormitory and then back, each slow pace picked out by the scrape of metal and leather shod ammo boots against tarmac. He idly wondered if the road had been built by his grandfather, a soldier before he’d become a navvy in England.
He stopped to listen to the bombers that droned overhead, making for some industrial centre. Blenheim night-fighters and single-engined Defiants engaged their largely unseen foes with limited success, only one hit resulting in an enemy plane sent spiralling to the ground. A trail of flame gorging itself on an excess of o
xygen marked the stricken aircraft’s downward path. From his viewpoint, Tony couldn’t say for sure that this was a German aircraft, in fact, such was his current pessimism, he suspected that the plummeting plane was British. His thoughts turned inwards. He couldn’t help but think that this was all so avoidable.
He loved being in the Army. He loved the time he’d spent in India - a place so far removed, certainly in terms of weather, from his native land, that returning home seemed almost unbearable. He loved the fact that he was carrying on a tradition of British Army service in the O’Keefe family…. but it would stop here. He knew that. One way or another it would stop with him, either through his own extinction or simply from the fact that his own children, should he live to have any, wouldn’t even know that their father had been a British soldier and would never even think about joining up. He’d make sure of it.
All of which brought him back to the girl he’d left behind. Well, he sometimes thought of her that way. Siobhan had got fed up with his indeterminate absences and dumped him in favour of an Italian ice cream man who lived in Bray. Tony wondered if Italy’s recent (taking advantage of Britain’s weakness) declaration of war on Britain was reason enough to go and kill Giovanni Caproni. He had no idea that the latter had been arrested and interned on the Isle of Man as he tried to make his way through Britain to Europe to join the Regia Aeronautica, the Italian Air Force. He had no way of knowing that they would have declined his services on account of his heart murmur. He didn’t know that he had a heart murmur. It didn’t matter now, anyway. Siobhan and Giovanni were married, had two children and of course, good Catholics didn’t divorce. He knew that he had to find someone to replace Siobhan in his heart but somehow, he never had and, as he surveyed the confused picture around him he wondered if he ever would. Suddenly tiredness swept over him and his head began to spin. It always happened. He always felt most tired when he had the least opportunity for sleep.
Battle group Henderson
‘What exactly do you mean, sir?’, the Major asked. He removed his helmet and scratched his head very demonstratively as if he was acting (over-acting, that is) in a silent movie. Henderson smothered a smile. His new second in command was a puffed-up, passed over major. Not without his strengths of course, but certainly with little imagination. But maybe, in these circumstances that was what he wanted - he certainly didn’t want an ambitious officer who would undermine him. As for the young Lieutenant from the Royal Irish Fusiliers - he looked a bit shell-shocked and uncertain, but he would use him nevertheless. It might be just what the boy needed.
‘Well, it’s what the Germans do. And they have been rather successful, haven’t they?’, said the Brigadier. The Major nodded with an enthusiasm tempered by confusion. ‘It’s to do with being flexible. That’s the key. You take whatever ground forces are available and use them when regular formations have been destroyed or have, in some way, ceased to exist. And you mould these various individuals into a fighting force in as little time as is available. Hey Presto! A battle group!’ The Major nodded again. He was getting the hang of it and it sounded good. Unorthodox, but good.
‘Of course, that means that you have the cooks, clerks and bottle
washers, but they’re all trained soldiers and have to fight. They have to fight!’, he said with emphasis. ‘Martial spirit. Leadership. That’s what is needed. As for training, it's probably too late to think about that. We would just have to use whatever training they had already received. It might mean finding a section commander who was a mess orderly or a platoon sergeant who was a store man, but it can be done.’ The Major nodded again as did Lieutenant Clegg. Here was a leader speaking. He could learn a lot.
Sam stumbled across the crew of a Matilda. One man was thrusting a huge cleaning rod down the tank’s barrel while two others watched. A fourth man was loading Besa guns up with ammunition. He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep, but he ached, was hungry and depressed. The feeling reminded him of waking up on the morning of the last day of leave with a slight hangover and remembering that vacillating mood of the night before when despair had turned into muted happiness. The return to camp fairly squashed any drink-induced fondness he had for his barracks. Christ!
‘Hello’, he said. The tankies nearly jumped out of their skins. Sam stood there, his hands by his side in a supplicative pose lest he be shot and questions asked later.
‘Fuckin ‘ell, mate’, said a full-screw. He was the tank commander. His black beret was clamped to his head and worn in the fashion of the Royal Tank Regiment. ‘You scared the shit aht of us! Where’ve you come from?’
Sam was about to explain when an officer almost leapt out of the bushes that marked a sort of boundary to the tank on three sides. He wore the crown of a Major on each shoulder.
‘Troop commander?’, he asked, imperiously. The corporal from London pointed in the direction of another tank. ‘Get your engines started and all your stuff squared away. You’ll be heading off in a minute. You’re part of Battle Group Henderson.’ The Major was gone, imparting a grid reference to the rather laconic Lieutenant commanding this particular RTR troop.
‘What?’, said the Corporal.
‘Battle group ‘Enderson, or summink’, said the trooper on the end of the cleaning rod.
‘What the fuck’s one of them?’ There was widespread shrugging at this, with which Sam joined in. ‘What’s an ‘Enderson?’, repeated the Corporal, but still no-one knew.
Sam hitched a lift on the back of the tank. They ground through forest, road, mudflats, hills and nothing stopped them. The tank never tired. But Sam did not envy them their job. He'd seen too many tanks 'brew-up' to ever think of a transfer. True, their lives involved no foot-slogging but when they died, they died horribly. No battle-hardened soldier wanted to swap places with them in the heat of battle. Being in the infantry was tough all right; demanding and dangerous. But in a tank…. well, you had one chance to destroy the enemy. If you didn’t manage it then they would get you. And it was almost certain death as far as Sam could discern. He’d seen crewmen trying to escape their burning vehicles and being consumed by fire. It wasn’t something that he wanted to see often, if ever.
Battle Group Henderson really did contain a motley assortment of troops, loosely bound together with the remnants of proper fighting formations; almost a platoon’s worth of Royal Irish Fusiliers but with two sergeant’s and no officer, six Matildas from the RTR, twelve Yeomanry armoured cars, a battery of anti-tank guns with no limbers or transport, a fresh TA infantry battalion from the Dorsets, a company of Argylls, a squadron of sappers, plus a melange of RAF ground crew and RAF Regiment. The whole thing was padded out with various supporting troops who had hastily been re-assigned as infantrymen.
‘What do you think, sir?’, said the eager Major.
‘Well….’, replied Brigadier Henderson, doubtfully as he surveyed the pot-bellied, bottle-washers platoon. 'It'll have to do.'
The Long March North
‘Can’t you stop them singing?’
‘Pardon me, sir?’
‘Singing. Can’t you stop it?’
‘Well I don’t know how, sir. Plus, it keeps them on the move.’
‘Yes, but we don’t know what they’re singing about!’
‘Well maybe not, Sir but they are getting further and further from the rest of the battle and those were my orders. Get them away from the coast; get them away from the fighting. And we’re making good time, sir.’ The sergeant-major looked the lieutenant-colonel in the eye, as he finished his little statement. He wondered how he had ever got to the rank of warrant officer when faced with such obduracy from his superiors. Not all of them of course, just the chinless wonders like this one. But naturally the officer was not satisfied with this response.
‘Should I get the guards to sing, sir? Try and out-sing them, or something?’
‘Are you trying to be funny, sergeant-major?’
‘Practical, sir. Trying to be practical’, he said. Fuck it! They’
d all be dead in a week. ‘I’ll ask these soldiers if they can sing. There’s a song they like….’ He turned to the guard behind him. ‘What’s that song you sing, corporal? The Sash, is it?’
‘Not me personally’, said Tony. ‘But I believe it’s popular with the men.’ He spoke in a plummy voice like an officer, tucking his chin in and waggling his eyebrows.
‘Will they sing it?’, asked the English sergeant-major.
‘I doubt it, sir. They’d be drowneded out by the Jerries singin’. They’re not used to havin’ competition, sir. They’re Protestants, you know.’
The sergeant-major didn’t fully comprehend that explanation. He turned to the officer with a helpless shrug which, in a way, said ‘bugger off now, sir.’ The officer stopped suddenly as if he had forgotten something and needed to turn back. The prisoners and their guards marched past.
A staff car made its way laboriously through the marching throng, the German prisoners having some fun by pretending not to hear its horn and therefore not getting out of the way. When it reached the front of the column it stopped and a staff officer with red tabs jumped out and bounded over to the sergeant-major. His driver took care to keep just ahead of the prisoners as the two men talked.
‘I believe you’re in charge here sergeant-major?’, he shouted above the singing.
‘Yes sir.’ They walked in step to the beat of ten thousand German boots.
‘Anything I can get you?’
‘Some food, sir. A lot of it….and I wouldn’t mind knowing where we’re going and what’s going to be waiting for us when we get there.’ He looked at the staff colonel, trying to gauge the veracity of the answers he would shortly give.
‘The food is easy. Relatively. About five miles from here, there is soup and bread, plenty for everyone and we’re trying to get a warm meal together for tonight.’ He sighed at this point, something which the warrant officer recognised as a bad sign. ‘As for where you’re going, that’s all rather, er… fluid. No. No, it's not fluid at all, sergeant-major. In fact, no-one knows where the fuck these men are going to go. I know that some POW camps are being built just south of Birmingham….’