Island Redoubt

by David Roy

  ‘Run!’ shouted one of the soldiers, an older man in his thirties, as taking his own advice, he allowed himself to tumble down the hill. The younger soldier was transfixed by the horror of the scene below him. They had seconds to live and Sam was almost resigned to this as the snorting steel beast began its laborious ascent. Still, he held out some hope and picked up a mortar bomb, flung it at the tank and took cover. Nothing! …. and the tank was only twenty-five yards away. Its tracks began to slither and turned the hill side into a muddy slide. It edged closer. Sam threw another bomb and this one hit the tank but didn’t explode. The other soldier joined in and between them, practically in tears at the futility of it they flung bomb after bomb - nine in all…. An explosion! At last! The bang sent Sam backwards, falling painfully on his pack, his legs buckled awkwardly underneath him. When he sat back up, the tank was belching smoke and its turret lay askew on the turret ring. This was David versus Goliath.

  He felt like a gladiator or a bull fighter as adrenaline coursed through his blood vessels. Whether it was due to the fight or simply having survived he couldn’t say and his companion of moments before seemed unaffected as if everything that had happened to them was simply too much to comprehend. The boy was dazed but he stood, shakily at first and then ran for all he was worth, leaving his rifle behind.

  Sam crawled to the top of the hill and peered over, drawn by the continuing sound of gunfire that conflicted with his very sensible desire to avoid further risk. The battle in the woods seemed to be carrying on with a ferocious intensity but the trees screened the progress or lack of progress made by the British. Below the British tanks still smoked as the panzers wheeled round, churning the Devon soil into mud. With a smoky roar they headed back to the edges of the wood. Sam’s quandary didn’t disappear. To head back to the scene of the fighting seemed almost suicidal and to remain where he was seemed cowardly. He wanted to help the other men and particularly the Brigadier but couldn’t from here….and why throw his life away? He felt wretched and afraid but as he waited he thought that he detected a lessening in the intensity of gunfire until suddenly it stopped and the battle was over.

  Smoke continued to billow from the Matildas and he tried to peer through it as if he could somehow see into the darkness of the wood. He was desperate to know what happened. Fear made him cold and his throat was dry and sore. He realised that in amongst all the other confusing emotions he also felt lonely and isolated.

  Any questions he had about the outcome of the battle ended when the turret hatches on the panzers opened and the crews began to climb out. They laughed and joked. One soldier clapped another on the back. Their voices carried a lightness of tone that he recognised as being born from relief. They had survived and that was the best feeling in the world. Okay, so they would fight again and feel fear and maybe die, but for now they were alive. Equally, that was the end for Battle Group Henderson. They had been sacrificed and Sam couldn’t see any way in which it could be considered worthwhile. Now it was every man for himself.

  Sam ran to the road. Many of the vehicles were still burning but some including the scout car were intact. This didn’t help, however, since it was irrevocably trapped - a tank in front and three lorries behind - one skewed across the road. If he was going to escape it would be on foot.

  Closing the Gap

  The German patrol edged forwards carefully. They looked ahead, behind and above. Snipers, booby-traps…. they ’d been warned to expect anything from the increasingly desperate British, a caged beast, trapped, unpredictable, in mortal danger but fighting still - fighting to the death, simply because it knew no better. The gruppenfuhrer poked his head around the corner to survey the junction ahead. A railway station, a few houses and nothing else. No sounds, no smells. The car park was empty but otherwise everything looked like it was a going concern enjoying a freak moment of utter calm. He looked down at his old MP28, the mark of a long-serving professional soldier. Its wooden stock had a lusty gleam and the metal parts were lightly oiled, the magazine in place. He hadn’t fired it since France - that old French reservist, the surprised look, the blood and the other soldiers running for their lives. ‘Fuck me’, he’d thought, ‘this is too easy.’

  Not like the Poles. Stupid, maybe. Cowardly? Definitely not. But there was no-one around. He just knew. It wasn’t a sixth sense - that was bollocks - it was just a matter of skilfully using the five that God had given him.

  He waved his arm and the others emerged from doorways and began the approach to the junction. He sprinted across the road as they closed in and then covered them from another angle. Every viewpoint revealed the same thing - tranquillity. The main danger now was being shot by an advanced element from the battle group they had been told to meet up with. They were ‘closing a pocket’, that’s what the major called it. A British pocket. He made it sound important and daring - but if it was all that, he’d be here in person, getting the glory, crafty bugger. He signalled that his section should hunker down. He wanted to check the station office for maps or…. he didn’t know what.

  The gate opened without a noise and he approached the side window obliquely. If there was anyone there they’d have shot him by now but you still had to be careful, didn’t you? Therefore, the shock of seeing the two Britishers made him draw breath. He began to stagger back but regained his senses in a moment - part of a moment. Through the window he saw them get to their feet and he cocked the Bergmann before twisting his hip to kick the door in. It splintered at the lock as it burst in, banged off a table and rebounded.

  ‘Fuck!’, shouted the British soldier. He was reaching for his weapon but knew he was too late, the other was too shocked to move. The gruppenfuhrer could hear the other men pounding along the station platform, their boots resounding heavily on concrete. One of the British soldiers had a bar of chocolate in his hand. He held it up as if it would ward off evil and then spoke. ‘Would you like a piece?’, he said, but the section commander didn’t understand.

  Photo Reconnaissance

  The Spitfire, one of very few remaining and in the hands of one of very few remaining skilled and experienced pilots, had been stripped of almost everything that was not essential for it to take to the air. Flight Lieutenant Ramsay had almost choked on his tea when it was suggested that he even leave his parachute behind. The dinghy was one thing - he didn’t intend to stray too far over the sea, but the parachute! Which bloody desk-bound joker thought that one up? And yet here he was - twenty-three thousand feet, no dinghy, no parachute, no bloody chance. He knew, however, that even with the bulky cameras installed he could get four hundred out of the ‘Spit’ and that, combined with his simple survival plan, might just be enough. The plan? First sight of a Messerschmitt, turn and dive and fly back past the British lines, hoping that they ack-ack would be enough to put the German off his pursuit. He certainly wasn’t going to fight, that was for sure; his guns - eight Brownings - had gone as well! Cooper, the wily old sergeant who looked after his Spitfire had said, ‘See you in an hour, sir.’ He bloody hoped so.

  He was so familiar with the lush British countryside laid out before him. He’d grown up here. Attended university and learned to fly here. He’d even shot down four Jerry bombers right over these fields, plus an unconfirmed Me110 - he knew he’d got that bastard though. So, what had changed - apart from the guns being taken out of his kite? The green and pleasant land below now belonged to the Germans, that’s what! Perhaps he shouldn’t think of it as ‘belonged to’. It didn’t bloody belong to them at all! But they certainly held it. There weren’t too many Britishers still living down there and he’d heard that London was to be made a free city - evacuated and abandoned rather than fought over, in the hope that it would survive for posterity.

  Whose posterity, though? Mind you, he supposed, it had been bombed enough already but the whole point would be to remove its strategic importance. Well, it was for others to decide such things, not him.

  He scanned the skies for bandits, his head arcing bac
k and forth, his eyes looking for that tell-tale black spot that would get larger and larger as he watched. And the spiteful little spots of yellow and orange flame that would send the hail of bullets to surround, enclose, overwhelm, engulf and cut up his fragile plane for what would be no more than the blink of an eye. And that was all it took. And he was still here because he always looked, never took a chance, never relaxed.

  He came down through Essex and then Kent. Everything looked normal. It was when he flew along the south coast, starting at Sussex that it began to look wrong. He began to press the shutter button on the camera again and again, his mouth dry and his heart beating too fast. He’d known they were here. He’d flown against them, strafed convoys of trucks and escorted bombers to targets in Sussex and Hampshire but somehow to actually see the German war machine being assembled on British soil to continue its attack on Britain was simply devastating. He knew then that the war was lost. So far they’d only been fighting (without much success it had to be said) the advanced elements of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe - the assault troops if you like - but this? This was the main force. This huge army would be the one which would over-run and subjugate Britain and Churchill’s rhetoric would amount to nothing. He could see it now. He photographed it so that others could see it also. He photographed the three German capital ships anchored off the Isle of Wight. Scharnhorst? Gneisenau? One other. He photographed the rail heads being used to send troops north, low loading carriages with tanks, oil tankers. He photographed the docks teeming with stevedores, unloading the machines of war and countless more ships waiting to come in. This was the infrastructure of the Great British economy - it had made them great - being used to make them humble once more. Everything turned against them; turned against those who had made them and used them. We’ve been too soft he thought bitterly. ‘Should’ve destroyed the bloody lot’, he said into his oxygen mask. He felt like crying. Churchill needed to see this before his next speech. Worst of all for him he could see the Luftwaffe landing and taking off from RAF bases. He could name every one. Below him now a two-engined plane, probably a Dornier, lifted off from Middle Wallop. He’d landed there once for fuel. Not now.

  It was time to head back. He took a few pictures of Devonport dockyard, filling up with German destroyers by the look of it. He caught a glimpse of another capital ship gliding in past Drake’s Island but an isolated cloud cut off his view. Would he dive beneath the cloud for a photograph? The first few ack-ack blasts, black doom-laden cotton wool balls, helped him make up his mind on that one and he turned north, heading for home. Below him three huge Focke-Wulf Condors dipped down to land somewhere in Cornwall and to his east a squadron of Junkers 88s climbed into the skies for a raid on the midlands of England. Nothing he could do about it, though.

  On the ground his lone Spitfire did not go unnoticed and more than one of the enemy joked that it would be a shame to shoot it down as it was the last one the British had left. Not so an eager squadron leader in the Regia Aeronautica who scrambled a flight of Macchi interceptors hoping for an easy kill. The little fighters normally would have been no match for a Spitfire but he was feeling lucky today.

  Fortunately, Ramsay saw the mottled, bottle-fuselaged, open-cockpit Italian planes and began his dive just as they tried to close in. One or two tracer bullets came close, spinning off into eternity, but he’d soon left the Italians far behind and they broke off their pursuit. He took the Spit into a shallow dive for home, wondering what good his photos could possibly do.

  If it looked bad from the air it was worse on the ground. Maybe it was lucky that Ramsay couldn’t see his beloved Spitfires being put back into production by the Germans in the Supermarine factory in Southampton.

  London

  Every train heading north was packed with refugees. No serious attempt was made to co-ordinate the evacuation - just extra police on duty - because officially there was no evacuation - not yet. Many of those leaving the city had nowhere to go - they knew simply that they didn’t want to be there to face the inevitable. Those idiots who said that the war seemed to have eased off! How could it ‘ease off’? - everybody knew it was just so that the Germans could organise themselves for the big attack. The veterans of the Great War called it the ‘big push.’ In other respects, things went on as normal - although everyone was panicky as if they would bolt at the slightest hint that the ground war had reached their city. Bombing they were used to - but they hadn’t yet seen that distinctive German helmet in London. And if they stayed they would. They knew that, and old Churchill’s bluster, well that might fool some people….

  Like the rest of the rest of the capital, Whitehall was in a state of flux. Things were being packed as if mentally the government had already moved out and only their physical beings remained. The ‘Sue for Peace’ lobby had grown and defeatism was rife - only now it wasn’t defeatism. It was realism, peace with honour - dress it up whatever way you want. Call it what you like. Churchill was having none of it - even when his aide gave him the photographs. A photographic interpreter from the RAF, a man whom the Prime Minister immediately disliked because of his resemblance to De Gaulle, was brought in to explain what each photograph showed. Churchill sighed and muttered as he disconsolately flipped through the pile of prints, seeming to not want or need assistance from the large-nosed squadron leader. He reached for a cigar, jammed it in his mouth but didn’t light it.

  ‘What does this one show?’, he said suddenly, through clenched teeth. The squadron leader leaned forward to get a better look.

  ‘Southampton dock, sir. Those are German freighters being unloaded’, he said pointing to the little oblongs next to the piers.

  ‘Unloaded of what?’

  ‘We think tanks, sir but we can’t be sure.’

  The PM turned to Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

  ‘Tanks, Field Marshall! Are they better tanks than ours?’, he said gruffly. Brooke was an honest soldier but capable of great diplomacy.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ This wasn’t the time for diplomacy. He’d discreetly picked up each of the photographs as the PM had discarded them. What he saw horrified him. He’d had an idea of the sort of force the Germans would use to destroy Britain but to actually see it was something else. This type of aerial photography was so good, so clear that he doubted if many generals had ever previously seen the true extent of either the forces arrayed against them or those at their own disposal.

  ‘It would be interesting to see what our own forces looked like in comparison.’

  ‘Hmm. Perhaps so. And perhaps it would be too dispiriting.’ He hadn’t meant to be so frank with a lowly RAF officer present. ‘Thank you, squadron leader. You can go.’ He turned to Brooke, once more. ‘Which generals can bring us victory, Field Marshall?’

  ‘Any of them, sir. They wouldn’t be generals if they couldn’t win battles.’

  ‘Very diplomatic, Brooke, but if you could only have one, who would it be?’

  ‘Alexander.’

  ‘The last officer to leave the beaches at Dunkirk - very symbolic.’ Brooke knew how such symbolism could appeal to a leader like Churchill but tried to extol the Alexander’s other virtues as well.

  ‘But he is also a very capable general, sir. A good, unflappable leader. Popular, makes good decisions. Perhaps he was born for this moment….’

  ‘Like me. Destiny. Save the country from tyrants.’

  ‘Precisely’, said Brooke, smothering a smile at the PM’s undisguised self-regard.

  ‘Right. Let’s get him here and whatever deputy either you or he see fit to employ. Oh, and Mr Eden as well.’

  Churchill poured himself a drink from a bottle of whiskey he’d been sent by President Roosevelt. The heavy blackout curtains in 10 Downing Street had been pulled and after perfunctory greetings the little party of men waited for the Prime Minister to speak. Brooke, Alexander and Montgomery, were in uniform whilst Anthony Eden wore his habitual suit.

  Maps were laid out on the table but oddly Churc
hill clutched an atlas of the world close to his chest as if it contained great secrets.

  ‘I’ve been looking at this atlas, gentlemen and reminding myself how much of the world is under British control. And how much of it used to be. I’ve also looked at how much of it is now under Hitler’s control. And Mussolini, of course.’ He made the latter comment with disdain for Italy’s fascist leader, whom he considered to be a bombastic fool. He sipped his drink and then looked at the other men over the top of his glasses. ‘We are right to go on fighting. There are plenty of people who think we should sue for peace. But we are not going to. There are even some people who have said that our empire is every bit as evil as that of Hitler, which is nonsense of course. I think that we have done a lot of good in the world but I do think that the days of our empire might be numbered. But that’s not what concerns me now. When I look at the map’, he pointed to the desk, ‘and see the deployment of Germans forces on our beautiful island I am filled with anger….and perhaps a little bit of despair. But this despair is for me alone and I will not share it with the British people.’ He paused and began to pace the room with the atlas still close to his chest.

  ‘We must do something. Stop the rot. This can’t be a patch up job. The Germans are determined and organised and we can’t defeat them by simply responding to their attacks. We need to soak up the punishment let them weaken and then deal a deadly blow. They already have a considerable beach head. They can bring whatever materiel of war they choose into the country so the option of turning them straight back into the sea has gone. So instead….’, he flipped open the atlas and laid it on the table. It was open at a political map of the UK. Churchill carefully laid his fist down on the approximate area of Birmingham and then uncurled his palm until it formed a straight line cutting the south off from the Midlands. ‘We defend this line and let our offensive forces re-organise and re-equip and re-train behind it.’ He then said nothing more. Montgomery looked out of the corner of his eye at Alexander. Alexander stared down at the open page of the atlas as if Churchill’s hand was still marking out his defensive line and Brooke looked at Churchill. It was Anthony Eden who spoke first.