by Pirate Irwin
Drew, who Sebastian guessed was in his mid-forties and looked good on it, nodded at the two majors, who retreated to another table where another map of unreality no doubt awaited them, and offered his young lieutenant a cigarette, which he gratefully accepted.
“Keep the packet. That is one commodity we’re not short of here,” he smiled at Sebastian, which immediately put him at ease – Drew may not look as if he’d been in the war but he wasn’t one of those stuffy types who pulled rank.
Sebastian nodded his gratitude and waited for Drew to state his reason for his being called here, though he had to wait a bit longer as the colonel poured him some thick black liquid out of a battered old coffee pot.
“Stuart, Sebastian, isn’t it? This is what passes for coffee these days but there is an added spice to it,” he smiled again and winked at him as he handed him the cup, which had once been perhaps the pride of the peasant couple who owned the cottage but had lost most of its blue painted exterior and was going to prove a hazardous barrier for Sebastian, given the chips round the rim – though his lips could hardly provide the space for another cut in any case.
He sipped the coffee and it took him back to the day when he had sat in more comfortable surroundings, admittedly with Kordt, but when the situation had been as desperate.
The taste would have been the same but for the Colonel’s extra spice which was excellent quality cognac, Drew admitting it was the last bottle they had managed to take with them from the more salubrious surroundings of their headquarters in a chateau, now many miles away from their lines.
“Sebastian, I have called for you here because the situation as you have probably remarked upon in your area is desperate, and that goes for every part of the line . . . well, that is being a little economical with the facts, there is no line as such except for an endless traffic jam to the coast.
“Now there is no chance of a counterattack, the French are in disarray and according to intelligence from Paris not far away from doing a deal with the Germans, while we are in no condition to go it on our own. So the only option open is this retreat to the coast and hopefully to be met by some form of flotilla which can take us back home in some sort of numbers and order so that, well, one day perhaps, we can return in a better set of circumstances.
“In order to do that we do need to form some organized system of rearguard actions, and I don’t mean some mad idea of Rider Haggard type heroes charging into the middle of an oncoming army and holding them up for a second. What I want are groups of organized units holding up the pursuing Germans so that the majority of the army can at least reach the coast and well, then it becomes the navy’s responsibility and for those behind us every man for himself.”
Drew smiled again, but this time it was a sad one as he knew what he was asking of this worn out bedraggled figure in front of him was not a scenario likely to end in a happy outcome. Sebastian raised the cup to his lips and drank a large gulp, trying to steady his shaking hands as he let the impact of Drew’s words sink in. He lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply and exhaled, though it pained his chest and was accompanied by a racking cough which left him bent over the map.
“I know what I am asking you to do is an enormous task but if it is any consolation it is because you have been highly recommended after your exploit in bringing your men back in safe and sound and, ironic as it may seem, you have paid for still having most of them intact.”
“Very well, Colonel, just show me the area you want us to cover and I will relay the orders to my men. I trust we will not be the only cover for you?”
The Colonel put a hand through his greased back hair and nodded.
“You won’t be alone, I guarantee you and hell, if things go well we might even meet up on the boat!”
“Forgive me, sir, but I think that is a tad optimistic. How many units of cover do you foresee being able to put into the field, and will there be any air cover?”
“Units there will be aplenty, but regarding air cover, I think there you are being what did you say, a tad optimistic. What is left to us is being deployed towards the coast to the area round Dunkirk which is where we plan to embark.”
Sebastian shrugged and saw that the distance between where they were now and Dunkirk was a good 50 miles, which made the chances of a successful rearguard action and getting out less likely.
“So you want us to effectively take on the whole of the German army and air force and delay their advance on this Dunkirk?”
“That’s the gist of it. You are to cover this area here,” Drew indicated with a sweep of his arm, which took in a rather large swathe of country.
“It is a huge task, but you will not be alone and in the grander scheme of things I am afraid there have to be . . .”
“Sacrifices,” interjected Sebastian.
Drew let his eyes drift down to some part of the map and stroked his chin.
“It’s not the sort of word I like to use as it’s not a pagan ritual, but I’m afraid couching it in any other terms would be nefarious of me,” he said.
Sebastian smiled thinly back at him but respected him for being so blunt and acknowledged it was no easy task to be trying to run a chaotic situation and at the same time effectively condemn men to their deaths.
“Without ammunition that may prove difficult, sir. But no doubt you have already thought of that,” remarked Sebastian.
“Yes, that I have, and don’t worry, you will receive extra rations, cigarettes and extra spice, though the quality will not be of the same level as the one you have been imbibing,” replied Drew with a conspiratorial wink. “It should be being delivered to your platoon at this very moment. All it leaves me to say is to wish you the best of luck and to hope that we do meet again on some blessed boat or back on the other side,” said Drew, who poured them a cup of the black oily stuff, clinked the two shattered cups together and let them drink their toast in silence.
Sebastian made his way back to the platoon, passing several other young lieutenants as they trod the same path to the little cottage and their own date with destiny, and thought to himself: So, Stuart, your dreams of immortality have arrived a little ahead of what you had planned, in some green corner of northern France, a country drenched in the blood of so many Englishmen in ages past, what are another 30 or so to add to that list.
As he greeted his men, who were marvelling over the supplies being handed out as if the world had gone so mad and time had gone with it too so that Father Christmas had arrived months ahead of time, as if to say you boys may be in hell but let that not strip you of your humanity totally. He saw Miller and Corporal Peete move away to one side where they could converse.
Peete was as good and reliable a man as Miller; he had been to university but had eschewed a commission as he viewed a life of privilege with disdain and, while his politics were not to Sebastian’s taste, he valued his comradeship on the battlefield and trusted in his judgement. While Miller was strongly built with a florid face and a bushy moustache and thick brown hair, Peete was of slighter build with a thin rodent-like face accentuated by his teeth, but he had a far livelier assessment of strategy and tactics. The trio complemented each other.
“I don’t suppose these are a reward for our recovering to our lines, sir?” enquired Miller.
“I’m afraid not, sergeant. It’s to ease our way into Valhalla but taking a lot of the Germans with us,” replied Sebastian drily.
“Valhalla, sir?”
“The cemetery of the Nordic gods where very self-respecting warrior would wish to go,” replied Peete, acerbic as ever.
“Yes, sergeant. We are to Valhalla while the great and the good and the rest of the detritus of this once proud army are on their way to the beach of Dunkirk and thence, they hope, to safety. We are to ensure this is how things work out,” explained Sebastian.
Miller drew himself up to his six-foot-four stature and said, “Very good, sir, I will get the men to fall in,” while Peete stared at the ground, his mind focused on his own
mortality but he snapped out of it quick enough once he heard Miller bark the command, smiled at Sebastian and slung his rifle round his shoulder. The 30 men stood to attention, all in varying involuntary states of undress, thanks to the battering they had all taken, some even resorting to donning parts of German uniforms to wrap round superficial wounds or tears in their tunics. All showed the same signs of outward fatigue but the thing that Sebastian could not tell were the internal wounds and how they would manifest themselves in the days to come. Thus far everyone had held up remarkably well, but it was one thing when you were fighting for your survival with the goal of getting to safety and ultimately home but quite another when it was a case of battling just to save the rest of the army and yielding little hope of getting out yourself which could change things markedly in a man’s disposition.
As Sebastian delivered his death sentence to his men, for that is what he considered it to be, though of course there was the possibility of being captured which was as good as death, he studied his battered group’s faces. It was difficult enough when they were blackened by the smoke and the dirt but he was encouraged that the remarks were more gallows humour than moans and he did not see shoulders slumping or faces dropping to the ground, but he would have sympathized with them had they shown such signs. He ordered Miller and Peete to go round and fill their respective cups, or whatever they had handy, with a shot of cognac. He strode round each little group chatting to them as if they were sitting outside some country pub in England preparing for a day’s cricket, where the worst possible thing to be thrown at you was a polished red ball and not endless streams of darkly coloured missiles raining down on you from above and along the ground. Unlike the bowler one faced, this opposing team’s faces remained largely hidden just as those in the first tank he had taken out would never have seen their executioner’s visage.
Sebastian, though, was not going to allow his pessimism to surface. Instead he encouraged the men to believe that having already once escaped from the grasp of the enemy they could come out of this together – for they at least could say they had taken them on and come out victorious, such was the limit of their army’s success against the Germans – and he again was largely enthused by the reaction he got back from them.
As the evening set in, he gathered the men around and allowed Peete to read some purple prose he had written, having vetted it first just in case it was a little too revolutionary in content, but the Corporal had got the tone right and the men, some of whom were barely able to read or write, listened respectfully before filtering back to their respective bivouacs and bedding down for the night.
The end came three weeks later. The resistance had been in typical British style –stubborn, brave and not ineffective as Sebastian’s platoon and the rest of the units consigned to form a bulwark in between the advancing Germans, and the morass of British soldiers retreating to the coast repelled several attacks. However, they were little more than pinpricks which drew droplets of blood in the smooth professional machine that the Wehrmacht had become.
While several dead Germans could easily be replaced, there was no such luxury for the British, and Sebastian’s platoon took heavy losses, to the extent that he was now hiding in a thicket some 15 miles from Dunkirk with just six of his men remaining and none of them were in much of a state to put up any organized resistance. Sebastian had taken a bullet to the leg but again had been fortunate that it was a superficial wound and could walk, though with some difficulty. But it was more the endless days without sleep and continually having to think on one’s feet which had had the greater impact and, while he tried not to let it show, he was down to his last reserves of energy and demoralized. Often his mind would wander and he would wonder whether the man shooting at him could be Eric and he would grin sombrely and think how ironic it would be were his best friend to administer the final blow to him – it was unlikely that he would be in a position to reciprocate his speech at his wedding with his funeral oration!
The remainder of his shattered unit were in a far worse condition than him, both physically and mentally – Miller was dead, shot in the first days of the action having gone to the aid of three of his comrades as they got pinned down by some relentless machine-gun fire. He had saved two of them but he and the third member, a Cockney private by the name of Smithers, had been cut down on the way back to the hillock where they had taken up position. Two more letters that will go unwritten, remarked Sebastian bitterly as he surveyed the withered group around him; there was not even a radio to pass on their dire situation and the increasing list of casualties. In any case there was little chance of anyone being at the other end of the line – as Drew had said it would end up being every man for himself and there would be little time to listen to the travails of those left to provide some fight and save some honour for the catastrophic campaign that had been the defence of France. No radio, barely a piece of edible rations left, the cognac was down to half a bottle which he was saving for the final moments, no medical supplies remained and there was bugger all water – which made sending out soldiers to scavenge for it and something to eat a suicide mission with them virtually surrounded.
They couldn’t even leave the thicket in any case as, his superficial wound apart, to describe the men as walking wounded would have been optimistic – Peete was still there but he had been shot in both shoulders and his right ankle, while the four privates could just about handle a rifle, save Gordon who had a stomach wound and was slipping in and out of consciousness. It was only a question of time before he slipped off to Valhalla and what a glorious death that is, remarked Sebastian. He reflected that the South’s moment when they lost the American Civil War had come with General Pickett’s disastrous charge at Gettysburg – hell, his moment when he lost his war would be a thicket charge! Ha ha, he groaned, what a great war poet you could have been. Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, eat your hearts out!
As there was no way that they could make their boat rendezvous with Drew, as he had so optimistically thought at their fateful meeting, Sebastian had decided that this was the last stop and come what may it would either serve as their burial site or at the very least the location where their war ended. Down to the final rounds of ammunition, with no grenades remaining and the Bren gun long since dispensed with, he prayed that the German unit which came upon them would be merciful, though the manner in which he had seen two of his men dispatched by German troops did not offer much hope. Both had been left propped up against a tree after suffering serious leg wounds and had been issued with as white a piece of cloth that could be found but it had been a useless gesture. The German officer dressed in the field grey of the Wehrmacht and not the feared black of the SS had prodded them and then forced the two to crawl through the grass kicking them while his men laughed at the humiliating spectacle. When finally Bowers and Greene could go no further and were screaming in pain, the officer, who Sebastian was watching from the other side of the field, drew his pistol and emptied half of the magazine into the men before spitting on both their bodies and left them to rot in the sun.
Occasionally they would be roused from their thoughts, by the rattle of gunfire or the explosion of the bombs dropped from the sky by the endless waves of bombers, but gradually the fire appeared to be more muted as one by one their fellow units were destroyed or withdrew further towards Dunkirk. They left behind those too badly hurt to buy them some time and so it became an endless chain as those who should have been the ones shipped back under ordinary circumstances became the ones protecting those few fit enough to make their escape.
Peete stirred as another explosion rocked the road that lay alongside the thicket and peered through his half-shut eyes and, seeing nobody had taken a hit, closed them again, his throat so dry that making an effort at speaking was a fruitless task. Sebastian roused himself and lit a cigarette – there remained plenty of those but it was of little succour to them as aside from their parched throats, the majority had serious chest complaints from inhaling the i
ncessant black smoke that wafted over the once fertile fields of their French hell. The merest intake of nicotine had the result of a chorus of hacking coughs with the sufferer wishing upon wish that he had enough fluid in his body to summon up some phlegm and ease his pain but not one droplet was forthcoming. Sebastian, though, managed to stifle his coughing effectively, that having become compulsory as the slightest noise could alert the nearest enemy patrol. At the same time he had come to the realization that hiding here was all very fine but with the group largely immobile there was no way they could stay there nor at the same time make a last desperate break for it. He would wait one more night before he told the men that he had decided the only option was to surrender to the Germans and hope they were treated according to the Geneva Convention, though it would take some persuading of the men that would be the outcome having witnessed what had been done to their two comrades.
As the sun rose, Sebastian struggled to his feet. The night’s sleep had been a fitful one where no manner of demons had visited him with visions of Steiner mixing with Ponsonby and Eric, with the former two laughing at him while drinking some expensive brandy back in London while his German friend mouthed a warning before his face dissolved into a mesh of blood and skin. Sebastian lit a cigarette, sipped some of the cognac and sidled over to where Peete lay with his legs apart as if performing some love scene and with the smile on his face it suggested that this was a man enjoying a rare moment of happiness after weeks of pain and stress. However, Sebastian nudged him with his boot to bring him back to the painful reality they were living in and the smile gave way to a frown as Peete opened his eyes and stared up at not a glorious looking blonde but the bearded, gaunt features of his commanding officer.
“Well, thank you very much, sir. I was in the middle of a really good dream and then bang, you bring me back to a real nightmare,” moaned Peete.