Darkest Hour (53 page)

'Yes, you're right. But I'd rather not go back to that
room at the top.'

'Of course not,' said Tanner, standing up. 'Come on.
We'll find you a room on the first floor.'

They crept upstairs. The house was still once more,
the only sound the gentle snores coming from Peploe's room.

'That's Jim,' whispered Lucie. 'I've heard him snore
even louder than that.'

The bedroom door opposite was open. It was the same
room from which Slater had thrown Tanner. The window was still open, and there
was a large, unused bed. 'Why don't you sleep here?' he suggested. 'I'll get
your kit from upstairs.'

'Thank you.'

He returned a minute later. 'Goodnight,' he said,
having placed her kit on the bed.

'Sergeant,' she said, 'just let me look at your head
first. Really-I should.'

Tanner sat on the edge of the bed, conscious of his
near-nakedness. Lucie knelt behind him, her delicate fingers parting his hair.
He winced as she touched the wound.

'Sorry,' she said. 'It does need a couple of stitches.
There's no point leaving it open and letting it get infected. And you've some
old stitches too that should be taken out. What have you been doing?'

'Soldiers tend to get bashed about a bit,' he said.

'But not usually by your own side.'

'You'd hope not.'

She delved into her surgical haversack, took out a
syringe and a phial, then a rolled cloth pouch that reminded him of his
housewife. 'I'm just going to give you a small injection of procaine,' she
said. 'It'll numb your head a bit.'

'Good,' said Tanner. 'You can give me a big one if you
like.'

She laughed, a soft, infectious sound. 'Just keep your
head still. This won't take long.'

When she had finished, she ruffled his hair, then put
away her surgical scissors and thread. Something made him linger, then turn to
her. She gazed at him a moment, then ran her hand across his cheek. 'You remind
me very much of someone,' she said. 'Someone I used to know.' She leaned
towards him, lips parted, and kissed him. 'Stay with me,' she breathed. 'Stay
with me tonight.'

Six p.m., Tuesday, 28 May, Wijtschate, Belgium. What
was left of D Company, the Yorkshire Rangers, stood sheltering at the edge of a
wood a short distance from the village. The passage of shells could be heard
easily amid the crumps and sharper detonations, whistling as they hurtled
through the air. Short but plentiful bursts of machine-gun fire and the lighter
explosions of mortars indicated that this was not merely an exchange of
artillery fire but that front-line infantrymen were actively engaged against
one another. Every so often a larger shell - a 105 or 155 - exploded and the
men felt the ground below them shake. Despite the damp and the rain that still
threatened, the air was heavy with cordite, burning and dust. Wijtschate, once
a pretty Belgian village, had had the misfortune to find itself on the front
line twice in the space of twenty-five years. In the Great War it had been
destroyed and now it was on its way to being destroyed again. Several houses
were burning; many more had crumbled. Shell craters pocked the road that

led into the village square. Ahead, a column of men
were picking their way through the rubble of a collapsed building. Another
shell hurtled over, this time from the western side - British gunners.

Tanner looked up as a despatch rider sped down the
road a hundred yards in front of them and turned into the farmhouse that was
now home to 13th Brigade Headquarters. A few minutes later another motorcycle
raced off. Messengers had been coming and going - by motorcycle, bike and on
foot - at regular intervals. Taking out a cigarette, he glanced at the men.
They looked fed up. It had rained on and off for most of the day, and although
gas capes were more or less waterproof, they couldn't stand up to prolonged
rain. Moreover, they were hot, especially when marching. Tanner had discarded
his hours earlier, but now his uniform was damp again. Khaki serge was
certainly warm and strong, but when wet it was heavy, scratchy and a bugger to
dry. Tanner wondered why he'd bothered to put his trousers in front of the fire
the night before, and pleasanter thoughts of Lucie sprang into his mind. She'd
been a sweet girl - passionate, too - but there had been a wistfulness about
her he'd not been able to put his finger on. Perhaps it was just the war - and
the inevitable loss of France. They had left her and Sergeant Greenstreet in
Poperinghe, and he wondered whether he would ever see her again; he hoped so.
She had got under his skin more than he had expected. The girl who had saved
his life.

The roads had been heaving all day, with French and
British troops going in the opposite direction from their own small band. Their
progress had prompted numerous jibes: 'You're heading the wrong way!'
'Dunkirk's the other direction!' It had got on their nerves and more than once
Tanner had questioned whether he and Peploe had made the right decision. The
men had carried on marching, standing aside to let vehicles through, weaving
past troops and civilians, but by the middle of the afternoon, heads were
sagging. At least the lieutenant was fit, apparently none the worse for the
crack on his head. 'I must have a very thick skull,' he had joked.

He and Peploe had inevitably talked about Blackstone
and Slater. Peploe was of much the same opinion as Tanner - that their flight
was a weight off his mind. Tanner wondered where they were now. Back in England
already? It wouldn't have surprised him.

'Don't worry, Sergeant,' Peploe had told him that
morning, 'they're facing a life on the run now. I swore I'd make sure they paid
for what they did in Warlus and I mean it even more now. And if for any reason
I don't make it back and you do, you must promise me you won't let them get
away with what they did.'

Tanner had promised. He wondered what had become of
the Pole, Torwinski. Christ, but that seemed a long time ago now. And Lyell?
Had he made it back?

A hundred yards away the column of men had now halted
by Brigade Headquarters. Tanner guessed there were two hundred or more. He
watched them fall out, collapsing wearily on the side of the road, and wondered
what Peploe was up to. He glanced at his watch as two shells landed only a few
hundred yards away. 'Come on, Mr Peploe. Either let us dig in or get us out of
here.'

The brigade staff had been pleasantly surprised when
Lieutenant Peploe had walked in and announced his arrival with thirty-three
other ranks.

'You're just in time,' said Captain Ross, one of the
Brigade staff officers. 'The Yorkshire Rangers have just been pulled back.' He
explained that every battalion in the brigade was horribly depleted, including
the 1st Yorkshire Rangers. Since D Company had been left by 1st Battalion on
the Brussels-Charleroi canal, the brigade had not been idle, having seen fierce
fighting east of Arras and almost continually since then. For two days, the entire
5th Division had been fighting desperately to hold the canal line between Ypres
and Commines; 13th and 17th Brigades had managed to stave off every German
attack, but not without crippling casualties. 'It's been one bloody crisis
after another,' he said. 'You've heard about the Belgians, I suppose?'

'No, sir.'

'They've thrown in the towel. Yesterday evening, just
like that. The whole of Third Div had to move last night from south of here to
north of Ypres to fill the gap in the line. They did it, though. Bloody
miracle.'

There was a feverish atmosphere inside the farmhouse.
Brigade staff had been whittled down to a bare minimum, which meant every man
had more work than he could reasonably manage. A map was spread on a table in
the kitchen and Peploe saw the brigadier and his GSO 1 standing over it.
Despatch riders hurried in and out, delivering and taking messages. Every so
often a shell landed uncomfortably close and the house shook. Peploe noticed a
pile of plaster on the floor in the kitchen. And there was an almost choking
quantity of cigarette and pipe smoke.

Another despatch rider came in and passed a message to
the brigadier, who read it with a faint smile. He was a lean-faced man, with
slightly hooded, intelligent eyes and a fair moustache. Looking up, he noticed
Peploe and extended his hand. 'Hello,' he said. 'Brigadier Dempsey. And who are
you?'

'Second Lieutenant John Peploe, D Company, First
Battalion, Yorkshire Rangers. How do you do, sir?'

'D Company were cut off from the rest of the battalion
eleven days ago, sir,' said Ross. 'They fought alongside Eighth DLI at Arras
and on La Bassee canal, got cut off again, but have eventually found us here.'

'That's rather impressive, Peploe,' said Dempsey. 'I
think most people in your boat would have hot-footed it straight to Dunkirk.'
He scratched the back of his neck. 'I'm afraid poor comms have been one of the
biggest failings in this campaign. Anyway,' he smiled, 'while I hate to make
you go back the way you came, that's exactly what I'm going to do. We're about
to withdraw - it seems we've done what was needed here, thank goodness, and
we're now the last in the line. Most of the brigade are to head to the river
Yser and from there fall back within the Dunkirk perimeter, but the Yorkshire
Rangers are being transferred.'

'To where, sir?'

'First Guards Brigade. You see, Lieutenant, although
your lot are down to just over two hundred and fifty men, that's a bit more
than the Wiltshires and quite a bit more than the Inniskillings and
Cameronians. Just luck, really - the Yorkshire Rangers have had a less busy
time than the other battalions in the brigade. Your task will be to help hold
the Dunkirk perimeter until all the other troops have safely passed through.'

'And been evacuated.'

'Well, that's the general idea at any rate,' continued
Dempsey. 'I'm sorry, it's rather a devil of a job.'

'There's M/T waiting a couple of miles from here on
the far side of Mount Kemmel,' added Ross. 'It'll be a bit of a squeeze, but
better than walking, I'd say.'

'And when will we be leaving?' asked Peploe.

'We're expecting Colonel Corner and the battalion at
any moment.'

Brigadier Dempsey shook Peploe's hand. 'Good luck,
Lieutenant,' he said, 'and pass on my best wishes to your men. I hope our paths
cross again.'

The journey north was desperately slow. The
thirty-four men of D Company as well as a much depleted seven- man platoon from
A Company were crammed into one Bedford OY truck, and since the A Company
platoon commander, Lieutenant Lightfoot, was one of the seven, Tanner was
forced to squeeze into the back with the rest of the other ranks. Every road
they took was clogged with troops, and while the British tried to head north,
the French, many of whom travelled by horse-drawn cart, seemed to be cutting
across them to the west. And still there were refugees with their barrows and
carts, bicycles and pitiful piles of belongings. It was as though the whole of
northern France was on the move.

Poperinghe had looked badly knocked about when D
Company had passed through earlier, but by dusk it was worse. Rubble had
spilled into the streets and had been only partially cleared, while the main
bridge across the canal was cratered in two places. British sappers were trying
to repair it while around them the traffic ground to a confused halt. From the
back of the truck, Tanner peered out at the darkening skies and prayed the
Luftwaffe
had called a halt for the day; they would find
rich pickings in Poperinghe.

By the time they had eventually got through the town,
it was dark. Progress was hardly much faster, however, the truck jerking
forward, then frequently coming to a halt, sometimes for a few minutes, often
for much longer. As the first streaks of dawn appeared, it was clear that the
battalion's column had become separated, so that when they eventually halted
for good at Rexpoede, a village half a dozen miles south of the perimeter, C
Company and half of B Company had been caught up in the traffic stream heading
for Dunkirk and were nowhere to be seen. Instead of supporting the 1st Guards
Brigade with two hundred and fifty men, they were now only around a hundred and
forty strong.

Tanner had barely slept - the crammed, jolting truck
had been too much even for him. All the men were exhausted but especially those
from the rest of the battalion. He watched the men of A Company lead off. Most
would have been just boys a few weeks before but nearly three weeks of war had
aged them - three weeks of marching hundreds of miles, of being shelled, bombed
and shot at, of retreating, of getting too little sleep and not enough food.
Dark rings framed hollow eyes; smudges of oil and grime covered their faces.
Uniforms were filthy, and often torn. They stank, too.

Ahead lay countryside that was as flat as a board.
Rows of poplars and willows lined the hundreds of dykes and waterways. Here and
there red-brick farmhouses rose against the skyline. Above, thunderous skies
rolled - rain again in the air - while on the horizon, for all to see, there
were thick clouds of oily smoke, drifting high above the coastline.

'So that's Dunkirk,' Sykes said to Tanner. 'Charmin'
lookin' place.' He began to sing, ' "Oh, I do like to be beside the
seaside . . ."'