Maggie Bright (26 page)

We’ve gone to war. The others, to France; myself, to Dover or to Ramsgate, where I am sure to be of good use to receive our boys home. Do check in on Clare
 
—she will be lonely without us. And I am sure she would very much like to see the dear Burglar Vicar.

Do enjoy the cake.

Regards,

Mrs. Iris Shrewsbury

P.S. Do you know? I feel as though I were born for such a time as this. Of course, I feel as though I were born for many things. It is wonderful to be 67, retired, and of good use.

P.P.S. Apologize to the BV for me. My actions with a teakettle are entirely reflexive.

“Well, how many small boats
do
you want? A hundred?”

To [Captain Eric] Bush it didn't seem then that any man as yet appreciated the full gravity of the situation. His voice tight with emotion, he answered: “Look, sir, not a
hundred
boats
 
—every boat that can be found in the country should be sent if we're to even stand a chance.”

 
—RICHARD COLLIER,
The Sands of Dunkirk

The rich and the famous, the poor and the unknown, as motley a bunch as ever set sail made up this mercy fleet.

 
—RICHARD COLLIER,
The Sands of Dunkirk

Let's hold our nerve, and see how many troops we can get away.

 
—WINSTON CHURCHILL

Lieutenant Ian Cox, First Lieutenant of the destroyer
Malcolm
, could hardly believe his eyes. There, coming over the horizon toward him, was a mass of dots that filled the sea. The
Malcolm
was bringing her third load of troops back to Dover. The dots were all heading the other way
 
—toward Dunkirk. . . .

As he watched, the dots materialized into vessels . . . they were little ships of every conceivable type
 
—fishing smacks . . . drifters . . . excursion boats . . . glittering white yachts . . . mud-spattered hoppers . . . Thames sailing barges . . . dredges, trawlers, and rust-streaked scows. . . .

Cox felt a sudden surge of pride. Being here was no longer just a duty; it was an honor and a privilege. Turning to a somewhat startled chief boatswain's mate standing beside him, he burst into the Saint Crispin's Day passage from Shakespeare's
Henry V
:

And Gentlemen in England, now abed

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here.

 
—WALTER LORD,
The Miracle of Dunkirk

THE SQUAD OF SIX MEN CRESTED
the rise of a dune and beheld the beach for the first time.

The nightmare scene before them was so vast and dark and flashing and thunderous, so unbelievably frightening, that at first no one could say a word.

Like prehistoric terrors of the air, wheeling Stukas and Heinkels harried their prey on the beaches and the harbor, flying overhead in groups of two and three, diving, strafing, bombing. They had just caught a glimpse of the man-clad pier in the harbor on their left when diving planes drew their attention to a ship that had slipped from the mole. They watched the destroyer take pounding after pounding of bombs and bullets until finally the deck exploded in flame. They heard men scream as they leapt, flaming, into the water; and suddenly the ship blew up, obscuring the entire harbor with first a blinding yellow flash and then a geysered veil of water and concrete, flying steel, flaming rubble.

The six men who’d crested the dune cried out in horror and rage, and realized that others did too, a great roar of wrath from massive black patches on the beaches.

The massive black patches ranging over the sands first brought to mind a continent of seaweed, until it materialized as thousands and thousands of men stretched out before them in milling dark groups, in great snaking queues. They saw these patches en masse first, and then as their minds adjusted they saw smaller patches, and smaller yet, down to individual spots scattered and walking about, some joining a group or leaving one. Finally, they saw patches not moving at all, at least not of their own accord; these lay scattered upon the beach, or rolled stiff and oil-slicked in a blood-frothed surf, or were stretcher-borne to an aid station or a place where they piled the dead.

“You had the feeling that if you just got to Dunkirk, it’s all over,” said Baylor, his voice small. “Everyone’s safe.”

“That was England, remember?”

“What’s this?”

“Not England.”

Blazing wrecks dotted the harbor amid a forest of masts where boats had sunk. Straight down at the beach itself, they watched a blue-painted fishing trawler fifty yards out from the shoreline try to navigate wreckage with one man hanging off the bow, watching intently and calling back orders to the skipper.

“Look there!” They looked to where Griggs pointed.

Boom, boom, boom.
A destroyer lying a mile off, its Bofors guns angled high as they could manage, blazed away at a dive-bomber and clipped its wing. Trailing smoke, the bomber banked from the dive and looked as though it might pull out when it suddenly veered, caught a wingtip on the waves
 
—then cartwheeled on the surface of the sea, and exploded.

A roar went up from the seaweed continent, and the men on the dune pounded each other on the back.

“Cheers for the Royal Navy!”

“Did you see that, Milty? Did you see it?”

“What fine shooting, what an impossible angle!”

“Lads, will you look at that!” Balantine yelled with a grin. He pointed at the blue-painted trawler. It had tied up to what looked like . . . “They’ve made a pier out of lorries!”

“Ran ’em out on low tide the other day,” said a soldier close by, a flush of lingering joy on his face from witnessing the plane wreck. “Brilliant, hey? Made it easier for smaller craft like that to get in. Loading goes faster. There’s some British ingenuity, hey?”

“How long have you been here?” Jamie asked him.

“Two days.”

“Two days?” said Jamie. He stared down to the harbor. “That’s how long the queues are taking?”

“Some have been here longer than me. They can only load by that eastern mole and by the lorry jetties they’ve thrown together, two or three of ’em so far. I heard there’s another up by Bray Dunes. You better get your men into a group. They take us off in order, best as they can. Until then, you can amuse yourself by staying alive. But look over there
 
—see? We’re starting to see smaller craft like that come straight in to the beaches. Lifeboats, day sailers, you name it. They’re taking us off by tens and twenties and fifties out to the destroyers. You know what they do then? They come straight back for more. While hell rains down. Never seen anything like it. They’re civilians.” He shook his head. “Brave, brave lads.”

“I’ll say,” said another next to him.

“Some of ’em ain’t lads,” another ginger-haired soldier added. “I seen old ’uns out there, old enough to be me grandpap.”

“Why are there bodies in the water?” Jamie asked.

“Well, you saw that ship blow up. Some are killed by the bombs, and some just can’t swim.”

Jamie looked around, and said, “Where do we go to get into groups?”

“Incoming! Incoming!”

“Take cover!”

A droning field of planes appeared from the east in three columns, some in formation over the waters, some over the beaches, some over land. Jamie watched, mesmerized, as a single plane dropped . . . four, five . . . ten, eleven . . . fifteen bombs.

Milton dragged Jamie down to the sand and threw himself on top of him.

Wet sand filled Jamie’s mouth, and he kicked and struggled and finally shoved Milton off. Coughing, spitting, he righted his helmet and wiped his mouth only to be pushed down again, his face shoved once more into skin-scouring sand. He couldn’t breathe, and frantically threw Milton off.

He spit sand, scrubbed his mouth, and roared at Milton, “Mind those stitches! I can’t have you comin’ apart!”

“He’s already done that, hasn’t he?”

“Shut up, Griggs!” shouted Jamie, Baylor, and Balantine.

Each man emerged from wherever he’d dove into the sand on the dune, took stock of himself, brushed off sand and righted kits and helmets, and then took stock of each other.

“Everyone all right then?” said Balantine. He looked down to the beach. “We need to find out where we’re supposed to be. That’s one bloody massive queue.”

“Go see that man with the megaphone,” said their earlier informant, brushing off sand and pointing west. “There
 
—that’s Captain Tennant, actually. He’s in charge.”

The man with the megaphone, dressed in naval blues and wearing a helmet with some sort of sticker on the front, moved along with another man trotting behind, calling out, “Maintain order! Stay in your groups! Queue in an orderly fashion!” His naval blues stood out in fresh, welcomed contrast to filthy army greens and browns.

“Nice to see someone clean,” said Griggs.

“Griggs, keep everyone together,” said Balantine. “I’ll see where we’re supposed to go.” Hand on his helmet, he went off at a trot, glancing at the eastern sky.

Jamie and Baylor sat watching the beaches. Curtis dropped where he stood and fell asleep in an instant. Milton sat gazing at the sky, and Balantine had not yet returned. Griggs sat apart, cleaning his gun and glaring at the east as if daring a bomber to come
 
—as if a Bren could take down a bomber.

“You ever see so many people in one place?” Jamie said.

“I went to the Olympic Games in ’36 with my cousin. That was a lot.” But Baylor sounded as though it didn’t quite compare to what lay before their eyes.

The entire beach, once a place for holidaymakers, was a shambles of debris. In the dunes, you couldn’t take a step without landing on something bomb-strewn; a bit of a brightly colored beach umbrella, a piece of what looked like a café table thrown hundreds of yards from the line of bombed shops fronting the beach, broken army equipment, and broken men.

They lay everywhere, and not just soldiers; they saw dead civilians, same as inland, the old and the young, men and women. Some of the French townspeople, weeping, collected their dead on stretchers and bore them away.

“Bullets are the worst,” said their informant, whose name was Peter. “You can avoid the bombs, but when they come in strafing, that’s another thing. Seems they always come out of nowhere. That one’s buggered,” he said with a nod, and they followed his line of sight. At first Jamie thought he referred to Milton, and felt a flash of offense; but past Milton, down in the surf of the beach, soldiers began to roll out of a stalled-out motorboat, and wade back to shore.

“Poor sods. You wait all that time. Bit anticlimactic. Especially if
you get bombed on the way to a destroyer. I’ll come back just for that. You see that happen, and all you see is bloody murder. Killing men who can’t shoot back. It’s just wrong. I don’t care if it’s war. It’s wrong. I’ll be back for that.” Peter nodded. “I’ll be back for a lifeboat I saw. Crewed by two kids, all shoutin’ and friendly and helpin’ the lads. One of ’em jumps in the water to help push a bloke up
 
—gets strafed to pieces, cut right in half. Then a bomber comes, finishes off the boat. Blew it to kindling.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Couldn’t see the name of the boat, so I named it in my head. The
Endeavor
. I’ll be back for that. I hope I get the chance to kill ’em just as defenseless.”

“I’ll kill them now,” said Griggs with a shrug.

“You have ammo for that?” Peter asked of the Bren.

“One magazine left.”

“Heavy things, they are,” Peter said vaguely, lighting his cigarette. Jamie noticed then how bleary-red his eyes were. There probably wasn’t much sleeping on the dunes. “They’re being slaughtered for us, you know. Right in front of our eyes.” He watched the surf. “They’re civilians. It’s just wrong. We’re supposed to do the saving. But we have to watch it every day, and not a bloody thing we can do. They keep coming, more and more of them. We have to watch when they’re blown to bits.”

“Just shut it, why don’t you?” said Griggs.

Peter blinked, looked at him in surprise.

“Don’t mind him. He’s just ornery,” Baylor told him. “Since birth.”

Griggs pulled up his gun and aimed for Baylor. Jamie felt a rush of weakness, and then Griggs swung the gun to the sky and let loose a continuing burst on a passing plane. The plane strafed their area, stitching a sand-pocked line right beside Griggs as men dove frantically for cover. Griggs continued shooting at it long after it passed, the only one standing when it came and when it left.

“Belay that!” someone shouted at Griggs.

“Oy! Get your man under control!”

“It does no good, you moron!” A soldier sat up, brushing himself off. “You think we haven’t tried it? Save it for the German infantry, they’ll be here soon enough!” He looked around. “Everyone all right? Peter
 
—you all right?”

But Griggs, to the astonishment of all, took the Bren by the end of the barrel and slammed it repeatedly on the packed sand. The magazine snapped off, the stock cracked and broke apart.

“Griggs!” Jamie bellowed.

“It jammed,” said Griggs.

“Oh, that’s smart!” an onlooker jeered. “That’s tellin’ ’em!”

“He’s gone mad!” said Curtis, wildly looking about. “Where’s Balantine?”

Effort noises erupted from the red-faced Griggs with each blow of the Bren upon the ground.

Milton rose and went to Griggs, hands raised. “My name is Captain Jacobs,” he said. “My name is Captain Jacobs.”

Griggs stopped, breathing hard, staring at the captain. He wiped spittle from his mouth, looked at Jamie, back at the captain. And the captain looked back at him, straight at him, brown eyes earnest beneath the dirty white bandage.

“My name is Captain Jacobs.” He lowered his hands.

Griggs looked at the ruined Bren in his hands, threw it aside. “All this time, you can’t come up with anything more interesting
 
—”

“That’s all you need to know, Griggs,” said Baylor, but the men turned at the sound of his voice.

He lay on the ground, gazing proudly at Milton, blood running between the fingers clutching his side.