Ride Out The Storm (13 page)

He decided it might be a good idea to take as many of his belongings as he could with him and she followed him into the house, pulling the curtains to turn on the light, and watching him carefully as he took out a spare shirt, socks and a jersey from the drawer in the kitchen dresser where he kept his possessions.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘I dunno. Dover, I think.’

‘To fetch the soldiers out?’

He said nothing and, as he paused to light his pipe, she went to the cupboard and brought out a block of tobacco. ‘You’d better have this,’ she said.

He took the tobacco without comment and fished in the drawer again in the hope that he might turn up a forgotten half-crown. There was no money but he found the two medals he’d been given after the last war. They were only campaign medals but he stuffed them in his pocket. They had no value beyond proving his service but he thought someone might ask about it.

Nell Noone was still watching him closely. ‘How are you for money?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got a bit.’

She fished in her purse and produced a ten-shilling note. ‘Better have that. You can give it me back some time. When are you off?’

‘He said a couple of hours.’

She giggled and he sighed, knowing what was coming. ‘There’s just time before you go then,’ she said.

It had been a day of disappointment for the admiral at Dover, too, and though the small boats had started moving, it was apparent that until they arrived off the beaches loading would continue to be slow. Less than 10,000 men had been landed in England that day. Fortunately, the battle was not yet lost and the gap where the Belgian army had lain down its arms was already closing. It was nowhere neat and there were still gaping holes, and in the darkness and the confusion units lost touch and commanders lost contact, but the divisions were making their way out of the turmoil and the new front was slowly taking shape as men groped for positions.

Among them, near Helluin, Lance-Corporal Gow lay with a small detachment of men by a bridge over the River Este. Nearby were cows and a manure heap where the flies had bothered them until dark, and in addition, Gow’s nose was peeling, his fair northern skin burned by the sun. He and his fellow Guardsmen had driven the Germans back from the Este once already but now, with the cooks and the batmen in the line, they’d been informed that the halt could be only temporary and that the following morning they’d have to pull back again.

‘You’re to hang on to that bloody bridge, Gow,’ his sergeant had told him earnestly. He jabbed at the map he’d handed over. ‘They’ll come down this road here and try to get behind us, see. There’s a field regiment of artillery coming up to help but they won’t be here till tomorrow morning and we’ve got to stay till they arrive. OK?’

Gow’s expression didn’t change. He wasn’t given to smiling much.

‘When the guns get here,’ the sergeant went on, ‘they’ll cover us so we can pull back, but until then it’s up to us. Right?’

‘Aye,’ Gow said.

He knew exactly what the sergeant meant. One Guardsman was equal to half a dozen infantrymen of the Line, fifteen or sixteen Frenchmen and ten thousand Peruvian field marshals. In the Guards orders were expected to be carried out. Buttons will be polished. Goals will be scored. The Brigade will advance. Berlin will be taken. The bridge will be held. In terms of Guards discipline, the order was extraordinarily simple.

Only one thought was in the minds of those who knew anything about it and could see the picture as a whole on that Tuesday morning as Lance-Corporal Gow lay on the banks of the river near Helluin, and that was the consequences of the capitulation of the Belgian army.

The German right hook towards the coast had been met at the last moment by armoured cars and the attack had ground to a halt, and though they’d pushed across the Yser into the streets of Nieuport their bridgehead had been held. Now, as they rushed up their supports, men like Gow, the unquestioning men of Fontenoy and Waterloo and Inkerman, were waiting.

The Este was only a few yards wide where Gow lay, and the bridge was a small stone affair of two arches half hidden by bushes. The position he’d chosen was directly opposite a point where the road curved to approach it and where vehicles moving in either direction had to slow down. The Bren he’d set up was a good solid weapon which could be relied on not to jam, and he felt it ought to be possible to do a lot of damage because a Bren was accurate – almost too accurate, because when they were rushing you it was as well to spray a bit.

As the light increased he settled himself and lit a crumpled Woodbine. ‘I’m hungry enough tae eat a mangy pup,’ he growled.

Even as he spoke he heard vehicles approaching, and down the curving road opposite he saw a line of lorries moving forward through the mist, led by an open lightweight truck containing an officer, three men and a machine-gun on a mount.

He jerked a hand at the men alongside him and they looked up, duty and courage struggling with uncertainty on their faces to contort them into wooden grimaces. ‘Get them fellers in the scout car,’ he said. ‘I’m after yon lot in the lorries.’

‘You’ll never get ’em, Jock. Not from here.’

‘No,’ Gow agreed. ‘No’ from here. But I will from yon bank. Gi’e us a wee liftie.’

They helped him carry the Bren to the top of a small rise overhanging the river. From there he could cover the road where the lorries were approaching. But it was not hidden by the bushes and left Gow horribly exposed.

‘They’ll spot you straight away, Jock,’ one of the men pointed out.

Gow was occupied in setting up the gun and seemed indifferent, ‘They’ve got two chances,’ he said.

He squatted down among the young grass, watching narrow-eyed as the vehicles on the opposite side of the river approached. ‘You lot ready?’ he called softly.

‘Yes.’

‘Right, then! Let the buggers have it!’

There was a blast of controlled fire across the narrow river that shattered the windscreen of the truck and lifted the officer over the side, his jaunty cap rolling into the long grass by the approach to the bridge. The driver flopped over the wheel as the vehicle slewed sideways towards the hedge, and the other two men, both wounded, were killed by the second fusillade of shots.

As the Bren roared Gow saw the lorries across the river come to a halt and the figures in the back jumping out. Several of them fell but the rest dived for the roadside and began to return the fire, and he knew it was only a matter of seconds before they started inflicting damage.

He didn’t have long to wait, and as his Number Two reached up to pass him a fresh magazine he yelped and fell against Gow, knocking his helmet off. As Gow pulled him into cover and reached for the gun again, he heard a loud elastic twang and one of the lorries across the river seemed to stagger on its wheels and burst into flames. Behind them, two fields away, a battery of 25-pounders was firing over open sights.

It was wonderful to hear the bark of their own heavy weapons for a change and Gow saw another lorry roll off the road, burning. But as he swung the Bren towards it, something exploded in his head and his long body jerked upright, stiff and straight, then went down like a felled fir tree in his native Scotland. As he crashed against the gun, it toppled from the bank and slithered among the reeds towards the water.

The firing had attracted the men from the position by the manure heap along the bank and they came up at a crouching run. The sergeant was with them. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Out you get!’ He turned Gow over. Blood was coming through his hair and down his forehead over his eyes.

‘Poor bugger,’ he said. ‘Straight through the head.’

Picking up the wounded, they hurried off, keeping their heads down, leaving behind them Lance-Corporal Gow, his bloody face turned up to the morning sky.

As Gow had been fighting his little battle, in the office in the cliffs at Dover the admiral had adjusted his plans again. The emphasis had shifted back from the beaches to the battered port, and personnel ships were signalled to approach the flimsy East Mole. With the setting up of a control system, berthing parties and a pier-master, and with sailors in the town as guides, the flow of men, redirected from the beaches, began to come in and the destroyers started to arrive.

By this time, Hatton was beginning to consider himself an old hand at the game. ‘Come on,’ he kept saying, pushing the weary soldiers aboard. ‘Keep going! Keep going!–’

The soldiers were carrying pets, French cheeses, wine, lace table-cloths, women’s underwear – presents for their families as though they’d been on a day trip; and since they were well-organised and in their own units, reporting as though for manoeuvres, when a worried-looking middle-aged officer with a smart uniform and a curling moustache pushed forward, Hatton stopped him.

‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘Which are your men?’

‘They’re at the other end of the jetty,’ a sergeant behind him said bluntly. ‘The bugger’s abandoned ’em.’

The officer blushed and thrust past Hatton to disappear into the press of men on the deck. As Hatton stared after him a steamer with great paddle boxes and a flat wide deck that had once plied up Southampton Water began to edge alongside and ropes were passed across.

‘We’ll load across you, if you’ve no objection,’ the captain shouted through a megaphone.

Hatton began to direct the men to the wider decks of the paddle-steamer. They were coming along the mole now in large numbers but the stream kept breaking off, as though it were proving difficult in the town to redirect them. Most of them had never in their lives been further to sea than in a pleasure boat and, as it was hard to get them to understand, Hatton soon dropped naval terms. Then, because he was growing a little light-headed with excitement and hunger, he began to behave like a bus conductor during the rush hour.

‘Pass down the bus, please,’ he kept shouting, and as the call was taken up by the petty officers, the weary faces under the bowl-shaped helmets began to split into grins. The soldiers were unwilling to go below, however, feeling they were safer on deck, and the petty officers began to push angrily to get them out of the way of the guns.

There was a brief lull. They’d been working a long time now and the paddle-steamer alongside seemed almost full. The decks of
Vital
had cleared, however, and the mole looked empty again.

Hough stared along it and examined the town through his glasses. ‘Nip into town, Hatton,’ he called from the bridge. ‘See if you can round up any more.’

Hatton ran down the pier with a petty officer and a couple of sailors. Dunkirk was a wreck and he wasn’t anxious to venture too far in case there were fifth columnists waiting to snipe him. The dock area was full of wreckage – a burning train, cranes canted out of true, ambulances punctured with bullets and shell splinters, and scattered brickwork where buildings and walls had been demolished.

Occasionally they came across bodies lying on the cobbles, covered with greatcoats, gas capes or groundsheets, their limbs decently composed, their great boots sticking up in ungainly fashion, and once two men sitting by a wall, killed by blast, a startled look on both the darkening faces. Here and there among the scattered vehicles there was a dead horse or a splintered cart, but there were no civilians and no sign of the town’s life.

They rounded up a few groups of soldiers, and then the petty officer found a bicycle which was far too small for him. ‘I’ll nip round a bit, sir,’ he said. ‘See if I can find any more,’

Hatton didn’t envy him because there were still explosions among the smoke, but he wobbled off and after a few minutes Hatton saw a group of soldiers running towards him.

‘This way! Down the mole!’

Eventually, they rounded up about three hundred more men, all filthy, all tired, and some of them hurt, the petty officer bringing them in like a sheepdog with stray lambs.

By this time, the wardroom, small as it was, was crowded with wounded, and the stokers’ flats, the petty officers’ and ratings’ messes were all jammed with men. There were more of them on the stern and along the deck amidships, and they had promptly lolled over and gone to sleep.

His work finished, Hatton reported to the bridge. Hough seemed to be in a good mood. ‘Made a good job of that, Hatton,’ he said. ‘What were you before the war? Conductor on a Number Eleven?’

‘No, sir,’ Hatton grinned. ‘Inspector. Bags of experience.’

It was full daylight by this time and Hough was staring anxiously at the sky. ‘Time we left,’ he said. He had the megaphone in his hand speaking to the first lieutenant. ‘Single up, Number One!’ He turned to the bridge of the paddle-steamer. ‘We’ll pass your lines ashore.’

‘Don’t worry,’ the shout came back. ‘We’re off, too. We’ve got ’em sitting in the lavatories.’

Gangways were dragged inboard and the lines were dropped. The water churned as the ferry’s paddles thumped and she slowly disappeared astern, and it was as Hatton pushed his way back through the lolling exhausted figures that a man on the point fives called out.

‘Sir! Aircraft approaching starboard side!’

The Stukas were screaming down out of the sky already and Hatton’s heart leapt as he saw one of them hit and swerve out of its dive. It headed over the town to disappear in a flash of flame and a puff of smoke, and he saw fragments of wing and tail whirring down among the houses. The soldiers cheered and began to fire their rifles, the clatter of shots and the working of breeches audible even above the racket of the guns.