Ride Out The Storm (32 page)

It opened with a splintering crash and, reaching inside for the whisky bottle, he wrenched out the cork and, tossing it away, raised the bottle to his mouth. It helped solve a lot of things.

The problem Allerton had to solve was that of getting ashore. Clinging to his oar, he recovered his wits and his strength and, with the will that exists in every man until he dies, he’d started to fight back and kick his way slowly towards the beach.

As he reached the sand, he lay for a long time in the shallows among the floating packs and planks and ropes. Then he realised he was being nudged by the body of a man in the blue trousers and jersey of a sailor, and weakly he pushed it away and struggled to his knees. Staggering to his feet he headed up the beach until the sand became dry beyond the tide line. There the afternoon sun was blissfully warm on his face and he flopped down. Within a moment he was asleep.

For Horndorff it was just as much of an effort. He was a poor swimmer, and, as
Vital
had rolled over more than half a mile from land, even with a splintered spar to assist him it was a long way.

As he drew nearer the beach, he began to feel the tide had turned and that he was drifting out to sea again. In a panic, he let the spar go and tried to head for the shore on his own. But he’d misjudged his own strength and he knew he was going to drown. His flailing arms grew slower and slower, and then he realised that his legs were not moving at all and that he was wallowing half under the water.

He tried again to force movement into his limbs but they were like lead now. Desperately he tried to touch bottom with his feet, but he was still too far from the shallows and he began to sink. His mind full of the cruelty of a fate that allowed him to drown while his comrades won promotion and medals, he at last forced his legs and arms to work again. A man was watching from the beach, but he could hardly see him through the blur of fatigue and aching agony and the glare of the lowering sun.

Slowly he drew towards the surf, but by this time his head was as often under the water as it was above, and as his flailings grew weaker he knew he’d never make it. Suddenly he didn’t seem to care, and as his arms and legs came to a halt he lay in the water and allowed himself to sink.

Not very far from where Horndorff was quietly drowning, Scharroo and Marie-Josephine were still pursuing Marie-Josephine’s idea of getting a boat to England. A morning of bombing and shelling had scared the wits out of Scharroo, but Marie-Josephine seemed to have become obsessed by her idea to the point of indifference to danger.

‘For God’s sake,’ Scharroo grated as they spat out grit and clawed the sand from their clothes after the violence of the last terrifying attack, ‘you still don’t have that crazy idea, do you?’

‘But of course!’ She looked at him as though startled by the question.

He pointed at the ship lying in the roadstead surrounded by smoke and steam, and at the wreckage where
Vital
had disappeared. ‘You see what they’re doing to them?’

‘Not
all
of them. Some they do not hit. We must ask.’

It seemed that the first essential to getting out of Dunkirk was a permit to board one of the ships but when they found the embarkation office, the man in charge stared at them as though they were mad.

‘For
whom
?’
he asked.

‘Me,’ Scharroo said. ‘And the girl.’

‘And neither of you are English?’

‘Right. I’m American. She’s–’

The officer interrupted. ‘Do you think I’ve got nothing better to do just now than issue permits to people who want to make day-trips to England.’ He flinched as a bomb landed nearby. ‘We’re trying to evacuate a bloody army.’

They walked slowly back to the beach. Though no one seemed to want them, no one questioned them either. The evacuation was so extraordinary it never seemed to occur to anyone to wonder how they came to be there, and they moved to a pier made of lorries. A naval officer was about to help Marie-Josephine into a boat when he looked up.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he said.

‘She’s trying to get to England,’ Scharroo said.

‘So are a lot of other people. And who are
you,
come to that?’

‘Walter Scharroo. American. UAP.’

‘Sorry. Can’t take you.’

‘Take her then.’ Scharroo was beginning to wish he’d never seen Marie-Josephine by this time.

‘She’s a civilian. My job’s to take
these
chaps back.’

The argument continued as the other soldiers pushed past them. When the boat was full, it pulled away and they were left standing on the pier. The men behind them didn’t seem to resent them and Scharroo had the impression that, as far as they were concerned, they could have gone and welcome.

It was late afternoon when they tried again. They’d left it for some time, hoping the climate would change, and by this time they were both hungry. For a long time they moved about the beach, until they found a young officer organising a fresh queue. Seeing a new point of organisation, other soldiers were running to join it and Scharroo grabbed Marie-Josephine’s hand and dragged her after them.

As they waited, the officer moved along the line, studying each man. At Scharroo and Marie-Josephine he stopped.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he asked.

‘To England,’ Scharroo said.

‘Oh, are you?’ The officer looked tired to the point of numbness and his nerves were clearly on edge. ‘Who the hell are you, anyway?’ he asked.

‘Name’s Scharroo.’

‘British?’

‘American.’

‘Sorry.’

As he turned away, Scharroo caught his arm. ‘The girl’s not American.’

The officer turned. His eyes were red-rimmed with lack of sleep and he seemed almost out on his feet.

‘British?’

‘French.’

‘Sorry.’

‘For God’s sake–’ Scharroo’s frustration and anger burst out ‘–the goddam French have been fighting for you!’

The officer stared at him coldly. ‘I thought we’d been fighting for
them
,’
he said.

Scharroo turned away and pushed Marie-Josephine from the queue. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘The bastards are running so fast you can’t see ’em for dust.’

Moving further along the beach, they came to a group of French soldiers arguing loudly. A British soldier watching them sneered.

‘The bastards tried to rush the boats,’ he said.

The Frenchmen seemed to take a different view, and one of their officers, staring out to sea, his face twisted with bitterness, explained. ‘They do not understand that some of these men have never seen a ship before in their lives,’ he said. ‘They come from the Jura and the Midi and the Alps and the Dordogne. What do
they
know about climbing into boats?’ He gestured angrily. ‘One would think their precious boats were made of paper, they are so afraid of them turning over.’

The signal about
Vital
’s
end arrived in Dover late in the afternoon.

‘It’s going to become harder than ever now, sir,’ the SOO said. ‘Bray Dunes is under shellfire now.’

‘What about Gort? Is he off yet?’

‘Yes, sir. I understand he’s aboard
Hebe.
’

The admiral was silent for a moment. ‘Dunkirk thinks it won’t be possible to hold the perimeter after midnight on the first,’ he said.

‘And the evacuation of the rear-guard, sir?’

The admiral looked up. ‘Postponed until dawn on the second.’

By this time Hinze’s shells were dropping regularly on the beaches. The streams of ships, big and small, kept coming, however, and the wind had diminished a little, the surf had died down again, and the makeshift piers were beginning to pay dividends. As darkness approached, the whole horizon was dotted with small craft, moving in a maze of wreckage and zig-zagging to dodge the explosions. They were manned by every kind of crew imaginable, RASC cadets, naval officers, masters of Sea Scout troops, parsons, old men wearing carpet slippers. Tugs pulled crippled ships or tows of small boats full of rescued men to put them aboard the personnel ships. Trawlers jammed men into cabins, fish holds, wheelhouses, and decks, and more were crammed among the coal dust in barges that had only recently been carrying fuel to London power stations.

Among them,
Daisy
chugged steadily backwards and forwards from the beach, Kenny Pepper beyond words at the awe of it all. Despite the noise and weariness, he was impressed by the sheer stark courage about him, and amazed at the admiration and affection he felt for Gilbert and Ernie Williams. From the day they’d taken him under their wing, rough, foul-mouthed, kindly men who’d chivvied and jeered at him, he’d never considered they could be brave but now he’d seen them proving it, and it dawned on him that nobility was something that came to men of all classes.

By this time he’d grown indifferent to things which forty-eight hours before would have turned his heart over, and as they stopped for a moment to draw breath, Gilbert Williams shoved his head out of the wheelhouse.

‘Tea, Kenny,’ he called. ‘Better give old Sy a mugful while you’re at it.’

‘I was going to.’ Brought up on tales of heroism, Kenny was surprised that he could feel compassion for cowardice. ‘He can’t help it.’

Gilbert nodded. ‘Make it quick, son, or them bloody Jerries’ll be back afore we’ve drunk it.’

It was more than likely because it had suddenly occurred to Alfred Stoos that he was sitting on the ground, D/6980 was sitting on the ground and Wunsche was sitting on the ground, and there was work to do.

‘She needs testing,’ Hamcke had said of D/6980.

Very well, Stoos decided, he would test her.

Allerton had spent most of the day lying on the beach. The sinking of
Vital
had left him drained of energy and he’d sprawled as though dead on the sand. No one had gone near him because they’d assumed he was just another of the drowned silent bodies that littered the shoreline. The tide had fallen away from him and eventually his clothes had dried, but still he hadn’t moved. It was only when the tide had returned and the chilly water had lapped at his legs that he awakened.

He had no idea what time it was, or even which day. There was no one about him he knew. Nearby, a soldier was lying on the sand, horribly burned, the only indication that he was alive the slow movements of his hands. There was nothing Allerton could do and he staggered past him towards the dunes. All he wanted was safety – not the safety of England, just the safety of dry land where the sea couldn’t snatch him under.

Where he finally sank to the sand again, a man in the coloured forage cap of a cavalry regiment was digging a hole with an empty corned beef tin. He looked up but went on digging, and Allerton went to sleep again. His mind had stopped working. A safety valve had lifted and his brain, as well as his limbs, had gone limp.

When he woke the sun was still shining, but it was low now above the horizon and the cavalryman alongside him lay head-down half-inside his hole. The dry sand, stirred by the breeze, was slipping down in little rivulets from the lip, gradually burying his head and shoulders and disturbing the flies encrusted on the blood on his jacket and the edge of the corned beef can he’d been using.

Then Allerton became aware of the stink again. It was like a slaughterhouse and, scrambling to his feet, he moved out of the dunes and into the town, numbed, stupefied, and devoid of emotion.

Telephone wires hung in dangling loops among the fallen masonry but nearby he could hear laughter and saw a man on a lorry tossing out cartons of cigarettes as he drove post. A machine-gun was chattering away on his left and he heard another answer it, and then a group of light infantrymen in full equipment went by, heading for the beaches in their quick high step, led by a man playing a fife. They were singing.

Ten men went to walk, walk along the sand dunes.

Ten men, nine men, eight men, seven men, six men,

five men, four men, three men, two men, one man

and his dog walked along the sand dunes.

A group of officers standing in a garden, eating biscuits and bully beef, took pity on him. They were dirty, stained and red-eyed with sleeplessness but they were still part of a unit.

‘What happened, old boy?’ one of them asked, staring at Allertons swollen mouth and scarecrow appearance.

‘I was on a destroyer,’ Allerton explained. ‘It was hit by a bomb. What time is it?’

They told him and he rubbed his hand over his features. ‘I’ve lost a day somewhere,’ he said.

They gave him a cigarette and a small square of corned beef on a biscuit tasting of diesel oil. ‘All we can spare, I’m afraid. Sorry we’ve nothing to drink. We had a touch of gin but it’s all gone now.’

The sun was only just above the horizon now and the Stukas seemed to have disappeared. Groups of soldiers were strolling about the beach, bored with waiting. Offshore,
Vital
’s
stern was still sticking out of the water, the bronze propellers catching the sun.