Ride Out The Storm (33 page)

As he lifted his head, Horndorff realised he was lying with his feet still in the water but that his head was clear. At first, because he felt so much at peace with the world and his last thoughts had been concerned with dying, he was certain he was dead. Then he realised where he was and lifted his head to stare into the sun. There were groups of soldiers standing in the water, their boots in their hands, their helmets on the back of their heads. Higher up the beach he could see a lorry blazing and a few men drinking out of tin mugs round a Bofors gun which was cocked towards the sky. Nobody took any notice of him and it occurred to him he was free to go where he liked.

Slowly, still exhausted, he dragged himself on to all fours, chilled despite the sunshine. Then he turned his head and saw Conybeare.

He was sitting down, his figure stretching a long shadow on the sand. He was wearing stockings but had lost the clumsy boots. His tunic with its wings lay alongside him and he looked like a small boy on the beach for the day, but in his hand he still held the Luger and Horndorff was staring straight into the muzzle.

‘We nearly didn’t make it,’ Conybeare said.

Horndorff’s eyes blazed and then he realised what Conybeare meant.

‘You saved me?’ he said.

Conybeare nodded. ‘Good swimmer,’ he said.

‘Is there anything you’re not good at?’ Horndorff asked bitterly.

Conybeare shrugged. ‘Good at most things,’ he said. ‘Got here pretty quickly. Knew what you’d do. Walked up and down the tide line waiting for you.

Still on his hands and knees, his clothes damp against his big body, Horndorff stared at Conybeare, his expression full of loathing.

‘
You
saved me,’ he said. ‘
You
saved my life?’

‘That’s right.’

‘
Why
?’
The word was almost a screech. ‘
Why
?
Why
?’

Sitting in a garden in the southern suburbs of the town, Sievewright wondered at his own blind faith. He’d long since decided that too much was happening for him to get involved and had decided to wait for darkness before attempting to move on.

He’d found the garden at the back of a big house that had been burnt out. The grass and the flowers were covered with flakes of soot and fragments of charred wood, but it was surrounded by a high wall and there were larches and laurel and cedars in it that had kept the heat of the sun from him. He’d chosen it deliberately because, seeing the black puppy with him, the provost sergeant on duty outside the town had advised him to get rid of it.

‘The bloody place’s full of dogs,’ he said. ‘All going potty with the bangs. They’re having to shoot ’em on the quayside.’

In the time since he’d picked up the animal, Sievewright had grown attached to it. The idea of seeing it destroyed was just too much for him, and he sat now with his back to a tree, sharing his last biscuit with it. It squatted in front of him watching him as he broke fragments off and passed them across.

He was hungry but in no way dispirited. It was already dark and soon, with a bit of luck, he told himself, he could go and find a ship.

Behind Sievewright, at close on midnight, Lance-Corporal Gow and his little detachment of British and French soldiers were approaching the town. As they’d moved back after their action by the canal, they’d picked up an abandoned lorry, but while they were still crowing their delight it had dawned on them that the lorry was abandoned because the Germans to the east had somehow managed to filter past; an artillery detachment had expertly bracketed a bend in the road they were on and were hitting everything that tried to move towards the dumping area on the edge of the perimeter. In the distance four trucks were burning, and about them were men of the Wiltshire Regiment trying to make up their minds how to tackle the problem.

‘Well, we cannae stay here,’ Gow had pointed out firmly.

Gibbering with fear, trying to screw himself up to the exquisite agony of daring that he’d never have managed without Gow scowling beside him, Noble had driven the lorry at full speed down the road, fully expecting every moment to be his last until, thirty yards from the bend, Gow had screamed at him – ‘Brake!’ Even as he had slammed the lorry to a standstill, he heard the whistle of shells and saw flashes and mushrooming clouds of dust and smoke in front.

‘Now, mon,’ Gow screeched. ‘Full speed!’

His heart in his mouth, Noble had jammed the accelerator down and they’d gone round the corner on two wheels, their nostrils full of the smell of cordite from the smoke still drifting across it. As they’d headed into the next straight he’d heard the crash of shells behind them, and he’d climbed out by the dumping area on shaking legs.

‘Gow,’ he’d said. ‘I’m frightened.
You
frighten me.’

Now, as they approached the town, the roads were scored with shell-holes and strewn with broken glass, and occasionally in the flames they saw a rat move.

Men were still working in the vast car parks, destroying the vehicles. Occasionally a shell burst and the fragments hissed down, but the work of destruction never stopped. Artificers were attaching 50-yard lengths of signal wire to the trigger levers of their guns. Cordite bags were being taken out of the cartridge cases and their contents scattered, so that if an advancing German – trying for a quiet smoke – tossed away an unwary match, he’d be surrounded in an instant sheet of flame. Men were trudging to the canal with 25-pound shells and loading their last vehicles with dial sights, clinometers and director heads. Only the Bren gunners and the Boyes riflemen kept their weapons.

As Gow and his men tramped past, a gunner picked up a shell, took the fuse cap off and slid it carefully down the muzzle to the breech. Warily, he placed another in the breech with the charge.

‘Look out, they’re going to press the tit,’ a sergeant warned and, as they headed for the ditch, an officer pulled the signal wire attached to the trigger. When they lifted their heads the gun was scrap.

They were all hungry and tired now and Private Angelet was asleep on his feet, putting one foot automatically in front of the other, his eyes open but unconscious of what went on around him. Lije Noble, limping heavily now, also craved sleep but was still uncertain which was worse, being hungry and tired or having Lance-Corporal Gow pounce on him. Only Gow and Chouteau seemed untouched by weariness. For most of the march back, they’d argued in an extraordinary Anglo-French jargon of their own devising which was the better unit, the Foreign Legion or the Brigade of Guards. So far honours seemed to be about even.

Apart from the few gunners trailing behind them the roads to Dunkirk seemed deserted now. Summer lightning flashed along the horizon where guns were still firing, and ahead was only the dreadful beacon of the dying town. The road was strewn with the wreckage of the retreat and occasionally there were stray flashes and explosions.

As they passed through Rosendael, sergeants were calling names in rasping whispers as though the Germans might hear. Skeleton walls like the ruins of some bygone civilisation reared on either side of them but the only sound was the crunching of glass under their boots, like the crackling of ice in winter. The darkness was peopled by shapeless muffled figures, and occasionally mysterious shadows appeared in doorways or from round corners – stray inhabitants, a few looters, perhaps an occasional fifth columnist. Names were still being shouted – ‘That A Company, 5th Warwicks?’ – ‘Alf, where are you?’ – ‘This way, George’ – as the British fragments of the rear-guard filtered back. The road was narrow, and a lorry-load of French troops trying to force their way past came within an ace of being shot to pieces as half a dozen tired and furious men had their rifles at the driver’s throat in a moment.

As they reached the shelter of the town and began to pick their way through the ruins, the German aircraft came over again and Noble ducked and ran, feeling that the rags of his backside were flapping. Gow remained standing in the roadway, as though wishing he could defy the whole might of the German air force and, from his shelter under the wall of a house, Noble leapt up and took a running dive at him so that they went staggering together from the centre of the road to fall through the hedge into a garden behind.

The bomb hit the house where Noble had been sheltering and he watched the walls bulge outwards and collapse in a ballooning cloud of smoke and dust. The last few slates sliced murderously through the air and the last few bricks came rolling across the road, bouncing and jumping as though they were alive. Awed by the near miss, Noble let his head sink wearily to the hard pavé’.

Gow pushed at him gently, his voice concerned. ‘You hit, mon?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Noble said. ‘Just bloody terrified.’

The admission changed Gow’s tone. ‘You shoved me,’ he accused. ‘Why’d you do that?’

Noble turned his head slowly and looked at Gow’s indignant face in the glow of the flames. ‘Because you’re bloody soft in the head,’ he exploded. ‘Somebody’s got to look after you!’

They looked round for Chouteau, but he and Angelet had disappeared. Gow’s indignation increased. ‘And look what you’ve done! Ye’ve made us lose oor pals!’

Noble stared at him, not understanding him. He’d never understood him from the moment they’d met.

Gow stood up and stared about him. ‘Call his name,’ he said.

‘I don’t know his bloody name!
You
call!’

‘I forgot it. Yon French hae such bluidy queer names. What about yon little feller? Somethin’ aboot angels, I think.’

As they moved away they bumped into a soldier stumbling past with a bottle of wine under his arm. ‘Where you get that, mate?’ Noble demanded.

‘None of your business.’

Noble swung on the soldier’s arm. ‘Look, mate–’ he gestured at Gow ‘–I’ll get my mate to shove his Bren up your nostril if you don’t cough up.’

The soldier looked at Gow’s stark haggard features and glittering eyes. ‘Down there.’ His arm moved. ‘You have to pay.’

Noble patted his back pocket where the takings from the NAAFI were tucked. ‘I can pay,’ he said.

As Gow and Noble went in one direction, Allerton was moving in the other. He didn’t feel ill, just incredibly weary and cold despite the heat of the flames.

By this time the beaches were a bedlam of different tongues, increasing difficulties and lack of discipline, and the town a mad-house of rumour and counter-rumour, disorder, exhaustion, growing apprehension and failing communications. No one knew anything and lives were being lost as orders contradicted each other. It was the debit side of the success.

After a while he met a man wearing a kilt who was either drunk or shocked.

‘They said Ah kidnae wear ma kilt,’ he was announcing at the top of his voice. ‘“Battledress,” they said. “Everybody wears battledress.”
Battledress!
’
he spat. ‘“Wee Alec Galt has worn his kilt sin’ he joined an’ long before,” Ah said, “an’ he’s wearin’ it the noo. So up yer, Jock.”’

He had a bunch of pamphlets in his hand and he offered one to Allerton. At first Allerton thought they might be instructions on what to do but they were German propaganda leaflets.

‘
The Game Is Over
,’
he read. ‘
The Stumps Are Drawn. British Soldiers, your troops are entirely surrounded. Put down your arms.’

‘They must hae known we were short of bum fodder,’ the Highlander said.

Passing them now were groups of men who’d got hold of drink. One man was wearing a fur stole. ‘Tell Lord Gort,’ he shouted, ‘that Trooper Forrest of the Yeomanry presents his compliments and tells him he can stick his bloody British army where the monkey sticks its nuts.’

The Highlander looked shocked. ‘For Christ’s sake, mon,’ he said. ‘Hae ye no pride?’

‘Arseholes to you, you kilted bastard,’ the man in the stole said, and the Highlander dropped his pamphlets to the ground and jerked his rifle butt up. The man in the stole was lifted off the ground and lay draped across a hedge.

‘That’s shown yon bastard!’ the Highlander said, carefully picking up his pamphlets and stalking off. ‘No bastard insults a Scotsman’s kilt.’ He turned to Allerton. ‘You’ll be all right, mate. There are thirty thousand marines coming ashore later the day. This lot’s only temporary.’

Allerton watched him stalk off, a stocky figure with a grimy face, wearing his helmet on the hack of his head, his kilt swinging as he walked. The man in the fur stole still lay on his back half through the hedge. Several men who had watched the incident crossed the road and pulled him free.

‘There’s vicious for you,’ a high Welsh voice said indignantly. ‘His jaw’s broke.’

‘Serve the bugger right! You can’t insult a Highlander’s kilt.’

Allerton couldn’t see why not. Plenty of people seemed to be doing more than merely insult each other that day.

The corned beef he’d eaten had given him a raging thirst and he moved into a nearby house to find a drink. He tried the tap but nothing came out, and he thought of the lavatory cistern. The water brought life back to him as it went down his cracked throat. Picking his way through streets that had long since become impassable to vehicles, he passed a church that seemed to be surrounded by a rising and falling sound of sighing he could hear even above the explosions. It puzzled him and then, as he saw ambulances, he realised it came from the throats of wounded men.