Silence Over Dunkerque (2 page)

Actually the warnings sounded early that spring morning of the tenth of May along the British front in France. As flights of Messerschmitts and Heinkels droned overhead, the code flashed from brigade to battalion, from battalion to battery, from wing to squadron. Even so, it was too late in many places. German attacking planes swooped down unexpectedly from the night skies, bombing every British aerodrome in France. Many machines were set afire and destroyed on the ground.

Sergeant Williams knew immediately what was happening. He sat up at the first sound. Not too far away, bombs were falling. That would be their flying field at Lustrem, a few miles distant, taking a pasting.

His first thought was about his family. No leave for sergeants now. Then he leaned over and turned on the small radio on the table beside his cot.

A horrible noise, a voice harsh, guttural, Teutonic, filled the small room. He recalled he had tuned in
Radio Stuttgart
in Germany just before going off to sleep.

“Achtung! Achtung! Hier ist der grosse deutsche Rundfunk....
This morning at 5:30 our soldiers crossed the Luxembourg frontier....”

By now he was awake. He rose, rubbing his eyes and reaching for his clothes. The telephone jangled. Hundreds of planes were roaring overhead as he picked up the receiver.

The orders were short. Destroy everything. Burn all unnecessary papers. Get moving. A glance at his watch showed ten to six. The Battle of France had begun.

Once roused and awake, the men were eager and ready. This was the end of eight winter months of cold, boredom, and inaction, of digging trenches, of making concrete shelters and gun emplacements, of nights broken by marches and training exercises in icy rain. They were happy to be leaving their billets at last and seeing action.

By noon the whole battalion was packed and ready. The forward movement north into Belgium had started; the motorcyclists and dispatch riders first, then the low reconnaissance cars, finally the long lines of vehicles with troops, the antiaircraft batteries, the field kitchens, the ammunition trains, the engineers with pontoon bridges on lorries, the Signal Corps with their field equipment. At two o’clock the Wilts crossed the frontier.

The start was peaceful. The sun shone from the clear May sky. Belgian villagers thronged the streets of the red-brick towns to welcome them, stuck lilacs in their flat helmets, handed up bread, cheese, and beer to the troops. Then, gradually, the columns slowed down. Traffic became greater from the opposite direction. Sergeant Williams in the front seat of a lead lorry watched it increase; first, a few luxury cars, Panhards and Talbots and Isottas; then smaller ones, Peugeots and Citroëns. Soon all cars passing had mattresses tied on top, all were packed with families—children, boys and girls of every age, sitting on each other’s laps or holding pets—dogs, cats, birds in cages. Many cars now began to show bullet holes in them.

This was the first tiny touching of war. The British soldiers ceased their jokes and became serious. Beside the Sergeant on the seat of the lorry, the driver shook his head, remarking as their forward speed decreased and the halts became more serious, “If those dive bombers, those Dorniers’ came along now, we’d be in for it sure enough.”

Things got worse when they stopped at five for tea. The luxury cars were a thing of the past; now the automobiles were smaller, less luxurious, older. Many were the trucks of tradesmen with their names and addresses painted on the sides.

M. Barrau, Boucher á Bruges, Flandre occidentale. André Frères, Boulangers á Malines. Etablis. Citroën, rue Roi Albert, Gand, Anvers.

The Sergeant realized they were little shopkeepers, small businessmen caught up in the maelstrom, each vehicle packed with people, bags, furniture, and the useless things one snatches up when bombers roar overhead.

“Keep to the right... keep to the right... g
ardez le droit,”
shouted the white-gloved British military policemen, acting as traffic cops to the panic-stricken hordes of civilians pouring south.

“How on earth d’you imagine they’ll ever get ammo and supplies up front in this mix-up?” asked the young soldier beside the Sergeant.

He shook his head and said nothing. For he was thinking precisely the same thing.

Soon the procession became an endless serpent, a long trail of cars, lorries, bikes, motor bikes, carts, fire engines, swill carriers, men and women on foot, some even pushing loaded baby carriages. The procession moved at a slow walk, starting, stopping, starting again, the radiators of the hundreds of cars and trucks boiling. These refugees appeared to have left their Flemish villages for the first time. The women wore aprons; many shuffled along beside the farm carts in slippers and house dresses. They looked dazed and bewildered.

As they moved into a small village, an enormous roar greeted them. It was a steam roller. Attached behind were two farm carts packed with families, the old men in black, women in their Sunday best, all sitting on great bundles of household linen tied up in sheets.

The Englishmen in their lorry tried to wedge through the mass; it was difficult. Before them a small boy was begging bread for a small girl he held by the hand; a thirteen-year-old was at the wheel of an ancient Renault with his mother, grandmother, and several kids packed inside. Most pathetic were the huge farm carts drawn by thick-necked horses, heads down, panting.

Coming toward the Sergeant’s lorry was an ancient crone, perched unsteadily on a pile of burlap sacks across the handlebars of a bike pushed by a youth, obviously her grandson. That tiny old woman had been a young, pretty girl when her father dragged her along these roads in 1870; she was a mother watching her three sons leave for the front in 1914; now she had lost her family and only her grandson remained. Always it was the invaders from the north. Only their headgear changed.

Then there was a loud noise, confusion, and shouting ahead. A huge French Bayard tank lumbered past, teetering on the left edge of the packed highway, overturning cars, ripping fenders off others. A red-faced French officer in blue, angry to the point of insanity, stuck a helmeted visage from the tank’s turret, screaming that he was going ahead and would run over anyone in his path.

“Attention...”
he yelled, shouting in a voice that penetrated the surrounding din.
“Attention... attention... attention....”

T
HERE WERE THREE
of them squeezed in on the front seat of the lorry—Three Fingers Brown, a former London bus driver, who was the best driver in the battalion, a young Scotch boy named MacPherson, and the Sergeant. For two days and nights they moved north with the columns of fighting men, gradually getting nearer the conflict yet never actually seeing action. All the time that horrible pageant moved past going south, the long lines of refugees and their vehicles blocking one side of the road. On the third day they came under fire for the first time.

“Listen! Listen there, Sarge,” said the Scotch boy. “What’s that noise?”

The procession stopped. Behind them the antiaircraft men fell out and hastily began setting up their guns in an adjacent field, while all around people left their cars, jumping for the side of the road and the shelter of the bordering trees. One minute the peaceful countryside was friendly and smiling in the spring sunshine, the next came that awful shrieking above.

Before they could move from the front seat the antiaircraft guns began to bark, and three hedge-hopping planes with large black crosses upon their wings zoomed down, machine-gun bullets spattering the paved road ahead.

The Sergeant cringed. Half the lorry was loaded with tins of gasoline, and he knew they would go up in flames if a bullet struck them, yet he was incapable of moving. He was chained to his seat. There he stayed, slumped down in a kind of bad dream, shielding his head in his hands. Most of the refugees were racing for the ditches, but death was faster. Men, women, and children tumbled to the pavement, flopping forward in the queer twist of the dying. One or two just stumbled, pitched forward, and fell on the black-topped road.

Directly before them was a peasant with a little girl of four or five strapped to the wicker basket of his bicycle. Caught in a moment of panic, he stood feverishly trying to untie the knots that held her. The rain of lead hurled them both to the ground.

It was there, it was here, it was gone. The zooming and shrieking died away, the machine guns in the fields ceased barking, and the three men sat silently in the front seat.

“I’m going to be sick,” said the Scotch boy, sticking his head out the window.

The Sergeant waited, understanding, and put his hand on the boy’s knee. It was their first time under fire, and he had sat paralyzed with fear like the boy.

The line of refugees ahead was in disorder. Beyond them several automobiles were burning. The dead and dying spattered the road on both sides, showing exactly where the German planes had passed. Along the pavement, horses, dogs, people lay twisting in agony, or lifeless and silent under the tall poplars beside the road.

The Sergeant nodded to Fingers, who pushed the starter. He moved the lorry gently forward, eased around the wrecked bicycle on top of which were heaped the peasant and his little girl. Just ahead a dispatch rider in khaki writhed in pain beside his motorcycle. The machine guns from above had treated child and soldier impartially.

F
INALLY THE REGIMENT
reached their positions along the river Dyle in Belgium. The next day Sergeant Williams was ordered to send out a patrol to reconnoiter the terrain in front of his battalion. He could have dispatched another non-com, but he wanted to see for himself what the country across the river was like.

He chose a corporal who was alert and intelligent, and Three Fingers Brown, as driver. Brown had been refused enlistment early in the war, because he had only three fingers on his right hand. He had then challenged the recruiting sergeant, and they had gone to a shooting gallery where the non-com was so badly beaten that Fingers’ enlistment was immediately accepted. Short, stocky, cheerful, and dependable, he was a good man to have around.

Armed with pistols and a machine gun, in a scout car, they crossed a small bridge, the mines having been pointed out to them. The road led straight ahead, and before long they were in a wood, winding through lanes for perhaps half an hour with no opposition and no enemy visible. At last they came to a small stream over which was a tiny stone bridge. A Belgian farmer working in the fields rose from his vegetables as they passed. There was a half frown on his face and something of a warning, the Sergeant thought, in his bearing.

“Most likely this bridge is mined,” said the Sergeant. “I’ll ask him.”

During the long winter months when most of the battalion non-coms were spending their evenings over glasses of beer in the cafés and
estaminets
along the frontier, Sergeant Williams had been studying and taking French lessons from the cure of the nearby village. By this time he was able to speak the language with fluency and a horrible British accent.

He leaped from the scout car and walked over to the farmer. As he did so, a frightful sound came from the rear.

“Hinauf.”
Stick ’em up.

He whirled around. From the thicket across the road stepped five German soldiers in coal-scuttle helmets with Schmeisser pistols at their hips. They were the first Germans he had ever seen. They were not to be the last.

In the car, Fingers and the corporal sat foolishly, mouths open, hands high in the air. Slowly the Sergeant swung round and stuck his up too. His face flushed. I just can’t believe it, he thought. In the regular army since I was sixteen, worked up from private to sergeant, and taken prisoner on the third day of battle without ever having fired a shot.

His next thought was of his family in the house on the Folkestone Road in Dover. This means they’ll be more alone than ever, for we’ve copped it. A German prison camp and the end of the war for the lot of us. The Sergeant was cheesed off.

The officers stepped from the woods and searched them. These were the first British guns they had seen, and each one was passed back and forth with interest. Then one officer beckoned, and a small German weapons’ carrier issued from an unnoticed road. He ordered the Englishmen back into their own car, and indicated they were to follow. As the cars lined up, a German soldier sat in the rear of the weapons’ carrier, with a machine gun on a tripod between his knees. It was pointed directly at them.

The corporal started to climb into their car, but Sergeant Williams shoved him aside and got in beside Fingers, the driver. A German officer observed this, said something to the man in the rear of their vehicle, and the machine gun swung to the right and gave forth an eloquent burst of sudden, sharp sound. Then the barrel swung back and lined up on their scout car.

The German patrol piled into their machine, the officer signaled, and they moved across the bridge. For perhaps a couple of miles they bumped across a country road. Then, far ahead, the Sergeant observed a crossroads with several signposts. His mind became active. As the senior non-com he had got them into trouble; now his job was to extricate them.

Coming close, they saw it was a main crossroads. The enemy car winked its lights to show it was turning left, the machine gun swung ostentatiously from side to side. Fingers winked his lights to indicate he understood the signal.

“Go right, Fingers,” said the Sergeant. His mouth never moved as he talked. “Go right and drive like hell.”

The little cockney said nothing. But he heard, understood, responded. Gaining speed, he came closer to the enemy weapons’ carrier, so near they could see those cruel blue eyes behind the machine gun. As they neared the crossroads, Fingers seemed to be obeying orders and following the German car. Then at the last second, he swerved violently right, tossing the two others against the windshield, and raced down the empty road.

Almost immediately machine-gun bullets spattered past, but they were soon out of range. With a good start they had made half a mile before the German car reversed itself, turned back around the corner, and came after them.