Silence Over Dunkerque (5 page)

The Hurricanes, one trailing smoke behind, turned due west and vanished in the summer haze.

I
N THE CONFUSION
of the retreat, they never caught up with their unit. The Fifth Division was moved to the left of the front to defend a portion of the circle, ever decreasing, around Dunkerque, so contact with them was never again established. After their stand at the crossroads when they captured the Mercedes, they were on their own, with the Sergeant, the senior non-com, in command.

The test of leadership comes when an army retreats. For ten days they had been retreating, fighting rear-guard actions by day without air support, marching grimly toward the sea at night. You ate what you carried, or what you could scrounge along the road. All the time he was absorbed in the business of holding this remnant of his men together. He felt sure that once they reached the coast the Royal Navy would take them home; “the dark-blue jobs,” as they called the Navy, would get them safely back. Here at Dunkerque there would be order and discipline, superior officers who would take over his responsibilities. Because of this, he began to think of home. Throughout the retreat he was a soldier; as a soldier, he had shut his family from his mind; but at last, with safety ahead, he began to think of the house on the Folkestone Road, the twins watching troops disembark from the Admiralty Pier at Dover, their dog beside them.

A road sign loomed up. The word Dunkerque stood before them. Dunkerque, fought over ten times since the seventh century, besieged, captured, devastated, rebuilt, and fortified again by the Counts of Flanders, by the Dutch, the Spaniards, the French, and the English, was this time being destroyed by the Germans. But here, within sight of escape, he soon found there was little of the order he expected. Unattached soldiers wandered around completely out of control. As the squad entered the burning town, stores were being pillaged, houses ransacked, men coming out with absurd loot—a grandfather’s clock, a bolt of cloth, a doll. Some, after helping wounded pals along the roads for days, suddenly deserted them in the streets when the bombers overhead roared down toward the beaches.

A sharp, familiar bark came through the noise. The Airedale was no longer at his heels. He turned. She sat back a short distance, her paw coming up in that so-familiar gesture. Suddenly he felt the crinkle and tinkle of broken glass under his heavy army boots. The animal was smart. She knew her paws would be cut to pieces by the broken windows blown into the streets.

She barked again, two short, appealing barks. The antiaircraft guns from the beach rattled; in the distance was the crump-crump of falling bombs. Somewhere a battery of field guns was firing back at the advancing Germans in the marshes beyond the city. Yet he heard her distinctly.

Hey, pal, after all this time together, you wouldn’t desert me now, would you?

The Sergeant hesitated. What’s she to me? Just another dog, that’s all. I’m exhausted, I’ve had it. Besides, I still have a duty to my men. Anyway, couldn’t possibly get a big dog like that aboard a ship. Space would be too valuable. I’ll leave her and go on.

He intended to go on, he had convinced himself he ought to leave her, he tried hard to turn away. But he couldn’t.

“Here, lad, hold this a bit.” He handed over his rifle. The men stood watching. Quickly he crunched through the splintered glass on the cobbled street and, seizing the dog, managed to sling her over his shoulder. That way he staggered after the men through the ruined, smoke-filled town.

It was a furnace, the pavement torn and jagged, broken tiles from the roofs tripping them, pieces of stone, telephone wires, burned-out cars, here an ambulance still smoking, there an overturned truck with the dead driver pinned underneath. The whole place smelled of the dead and dying. Flames mounted from the houses on both sides.

He stumbled, gasped, coughed. Suddenly the clear wind from the sea blew in to save them. The smoke shifted in the other direction. Coughing, they staggered out into the clear sea air. They stood on an avenue, a wide promenade along the sea, fairly clear of glass and debris. The Sergeant just made it. Once on the curb, the dog scrambled down, her tail wagging a kind of thank-you.

Taking back his rifle, he stood gazing at the sight in front. The squad clustered round. Below them was a hard sandy beach about one hundred and fifty yards wide, extending north from the burning town as far as they could see. It was black with lines of soldiers, six to eight abreast, stretching far out into the water. To their right was a ruined pier; alongside was a naval vessel, with men leaping from plank to plank to reach the ship. A few, very few small boats were coming in to the beaches. Each one was assaulted by the lines of men in the water. Several overturned before their eyes, and they could see soldiers struggling in the choppy sea, then dragged down by their packs and going under.

Continually the rattle of antiaircraft guns and the shells falling on the beaches to the north came to the ears of the little group. Suddenly there was a shriek behind them. They turned. A soldier in a black derby, arms outstretched, rushed past on horseback, singing incoherently. Crazy? Drunk? Or crazy-drunk? Did it matter?

But where was the division? They had expected to find it waiting—or at least someone who could direct them to it. But the scene before them was chaos. It was every man for himself; one glance showed the utter disorder, men slipping from one column to the other in hopes of getting aboard a boat. Overhead a flight of enemy planes roared down, scattering the troops on the sand in every direction. When they passed over, the soldiers tried to re-form again; there was argument and, here and there, fighting.

The squad stood around, faces stiff with stubble and sweat, caked with dirt and grime. They looked at him hopefully and eagerly. Solid, the boys called the Sergeant. This was their highest praise. Most troops disliked their non-coms. “I’ve no time for Sergeant Matthews,” they always said. But everyone liked Sergeant Williams.

At Dunkerque he had expected to turn them over to a higher command. None was visible. On the beach below, soldiers were cutting the regimental badges from their sleeves in order to slip in anywhere a boat was available. Now the squad edged closer, waiting, watching.

Through his weariness he appraised them—Fingers, the East Londoner; Harry Lonsdale, the rich boy from the West End, who had enlisted when dead drunk one evening; Jake Potter, a miner from Wales and a veteran of the First War. Then there was Jack Codrington. Jack was a jokester, always talking, though he had said little for three days now. But he was useful with a machine gun. Last were the two Scotch boys. That was all that remained of the squad. Several had been killed in action, one man had slipped off the road in the dark and either been drowned in the flooded marshes, or lost. He simply wasn’t around the next morning when light came.

Of course there was also the dog. Yes, naturally the dog. Sitting close to his right leg, she depended upon the Sergeant also.

A conscientious man, Sergeant Williams. In any army, any time, a man with a conscience is rare. Thoughts of himself, hopes of turning the men over to someone else, of relief from pressure, this all vanished as he saw them standing there, waiting, hoping, confident that somehow he would get them aboard a ship for England.

“All right, you men! We keep together. Stay together and we may get orders to embark. Separate and we’re just part of the crowd down there.”

Below on the sands he observed an officer, evidently from the staff, for he had a red band on his cap, consulting papers clipped to a board. The Sergeant decided to report.

“Come along now.” He climbed the iron parapet and jumped down onto the sand, the men clumsily following one by one. The dog, terrified to leap down, yet fearful at being left behind, ran back and forth along the stone promenade, barking furiously. At last she squeezed under the lower rail and scrambled down after him to the beach.

This devotion to the Sergeant was a curious thing. Many soldiers in the long columns that wound through the town of Bergues had observed her sitting on that stone doorstep, had called to her without response. The Sergeant was different. He had stopped, gone over, petted her with understanding. This she recognized, so she never left him, day or night. Let him move five feet and she was beside him. If he went inside a house and she couldn’t get in, she sat waiting, and when he came out her tail wagged as if he had been gone all day.

Through the damp sand he trudged up to the officer, followed by the dog.

“Sergeant Williams with a squad from the Second Wilts reporting, sir.”

“Second Wilts? You the N.C.O. in charge? Your regiment has already embarked at La Panne, I believe. Let me see... Yes, you better try up there at Bray-Dunes; that’s about six miles north up the beach. Here’s your embarkation number; you won’t be allowed on board without a number.”

He handed over a piece of red cardboard with the number S33 upon it. The Sergeant buttoned the precious pass to freedom in the pocket of his blouse. “We embark at Bray-Dunes, sir?”

The officer, now surrounded by others seeking information about their units, half turned his head. “That’s if any small boats can get in today. The surf is rising.”

The men stood despondently behind the Sergeant. Nobody spoke. He shifted his rifle to his shoulder and turned up the beach, the dog scrambling along beside his right leg.

“The surf is rising... the surf is rising... as if we couldn’t see for ourselves that the surf is rising,” grumbled Codrington.

“Why shouldn’t someone in the battalion have been detailed to wait? There must be lots of detachments like us.”

The Sergeant turned. They were strung out to the rear.

“Close up, you men,” he said sharply. “Stay close if ever you want to see England again.” But the exhausted soldiers had difficulty making headway through the long lines of troops on the beach. Only the dog stayed by his side.

“George!”

He stopped. In the army nobody called him anything but Sergeant Williams, or Sergeant. The name George meant everything to him—safety, home, Dover, and the family.

A stoutish figure in blue was waving at him across the sand. The man approached. It was old Captain Hudson, not really a captain at all, but a retired sergeant major of the Guards, who worked in the customs on the Dover Pier and lived near them on the Folkestone Road.

“Cap’n!” Everyone called him that. “Fancy meeting you here!”

“Yes, and fancy my recognizing you with that beard! Knew you at once by your walk, laddie. I’d recognize that walk anywhere.”

“How’s the family? How’s everyone at home? Everyone all right?” he asked eagerly.

“Family is fine. Saw the twins yesterday, and the missis too; she’s busy as usual. The town? We haven’t suffered too much yet. They say, though, the Germans are mounting long-range guns at Calais that will reach us.” He looked around. “My word, bit of a mess this, isn’t it?”

The Sergeant nodded, watching his men trudging through the sand. The Airedale, of course, was at his heel. “Yes. Bad business. How’d you get over, Cap’n?”

“With a small boat of the Dover patrol. The boys all volunteered to come. We’re anchored right off there. Like a nice ride home?”

His heart jumped. Home! There it was, in front of his eyes. “Great. How many can you handle?”

The face of the Captain grew stern. “Ah... just you, laddie. We’re full up as it is; they’ll take you along, though, if I give them the word.”

The Sergeant hesitated. Who wouldn’t? Then he glanced up the beach again. His little group stood irresolute, watching him converse with the man in blue. Perhaps they realized the offer that was being extended to him. At any rate, the dog did. She rubbed hard against the Sergeant’s leg; her paw went up.

It was his men’s attitude of indecision, their air of obvious anxiety that he was leaving them, this, as much as his sense of duty, which caught his throat. His voice was tight.

“Sorry, Cap’n, we’re due to leave from Bray-Dunes up there. I better stay with my men. Be sure and tell them at home you’ve seen me, that I’m fine, and coming back.”

“Good lad,” said the elder man, putting one hand on the shoulder of the Sergeant. A former non-com himself, he understood. “Luck to you, boy. By the way... you’ve got yourself a nice dog there. Looks like that Airedale of yours. What was her name?”

“Candy,” said the Sergeant eagerly, happy that the temptation had passed, was over and done. “Yes, you’re right, exactly like our Candy.”

“H’mm... guess you didn’t know maybe, George, that your dog was killed.”

“Killed? No! It’s not possible. How? Where?”

“Down in the town. She was run over by an army lorry in the blackout. So you best take this one along with you. Well, all the luck, my boy. You’ll be in Dover afore me, most likely.”

“Perhaps.”

They shook hands, and he moved back toward the waiting group ahead. They all seemed relieved to have him with them again. The tail of the dog waggled violently.

I
F YOUR MEN
get no sleep, have them shave every day and eat frequently. But there was no water to drink, much less shave in, and no food. Suppose you have nothing to eat; what then? Every store in each village through which they had tramped had been pillaged, plundered, and overrun by half a dozen units. Even the corpses lying in the fields had been searched.

Standing on the hard sand, he glanced down at the dog, who looked up at him appealingly, her left paw in the air. He knew she wanted what they all wanted—food and water. Like his men, her only meals for three days had been a couple of army biscuits. Like them, she had no water, because Dunkerque had been waterless for a week. Like the men, she also was near the end of her strength.

“Good dog, good Candy.” He called her this, because she resembled his dog, who had been killed, and because merely the sound of the name made home seem nearer. Curiously, she responded. With that peculiar instinct of a pet pampered by a family, she stayed close, never losing him from sight, always able to distinguish the Sergeant from the thousands of men milling around in uniform.