The Black Jackals (17 page)

Bennett was at the wheel again and the truck was moving smoothly. Lamb had laid the map out in front of him, spread across the shallow dashboard, and was plotting their course for the umpteenth time. How, he wondered, could he possibly have any idea where the enemy might be? He presumed they would have occupied and garrisoned all of the larger towns they had overrun in the lightning advance to Abbeville, so those would be out of the question as points on their route. But tanks were cross-country vehicles. They might be anywhere, ready to lob just one shell at their truck and send them all to oblivion.

Lamb's dread of tanks preyed on his mind and he could not expunge the image of the poor, half-mad infantryman in Arras who had seen his friend crushed to death in agony, beneath the tracks of a Panzer. Trying to divert himself, he traced their route in the truck with his fingernail across the map.

As he was studying the possible alternative roads, of which there were precious few, Valentine began to hum. It was not the song itself that irritated Lamb. ‘Where or when' really wasn't half bad. In fact he had bought the recording from the local music shop in Tonbridge shortly before embarking for France. Nor was it the tunefulness of Valentine's version. In fact, annoyingly, Valentine was pitch perfect. No, thought Lamb, it was more the way in which he hummed it, as if he wanted to keep it to himself, and the fact that he did so over and over again. Lamb wondered that he had never noticed it before, and whether the others had been aware of it. Or perhaps, he thought, it was something Valentine had just started to do merely to irritate him, in what seemed increasingly to be a personal vendetta. Whatever the reason, in the past few hours in which the two of them and Bennett had been sitting together crammed into the cab of the Opel, Valentine's presence had really begun to annoy Lamb. It was the very fact that his self-control should be compromised by such a man which irked him more than anything. The corporal had not yet had to use his German and had not said a word. But, still, he had somehow got under Lamb's skin. Now he began to hum again.

Lamb snapped, ‘For Christ's sake, shut up, Valentine. If we've heard that bloody tune once in the last hour we've heard it ten times. Don't you know anything else? Or, better still, why don't you hum nothing at all?'

Valentine looked at him and smiled like a crestfallen schoolboy told off by a favourite master. ‘I'm terribly sorry, sir. I had no idea it was annoying you so much. I'll stop then, shall I?'

Lamb said nothing and had to exercise self-control to stop himself wringing the man's neck. Bennett saw it. ‘That's right, Valentine. You just change your tune. That'll suit us all, sir, won't it?'

Lamb smiled at the joke and, still saying nothing, stared at the map, unable now, despite the fact that Valentine had stopped, to get the song out of his own head.

‘. . . but who knows where or when? . . .'

At least his hunch had been right. The road, which was really no more than a tiny rural track to the east of the D12, had hardly passed through any built-up areas. Now, though, they were nearing the one village that they could not avoid, and to his amusement he realised that it bore the name of Crécy en Ponthieu. He was wondering whether any of the others might spot its significance when Valentine, whom he had been aware was also looking at the map, spoke.

‘It's really terribly clever of you, sir.'

‘Corporal?'

‘Well, to take us on such a very clever route. To give us all another history lesson.'

Lamb smiled. Trust Valentine to have noticed it. He responded grudgingly, ‘Well done. I was wondering who'd be the first to spot it.'

Bennett looked puzzled. ‘Beggin' your pardon, sir, but can I ask what you're talking about?'

‘Well, Sarnt, the corporal here has spotted that the only village on our route is a place called Crécy. Just as we found ourselves at Waterloo, we've stumbled across another battlefield. We beat the French here too, in 1346.'

Valentine stared straight ahead and declaimed in Shakespearean tones: ‘The English archers stepped forth one pace and let fly their arrows, so wholly and so thick that it seemed snow.' He turned to Lamb. ‘Sorry, sir, that's Froissart. John Froissart.
The Chronicles
.'

‘Yes, Corporal. I am aware of the book. Very poetic.' He looked back at the map. ‘If you really want to know, I didn't intend to bring you here. It was pure fluke.'

They were nearing the town now, and on either side of the road the countryside was lush grassland. To their left Lamb spotted a small wooden notice. ‘There you are. We're on the battlefield now.'

Bennett looked around as he drove. ‘Hardly seems possible, sir, does it? What was it then, five hundred years ago?'

‘Six hundred, Sergeant,' Valentine corrected him.

‘Yes, six hundred years, near as dammit.' Lamb scratched at an itch on his leg, presumably from the fabric of the German trousers. ‘I wonder if people will come here after we've gone and say the same about us.'

Valentine said, ‘Well, we're not actually fighting here, sir, are we?'

At that moment there was an all-too-familiar noise in the sky above them and a vibration that shook the truck, almost making Bennett swerve. Then, seconds later and 200 yards away to their right and it seemed almost directly overhead, three huge aircraft came in low over the fields.

In his surprise, Bennett barely managed to hold the truck steady and swore as he wrenched the wheel. ‘Jesus Christ. Bloody hell. Sorry, sir.' He cast a glance at the massive grey shapes, and saw the double black crosses on the fuselage. ‘They're bloody Jerry.'

They slowed down and Lamb watched as the three planes, snub-nosed ME110 fighter-bombers, dipped below the tree line off to their right and reached the ground. He looked at the map, searching for the road and a relevant sign. ‘Must be an airstrip.'

‘A Jerry airstrip?'

‘Well, it is now.' He was pointing to the sign on the map. ‘Up till a few days ago it was French.'

Lamb could hardly believe it. They had come this far, and despite all his best efforts to take the most obscure of routes they had stumbled into a hotbed of enemy activity. He marvelled at the efficiency of the Germans. They could not have been here for more than a few days, yet already they had managed to locate and take over an Allied airfield and were apparently flying bombing raids out of it. He also realised that it was likely that around the next bend they would run slap bang into a Luftwaffe roadblock.

He turned to Bennett. ‘Kill the engine.'

The sergeant stopped the truck and pulled up at the roadside. ‘What do we do now, sir?'

Lamb did not have a straight answer. They had two options. They could carry on regardless and push through, by force or guile, any enemy roadblock in the town. Or, he thought, they could stop here and use the captured machine guns to wreak as much havoc as possible on the airfield. Choose the first option and he would be carrying out his orders and getting the message to Fortune. If he managed to do that in time and if he could find the general, and if Colonel ‘R' had been genuine, then perhaps, just perhaps, his action might save thousands of British soldiers from death or captivity.

Choose the second way, though, and Lamb knew that, even by knocking out one or two of the bombers and disrupting the base, they would definitely have a direct effect upon the immediate course of the battle raging either side of them in the north and the south, and there was no doubt that their action would save the lives of their comrades in both sectors. It was a terrible dilemma, and for some minutes Lamb sat silent, saying nothing. Even though his faith in the colonel had already provoked him into a court-martial offence and brought him here, endangering the lives of his men, it was hard not to see the absolute logic now of using their new-found resources in direct action. Aside from that, his conscience was still aching from having abandoned Petrie and the men at the canal. He wondered what their fate had been, and part of him felt that he must atone for his actions. He looked at Bennett and saw from his expression that he understood.

However, it was Valentine who finally goaded him into action. ‘Funny, sir, isn't it? If we hadn't come here to find your battlefield, we wouldn't be in such a pickle. Do you think history's trying to tell us something?'

Lamb, finally snapping, turned on him. ‘Shut up, Valentine. I didn't bring us here to find a bloody battlefield. I came here on orders. Do you think this is easy?'

But he knew that, for all his insolence, the corporal had hit on something like the truth. If they ignored their circumstances they would be betraying not only their comrades, cowering in their front-line trenches under bombs delivered by these planes, but betraying an entire tradition of British military might that stretched back to the bowmen who had stood their ground on these very fields six hundred years ago. He turned to Bennett. ‘We've got to do something here. You know that, don't you? We've got to stop those bloody bombers taking off again. It's our duty.'

Bennett smiled, ‘Yes, sir. Anyway I'd had enough of running away for the moment.'

Valentine shook his head, unable to believe that Lamb wanted to attack a German base. Lamb reconnoitred the road around them.

Aside from the row of trees alongside which they were now parked, it offered little if any cover. Clearly the entrance to the airfield must be no more than a few hundred yards down the road and off to the right. He thought fast. Apart from the four MG34s in the back of the truck and the mortar, their chief weapon was surprise, and if they were to have any reasonable effect, and also have any chance of getting out alive, they would have to use it to the full.

He turned to Valentine. ‘Stay here, and if anyone comes up, use your German. I'm going into the back.'

Lamb got out of the cab and walked round to the rear of the truck, then, lifting the cover, he climbed inside. Fourteen pairs of eyes looked at him anxiously.

‘Look, this is what's happening. That noise you heard was Jerry bombers. ME110s. There's a squadron of them, perhaps more, in an airfield over to the right, and I mean to destroy them.'

He let it sink in. ‘Corporal Mays, I want two of those Jerry guns, three if you can do it, set up pointing out of the tailgate. Two-man crews on each of them. Perkins, Butterworth, Hughes and Tapley, you'll do. And make sure you have plenty of ammo to hand. You others can help feed them. We're going to bluff our way into the base. Then wait till I give the word, and when I do, two of you lift the flap at the back and let them have it. Stubbs, how many mortar bombs have we left?'

‘Three, sir.'

‘Right. When the balloon goes up, you and Parry stay in the back half of the truck near the cab. Get rid of that tarp and use your bombs. And make them count, Stubbs. Right, everyone got it?'

They all nodded, and Lamb looked at Madeleine. Her eyes were wide and bright – not, as he had expected, with fear, but with real excitement. He had thought to leave her in cover at the roadside, but seeing her he realised at once that if anything went wrong this would be the best place for her, with the men and in the thick of it. A good enough place for anyone to die. He started to drop the flap and go back to the cab, but then quickly he turned back. ‘Smart, give me your bayonet.'

‘Sir?'

‘Your bayonet, man. I have a feeling that I might need it.'

Clutching the long knife, Lamb dropped the flap of the lorry and walked back to the front of the cab. Carefully he slid the thin blade of the 17-inch infantry bayonet down the side of his right jackboot and then, climbing back in, he changed places with Valentine, placing him in the outside passenger seat where he would be able to speak to any guard. Then he nodded to Bennett and they started off.

They drove along the road and past the long line of trees until they reached a slight bend from which a fork went left and right.

Lamb looked at Bennett. ‘Here we go. Turn right, Sarnt.'

Bennett turned the wheel and moved the Opel slowly along the smaller of the two tracks to the right, around the north end of the woods, which up till now had shielded their right. As Lamb had suspected, ahead of them lay a simple wooden gatehouse and beside it a red and white striped barrier pole. A single German sentry stood guard with a slung rifle, but Lamb was sure that there would be more men inside the guard hut. He shot Valentine a glance. ‘Do your best, Corporal.'

Valentine said nothing and the truck rolled on towards the barrier. As they approached, the guard unslung his rifle and levelled it at them. ‘
Halt. Wir kommen?
'

Valentine stuck his head out of the window and smiled, then spoke in fluent German. The two men had a brief conversation, during which the guard smiled and nodded.

Christ, thought Lamb, it looked as if the man had bought whatever tale Valentine had spun. They were in the clear. He smiled at the sentry and Bennett began to move towards the barrier, on which the man had placed a hand. Lamb whispered to Valentine, ‘What on earth did you say was in the back?'

‘Supplies. Very urgent. The commandant's wine from Abbeville.' Lamb smiled, but just as the guard was beginning to raise the barrier he dropped it back into place. Lamb swore under his breath. The man frowned and peered into the cab, then muttered something else.

Valentine turned to Lamb. ‘He wants you, sir.' The guard looked uneasy and motioned them out of the cab. Valentine replied in German, ‘All right, we're coming.'

He jumped down, and Lamb followed. He cast a backwards glance at the guardhouse but saw that no one had emerged to follow them. Then he caught Bennett's eye and jerked his head towards the door.

Lamb was sweating now. Perhaps this wasn't going to be such a piece of cake. Still talking to Valentine, the guard moved with him to the rear of the truck, with Lamb following. They stopped, and as Valentine moved forward to lift the tarpaulin he looked at Lamb, who fell, fast and silent, upon the guard. Covering his mouth with the palm of his hand, he slipped the bayonet up from his jackboot and drove it hard into the man's side as he had been taught in hand-to-hand combat classes – not perhaps with as much street gang style as Mays, but certainly hard enough to do the job. The guard's eyes widened with pain and terror and then clouded over as he slipped limp to the ground.