The Black Jackals (8 page)

Lamb looked down at the map as the colonel's hands swept across it, and instantly saw the extent of the disaster.

The colonel went on, ‘The Germans have been training for this for years. They're fighting fit and they damn well know it. And what have we been doing, Lamb? We've been sitting on our fat backsides doing sweet Fanny Adams.' There was real bitterness in his voice. ‘Britain is a great country, Lamb. The greatest in the world, with a strong, resolute people and a powerful Empire. But look at the men you brought out here. Look at the British army. Our soldiers.'

Lamb frowned and began to speak, ‘My sergeant, sir . . .'

‘Yes, I dare say your sergeant's a good man, and a few others besides him. But what of the rest? Think about it.'

‘They're a good bunch, sir. Loyal as they come.'

‘I've no doubt as to that, Lieutenant. But just how fit are they?'

Lamb bristled. ‘They can march, sir. And they can fight.'

‘But can they march and fight one after the other, laddie? Hitler's Nazis can do that. That's why they've come sweeping through Belgium. That's why we're sitting here fifty miles back, trying to work out what we can do and waiting for their damned tanks to roll into town.'

It was hard to argue against the colonel's logic. It backed up everything Lamb had seen so far.

‘Lamb, your men, our men, this army. The good few aside. You must see, they're gutter scrapings, the victims of the depression. It's not just the army that's been starved of resources. The entire country's been living on subsistence rations. Save for a privileged few. Me and Meadows included, if you want. And where are most of those fat cats now? On the General Staff.'

Lamb knew he was right. Many in his regiment were men laid off before the General Strike, or their sons – men who had been brought up on thin porridge and meat just once a week, men who had been offered the promise of a future they never saw, and little else. They were underfed and ill-educated. He was leading the legacy of the last twenty years. He thought of the brigadier with his roast chicken and brandy.

The colonel continued: ‘I tell you, Lamb, something's got to be done. And fast. D'you know one of our major problems? Our tanks' guns can't penetrate their tanks' hull armour. Not even the new Matildas have a real chance, and most of the others only have machine guns. And have you seen what these new 88-millimetre guns of theirs can do to one of our tanks? They were designed as anti-aircraft guns, for Christ's sake, and the Jerries have started using them against our armour. We haven't a chance. We're the worst-trained, worst-equipped army ever to be sent by Britain to fight on foreign soil. And that's saying something for the nation that fought in the Crimea and the Afghan wars.'

Lamb was taking it all in. He looked closely at the map. Saw the blue pencil lines marking the British and French corps and divisions. It was true. They were cut off and being pushed closer and closer towards the French coast.

‘Won't the French be able to break through and cut the German lines? What about their tanks?'

The colonel sighed. ‘It would be good to think so, and in the last lot they might have done just that. But this French army is very different to the one I fought alongside in '17. They're sick of war. The French have all but thrown in the towel, and Churchill knows it.'

Lamb wondered how the colonel was able to know what the Prime Minister thought and began to realise that he might be something more than a mere colonel.

The colonel looked over the piles on his desk and found another piece of paper. He handed it to Lamb. ‘Here, read that now. Then tell me your thoughts.'

Lamb read. On writing paper headed ‘British Broadcasting Corporation' it was dated 18.30 hours, 14 May. That was three days ago.

He frowned, ‘I'm sorry, what does it mean, sir?'

‘What do you think it means?'

‘It sounds as if we might be trying to get together a sort of people's navy. All the boats we can get.'

‘Yes, that's about it.'

‘But why would we do that? Unless . . . But that's ridiculous.'

‘Yes. I think you've got it now. We're preparing to evacuate the entire army, or whatever there might be left of it. We want to take them off the beaches back to England.'

‘The entire army, sir?'

‘That's right. As many as we can. Frogs, too, if we can.'

‘Can it be done?

He took a long pause. ‘No one's ever tried. There are two schools of thought. Gort's behind it. Think the PM is too. The Frenchies aren't keen, though. As you might have guessed.'

‘Where can we manage it?'

‘The Channel ports. We had thought of Calais alone but it would seem that we need Boulogne and Dunkirk too. If we can get the small craft onto the beaches we might be able to ferry the men out to the Navy.'

‘So we are running away then.'

‘If we are going to be able to continue to fight this war then we have to save what's left of the BEF. The French are sunk. I have that on the highest authority. And I do mean the highest. There is no way that we can hope now to meet and repulse a German attack in the north. We can only retreat to victory.'

‘So are you telling me that I should make my way to the Channel ports, sir?'

The colonel shook his head. ‘No, I shouldn't do that if I were you. You seem a very able soldier and I am going to give you what may well be the best piece of advice you'll get in this war. Get yourself and your men away to the west. There's no point in going any further north. Jerry's already cut our communications and you'll never get through, but he's still chasing our tails to the west. Besides, up there you'll be one among tens, hundreds of thousands scrabbling for a place on those boats at Dunkirk. No, laddie, the west is your best bet. If I were you I'd duck down to Arras and then head for the Somme. You'll still find Jerries, but there may not be quite so many of them.'

‘The Somme, sir?'

‘Not the old battlefield. Further downstream, towards the coast. I know it seems unlikely, but we've a division heading down there now. Pulled away from the Saar yesterday. 51st Highland, General Fortune. The original plan was that if this situation arose and the French could be rallied then it would be the nucleus of a fresh BEF. But to be perfectly frank it looks increasingly unlikely that the French will stand at all. So it's likely that we'll have to get the Scots off as well. Just ten thousand of them. Should be easier there than with the half million up at Calais and Dunkirk.' He paused and stared at Lamb. ‘Actually, I've an idea. Lamb, I want you to do something for me. And this really is vitally important. Not like Meadows's nonsense. Communications are shot to pieces or near as dammit with General Fortune's HQ, and we have no way of letting him know the situation. I want you to take him a message, from me.'

He looked across at the major. ‘Simpson, write this down please, will you?'

He looked back at Lamb and paused, then said, ‘Tell him that the Jerries have cut us off at Amiens and the French look as if they're about to give in. Or pretty damn soon. If that happens tell him we're going to get them all away. All of his division. The plan is to get them off from Le Havre. Tell him that they should hold out on the Somme until further notice and bear in mind that Le Havre needs to be kept accessible. The French might order him south – he's under their command – but if he has to fall back he should make for Le Havre. Tell him that whatever else he might hear, from whatever source, even Churchill himself, ships are on their way. Tell them at all costs that they should not surrender without further orders. No surrender. Got it? They hang on until the ships arrive.'

Lamb looked at him. ‘Are you sure it's me you want to do this, sir? Perhaps a dispatch rider would be quicker. Or a team of them. Surely that sort of order should come from someone on the staff? Shouldn't I try and rejoin my unit, sir?'

The colonel shook his head. ‘No use, Lamb. Isn't that right, Simpson? Dispatch riders are no go. Being picked off all the time by Jerry snipers. And you can forget your unit for the time being, Lamb. Very soon they'll just be one of hundreds trying to get home any way they can. It's up to you to do the same. Besides, I can't spare anyone on the staff, laddie. Even if I knew where they all were any more. No, you'll do. And that's an order. You'll have to do. In fact I think you're just the man for the job. If you can hold up an entire Jerry regiment with a few grenades, Lamb, seems to me you've a far better chance of getting through than any staff Johnny. And I think a few more heroics might be of use to you in future.'

‘Yes, sir. I see.'

‘That's it then. Well done.'

He looked to the major, who gave him the piece of paper on which he had been writing, and a pen. The colonel read it over briefly and then signed it. He gave the note to Lamb and returned the pen to Simpson. ‘And now you'd better get a move on. I'm afraid you can't show that note to anyone but the General or someone on his staff. Oh, and one other vital thing. Of course, almost forgot. To make sure that you get to General Fortune and that he believes you, tell him that Colonel “R” sent you. Just that, Colonel “R”. He'll know exactly who and what you mean. He'll believe you. Got it? Colonel “R”. That's all you need to know.'

‘Yes, sir.'

The colonel smiled at him. ‘Good. Well, good luck, Lieutenant. Perhaps we'll meet again. I'd like to think so.'

It took Lamb a little time to digest what had just happened. He had walked in thinking that he was at the end of a mission to deliver a message, and had left charged with another much greater task. How, he wondered, had that been managed? How had he got himself into this mess? Now, rather than heading north to find his regiment and try to get back home, he had been ordered to take his men west by a colonel whom he knew only as ‘R' to find a general commanding a Scottish division cut off from the main force and to tell that general that his men were to fight to the death.

He shook his head and spoke out loud to himself as he walked from the corridor into the buzzing atrium of the mayoral building: ‘You stupid bugger.' No one heard him.

It wasn't, he thought, as if he would ever avoid such tasks. He was only too keen to prove himself and would have volunteered for anything that might help his country. But this really did seem a ludicrous errand, and for all he knew as hair-brained as the last. Why, he wondered, should he really trust the colonel – Colonel ‘R' or whatever his name was – any more than the brigadier? Certainly the man had seemed more
compos mentis
than Dewy Meadows, but he wondered if he had lost the ability to tell any more. Everyone seemed as mad as each other in this strange kind of warfare.

But, he reasoned, what alternative did he have? To go against what had effectively been a direct order and not to deliver the message to General Fortune and head north to find the regiment? Who knew where that might land him? Fortune might never know to fight on. He might try to withdraw south, deeper into France. Then they would risk losing an entire division if France fell. This was not what Lamb had really expected his war to be like. He had seen himself at the head of a platoon, leading from the front, as he had done with the German column, not on an errand to find some brass hat and tell him to retreat. But if that was to be his role, then so be it. They all of them had some part to play in overthrowing the Nazis, however small and apparently insignificant or crazy it might seem.

He found the platoon on the far side of the park, away from the area being used as a temporary morgue for the victims of the air raids. They were sitting on the grass, smoking and chatting. Bennett saw Lamb approaching and stood up. ‘Officer present. Put those fags out. Snap to it.'

The men grumbled and stood up, grinding their cigarette butts into the grass. Lamb reached them. ‘Stand easy. We've been given new orders. We're heading west.'

The men stared at him. Corporal Mays spoke. ‘Sorry, sir, but I thought we was trying to find the battalion. Haven't they gone north?'

Bennett stared at him. ‘Mays.'

‘It's all right, Sarnt. Yes, Mays, you're quite right, they have, and yes, we were – heading north that is. But all that's changed, I'm afraid. We've just been given an important job to do. Fresh orders from on high. In any case I doubt very much whether we'd find the battalion now. From what I've just been told the situation is really very fluid at the moment.'

Bennett smiled at the expression.

Lamb went on. ‘So let's get to it, shall we? We need to make for Arras. That's about thirty-five miles away. We'll see how we do and try to find a billet on the way.'

But Valentine hadn't finished. ‘May I ask, sir, what the nature might be of this “important job” we have to do?'

Lamb detected the sarcasm in his tone, but didn't show his annoyance. ‘No, I'm sorry, Corporal. I'm afraid that I can't tell you that. At least not yet. Suffice it to say that it is important and we should feel honoured to have been given it.'

Valentine smirked in that way that irked Lamb so intensely. He ignored it and turned to Bennett. ‘All right, Sarnt, let's get on. We don't want to be caught in any more air raids here.'

Unsure of his bearings, Lamb retraced their steps through the ruined town amid the sound of more explosions as more streets were torn down by the Royal Engineers, and they found themselves back at the crossroads. The MP sergeant had gone, to be replaced by another whose efforts, to judge by the jam of trucks and staff cars on all sides, were meeting with a similar lack of success. Leaving the chaos behind, Lamb wheeled them to the left, through the sad, dusty streets, into the Rue St Martin, past broken houses and the smashed possessions of their absent occupants lying across the cobbles. Ahead of them a long line of refugees stretched away far down the road. For a change, though, there were none of the usual accompanying files of British soldiers, and they seemed to be the only unit heading south west. Lamb was hardly surprised. If the British were to use this road it would be to fall back on Arras, and according to the major they were not planning to go anywhere at the moment.

They marched at a steady pace, in single file, with each section or weapons group of the platoon travelling on alternate sides of the road, passing the slow-moving civilians, who hardly gave them a glance, so caught up were they in their own private miseries. No one spoke and there was no sound save for the steady tramp of the men's boots and the clattering and jangling of the pots and pans hanging from the civilian carts. As they reached the outskirts of the town and the shattered buildings began to give way to open fields and trees, Lamb fell back to his usual position on the march in the ‘O' group, with Smart and with Valentine and Briggs, the commanders of number two and three sections, close behind with the two runners.

They had gone no more than a mile down the road when they heard it. From directly behind them a series of explosions tore through the afternoon. They turned and saw the skies behind them above Tournai filled with a swarm of black aeroplanes and watched the bombs falling like evil confetti from their open bellies. As they hit the ground the earth shook, flames leapt up and great columns of black smoke rose high above the city.

Smart summed up all their thoughts. ‘Christ. Poor devils.'

The refugees had seen it too, and a terrible wailing now began to come from them. Their homes were being torn apart, and friends and family they had left behind were dying with the British under the black rain.

Lamb turned back to the front. ‘Come on. Nothing we can do about it now.'

He wondered if the colonel and the major had found shelter, and the frustrated MPs. The town would be even more chaotic after that lot, he thought, and for an instant the idea came to him again of abandoning the colonel's madcap mission. Perhaps the man had been killed. Who then would know about his order? But the idea passed as quickly as it came, with a feeling of guilt at having even considered it. He had been given an order and it was vital that he should transmit the colonel's message to General Fortune, though yet again he wondered at why a mere colonel should be giving a message to a general. And what on earth was all that Colonel ‘R' business about, he wondered. It was like something out of a novel by Childers or Buchan. For a moment Lamb wondered whether he might be being drawn into something more complex than merely delivering a message. But then he thought the better of it and dismissed it as fantasy.

Behind them the bombs continued to fall on Tournai. Lamb turned to see yet another wave of the large, twin-engined bombers hovering in the sky, bigger than the Stukas they had encountered, planes with the capacity to obliterate entire towns rather than just kill troops and destroy tanks on the ground.

Bennett was beside him. ‘Lucky we left when we did, sir. You were right. Poor devils.'

‘Yes, the Jerries seem intent on flattening the place. That's one lesson we can take away from this campaign. Once they've started something they tend to finish the job.'

They left the weeping refugees to watch the destruction of their homes and hurried past the column. Soon, Lamb knew, this road would be filled with British troops, pulling back from Tournai as was inevitable, and he wanted to make sure that he had a good head start before that happened.

The country had opened out now and even the shelter of the trees had gone. It was incredibly flat, with a low horizon that he guessed must stretch for ten miles on either side before it hit poplars or buildings. He felt horribly exposed. There were ditches on either side of the road, and those he supposed would have to do as cover should they be attacked from above.

The pace seemed desperately slow to Lamb and there were no songs now. He almost suggested one, but thought better of it. There was a time for such things, and too much had happened. They all knew it. At length they found themselves among more buildings, a few red brick houses and on the left a huge factory. Closed, by the look of it. A sign told them they were entering the village of Orchies and Lamb realised that while his mind had been wandering they had in fact been travelling at a good pace.

He called to Bennett. ‘Sarnt, we'll halt for the night at Douai. It's about another ten miles. We'll make it by sunset, easily.'

There was a groan from some of the men. Bennett answered it. ‘All right, you can still walk, can't you? You'll be thankful of it tomorrow when we've got less of a way to go to Arras.'

Valentine spoke from the rear of the ‘O' Group. ‘Sergeant, don't you think it would be better to go all the way to Arras now?'

Bennett heard him. ‘Not your place to argue, Corporal Valentine. Mister Lamb has given an order. You're here to obey it.'

They carried on, and while he kept his eyes on the countryside around them Lamb's thoughts drifted away from the immediate scene. He wondered what they would make of this at home, if they ever found out. How could he possibly ever tell his mother about what he had done at the bridge? How could he tell them of what he had seen? Of the death and the ghastly wounds. Of what weapons can do to a body. Could he, he wondered even tell them about the mission he was now on? He wondered what their fate would be, and then his mind filled with the secret terror that haunted every soldier and which you had to brush aside as soon as it came on: the question of whether he would live. He had not noticed that Valentine had changed position and was walking directly behind him now, and for once he was glad when he heard the man's voice.

‘Sir. We're nearly at Douai, aren't we? I don't mean to be disrespectful, sir, or to challenge your authority, but don't you think it would be a better idea to go straight on to Arras?'

‘No, Valentine, I don't. The men need to rest, and we need to scrounge some rations. Douai is the obvious choice. It probably hasn't been bombed yet either.'

Lamb chided himself for having to justify his decision to a corporal. What was it about Valentine? He was determined now to get rid of him at the earliest opportunity. This, he presumed, would not be until they made it back to England. If they ever did. But he thought that he might take the opportunity to sow the seeds of a potential move:

‘What I can't understand, Valentine, is, if you have so many bright ideas, why you're still a corporal. I mean, a chap like you with a sound education, an obviously clever brain, you should be on an officer training plan. Have you ever thought about it?'

Valentine smiled and, as always when he did, Lamb felt a sense of distaste. ‘I didn't want the responsibility, sir, you see. Don't really think that I'd make an officer. Prefer to take orders.'

‘When we make it back to the battalion, Valentine, and I'm quite sure we will eventually, I'm putting you up for a commission.'

Valentine continued to smile. ‘I don't think that would be an awfully good idea, sir.'

‘You don't?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Why exactly?'

‘I told you, sir. Can't be doing with the responsibility. Like what happened to you on the bridge, sir. I couldn't very well live with that on my conscience, you see, sir. Must be very hard for you, sir.'

Lamb tried to stifle his rage. ‘That be damned, Valentine. You'll be an officer and like it.'

‘Sir.'

Their conversation at an end, Valentine returned to his place in the line. Lamb cursed himself. He had been goaded by Valentine and unwittingly had shown his hand. Worse than that, he was not sure how the man had managed it. There was just something about him that made Lamb drop his guard. Yes. He was decided. Corporal Valentine had to go, and the sooner the better.