The Iron Stallions (33 page)

The surviving tanks moved about in the smoke, keeping on the move so as not to present an easy target.

As he looked for a face he knew, Josh saw the shapes of tanks coming through the smoke. One of them clattered to a stop and the head of the brigadier of the 92nd appeared in the hatch. Shelling was still going on and the air seemed thick with armour-piercing and high-explosive missiles. Josh was sitting on the turret of his tank, tired and indifferent to the firing. As the other brigadier dismounted and crossed to him, he waved a hand towards the east.

‘All you have to do is pass through and fan out,’ he said. ‘We’ve made a gap for you.’

Staring into the chaos ahead, the brigadier of the 92nd frowned. ‘I’ve never seen anything in my life that looks less like a gap,’ he said.

As the 92nd moved past, Josh picked up the microphone. As he gave his orders, what was left of the 43rd rallied, formed up again and followed.

When they finally halted at dusk, the whole valley was full of vehicles moving ahead and swinging north and south. Tanks, guns and lorries were pouring through the gap that had been smashed in the defences. As they stopped and regrouped, Josh climbed slowly down. Bredon of the Derbyshires was dead, he knew, and the Hussar colonel wounded. Reeves seemed to have disappeared.

The brigade major arrived. He had a bandage round his head, his clothes were scorched and blackened by flames and he was on foot and looked harassed and distressed.

‘What’s the butcher’s bill?’ Josh asked.

The brigade major opened his notebook. ‘Out of ninety-seven tanks which made it to the start line,’ he said, ‘we’ve lost seventy-five and out of some four hundred officers and men who manned them we lost two hundred and twenty- nine. That’s the tally so far, sir, but I expect it’ll be different in the end. Some we won’t know about. Others will turn up. For the whole night’s operation the total tank losses were eighty-seven. We have nineteen left undamaged. Nearly every squadron leader’s tank in the brigade was destroyed. The Yeomanry have lost Colonel Bredon and most of their senior officers. It’s much the same with the Hussars.’

‘What about the Lancers?’

‘Only four officers left unwounded. Twelve killed outright.’

‘Got any names?’

‘Yes, sir. Captain Dodgin’s gone. Packer. Greatorex. Flood.’

‘Pallovicini?’

‘Him, too, sir.’

‘He should have something,’ Josh said thoughtfully. ‘The way he led over that bridge was splendid. Make a note of it.’ He paused, lacking the courage to ask the question he knew had to be asked.

‘Toby Reeves?’

The brigade major hesitated, knowing the friendship that had existed between them.

‘I’m sorry, sir. He’s just been found.’

Josh was silent. It seemed he would have to look elsewhere for a godfather for his son.

He drew a breath, so deep it hurt his chest. ‘I just hope the general’s pleased,’ he said.

When Leduc drove up later in the morning, old men and women were just beginning to emerge from the neighbouring woods to carry off their dead, many of them boys of fourteen and fifteen or middle-aged men hurriedly pressed into uniform for the defence of the Drosseltal.

He found Josh asleep beside his tank. Tyas Ackroyd, his trousers smeared with Robinson’s blood, was brewing tea. Nearby a few tanks were dispersed.

Leduc climbed from his jeep and walked across. ‘How long’s he been asleep, Sergeant?’

Ackroyd rose slowly, his face grey with shock and fatigue.

‘Couple of hours, sir.’

Leduc nodded, bent and gave Josh a little push with his foot.

‘Sorry to wake you,’ he said quietly as he stirred. ‘92nd are going like a pack of hounds. It’s over. It must be over. There’s nothing else but the end now. How are you fixed to move on?’

Josh sat up. ‘We can move,’ he said.

‘Where are your tanks?’

Josh waved a tired hand at the little group of vehicles around him. ‘There they are.’

Leduc looked round, frowning. ‘I don’t mean your headquarters tanks. I mean your regiments.’

Josh waved his arm again. ‘Those
are
the regiments.’ His voice was hard and brittle. ‘That’s all that’s left of them. Your hundred per cent casualties were very nearly just that.’

Josh watched Leduc climb into his jeep and drive away, then he stared at his remaining tanks, still numb with shock. The 19th were down to five tanks.

Seeing him alone, Ackroyd walked across to him, and handed him a mug of tea.

‘Do you good, sir. Nice and sweet.’

‘Thank you, Tyas.’

‘A right Balaclava, sir, that was. Let’s hope it’s the last.’

‘Amen to that, Tyas.’

As Ackroyd turned away, Josh stood with the mug of tea in his hands, aware of its warmth against his fingers. Their self-immolating attack had been quite incorrect, but it had been the deciding factor in breaking the German line, and in the end, he supposed, it was a fully justified use of armour.

It had been Balaclava all over again. It was strange how things followed a pattern. His own seemed identical with his grandfather’s. The old man had also taken part in a sacrificial charge. He, too, had married an American girl he had rescued from battle and lost his oldest friend in war. But he had also survived to a distinguished old age. Perhaps, Josh thought, he would, too.

He was beginning to feel better after his sleep, though he knew it would be weeks before he would cease to be affected by the loss of his friends throughout all ranks: Toby Reeves. Syd Dodgin. Pallovicini. Greatorex. Packer. Flood. Bredon of the Derbyshires. Sergeant Sparks. Robinson. The list seemed endless.

‘It is always the tallest poppies that are plucked.’ His grandfather had picked up the expression from the Graf von Hartmann, whose son had married his daughter. And so it was. What a clearing away there had been. Death, he made himself think, was really no different from a posting. Toby Reeves and all the others had merely gone away. It was the only way to regard it. The tragedy lay in the fact that they’d never be seen by human eyes again.

He sighed, aware of all the letters that would have to be written to relatives. When a man was wounded or a prisoner it wasn’t too difficult but it was terribly hard to find a mite of comfort when he was dead.

He walked slowly to his command. The wireless antennae moved slightly in the breeze. The men climbing back into their seats moved slowly, as if they were worn down by weariness and by the memories of friends who were no longer with them. He knew what they were thinking. ‘Why us? Why can’t we stay where we are?’ But their faces were blank and unemotional and he found their very lack of emotion was enough to bring him close to tears.

As he climbed to his place, he realised how tired he was. But it was over. As sure as God made little green apples, the war could not go on much longer. Hitler would die somehow – either by his own hand or at the end of a rope – and with him, all the bestial apparatus of Nazism. Somewhere ahead the Russians were surging west as fast as the Western Allies were surging east. Before long they would meet and the only thing that must remain in their thoughts was the end of Nazi Germany. There was only one way to go, only one way to look, only one way to think. The past was dead, like the men who had made it. There was only the future, and that future belonged, after all the suffering, to men like himself, with Louise, the new Joshua Goff, Rosie and Kitty and Braxby.

He picked up the microphone and made himself comfortable. Ackroyd had settled himself in his seat, his hands on his steering sticks. All those old men who had said cavalry was finished had been wildly wrong. Tradition had become confused with reaction. The truth was that, though weapons changed, men did not and in the last analysis it was the men who won the battles. It all came back to the same thing. In the Drosseltal there had been nothing to keep them going but the fact that they were who they were. It mattered to the 19th Lancers that they were the 19th Lancers, as it did to the Hussars and the Yeomanry. It was one of the imponderables that could never be measured.

Beneath him the tank’s engine was rumbling and Ackroyd was singing softly to himself. Josh recognised the words.

‘Wrap me up in my old stable jacket

And say a poor devil lies low

And six of the Lancers shall carry me

To the place where the best soldiers go.’

It was not sung with the usual jaunty air of defiance, but with a heavy beat like a slow march, as a lament for all the men of the regiment who had died and particularly for George Robinson, who had shared their tank with them for what had seemed a lifetime. Slipping on the headphones, Josh drew a deep breath and reached for the microphone. Life had to go on. Like Reeves, Robinson had only been posted away.

‘Okay, Tyas,’ he said. ‘That’ll do.’ He paused and the song died. ‘Right,’ he ordered. ‘Berlin, here we come.’

(in order of first publication)

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

(in order of first publication)

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

(in order of first publication)

These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

Published by House of Stratus

Back to Battle The third title in the exciting naval trilogy featuring the courageous Kelly Maguire. Commander Kelly Maguire, leader of men in the British Navy, finds himself plunged into blistering attacks at the battle of Dunkirk. From bitter fighting in the Mediterranean, to the landings at Normandy, this action-packed saga takes Maguire through trial to triumph. Against a background of personal tragedy, this is a compelling story of love and adventure.

The Blunted Lance The second novel in the Goff family trilogy. The Goffs, a family devoted to The Regiment - the Nineteenth Lancers - find themselves charting a history of the world from the Sudan to South Africa, Flanders to Palestine. Charging and retreating on the wide plains of a failing British Empire, Coby Goff rises to the rank of Field Marshal and Dabney is honoured as a hero. But they witness the decline of the beloved cavalry, defeated in the face of pounding artillery, the tank and machine gun.

The Bright Blue Sky The first in Hennessy’s breathtaking RAF trilogy. The reckless days of early aviation are brought to life in a tale of daring, dashing young pilots waging war, and of the raging struggle between the hearts of two brave men for the heart of a beautiful woman. This is the first story in the trilogy involving Corporal Quinney, an air ace in the RAF; a hero blazing through the skies to dogfight high above the Italian front, confronting deadly foes and challenging a treacherous rival in love and war.