Tramp in Armour (10 page)

He saw Pierre in the distance, climbing up out of the ditch where he had jumped as soon as the truck appeared. Now he walked slowly along the road as Barnes scrambled down the slope to investigate the carnage. It was like a miniature battlefield. In its fall down the slope, the truck had thrown out its grisly load, scattering bodies along the canal bank. One man lay half in the canal, face downwards. The smashed and twisted bodies were all dead, all except one^ Grimly, Barnes walked over to the moaning man, the moans reminding him of an animal in mortal pain. Both his legs had been blown off and he lay on his stomach, the lower part of his body a bloodstained stump. He had lost his helmet and appeared to be biting the ground. It was quite clear that in a short time, half an hour at the most, he would be dead, but during that half an hour he was a creature who would be racked by unendurable agonies. Christ, thought Barnes, why didn't you have the sense to die too? He clenched his teeth bitterly. You poor bastard. He mouthed the words silently for fear that the man might hear him, might even manage to turn his head. Leaning down, unaware that his teeth were locked rigid, he held the muzzle of the revolver within an inch of the man's head and before he could think about it he pulled the trigger. The German gave a quick convulsive movement and lay still. Barnes let out his breath. As he straightened up he sensed that he was not alone and he turned round. Over the parapet of the bridge two faces stared down. Penn and Pierre.

'Pierre,' shouted Barnes, 'come down here a minute.'

The lad came down slowly, watching his feet as he slithered down the slope, not looking at what lay beneath him. Up on the bridge Penn still looked down, his face like stone. When Pierre reached the bottom he stopped and looked at Barnes, his hair freshly combed, his expression blank.

'Take a good look, Pierre,' invited Barnes. This is the war you were so eager to get mixed up in. When you reach your age group you'll get called up - and it's my bet the war will last long enough for that. But don't ever think that it's going to be fun.'

Pierre's eyes wandered over the bodies, his face still devoid
of all emotion. He stood very erect.

'Take a good look,' went on Barnes, watching him closely,
'These are the bastards who machine-gun women from tanks
and planes.'

'Can I go now?' Pierre asked coldly. He omitted to add the
word 'sergeant'.

'Yes, go straight back to the tank and wait there with
Trooper Reynolds. Perm, come down here a minute.'

He waited. Pierre had disappeared over the bridge when
Penn reached the tow-path, his eyes blazing, his voice sharp-
edged.

'Did you have to do that to him?'

'I had my reasons. Now find two machine-pistols in working
order and as many spare magazines as you can. That'll give us
one each and they may come in handy.'

They worked in silence. Barnes counted the bodies and as
far as he could make out the truck had carried a complement
of twenty men including those lying in the field on the other
side of the road. He would have liked to search the clothes of
the officer who had undoubtedly sat in the cab beside the
driver, but in; this jumbled horror such a search would have
taken hours. Instead, he went back to the man without legs,
felt under the body, and extracted his Army pay-book. Gustav
Freisler, the 75th Field Regiment. At least that's what he
thought the long German word identifying the unit meant. He
put the pay-book in his pocket. It would positively identify the
unit when he reached the Allied lines and also he wanted the report of this poor devil's death sent back to Germany via the Red Cross as soon as possible.

When they returned to the tank, Barnes spent a short time explaining to Penn and Reynolds how the German machine-pistols worked and he made them practise using them without magazines. While this was going on Pierre sat on the engine covers and gazed up at the sky without taking the slightest notice of Barnes. Penn practised with his pistol diligently and said hardly a word, climbing up into the tank when the exercise was over with an expressionless face. Only Reynolds seemed unaware of the coolness in the atmosphere and he spoke with conviction as he turned to get down inside his hatch.

'Good old Penn. He can really use that two-pounder.'
'Good job he can - there were twenty of them inside that
truck.'

Good old Penn. Reynolds was right there. If he hadn't clobbered that truck with his first shot, the dead German officer might well be examining their pay-books now. But it was what lay ahead of them that was occupying Barnes' thoughts now, and as he screwed up his eyes to check the late afternoon sky he felt sure that they couldn't hope to get through the coming night without very serious trouble.

There was an element of danger in his decision, but Barnes took a calculated risk when he decided to spend the night by the river bridge. Since leaving the shelled truck by the canal they had experienced an evening of tension which had played havoc with their already strained nerves, and since both Penn and Reynolds had taken it in turn to mount guard during the four nights when Barnes lay unconscious at Fontaine, all of them were in a state close to physical exhaustion. Probably the factor which more than any other drained their resources was the knowledge that they were moving behind the enemy lines, that at any moment they might encounter an overwhelming German force which would easily annihilate them in a matter of minutes. Most of all, Barnes feared that they would meet a Panzer column head-on.

The rising tension made itself felt in different ways. Two hours had been wasted by the roadside when the engines broke down and they struggled to find and repair the defect. During this time Pierre, who had to
leave the tank when they pulled open the engine covers at the rear, sat on the grass verge without speaking. Barnes suspected that even Penn was beginning to wish that he hadn't been so keen to bring the Belgian with them, but he couldn't be sure because the corporal himself was unusually silent. Reynolds worked stolidly on the engines, noticing nothing wrong, but then Reynolds was never oversensitive where atmospheres were concerned. They found the cause of the trouble eventually, repaired it, had a drink of water, and then moved on, leaving the road to circle round a town. So far they had avoided three towns by moving across open country in wide sweeps, returning to the road well beyond each town. This tactic, too, had caused an argument with Penn.

'Why don't we risk it?' he had pressed. 'We have Pierre and
one of us can sneak in with him to get some news.'

'We may have to do that later, but not yet,' Barnes had
replied firmly. 'I want to have some better idea of where we
are first.'

'Doesn't the map tell you that?'

The engine had just been repaired and before starting out
again Barnes and Penn had wandered off into a nearby field as
Reynolds made his final checks.

'No, it doesn't, Penn. We'll go round this place like we went
round the last one.'

From where they stood they could see the town in the distance. A tall church spire, several factory chimneys, a long line of buildings. A flight of Stuka dive-bombers crossed the sky very high up, heading for the north-west. Since leaving Fontaine they had stopped four times while enemy planes flew out of view. Irritably, Penn persisted.

'But if you just trace the road down from Fontaine ...'

'Penn, the road we're travelling on doesn't correspond with
the road we thought we were taking. It doesn't correspond
with it at all. We're travelling south-west now, I know, but for
a long time we were heading due south.'

'The compass may be playing up. It does sometimes with all
that metal..."

'I'm going by the sun - that isn't affected by the metal, is it?'

'You mean we may have got back on to a different road when we made one of our detours?'

'I mean there's something damned peculiar about the whole
business. So,' Barnes spoke emphatically, 'we're not going near any town today. We'll go round this place, wherever it is. We'd better get moving.'

It was very close to dusk when Barnes saw the bridge, a
large stone affair with a broad span which could easily take
two lanes of traffic. They were in the middle of open country
miles away from anywhere and within half an hour they
wouldn't be able to move without putting on the headlights, a
course of action he was anxious to avoid at all costs. As they
came closer he noticed a copse of trees to the right of the
bridge. He stopped the tank and went forward with Penn to
investigate.

'This might be a good place,' Penn suggested. 'Bridges are
lucky for us. We could park Bert in these trees.'

But the copse was a hopeless cover. It was simply a handful
of thin-trunked saplings staggered at intervals through the
grass. No matter how they parked the tank, Bert would still be
visible from the road, and it was the road which worried
Barnes. Penn thought differently.

'This is an ideal spot, particularly at night.'

'Not correct, Penn. Any vehicle coming over that bridge
from the south will swivel its headlights straight over this spot. We've been lucky so far — I think the German invasion has
cleared all normal traffic off this road but that doesn't mean
Jerry won't be sending more troops this way. We've got to find
somewhere we can park Bert completely out of sight. Under
that bridge might do the trick.'

'Under
the bridge? ...'

But he was talking to himself. Barnes strode off-back to the road and scrambled down the bank by the side of the bridge, pushing his way through thick brambles to the river at the bottom. Yes, there was ample room
under the high stone arch, but how deep was the river? Bert could comfortably wade through three feet of water provided the fording flap was closed over the rear air outlets. He found that under the bridge the water was less than a foot deep and blessed the fact that it hadn't rained for over a fortnight. Even better, the bed of the
river was surfaced with smooth rocks and between the rocks was a fine gravel.

An old footpath ran along the north side of the river, a footpath half-submerged under weeds and tall grass, and this would give them a place to sleep close to the tank. Looking up under the arch he judged that there was sufficient clearance to take Bert's overall height of eight feet. Now for the question of concealment. He walked along the footpath under the bridge, pacing out the distance. Twenty-six feet. Bert's overall length was eighteen feet so he would rest well inside the archway. The only problem lay in getting the tank down to the river bed - the banks were at least twelve feet high and steeply inclined, their slopes covered with a jungle of brambles and undergrowth. He went back to the tank and issued instructions, leaving Pierre by the roadside while he guided the vehicle some distance across a sun-baked field and well away from the bridge before they attempted the descent to the river bed: he was determined to leave no traces of their presence by smashing down undergrowth close to the bridge.

He checked the river depth again, returned to the tank, and ordered Reynolds to switch on the headlights, disliking the precaution but knowing that it was essential because it Was almost dark now below the level of the banks. Then the tracks began to descend, smashing down undergrowth, dropping with a bump as the tank's centre of gravity pivoted on the brink and then plunged downwards, slithering and grinding over the brambles, hitting the water with a splash, the tank turning as Reynolds briefly halted the right track so that the revolutions of the left one swung the hull round through an angle of ninety degrees to face downstream. When Barnes shone his torch beam he saw that the river level was no more than a foot up the side of the tracks. As usual, Reynolds was handling the driving brilliantly even in this unusual environment. The tank advanced .towards the bridge, a clearance from the banks on either side of several feet, moving forward over the firm river bed until they halted under the archway. Inside the hull Penn sat listening to the peaceful lapping of water round the tracks.