Tramp in Armour (29 page)

'You. think it's safe now?' asked Mandel. 'The petrol, I
mean.'

'If it was going up it should have gone up by now. Can you
get Etienne to use his grab to shift the hay in front of the
tank? When it cools down I'll have another go at the engine,
but that won't be for a while yet. You'll be damned glad to see
the back of us, Mandel.'

'This is our war effort. Who knows - your tank may strike a
decisive blow at the enemy.'

A decisive blow? It seemed a little unlikely to Barnes at
that moment and even less likely when later he followed them
into the house to assess the damage to his crew. The kitchen
had all the appearances of a casualty clearing station. Jacques
who was now outside watching the road, and Etienne, had
escaped with only minor burns, but Perm and Reynolds had
borne the brunt of the injuries. Reynolds seemed to be in the
worst state: he was sitting in a chair with his arms stretched
out across the table and both arms had been bandaged by Mari
anne from wrist to just below the shoulder. As Barnes came in
the driver stood up swaying slightly, and Mandel began to
help him on with his shirt while Marianne attended to Perm
who was flopped in the armchair. She had just finished applying a bandage which covered the whole of his left forearm and
he winced as she tied the knot. But when he saw Barnes he managed a grin.

'Now it really looks as though your crew has been in the
wars.'

'How are you feeling, Penn?'

'Like a fortnight by the sea Would Abbeville be a good idea
do you think?'

'What about you, Reynolds?'

Barnes turned to his driver with a special anxiety because
without Reynolds the status of the unit was definitely noncom
batant. Barnes could drive the tank but he couldn't from the
driving compartment at the same time keep close all-round
observation and operate the guns when necessary. Clinically he
watched the process of Reynolds finding his way back inside
the shirt Mandel was holding, noticing that Reynolds was able to bend his elbows and seemed to have full use of his hands. It
was his face which worried Barnes most at the moment. Nor
mally, Reynolds looked the picture of physical well-being, his complexion ruddy like that of a man who spent most of his life outdoors, but now the driver's face was chalk-white, drained of all colour.

It's hitting
him
,
thought Barnes. He's in a state of shock. It
just depends on how he comes out of it. Reynolds still hadn't
replied to the question and he remained silent while he fum
bled with the shirt buttons. Then he reached for his battledress jacket but Mandel lifted it off the table, holding it open for his arms. Carefully, Reynolds slipped inside it, doing up the cuffs and then the buttons down the front. When he had finished he
sat down heavily on the chair and picked up a glass of wine,
draining the contents in one long swallow. Putting the glass
down he looked up at Barnes, his voice a growl.

'Give me half an hour and I'll drive you to the coast.'

He's indestructible, Barnes told himself. He's been driving
almost non-stop most of yesterday; he had two and a half hours' sleep last night, less the night before; both bis arms
have been badly burned, and even now his voice sounds vigor
ous. He decided he still had a driver and went over to Penn, another face as white as death but here there was an awful
weariness, and whereas Reynolds sat stiffly upright at the
table Penn sank back limply as though he might never move
again. He grinned up at Barnes.

'I'm not as bad as I look. Fortunately.'

'Of course you're not. I didn't see your arm - what's it
like?'

'A bit of a mess - but you should see Reynolds! I suppose
you know the back of your own hand could do with a little
attention?'

He had just made the remark when Marianne took charge of Barnes, guiding him over to the sink where she held his hand under the cold water tap. The sudden icy douche made
him jump and he saw that raw skin was peeled back and hanging loose. While she applied ointment and then a bandage he looked round the kitchen. At least the Mandels had avoided severe burning: Mandel himself had a few blisters on his right arm and he had lost half his eyebrows, but apart from a singed hair-line Etienne was untouched, probably because he had fought the fire from the seat of the power-grab. When he tried to thank them Mandel wouldn't listen, repeating that it was part of their war effort and that in any case the British were fighting for France as well as for themselves. Because there seemed to be no more to say Barnes went back outside to straggle with the engine.

The hull was still very hot but he found that he could cope and he spent half an hour checking for the fault, feeling an enormous sense of relief that the tank had survived and enjoying himself once more with mechanical work, work which gradually drained away the tensions from his body. When he climbed down inside the driver's compartment the engine started first time. They were on their way.

SEVEN

Saturday, May 25th

West and then north - that would be the route they would
follow. The tank climbed up to the summit of the hill crest at top speed in the mid-morning sunshine. The rim of the turret
was hot to the touch., but this heat came from the steady blaze of the sun rather than from the incandescence of fire. Looking
back for the last time Barnes saw the tiny figures of the
Mandel family standing outside their farm, then they vanished
as Bert moved down the other side of the hill. The road ahead
to Cambrai was deserted and the only sign of movement came
from people working in the fields several kilometres from the
roadside.

In spite of his throbbing shoulder, his aching knee, his hand
which burned as though a fire smouldered under Marianne's
bandage, Barnes experienced a sense of quiet exhilaration:
they were on the move again once more and now he knew
exactly where he was heading for. His fateful decision to change direction - to head west and then north for Calais
instead of north-west to Arras* - was based on a process of
thought which had been going on inside Barnes' head for
nearly two days, and he was compelled to rely on only two sources of information - the sketchy news bulletins and the
evidence of his own eyes. It was what he had seen which more
than anything else had convinced
him that this was a revol
utionary development in warfare based on the fantastic mo
bility of the tank.

* The Allied forces had withdrawn from Arras at 10 pm on Thursday, May 23rd. During their brief counter-attack, I Army Tank Brigade halted the 7th Panzer Division commanded by Major-General Erwin Rommel and caused a panic in the German High Command.

The Germans had disrupted all previous ideas of a static
front line by driving their Panzer divisions non-stop across
France, driving forward without any attempt to consolidate
what they had conquered, relying almost entirely on the elements of surprise and terror to disorganize their enemy. The
conclusion to be drawn seemed clear enough — providing one threw out of the window nearly all one's previous ideas of tank
warfare. If the Panzers could move across such huge distances without waiting for the infantry to occupy them, then it should
be possible for a lone British tank to come up behind them providing that it escaped detection. And then there was the
question of the dumps. Barnes thought back over the conversa
tion he had had with Jacques as he wrestled with the engine.

'If you can drive all the way here from Abbeville, Jacques,
you must have plenty of petrol.'

'The Germans have plenty of petrol.'

'What does that mean?'

'You won't tell my uncle - he worries about these things?'

'I asked you because we're out here on our own.' Barnes stopped working for a moment. 'Look Jacques, I've got to get
an idea of the position as accurately as I can. You've been
haring all over the countryside and you're the only one who can
tell me.'

'I took it from a German petrol dump near Abbeville. All I
had to do was to creep under a wire fence well away from the
guards and take what I wanted. They've threatened to shoot anyone found on what they call German property - but that's to scare people off because they can't guard the petrol.'

'Something was said about ammunition dumps, too.'

'The same with them. I got inside one place with a friend
and there were shells and boxes of ammunition all over the
place.'

'I find that hard to believe, Jacques.'

He flushed and then grinned. 'That is because you do not know what is happening. The German tanks and guns have
broken through with their supply columns but the infantry
have not yet reached them - so they can't guard their dumps
properly.'

'I'm beginning to get the idea,' Barnes encouraged him.

'It is like the curfew in Cambrai, They say they will shoot anyone found on the streets at night but that is to scare people. I have heard that you can walk all through the town after dark without seeing one German soldier except near the town hall. I think,' he said shrewdly, 'the main reason for the curfew is so . that people will not know how few Germans there are in Cambrai at the moment.'

'And you say the road to Abbeville is clear all the way?'

'Except for Cambrai and the three road-blocks outside Abbeville. I could mark their position on this,' he offered,
pointing to the map spread out over the hull.

'Do that, would you?'

He went oh checking the engine while Jacques marked the
road-blocks and then asked a fresh question.

'What about the roads south towards the Somme?'

'I don't know the position there -I have not been that way, you see.'

'And which route do you take when you by-pass Cambrai?'

'This way, to the south. I will mark it for you.' When he
had finished he looked up, his expression blank. 'If you turned
north beyond Cambrai you might get through to Boulogne. I
know a way which goes close to St Pol and Fruges, but it is
not the main road - it ends up at Lemont where I live, near Gravelines. I have often used the route when driving from
Lemont to Abbeville. I will mark that, too, just in case.'

'Might as well.' Barnes was peering at the engine.

'I feel perhaps I should have driven there instead of here,'
went on Jacques as he marked in the route.

'You'd have run into the Panzers.'

'Possibly. I wonder? I think they went up the coast road
here and my route is much farther inland. From what I have heard I believe there is a gap between the Panzers along the
coast and the Allied lines near the frontier.'

'Really?' Barnes kept his face blank, wondering whether he
was fooling the sharp-witted youth. It hadn't escaped him that Jacques had carefully refrained from asking him which route they would be taking.

'I'm going back to Abbeville later this morning. I want to tell my sister that Uncle is all right. Then I may drive on to
Lemont. Plenty of petrol!'

The trouble with this lad, Barnes was thinking, is that he's so excited by the war that he can't keep still, so he pinches
Jerry petrol and then goes flying about all over the countryside to see what's going on. If he's not careful he's going to run into
something.