Silence Over Dunkerque (3 page)

Two clouds of dust roared down that country lane. Some school children on bicycles dismounted and ran to the side of the road in fright. A handful of chickens scuttled off as Fingers tore ahead. He managed to keep their distance, but the Sergeant realized he had no idea where they were or where they were headed. Back to the British lines and safety, or straight for the Germans and captivity? Or just moving in a kind of no man’s territory between the two?

Around a curve loomed the red-tiled roofs of a hamlet. “Slow down, Fingers, slow down and be ready to turn.”

As their car slowed down, the German weapons’ carrier drew closer, and bullets spattered the road behind them. Yet the Sergeant knew what he was doing. “Slow down, never mind them, slow down, I tell you. Take the first turn you see. That’s an order.”

Fingers braked as the bullets began to sing off the rear of the car. They swung round a corner and, seeing a half-hidden drive in a farmyard to the right, Fingers turned the car on two wheels with a tire squeal that brought faces to the windows of the house. The three men leaped from the car before it stopped, raced across a vegetable garden toward a friendly wood. Just then the German carrier, traveling at seventy miles an hour, made the curve and hit the cobblestones of the village street.

There was the inevitable crash, the enemy car striking a brick wall at one side, an enormous cloud of dust, and then silence. Looking over their shoulders, the three British soldiers observed Germans scattered up and down the street. They raced into the wood, running as fast and as far as they could. In an hour they had thrown off any pursuit, and began walking. Thanks to the Sergeant’s compass, they headed west, and in another half hour saw the welcome sight of the Dyle, with British embankments on the far side.

At first the sentries on the opposite bank fired at every movement they made. The Sergeant feared the firing would attract another German patrol, so he edged down behind some bushes near the bridge, stuck up a pole with a white handkerchief on it, and called out. After some conversation he managed to halt the British fire. They crossed gingerly, and were immediately taken before an intelligence major who gave them a severe examination before their identity was established.

“Second Wilts?” he said. “Why, your blokes withdrew an hour ago.”

The Sergeant couldn’t believe it. “What for? Without any fighting?”

“Yes, I believe the Belgians on our left have packed up. Anyhow, we’ve all been ordered to withdraw to prepared positions. By the way, laddie, what’s the matter with your forehead? What’s that lump there?”

The Sergeant put a hand to his forehead. There was an enormous lump which throbbed and pained badly. He had struck his head on the windshield when Fingers turned at the crossroads, but in the excitement of escaping had not felt it until that second.

W
AVES OF BOMBERS
darkened the sky. Parachutists fell on the cities and towns of the Low Countries. Rubber boats appeared on the rivers of France and Belgium. And everywhere were the men in field gray, men in tanks, in lorries, behind motorized antiaircraft guns and armored command cars. Yet though war was all around them it had not yet touched the Wiltshires. Then war came, all too soon.

They had become part of Frankforce, so-called for General Franklyn, their divisional commander. The Sergeant realized things were getting desperate, for this was a mixed outfit, a few Belgian infantry battalions, some French tanks, plus the Fifth Division of the British Expeditionary Force.

Orders came down to hold the Ypres-Comines Canal.

They were entrenched not far from the ancient town of Ypres, behind the banks of the canal. The land rose slightly, and they had a long sector to defend. On one side of them was a Scottish regiment, on the other a French North African battalion supported by 75 mm. guns. Behind a hill across the canal were camouflaged some heavy French tanks. To the left were seen a few red-roofed dismal villages. The land was flat on the other side of the canal, with a wood in the distance.

“Here they come, boys,” said an officer, peering through field glasses. The Sergeant, looking over the top of the trench, could make out several hundred German infantry with machine guns rush from the edge of the wood, firing, crouching low to the ground, running, tumbling down, and jumping forward again. They came closer and closer to the canal. Enemy mortars from the wood opened up, the shells raising great waterspouts in the stagnant waters before them.

A sharp whistle sounded. The French 75’s barked. Then the battalion Bren guns opened fire. Still the Germans advanced. The fire increased, the enemy line stuttered, hesitated as the men fell, and went to pieces. Only a few seriously wounded lay before the canal.

An hour later the attack began more seriously, this time supported by tanks. The Panzers issued from the wood in several places with infantry behind them. Before they got within range, huge French tanks waddled out to meet them.

“We’ve got a ringside seat, Sarge.”

“Certainly have.” They watched as all along the lines the troops peered over at the battle along the front on which their safety depended.

The Panzers, firing first, swung about to meet the French tanks. The Sergeant saw a shell hit a French machine, rock it, and bounce off. Better armored, if slower, the French simply moved within range and then plastered the Panzers. One was afire, another exploded with a roar as its magazine was hit, a third stopped with a track torn off, and helmeted Germans jumped from the top to run for shelter. Those left soon retreated into the security of the wood. Only one French tank remained smoking on the field.

The British infantry cheered as the French tanks returned behind their hill.

Evidently the resistance had taken the Germans by surprise, because for several hours nothing happened. Twilight descended. The Wilts boiled water, drank tea, ate biscuits, waiting. Then just before dusk the attack began again on their right. It spread to the front and this time the enemy obviously meant business. When the grayish tanks appeared from the wood they were supported by what seemed to be all the planes in the Nazi forces.

The Wilts cowered in their shallow trenches. Bombs fell. From above, dive bombers machine-gunned them. One plane was caught in antiaircraft fire and spiraled to the ground, but most of them kept zooming into the sky and returning to the attack. Soon the British fire slackened, and behind their tanks the German infantry advanced. Once again the French tanks went gallantly forward, but this time they took a pasting from the air. Darkness descended with the fighting still in progress.

Somewhere behind came the sound of firing-rapid, quick bursts that could only be machine guns, enemy or British. Trying to get some wounded back to the casualty clearing station, the Sergeant began to suspect their lines had been broken. It was then, with the blackness still stabbed by the firing guns, that word came down.

Frankforce was retiring to prepared positions.

Hardest of all was leaving the wounded. “The next regiment has transport, they’ll pick you boys up,” he tried to tell them. “They’ve gone off to get transportation.” But he was lying; he knew they saw he was lying by their despairing glances. Many men of the battalion were left that night. One or two superficially wounded were jolted along in wheelbarrows, yet there were over two hundred soldiers in rows on the ground at the casualty clearing station, cared for by several medical officers and a couple of orderlies. Most were not transportable. Anyway, no transport was available.

Now the Sergeant thanked heaven for their training exercises, for those many cold winter nights when they had practiced moving ahead and retreating in the dark. Without panic or haste the lines formed, went off into the blackness, occasional voices now and then trying to locate some regiment.

“Cameronians?”

“Cameronians just behind.”

“Second Wilts here. Fall in, lad, this is what’s left of K Company.”

“Northamptons on the left. On the left, Northamptons.”

Shells fell around them in the low-lying fields, but much of the battalion got away. Although they did not know it, only two roads of escape to the north were open. The Panzers were closing in.

All night they slogged through the blackness, each man trying to keep up with the man ahead, carrying the Lewis and the Bren guns and what ammunition was left. The villages through which they passed were ghost towns, empty of all life save cats, dogs, and farm animals; shops and stores pillaged, doors flapping in the night breeze. Just before morning the Sergeant heard two officers talking, and for the first time understood the meaning of this withdrawal.

“It’s the Belgians,” said one. “We had it on the wireless at headquarters. Their king has surrendered.”

“Surrendered! How on earth could he? He asked us into Belgium; now he surrenders. Doesn’t that leave our left unprotected?”

“Exactly. It does. That’s why we’re moving north.”

“O
UT! PUT OUT
those lights.”

“Put out those lights. D’you want us all killed?”

Up ahead someone had flashed on the lights of a lorry momentarily, but the yells and shouts along the line forced him to extinguish them. Exhausted under the constant bombing, the continual retreating, fighting, then retreating again in the dark, the men trudged on in long lines, summoning their remnants of courage to make those last few miles to the port of Dunkerque. There, on the coast, so the word came down, ships would take the army to safety and the sea.

“Sergeant Williams! Sergeant Williams!”

“Sergeant! You’re wanted up front.”

He stumbled forward in the blackness, slipping and sliding along the edge of the road, for it was misting and hard to walk, with a fine drizzle from the sky. At a crossroads beyond, several staff officers were standing around a map. He saw what it was by the light of an electric torch that one held, shading it from above with his cap.

“Sergeant? Good! We shall need you to patrol this crossroads here until eight this morning. You’ll take a squad under a corporal, and have a weapons’ carrier. Try to hold up any advance temporarily; if it gets too sticky, move out fast. We’re going northwest, Route 19, the main road to the coast. It leads through Poperinghe, and you’ll find our rear guards there with artillery support.”

“Yes sir. Until eight this morning?”

“About then. Take a squad of trained men and a Bren gun. Mind you get enough ammo, too. Good luck, Sergeant!”

All the time the regiment went slogging past. The Sergeant pulled out a squad, and waited while a regiment of French horse-drawn artillery creaked along. Then came a final British battalion. It was nearly daybreak when the lines vanished in the mist, only a handful of limping and exhausted stragglers going through. The Sergeant concealed his car in a small thicket, covered it with branches, and set up his post nearby, the machine gun on a small rise that commanded the crossroads.

His men had little strength left, so he allowed them to stretch out while he and Fingers kept watch. The only movement was the flow of stragglers going north. A few French soldiers in a farm cart went by, flogging a weary horse, then some wounded staggering courageously along, a handful of R.A.F. ground troops in a small lorry that coughed and sputtered and stalled every quarter mile. The enemy? Nobody had seen the Germans, nobody knew their location; but everyone felt sure they were near at hand.

Most amazing to the Sergeant were the rumors. Every group that passed had a new rumor—the Panzers had broken through and were behind them, the Russians had entered the war, the Americans had sent planes over, the Germans had taken Paris, a revolution had broken out in Berlin. You listened, nodded, but believed only what you could see yourself, which in that grim, gray dawn was not a great deal.

It was six, it was seven. Planes with the black cross flew overhead. The men woke instinctively and dived for cover, but the planes passed along. The mist ended, the drizzle ceased, the sun appeared. Still no sign of the rumble of the German Panzers or any enemy advance detachment. The steady flow of Allied troops ended.

Then an idea came to the Sergeant. He took a soldier south along the road about ten feet. There he had the man loosen the surface of the pavement, dig a wide, shallow hole, and fill it with dirt. It looked exactly as if a land mine had been buried there.

Hardly had he returned to the post when the sentinel on duty called his attention to something far off on the horizon. Down the flat, straight highway was a tiny cloud of dust. It moved.

The Sergeant woke the tired men, posted them on each side of the road, got the Bren gun pointed to cover the highway from the south. The cloud of dust was approaching rapidly. Through a pair of glasses loaned him by the officers, he saw it was an automobile, possibly a staff car. But was it German or British?

“Most probably officers,” he remarked to Fingers. “They’re riding.”

“Most likely lost, too, so far out front. Only they may be ours and far to the rear.”

The car came closer. It was going at about fifty miles an hour, and as it approached they could see it held Germans. When the driver came near the crossroads with the signposts dead ahead, he slowed down, glancing anxiously to right and left. All at once he observed the raised dirt surface in the road directly ahead. His brakes squealed. He stopped the car two feet away.

It was a big, shiny Mercedes torpedo with the top down, and two impressive-looking officers in the rear. They glanced ahead anxiously, handed a machine gun to the driver who remained in the car. Then they rose and stepped out. There they stood, a respectable distance from the low pile of dirt on the road. For a minute they looked at it irresolutely.

“Let ’em have it, Jacky,” said the Sergeant in a low tone.

The machine gun barked, the two officers dropped lifeless to the ground. Terrified, the man in the front seat of the Mercedes raised his arms, waving frantically as his machine gun fell to the floor. Obviously he had no wish to die.

The patrol started forward together, rifles ready.