Back to Battle (13 page)

With the aid of Archie Bumf, one of the staff officers drafted a document in French for Kelly to use that would satisfy French consciences and, borrowing typewriters and carbons, they spent the next hour pecking out as many copies as they could.

‘Try Gyseghem,’ the staff officer suggested. ‘The place’s full of troops. It’s the headquarters of General Guyou and he’s been nothing but a bloody nuisance. If you can get him moving north, you’ll be doing us all a favour because he’s not doing a scrap of good where he is and he’s blocking the escape route of the rear-guard. He’s got some good people who’ve done well and are worth saving, but he himself doesn’t seem to know his arse from his elbow.’

The Germans started dropping shells in La Panne as they left. The sound of them approaching seemed to fill the air and everybody started to run. French drivers began to lash at their horses and swing off the road among the trees, and the place emptied of human beings in a flash. Feeling conspicuous, Kelly’s party flung themselves over a wall, thinking they would have the other side to themselves. To their surprise it was occupied by dozens of soldiers, who moved up to make room. The explosions threw up dust and clods of earth in the fields beyond the château, then the shelling stopped again and everybody began to appear from holes in the ground and from behind trees and walls. Vehicles began to move again and the whole countryside seemed to come to life.

As they drove from La Panne, they found themselves in countryside that was flat with miles of marshy fields, each one below the level of the network of canals that cut up the area. The whole of the BEF was streaming into it, every road jammed with khaki-coloured transport and great columns of troops, stretching back to the horizon, all of them heading towards the single point on the coast. Ambulances, lorries, trucks, Bren gun carriers, artillery columns, everything except tanks, was crawling north over the featureless landscape in the early sunshine, like slow-moving rivers of mud from some far-off upheaval of the earth.

‘They’ve been having a day of prayer for us back in London,’ Rumbelo said conversationally as they pushed past.

Kelly grunted. ‘That’ll be why the whole bloody thing’s falling apart, I expect,’ he said.

It was easy for the church dignitaries to make their announcements and equally easy for the politicians to turn up in their top hats and frock coats and bow their heads before the altar, but it wasn’t as simple as that. War contained a wealth of grief and pity and those people in London getting down on their knees and saying a few easily-uttered prayers were a world away from this grimness and fear, this mounting weariness of body and spirit. For some of the men passing on their way north it was a fortnight since they’d had a decent sleep and some of the drivers had feet so swollen they drove without their boots and fell into unconsciousness every time the column came to a halt at one of the paralysing road blocks, so that they had to be hammered back to life as the military police got it moving again.

Among the hordes of men heading north were French troops who had tossed away their rifles and helmets and were forcing their way through the rows of horse-drawn and motorised vehicles. They looked the sort of men you didn’t argue with. Their drivers were unshaven, their clothes muddy, and there were no officers or NCOs. As they passed, they gave sheepish smiles that sent a cold chill through Kelly’s heart. They were the ruin of an army and their commanders had thrown in their hands.

Gyseghem was a dull redbrick little town largely centred round a factory making motor car accessories. The factory had been bombed into stark smoke-blackened spires of brick and twisted girders, and mirrors, fenders, and hubcaps lay everywhere in the square. Firemen and soldiers were still dragging the dead and injured from the ruins, and from every house and cottage – even the church steeple – white flags of tablecloths, sheets, towels or handkerchiefs were hanging. A few people stood in their doorways, watching, their expressions apprehensive at the thought of what the arrival of the Germans might bring.

The town was full of troops and at the French headquarters in the Mairie they split up, Le Mesurier taking the car and heading out of the town with Archie Bumf to find out what the situation was, while Kelly looked for General Guyou. Outside the Mairie an intact regiment was waiting in the square. Several buildings were burning, and the soldiers were backgrounded by broken walls and blackened brickwork. They had lost their colonel and the major in command was thin, spare and greying, a regular soldier who in Germany would probably have been a general but in the confusion that had gripped France since 1918 had remained only in a junior rank. His men were bewildered but they still had weapons in their hands and their heads were high, and there was something in their faces that showed they were unbeaten. The old major’s face was drawn with weariness and it was also full of disgust.

‘We are doing nothing, you understand,’ he told Kelly angrily ‘We are neither fighting nor retreating. We have been here twenty-four hours and the command structure has atrophied. There must be four thousand men in this place who don’t know what to do and have no orders. We would welcome evacuation, so we could fight again elsewhere.’

While they were talking, a staff car drew up and General Guyou climbed out. He was small, plump and petulant-looking and when he learned what Kelly’s mission was, he started to work himself up into a passion. In reply, Kelly put on his Royal-Navy-In-Adversity act – cold, arrogant and bullying. It didn’t work.

‘I have no orders,’ Guyou insisted loudly. ‘And German tanks are approaching.’

‘My information,’ Kelly said, ‘is that you’re unlikely to receive any orders, and that it’s imperative that you move to the coast and leave Gyseghem clear for the rearguard to move through.’

‘My men are exhausted!’

‘Surely not too exhausted to be incapable of movement,’ Kelly snapped. ‘The French government has agreed that their troops shall have the same facilities for evacuation as the British.’

‘I have not been informed.’

‘I’m informing you now! There are ships waiting to take your men to safety!’

They were still arguing when the old Austin drew up with a shriek of brakes and Le Mesurier fell out, yelling.

‘Tanks,’ he screamed. ‘About three miles away! And coming fast!’

The square emptied, and Kelly saw some of the old major’s soldiers setting up machine guns, their faces grim. Then his eye fell on all the hubcaps lying about the square and he caught the eye of D’Archy.

The Frenchman smiled. ‘You are thinking what I am thinking, I believe,’ he said.

Rounding up a party of men, they set one half of them placing the hubcaps in rows along the road, while the other half brought ashes and pulverised earth and scattered it to hide the shiny chrome. They were all out of sight when the tanks appeared. They stopped by the row of hubcaps, the commander of the leading tank clearly worried by what he suspected were land mines. As they watched, a hatch opened and an officer climbed from the turret and moved slowly forward, accompanied by one of his crew and the commander of the second tank.

They were still watching when the turret lid of the third tank lifted and the commander’s head appeared. Climbing out, he sat on the edge of the hatch, watching as the other Germans moved closer to the scattered hubcaps. Kneeling, one of them probed carefully under the scattered earth with his fingers, then they heard him say something and saw him straighten up and take a kick at the hubcap. As it skated away, rattling, he turned back to the tank and immediately, every machine gun round the square opened up. The Germans were flung aside like rag dolls and the commander of the third tank fell backwards, draped across the hatch as if he were full of straw, his body sprouting crimson flowers.

The French soldiers were letting fly with everything they had, with so little regard for direction they were in danger of shooting each other. Bullets clinked and clicked against the walls to whine off into the distance, and a young corporal ran forward and tossed a grenade into the open hatchway of the rear tank. The muffled thump as it exploded was followed by screams, and a crimson horror pushed the body of the commander aside and began to drag itself out. At once every weapon in the place was turned on it and, shredded by the lash of the bullets, it flopped silently back out of sight.

With their retreat blocked by the third tank, the first two tanks began to move forward over the bodies of their own commanders, but the Frenchmen, infuriated and humiliated by their defeat, were swarming all over them, shouting and cursing, almost fighting each other for the privilege of thrusting a rifle or a grenade through the slits. Within a minute, there was no sign of life from inside them and Kelly stared at D’Archy in astonishment at the unexpected success of their scheme.

At first, Guyou still refused to withdraw but D’Archy’s title finally overawed him and, catching the angry mutterings from the weary officers and men behind him, he changed his mind. The burning tanks were filling the air with oily smoke as the old major’s men formed up and began to tramp away. As the last man moved off, Kelly noticed that Guyou also turned his car north and drove after them.

Watching silently, D’Archy turned to Kelly and smiled gravely.

‘It’s a measure of the weakness of the general staff,’ he explained, with all the contempt for the army that all naval men, whatever their nationality, seemed to imbibe with their mother’s milk, ‘that sixteen generals have been removed for failing in their duty.’

Without Guyou, his staff were much more realistic and willing to help, and within an hour they had rounded up the rest of the French troops and had them heading north. They were unshaven and out of step, because the French had never set much store by smartness, but they still managed to look like soldiers.

‘What’ll happen when it’s over, sir?’ Rumbelo asked as they watched.

‘France will surrender, I suppose,’ Kelly said.

‘And then, sir?’

‘And then it will be the Germans marching down the Champs Elysées,’ D’Archy said. ‘And those bougres who have bank accounts and mistresses and apartments in the Avenue Foch making terms to get the best they can out of it. There are a few in England, too, I have no doubt.’

Rumbelo looked alarmed. ‘They’ll not get to England, will they, sir?’

‘Not on your life, Albert, old lad.’ Kelly’s face was grim as he spoke. ‘But if France goes, then it’ll be a bloody sight more difficult for us in the navy, because they’ll hold every scrap of coastline from north Norway to Spain, and probably that, too. Think of that in terms of U-boats and bases for commerce raiders.’

As they returned to Dunkirk, military police were forcing everything on wheels into enormous car parks in fields outside the town, and all along the road an orgy of destruction was taking place under a vivid blue sky.

Engineers were handing out blocks of gun cotton and detonators for artillery officers to place in the breeches of their guns to destroy them, and in a beet field, where thousands of new vehicles were parked – Scammells, diggers, buses, engineering plants, limbers and lorries – men were smashing their petrol tanks and cylinders with sledge-hammers in a steady crunching sound.

As the jam of vehicles ahead brought the Austin to a stop, a provost lieutenant stepped in front of their bonnet, waving a revolver. ‘In here,’ he said.

‘I’m going into Dunkirk,’ Kelly explained.

The officer lifted the revolver. ‘In here,’ he repeated.

Kelly climbed out of the car, followed by Rumbelo and the other two, expecting that the four stripes on his sleeve would overawe the officer, but the lieutenant was adamant.

‘In here,’ he said once more.

Without arguing, Kelly pulled out his own revolver and pointed it at the officer’s stomach. Rumbelo did the same.

‘I have the authority of the admiral in charge of the evacuation and of Lord Gort,’ he said. ‘And I’ll happily shoot you if you try to stop me doing my job. And if you should just manage to shoot me first, my petty officer will do it for me. Now – do we go into Dunkirk?’

The officer blinked, startled, then he scowled, pushed away his weapon and waved them on.

The destruction stretched all the way back to Dunkirk, every dyke jammed with abandoned vehicles that stuck out of the water among the floating straw and the bodies of drowned animals, every road littered with cast-off equipment, caps and helmets. Dunkirk seemed to have grown more battered even while they’d been away and tall skeletons of buildings were silhouetted against a sword-cut of opal sky. Among them fierce fires raged.

As they drew to a stop, they could hear the hammering of guns from near the harbour, then another sound intruded, rolling in iron waves round the sky. As it increased, blending with it, they heard a growing howl.

‘Run!’ Kelly yelled and they all dived from the car for an open doorway. As they flung themselves down, the scream of the bombs grew to a shriek and the crash as they exploded seemed to lift the ground and hit them in the face. The air was filled with dust and acrid smoke and they could hear metal clanging to the cobbles. His face tight, the skin pulled taut, Kelly found his jaws were aching with the clenching of his teeth.

Unharmed but shaken, they scrambled to their feet to find the old Austin lying on its side against a wall half-demolished and with its hood licked by small tongues of flame. The din was tremendous and the water of the harbour and canals was dotted with splashes as shell splinters dropped from the sky. There were a few good omens, however. The French had started to join in the evacuation, though the town major’s office was bedlam, with what appeared to be dozens of officers all shouting the claims of their own units.

‘I must have the numbers,’ an officer at the desk was yelling. ‘I’ve got to know how many men there are!’

‘For Christ’s sake–’ the officer who yelled back at him was filthy-dirty, grey-faced and red-eyed with fatigue – ‘I don’t know the bloody numbers myself!’

As the dive-bombers returned, the arguing stopped while everyone tried to assess where the bombs would fall and then, according to what they’d decided, took cover or remained where they were, flinching at the crashes. The town major, an exhausted-looking colonel, didn’t even look round as the bombs exploded, and as Kelly explained what he was up to, he managed a thin smile.