Darkest Hour (21 page)

'I speak a little,' said the woman.

'Oh,' said Barclay, straightening.

'For God's.sake,' muttered Lyell.

Flustered, Barclay said to the woman, 'Er, would you
mind awfully leaving us for a few minutes?'

She tugged at her husband's sleeve and the two left
the room. Then, clearing his throat, Barclay spread the map upon the table.
'Right. God knows where the rest of Battalion have gone. Must have turned off
somewhere along here, I suppose.' He pointed to the road between Rebecq and
Steenkerque.

'Whatever, Hector,' said Lyell. 'We've lost them.
That's the point.'

'Yes,' said Barclay. 'And, frankly, I don't think we
can bank on finding them again now. Maybe we will - you never know - but from
now on, we've got to think and act for ourselves.'

'Then we head due west, sir,' said Blackstone. 'If we
don't bump into the rest of the battalion, we'll probably meet some other
British troops. It's a general retreat, after all.'

'Yes, but we don't know where we're retreating to,
CSM,' said Barclay. 'Could be south, could be north.' He cleared his throat
again. 'But we do know where BEF Headquarters is.' He looked up at the others.
'Arras. I hardly think the Germans will overrun that before we can get there.'

'Arras? But how far's that?' said Blackstone.

'Hundred miles at the most.'

'Why don't we work it out on the map, sir?' suggested
Peploe.

Barclay looked at them sheepishly. 'I haven't one -
not of that area, at any rate. I'm afraid Captain Wrightson has the maps we
used to get here.'

'Now I've heard it all,' said Lyell. He'd done nothing
but whine ever since they'd picked him up, Tanner thought, and had they not
bothered in the first place, they wouldn't have lost contact with the rest of
the battalion. He couldn't understand why the captain wasn't firmer with the
man.

'I thought we could ask the farmer if he had a map,'
said Barclay, his unlit pipe sticking from the side of his mouth.

'Jesus wept,' said Lyell. 'I've got one.' He delved
into the inside pocket of his tunic, took out a crumpled map of Belgium and
northern France and handed it to Lieutenant Bourne-Arton.

Everyone gathered round as Barclay spread it out
across the table. 'Less than a hundred miles,' said Barclay. 'More like seventy
or so. We'll head towards Mons, then Douai and Arras. Agreed?'

For a moment, no one spoke. Then Blackstone said, 'If
you say so, sir.'

'Good,' said Barclay, trying to brighten. 'We can't
afford to stop for the night - we can rest up at some point tomorrow. I suggest
we aim to be on the road again at, say, midnight. All right?'

Tanner left Peploe and the other officers in the farmhouse
and went out into the yard to find the platoon. He only had to follow his nose,
and headed through a gate at the end of the yard into a pasture that led to the
river. Dim lights flickered ahead of him - from torches, from the low paraffin
flames of stoves and the glowing red ends of cigarettes. The smell of chicken
and eggs, frying in mess tins, wafted into the still night air, blending with
the dewy damp of the meadow and the whiff of tobacco smoke.

He found Sykes's section standing or squatting around
a Primus stove by an ageing willow on the riverbank.

'So what are we doing?' Sykes asked.

'Keep going tonight.'

'Thought as much. Where are we headed?'

'BEF Headquarters at Arras.'

'Jesus,' said McAllister. 'If you ask me, Sarge, that
captain doesn't know his arse from his elbow.'

'That's enough, Mac.'

'It's true, though, sir.'

'I said, that's enough.'

'I'm only saying what everyone thinks. We had the
whole battalion not half a mile away and we've managed to lose them.' Bell and
Kershaw nodded in agreement. 'One of the lads in Company HQ said that the CSM
told the captain we should have all gone to Oisquercq with Ten Platoon and
those Jerry prisoners. If you ask me, Captain Barclay should have listened to
him.'

Tanner leaned down, grabbed McAllister's collar and
yanked him to his feet. 'I'm not asking you,' he said. 'Now listen to me, Mac,
were you at Company Headquarters this afternoon? No. Did you hear the orders
that were sent to us by Battalion? No, you didn't. Should you listen to idle
tittle-tattle? No, you bloody well shouldn't. You're a sodding lance-corporal
now, Mac. Start bloody well acting like one, and use your brain rather than
your backside.'

Tanner dropped him back to the ground. 'And that goes
for all of you,' he said, looking around the men. 'You're soldiers, not bloody
schoolboys, so less of the mithering. What's happened has happened. We head in
the direction of Arras. Hopefully we'll find some Tommies on the way and they
can tell us whether we're supposed to be somewhere else. Now, let's get some
grub inside us.'

There was, Tanner knew, something in what McAllister
had said - Captain Barclay was a fool - but poisoning the rest of the company
against the OC, as Blackstone was doing, was unforgivable. He had seen officers
lose the respect and control of their men and it was painful to witness. But
while in peacetime such a thing was unfortunate, in wartime it could be very
dangerous indeed. Discipline, not dissent, was the best antidote to any crisis.
That sodding bastard,
he thought.

Saturday, 18 May, was a long day for the men of D
Company, 1st Battalion, the Yorkshire Rangers, and one in which tempers had
begun increasingly to fray; it had started shortly after midnight and had
continued as dawn had given way to morning, and morning to midday. They had not
seen a single British soldier, let alone the rest of the battalion, but their
route had been dogged by people. Countless numbers of refugees - men, women and
children, the elderly and even infirm - had appeared on the roads the moment
the sun had risen and had seemingly increased with every passing hour. Their
plaintive questions and appeals for help got on the nerves of the men and
reminded them that they were heading backwards from the Germans too: running
away from the enemy.

Above, aircraft had droned, mostly formations of enemy
planes rather than British or French. Behind them, and to the south, they
occasionally heard muffled explosions and the distant crump of guns. Around
noon, they reached a crossroads in the middle of the flat, wide countryside
just to the north of Mons, and were forced to watch as a French column turned
onto the road, heading south towards France. The troops' progress was painfully
slow. Carriers, guns, lorries and other trucks crammed with soldiers inched
their way through the refugees, the men shouting at them to move out of the
way. Tanner saw a woman on a bicycle hit by the wing mirror of one lorry - it
only clipped her, but she tumbled into the side of the road. She got to her
feet, waving a fist and cursing.

Their own small column was halted while the French
troops passed on their way, the men moving off the road and collapsing onto
their backsides in a field of green corn. The air was thick with dust, fumes
and the misery of Belgian civilians struggling to escape the Germans. Away to
the south, they heard the faint dull thud of explosions.

'Bombers?' Peploe asked Tanner.

'Must be.' Tanner gestured at the crawling French
vehicles. 'Worth asking them for a ride, sir?'

'Nothing ventured,' said Peploe. In front of them, a
staff car had ground to a halt while a man with a laden wooden cart battled to
get his mule over the crossroads. The French officer was yelling at him, and
Tanner smiled as Peploe interrupted. The response was an irate torrent of
abuse.

'Nothing gained,' said Peploe, ruefully, as he
rejoined Tanner and the rest of the platoon. 'They're heading to St Quentin
anyway, which is too far south for us. Apparently every transport is already
chock-full of men. He reckoned we'd be quicker on foot - although he didn't
express it quite as politely as that.'

'Bloody Frogs,' said Tanner. 'I'll remember that next
time one of them asks me for help.'

'Sir,' said Sykes as he came over to Peploe, 'surely
we could ask the Frogs to take the squadron leader?'

'They didn't seem very keen to help, I'm afraid,'
Peploe replied. 'I did ask.'

'But if Captain Barclay tried?' suggested Sykes. 'And
perhaps a different Frog officer?

'It would certainly be good to offload him, sir,' said
Tanner to Peploe. 'It's not as if he's been particularly grateful. He's
complained more than the men have.'

'All right,' said Peploe. 'I'll ask Captain Barclay.'

Tanner, Sykes and several others watched Peploe pick
his way through to Barclay. They saw the captain shake his head, despite
Peploe's best efforts to persuade him otherwise.

'Nothing doing, I'm afraid,' said Peploe as he
rejoined them a few minutes later. 'The French have their hands full.'

'Bollocks, sir,' said Sykes. 'We saw him - he didn't
even ask them.'

'I'm sure he has his reasons,' said Peploe.

At this point Tanner spotted McAllister muttering to
Bell and Ellis, and gesticulating covertly at the OC. When he noticed his
sergeant's eye on him, he stopped immediately.

Tanner turned back to Sykes and Peploe. 'The lads are
fed up. We need to watch morale, I reckon.'

'They are, Sarge,' agreed Sykes, 'me an' all. The
sooner we get to Arras the better.'

By afternoon, as they continued west of Mons, the
numbers of refugees had thinned, but progress was no faster because the effort
of marching for the best part of sixteen hours was taking its toll. Feet were
sore, legs ached and stomachs were empty. To the east and south, more dull
explosions ruffled the air.

'Some poor bastards are gettin' a pastin',' said
Sykes, as Tanner tramped alongside him.

Tanner looked up to the sky. 'Nasty amount of bombers
been going over.'

'Where's ours, Sarge? That's what I'd like to know.'

'You and me the same, Stan. Looks one-sided from down
here, doesn't it?'

Just before four o'clock they stopped for their hourly
ten-minute breather. They were on a low ridge of woods and open farmland,
overlooking a river valley to the south. Tanner lit a cigarette and regarded
the men, most of whom had lain down on the grassy verge. Several had their eyes
closed, almost asleep already. He felt tired too, and hungry; his stomach
groaned. All day they had had nothing but scraps they had scrounged on the way
- a bit of bread and some cheese but nothing that could be considered a proper
meal.

'Sarge.' Sykes quickly ran his comb through his hair
and replaced his helmet. 'They're almost done in, Sarge. If you're worrying
about morale, we need to lie up for a bit. It's one thing trekking on and on
when you haven't got any choice in the matter, but the Jerries don't seem that
close behind us, do they? I think that's what's getting to everyone a bit.'

'I know, Stan, and we need some bloody scoff, too. Mr
Peploe's talking to the OC about it now. Hopefully this'll be almost it for a
while.' He picked out a farm not far away. 'Don't see much wrong with trying
there.'

When Peploe rejoined them, however, he told them the
OC wanted to push on a bit further first.

Tanner sighed. 'Bloody hell, sir. How much further, exactly?'

'Not far. Can you see that village over there?' He
pointed to a church tower that poked up through the trees a few miles away, on
the far side of the river. 'He wants us to find food there, then lie up.' He
turned to the men. 'Another hour, boys, that's all. Then we'll get food and you
can all have a sleep.'

The men groaned. 'Another hour, sir?' said Hepworth.
'I'm going to need a stretcher soon.'

'It's all right for you, Hep,' muttered McAllister.
'You haven't had to carry a sodding great Bren.'

'Listen, Mac,' said Tanner, putting an arm round
McAllister's shoulders, 'I know you're fed up. We all are - it's dispiriting,
trudging backwards - but remember Norway? We had it tougher there, didn't we?
And we had our fair share of arseholes to carry too.'

McAllister smiled ruefully. 'That Frog lieutenant,
Chevannes. You're right, Sarge - he was worse than the squadron leader.'

'Come on. Another hour and we can put our feet up.
That's not so long.'

'Suppose so, Sarge.' He got up. 'All right, then. Get
it over and done with, eh?'

It was approaching five o'clock by the time they had
dropped down into the valley and crossed the poplar- lined river that snaked
its way sleepily through the Flanders countryside. They marched on beside a
thick wood, then emerged into open country. Less than a mile ahead the village
with the church spire was clearly visible. Before that, however, there was a
farm, and Captain Barclay called a halt. As the men marched through an aged
brick archway into the yard, chickens clucked and scurried about, a dog barked
lazily, and a number of fat geese waddled towards them honking loudly.