Darkest Hour (42 page)

A short way forward from the
anti-tank crew, a hedge extended either side of the road.

'Is anyone dug in along here?'
Peploe asked one of the DLI gunners.

'No, sir. We've got forward
posts in the wood but that's

it.'

'All right,' said Peploe.
'Cooper, take your section and position them to the left of the road, behind
the hedge. Ross and Sykes, your boys take the right. We're missing a few men
now so we'll have to spread out a bit - five or six yards apart. I want one
Bren by the road here opposite the gun and the other two at the end of our
defensive lines giving covering fire across the whole of our front. Sykes, your
section can be at the end. Ross, I want you a dozen yards in from the road. We
need to watch out for any enemy infiltrating from the west but our primary task
is to defend the village from the south.' He cleared his throat, then turned to
Tanner. 'Happy with those dispositions, Sergeant?'

'Yes, sir.'
The lieutenant's learning fast.

'Good - all clear? Then let's
go.'

As the men shuffled along the
hedgerows, the drone of aircraft thrummed away to the east. Tanner counted a
dozen black crosses against the pale evening sky. In no time they were directly
overhead, and then they were gone, this time to bomb some other target. To the
north, fighting continued, but at Warlus, although desultory mortars continued
to hit the village, it was suddenly quieter to the south and east. Tanner moved
along the line, checking the men were in position correctly and that those
manning the Brens had enough ammunition.

They had lost four men during
the attack on the battery, all killed, leaving Sykes's section only eight men
strong and the other two with nine each. The shortfall had been made up by men
from Company Headquarters, which left himself, Peploe and Smailes.

'All right, Mac?' he said, as
he reached McAllister, manning the Bren at the end of their small line.

'No, Sarge. I'm bloody hungry.'

'Me an' all,' agreed Bell.

'And me,' said Tanner. He'd
barely thought about food all day but now he remembered they hadn't eaten since
morning. His stomach immediately began to grumble. 'Try not to think about it,'
he said, to himself as much as to them.

And he was tired. For the past
few hours he had barely had time to think of anything but the task in hand.
Now, as the battle appeared to have died down and they lay waiting patiently,
his remaining energy was ebbing. He found Peploe by the road, took out one of
Timpke's cigarettes and lit it, inhaling the smoke deeply. Dew was falling. The
day's warmth was seeping away as rapidly as his energy.

'Where's the rest of the
platoon, sir?' he asked.

'I'm not quite sure,' Peploe
admitted. 'Somewhere to the east of the village. I'm afraid we're a bit of a
scratch force here. Two companies of the Eighth DLI never left Duisans - there
were some enemy forces to the north-west of there - so it's only A and D
Companies here, plus a carrier platoon and a few mortars, and they've lost a
fair few during the day. Lieutenant Bourne-Arton is missing and we're down a
dozen men so far today - and that's not including the four from this platoon.
The Durhams have had it worse - half their number are gone.'

Tanner shook his head. 'Mostly
to dive-bombers?'

'You would have thought so, but
no. Only about ten went in that. The worst casualties happened when they tried
to push forward earlier, and since then there have been others - mortars, small
arms and so on.'

'Not good. How long are we
expected to stay here, sir?'

Peploe shrugged. 'Colonel
Beart's missing too, and so is Captain Dixon. One of the advance-guard
motorcycles went back to Duisans to try and get information but hasn't been
seen since.'

'It's ridiculous, sir, trying
to fight mobile battles with no radio. These SS-wallahs we picked up today, you
should've seen their kit. Sykes disabled a beauty in the scout car.'

'I know. I'm beginning to think
we're not really prepared for this war. That gun was something, wasn't it?'

'Actually, sir, I found out
what it was. An ack-ack gun, all right, but it seems they use them in an
anti-tank role. It's something called a Flak 36, 88mm calibre. I think we
should take a leaf out of their book and start using our ack-ack guns in that
way.'

'Beasts to move around but they
certainly make our little twenty-pounders look a bit feeble.'

'The twenty-pounder's all
right, sir, just so long as you use it over short distances. If anything comes
over that ridge tonight, I'd back those boys to see it off, but over longer
distances - well, that 88 caused mayhem, and we were firing more than two
miles.'

'And the pair of them saw off
our tank attack,' added Peploe.

They were silent for a moment, and
then Peploe said, 'I know we did what we were asked to do today, but that it
was all for nothing sticks in my gut. Four good men lost. To think they were
eating and breathing and living their lives this morning and now they're lying
beside some copse on a French hill.' He sighed. 'I can't help feeling
responsible for them - guilty, even. It wasn't something I ever considered when
I was at OCTU.'

'You might have lost more men
if we'd stayed here, sir. And we learned a lot from that attack. Do you remember
our conversation when we first got to Manston, about experience being the best
training? Don't you feel a better soldier now than you did this morning?'

'You're right.' Peploe smiled.
'But another thing they don't teach you at OCTU is how confusing battle is.
Most of today I haven't had the faintest idea what's going on. I still don't.'

Tanner grinned. 'I don't think
anyone does. You just do what you can in your own part of the battlefield. Try
to deal with whatever's flung your way.'

It was quiet now on their
front, although to their rear gunfire still thumped intermittently.

'Did you see the CSM?' asked
Peploe.

'He's looking after the
prisoners. He had Slater with him and another lad from Company Headquarters.'

'Dangerous job.'

Tanner smiled wryly. 'Like I
said, he's a coward. All bullies are,' he said. 'He won't get in the firing
line unless he absolutely has to.'

'Did he say anything to you?'

'Not really.'

'Tanner, I'll make sure this
rape charge is forgotten, you know.'

'Thank you, sir,' said Tanner,
'but we've got to get out of this mess first. If Jerry doesn't attack in the
next hour, I reckon he'll wait until morning. He doesn't like attacking at
night. But the fact is, sir, I think we're more or less surrounded. If we don't
pull out tonight, we'll be in the bag tomorrow.'

'We've been ordered to hold the
village, though. What else can we do?'

Tanner sighed. 'That's what's
worrying me, sir, because it's a lost cause.'

When Sturmbannfuhrer Timpke
came round he couldn't understand where he was or how he'd got there. He was
lying on straw and it was dark - not completely but enough for him to realize
he must have been out for several hours. His head was pounding with a sharp,
throbbing pain.

He saw that he was in a large
old barn. Aged, dusty beams, hewn and fitted together centuries before, hung
above him. He could smell dust and straw, but something else too - something
sweet and cloying. For a moment he couldn't think where he had come across it
before. Then, pushing himself up on his elbows, he gasped. Bodies - lots of
them. Totenkopf men. His mind raced. Not ten yards from him Schultz lay on his
back in a large dark pool of blood. And there were others he recognized too.
No,
he thought.
They've shot my men.

Suddenly he heard voices - English
ones - and saw two men standing in shadows by the open door. Soundlessly, he
lay down again and closed his eyes.

'It's Tanner, all right,' said
one of the men.

'Sergeant Tanner,' said the
other. 'And Corporal Sykes. They've murdered the lot of them. And look.' The
man kicked something - a weapon. 'Tanner was carrying one of these earlier.'

'Tanner,' said the first man.
'How could he do this?'

Timpke heard them leave, but
waited where he was for a few minutes. His brain reeled. He had overseen a
number of executions in Poland but the victims had been partisans, resisters
and Jews. That was one thing, but to kill fellow soldiers in cold blood - it
was incredible, horrifying, beyond comprehension. And it had been Tanner, the
piece of scum who had sat with him so coolly in his scout car. He had
recognized then that Tanner was a hard man, but now he had done this. Him and
that small, wiry man who had disabled the radio. Sykes. When he dared to get
up, he staggered as he saw the dead. Some stared up at him, their eyes still
open; others lay on top of their comrades. Flies buzzed around, gorging on the
blood. Timpke clutched his head, staggered again, then turned towards the
entrance. A sub-machine-gun lay on the dirt floor. He bent down and picked it up
to examine the markings. Yes, there could be no doubt. Two circles and a square
inside, with the letters W-SS, engraved on the breech. A Bergmann MP35 Mark I.
Exactly like the one Tanner had taken from him.

Leaving it where it was, he
reached the door, looked around, saw no one, and ran across the yard to the
farm's main entrance. Carefully peering around the gateway, he saw the end of
his scout car parked across the road. To his surprise, no one was around. For a
moment, he crouched in the shadows, thinking. It was almost dark; above him,
the first stars were twinkling. He could hear occasional gunfire from the
north, but he was certain the Tommies still held the village. He wondered why
the rest of the battalion hadn't followed and attacked as he had ordered Beeck.
But then, of course, they would have realized that he and the bulk of Company 3
had been taken prisoner. Units of Regiments 2 and 3 would have caught up; any
orders Beeck tried to implement would have been overruled. They would have
probed forward this evening, would send out patrols tonight and then, having
made sure a sufficient weight of fire was in place, would attack the following
morning.
Yes. That's what's happened.
If the Tommies remained where they were, they would
have no chance.

And then a plan took shape. All
he had to do was disable the vehicles. If he did that, they would struggle to
get away. And he wanted them to stay. He wanted them to stay so that he could
exact his revenge on this
Unteroffizier
, Tanner.

So long as Tanner and Sykes
were not killed, they would almost certainly end up as prisoners of war. Then
he would take personal charge of them. There would be no simple bullet to the
head - no, Timpke was already planning something far more drawn out than that.
He allowed himself a thin smile. The mere thought of it helped lift his
spirits.

It was around ten o'clock when
Sykes heard movement. He lay stock still until he heard a chink about fifteen
yards in front. He hissed at McAllister to hold his fire, then carefully pulled
a grenade from his haversack, drew out the pin and lobbed it over the hedge.
The night air was so still that he heard it land with a dull thud among the
young shoots of corn and a few seconds later it exploded with a blinding crack
of light. A man cried out and fell backwards. Then McAllister opened up with
the Bren.

A moment later a German
machine-gun fired from just below the ridge. Bullets whizzed above them,
splintering the tops of the hedge, then mortars were falling, but exploding
some distance behind them.

More small-arms fire came from
the direction of the wood to the south-east, then mortars.

'Give them another burst,'
Sykes told McAllister, 'just in case.'

Tanner joined them, crouching
beside Sykes.

'I think it's only patrols,
Sarge,' said Sykes.

'Maybe. Sounds to me like
they're trying to clear that wood of our posts, though.' More mortar shells
fell and a tree now caught fire. They could hear the spit and crackle of
burning timber. A flickering orange glow shone from the southern end of the
wood and shouts rang out, followed by yet more mortars and small arms. Then,
from the village, they heard an engine and the sound of a vehicle driving away.