Ride Out The Storm (10 page)

The end seemed to have come.

Fortunately, the German tank attacks had stopped. With the French army to the south still undestroyed, it was becoming dangerous to allow the wastage to continue, though Jocho Horndorff’s unit was still probing forward.

Hard as the campaign had been, they were infinitely better off than the French who had lacked petrol, repair crews, brakes for their cannon, and had the wrong ammunition for their Hotchkiss machine guns, while most of their officers were new from St Cyr. The British had had the right spirit but hardly any tanks, and whoever had been responsible for their design must have been suffering from a considerable weight on his conscience. The principal influence brought to bear on them had been the cavalry school of thought which had tried to make them as much like horses as possible, so that they were fast and lightly armed and could run away quickly but were useless when brought to battle. The British cavalry regiments had used them with their usual élan, charging like the run-up to the first fence at a race meeting, but this method had changed to others more wary as it was curbed by the diminishing stock of dashing officers and the dearth of tanks. One after another they’d been abandoned with broken tracks or other mechanical defects, and now littered the French countryside, square and ponderous, like garden sheds on wheels and about as flimsy.

The roads in front of Horndorff were jammed with refugees and blocked with broken vehicles but no one got in the way. Horsed carts were dragged off the pavé, cars and vans were driven into the ditches and hedges, their occupants jolting wildly as they bumped over the verge. Men and women pushing barrows and perambulators and bicycles flopped into the grass. Others abandoned their suitcases and packages, leaving them strewn across the road to be chewed to shreds by the tank treads as their owners bolted for safety. There was no shooting but more than one van, moving too slowly, was nudged from the road, and once Horndorff saw a cart slide sideways into a canal, a wheel buckling under it, the horse dragged backwards to the water, screaming with fear. He didn’t stop.

When they reached Scheywege they halted and the radio crackled with the news that the British were setting up guns. ‘Resistance is stiffening,’ the instructions came.

‘But of course,’ Horndorff growled as he took the report. ‘We missed our chance. All right–’ he gestured ahead ‘–forward.’

The countryside was featureless now, nothing on its surface to break the monotony but scattered groups of cottages or a level crossing. It was dangerous because there was nothing to hide them except an occasional farmhouse or osier-bed and they moved more warily, Horndorff watching every corner, every barn, every clump of bushes and trees, every low wall where a British battery might be sited.

‘Close hatches,’ he warned. ‘Stand by.’

The radio crackled again and information came that infantry was held up by a British strongpoint at Zoetsweg and that he was to give help. He stopped the section and, directing two of the tanks to a map reference to the north with instructions to pick him up later, waved his arm again so that the four tanks that were left began to clatter forward once more with the creaking protestation of springs and bogie wheels.

The fields now were quite flat with occasional potato clamps and a lot of dykes, and Horndorff guessed he was approaching the British front line. His eyes were roving round him and just as he caught a movement by a row of clamps in the field to his right the wireless operator started yelling. He shouted down to him to shut up.

‘But Herr Major! It’s the colonel! He’s saying we’re to take care because–’

Even as he yelled the warning, Horndorff saw a series of flashes and in the same moment caught a glimpse of the flat steel helmets the British wore.

‘Drive, reverse,’ he screamed. ‘Turret eleven o’clock! One-two-zero-zero–!’

But as the driver heaved on the brakes there was a tremendous crash below him and the tank shuddered and he smelt cordite and smoke. As he looked down, the white questioning faces of the gunner and the operator stared up at him and their lips formed the word, ‘Fire!’ Then he saw fumes coming from the louvres and, almost at once it seemed, there was a roar of flames and he heard the driver screaming. The inside of the tank turned into a glowing furnace and he scrambled to safety as the hidden guns among the potato clamps began to fire as fast as they could. The gunner followed him but he seemed to panic and began to run in circles. Them as the tank behind stopped dead, there was a muffled thump from inside that lifted the panic-stricken gunner into the ditch. The turret slid off sideways and the screaming that had started died down. Red fountains were playing around them now and Horndorff’s mouth was filled with the taste of cordite and he could smell the frightful smell of impending death that went with it. The air was full of lead and noise and he caught a split-second glimpse of tracer curving by in long hot rods that took the breath from his lungs with the vacuum of their passing.

One of the two remaining tanks was trying to bring its gun to bear but the British shells were still whistling past and he knew it was only a matter of time before it was hit.

‘Get out of it!’ he screamed at the fourth and last tank, leaping to his feet and running towards it, determined not to be taken prisoner. The machine began to slew round on the narrow road, but there was a dyke on either side and it was difficult, and as he ran he saw a shell hit the other tank. The whipcrack of the explosion blew him off his feet and he rolled over the bank of the ditch, spattered with falling dirt and stones.

Lifting his head, he saw three figures jump out, their clothes on fire, but a machine gun among the potato clamps rattled and he heard the bullets chattering against the armour-plate. All three men went over like shot rabbits, still burning.

The last tank was still trying to turn, moving awkwardly like a crippled beetle. As it jerked away, he wondered if he could run after it, but that damned machine gun was still playing across the open fields and there wasn’t a scrap of cover where he could hide. Then, just as the tank began to roll, one of the shells screaming over his head hit it on the nearside and he saw the track coiling like a snake as it curled off the bogies. The tank swung sideways, and he saw it topple slowly into the dyke.

It hadn’t taken Flying Officer Conybeare long to realise that waiting in Villers-sur-Grandie was going to be a waste of time. Three hours had elapsed following the telephone call he’d made to his squadron but there had been no sign of the truck which had been promised and he’d gradually grown more and more uneasy.

There was an atmosphere of bewilderment and gloom about the place and when a lorryload of French soldiers had come hurtling through, pointing backwards and screaming ‘
Les Allemands
’
,
he’d decided it was time he set off walking. There were no other soldiers in the village, and now the carts, barrows, horse-drawn drays and ramshackle old motors had begun to appear out of backyards and head west, trailing a long column of men, women and children on foot. The speed of their assembly had seemed to indicate they’d been ready for take-off for some time.

At the next village they’d run into another column coming from the east and the numbers had increased. They hadn’t seemed to regard Conybeare with much affection and it had seemed wiser not to mingle too closely with them. In the village square the column stopped. No one had attempted to help them and they had slept where they could. Preferring to be where he could make a quick getaway, Conybeare had managed to find a chair in the
Maire
’s
office and stayed there until the move west and north started again as soon as the sun had risen. The Germans found them before they’d gone a mile.

When the shooting and the howl of engines had stopped, Conybeare scrambled to his feet and ran along the line of sprawled figures. Men and women were appearing from the ditches, weeping and terrified, some of them cursing and shaking their fists at the disappearing Stukas. Nearby was a woman whose arm had been ripped to shreds by a burst of bullets. Further on were two children sitting in a push chair. One of them was covered with blood and silent. The other was screaming with terror and fighting to get free of the strap that held it in. Conybeare unfastened the buckle and lifted it clear; then as a man took the child from him, he decided he was getting his priorities mixed. He could be more usefully employed elsewhere. He sighed and, turning abruptly, began to head for the fields.

From the point where Conybeare was just making up his mind that a fighter pilot could help more in the air than with rendering first-aid to injured men, women and children who were already surrounded by their families and friends, to the head of the column was just over a mile. Up in front, between a horse that was snorting out its life in bannering bubbles of blood, and an ancient Citroën which seemed to be spouting steam from half a dozen points of the engine, Marie-Josephine Berthelot was on her knees by a dying woman. She had neither morphine nor bandages and the woman’s cries were tearing at her heart. From behind, a man offered a brandy flask but in her terror and misery she hardly noticed.

She was weeping softly and the man who’d offered the flask put his hand on her shoulder.

‘She’s dead,’ he said quietly.

Marie-Josephine lifted her face, her cheeks wet with tears, her eyes questioning. ‘You are English?’

‘No. American.’
And
a goddam fool, Scharroo thought. During the night the Germans had unexpectedly pulled back and when morning had come he’d been shocked to find that during the hours of darkness the fighting had shifted direction and he was now on the wrong side of it.

He squinted at the sky, worried. ‘We ought to be moving,’ he said. ‘That lot were dive-bombers but they didn’t drop any bombs. That sounds like they had orders not to damage the road surface, and
that
means German tanks aren’t far behind.’

He glanced again at Marie-Josephine. She was small and pretty with soft dark hair and large brown eyes that were circled with the purple shadows all Frenchwomen seemed to have. He put her age at about twenty.

‘You alone?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

He indicated the suitcase she’d dropped. ‘I can carry that for you,’ he said. ‘Where are you heading?’

Marie-Josephine had recovered her composure now and was looking at Scharroo, stiff-backed, her head up, her small mouth firm, her manner business-like. ‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘I have some relations at La Panne. Perhaps I join them.’

Scharroo nodded. He could stay where he was, he supposed, and wait for the Germans but, though it was no part of his commission, he’d begun to feel that he ought instead to get to Paris. He had a feeling that it would be there that the next big act would take place. There was little doubt that, despite their undefeated armies to the south, the French were unlikely to fight to the death and Paris would soon fall. His job was to be present to see the Germans’ triumph. If he could get to La Panne, he thought, he could perhaps get a train from Nieuport to Ypres or along the coast and south via St Omer. It was chancy but better than hanging about in this empty area of canals and dykes.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘That’ll do me.’

When Conybeare had turned away abruptly and headed into the fields, it had not been an easy decision to make and his mind had been a turmoil of horror and pity.

At the other side of the field, he hit another road full of lorries with which he pushed along for a while, aware of the invisible ring of the enemy growing tighter and harder all the time. Then a truck full of French soldiers came past, insisting on trying to overtake all the other vehicles. There were shouts of ‘Wait your turn!’ and ‘Pull in!’ and an officer pulled out his revolver and, jumping on the running board, stuck it in the driver’s face. The Frenchman pulled in, but somehow the incident worried Conybeare and, deciding the road would attract attention from the Germans before long, he turned north yet again, keeping the sun behind him as a compass. Eventually, on his left, he saw houses and a church spire and, hungry by this time, he wondered if he could find anything to eat there.

The village appeared to be deserted but he entered it warily, expecting to find the Germans in possession. The fronts of several houses had been blown away and the silence was frightening. Though a few cats stared at him, there was no sign of human life. In a deserted café he helped himself to a bottle of beer from the cold cupboard and, half-starved, wolfed a stale baguette from under the counter and helped himself to cheese and sausage. He was still standing at the bar, tenderly fingering the bruise over his eye, when he heard footsteps in the roadway outside.

At first he thought the approaching man was a parachutist, because he wore overalls and a small round helmet. He was blond, hard-faced and tough, and much bigger than Conybeare who was completely unarmed.

He looked round for a weapon. There was nothing he could use. Then he saw an old hammer-operated shotgun over the bar. He reached for it and, staring into the dusty barrel, saw it hadn’t been fired for years, perhaps generations. It was of little value in an emergency but he decided he might manage to do something with it.

The German was only twenty or thirty yards away now, heading straight for the café, and Conybeare slipped behind the door that led to the private quarters. The German’s boots clumped on the floor-boards, and Conybeare saw him go behind the counter and take a bottle of beer from the counter. As he took off the cap and reached for a glass, Conybeare stepped out and placed the muzzle of the old shotgun against his neck, feeling like a schoolboy playing a game.