Ride Out The Storm (25 page)

Nevertheless, some men, preferring not to wait, were swimming off the beaches clutching pieces of timber, doors, oars, even inflated inner tubes they’d salvaged from abandoned vehicles. Someone had also had the bright idea of building piers. Three-tonners had been driven as far into the sea as possible at low tide, and behind them a long line of ammunition wagons, Bren gun carriers, anything that was available and would still move, had been wedged nose to stern. Immediately, despite the bombing, engineers scouring the beaches, rounded up planks and ropes and wire and joined the vehicles together in a makeshift jetty so that men could scramble along them and small boats come alongside without danger of going aground.

Some soldiers, their places far back in the queues, were sunbathing. Others had disintegrated morally and, like all men whose characters crumble in war, they had done so at terrifying speed. The colonel with the gay forage cap Scharroo had seen was arguing at that moment with a hysterical officer who’d rushed the queue and was insisting on taking his place at its head. As dawn had broken the man in the gay cap had splashed in a canvas bath provided by one of the Bofors batteries, watched by unbelieving soldiers. Now, tall, blond and unconcerned, he quietly drew his revolver, stuck it in the other officer’s stomach and called a military policemen to lead him away. Other men sat among the dunes, unable to accept that the ordered world they’d lived in had collapsed, and were merely waiting in defeat to be captured. For the most past, however, they were prepared only to admit that things were ‘a bit dodgy’ and regarded their defeat with the air of cynical disillusionment and mocking self-deprecation that was the stock-in-trade of British servicemen.

There were all kinds, most of them still clutching their rifles, some with suitcases, artillery theodolytes and favourite golf clubs. There were engineers, cavalrymen, tankmen, gunners, infantrymen, medical men, men who didn’t know the first thing about boats and tried to row stern-first or against an anchor some sailor had thrown out before he’d disappeared in the bombing. There were Belgians and Frenchmen from the interior who’d never seen the sea before and failed to understand that human beings crowding into a boat could set it so firmly on the sand nothing on God’s earth would move it until they climbed out again. Unlike the island British, they found it hard to accept the queues and worked themselves into a rage of impatience so that the sailors had to beat at frantic hands with boathooks and oars.

There were even a few odd Germans like Jocho Horndorff, watching sullenly as Conybeare spoke to the beachmaster. ‘This man is my prisoner,’ he was saying, ‘and I’m taking him with me. He’s a panzer officer and he might be of use to us.’

The beachmaster studied Horndorff. The German’s overalls were grimy now with oil and coal dust and soot, and there were streaks of black on his face. He was hungry and tired and strained by the frustration of having Conybeare constantly alongside him; the confident conqueror of three days before had given place to a haggard prisoner.

The beachmaster stared at the small blue-clad figure in the vast ridiculous boots and decided he was a little bomb-happy. ‘That bunch in the dunes there,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to wait.’

As they walked up the beach, the Heinkels appeared over the town again, plastering the buildings, the dunes and the sand. The incessant, incredible, perpetual din that left them all voiceless with trying to shout above it, started again. The aeroplanes came in waves, the fighters roaring along the beaches with arrogant indifference to the opposition, the sand rippling ahead of them as their bullets raked the surface. Conybeare threw a spade at Horndorff.

‘Dig!’ he said.

Horndorff glanced at the sky. Another wave had appeared over the beach now and fighters and dive-bombers were falling out of the heavens one after the other. Their bombs could kill and maim impersonally, indifferent to nationalities or loyalties, and he began to punch at the sand, barely aware of the din and the snake-like rills in the sand as the bullets came. The bursting bombs encouraged him and the hole went quickly into the slope of the dune. Conybeare pointed at a staff car stranded in the sand. Its bonnet had been blown off and lay near them. ‘Shove that over the top and pile sand on it,’ he said.

Horndorff did as he was told and, under Conybeare’s instruction, dragged up a few metal two-pounder shell boxes and arranged them on top and round the entrance to the hole he’d dug.

‘Now get inside,’ Conybeare said.

Nearby, half a dozen other men were building shelters on the edge of the dunes. Some were modest, some pretentious, and as the aeroplanes disappeared, the man next door looked round. He was a tall officer wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, his face mild and humorous.

‘Haven’t seen a deck-chair about, have you?’ he asked.

‘Haven’t even seen an attendant,’ Conybeare said.

‘Sunny for the time of the year.’ The other officer gave his shelter a slap with the piece of planking he was using. ‘Long time since I went in for this sort of thing. Always used to go to Slapton Sands. Where did you favour?’

‘Skegness us. Had a house there.’

Horndorff listened to them in amazement. They seemed quite mad. They all seemed mad. Just down the beach, a soldier with a trumpet was blowing a Germanic dirge which Horndorff recognised as the British national anthem. Judging by the noise, it was the only thing he could play. Not far away, a few soldiers were kicking a ball about.

‘Ought to introduce ourselves,’ the spectacled officer said to Conyheare. ‘Usual when you share sandcastles.’

‘My name’s Conybeare. RAF.’

‘York and Lanes. Mine’s Wren.’ The eyes behind the spectacles beamed. ‘I’m building St Paul’s.’

They continued to exchange pleasantries. ‘I decided to put my best uniform on,’ Wren said. ‘Had it made in Lille. Cost nine hundred francs. Big decision.’

‘Always difficult,’ Conybeare agreed.

‘Got my batman to make two piles, one of the stuff I could take, one of the stuff I couldn’t. Then we threw ’em both away.’

By the water’s edge, two men were tinkering with a small blue speedboat and Wren and Conybeare studied them interestedly, sitting on the sand as though they were taking the air.

‘Been at it since dawn,’ Wren said. ‘Say they’re going to have a go in it.’

The bombers came again – ‘For what we are about to receive,’ Wren said – and the bombs landed on a wrecked ship lying just off the beach.

‘They have a go at that every time they come over,’ Wren pointed out. ‘Luftwaffe must be a bit short-sighted.’

In the dunes just behind them two young soldiers were asleep, clutching each other like children.

‘Been there since last night,’ Wren observed ‘Bit young for this sort of thing, I suppose.’

As he turned away there was a cheer and they saw that one of the Heinkels was on fire. It swung back above them, trailing smoke, and then, as they watched, it disintegrated in a puff of flame. From the hole in the dunes, Horndorff saw a wing twisting down to splash in the sea and then a single parachute drifting over the beaches above them. He heard a clicking sound and realised that every soldier within a mile was working the bolt of his rifle and lifting it to his shoulder. As he watched, a steady pop-pop-pop started and the figure under the parachute went limp in its harness. As it splashed into the sea, the parachute fell over the body like a shroud.

‘Ah, well,’ Wren said. He flicked from his uniform flakes of soot that had drifted from the town. ‘Not much hope of sun-bathing. Too grubby.’

The shelling seemed to be increasing as the daylight grew. Dunkirk was being heavily hit and more buildings on the promenade were blazing, the smoke flattening out over the town.

‘Heavy guns,’ Wren said. ‘Got ’em on the front at Nieuport, I’m told. Business seems quite brisk.’

RAMC men passed them, carrying a corpse in a blanket. Parties of them were doing the same all over the beach, burying the bodies and carting the wounded off to hospital. The British army was keeping its areas tidy. It was a wonder some sergeant hadn’t started whitewashing the pebbles. If it moves salute it, if it doesn’t, paint it.

While they watched, a soldier determined to get some fun out of the situation rode past on a black farm-horse. He was wearing a general’s cap with its red band, a pyjama jacket and a pair of breeches and polished riding boots from some senior officer’s kit.

‘Which way did they go?’ he was shouting.

‘Thataway,’ someone yelled back.

It was a ridiculous piece of farce amid the tragedy of thirst and futility and fear, and Horndorf suddenly began to see why it was that people like Conybeare had so much confidence in ultimate victory.

It wasn’t quite the same for Allerton.

He’d been released from his duties as beachmaster the previous evening and he’d awakened in the dunes stiff and cold and, now that he had nothing to occupy his mind, with a new sense of worry he hadn’t experienced before.

A bunch of north-country soldiers were singing ‘I do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’ and near them another man was dismantling a radio set for something to do. Two corporals were playing chess, and an officer curled up in a hole was patiently reading Zola in French. It was
La Débâcle,
which to Allerton seemed very fitting. Here and there a rifle was brandished as someone got out of line, but on the whole the affair was one of extraordinarily good manners, as though it simply wasn’t done to make a fuss and he was so moved he felt his eyes prick with tears. If this is the British, he thought, they can never beat us.

As the sun rose higher, the beach became hot and the dry sand among the dunes seemed stifling. He rubbed his bristly chin and decided to go for a swim. The planes had gone and the guns had stopped again in a brief respite of heavenly quiet as he headed down the beach, and the unexpected stillness of the air seemed to highlight the strangeness of it all.

As he reached the water’s edge he bumped into Temporary Acting-Corporal Rice who was paddling, his spectacles on the end of his nose, his boots hanging round his neck.

‘Hello, sir,’ Rice said. ‘Had a good night?’

‘Beds were a bit hard.’ Allerton was surprised at the casual manner he was adopting and he decided it must be infectious because everyone else had adopted it too. ‘How about you?’

‘Lost the other blokes, sir, so I had a prowl round. Thought there might be a night club or two.’

As they were discussing what they ought to do, they saw a small pale blue speedboat lying in deeper water nearby. There was a feather of exhaust smoke at the stern and the man at the wheel waved. ‘We’ve room for a couple more,’ he called.

‘Where are you heading for?’ Allerton shouted.

‘England. Care to join us?’

Allerton looked at Rice, then they nodded and they had just started splashing through the shallows when they realised the aeroplanes were back again.

‘Gets a bit tiresome, doesn’t it?’ the man in the boat shouted. ‘We’ll shove off until it’s over. Make sure you’re ready.’

As they ran for shelter, they heard the bombs splash into the water and the destroyers’ guns begin to bang. As Allerton turned he saw a vast eruption out to sea which caught the sunshine in multi-coloured rainbows of light.

‘That was a bloody big bomb,’ he said.

‘It wasn’t a bomb, sir,’ Rice muttered. ‘It was a mine.’

Allerton couldn’t understand his shocked tones until he saw a small pale blue piece of plywood fluttering down out of the waterspout, skidding from side to side like a leaf falling from a tree and catching the light on its wet surface as it fell.

He swallowed with difficulty. ‘We’d better go back up the beach,’ he suggested.

Rice nodded. ‘Perhaps it’s our turn, anyway,’ he said.

‘Yes, perhaps it is. I wish to God someone knew something definite.’

But nobody did, of course, and it was this very confusion that was worrying the admiral in his desperate uncertainty in Dover.

A curtain lay over the evacuation because there was too much distance between him and the beaches, and a dreadful weakness in ship-to-shore signalling that was leading to an immense waste of effort. The establishment of a senior naval officer afloat had brought some order, however, and his hand was at last being seen in the fact that the destroyers were now bringing back a thousand men at a time. The trouble was, there just weren’t enough of them.

Nevertheless, at Sheerness the Small Vessels Pool was beginning to work up to full speed, and the motor car engines of weekend yachts and cruisers were being made to turn over after the winter lay-up, while stores and accommodation were being produced for the stream of naval officers and ratings who kept appearing to man them. Rafts small enough to be manhandled but big enough to carry men were being constructed, and shipwrights were busy with ladders to load from the mole or from ships which had grounded in the shallows. Convoy after convoy was pushing out to sea, and from every quarter the numbers grew. London river had long since been swept clear of tugs and all the great towing companies had sent everything they could spare to pull dumb barges. Long-forgotten gunboats, drawing only five feet of water and mounting ancient guns which had been built for river work in China, passed each other in the mist that lay over the Channel, dodging damaged ships that yawed wildly from side to side, unable to manoeuvre. Lifeboats, transporters belonging to furniture removers, firefloats, battleships’ boats from Portsmouth, cutters belonging to the 34,000 ton
Nelson,
even the admiral’s barge itself, its bright paint dulled to a drab grey; everything that would float and was handy joined them, their names and numbers arriving on the desks of the grateful officers at Dover.