Ride Out The Storm (28 page)

The admiral smiled. It seemed like a good omen.

The first hours of the last day of the month were black and still, and for the patrolling destroyers almost impossible. The water was full of small craft and almost any of them might have been E-boats. As fast as they had loaded up and left Dunkirk, more had come in a never-ending procession. Some of the crews, to their indignation, had been given army maps to navigate on; others managed with hasty copies of other people’s charts, and they groped their way in, using torches and signalling lamps to find the buoys round which they had to turn, pushing past sunken shapes and drifting wreckage and the mats of floating bodies.

For Hatton it was much worse this time and he was terribly conscious of the metallic creaks about him as
Vital
picked her way forward, the ship’s nose a pale wedge on the dark rippling water. Voices were hushed, and across the bows lay the land where, with macabre regularity, the night sky split with dull red and yellow flashes like distant lightning so that he could see the harsh shoulders of buildings.

‘Starboard ten!’ The quiet order came to his ears along with the uneasy movement of feet on gratings as the ship sidled warily nearer. A listing wreck barred her passage but an urgent command guided her safely round it.

The appalling responsibility didn’t seem to worry Hough, and he was standing on the bridge eating a sandwich and calling his instructions through mouthfuls of corned beef. A paddle-minesweeper was on the beach just outside the harbour, burning fiercely, while another lay against the mole, its upperworks hanging over at an angle. In the darkness the town seemed to glow with fires.

‘Which side do you want the nets, sir?’

Hough pushed his glasses aside and picked up his sandwich again. ‘Neither. There are two destroyers off the beaches already. We’ll use the mole.’

As they threw their lines ashore, the naval commander who was acting as piermaster scrambled aboard. ‘Nice to see you back,’ he said.

As the blackness lifted and the greyness of dawn approached, the wind changed again. For days the sea had been as incredibly flat and motionless as a village pond. Men who knew the Channel and its treachery marvelled at the way even the gods seemed to be taking a hand in the struggle, the waves held within such tight bounds that the simplest manoeuvres were possible to frightened or unskilled men in unhandy boats.

But now, first as a stirring of the air, then as an increasing breeze, it began to blow in towards the shore from the north, and in the long shallows the surf rose. It was never heavy but, after five days, it was more than the exhausted men could fight. One after the other the small boats swung round and broached to.

The first to go aground were pushed off but the tide was receding quickly and those which followed were left stranded all the way from the foot of the mole to La Panne, small lopsided vessels lying on the drying sand.

Allerton was involved with one of them. When he saw it first it was still drifting, small and clinker-built and with a decked-in bow. A rope hung over the side and there was no sign of anyone on board. Across the stern were the words,
Queen of France.

‘That thing looks as though it’s got an outboard engine,’ he said to Rice. ‘Think we could make it go?’

They stripped and began to swim, but the water was only shoulder-high and they pulled themselves aboard without difficulty.

‘It’s not an outboard,’ Allerton said disappointedly, hanging over the stern. ‘It’s only some sort of rudder.’

Rice opened a hatch amidships. ‘The engine’s here, sir. Know anything about ’em?’

They swung at the starting handle but nothing happened and hopelessly they searched the lockers under the stern for tools. Below a hatch in the covered-in bow was a small cabin with a single narrow bunk, with a mattress and a blanket. The
Queen of France
had clearly belonged to someone who’d not been able to spend much on her, and the few pathetic fittings lay on a folded sail under the narrow bunk.

After a while, however, Allerton unearthed a rusty screwdriver and an adjustable spanner also red with rust. They were just about to climb back to the deck when Rice, who had been poking about in the lockers, unearthed a primus stove and a packet of tea. There was also a tin of condensed milk and water in the kettle. As they lit the primus the first raid of the day started and Allerton looked up.

‘Might as well stay where we are, sir,’ Rice suggested.

‘As safe here as anywhere,’ Allerton agreed and, despite the racket ashore, they sat together, stark naked, drinking tea, until the noise died and the engines faded.

As they finished they felt the boat bump softly but they paid no attention to it until the kettle fell off the primus and they realised that the cabin was now at an angle. The falling tide had stranded the
Queen of France
solidly on the sand.

Subtly, because of the conditions and without any real instructions from anyone in authority, the evacuation had moved east. Several ships had been hit near the harbour entrance and the others were now trying to avoid the danger and, with nothing to shoot at, Leutnant Hinze and others like him round Mardyck and Gravelines switched to Dunkirk itself; working at extreme range, they managed to bring the loading berths under fire.

To the exhausted men on the beaches, the shelling was a new harassment. There was no food left now, and officers and men were eating from the same tin of bully beef and sharing the same biscuits and the same stale dregs of wine. A constant procession of haggard, unshaven soldiers moved among the abandoned vehicles and through the dead, doleful houses in search of some forgotten tin or loaf or biscuit. A few still bathed in the sooty water to clear their ears and eyes of the grit which had been flung up by the shells and bombs and bullets and drifted by the breeze. A few searched for fresh clothing. One man was washing socks in the shallows and drying them on a string tied to a wrecked ambulance, another was emptying radiators to get enough water to brew tea on a fire made with broken equipment. A few more kicked a ball about, and two despatch riders were racing each other up and down the beach, their eyes always on the sky for the return of the bombers. At the first salvo of shells, at the first sound of aeroplane engines, everything was dropped and there was a rush for the shelter of the dunes.

The sight of the first starving, exhausted soldiers who found their way to
Daisy
had shocked Kenny Pepper. They arrived in small boatloads, stupid with fatigue, so that he stared at them, wondering what had gone wrong, and it was only when he realised that
Daisy
was heeling under the weight of the men hanging on to her sides that he came to life. His reaction was instinctive.
Daisy
was in danger, and in a fury he punched at faces and pounded on helmets and finally grabbed a boathook and went along the side of the boat thrusting at them. ‘You get off there,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s have some order!’

It was as they pushed the soldiers aboard a destroyer lying in the roadstead that he heard his first yell of warning that aeroplanes were overhead. He turned to gaze at the lightening sky and suddenly realised he was staring at the enemy. All the numerous bangs and explosions he’d heard ashore hadn’t really meant much up to that moment. They’d been impersonal things involved in other men’s defeat, but those small glinting shapes above were trying to kill
him,
Kenneth Harry Pepper.

The destroyer’s crew started casting off and the coils of the bow rope dropped in loops round Kenny’s head. Then the warship began to move ahead at full speed, her wash setting the mat of boats about her rocking violently.

‘Let’s git out of here,’ Gilbert Williams shouted but, even as
Daisy
swung away, the first bombs came down.

‘Oh, Christ Jesus God
Almighty!’ Ernie yelled, his wall eye swinging crazily as though it were loose in its socket.

One of the aeroplanes had come down so low in a screaming dive, it raced between the ships at masthead height. Kenny ducked behind the wheelhouse and swung round on hands and knees towards the ancient Lewis gun. ‘Give it ’em, Sy!’ he screeched in his high cracked boy’s voice.

But it was only when the aeroplanes drew off and the racket died down that he realised he’d heard no answering fire, and Ernie Williams was running along the deck.

‘Where’s that sodden Brundrett?’ he bellowed, snatching at the gun and swinging it round. ‘He hasn’t even taken the fucken cover off.’

A moment later, Kenny heard him in the engine room. ‘It’s
your
job,’ he was yelling at the top of his voice as he and his brother always did when they were angry. ‘You sodden get out there next time and start shooting!’

As he reappeared from the engine room and stamped to the little wheelhouse, his brows went down, his face flushed with anger. ‘Said ’e ’adn’t realised,’ he was shouting. ‘’Adn’t realised! Christ! With that row!’

Ten minutes later the aeroplanes were back again and as
Daisy
swung to starboard at full speed under Gilbert’s thick hands, Kenny saw a cockle-boat appear directly in front of them, wallowing in the wash of a passing ship. He snatched up the fender Ernie had been making in Dover and ran to the bow with it. It was heavy and Ernie had made it beautifully, taking care to get all the half-hitches even. As the gap between the two boats narrowed, Kenny swung it over the bows to take the shock. The two boats hit with a crash that almost flung him overboard. As he fell on his face on the foredeck, they were all covered with flying pieces of cork and the fender was only a flat bag.

‘Nice work, Kenny!’ Gilbert stuck his head out of the wheelhouse. ‘See you sweep them bits up when you’ve a minute, mind.’ He swung round to the stern. There was no sign of Brundrett at the Lewis again and he yelled to his brother:

‘You get on that bleeden gun, Ern!’

As Ernie swung the Lewis, another aeroplane roared over them and Kenny heard the reassuring clack-clack.

‘I hit him!’ Ernie yelled.

‘Nah!’ Gilbert shook his head. ‘Missed!’

As the aeroplanes disappeared, Gilbert called to Kenny. ‘Go and see what’s wrong with that fat sod,’ he said. ‘He must be deaf.’

Going below, Kenny found the engineer-cook half under the engine with a spanner in his hand.

‘Giving trouble.’ Brundrett had his head in the bilges, but Kenny could see his fat white cheeks quivering and it dawned on him that Brundrett was frightened sick and had chosen the position because it gave him the most protection from the bombs and bullets.

It shocked Kenny that Brundrett could be afraid, because in the stories he read it was only the enemy who ever felt fear, but when the aeroplanes came again and again, tearing at his nerves with the din, he began to see it wasn’t all that difficult. The crash of the bombs seemed to strip the flesh from his nerves and leave him shaking. Vast splashes rose in the shallows and he saw ships start to back out from the harbour in a hurry and men scattering like disturbed ants on the beaches as the high fountains of sand rose. There was still no sign of Brundrett and as the aeroplanes came down once more, he saw the bombs falling in uneven lines as though they were about to drop one after another along
Daisy
’s
deck. In the sea ahead there was a mat of swimmers where a boat had been hit and he saw a destroyer, taking desperate evasive action, plough through them at full speed, the brown shapes rolling over by the stern as she slewed round to set
Daisy
rocking with her wash.

Gilbert was staring bleakly at the disaster, then he came to life with a start and gave Kenny a shove. Having something to do helped, and as the aeroplanes came down yet again in another numbing attack he saw Ernie swinging the gun round. There were no tracers in the pan and it was impossible to tell where the bullets went.

‘Missed the bugger,’ Ernie snarled.

In the shallows nearby a cutter was floating empty, its crew blown overboard, and an officer took it over. Crowds of soldiers immediately rushed it and began to clamber over the stern so that the officer had to stand on the foredeck yelling at them to distribute their weight evenly. As it moved towards
Daisy,
it was so low in the water it looked as though it would capsize.

The rattle of rifles and the solid whango-whango-whango of the destroyers’ guns came in a deafening chorus that almost lifted
Daisy
from the sea. Then the skipper of the cockle-boat they’d hit yelled that he had engine trouble and asked for a tow, and Kenny made the line fast over the bollard as
Daisy
went ahead.

At that moment there was a tremendous explosion from aft and, as they crouched behind the wheelhouse, a hail of wood splinters and blazing wreckage fell about them, stirring the water and skating through the air to clink and thud on the deck. Lifting their heads as it stopped, they saw there was no sign of the cockle-boat or her crew – just the tow rope trailing in the water astern.

Kenny gaped at it, his mouth slack, then Gilbert Williams swallowed, his adam’s apple jerking. ‘Get that rope in, kid,’ he said in a thick voice. ‘Afore it gets round the screw.’

As he pulled in the frayed rope, Kenny realised his hands were trembling. He tried to get a grip on himself, but the trembling persisted and he had to stand for a moment to get over it.