Ride Out The Storm (36 page)

The lines of men still stretched to the water’s edge, and as they watched them, wondering which one to join, Scharroo found he was unable to face the humiliation of being turned away again. Glancing at Marie-Josephine, he saw to his surprise that quite clearly she had come to the same decision.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘We must decide something else.’ Her determination wearied him. He’d always thought the old races of Europe were worn-out, tired with existing too long, but now he realised they were like a long-distance runner who, past his best as a sprinter, had acquired a great deal of endurance.

He was just about to start arguing again when the first air raid of the day began with waves of machines thousands of feet up, apparently dropping their bombs haphazardly. Then the fighters came in low, roaring along the beach, and as the men began to run he grabbed Marie-Josephine’s hand and pulled her to where a shabby grey-painted boat lay on its side on the sand. They flung themselves down behind it as the bullets swept along the beach, whipping up the grit in a travelling wave.

As the racket stopped, Scharroo scrambled to his feet. The flung sand was drifting thick as mist, and new plumes of smoke were rising to flatten out over the town in a dingy grey ceiling that veiled the sun. Men were patiently taking up their positions again as though nothing had happened, and a party of Guardsmen returned to a wrecked barge they’d been unloading. Then he saw that Marie-Josephine was still crouching on all fours, staring at the boat under whose rounded hull they’d sheltered, and he saw her expression change.

It was a small clinker-built vessel with a transom stern, and to Scharroo it looked like a converted ship’s lifeboat. The name,
Queen of France,
was painted on its counter.

‘
C’est un presage
,’
she whispered. ‘
Un augure.
’

She climbed into the boat, staring over the stern at a strange old-fashioned rudder that looked like a large bucket-shaped claw which opened and shut with a wheel that operated a screw attached to the tiller. There didn’t appear to be much wrong with the boat except that its bilges were full of sand and water and it was a hundred yards from the sea, sorry-looking and useless.

‘If we push it so–’ Marie-Josephine gestured to indicate the vertical. ‘–it will float off at high sea, and there is that man by the bar who knows about motor boats.’ She looked at Scharroo, her eyes shining. ‘You must fetch him, Walter. He will know what to do.’

As the sun lifted it became clear to Stoos that there wasn’t much time left. The affair was almost over. The British were scraping the bottom of the barrel now, using every ship and small boat that could be dredged up from forgotten corners of boatyards and creeks – no matter how forlorn, how tarnished the paintwork, how deep the dirty water gurgling in the bilges. The guns from the east were thudding constantly, and occasionally he could hear other guns in the west – nearer guns – Hinze’s guns – banging away at the shipping. The sound stirred in him an almost insane desire to be part of it.

He’d watched Dodtzenrodt and what was left of the squadron take off in the first glimmer of daylight. Dodtzenrodt didn’t like him and would do his best to make as much of the incident at the hangar as he could, and, as the machines vanished into the sky, Stoos chewed at his nails. As he approached the hangar, Hamcke watched him warily.

‘I shall be testing D/6980,’ Stoos said. ‘I shall be taking Unteroffizier Wunsche with me.’

Wunsche was just coming out of the mess tent carrying a cup of coffee when Stoos appeared. He was unshaven and his hair was rumpled, as though he’d just awakened.

‘We’re flying, Wunsche,’ Stoos said. ‘We’re testing 6980.’

When he reached the hangar, D/6980 was waiting with the engine ticking over. Stoos walked round it, checking everything carefully.

‘I’ll want her bombed up,’ he said.

Hamcke seemed to guess what was in his mind. He glanced at the corporal alongside him who also seemed to have caught on. Then he shrugged his shoulders. It wasn’t his affair. Sending a man to the armourers’ tent, he climbed into the cockpit to switch off the engine. Stoos waited as the bright circle of the propeller slowed down and finally stopped. He could feel the heat from the engine and hear the creaks from the cooling metal. Wunsche was looking distinctly nervous now. He also seemed to realise what was in Stoos’ mind and he glanced at Hamcke who sketched another small shrug.

In silence they all watched the bomb trailer approach across the grass and the men work it underneath the machine. ‘That’s it, Herr Leutnant,’ the corporal armourer said, scrambling out. ‘It’s not fused.’

‘Then fuse it.’

Wunsche climbed aboard without speaking and, settling himself behind his guns, moved his hands automatically to check the ammunition. Stoos climbed in after him and fastened his harness. ‘Start her up,’ he said.

Hamcke waved the ground crew forward. They all looked a little uncertain but they didn’t protest.

The Jumo engine burst into an iron-throated howl and they stood back while Stoos worked the throttle. Reaching the holding area, he turned into wind and carefully checked the revolutions and instruments. Then he swung the machine round in a circle and checked the flaps and instruments. As he released the brakes, he saw a group of dots behind him, dropping down towards the aerodrome. It was Dodtzenrodt and the rest of the squadron returning to refuel. It seemed best to go before he could be stopped, and he thrust the throttle open and roared across the ground.

As the machine rose, the headphones crackled and for a moment before he deliberately switched them off he heard Dodtzenrodt’s voice calling his name. Then, as Outreux passed beneath him, he turned towards Dunkirk and the ships he intended to make his target.

Hatton was watching the coastline near Mardyck. He knew where Hinze’s shells had come from because he’d watched the guns firing the previous day, and he suspected they were out of range only by a matter of yards. His heart was pounding but, as he turned he saw a big tug,
Gamecock,
bearing down on
Eager
and could see the men on her stern already preparing the tow-line.

The air raid siren had gone but Hatton saw the men on the beaches dispersing for the hundredth time towards the dunes. The raid was shaping up for one of the heaviest he’d seen so far. A large force of Junkers 87s supported by 88s, Heinkels, Dorniers and Messerschmitt fighters, had arrived over the harbour, and the ship’s guns began to fire.

After the first waves the attacks began to move from the harbour to the ships, and every ship in the area, every gun that had been dragged down for the defence of the beaches, every man with a rifle or a machine gun, began to retaliate. Just ahead of
Eager
a destroyer was turning at full speed in the narrow waters, and Hatton saw nine bombs fall in a row along her starboard side. At first he thought she was hit but she continued at speed, heeling over from the shock of the explosions. As she lifted again her pom-poms were banging away over the top of a sloop, and as the aeroplanes swung round in a big arc to head inland, he heard their machine guns going

Gamecock
was close by
Eager’s
bows now, moving slowly towards her, the men in the stern waiting to pass the tow-line, concerned only with their job and apparently unaware of the drama alongside. The swiftly moving destroyer had slowed down now and Hatton saw her straddled by a stick of bombs. She was moving in slow circles, her rudder jammed, and as she did so, another wave of aircraft came over her and Hatton saw the bombs fall away.

‘She’s got it this time,’ a man near him shouted.

The bombs hit the destroyer as she turned and she slowed down at once and began to settle. As tugs approached to take her in tow, she was hit a third time below the bridge and this time heeled over and disappeared almost at once. But the sky was already emptying again and Hatton realised
Eager
had escaped. By some miracle, the bombers had not noticed her and he could now see that the heaving line from
Gamecock
was aboard and the men on the bow were beginning to pull at the heavy tow-rope.

The air raids were just starting again as Hinze’s guns began firing once more, and the one he’d had dragged up the dune was now flinging its shells the extra five hundred yards he’d been seeking. There had been a lot of guesswork in the operation, but the roadstead was perfectly visible to everyone and they could watch the fall of their shots.

The destroyer they’d hit was still motionless but there was a tug ahead of her now. Through his glasses he could see they’d got the tow attached, but he knew that to turn her they’d have to pull her in a wide circle before they could get out of range.

As the destroyer began to move the first shot dropped thirty yards from her stern and Hinze called out the new elevation.

Horndorff heard the shell that bit
Eager
whistle over his head. It passed above the pram with a swooshing sound, and as it exploded a vast circle of smoke belched out of the destroyer’s after funnel, followed by clouds of steam.

‘Damn,’ Conybeare said.

‘I think we shall have to head in another direction,’ Horndorff said, not without a grim satisfaction. There was another destroyer not far away, lying stopped, and several tugs were racing towards her. Small boats were going full throttle to get out of the way, among them a fishing vessel with a wheelhouse like a box, and a solitary mast forward where a boy stood holding a rope. Horndorff stared about him, feeling he’d been granted yet another stay of execution.

‘I think you are running out of ships, Officer Conybeare,’ he pointed out.

Eager
had just been moving forward under tow, the water inside her making the work slow, when Hinze’s second shell had hit her. A great cloud of soot had shot up from the funnel and dropped across the decks to cover everybody with hot greasy flecks, and she immediately started to list to port. There was a frantic and desperate yelling where the splinters had sliced through the crowded men, and Hatton stared about him desperately. The Stukas were coming down one after another now, peeling off at ten thousand feet and dropping with a terrifying snarl of their engines to within a few hundred feet of the water. Another destroyer was hit and he saw the cloud of smoke leap up from her funnel and drift away like a smoke ring blown by a huge cigarette. A tug hurried to her rescue but her inside had fallen out and anchored her to the bottom, and as the tug cast off the tow and prepared to take off the survivors she too was hit. She seemed to disintegrate into small fragments and when the water and the smoke had vanished there was nothing left, not even a few bobbing heads.

In the havoc and thunder of the bombs, Hatton was flinching every time an aircraft came near them. All round
Eager
there were patches of oil where ships had sunk, together with a mat of drifting wreckage, smashed boats, Carley floats, fragments of timber and floating rope. Steam was still coming from the funnel and through the engine room hatches in a vast cloud that he knew would advertise the fact that the ship was damaged to every aircraft within miles.

Stoos’ gunner, Wunsche, pointed downwards, and as Stoos saw the slender shape of a destroyer far below him just to the west of the mole he realised at once by the absence of wake that the ship was almost stationary and even appeared to be under tow. She made a perfect target and he could see from the colour of her decks that she was crammed with troops.

He licked his lips, certain he couldn’t miss. His eyes didn’t waver as he stared through the silvery circle of the propeller. He was only twenty-two years old and quite certain of his destiny.

He could hear voices in his ears as other pilots called out warnings to each other, but he ignored them, his eyes now on only one thing. At the rear of the cockpit, Wunsche crouched over his guns, slight, pale-faced and nervous. He was not a good gunner and Stoos decided he’d have to get rid of him when everything else was sorted out.

He shifted in his seat and glanced behind him. There was another Stuka not far away on roughly the same course, its fixed undercarriage reaching down like the claws of a hovering eagle. He glanced at the bomb release. The big bomb slung beneath him would soon send the fragile destroyer to the bottom. He was quite unafraid and, settling himself in his harness, pushed the nose down. Immediately the air blossomed with brown shell-bursts. At least they were awake down below, but it wouldn’t be long before they were swimming for their lives.

More shells exploded around him but the Stuka flashed through them unharmed, and the engine swelled into a high whine. Behind his goggles Stoos’ eyes narrowed with concentration. The destroyer was growing rapidly in size now until it filled the whole of the windscreen, and he could see the brown mass of men crowding the decks suddenly changing to white as faces lifted to watch him. The tracers started, red lines spinning towards him, but he didn’t take his eyes off his sighting mark, holding his breath to concentrate more. The machine was rocking but so far nothing had touched him. And then he realised why. There was another Stuka beyond the bows of the destroyer and the fire was being directed at that one instead. As he watched, he saw it lift away and knew that in a moment they would be seeing
him.

The sky was full of exploding shells now and black with smoke. More tracers curved up and Stoos had to grit his teeth to force himself to keep his eyes on his target. A Stuka coming from the opposite direction burst into fragments that dropped twisting and turning out of the sky, but still the slim line of the destroyer below him grew larger, and filled the whole of his sight as he pulled the release and heaved the Stuka out of its dive.