Ride Out The Storm (37 page)

As the Stuka began to pull away, Kenny saw the bomb fall and Gilbert Williams’ voice came in a cracked harsh cry. ‘It’s going right down the bloody funnel!’

The destroyer leapt out of the water as the explosion tore at her inside, the crash drowning the clatter of the Stuka’s machine gun as the aeroplane seemed to hover above them.

‘Now,’ Gilbert screamed. ‘Now, Ernie!’

But Ernie was hanging over the gun, clutching it with whitened knuckles and, as the wild-eyed Kenny watched, he slowly spun away on limp legs, staring bewildered at the drops of blood falling from his open mouth to the deck.

Kenny looked round for Brundrett, but Brundrett was still below in the engine room crouching under the engine and, as the yellow-bellied machine with its crooked wings and fixed undercarriage began to curve up into the sky, Kenny came to life and grabbed for the gun. He had no idea how to aim so he simply pointed it and pulled the trigger.

The crash of the bomb exploding in the bowels of the destroyer seemed to lift the pram clean out of the sea and Horndorff missed his stroke and fell flat on his back with his feet in the air. For a moment he lay there dazed as water and fragments of wood and steel showered down. Then the waves set up by the explosion caught them, rocking the boat so violently that he felt sure it was about to capsize.

When he lifted his head, the destroyer was wallowing, and he knew she would sink. The tug which had been assisting her had dropped her tow and was rushing in a wild circle to pick up survivors, while the fishing boat they’d seen was heading quickly across their stern.

Conybeare was now lifting his head too, and the purple bruise over his eye seemed to glow with rage. Horndorff began to wonder if he might take advantage of the confusion and plunge over the side and, as the memory of that last awful swim deterred him, he saw that Conybeare was looking like an angry schoolboy. In any other circumstances he might even have found it within himself to laugh.

‘We’re adrift,’ Conybeare was yelling. ‘You damned idiot! Fancy letting the oars go!’

Horndorff dragged himself upright, for the first time in days feeling he’d got the better of his captor.

‘
Was sagen Sie nun
?
he said. ‘Perhaps you have something to fit
this
case, Officer Conybeare. I think everybody is too busy to pay much attention to us.’

He was quite right, and on
Daisy
Kenny Pepper was staring towards the Stuka he’d shot at, realising with amazement that it was faltering in the sky and that its gun had stopped firing.

At first he couldn’t believe his eyes. Then he saw a puff of black smoke break out behind it, and then another which finally became a steady stream.

‘I hit him,’ he screamed. ‘I hit the bugger, Gilbert!’

He stared upwards, waving and dancing wildly. The Stuka was turning towards the land now but it was clearly in trouble and the smoke was still pouring from it. He glanced round and saw that the tug,
Gamecock,
had let go its tow and was turning in a tight circle to come up behind them at full speed. Then he saw Gilbert Williams was staring not at the sky but at the deck, and he remembered Ernie. Kenny had never known his father, and since leaving school had found the security he’d needed aboard
Daisy.
The two Williamses had been kind in their rough way and had become like parents to him. As he turned slowly, the only thing he was aware of in his moment of triumph was the sight of the man who’d given him forbidden fags and bottles of beer, who’d taken his side against Brundrett’s bullying, now crouched on the deck in a kneeling position, half-leaning against the engine room ventilator, his mouth working slowly, the blood coming out in a thin stream mixed with saliva to form a pool on the deck where his face was pressed.

As the Stuka sagged in the sky with Wunsche dead in his seat Stoos felt a sick feeling of frustration. There’d be no medals for him now.

Even as he thought of it, however, he choked on the smoke pouring into the cockpit and realised his only chance of life was to take to his parachute. The bomber was barely moving forward by this time and he knew that in a moment it would fall off in a stall and then it would be too late.

The Stuka passed him towards the sea in a screaming dive as he fell clear. Then he pulled the ring and felt the jerk of the harness as the parachute opened. A moment later he was swinging safely beneath it.

He watched the aeroplane vanish in a vast spout of foam. It didn’t occur to him to feel sorry for Wunsche. Wunsche had only been part of the aeroplane, not a human being, and he’d not been very efficient even at that. Almost without thinking about him, Stoos looked round again for his victim.

At first he thought he’d missed, but then he saw the destroyer surrounded by clouds of steam and smoke and he grinned, delighted, feeling that things would come right after all. He realised he was drifting over the land and felt still better. He wouldn’t even get his feet wet. He was only a few hundred feet above the beach now and edging towards the dunes. He saw the men below move together in bunches and start looking up, and as he heard the whiplash of bullets it dawned on him they were trying to kill him.

‘No!’ he screamed. ‘No!’

But by this time he’d dropped another two hundred feet and the next fusillade tore his inside to shreds. He screamed like a tortured animal and his arms and legs fell helplessly, a red blur of pain dimming his view. With glazed eyes he saw the rifles raised again and, even as he choked in his own blood, a bullet took out his right eye and another, entering his head beneath the chin, lifted the top of his skull into the torn remains of his helmet.

The men on the beach watched the parachute drift over the town, and a sailor – a survivor from an earlier sinking – looked round at them as they worked the bolts of their rifles.

‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Two hundred of you to kill one sodden Jerry! No wonder we’ve lost the war!’

As
Eager
sank lower, the men aboard her were scrambling for the ships that had appeared alongside. As they filled up and moved away, a trawler came up on the opposite beam and everyone began to move to the other side of the deck. Standing on the bow where he’d been sent to help lift the stern out of the water, Sievewright waited for someone to tell him what to do. Alongside, men who’d been blown overboard were swimming and shouting and as the ship’s bows sank lower and lower he wondered if he should now move to the stern to give more weight there to lift the bows. Because he’d boarded during the night, he’d seen little of Dunkirk in the darkness. Because he’d been amidships when Hinze’s first shell had struck, he’d seen nothing of the shambles aft. Because he’d moved to the bows, he’d seen nothing of the horror from the second shell or the uproar when Stoos’ bomb had hit. He was still neatly dressed, and was just wondering if it were still in the tradition to go down with the ship, when he became aware of an officer on the bridge shouting at him above the din.

‘You there! You on the bow! Get into a boat!’

As the head disappeared, he looked round. Someone had lowered a boat further aft, but, even as he watched, the sailors cast off and it began to pull away. Then he realised that
Eager
’s
bows were now within a foot of the water. Alongside them a small abandoned dinghy was bumping against the steel. It had no oars and was quite empty but it seemed a great deal safer than the ship and, as
Eager
settled lower and lower, he stepped off into it. He hadn’t even got his feet wet.

‘That’s it,’ Noble shouted above the crash of the bombs. ‘She’s gone!’

He and Lance-Corporal Gow were standing on the beach staring at the awful butchery of ships. The sun was high now and Lije Noble’s mind was beginning to fill with doubts. Gow’s back was as stiff as ever, but under his helmet his eyes were narrow in their circles of weariness.

‘Mebbe we’ll have to swim,’ he said.

Noble’s head jerked round. During the night he’d found a lieutenant-colonel’s greatcoat which he’d put on for warmth but, for all he’d been saluted several times, it hadn’t given him a lot of confidence. Gow, on the other hand, behaved as though he were in the Guards Depot at Caterham. As soon as daylight had come, he’d shaved, using the rusty water from the radiator of a wrecked lorry. Then he’d cleaned his belt and polished his boots and given the Bren a run-over before finally adding to the hieroglyphics in his notebook with a calm absorption that terrified Noble with its acceptance of all the horrors around them.

‘
Swim
?’
he said. ‘Swim what? The Channel, for Christ’s sake?’

Gow turned slowly and stared at him. He seemed indifferent to the crash of bombs that made Noble flinch. ‘Mebbe we could,’ he said. He paused. ‘There’s a raft out yonder,’ he said. ‘We could use that.’

‘I can’t swim,’ Noble said.

‘I can.’ Gow sat down on the beach and began to unlace his boots. All about them were hatch covers from sunken ships, broken timbers and oars. ‘You can hang on to one of yon,’ he said. ‘I’ll swim behind an’ push.’

Noble stared at him as if he were mad but Gow had both his boots off now and was pulling at the grey army socks. His feet were as white and bony as the rest of him. He stood up and calmly took off his ammunition pouches and steel helmet and, laying them down, carefully rested the Bren against them. Then he stripped off his blouse, his trousers and shirt, and stood only in a pair of rather ragged underpants. Watched by Noble, he put on the ammunition pouches and the steel helmet again and picked up the Bren.

‘You going on parade like that?’ Noble asked wildly.

Gow turned. ‘I cannae leave ma gun,’ he pointed out coldly.

He’d already found a heavy piece of timber and was dragging it to the water’s edge.

‘You’re bonkers,’ Noble bleated, almost collapsing with fear. ‘Stone bonkers. When you get to the other side, they’ll form you all up to number from the right. The whole bleeding Brigade of Guards. And at the end Lance-Corporal Gow, in his birthday suit with his weapons at the slope.’ Like all non-swimmers he was terrified at the thought of being beyond his depth, but with this terrible calm man he knew that unless something happened he soon would be. Then he saw the boat about a hundred yards away, lying on its side on the sand. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘How about that boat there? The tide’s coming in and there’s a feller aboard.’

Gow studied the boat for a moment. Then he reached for his trousers and shirt and, donning them, began to drag his boots on again.

Noble was already approaching the boat, his feet churning the wet sand. A figure in battledress and steel helmet was bailing furiously, then, as Noble appeared, it straightened up and he saw it was a girl. Recognition came at once. ‘’Ello,’ he said. ‘Fancy meeting you again!’

Marie-Josephine stared nervously and then she remembered him from the air raid the previous night. ‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘I do not thank you for helping me. It is very gallant.’

No one had ever called Noble gallant before and he was embarrassed. ‘Runs in the family,’ he said. ‘Like wooden legs. What are you up to?’

She gestured towards the shambles at sea. ‘I go to England,’ she announced.

‘In that?’

‘But of course.’

‘Will it work?’

‘My friend goes into the town to find a man who knows about it.
He
will make it go.’

As Scharroo entered the town, the men marching in towards him had been in heavy fighting. There were a lot of wounded among them, the blood bright on the white of their bandages. These were the last regiments to pull back from the perimeter, proud regiments with long histories, and they still carried their kit and gave a smart eyes right to senior officers as they passed. There was something about them, tired as they were, that stirred Scharroo and he began to see that if he ever reached safety
this
was what he ought to write about.

As he reached the Rue Gregoire de Tours where they’d halted the night before, however, he began to run into other men, without weapons and past hope, standing in odd shabby groups. There was no sign of the man in the blue jersey and he approached a soldier leaning against the wall sucking at a bottle of beer. He was a narrow-faced narrow-shouldered Cockney whose helmet seemed far too big for him, draped about with a ground sheet, small, stunted, his feet in huge boots, the product of underfeeding in some East End slum.

‘You seen a guy here?’ Scharroo asked. ‘Little guy in a blue jersey. I guess he was good and drunk.’

‘I wish
I
was good and drunk,’ the soldier said. ‘I walked all the bloody way from Tournai.’

As they talked, a lorry swung round the corner and began to roar towards them. Heads jerked round to watch as it pulled up. Then tall men in red-covered caps jumped out, and an officer wearing an armband began to gesture with a walking stick. The men in red caps formed up and a sergeant started to shout at the group of stragglers.

‘All right, you lot! In threes!’

The red-caps were pulling men into the roadway and one of them grabbed at Scharroo’s sleeve. Scharroo snatched his arm away and the policeman made another grab. Again Scharroo snatched his arm away and the officer appeared.

‘Get into line,’ he snapped.