Tramp in Armour (18 page)

'Well, we can't go on like this much longer. Reynolds must be near the end of his tether stuck out there in front driving on and on hour after hour.'

'Reynolds has not complained,' Barnes answered drily.

'But Reynolds is a good boy.'

'If this is going to be the quality of your conversation you'd better get back behind your gun.'

Perm clambered down into the fighting compartment without a word and Barnes immediately regretted his reply, but having said it he had to leave it. God, the strain must be telling for him to say a damned silly thing like that, but the tension was the product of strain. He reckoned it up. In twenty-four hours he had enjoyed barely two hours of uneasy sleep and Reynolds had made do with the same ration, but Penn hadn't slept at all, and prior to that both of them had made do with four hours' sleep a night for four nights while Barnes lay unconscious. Yes, they badly needed a safe bivouac for the night. And eight hours' sleep. He scanned the sky again.

Inside the hull the temperature was ferocious, the air almost non-existent. Penn sat in his vest and trousers, hugging the shoulder-grip, his hand close to the trigger guard. Their experience with the lorryload of German infantry which had roared over the bridge in their faces had impressed on all of them the need for a constant state of alertness, although at this moment it was purely a reflex action with Penn to take up the position. His brain was becoming numbed, numbed with the heat, with the diesel-fuel odour, with the endless throb of the engines, with the hypnotic grind of the tracks. He had reached the stage where he was frightened he might faint and this was why he had gone up into the turret. The dizziness increased and he kept shaking his head to clear it. The thirst he was suffering from was so intense that his tongue clove to the top of his mouth and he could almost see foaming tankards of beer, wishing to God that his imagination wasn't so strong. The tank ground on.

In the nose of the tank Reynolds wore a stolid expression. He was hot and sticky and he was thirsty, too, but they would get a drink when Barnes gave permission. In the meantime he could wait. He was neither worried nor resigned - he was just doing his job, driving Bert in accordance with instructions. He had experienced a little trouble with the monotony of the road rolling towards him on and on like a slow-motion conveyor belt which never stopped, but he countered this by glancing sideways across the fields frequently. So they were inside France now, were they? It didn't seem to make much difference to Reynolds - one field was like another and if they hadn't put up that pole you'd never have noticed any change. Fuel was going down, of course, but Barnes would do something about that. The tank ground on.

Water, fuel, ammunition, food. These were the basic commodities, in that descending order of priority, vital to their existence as a fighting unit, and they always loomed in the front of Barnes' mind. They loomed large now while he was coping with his aching wound, his bruised kneecap, the heat and the thirst, maintaining all-round observation at the same time. He knew exactly what the position was - they had sixty gallons of diesel left, but the tanks at the rear of the hull had a capacity of ninety gallons; they had half a bottle of water; a meagre quantity of bully beef, sufficient for another meal, and some tea. They were stuffed to the gills with ammunition, of course. A pity they couldn't eat that. He began to think that perhaps they had better investigate the next place they came to and he shaded his eyes to make sure that he wasn't seeing things. No, there it was - a line of buildings on the horizon straight ahead of them. He spoke into the mike.

'We're approaching a town. I'll be taking us in to have a look at the place.'

From that moment the whole atmosphere changed for the better. Glancing down inside the turret Barnes saw Penn looking up at him. The corporal grinned and winked. Even Reynolds reacted,-sitting up a little higher on his seat, straightening his shoulders, gripping the steering levers a little more tightly. It was like the approach to the promised land for them. Water, fuel, ammunition, food. If they were very lucky they might load up with everything they needed. And information, an item which Barnes was tempted to add high on his priority list. If they could only know exactly where they were what a weight off his shoulders that would be! He called to Penn to come up out of that hothouse again and the corporal almost sprinted up into
the turret, his voice positively light-hearted.

'Maybe we'll be off the old bully beef tonight. I wonder
what's on the menu at the Restaurant de la Gare.'

'We're behind the German lines,' Barnes reminded
him.

'Even so, providing their lordships aren't in residence we
may get a slap-up supper. Now, let me see, I wonder what I fancy.'

'A bottle of water,to start with.'

'Boeuf a la Bourguignonne with haricots verts would be acceptable. Yes, that's it. Washed down with several bottles of
vin ordinaire, of course. We can't really afford vintage wines
on Army pay, can we?'

'Don't count your chickens.'

'Chickens? Well, poulet roti might do at a pinch. It's rather
plebeian, of course.'

They chattered on for several minutes and Penn's lively banter, plus the sight of the approaching town, revived Barnes, but soon he sent Perm down into the tank again as a precaution. It would be just their luck to meet another lorryload of German infantry leaving the town. He repeated his routine, scanning the hot blue empty sky, searching the surrounding countryside for signs of danger, and all the time the tank rumbled forward, taking them even closer to the unknown town, which he now had difficulty in seeing because the road was turning and the sun shone straight into his eyes.

As the town came closer he found himself shading his eyes more frequently, straining to catch the detail of the silhouette which looked oddly still in the blazing sunlight. Once again he checked his all-round observation and then quickly looked ahead, his hand forming a peak over his eyes, his sense of unease growing. This town had been badly bombed. What he had taken for buildings from a distance on closer inspection revealed themselves as stone fa9ades of irregular shape, and now he was sure that at least half the town was in ruins. But in a place of this size there must be someone left, someone who could tell him the name. And they must find more diesel. A tank running low on fuel was a sitting duck, its second weapon
- movement - immobilized. He'd better break the news to them. He spoke quietly.

'This place looks a bit of a wreck - I think Jerry has been
here before us and he dropped a few carefully placed bombs.'

They were less than a quarter of a mile from the town now, a small town of possibly about thirty thousand inhabitants he
estimated. He held his hand up again, screwing up his eyes, his
mouth tight. It reminded him of pictures he had seen of Ypres
taken during the First World War, although the one thing he
did know was that they were many miles away from that
ill-fated Belgian town. Grimly, he watched the advancing silhouette.

The outskirts had been gutted, no other word for it. The
walls which were still standing were windowless, the upper
frames like sightless eyes enclosing clear sky beyond. Halfway
down the walls the scree slopes began, slopes of rubble and
debris. These were relics of buildings and there was no sign of
life anywhere - no women working in the fields nearby, no men
clearing the mess out of the streets. Just nothing, nothing at
all. And over the devastation there hung a curious atmosphere,
a horrible silence which seemed even more unnatural in the
bright sunny afternoon. Water, fuel, ammunition, food...

They crawled through the outskirts at minimum speed, hearing the tank tracks grinding their way over pieces of masonry, feeling the hull drop slightly as the stone was crushed to powder. Barnes ordered Reynolds to drive down the very centre of the rubble-littered highway as he anxiously watched the spectral walls of the bombed buildings they were passing, wondering whether they should turn back at once. It was by no means certain that the vibrations of the tank movement might not bring down one of those hanging walls. Some of them seemed to stay upright by a miracle of balance. Cautiously they edged their way round a corner and drove deeper into the town.

The devastation was getting worse, no doubt about that. Whereas before many buildings had at least one wall standing they were now entering an area of almost total annihilation. Any relationship between what Barnes saw and a town could only be visualized by stretching the imagination to its limits. He calculated that an area close to a quarter square mile was a sea of rubble. The rubble was arranged in cone shapes which rose up between huge craters, a scene more like a moon landscape than a town in northern France, and the going was getting worse.

'Driver, halt. Keep the engines running.'

He gave Penn permission to come up and climbed down to
the street, resting one hand on the hull and then snatching it
off as the heat seared his flesh. Changing his mind, he told
Reynolds to switch off so that he could listen carefully to hear
whether he could detect any sign of life; he still found it hard
to believe that a town of this size had been abandoned.

'There's always someone who stays behind,' he told Penn,
'someone who tries to make the best of it.'

'The Panzers may have been through as well,' objected
Penn.

'But they're not here now, are they? If they have been this way they'll just have passed through without occupying the
place - that's the sort of thing that's happening from what you
told me about the news bulletins.'

'But no one would stay here - just look at the place.'

'I know, but it may not be so bad on the far side. We'll take
a look.'

'I'd be quite happy to clear out altogether, thank you.'

Penn was voicing the feeling of all three men. There was
something horribly oppressive about the deserted town, as
though it had been sacked by barbarians who had taken all the
inhabitants away into slavery. On the far side of the rubble sea a wall swayed gently, leaned and toppled out of sight. They
heard a dull thud and saw a huge cloud of dust floating
upwards. Barnes was still listening when suddenly he was
galvanized into action, ordering Penn down inside the tank,
warning Reynolds to close his hood, leaping up into the turret
himself and ramming on his headset as he issued instructions.

The tank headed into the heart of the rubble sea, threading its way between the cones, slipping down the slope of a crater, crossing the floor and mounting the other side. They were near the centre of the area before the first planes appeared, a squadron of Stuka bombers flying low. Barnes issued the order to halt in the middle of a wide crater, went down inside the tank, slammed the lid closed and waited. The first stick of bombs fell some distance away, growing fainter as they fell farther off. Perm's voice was bewildered.

'Surely they couldn't have spotted us?'

'No, I think they were coming here anyway. I wanted us
well clear of those walls.'

'But they've already smashed the place to bits ...'

He stopped and they listened, staring at each other. The scream was starting again, the scream of a Stuka falling into a high-speed dive before it released its deadly load. Another stick was coming, but this one was different. The first explosion was a long way off, the next one closer, the third closer still, a frightful nerve-shattering crump. Penn began conducting an unspoken conversation with himself. It will be the next one that gets us, the next one... The bomb exploded in their ears and the shock wave was like a hammer-blow. The hull of the tank shook, wobbled, settled again. Then a fifth crump farther off. A sixth, fainter still.

'They must be stark raving bonkers.' Penn sounded indignant, a highly strung form of indignation. 'They did the job last time - are they running out of space to store their perishing bombs?"

'There's an encouraging side to this,' said Barnes, going on quickly as he saw Perm's expression. 'They must have come back to make the place absolutely impassable - which looks as though they're frightened Allied reinforcements will be moving up here soon.'

'Glad to hear it. I feel so much better, Sergeant, now you've
told me that.'