Tramp in Armour (36 page)

Colburn still hadn't jumped and Barnes had taken in breath
to order Reynolds up when a tuft of grass flew past his torch ray. A second later the rear of the tank dropped and there was
a slight bump as the tracks hit something solid. Colburn was
shouting sentences Barnes couldn't hear but he understood
what had happened. Climbing up over the steeply-angled
beams the tracks had moved on upwards into the air until the
centre of gravity had passed the end of the beams and they
dropped.
They had reached firm ground.
The tracks went on
up the shallow slope of the bank as he spoke quickly into the
mike.

'Keep it up! We've done it!'

At that moment the engine coughed, sputtered, stalled, but
they were ashore. The tow-lines were still taut as the tractor heaved at its immense load so Barnes jumped to the ground
and ran forward to tell the farmer to stop. When the engine was
switched off he thumped the Frenchman on the back and kept
on thanking him regardless of the fact that the man couldn't understand half he was staying. He stopped suddenly as he
heard Colburn calling out urgently and when he turned round to face the quagmire his body went completely rigid and he
froze.

The giant vehicle must have driven along the road while they
were preoccupied with saving the tank. They wouldn't have heard its motor because of their own engines and that of the
tractor, and Reynolds, the only one facing the road, must have
been too concerned with what was happening to notice the
road. Worse still, the new arrivals could easily locate their
position because Bert's headlights were still on, to stay nothing
of the tractor's lamp. The moon had now risen and this en
abled Barnes to make instant recognition of the huge vehicle
and the silhouette of its load - a tank transporter with a tank
aboard. As if to complete the process of recognition a soldier walked past the headlights of the transporter, a soldier carry
ing something which could only be a machine-pistol and
wearing a pudding-shaped helmet. The Germans had arrived.
It took a very short time for Barnes to recover from his
stunned state, and this was replaced by an upsurge of cold,
murderous fury. They had come all this way; they had lost
Davis and Penn; they had almost lost their tank and their own
lives a few minutes ago, and now this lot was poking its nose in
to snatch it all away from them. Running back to the tank, he
leapt on to the hull, grabbed a machine-pistol off the ledge
inside the turret, and jumped down behind the tank. He spoke
briefly to Reynolds and Colburn.

'Wait here - behind Bert. Don't switch the lights off - that
will alert them.'

Then he was running back into the field, following as closely
as he could the course the tank had taken when it first turned
off the road. To avoid any risk of going into the quagmire he
ran a little farther round than he thought was necessary,
circling back so that he would come out on the road a good
hundred yards behind where the transporter was parked. And
as he ran his mind worked with icy detachment. How many
Germans would there be? One transporter carrying one heavy
tank to the repair shop: four men at the most, he guessed.
Possibly only three - the Germans were short of ground
troops. He dropped flat suddenly. The first soldier he had seen was standing in the field just beyond the grass verge, and now
a second one had walked in front of the headlights and he was
looking in Barnes' direction. He didn't think he had been
spotted. He had kept his body crouched low and the moonlight
wasn't very strong yet, its illumination blurred by a faint white mist rising off the field. The second soldier joined his com
panion and they both stood staring across the field. They
couldn't be too worried yet because otherwise they wouldn't
have walked in front of those headlights, and they could have
no reason to suspect the presence of hostile troops in this area.
Had they done that in the first place they would never have
stopped the transporter. A third soldier appeared and stood
right in front of the headlights, his machine-pistol clearly vis
ible. He walked forward to join the others.

Barnes was very close to the road now and when he stood up
the road was only a dozen yards away. A curtain of mist
floated between himself and the Germans and he ran forward,
crossing the road and continuing several yards into the field
beyond. When he turned, the bulk of the transporter shielded him from where the soldiers waited. Why didn't they either
investigate or go away? He found the answer when he looked back across the road and saw that the scene on the edge of the
quagmire from that distance looked like anything but what it was. The lights of the tank were tilted downwards and he
remembered the shallow slope at the edge of the quagmire.

The odd angle of Bert's headlights gave the strange impression
that there had just been a car crash. The turret of the tank was
invisible and the light of the tractor was too far away to show
up the tank's silhouette. The Germans might well be imagining
that there was another road just across the fields, and from the
passive way they were standing by the roadside he felt certain
that Bert's engine had stalled just in time, otherwise they must have recognized the grind of the tracks. It was a tableau made
to order, if only he could take advantage of it in time. He
moved across the field towards the transporter, his boots mak
ing no sound on the grass.

He was close to the rear of the vehicle when he heard some
one call out in German. Peering round the end he saw two
soldiers still standing on the verge just beyond the front of the
transporter while a third one made his way across the field, flashing a torch in front of him. The mist was blurring Bert's
lights now and hung over the quagmire like a noxious gas rising from the swamp. Was there a fourth man in the cab?
The two Germans by the roadside presented a tempting target
but Barnes waited. He had to try and get them all at once to
avoid them scattering.

The soldier walking across the field had stopped, the
machine-pistol tucked under one arm while he waved the torch
with the other hand. The curtain of mist had drifted lower
now and soon he would have to walk into it. He shouted across
the field in German, waited, and then shouted again, several
sentences. It was deathly quiet when he stopped shouting. The
transporter's engine had been switched off and the mist
seemed to cover the field like a leather glove which smothered
even the slightest sound. Barnes waited. The Germans waited.
He was fairly sure that the soldier in the field was going to
give up his search and return to the others, which meant that
for a brief moment all three men might be close together. He hoped so because as he stood by the elevated ramp at the rear
of the transporter an entirely new idea was developing at the
back of his, mind, an idea which made it imperative that he would wipe out the whole German escort. Then he heard one
of the men-who stood by the roadside call out; the soldier
with the torch answered and began to move deeper into the
field, sweeping his torch towards the mist wall which was now
less than a dozen yards ahead of him.

It happened without warning. The German walked up to the remnants of a wire fence, paused at a point where two
posts tilted at a drunken angle, the wire between them sagging,
and stepped over the wires, walking forward again. Then he
fell forward,; losing his torch which skidded sideways over
baked mud, and shouted. His shout rose to a shriek of alarm.
Jesus, thought Barnes, he's in the quagmire. One of the
soldiers by the roadside ran forward, flashing on a torch beam,
while the other stayed to guard the transporter. It was at this
moment that Barnes climbed silently up on to the side of the
huge vehicle, creeping forward and taking up a fresh position
behind the German tank. The soldier was running across the
field now, waving his torch in front of him as his comrade in
the swamp screamed his head off, a scream of pure terror. As
the running soldier stopped abruptly his torch beam focussed
on a horrifying sight: the first German was already up to his
waist as the quagmire sucked him steadily downwards; his
arms were waving frantically as he kept padding them down on the mud to arrest his sinking movement and he was still
shrieking frenziedly. The third German by the roadside ran up
to the transporter, feeling under the tank only feet away from
where Barnes was crouched, pulled out a coil of rope and
started running across the field. The soldier in the quagmire
had sunk in up to the chest now, waving his arms high above
his head, and only a few feet from where he struggled the
lighted torch he had dropped lay on the top of unbroken crust.
The man with the rope was close now and while he ran he held
the rope coil ready to throw. As he reached the spot where the
German holding the torch stood the struggling man sank
lower, only his head and upstretched arms visible now, his
voice an agonized moan. The rope was thrown, falling several
feet short. The head in the swamp sank out of sight, the voice
dying in a strangled gurgle, the vertical arms sliding under the
surface, vanishing. Barnes wiped sweat of his forehead, slipped
his finger back inside the trigger guard, stood up behind the
tank and waited.

The two Germans came back slowly, machine-pistols
hoisted over their shoulders, talking in low tones. They were
less than a dozen yards away when Barnes lifted the machine-
pistol. He fired one continuous burst, shifting the muzzle
slightly from side to side to cover them both. They were still
collapsing to the ground when he ceased fire, half a magazine
still unused. At that moment the engine of the transporter kicked into life. There had been a fourth man - the driver,
with instructions never to leave his cab. Barnes leapt down on to the grass verge and the door on his side was still open as he ran forward, pulling up short just before he reached the open
ing. Keeping back out of sight he shoved the muzzle of his pistol round the corner, aiming it upwards, firing one short
burst. As he ran back to the rear of the vehicle, round the end
and along the other side, the engine was still ticking over but
the transporter hadn't started moving. He was still cautious
when he reached the closed cab door. Grabbing the handle, he hauled the door open and jumped back, his pistol levelled, but
the precaution wasn't necessary. As the door opened the
driver's body toppled sideways, landing in the road with a soft
thud. The German was dead, bis right side riddled with bullets. Switching off the motor, Barnes went across to have a
look at the other two soldiers. They were also dead. Sergeant
Barnes was in sole possession of one German tank transporter.

TEN

Saturday, May 25th

They were roaring through the night like a thunderbolt, twin headlights ablaze, the long beams stretching far into the dark
ness, the giant transporter swaying gently from side to side as
Reynolds stepped up the speed. Fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five
miles an hour. On the other side of the cab Barnes gazed along
the beams which still showed only endless open road, while
between them Colburn turned round to peer through the tiny window at the back of the cab.

'Don't worry,' Barnes assured him. 'Bert's still there - his
weight alone will keep
him
on board even moving at this pace.'

His mind travelled back to what had taken place at the edge of the quagmire before they started their headlong dash to the north, and he smiled grimly as he thought that whatever happened now they had been responsible for eliminating at least one German heavy tank, even if the method used had been, to
put it mildly, unorthodox. When he had examined the vehicle he found that it was in perfect working order except for the machine gun and the wireless set. To Barnes' mind it should
have been possible to repair the firing mechanism in a few hours but instead the Germans had loaded the tank on to a
transporter. This action alone pointed up the Germans' prodi
gal use of equipment. He had just finished his examination when he heard a heart-warming sound - the sound of Bert's
engines tuning up faultlessly. By the time that Reynolds and
Colburn arrived inside the tank he had decided exactly what
he was going to do.