Not Flag or Fail (5 page)

The smell of cordite hung in the morning air. As the sound of the guns died away and with our hearing getting back to normal, the sound of birdsong could be heard in the woods behind us. I looked at my watch it was 07.40, the action must have lasted for just over an hour and yet it had seemed like only a few minutes, if I needed proof, I only had to look at the pile of empty shell cases over by the gun. They added up to a lot more than a few minutes firing.

Lieutenant Davies came over towards us; thankfully he had put the pistol back into its holster and was looking a lot calmer than he had in the heat of the action.

“Well done chaps you did very well, I’m proud of you.” He paused, took a cigarette out of his cigarette case and lit it. The smell of the smoke wafted over towards us, most of us followed the Lieutenants’ example and lit up our own.

“Are we ok to put a brew on sir?” said Harry. “By all means Henshaw, I think we deserve one, do an extra mug eh? Better stay alert though, I don’t think Jerry will let us get away with what we’ve just done for very long.”

He was right too. The water was still on the boil when someone nearby shouted Stuka’s, and once again we all dived for the dug outs. This time our crew were accompanied by the Lieutenant. The bombs dropped all around us, earth cascading down on top of the roof of our shelter, the percussion waves from the explosions blowing the tarpaulin in towards us.

“Cosy little place you’ve got here.” said Lieutenant Davies, in an effort to make light of our situation.

“Yeh, I wouldn’t leave my little wooden hut for you.” said Fishy.

The planes had got here, so soon that we figured out that they must have been called in by the tanks before they had started their withdrawal. That meant that they would try coming on again, hoping we had been put out of action. This time though, no one had been either killed or injured and only one gun had been damaged so we had got off very lightly.

We were on the guns and ready, when the first of Jerry’s tanks came down the roads towards us.

This time though, they found our range and although we were once again the overall winners, they did score some hits, resulting in the loss of two more blokes and several more injured.

This pattern carried on throughout the day into early evening, then as the Stuka’s left at dusk; it started to go quiet again. By now we had moved out our dead and wounded back towards the coast. The battery was down to seven serviceable guns and about forty blokes. This reduced number was not all down to injury, some of the blokes had been moved out due to the damaged guns and equipment. It was felt they would be more useful elsewhere.

I stood three of the blokes down to get a break, while myself and Fishy stayed by the gun. We watched down the road for any sign of the tanks returning but it looked as if Jerry had decided to take a break too. Eventually Jack came over carrying two mugs of tea which he handed to us, we sat down on the carriage and the fags came out. I looked at Jack and Fishy; their faces were black with soot and sweat. I figured I must look pretty similar, there was no doubt we were just about done in.

“We can’t last much longer Bomb. There are only seven of us now. If them Stuka’s come back there’ll be nothing left of us by morning” said Fishy, once again stating the obvious.

“They won’t come back now” said Ronny, as he and Harry came over to join us “they won’t fly in the dark.”

“Just for once I hope you’re right Ronny” said Fishy throwing away the slops from his mug and going over to get another cup.

Ronny was right as it turned out, we spent a quiet night, sleeping in shifts of two men, for three hours at a time so we had all had some rest by the time we stood by the gun at 06.00 waiting to see what Jerry had in store for us today.

The morning passed quietly with most of the activity around the command tent, this included several trips up and down the road by Mickey Most on the BSA.

Around noon Captain Roberts left the command tent and stood for a long time looking down the road, he must have decided it was safe, and leaving a Lieutenant and a Sergeant to watch the road, he called us all together.

“Ok chaps, this is the situation. Jerry has us more or less cut off now and ‘the powers that be’, think we’ve done about all we can, so we’ve been ordered to pull back to the coast. Unfortunately there are some of Jerry’s advanced units already behind us, so an orderly withdrawal is out of the question, I’m afraid it’s going to have to be every man for himself and of course for most of us that means on foot as well.”

He continued, “Now look, the Navy are laying on transport from the port of Dunkirk, so it’s your job to try and get there. It’s about forty miles North West of our present position so it won’t be easy. Take only what kit you’ll think you need, but my advice is to travel light, your lives may depend on it. Oh, and one last thing. It’s rumoured that Jerry is shooting prisoners, so important not to get captured eh?”

“That’s all lads” said one of the Lieutenants.

“You heard the man” I said and headed off towards our gun, my crew following.

Lieutenant Davies came over to us “Hurry up and get your crew out of here Hilbert, don’t worry about the gun, myself and Sergeant Brennan will be fixing the demolition charges once everyone has left.”

Jack Hampton had put some food into a bag and other than our rifles and some extra ammunition we left the position with more or less just the clothes we stood up in.

Our truck had been blown up during the bombing so we had no choice but to leave on foot. We felt that by using the map and compass to travel as the crow flies, we could be at the coast in two days, three at the most. Ronny’s map reading was really good so we had no doubts we would get there; he had been looking at the map for most of the time since we had started off.

We had passed through some small villages that were easily identified on the map and no one had challenged us. So far nothing had slowed our progress; we had heard vehicles coming down the road towards us on several occasions but had always had plenty of time to get out of the way.

On this occasion from behind a thicket of trees, we watched as five Mercedes trucks, loaded with laughing, singing, German soldiers, headed past us for the coast.

“Flipping heck Bomb, by the time we get there it’s going to be full of Germans.” Harry said, but before I could speak Fishy, as usual, had to make his feelings known. “If we get there, they’re probably going to set up road blocks.”

Again before I could answer someone else decided to comment, this time it was Ronny. “Just as well we won’t be going by road then old chap, he drawled theatrically,” have a look at this Bomb!” He uttered in his normal voice.

He opened the map out and we all got round it, he used an unlit cigarette to point with.

“This is where we are now, if we head North-West through this wood we should come out in about six miles or so, right on this railway line just outside La Bassee. If we follow the train lines it should take us most of the way to the coast, what do you think?”

“It’s a good idea,” I said, “the railway will take us in the right direction, but I think our best bet may be to find the line and then wait up until its dark. We are too close to safety to risk being captured, anybody got anything to add?”

There was a general muttering of agreement so we took the opportunity for a quick smoke and then set off with Ronny leading the way.

There were lots of paths and trails through the wood so the going was fairly easy, we had no difficulty finding the train line. The weather was fine however we took the time to make a shelter, just inside the wood, to use for concealment. Then we settled down to wait for darkness. I wouldn’t allow the crew to start a fire, so food was hard tack biscuits and water; afterwards we snoozed, making sure there were always two blokes on watch.

By about nine o’clock it was pretty dark, our luck must have been in because there was no moon and by getting Jack to walk someway down the track I established that visibility was less than ten yards. We set off on our way walking on the sleepers to cut down the noise and observing silence. This was an easy march despite the darkness. We had needed to stop a few times when we had heard voices or noises, but by daybreak we had left the railway behind us and were walking along the side of a canal.

On the right of us and built at the top of a small hill we could see the town of Bailleul.

I was starting to worry now, daylight was coming fast, soon we would be easily visible and I needed somewhere for us to hide. As we walked on, we came to what looked like an old stable building, built not too far back from the edge of the canal. I put up my hand to stop the lads and motioned for Fishy and Harry to take a look inside; they cocked their rifles and went inside. Harry came back just moments later and beckoned for us to follow him in.

The place was indeed a stable block; inside was an area about 12ft by 12ft, then off that was wooden partitions which divided a similar sized area into two stalls. Tiles were missing from a couple of places in the roof and the dim, morning light was starting to seep into the building which helped us to have a quick look around, it was clear that the building had not been used for any purpose for quite a while. As a place to hide up it was a mixed blessing it was empty and fairly dry but the door we had come in through was the only door so there was no choice of exit if we had to leave in a hurry. There was a window but most of the panes were broken, on the plus side it gave a good view down the track leading away from the canal.

“What are we doing Bomb, are we stopping here for a bit?” asked Harry, as he looked out of the window.

“I’ll be honest with you lads I’m not sure what to do. Part of me thinks we should carry on and get to Dunkirk ASAP but we know Jerry is in front of us, so I’m also thinking perhaps we should stay here until dark and cut down the risk of capture.”

“It’s not a good location though Bomb is it?” Ronny, said again looking around the building. “If we are approached from any direction, whether we left through the window or the door, we would be exposing ourselves. I think we should go on a bit further before the locals are up and about and try and find somewhere that gives us a better chance to escape if we need to.”

I went across to look out of the window standing besides him and Jack, I thought he had made a good point and decided we should head off towards the town. There was a church in the distance that might offer us a better chance of concealment.

The church was about half way up the hill that led to the town, it was an old place, with a square bell tower and stone buttresses, built in typical Norman style. The churchyard spread over quite a wide area and was bordered by a high wall built in the same stone as the church. As we entered the churchyard we saw that many different generations of gravestones and tombs stood between us and the church entrance.

“Are we going to hide in the church Bomb?” said Jack, as we squatted with our backs to the wall looking around.

“No I don’t think that will be a good idea, my guess is that the Belgians will soon be here for morning Mass.” I replied.

“I agree with the Mass bit,” said Ronny, “but we’ve been back in France for a good few hours now.”

“That’s as maybe,” I said, “but French or Belgian, they’ll still be coming for Mass and we still need somewhere to hide up until its dark.”

We discussed the belfry but ruled it out because it was both an obvious place to hide and it only had one way out, we thought that perhaps there would be cellars under the church but decided it was too risky to go and look. Eventually, despite protests from Fishy, we decided to try and get into one of the bigger, older looking tombs. The one we chose was only about twenty yards away from where we were huddled. It was a big, stone tomb that stood some distance off the path, about ten feet square. It stood on an overgrown plot that was about twice the size, the whole thing was surrounded by rusty, iron railings, with a gate which was locked by an old padlock. The entrance to the tomb was opposite the gate, it had a braced door that looked as if it may have been made of oak, studded with iron rivets and looked very substantial, however it was only held closed by a very old and very rusty hasp and hinge and an old padlock.

“Ok I said wait here and keep your eyes open.” I ran across to the tomb and hit the gate padlock with the butt of my rifle, it sounded very loud in the quiet of the morning but despite the noise nothing happened. I was poised to hit it again when Fishy came up behind me.

“Move Bomb you’re doing it wrong,” he said, and putting his bayonet on the top of the lock he moved the lock so that it was supported by the railing.

“Now hit the bayonet and not me flipping hand.” he said. I did has he said and the lock burst open, I opened my mouth to speak.

“Don’t ask” he said moving in towards the tomb door. With a blow from his rifle, the hasp fell away from the door and with a shove he had it open.

Six steps led down into the tomb, which wasn’t particularly dark, as light was spilling in from the entrance. The inside was also made mainly of stone and on three of the sides there were three stone shelves, all but two of which held coffins. At the bottom of the steps was a space about seven feet long by four foot wide, it was big enough to hold us all.

I went back up the steps to where Fishy was still hanging around by the entrance and waved for the others to join us. They ran across and I told them to go straight in, Fishy and I closed the gate and did our best to put the lock back looking as if it were still locked. We decided it would not hold up to close inspection. Pushing Fishy in front of me, we went down a couple of the steps, and then I turned to close the door behind us.

“Wait!” shouted Fishy, louder than I felt was necessary, but I stopped anyway.

“What’s the matter now?” I said “We have to close the bloody door!”

“I know that” said Fishy “but look, if you do, there’s no way to open it again.”

He was right, when I looked again; I saw that the door had nothing inside that would allow us to pull it open. Fishy had needed to put his shoulder to it to get it open, so if I had shut it we would have been trapped.