Once More the Hawks (7 page)

There were thousands of them, all pressing against the military vehicles trying to get past. Then Dicken noticed a Fieseler recce plane hovering overhead, humming like a dragonfly in the bright blue sky, and with a sudden horrifying awareness, he realised what was going to happen. A Heinkel flew over but its bomb dropped outside the town and a soldier in a Bren gun carrier yelled his contempt. ‘They couldn’t ’it a pig in a passage,’ he roared.

It was still impossible to move because the refugees, who had bolted for the fields, had already begun to swarm back on to the road, and Dicken was just watching a line of cars loaded with people and their possessions passing ahead when he saw the Stukas arrive, 10,000 feet up, in a formation like an arrowhead. Even as he saw the point of the arrow disintegrate, the refugees started to run again.

The sky was alive with bursting shells as the leading plane dived. It came down at a terrific speed, filling the air with a maniac scream so that impulsively everybody flung themselves from their vehicles and hugged the earth. To Dicken, cowering in a ditch with his driver, it was as if he’d been singled out individually and that nothing on earth could stop the diving plane. For the first time he began to realise why the Germans had backed Udet’s dive bomber tactics.

As the first salvo of bombs struck, the ground seemed to heave as if in a heavy swell. Almost immediately a second plane came down, followed by a third and a fourth, and Dicken felt the earth moving beneath him as their bombs landed. A house collapsed with a roar and tiles sliced viciously over his head through the yellow smoke lit by tongues of flame that eddied about him.

The horror appeared to go on for a lifetime while they clawed at the earth, their mouths hanging open, their eyes blinking at every shower of debris. Dimly, they could hear the incoherent cries of women and children, then the last bomb fell only a few yards away in an ear-shattering crash and, as suddenly as it had begun, the bombing stopped and the world was full of silence, an uncanny silence. Dicken lifted his head, breathing painfully, his face blackened by dust. La Motte seemed to have been blown off the face of the earth.

There was nothing now of the village but piles of rubble and the air was filled with a wailing which rose and fell in an eerie cadence that was broken immediately by the shouts of stretcher bearers, as soldiers ran to do what they could for the injured. The black-clad old ladies had vanished beneath the debris of their houses and the road junction ahead was completely blocked by the wreckage of vehicles and human beings.

It took an hour to get past. Though it was hard to press on through the misery, it was pointless to try to help. There were already too many helpers and nowhere to put the injured. Beyond La Motte there were still more refugees, waiting limply by the roadside, exhausted and grey-faced with fear, staring mutely as if they were too tired to care at a company of Senegalese troops who were marching past with impassive faces.

They hadn’t gone more than a mile when the aeroplanes came again, strafing the road to complete the confusion. As they heard the howl of engines, the driver braked and yelled to Dicken to take cover and, as the bombs came screaming down, a wail went up from the refugees. Flinging himself down a bank into a ditch, Dicken found himself shouting at them to lie flat. But, bewildered and shocked, they simply stood gaping at the sky, and scrambling from the ditch, he went among them, pushing at them, sending them flying into the ditch one after another, then finally tossed a baby down to its mother, pushchair and all, as the bombs struck. He saw flashes and people falling like toppled ninepins then something like a huge soft fist hit him in the back and flung him into the ditch on top of the driver.

As the aeroplanes returned, he saw the Senegalese form up in a group and fire their rifles. By some miracle they hit the leading machine, which was only thirty or forty feet up, and it came lower and lower and finally hit the surface of the field ahead at an angle. It bounced once or twice, sending up showers of dust and clods of earth before finally coming to a stop.

Heads lifted from the ditch but as other machines howled past stick after stick of bombs whistled down to explode with cracking roars along the side of the road. As the scream of the engines finally faded, Dicken scrambled to the road. There had been no casualties in their immediate neigh-bourhood but up ahead they could hear piercing shrieks from a group surrounding a farm cart that lay on its side, its wheels still spinning, the horse struggling to drag itself out of the ditch, its hind legs trailing like those of a dog run over in the street. The cart had been full of children and small bodies were scattered all over the road.

The Heinkel which had crashed had caught fire now and the crew, struggling free, started to run. But the Senegalese soldiers started firing and, as one of them went down, the others stopped dead and raised their hands. As the Senegalese advanced on them, one of the Germans reached for a pistol. There was another fusillade of shots and he fell backwards, and the Senegalese, without a change of expression, picked up the other two by their arms and legs and tossed them into the flames of their stricken aeroplane. As their screams came, the Senegalese, with the same unmoved expression, picked up the bodies of the remaining two, and flung them after their comrades. Then they formed up again and marched back to the road to continue their westward trudge.

By this time the confusion was appalling and the air was alive with rumours of parachutists and motorcyclists across the path of the retreat. It was Dicken’s opinion that they
were
just rumours because most of them appeared to be hearsay and the damage was being done entirely by fear and lack of knowledge. But there was no question of standing and fighting. The French army had collapsed. Some regiments had fought to the last man but the conscription system had produced poor regiments officered by middle-aged men, and the German intelligence had been good. The Stukas had smashed a colossal hole in the French front through which their armour was now pouring en masse and, fanning out behind, were creating chaos by the spreading of alarmist stories.

Still undefeated but feeling they were surrounded, the French had fallen back to try to establish a line of the sort their generals remembered from the last war. But there
was
no line and they went on searching until the Germans rounded them up in groups. The British army was already pinned against the coast at Dunkirk and it was obvious they were about to get out of the Continent. But the Stukas were taking a tremendous toll of ships and there was already a horrifying loss among the destroyers.

All the lines of communications troops had long since gone with every scrap of equipment that could be got away, followed by the experienced soldiers who had fought against the Germans and knew their tricks. But there was no longer time to pick and choose. It was now a case of every man for himself, and it was with the crisis at its worst that they learned from an agitated telephone call from a British attaché in Paris that the wounded pilots there were still awaiting transportation to the coast. Frantic contacts with London showed that Diplock had already reached home.

Barratt gestured. ‘Get off there, Dick,’ he said. ‘Round ’em up. Get ’em away. Most of them will be able to fight again and we’re going to need them. Get them to Dieppe or out via the Gironde.’

Driving to Paris, Dicken found its inhabitants already leaving for the Mediterranean coast, Bordeaux and Brittany, and, rounding up a fleet of ambulances and cars, he stuffed them with men in blue wearing bandages and plasters and set them on the road south. By the time he had finished, it was possible to hear anti-aircraft firing and the sound of aeroplane engines. Crumps, bangs and whistles were followed by the clink and clatter of falling splinters and the rush of tumbling brickwork. Great billows of black smoke were rolling across the city from St Denis, the Seine and St Germain to the west.

The following day he learned that nearly 300 people had been killed and there had been a lot of damage at the Citroën Works, city aerodromes and the French Air Ministry. People were still cramming the stations for the south and west and heading in streams for the Porte d’Italie, their cars laden with household goods, mattresses draped across the roofs in the hope of keeping out the bullets of strafing German aeroplanes.

There were still a few British service personnel about the city and, since Dicken had started the exodus south, they began to approach him for instructions. Commandeering service and private vehicles, he sent them after the others. It was clear by this time that the Germans would occupy Paris before long, but there were still a few people around who refused to be hurried. The American Ambulance Corps was still busy about the city, and, searching for a wounded sergeant, Dicken saw one of them, a woman with a sweet face and a low voice, holding the hand of a boy of about nineteen, who clutched his bloodstained flying helmet as if it were a talisman.

‘God bless America,’ he muttered as he passed and the woman turned and looked up, startled.

A French tank captain he talked to who had knocked out three German panzers insisted that his tanks had been superior all along the line to the German machines, but that the Germans were winning because the French politicians were a lot of craven-hearted cowards who had bolted for Bordeaux at the first alarm.

It was obvious there weren’t many days left before the Germans arrived. They were already coming up the Seine and their aircraft were over the city daily. Caught near the Champs Elysées by the thud of bombs that came even before the sirens sounded, Dicken started to look around him for a shelter.

The aeroplanes were appearing overhead now and, standing in the doorway of a shop nearby, he saw a woman in the uniform of the American Ambulance Corps. He recognised her at once as the woman he’d seen holding the hand of the wounded pilot. She looked bewildered, so he grabbed her arm and dragged her with him. Ahead of him he could see the sign, ABRI – shelter – and he pushed her in front of him down the steps just as the first bomb landed in the street. There was a tremendous crash and the air seemed to be sucked out of their lungs, then a cloud of dust filled the shelter to make them all start coughing. The American woman hid her face in Dicken’s shoulder, and, without thinking, he put his arm around her and pulled her closer.

The raid didn’t last long and after a while the American woman lifted her head. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Perhaps a drink would help,’ Dicken suggested, but she shook her head.

‘I’m sorry. I’d love to, but under the circumstances I’d better get back. There’ll be work to do.’

News arrived that the Germans had reached Rouen and it was clearly time to go. With no kit to pack, nothing but the revolver round his waist, Dicken called at the American hospital to thank them for all they had done. He had half hoped to bump into the woman he had met in the shelter but nobody could identify her from his description and time was hurrying by so he had to leave without finding her. He decided to travel by train to Blois where the Headquarters of the Advanced Air Striking Force had moved. But it was impossible to get near the Gare de Lyon for the crowds of people trying to escape. The Gare d’Austerlitz was similarly crowded and he found out that the lines were being bombed, anyway, and in the end decided to leave by road.

That evening he wandered round the streets which were empty except for an occasional car. The cafés and restaurants were all boarded up, the pavements deserted and devoid of the famous
flâneurs
, and the atmosphere was one of desolation. Walking up the Champs Elysées to the Etoile, he stood by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for a while, watched by a silent gendarme, and stared at the words on the tomb –
Ici repose un soldat français mort pour la patrie
– remembering bitterly how after the last lot the politicians had promised it had been the war to end all wars.

As they moved off the next morning, there was a strange mist over the city and a strong smell of burning. The rumble of gunfire in the distance seemed to reach him through the bones of the earth. He had acquired a car and a truck filled with fifteen RAF policemen and their baggage and was escorted by two RAF despatch riders, who worked wonders as they reached the crowded country roads. Looking back he saw a shroud of black smoke hanging over the city and the smuts from the fires settled on their clothes and made the faces of the despatch riders as black as negroes’.

Châteaudun came up and they moved on to Blois which was as crowded as every other town, then they began to follow the Loire until they came to Nantes. They had been unable to find food because of the horde of refugees moving ahead of them and were forced further south to Poitiers where they knew of an airfield where there might be aircraft going to England. Aircraft were moving all right but they were all packed to suffocation and, beginning to grow angry, Dicken found an abandoned Bristol Bombay. It was an old-fashioned high-winged twin-engined bomber which had been relegated to the status of a transport. It had a broken tail wheel and rudder but, with the aid of a corporal fitter, they got to work on it.

‘Will it hold up?’ Dicken asked.

‘I reckon so, sir. Just.’

Cotton and his team arrived soon afterwards with his Lockheed and an abandoned Fairey Battle they had found.

He greeted Dicken warmly. ‘Just in time,’ he said. ‘It’s all finished here. Just as I’m finished in England. I’ve heard the Air Ministry’s going to sack me. Feller called St Aubyn. How are you off for transport home?’

‘We’ve got an old Bombay and you look pretty full already.’

Cotton grinned. ‘Even an English secretary and her dog.’

The service policemen had managed to find a place on another aeroplane by now but there were plenty of ground crew who crowded aboard the Bombay and in the end Dicken found he had a group of twenty-one. Five more turned up just as the corporal fitter started the engines.

There were no maps and Dicken had never flown a Bombay but he put it to his passengers and found they were all willing to take a chance. Taxiing to the end of the field, he swung into wind with the tail wheel rattling and clunking as they rolled over the ruts. The fitter was sitting in the co-pilot’s seat, his eyes glued to the dials.