Ride Out The Storm (41 page)

‘He looks as though he’s got the hump.’

‘Yes, he has a bit.’

‘Who is he?’

‘Friend of mine. Tanks.’

‘Not hurt?’

‘No,’ Conybeare said. ‘Bit cross, that’s all.’

Horndorff turned and faced the others. ‘I am a German officer,’ he said slowly, deliberately. ‘I am a prisoner of war.’

Noble’s jaw dropped. ‘I didn’t know we’d captured any.’

‘You have captured at least one,’ Horndorff snapped. ‘Officer Conybeare is taking me to England.’

Noble grinned. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’re a bit short of grub, so if we have to eat each other, we know who to start on first.’ He turned back to the business of the boat. ‘Hold tight, folks. We’d best be on our way.’

As he spoke, the engine started faltering and he leapt to it at once.

‘Now what’s up with the bugger?’ he screeched.

‘Is it running hot?’ Tremenheere asked faintly.

‘No.’

‘Petrol switched on?’

‘Yes.’

As Noble spoke, the engine gave a final cough and died.

‘Oh, Christ Jesus,’ Noble moaned.

Tremenheere lifted himself in the bottom of the boat with difficulty. ‘Bring us that can of petrol,’ he said.

Gow passed it over, and he unscrewed it one-handed and sniffed. ‘Smell’s like petrol,’ he said. ‘Pour a bit out.’

Gow splashed a little of the liquid on to his hand and he stared at it.

‘Water, me dear,’ he said. ‘It’s got water in it.’

Horndorff started to smile, and Noble glared at him.

‘What’s
he
grinning at?’ he demanded.

Horndorff looked at Conybeare. ‘All to no avail, Officer Conybeare,’ he said. ‘You will not get me to England after all. We shall remain here until it is all over and then, when all your ships have gone, the German Navy will come and you will be taken back where we have come from to join the others who have been caught.
Es wird ein deutscher Sieg.
It will be a German victory.’

Tremenheere’s soft Cornish drawl interrupted him. He’d been staring about him with interest and now his words came, full of sly pleasure.

‘Hard luck, me dear,’ he said. ‘Not this time. This is a Mevagissey lugger we’re in. Or she was once. She’s built for large harbours with plenty of sea room and she’s rigged for a dipping lug. They take herring, mackerel and pilchards, according to what comes in, and they’re good sea-boats. And I come from Truro way and, if I’m not mistaken, this bloody uncomfortable pole I’m lying on’s the mast.’

Conybeare turned to Horndorff and gave a little smile ‘
Der Sieg wird bis auf Weiteres verschoben
,’
he said. ‘Victory will be a little late this year.’

Horndorff’s head jerked round. ‘You speak German?’

‘Had a German governess.’

The German’s face darkened. ‘Then why did we speak always in English?’

Conybeare shrugged. ‘Because you’re my prisoner and I’m taking you to England,’ he said. ‘That’s why.’

The big lift was coming to an end. By this time, the destroyer force had been bled to death and the weary admiral had only nine warships left out of the forty he’d handled and only ten out of thirty personnel ships.

The major portion of the BEF had survived, however, all of them wise with the experience of war and possessing the skill to build a new army. With them had come Belgians and French, a few nurses, a few civilians eager to enlist, and God alone knew how many dogs.

The admiral glanced at the signal in his hand. It had come in some hours before. ‘
To VA, Dover
,’
it said. ‘
From SNO, Dunkirk. BEF evacuated.
’

He stood by the desk, holding it on top of a folder. He looked a little older than he had a week ago and he suddenly realised just how weary he was. He laid the folder down.

‘Signal all ships to move away,’ he said, ‘and instruct the blockships to enter. We must have picked up everybody who’s in a position to leave.’

Not quite everybody.

There was still Sievewright.

Eager
had been well out in the fairway when she’d sunk, and the dinghy he’d stepped into had been washed away by the surge of water as she’d gone down. The tug that had come roaring down to pick up the survivors had passed him to port and her wake had lifted him further away. As the dinghy had spun round, he’d realised it was drifting.

At first he’d moved further towards the shore but then, as the tide had turned, he’d noticed he was moving out to sea and began to wonder what he should do. As a good Scout, he knew you could live without food, but he also knew that without water his chances were not very good. Sea water brought on madness, and all the rules for survival seemed to include having compasses, hard biscuits, beef extracts, a knife, a rocket, fishing lines for landing fish, something for catching rainwater, and always a sail or a pair of oars. As he stared round the dinghy he saw there was neither sail nor oar – not even a rowlock – and that all it contained besides himself was a little sea water and some scraps of what looked like bait, which looked so repulsive he couldn’t ever imagine being driven to the extremity of wishing to eat them.

He sat down again in the stern and stared back at the land. For once there didn’t appear to be anything in his Scout training that covered an emergency of this sort.

The sun was lowering as the French admiral in command of the port moved with his men towards the sea; but as the last retreat began, from the cellars, the ruined houses and the shelters of Malo and Dunkirk, a monstrous army of unarmed men began to converge on the mole, an immense river of refugees and of craven soldiers who’d hidden from the fighting. They snatched the places of the desperate men of the rearguard who, when the final dawn came, had to stand on the beaches and watch the last of the ships leave without them. A British destroyer, one of the oldest and least beautiful of them all, lifted the final load as German machine guns started firing on her at short range. Behind her, she left only the sacrificed French regiments, their discipline still strong, their bearing still proud, the broken men, the deserters and the wounded.

On one of the last lonely craft moving along the beaches towards the open Channel, its decks crammed with haggard men, Nobby Clark, Royal Navy, late of
Athelstan,
later still of the fishing boat,
Bonny,
and still wondering from time to time about the survivors’ leave he hadn’t had, stared towards the devastation along the whole ten miles of beach from Dunkirk to La Panne. For the most part during the past week, what with the activity and the noise, he hadn’t had much time to stop and think, but now the penny seemed to drop and he became aware of the incredible silence, of the bodies along the tide line and floating in little groups in the calm water, and of the rows of wrecked and abandoned vehicles and guns beyond, like a vast ugly, soundless graveyard in the sunshine. Groups of French soldiers who had fought bravely every inch of the way back stared out to sea along with British gunners of the rear-guard who had blown up their guns and could now only wait despairingly for ships that would never come. Who’s going to bring
them
out? he thought. What about the ones left behind? And in the sudden stillness that had come over the battlefield he asked himself, What’s it all for? Who’s responsible? Since the previous September he had seen some terrible things, but none that had moved him so much as this, and in his exhaustion and the terrible hurt he felt, he seemed broken inside and wanted to sit down on the crowded deck and weep.

On 4 June the sun rose harsh and gaudy, catching the black smoke that still curled up from the blazing oil tanks and drifted along the coast past Gravelines towards Calais.

Along the shore there were still a few small boats looking for men, hut nothing else, and the beaches were lonely apart from the wreckage, the immobile dead and the quick mounds of new-filled graves. Above the smoke, the Stukas searched for victims but there were no longer any there. The sea was empty.

When the last ship arrived at Dover, 338,226 men had been brought to England, and they knew it was all over at last. The results were stupendous. Yet there were some who hadn’t made it, as they well knew.

Allerton was among them, and as Dunkirk surrendered a padre near him was giving instructions to those who were left. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he was telling them. ‘Just say “
Nicht schiessen – Rotes Kreuz.
” That should do the trick.’

Orders had arrived that one officer and ten men were to be left for every hundred casualties, and that the remainder of the medical staff could leave. As they had prepared to move to the mole, Allerton had noticed a medical orderly standing apart, his head erect, his face stiff.

‘You staying?’ Allerton asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I. I’ve got a nipper I’ve never seen. I got the telegram the day it all started.’

Allerton said nothing for a moment; then he lifted his head. ‘Can’t you get someone to take your place?’

The medical orderly turned away, his expression bleak. ‘Who’ll take
my
place?’ he said. ‘Here.’

‘I will.’

The soldier had just been about to bend over a wounded man and he straightened up again. His face was still expressionless but the dead look in his eyes had gone.

‘Better go and fix it,’ Allerton said.

There were tears in the orderly’s eyes. ‘You’re a toff, sir,’ he said. Allerton shrugged. ‘
Fais ce que dois, adveigne que pourra. C’est commandé au chevalier.
’
Allerton was proud of his erudition but to the medical orderly the words were meaningless.

‘What’s that mean, sir?’ he asked.

Allerton managed a gap-toothed grin. ‘It means “
Press on regardless,
”’
he said. ‘“
It’s a command from the chap on the horse.
”’

Some time during the morning, they heard lorries outside and then the first German entered. He was a corporal and he was wearing a helmet and jackboots.

‘
Raus!
’
he shouted. ‘
Alles raus! Schnell! Hände hoch! Der Krieg ist vorbei!
’

As they straightened up from the stretchers and lifted their hands, he gestured with his pistol. ‘For you the war is over. England and France are defeated.
Heil Hitler!
’

As his arm shot out in a salute, he was pushed aside. The officer who entered was a tall man, incredibly thin and wearing spectacles. His voice was much quieter and there was no arrogance.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you are now prisoners of the German Reich. The wounded will be properly cared for and all doctors and medical staff will be allowed to continue to attend them.’

It didn’t stop the corporal returning when he’d gone and removing their watches and money.

Allerton was not alone.

The dead lay all over the town, in hastily scraped graves in gardens and parks and among the sand-dunes. They sprawled along the tide line, floated face downwards in the shallows, and lay in the warm yielding soil all the way back to the frontier through the old graveyards of the earlier war, as far south as Beaurains and beyond. They huddled in the ditches, in the fields and in the streets of a hundred small towns and villages, among the wrecked guns and smoking vehicles and all the other detritus of a defeated army. Many more were entombed in the icy hulks of ships beneath the sea.

There were hundreds of them. Lieutenant-Commander Hough, of
Vital
was one, with Lieutenant MacGillicuddy and the rest of the ship’s company and the ship’s company of
Eager
and many other fine vessels. Even Dr Knevett, owner of
Athelstan,
was among them, because he’d finally insisted on crossing on the personnel ship,
Scotia,
and she was now lying on her side, a burnt-out wreck. Temporary Acting Corporal Rice hadn’t reached safety. Nor had Lieutenant Wren, of the York and Lancs. Captain Deshayes, of Angelet’s 121st, hadn’t made it either, and despite the efforts he’d made, nor had Private Favre. Neither had Sergeant Galpin, of the Engineers, nor Private Bawes, H, of the Worcesters, now bobbing gently in the cabin of
Athelstan
below the sea, or an unknown Cockney, still lying with his face covered by his helmet where Scharroo had left him on the mole. Or Joe Ferris or wee Alec Galt or Ordinary Seaman Didcot.

On the deck of the last ship to leave, Gilbert Williams was writing his report. It wasn’t very official and it wasn’t in triplicate. It was in pencil in Gilbert’s ungainly hand on a scrap of paper torn from an exercise book and he was finding it hard to write for the tears in his eyes.

‘I wish to report the loss of my boat, Daisy
,’ he wrote down. ‘
I put all my savings into her and now I have got nothing. She was run down by the tug, Gamecock. My brother, E Williams, is missing, also S Brundrett and K Pepper.
’

Even now the water of the Channel was littered with rafts, rubber dinghies, motor tyres and small boats containing determined men who were set on reaching safety. One intrepid warrior of high spirits and great good humour, stripped to the buff and swimming five miles offshore, was picked up by a destroyer as he headed doggedly for England. ‘Sure you’ve got room?’ he gasped as they dragged him to the deck. ‘I was just getting into my stride.’