Tramp in Armour

ONE Thursday, May 16th

The war had started.

‘Advance right, driver. Advance right. Two-pounder, traverse left, traverse left. Steady…’

The tank commander, Sergeant Barnes, thought that should do the trick – when the tank emerged from the ramp on to the rail embankment, in full view of the German troops of General von Bock’s Army Group B, the turret would rest at an angle of ninety degrees to the forward movement of the vehicle, the two-pounder and the Besa machine gun aimed straight at the enemy. The tank crawled upwards at a steady five miles per hour, still invisible to the German wave advancing across open fields to assault the embankment behind which the British Expeditionary Force waited for them, while overhead the sun shone down on Belgium out of a clear blue sky, the prelude to the long endless summer of 1940.

Barnes’ squadron of tanks was positioned on the extreme right of the BEF line, and the troop of three tanks which formed his own unit was stationed on the extreme right of the squadron. Somewhere beyond this troop the French First Army, the next major formation which faced the attacking German army group, reached out its left flank to link up with the BEF, but this vital link was not apparent, which was why Barnes had just received his urgent wireless instruction from Lieutenant Parker, his troop commander.

‘Find out where the hell the French are, Barnes, and report back immediately, if not sooner.’

The natural route to the French, the road below the embankment, had been blocked by dive-bombers, and now what had once been a road was a barrier of wrecked buildings, so Barnes decided there was only one way to go – up to the top of the embankment and along the rail track in full view of the enemy. The prospect of exposing his tank like a silhouette on a target range didn’t greatly worry him: the armour on the upper side of the hull was seventy millimetres thick and none of the light weapons the German advance troops carried could do more than scratch the surface. As for the big stuff farther back, which was already lobbing shells into the BEF rear areas, well, he’d be off this embankment before they could bring down the range of their artillery. Any moment now, he told himself, pressing his eye to the periscope.

Four men crewed the tank: Trooper Reynolds inside his own separate driving compartment in the nose of the tank, while in the central fighting compartment Barnes shared the confined space with his gunner, Trooper Davis, and his loader-operator, Corporal Penn. The fighting compartment in the centre of the tank was shaped rather like a conning tower, the upper portion protruding above the tank’s hull; the floor, only a few feet above the ground, comprised a turntable suspended from the turret, so that when the power-traverse went into action the entire compartment rotated as a single unit, carrying round with it the guns and the three men inside, the traverse system controlled by the gunner at the commander’s instructions. They were very close to the top of the embankment now, but still the view through the periscope showed only the scrubby grass of the descending slope, while outside all hell was breaking loose, a hell of sound infinitely magnified inside the confines of the metal hull: the horrid crump of mortar bombs exploding, the scream of shells heading for the rear area, while the permanent accompaniment to this symphony of death was an endless crack of rifle shots, a steady rattle of machine-gun fire. It was only possible for the crew to hear Barnes’ sharp instructions because he gave them over the intercom, a one-way system of communication through the microphone hanging from his neck which transmitted the words to earphones clamped over the crew’s heads. Barnes screwed up his eyes, saw the wall of embankment disappear. They were over the top.

The view was much as he had expected, but there were many more of them – long lines of helmeted Germans in field grey advancing like the waves of a rising tide, running towards him across a vast field. Some carried rifles, some machine-pistols, and there were clusters with light machine guns. The tank had reached the embankment at the very moment when the first assault was being mounted.

‘Driver, straight down the railway – behind those loading sheds. Two-pounder. Six hundred.’ Davis set the range on his telescope. ‘Traverse left.’ With a hiss of air, turret and crew began to swing round, the tank still moving forward. ‘Traverse left.’ The turret screamed round faster, the guns and the fighting crew now at an angle of forty-five degrees to the tank hull. ‘Steady,’ Barnes warned, his gaze through the periscope fixed on the anti-tank gun hi the distance as a fusillade of bullets rattled on the armour-plate. ‘Anti-tank gun,’ he snapped, pinpointing the target.

‘Fire!’

Davis squeezed the trigger. The tank shuddered under the recoil, the turret was swamped with a stench of cordite. Barnes didn’t hear the explosion but he saw it – a burst of white smoke on the gun position, a brief eruption of the ground. Then they were moving behind the loading bays which the ramp served, out of sight of the enemy for swiftly passing seconds, emerging again as Barnes gave fresh orders.

‘Besa…’

The destroyed anti-tank gun was the only immediate menace to Bert, as they called their tank. Now for the German troops. The tank had scarcely moved beyond the sheltering wall of the loading bays when the Besa opened fire, the turret traversing in an arc from left to right, pouring out a murderous stream of bullets which cut down the first wave of Germans like a scythe. The turret began to swing in a second arc, the Besa elevated slightly to bring down the second wave, and all the time the tank moved forward down the rail track while Penn, who had already re-loaded the two-pounder, attended to his wireless. Parker, the troop commander, was speaking to Barnes now.

‘What’s the picture, Barnes?’

‘German assault waves just coming in – they’ll be over the top in your sector any second now. They stretch as far as I can see, sir. Over.’

He pressed the lever on his mike which controlled wireless communication and waited. Parker sounded exasperated.

‘But the French, Barnes – can you see the bloody French?’

‘Nothing so far, sir. I’ll report back shortly. Off.’

All the way up the ramp and along the embankment so far the turret lid had been closed down, so Barnes had relied on the periscope to let him know what was happening outside, a method of sighting which he found restricted and unsatisfactory. Now that he could no longer hear the clatter of bullets ricocheting harmlessly off the armour-plate, he risked it, pushing up the turret lid and lifting his head above the rim. For once, he was wearing his tin hat. A quick glance told him that no Germans were close to the section of the embankment they were advancing along. Instead, the troops in that area were running back across the field away from him: they had seen what had happened to their mates. To encourage their flight he gave orders to fire the two-pounder twice and then called for a burst from the Besa. If he was really going to see what was going on he would have to lift his head well out of the turret. He clambered up and stood erect, half his body above the rim, gazing all round quickly as he gave Reynolds instructions automatically.

‘Driver, full speed ahead down this railway. All the speed Bert will give.’

The tank began to pick up speed, one caterpillar track outside the railway, the other travelling midway between the two iron lines, while inside the driving compartment Reynolds had his eyes glued to the slit window in front, a window protected by four-inch armoured glass. Normally, he sat on his jacked-up seat with his head protruding clear of the hatch in the front hull, but now this seat was depressed so that he sat inside the hull and a steel hood was closed over the hatch above his head. He vaguely wondered what Barnes was going to do next, a line of thought which was occupying Barnes himself at the same moment.

To the left the fields of Belgium stretched away to disappear inside a curtain of black smoke, the result of RAF bombing and BEF heavy artillery fire. In front of the curtain small figures moved like the inhabitants of a disturbed anthill, but always the apparently chaotic movement was forward, except in the sector ahead of the tank. They were now perched a good twenty feet above the surrounding countryside and to Barnes’ dismay he realized that the embankment was gradually rising all the time the farther south they progressed, the sides growing steeper, making their descent from the railway more difficult every yard they moved forward. His eyes scanned the ground on the Allied side of the embankment and saw nothing which comforted him. As he had anticipated when he had decided to mount the embankment and make a dash along the railway, it gave him an excellent view of the battle area. The outskirts of the Belgian town of Etreux had been badly battered by the Stuka raids, but even at this early stage of the campaign he was becoming used to these scenes of devastation. What he had not expected was that the desert of rubble would be unoccupied, and as his eyes searched and searched again for signs of life a chill began to crawl up his spine. The wireless crackled: someone was coming on the air again.

‘Hullo, hullo! Troop calling. Parker here. Anything to report, Barnes?’

‘Barnes here, sir. No sign of our friends yet. Repeat, no sign of our friends. I am a quarter of a mile out and no sign of them yet. Repeat, at least a quarter of a mile. Over.’

‘Are you quite sure, Barnes? I’ve got to report to Brigade at once. I must be quite sure. Over.’

‘Quite sure, sir. I’m twenty-five feet up here and the place has been flattened, so vision is good. I’m a quarter of a mile out at least and there’s no sign of them ahead. Do I proceed farther or return? Over.’

‘Proceed a farther quarter of a mile if you can, then report again. Over.’

‘Barnes OK. Off.’

At least it was a convenient distance. The tank was still moving ahead along the railway line, the embankment straight as a ruler, and about a quarter of a mile farther along the line disappeared into a steep hillside. Barnes could see the arched opening of a tunnel clearly now. So the distance was all right, but the timing probably wasn’t. He glanced at his watch and calculated that within the next two or three minutes the Germans would have wirelessed back for artillery support to lay down a barrage along the top of the embankment. Soon the first ranging shots would be falling, a spotter would be reporting their fall, and unless Barnes was very much mistaken they would hardly have completed their quarter-mile run before the shells began to bracket the tank. The fact that the embankment was so damned straight would make the German gunners’ work that much easier. He wondered how the others liked being stuck up silhouetted against the skyline and glanced down inside the turret. Davis had the shoulder-grip tucked into position and he couldn’t see the gunner’s expression, but Penn happened to look up and on his thin, intelligent face Barnes thought he detected signs of worry, but then it would always be Penn who worried first because Penn had the imagination to think of all the things which might happen. Too much intelligence could be a distinct disadvantage when you were locked up inside a tank. He spoke briefly into the mike, urging Reynolds to keep up the speed.

Below him the ruins of Etreux glided past while he continually watched for the first sight of a gun position, for French troops. There had been a muck-up, the certainty of this was growing on him. First, there had been the hectic rush forward on May 10th when news of the German invasion of Holland and Belgium had come in, a rush from behind prepared defences on the Franco-Belgian frontier out into the open to meet the German onslaught in head-on collision. And now it was Thursday May 16th, only six days later. To Barnes it felt more like six weeks later, but at least they were stuck into them. For a brief moment he glanced back to where the line of German dead lay, victims of the Besa’s murderous sweeping arcs. He felt not a trace of pity, but he also felt no exultation, only perhaps a certain satisfaction that one of the few British tanks with the BEF was already proving its worth.

The railway tunnel was very close now, barely two hundred yards away, the black arch coming closer every second as the tank ground forward. And still no sign of the French, no sign at all. He’d have to report back soon now. Even in this sector there was a lot of noise – the heavy boom of the big artillery, the whine of shells – and this was why Barnes failed to detect the arrival of the enemy. Also, in his concentration on Etreux, he had neglected to search the sky for the past minute. It happened with terrifying suddenness – the appearance of a plane above his head screaming down in a power dive. He looked up as he dived inside the tank, saw the Messerschmitt hurtling earthwards, its guns blazing straight at Bert, and rammed down the lid, almost crushing his fingers in his haste. But he was just too late – one bullet whistled in under the closing lid, missing Barnes by millimetres, and terror entered the tank.

With the driver’s hood closed and with the turret lid down, the occupants of a Mk II Matilda tank in 1940 could feel themselves reasonably secure against everything except a direct hit. On the other hand, if by some mischance a bullet from a rifle or a machine gun were able to enter the armoured confines of the tank, then what had once been a haven of comparative safety immediately became a death-trap. Entering the mobile fortress under the impetus of its own tremendous velocity the bullet has to spend its velocity somewhere, and it does this by ricocheting back and forth off the armour-plate hull of the interior of the tank, flying about unpredictably in all directions until its force is spent – normally by its entry into human flesh. As soon as the bullet entered, the three men knew what they were in for, and knew that there wasn’t a thing they could do about it – except to wait and pray. The biting sound of bullet tearing from one metal surface to another only lasted for a brief period in time, but nerves stretched to breaking-point by the wear and tear of battle reacted to screaming pitch as the danger flashed into three battered minds, drawing from them in seconds reserves of physical and mental strength they would normally have expended over hours. Then there was a momentary silence while Reynolds drove at top speed towards the tunnel. Penn was the first to speak.

‘I think it went into the wireless set.’

Barnes checked his communications and banged the microphone while he looked at Penn, who was examining the set. Then suspicion flooded into his mind and he scrambled up the turret, pushing the lid back and staring up into the clear morning sky. The clever bastards! They’d sent the Messerschmitt down not hoping to hit anybody but to get him to close the turret. In this way his vision would be restricted and he wouldn’t see what was coming next, but he could see it now coming from the east – an arrow-shaped formation of ugly, thick-legged birds – Stuka dive-bombers coming for Bert. He spoke into the mike, his voice dry and harsh, using his driver’s name.

‘Reynolds, we’re going to be dive-bombed unless you get us into that tunnel first.’

He stayed in the turret to check the course the Stukas were taking, remembering that these were the planes which had battered Poland. He might well die in this war, he knew that, but not yet, not yet! He wanted to see Germany smashed first. With narrowed eyes he watched the tunnel draw closer as the Stukas came over at a bare thousand feet. Yes, he’d been right – they were coming for Bert. They’d change direction now and he waited for the first one to peel off, waited for the hair-raising shriek of those screaming bombs which would put fear into the dead.

‘Lights on,’ he ordered, automatically as Bert thundered towards the tunnel.

The first Stuka was peeling off now, falling sideways, ejecting black eggs from its belly. Barnes slammed down the lid, dropped to the turntable floor and rotated the periscope so that he saw the tunnel moving towards them.

‘Wait for it,’ he warned the others, but mainly to warn Reynolds who was driving.

They heard it coming., a high-pitched whistle growing to a piercing shriek which easily dominated the engine sound, penetrating the armoured walls as though they were papier-mache. It’s a direct hit this time, thought Penn. He looked at Davis, but the gunner’s eyes stared fixedly at the turntable floor, his jaw muscles clenched, his forehead moist with sudden sweat. Penn looked at Barnes, but the sergeant had his eyes glued to the periscope as he watched the tunnel coming closer. God, thought Penn, he’s got no nerves at all. The thing was screaming like a banshee now. Would it never land? Up in the nose of the tank Reynolds could hear it coming, too, but he was wrestling with two separate fears. Reynolds had no imagination but as he saw the mouth of the tunnel looming towards him through the slit window he remembered a story he had once read in a newspaper. It had happened in Spain during the Civil War – a scout car racing towards a tunnel to escape bombing had met an express train coming out of the tunnel at high speed… But nobody would be running trains in the battle area. The tunnel mouth yawned towards him and the bomb exploded.

The shock wave dealt the armour-plating such a blow that it rattled the plates, seeming for a moment about to blow the tank off the embankment. Fitments clattered down on to the turntable floor and the detonation reverberating inside the metal room was so loud that they were all deafened. Then they heard the next one coming. First the whistle, then the scream. This time Barnes felt fairly sure they were going to get it: the scream was much louder, its aiming point seemed to be dead centre down the turret. It had to happen to someone during the war – a bomb dead centre through the lid, exploding inside that confined space… The bomb hit, detonated. It rocked the tank like a toy, smashing at the plates with a hammerblow, the acrid smell of high explosive seeping inside the fighting compartment. That one had been close! He glanced at Davis, who still stared at the floor as though his life depended on it. Penn had gone as white as a sheet, his small neat moustache quivering before he clenched his lips together and then unclenched them to speak.

‘Knock, knock. Who’s there?’

Nobody laughed, nobody smiled. They just looked at each other strangely, as they heard the next one coming. In the driver’s seat Reynolds kept the tank going full out, conjuring up reserves of speed from Bert that even he hadn’t known existed. The tunnel mouth now filled the breadth of his slit window. He had forgotten all about trains coming out of hillsides. His hands holding the steering levers were as wet as though he had ^dipped them in water. Sweat streamed off his broad forehead and dripped into his eyes, but he kept them open, seeing the beams of his headlights inside the tunnel now. Then the third one started to come down. The tunnel rushed closer and closer as the bomb fell lower and lower, louder than its predecessors. Please, Bert, please! Reynolds whispered to himself. The walls of the tunnel rushed forward and they went inside as the bomb detonated. The force of the explosion seemed to take hold of Bert’s rear and shove him inside the hill, followed by an appalling clattering sound, a low rumble behind them, then the ground under the tracks shook and they felt the vibration inside the tank. Barnes swore, swivelled the periscope through one hundred and eighty degrees, and stared back to where should have been an arched frame of daylight, seeing nothing but pitch blackness. The last bomb had caught the top of the entrance, blowing the hillside down over the track and sealing off the outside world.

‘Halt,’ Barnes rapped out into the mike, ‘but keep the engines revved up.’

The last thing he wanted inside this tunnel was an engine failure. He looked at the others and they stared back, stunned now by the nerve-racking silence. Except for the engine sound it was uncannily quiet. No shells whining past, no projectiles screaming down from above.

Cautiously, he climbed into the turret and pushed back the lid on its telescopic arms. It was like emerging into an underground cavern, a subterranean cave weirdly lit by Bert’s headlights. Barnes felt a tightening of his stomach muscles as he swivelled his torch beam into the dark corners, moving it slowly over the enormous rock pile. Through the intercom he told Reynolds to switch off the headlights and at the same moment he doused his own torch. Not a glimmer of light anywhere: the entrance was well and truly blocked. He climbed down off the tank and used his torch to guide him to the rock wall. Still no sign of daylight. The only way out was forward to the far end of the tunnel. When he climbed back into the tank he found Penn was still examining the wireless set. He put on his headset and ordered Reynolds to switch on the headlights. The corporal looked up and pulled a wry face.

‘It’s hopeless. Two valves went when the bullet charged in. Mind you, I’d sooner have it nestling in there instead of in my pelvis, but I haven’t any spares so we’ll have to wait till we get back to squadron HQ.’

Barnes tested the intercom again. At least that was still working, but being cut off from Parker was serious. Thank God, he had sent out one warning about the gap in the French lines. Taking the map case out of the rack he climbed down on to the hull and Penn followed, watching over his shoulder as he spread out a large-scale map of Belgium and Northern France over the engine covers at the rear of the tank. His torch focused on the area round Etreux.

‘This tunnel’s a damned long one, Penn. We’ll just have to jog through it and then make our way back as best we can, Jerry permitting. At least we’ll have a pretty good report on the area when we do eventually land back.’

‘It’s going to be a long way round, isn’t it?’ queried Penn. ‘As soon as we get out of the tunnel that canal bars the route back for miles. We’ll have to go over that bridge, then follow this road…’

His finger traced a wide semi-circular course which would take them back into the rear outskirts of Etreux. Barnes agreed that this was the only way and he cursed inwardly at the breakdown in wireless communication. Parker would be wondering what on earth had happened to them and meanwhile he’d have to fight the German onrush with two tanks instead of three. It couldn’t be helped, but they’d better get cracking. Climbing back inside the tank he explained the position to Reynolds and Davis, giving Reynolds a word of caution over the intercom.

‘This tunnel won’t be straight, you can bet your life on that, so keep your speed down to five miles an hour or less and watch for bends. I’m going up into the turret to help guide you. What’s the matter, Davis?’

The burly gunner with the squarish face and red hair had a hunted look and an air of tension radiated from him. He opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking.

‘Come on, spit it out, man,’ snapped Barnes.

‘You’ll think it’s stupid, Sergeant, but I’ve always had a horror of tunnels. I was a miner once, as I told you. I was in a colliery disaster in 1934 – we were locked in for five days and we thought we’d been buried alive…’

‘Well, Davis, this happens to be a railway tunnel and we’ll be through it in ten minutes, so get your mind on your guns. You never know,’ he smiled grimly, ‘we might meet a Panzer division coming up from the other end.’

He had reached the turret and given the order to advance when the hollowness of his joke struck him. If the Germans had just happened to break through at the other end, it might seem a very good idea to send tanks along the tunnel in the hope of taking Etreux on the flank. He decided that he’d better keep a close lookout ahead and his mind began to calculate the possible effect of two-pounder shells exploding inside the railway tunnel. The powerful headlights penetrated some distance into the tunnel and soon Barnes was warning Reynolds of a curve in the line. Now that they were away from the battle area the driver had rolled back the hood from the hatch and jacked up his seat so that his head protruded above the hull like a man in a Turkish bath cabinet. The journey along the tunnel was eerie and strange, the grind of the tracks and the throb of the engines echoing hollowly, probably very much like riding through a mine shaft, Barnes thought, and he glanced down into the compartment below. Penn was still fiddling with the wireless set as though hoping to perform an act of faith, but Davis sat rigid as a stone behind his guns, his body thrust hard into the shoulder-grip, his hand on the two-pounder’s trigger. Undoubtedly, Trooper Davis’ idea of a private hell was meeting a Panzer column deep underground.

The engine noise sounded far too loud with its reverberations hemmed inside the tunnel and the grind and clatter of the steel tracks conjured up the advance of the biggest tank in the world. Barnes looked at his watch again and then gazed ahead. They should be seeing daylight soon now if the map was anything to go by, and leaving the tunnel was going to call for some pretty careful reconnaissance. Barnes had absolutely no idea what the position might be on this sector of the front: what he had seen from the embankment gave him little cause for optimism as to what might face them once they reached the far end. One part of his mind concentrated on the probing beams while another considered the various possibilities they could encounter – calling on the one hand for a swift dash out into the open or, on the other, for a more cautious passage. As far as he could tell from the map, the railway emerged into open country with no sign of an embankment; there should be fields on both sides with the canal barring the way to the west, the way they wanted to go. They’d just have to see. The headlights were now beginning to sweep round a gradual bend. Somewhere round this bend they should see daylight, probably a first glimmer, then a distant archway. What that happens, Barnes told himself, I’ll halt the tank and go on foot for a recce. Just so long as we don’t have any trouble with Davis. He glanced down again and saw that Davis was sitting in exactly the same position, gripping the two-pounder as though his very life depended on it, a posture of such implacable rigidity that Barnes was none too happy about his gunner’s likely reactions.

‘We’ll soon be there, Davis,’ he said down the intercom. ‘Perm, get back to your seat just in case. Be ready to halt, Reynolds, as soon as I give the word.’

The tank ground on, the left-hand track rumbling over wooden sleepers while the right-hand track scattered pebbles, so that the tank was tilted very slightly to the right, the three sounds complementing each other – the throb of the engines, the grumble of the tracks, and the slither of pebbles. Abruptly, Barnes gave the order to halt, saying nothing more while he wondered how to break it to them. The headlights penetrated the darkness and then halfway along the full extent of their beams they splashed out over solid surface, a wall surface with boulders protruding from a scree of soil and rubble which resembled a landslide. This end of the tunnel was blocked, too. They were sealed off inside the bowels of the earth.

On May 10th the BEF had moved from France into Belgium and Barnes’ unit had moved with it. On May 10th, four hours earlier at 3 am, General von Bock’s Army Group B had advanced across the frontiers of Holland and Belgium with the express purpose of tempting the BEF and three French armies to leave their fortified lines. Before the end of the day the movement of these vast forces was quite apparent to London and Paris, but a third movement of even more massive forces had so far gone unnoticed.

At the point where Belgium, France, and Luxembourg meet lies one of the least known areas of Western Europe – the massif of the Ardennes range, a remote zone of high hills enclosing steep wooded gorges along which snake second-class roads. This was the sector of the huge front from Belgium to Switzerland which the French High Command had long ago declared ‘impassable’, and it was opposite this sector that they had placed their weakest forces.

During the early hours of May 10th General von Rundstedt’s Army Group A began its secret forward movement through the ‘impassable’ Ardennes, an army group more powerful than any the world had ever seen. It comprised a force of forty-four divisions, including the main mass of the Panzer divisions which contained over two thousand armoured vehicles. All night long the army group penetrated into the twisting defiles, drawing ever closer to the French border. The tanks drove in close formation, each vehicle guided by the hooded rear light of the tank ahead, an exercise they had practised over and over again. Seen from the air through the eye of an infra-red camera the German host would indeed have resembled a snake, or rather a series of snakes – armoured snakes threading their way through the darkness towards the Meuse near Sedan.

The leading Panzer division was commanded by a thirty-two-year-old general who had won his spurs – and his promotion – in Poland. His unit had led the Wehrmacht into burning Warsaw and now he looked forward to leading it into burning Paris. Without aristocratic connections, on sheer ruthless ability, the general had risen in a few brief years to command the very tip of the spearhead aimed at the heart of sleeping France. His was, in fact, the first tank, and now he stood in the turret erect as a fir tree, night field-glasses dangling over his chest, the Knight’s Cross suspended from his neck, his eyes fixed on the motor-cycle patrol ahead.

Under his high peaked cap his hawk-like face was calm and without a trace of emotion. His gloved hand rested lightly on the turret rim, without tension, to correct his balance as the huge vehicle made its way along the insidious road. He might well have been on manoeuvres, looking forward to the congratulations of the umpires later and a drink with his fellow officers in the mess. Except for the fact that the general neither smoked nor drank, and except for the further fact that he was leading the advance guard of the coming onslaught, confident that he was about to play a decisive part in the total annihilation of the British and the French.

The tip of the German spearhead reached the Meuse on May 12th, crossed it on May 13th, and by Thursday May 16th, the general was in Laon, deep in the heart of France. He led the advance still erect in his tank, still wearing the peaked cloth cap in spite of the earlier entreaties of Colonel Hans Meyer, his GSO, to exchange it for a steel helmet.

‘It won’t be necessary, Meyer. You will see,’ the general had said, ‘we "shall cut through them like a scythe.’

Meyer withdrew the helmet as he sourly recalled a conversation he had had with the general,a month earlier during the final war manoeuvres near Wiesbaden. To Meyer it now seemed that the conversation had taken place at least a year ago since already the Panzers were pouring over the pontoons across the river Meuse.

‘There will be two or three major battles,’ the general had said, ‘and these will take place soon after we have crossed the Meuse. We can expect the fiercest resistance for two or three weeks and then a total collapse of the enemy.’

‘I wonder,’ Meyer had replied dubiously.

The general was a little too confident for Meyer’s liking, particularly when he remembered that this commanding officer was a nobody whereas Hans Meyer was descended from one of the oldest families in East Prussia. One must move with the times, of course, and Meyer was only forty-three years old. As he watched the endless Panzer column advancing into the fields of France, Meyer reminded himself that he expected high promotion in this war and that this largely depended on the general’s good-will. So he must compromise, keeping his doubts about the general to himself.

Once beyond the Meuse the Panzers met with only sporadic resistance – the frantic firing of a few shells from artillery pieces, a rattle of machine guns, an irregular thump of mortar bombs falling somewhere. The general drove his division forward non-stop along the main road, thundering across France in a cloud of dust while the early summer sun beat down on the iron column. Away from the road, women working in the fields stopped to watch that dust cloud which rose like a smokescreen against the hot blue sky. It was a beautiful morning, the sky cloudless, the sun building up the intense warmth which suggested leisured ease rather than total warfare. Some of the women thought that the dust cloud marked the progress of a French column, although it was travelling in the wrong direction. Others stood and wondered, a feeling of depression and fear clutching their hearts, but still not able to accept the fact that the German army had broken through.

For this is exactly what it had done – it had broken clean through the French lines where the Ninth and Second Armies met – the least defensible point along any continuous front. And so far, since the dive-bombers had smashed all resistance on the west bank of the Meuse, there had been no fierce battles, none at all. Because the general was young, in the prime of life and endowed with enormous funds of energy and optimism, his sixth sense was beginning to tell him something. It was a matter of keeping going, of not stopping for anything. This mood was not shared by Colonel Hans Meyer.

There was an ugly scene when the general’s tank halted briefly in the centre of a French village. Behind him four more heavy tanks rumbled into the square and halted, their huge guns revolving slowly round the upper windows of the old square, menacing even the thought of resistance. Meyer climbed down from his tank and approached the general, who remained in his turret, still standing erect, his face expressionless as he handed down his map.

‘Meyer, the patrol has taken that road,’ he pointed with his gloved hand, ‘but is it the right one? They have assured me that it is – what do you think?’

Meyer examined the map quickly, looked round at the exits from the square, consulted his own map, and handed the other back to the general.

‘I’m sure they are right, sir.’

‘We’d better check with the locals. You speak French. That man over there – ask him.’

The general took off his glove, unbuttoned his holster flap, extracted his pistol, and pointed it at a middle-aged man with a grey moustache. It was an astonishing scene: the sun shining down so that it was almost hot, the inhabitants standing in the old square rigid with fear, like waxwork figures out of a tableau. Only five minutes earlier they had been going about their daily routines with a touch of anxiety but with no real fear. Then it had happened – the scared boy running into the square shouting something about a huge dust cloud. He had hardly finished telling his story when the motor-cyclists had flashed across the square, tyres screaming at the corners, vanishing as they raced off to the west. People had come out of their houses at the commotion, completely bewildered. A woman had seen German soldiers in the side-cars, helmeted figures carrying machine-pistols. Arguments had broken out. She must be mad, must be seeing things. And while they argued and wondered the general had arrived with five tanks. The village was paralysed as he unsheathed his pistol and aimed it.

The man with the moustache stepped forwards and sideways, presenting his body to the pistol muzzle, shielding a woman instinctively. His wife. A hush of horror fell on the sunlit square. Even Meyer was disturbed. He spoke quickly.

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘Ask him, Meyer.’

The gun remained levelled at the man’s chest. Meyer stepped forward, his face stiff with anger. He even placed his own body between the man and the pointed muzzle as he addressed him in excellent French.

‘Which is the direct route to St Quentin? You see what we have with us, so think carefully before you reply. The direct route to St Quentin.’

The Frenchman moistened his lips and glanced sideways as an Army truck drove into the square. Before it had pulled up men were jumping out of the back, German soldiers armed with rifles and machine-pistols. Their sergeant held a map in his hand, a detailed map of the district. He glanced around quickly, pointed, and a detachment ran into a building. Outside in the square, the moustached Frenchman had taken his decision: he had his wife to consider, and the other villagers. He pointed in the direction the motor-cyclists had taken, his hand wobbling.

‘That is the way to St Quentin – the only direct way. I swear to God.’

Meyer nodded and turned round, his body still shielding the Frenchman while the general put away his pistol.

‘He says the route is down that street. He’s telling the truth, I’m sure of it.’

‘Good, good. As long as we’re sure.’ The general turned round in his turret and called out to the sergeant who stood by the truck with several of his men.

‘Tell them we come as liberators. Tell them also that at the slightest sign of resistance they will all be shot.’ He broke off impatiently. ‘You know what to say, I should hope. We are pressing on.’

He issued the order to his driver and the tank rumbled away from the square, leaving Meyer to scramble up inside his own vehicle while the villagers stood perfectly still, not yet able to grasp the nightmare which had arrived in brilliant sunshine.

I’m right, the general told himself as the tank advanced into open country beyond the village, I do believe I’m right. He allowed a little of the exultation to well up inside him. There isn’t going to be any real resistance. Those people in the village were symbolic: the shock of the armoured hammer had smashed French morale, had brought on a state of psychological paralysis. We must keep moving, on and on. And on and on raced the German spearhead, a spearhead tipped by the 14th Panzer division, commanded by General Heinrich Storch.

The tank crew had been entombed inside the tunnel for over twenty-four hours and the strain was telling. In spite of the fact that they had spent over two-thirds of their time in back-breaking toil, removing large boulders with their bare hands, carting away hundredweights of debris with the shovels they carried on the tank, their state of near-physical exhaustion still couldn’t prevent them from thinking, and the longer they remained trapped inside the hill the more they began to wonder whether they would ever leave the tunnel alive. Barnes paused to lean on his shovel, wiping sweat from his dripping forehead as he looked at his watch in the headlights. Seven o’clock in the evening of Friday May 17th.

They had driven into the tunnel at eleven o’clock on the morning of the previous day and there was still no sign that they had more than scraped the surface of the landslide. At the rock face, its impenetrable solidity, only too apparent in the pitiless headlight beams, Davis and Reynolds wrestled to haul out a massive boulder from the left-hand side of the wall. The two men were working together as a team while Barnes and Penn wielded the shovels – a sensible division of labour since the two troopers were easily the strongest men in the crew. Barnes stood back and watched them working while he began his fifteen-minute break. He had organized the work routine so they had fifteen minutes off in every hour, and he had further arranged that the breaks should be taken in pairs, so that each man had someone to talk to, but at the same time he was encouraged by still seeing the work in progress. Four men resting at the same time, all voicing their fears, could have a disastrous effect on morale.

‘Time for a break, Penn,’ he called out.

‘In a tick – I’ll just finish shifting this lot.’

Thirty-four years old, Barnes was not only the oldest member of the crew, he was also the smallest. Barely five foot seven inches tall, he was small-boned and slim, but his frame was wiry and on a long-term endurance basis he could probably outlast the other three on sheer will-power alone. His face was lean, clean-shaven, and above prominent cheekbones his brown eyes were still alert and watchful as he studied Reynolds and Davis. In size there wasn’t a great deal to choose between them; they were both large, heavily-built men, but there was an enormous difference in temperament. Whereas Davis, the ex-miner, was subject to moods of melancholy, Reynolds could be relied upon to carry out any task he was set until he dropped, showing neither enthusiasm nor depression at any stage. As for thirty-year-old Corporal Penn, he was easily the most intelligent and best-educated of the four men. At the outbreak of war he could have obtained a commission but he had turned it down for reasons which were never quite clear. Slim and tall, he was the most light-hearted of the crew, and at the same time the most sensitive. Dropping his shovel, he wobbled over to Barnes in an exaggerated manner.

‘There should be extra pay for this, there really should. Working underground doesn’t come within my agreed sphere of duties, you know. I’ll have to look it up in King’s Regs. Mind if we take a stroll along the promenade?’

Along the promenade was Penn’s version for walking through the tunnel, so Barnes got up off the hull where he had been sitting and walked with Penn, his torch beam showing the way. As soon as they were out of earshot of the other two men Penn began talking.

‘I don’t like the look of Davis. I don’t think he can stand much more of this.’

‘He’ll have to – it’s the same for all of us and we may be through to the other side any moment now.’

‘Do you really think so? That wall could be twenty feet thick. I imagine the Germans blew in the entrance.’

‘It looks like it – or they might have been bombing the railway and dropped one which started a landslide. It doesn’t make much difference now – we’ve just got to get far enough through to be able to use the two-pounder.’

‘The two-pounder?’ Penn stopped in the middle of the rail track. ‘You’re joking, of course?’

‘Look, Penn, by the time we see daylight we’re going to be pretty tired. And in any case we’ve been away from the troop for well over twenty-four hours. God knows what’s been happening on the outside but our job is to get back as fast as we can – and the way to do that is to shoot our way but when we can. We’ll wait until we have a hole big enough for me to crawl through and do a recce. Then Davis can take his mind off things by shelling the rest out of the way.’

‘Just so long as Davis lasts out the course – and always assuming we ever reach your little hole.’

‘Now you’re beginning to talk like Davis. It doesn’t seem to have struck any of you that being cooped up inside here is a damned sight safer than being bombed by Stukas.’

Penn glanced at Barnes in amazement. He had really meant what he had said, Penn felt sure of it. The idea that they might be trapped inside this tunnel until they were out of water, out of food, out of lighting when the batteries ran down – none of this seemed to have crossed Barnes’ mind. In his usual way he just assumed that they would make it, that it was only a matter of time before they broke through that terrible wall. Well, if faith moved mountains, Barnes was likely to move that wall, and their tank commander had a habit of backing up bis faith with planning and forethought: they were still enjoying meals of bully beef and biscuits because of Barnes’ insistence that they should always carry provisions for one" week. He turned and followed Barnes back to the rock face, sensing trouble as soon as they arrived. Davis had apparently been waiting for their return and now the burly gunner was glaring at his sergeant, his voice an insubordinate growl.

‘We’ll never get through this bloody wall.’

‘No, we won’t – not if you just stand there,’ Barnes agreed mildly. ‘So get on with it.’

‘We’re wasting our time.,.’

‘No, Davis – we aren’t. At the moment you are the one who is wasting time, so get on with it.’

Barnes’ voice was still very mild. He stood close to his large gunner with a relaxed air, his eyes never leaving Davis’.

‘We’re going to die down here – die, did you hear me? And one day they’ll open up this bleedin’ tunnel and find four corpses – four skeletons.’ His voice was close to hysteria now, his mouth and hands working as though on the edge of a complete breakdown. ‘I’m a miner – I know what this means. I’ve…’

‘Davis!’ Barnes’ tone was sharper now. ‘You haven’t by any chance thought yourself into thinking that this is a mine shaft, have you?’

‘No, but…’

‘So, instead of being hundreds of feet below the surface we’re actually at ground level – right? The fact is, Davis, that your being a miner is just about as relevant as the fact that Penn was once a draughtsman. Now, do you expect Reynolds to shift that boulder all by himself or are you going to give him a hand?’

‘It may take a fortnight to shift that lot,’ Davis persisted stubbornly. ‘There could be hundreds of…’

‘Davis, I’m beginning to lose patience with you. It’s just possible that it will take all four of us to break through, so we can’t afford any spare wheels round here, and that’s what you are at the moment. For the third time, I’m ordering you to get on with it.’

‘Why not have a go at the other end – the wall may be thinner there.’

Barnes’ face tightened. He prodded a stiff finger hard into Davis’ chest, punctuating his words with prods.

‘You have been given an order three times and three times you have refused to carry it out. As soon as we get back you’re on a charge. In the meantime you will do your bit with the rest of us, and since you’ve wasted five minutes gassing, your next break period will be ten minutes instead of fifteen. Give Reynolds a hand with that boulder at once.’

He turned away and went back to sit on the tank hull, checking his watch to see whether his fifteen minutes was nearly up, putting his hands flat on either side of his body as he watched Davis start work again. Beside him Penn grinned and whispered, ‘He thinks he can be Bolshie now we’re on our own.’ But Barnes made no reply and his face was grim. It had been a close run thing. They only needed one rotten apple in the barrel for the infection to spread, and the most contagious infection of all is fear. Outwardly, Barnes remained perfectly confident, his every word and gesture indicating clearly that it was only a matter of some hard slogging before they reached the outside world, but inwardly he didn’t like the look of it. They were marooned in the centre of a battlefield and the war could rage backwards and forwards over the front for weeks as it had done a quarter of a century earlier. While that went on there would be a certain shortage of people to go round digging out buried tunnels, even supposing that the idea seemed important to them. There was no real problem of air – the tunnel was long enough for them to breathe inside it for weeks – but their water and food supplies would only last for several days, to say nothing of Bert’s batteries. And when the batteries went they would be plunged into darkness, which would make working on the wall face almost impossible. For the first few hours of their entombment Barnes had mainly fretted about being cut off from his troop, but as the hours passed and they entered on a new day he found his mind beginning to think like Davis’, and the analogy of the mine disaster was only too apt, which was why he had shut up Davis at the earliest possible moment. He glanced at his watch again, nodded to Penn, and went forward to pick up his shovel.

Twenty-four hours later, in the evening of Saturday May 18th, they had removed an incredibly large mass of rubble and rock, but still the wall face was intact. They worked now by the light of the oil lamp which Barnes always carried inside the tank, and the reason for this was not only to save Bert’s headlights: Barnes foresaw that later, when morale was sagging, switching on the headlights again might just keep them going a while longer, but he kept the real reason for this decision to himself. In the middle of the afternoon there had almost been a fatal accident when part of the wall suddenly came away and slid forward of its own momentum. Only Reynolds’ speed and strength had saved Davis when he had grabbed the gunner’s arm and hauled him sideways out of the path of the tumbling boulders. It was a measure of their anxiety that even when Davis had just experienced this shock he was the first to recover, running away from Reynolds to gaze up at the centre of the wall in desperate hope, his voice hoarse and strained.

‘Maybe we’re through now.’

‘Keep back. I’ll see,’ snapped Barnes.

Gingerly, he had climbed up the rubble slope, expecting at any moment a fresh fall, but when he had reached the rock face and pushed it was like leaning against the side of a fortress. So they had started again, Barnes and Penn working furiously with their shovels to remove the fresh rubble so that the other two could reach the rock face with their crowbar. It was just after seven o’clock in the evening when Penn made his remark during their rest period. Barnes sat alongside him on the tank hull, watching Reynolds prising out a fresh boulder while Davis sought to give extra leverage by pulling with his bare hands.

‘It’s funny, but ever since we’ve been in here we haven’t heard any sound of the battle.’

‘We’ve probably driven them back a bit – besides, there wasn’t so much going on this side of Etreux.’

He left it at that, wondering why the obvious and macabre conclusion had not been drawn by the others long ago. The fact that they could not hear even faint sounds of the huge bombardment taking place in the outside world demonstrated more clearly than anything the immense thickness of the wall which barred their escape. The thought had occurred to Barnes twenty-four hours earlier and had so worried him that he had waited until the others were asleep before walking back down the tunnel. When he reached the far end he had listened carefully at the blocked entrance but no sound had penetrated from the outside world. They were well and truly sealed in at both ends. Taking a sip of water from his mug, he frowned.

Then, very carefully, he put the mug down on the hull and walked over to where Reynolds and Davis were working. He faced the wall and then turned sideways as though listening. It was a dramatic moment and Penn instantly guessed that something had happened because he got down off the tank and walked forward. Something in Barnes’ attitude had attracted the attention of Reynolds and Davis and they stopped working.

‘What is it?’ asked Penn.

Barnes shook his head and faced the wall again, his hands on his hips, his eyes searching the surface carefully. When he spoke his voice was quiet. ‘I think we’re nearly through.’ ‘Why?’ Penn asked quickly.

‘I can feel a faint current of air – come and stand here.’ ‘My God! You’re right! You’re right!’ They began to work feverishly at the point where Barnes had traced the air current’s entrance, a point about four feet above the level of the tunnel floor. A quarter of an hour later they experienced another heart-lifting moment when Barnes told them to stop working for a minute while he put out the lamp. For a short time there-was no sound in the darkness of the tunnel while four pairs of eyes strained to see any sign of daylight in the wall. It was Barnes who spotted it first – a narrow, paper-thin slit along the upper surface of one large boulder.

‘We’re through,’ shouted Davis. ‘We’re really through. Dear Mother of God, we’re through!’

‘Take it easy now,’ warned Barnes, ‘this could be tricky. There’s still a solid mass of rock up there.’

He relit the oil lamp and when he turned round Davis was already inserting the crowbar into a corner near the end of the slit they had seen, his hands gripping the iron with a ferocious intensity as he drove the end deeper into the wall and began to twist and turn for leverage. Barnes opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking. The poor devil must have gone through even greater agonies than the rest of them with his memories of the mine trap he had escaped from. Barnes had realized this when he had treated Davis roughly, but any display of sympathy at that time could have destroyed the morale of all of them, and Barnes never forgot the dictum of Napoleon – morale is to the material as three is to one. So now he let Davis break loose as he dug and rammed the bar into the remaining barrier, punishing his hands with the force of his efforts and never even noticing the punishment. Penn spoke as he shovelled debris to expose the base of the remaining rocks. ‘I’ll tell you now, I never thought we’d make it.’ ‘We’ll face tougher things than this before this war’s over.’ Within ten minutes Davis had prised the boulder loose and Reynolds was helping him to haul it back out of the wall, a boulder as large as the oil stove they carried inside Bert for emergency cooking arrangements. It came away suddenly. One moment Davis was leaning his full weight against the crowbar, sweat streaming down the sides of his face, and then the rock was shifting inwards, swaying gently before it toppled back into the tunnel, so unexpectedly that the two men had to jump sideways to avoid it. Picking up the oil lamp, Barnes held it behind his back and they all stared at the oblong of daylight. It was a memorable moment. Four-men, each of whom had secretly felt that they would never make it, knew now that they would live. There was a pause when no one spoke, no one moved. Then Davis went berserk.

Seizing the crowbar which had fallen with the boulder, he rammed it behind the rock above the opening and began heaving and twisting with all his strength. Barnes shouted a warning, but Davis either didn’t or wouldn’t hear him. He felt the rock moving easily and dropped the crowbar. Reaching up to his full height he pushed, both hands flat against the rock, which fell outwards, enlarging the window considerably, enlarging it enough for Davis to climb up into it, crouching inside the alcove on his knees as he pushed with his hands at the loosened rock above. Barnes was still shouting when disaster struck.

The upper rock was held in position over the opening by ledges on either side of the aperture, but it moved loosely on the ledges so that when Davis again pushed his full strength against it the rock wobbled and then fell outwards under the fierce pressure of Davis’ hands. As it fell away it unhinged the centre of gravity of the wall above. Davis was still crouched in the aperture when there was a low rumbling sound. The whole upper wall began to quiver and disintegrate. Barnes was running forward to grab Davis when Penn grasped his arm firmly and hauled him back against the side of the tunnel. A second later an avalanche of rock and rubble poured down over the floor where Barnes had been standing, spilling tons of debris along the centre of the rail track, filling the tunnel with a roaring sound which deafened them. Then they were bending over and choking and spluttering as the dust invaded their lungs and blinded their eyes.

It was only when the dust began to settle that Barnes saw what had happened. On the far side of the tunnel, his back against the wall, Reynolds was safe. Beside Barnes, Penn was wiping his eyes to try and clear bis vision. But it was the entrance to the tunnel which was the most awe-inspiring sight. The new landslide had completely cleared the upper part of the tunnel, leaving a great gap above the rubble slope which now stretched deep inside the tunnel, a gap through which they could see the blessed evening sky, a gap through which-Bert could be driven once he had mounted the slope.

It took them several minutes to locate Davis, and they found the gunner only a few feet away from where Barnes had been standing after Penn had jerked him back out of the path of the falling wall. At least, they found Davis’ head. The rest of his body was buried under the fall and it needed only a second’s examination for them to realize that he was dead.