Tramp in Armour

TWELVE Sunday, May 26th

Storch jumped out of the staff car, checked his watch, briefly acknowledged the salute of the waiting officer, walked down the hedge-lined lane on the outskirts of Lemont. 12.45 AM. Less than four hours to dawn. The lights of an armoured car at the end of the lane showed him the way while beyond the hedge on his left, to the north, the light of the moon shone down over the flooded areas, a vast lake which might have been the sea. When he reached the car he stopped and turned to the officer who had followed him.

‘So here it is, Keller – the start line of the final advance. It doesn’t look much from here, does it?’

The lights of the armoured car beamed north across a flooded field below the level of the lane. Water stretched as far as the eye could see towards Dunkirk, but standing up above the surface of the lake ran a double line of six-foot poles like slim telegraph poles immersed by the inundation.

‘Keller, how far do the marker posts stretch?’

‘Ten kilometres, sir. We felt it inadvisable to mark the passage any further at the moment.’

‘Quite right, Keller, quite right.’

Storch paused, slapping his gloves slowly against the side of his leg. He was in an excellent humour and when this mood took him he liked to show his subordinates that their general was capable of a certain light-hearted touch.

‘So, Keller, you are telling me that between those posts lies the road to Dunkirk – that we do not have to possess supernatural powers like Christ to walk upon the waters?’

Keller, a religious man, as Storch knew well, blinked and stirred uneasily. What could be in Storch’s mind now? He kept his face expressionless and answered with admirable brevity.

‘Yes, sir.’

Keller waited anxiously. He was never quite sure how to deal with the situation when Storch talked like this for it was closely akin to another mood which could be the precursor to an almighty row. He said nothing further and waited while the general walked to the front of the armoured car, standing to gaze for a moment through the gap in the hedge. Then, without warning, Storch marched forward between the posts, his boots splashing up water but never sinking more than six inches below the waterline. He walked on and on, almost out of sight, and then came back again, deliberately kicking up great spurts of water like a small child on its first day by the sea. Reaching the armoured car, he paused and lifted his night glasses to look the other way, focusing his gaze to the south where a line of heavy tanks was drawn up along the extension of the road on higher ground. Beyond the tanks he could see the small airfield which was serving as the main tank laager and beyond the groups of small dark shapes loomed the hangar, the main ammunition dump. Meyer had once again complained that everything was crammed into too confined an area but the floods had dictated that. At that moment Keller had the misfortune to say the wrong thing.

‘I hear, sir, that the main dump is very close to the laager.’

‘You’d like to move it, Keller?’ Storch inquired.

‘No, sir. I just thought… that is… Colonel Meyer…’

‘Meyer has been here recently?’

‘Only for a few minutes – to check the water level…’

‘Really, Keller, it is most fortunate for you that I have only wet my boots. Had the water risen to my thighs we might well have had to look for your replacement. Till 04.00 hours, Keller!’

Barnes rubbed his eyes and checked his watch. 12.45 AM. The tank rumbled along the side road, its lights full on, the tracks churning round at top speed. In the turret beside him Jacques warned that they were approaching the southern outskirts of Lemont. The French lad knew exactly where he was and now he felt strangely excited as the road he had known since boyhood rolled past under them. He had chosen a roundabout route to enter the village and Barnes had asked him to find a place where they could park Bert safely for a short time. He thought he knew just the place.

Inside the tank Colburn sat behind the two-pounder in Davis’ old seat. A loaded machine-pistol lay across his lap and already he was becoming accustomed to the small metal room, the gentle sway of the hull, the endless grumble of the tracks. He missed the fresh air of five thousand feet up but at least here he had solid ground under his body. Oddly enough, now that they were so close to the battle zone the thunder of the guns had died, as though preserving their energies – and their ammunition – for one final effort when day came. And daylight was close now. But he was on edge because he had nothing definite to do, and in this respect he envied Reynolds. The driver in the nose of the tank had his head projecting above the hatch and gazed stolidly forward. His hands held the steering levers stiffly because his arms felt as though they were on fire and even the slightest movement increased the pain. They were almost there, Barnes had said, and Reynolds was anxious to get it over with. Now that they were so close to the Allied lines and that Dover was just across the water he found himself thinking of England and home. With a bit of luck they’d soon be there. He’d be able to get some leave and go back to Peckham. A pint of bitter at The Grey Horse. It made him feel thirsty and then he forgot about it as Barnes’ voice came down the intercom with a fresh instruction.

‘You turn left,’ Jacques had just told Barnes, ‘just beyond that white building.’

Barnes gave the order. ‘And that farm you mentioned, Jacques, those isolated outhouses…’

He broke off as the tank turned down a narrow track. At the , edge of the headlights he could see a strangely familiar shape, and when the track curved the beams played full on the bulky silhouette. Barnes stiffened and as Jacques pointed to the farm buildings beyond an open gateway he gave the order to halt.

The stationary vehicle which had startled him was tilted over at an acute angle, lying just inside the field with one track caught in a deep ditch. It was Bert’s twin brother – a Matilda tank. Jumping to the ground he walked towards it, hearing Colburn’s footsteps behind him. When he played his torch over the tank he saw that it was derelict, half the turret blown away, its right-hand track torn loose, the rear of the hull burnt black.

‘Looks like one of yours,’ Colburn suggested quietly.

‘It’s one of ours all right. There’s been a helluva scrap here. Look.’

In the field behind the tank uniformed bodies lay scattered across the grass, on their stomachs, on their backs, on their sides, and sometimes the uniforms were German but many were British and all dead. Barnes picked up several rifles and found them empty. There was only one tank, the single Matilda, and in its solitude it seemed to emphasize the terrible shortage of armoured forces with the BEF.

‘The Panzers came through,’ he remarked to Colburn, who made no reply.

They walked farther down the track and by the gateway they found more empty rifles, British .303s, their dead owners lying close by. Barnes followed his torch beam cautiously into a yard surrounded by outbuildings and when they searched them they found that the place was deserted – deserted of human life but there were several British fifteen-hundred-weight trucks parked round the edges of the yard which had obviously been some minor transport depot. Inside the buildings were more trucks and further evidence that a unit had been in residence recently – a pile of unwashed billy cans, a dixie full of scummy water, several respirators and a Lewis gun without a magazine.

‘I’d like to have another look at that truck in there,’ said Colburn, flashing his torch on a truck with an RE flash at the rear.

‘I’ll be back in a minute. I want to get Bert parked.’

Barnes left the Canadian and explored the area immediately round the buildings, finding only empty fields which were strangely still and silent in the pale warm moonlight, the air heavy and muggy as the earth released the heat of yesterday, the buzz of unseen insects in his ears. Across the fields he could see a roof-line which looked as though it had been cut from cardboard – the roofs of Lemont – and behind them a solitary searchlight wearily probed the sky. When he returned to where he had left the Canadian he found him inside the truck which carried the RE flash. He was shining his torch over layers of wooden boxes.

‘I want to do a recce into Lemont on foot from here,’ Barnes told him. ‘Jacques has agreed to take me in so I’m leaving you and Reynolds with the tank. This is a better place than I thought we’d get to park Bert – the Germans are hardly likely to come poking around a place where there’s already been a dust-up and this stuff’s no use to them. It’s only a handful of bits and pieces, anyway.’

‘There’s more than a handful of these, Barnes. You know what they are, of course – detonators. There’s enough stuff here to blow up half Ottawa – including gun-cotton, a plunger, and God knows what else. This truck belonged to a demolition unit.’

‘For God’s sake mind what you’re doing, then… Sorry, I’d forgotten. Detonators are your business.’

Barnes sat down on an old wooden crate pushed against the wall and tried to think straight. His shoulder wound had been playing him up foully ever since he had crashed back into the tank transporter when he was trying to reach the deck from the cab. It was pounding like an iron hammer now and he wondered whether he had the energy to walk one step farther. Well, he’d have to walk quite a few steps farther if they were going to try and find out what the position was inside Lemont, and Jacques had blithely told him the best thing would be to try and reach his father. The fact that his father lived in a house in the main part of the village on top of a small hill overlooking some private airfield, and that this meant a long walk from where they were now, hadn’t seemed to worry Jacques. but it worried Barnes when he thought of them making their way through enemy-held streets. He made the effort and was walking out to give instructions to Reynolds when he stopped in the doorway in surprise. Colburn was whistling under his breath, a tuneless melody. Colburn was in his element as he explored more boxes.

‘Barnes, there’s wire here – there’s even some phosphorus. This goddamned truck is one huge potential bomb…’

‘Well, we shan’t be needing any bombs,’ Barnes replied, his voice edged with irritation.

‘Can’t understand the bastards leaving this lot unguarded.’

‘They haven’t got enough men to guard their own stuff according to Jacques.’

‘This I could really do something with, Barnes. I haven’t had my hands on such a hoard since I joined the RAF. If I’d bumped into this outfit instead of your own mob I could really have earned my daily bread. And say, look you here…’

Barnes wasn’t too interested in Colburn’s enthusiasms and the Canadian’s burst of energy seemed to underline his own state of desperate fatigue to an extent which made him feel more irritable than ever. He spoke quickly.

‘I’m off with Jacques now. Reynolds is staying with Bert next door so you’ll have someone to chat to.’

Tm quite happy here. You’re going to Jacques’ father’s place?,’

‘I doubt if we’ll get that far.’

‘The old boy might know what’s what. And watch yourself – we don’t want any nasty accidents now we’re at the end of the line.’

‘That’s right. So for Pete’s sake, Colburn, don’t drop one of those detonators.’

Barnes checked his watch, Penn’s watch. 2.25 am. Ninety minutes to dawn. The recce was. completed and they were almost home, if you could call ‘home’ three outbuildings they had never known before, one of them stuffed with high-explosive. He looked back along the silent street and saw Jacques a long way behind him – Jacques who was still a problem because the village of Lemont was abandoned, all the inhabitants either evacuated or driven away by the Germans when the tide of war had rolled this way. The lad waved a hand and pointed ahead, an unnecessary precaution because Barnes was already trying to locate the German sentry they had skirted on their way in. He had been standing on guard outside a small single-storey house where light had shown round the edges of drawn blinds. On the outskirts of Lemont all the houses were single storey and this was the only house which had shown any sign of life in the deserted tree-lined street. Who was hidden behind those drawn blinds? And where was that damned sentry now? The empty motor-cycle and side-car was still parked in front of the house.

He took several cautious steps forward again and halted. He could still see the light round the blinds but the sentry had vanished. It worried Barnes and he glanced back again to make sure that the lad was still behind him. Jacques opened his hands to express puzzlement and Barnes knew that he also had spotted the sentry’s absence. The only thing to do was to go round the back way as they had before, but cautiously. He held up a warning hand to indicate to Jacques that he should stay well back and then he crept forward, turning down a path which led between the houses.

His nerves were keyed up tautly, his mind oscillating between two impulses – the need for caution on the last lap and the need to move quickly because they were running out of time just when he had found his supreme objective. The path was bordered with shoulder-high stone walls and he knew that when the path turned at the bottom the walls continued along the backs of the houses. Keeping his head down, his revolver in bis hand, he crept past a closed gate let into the wall. He was concentrating on placing his feet carefully because he remembered that there was a deep ditch on the left. Perhaps he heard something at the last moment. He might even have started to turn his head, but he could never remember the details afterwards. A rifle butt struck his head with such vicious force that he lost consciousness immediately…

When he woke up he knew that he was going to be sick, but he forced it down into the churning pit of his stomach. His wound ached abominably but now the pounding hammer was at work inside his head, and because it felt hollow he seemed to receive each blow twice as the blows echoed. Get a grip on yourself, man. With an immense effort he forced open eyelids which felt to be made of lead. A blinding light hit him, so he closed them quickly. A voice spoke gutturally. In English.

‘So pleased you are recovering, Sergeant Barnes.’

Barnes jerked his eyes open a fraction and peered through slitted lids. From behind the lamp a uniformed arm appeared and lowered the light cone so that it shone on to the desk. The arm belonged to a thin-faced man of about thirty who wore the uniform of a German officer. Glancing round the darkened room Barnes could see no sign of Jacques; the French lad must have escaped into the village during the ambush.

‘Tell me when you are ready to speak,’ the German suggested.

Barnes swore inwardly. He was seated in a high-backed wooden chair and his wrists were bound with wire to the arms. When he tried to shift his body surreptitiously he felt a broad band strapped round his waist; only his legs were still free. They had sewed him up nicely. Another uniformed officer appeared from behind his chair and like his colleague behind the desk he was wearing bis peaked cap. He spread pine needles along the desk under the cone of light, arranging them carefully in varying lengths, apparently taking no notice of Barnes while he completed his little display. Barnes gritted his teeth, wondering whether the prelude to torture was a bluff to sap his nerves. The officer behind the desk spoke.

‘I am Major Berg. You, of course, are Sergeant Barnes.’ He lifted a British Army pay-book off the desk and waved it. ‘And if you are wondering why I speak such good English it is since I was military attache in London before the war.’ His voice changed and he spoke rapidly, his manner bleak. ‘Barnes, where is your unit and from where will the British be attacking us in the rear?’

Barnes said it. Name, rank, serial number. Then he shut his mouth. He opened it a moment later when the officer who had been bending over the desk swung the stiffened side of his hand savagely across Barnes’ lips. He felt something give inside his mouth, felt around with his tongue, tasted blood, and spat out a broken tooth. Through half-closed eyes he saw Berg shake his head as though cautioning his fellow officer.

‘I should have introduced you,’ Berg went on. ‘This is Captain Dahlheim. Normally our method is to ask questions politely first and then exert pressure later, but we are short of hours. I should warn you that Captain Dahlheim becomes annoyed when people do not answer my questions properly.’

Barnes said it again. Name, rank, serial number, adding that under the Geneva Convention this was all the information he was obliged to give. Dahlheim was fiddling with the pine needles now and while his body temporarily masked him from Berg, Barnes lifted his wrists hard against the wire. It was quite impossible to get his hands loose.

‘But you are a spy,’ went on the unseen Berg. ‘Show him the clothes he was wearing when we found him.’

Dahlheim picked up a bundle from a chair and showed the clothes. For a horrible moment Barnes wondered whether they belonged to Jacques but he saw that they were a jacket and a pair of trousers of blue denim, common apparel for French workers in the fields. Jacques had worn a lounge suit. He must have escaped.

‘I’ve never worn those in my life and you know it.

‘Captain Dahlheim can confirm that we took those clothes off you while you were still unconscious. We can say you wore them to hide your uniform. And you had no means of identification. No pay-book.’ He dropped the pay-book into a drawer and closed it. ‘So you are a spy and can be treated in any way we like.’

Was Berg bluffing? Barnes could see his white face now and as he became accustomed to the single desk light he thought the German was older than he had thought at first. He felt sick with fury. He had been on the last lap, had completed the most difficult reconnaissance he had ever undertaken, had been within a five-minute walk of Bert’s refuge, and because of a momentary lack of alertness he had been captured. And as the realization dawned on him, the realization of how unlikely it was that he would ever escape, he found one thought torturing his mind. He had come to Lemont because the battle plan they had taken from the German staff car showed beyond doubt that here was the point of maximum peril for the BEF. And now he believed that he had found a way of striking a blow against the 14th Panzer Division, the spearhead of the attack on Dunkirk, only to find himself a prisoner. What was it Berg was saying?

‘We have not a great deal of time, Sergeant Barnes.’

‘None of us have that here.’

‘For various reasons it is a matter of urgency that you answer my questions quickly. Where is your unit? What is the British plan?’ He paused. ‘Dahlheim! Barnes is not going to reply again.’

Dahlheim straightened up and turned round. The needles were arranged in a neat row, their sharp points turned towards Barnes under the cone of light. Beneath the peaked cap Dahlheim’s face was round, his eyes seeming half asleep, and for the first time Barnes saw that he wore a black and silver collar-patch bearing a curious runic sign. Captain Dahlheim was a member of the SS.

By now Barnes found that his eyes were growing accustomed to the semi-darkness beyond the cone of light and behind the seated Berg he could see a window. The curtain was drawn across it but at one side there was a gap, and because of the deep shadow beyond the desk light he could see a wedge of moonlit night. Dahlheim was reaching his hand to his side and Barnes expected him to draw the pistol from his leather hip holster, but instead he took a length of cord from his pocket and wrapped it round both hands, He took his time over this little exercise, watching Barnes carefully, then without speaking he went past the chair and disappeared behind it. Guessing what was coming, Barnes tensed himself.

Reynolds could see the sentry standing outside the small house and he also saw the stationary motor-cycle and "side-car close by. It was the first sign of life he had seen since entering the village. He took several quiet paces away from the road down a pathway between stone walls. Now he was well under cover, two houses away from where the sentry mounted guard. For a minute he stood there, undecided what to do. It was probably the first time in his Army career that he had performed these two actions and both of them worried him – he had disobeyed an order and he had taken an initiative without reference to any superior. He kept wondering whether he ought not to go back.

Barnes had specifically told him to stay with the tank and now Bert was a good five minutes’ walk away. Only an overwhelming feeling that something had happened to Barnes had prompted his action and he had firmly refused Colburn’s offer to come instead. A pilot’s place was in the air – they weren’t much good on the ground, Reynolds had reasoned to himself. Now his great dread was that he had missed Barnes and Jacques coming back and that already his sergeant was asking Colburn where the devil Reynolds was. He’d better go back, he decided, but not along the road – that was far too dangerous. There must be another way back along the rear of these houses. Yes, he’d go back immediately. Barnes was able to look after himself.

He reached the end of the wall and lifted his head cautiously. Light from a window two houses away spilled out into the night. It must be some sort of German HQ, a good place to keep away from. He started retreating along the footpath which ran behind the back garden wall and then looked over his shoulder. The light puzzled him. Perhaps he’d better check: Barnes might want to know who was there. In for a penny, in for a pound, as his father was fond of saying. Keeping his head well down, he crept along the back wall, counting gates. This must be the right one. The gate wasn’t quite closed and when he pushed it gently it swung back inwards without making a sound. The vague outline of the lighted window was broken up by the branches of fruit trees which stood in the garden. He listened carefully and peered round the end wall to look along another pathway which led back to the road. If the sentry decided to walk up there while he was inside the garden he would be nicely trapped. In for a penny…

Creeping down a garden path he reached the back of the house close to the window and saw that there was a gap in the curtain. Ten-to-one the people inside would be staring straight at the window when he looked in, but he felt he must see what was going on, so he pressed one hand against the wall, eased himself forward, caught a quick glimpse and stepped back. He had glanced inside at the moment when Dahlheim had walked behind Barnes’ chair. He had seen his sergeant helpless, the only time he had ever seen Barnes in this state, and for a few seconds he was stunned, but his mood swiftly changed to one of fury.

He went back up the garden, out of the gateway, down the pathway between the houses, his hand extracting the knife from its sheath, a knife which he had carefully honed to a razor’s edge, the point like a needle, the condition in which an ex-fishmonger was prone to keep his knives. At the end of the path he waited behind the wall and listened to the sentry’s footsteps. The German must have become bored with standing and now he paced a steady sentry-go – ten paces away, ten paces back again. While he listened Reynolds remembered a certain guard duty he had mounted late one night at a remote camp outside Hull. Alone in the dark, he had particularly disliked the moment when he had stopped to turn, still keeping step as he revolved through one hundred and eighty degrees, and this was the moment he was waiting for now.

The sentry was coming his way again. Eight, nine, ten… Leaving the safety of the wall Reynolds moved with a terrible determination, seeing the back of the German only six feet away. His hand rose above shoulder level and with the same movement he crept forward three quiet paces, driving the knife savagely down into the uniformed back. He felt it shearing through cloth, driving down deeper, jerking briefly as it grazed bone and then sank deeper still. The back fell away from him and the sentry let out one howling shriek. Reynolds was sure half the street had heard the sound as he bent over to grab the rifle and fixed bayonet, tearing the strap loose from the limp arm.

His reactions now were an echo of his early basic training -taking up the rifle, one hand gripping the stock, the other stretched well along the barrel as he grasped it close to the bayonet. He was running full pelt for the front door when it opened in his face, revealing a uniformed figure. Dahlheim held a Luger pistol in his hand but before he could press the trigger Reynolds was on him, his headlong rush carrying the bayonet deep into Dahlheim’s stomach. He groaned and went over backwards, carried to the floor by the still-moving impetus of Reynolds’ violent charge. Automatically, the driver stood a foot on the sprawled body and used it as leverage to withdraw the bayonet with one quick hard pull, his eyes searching the room beyond.

When they heard the sentry’s awful cry Dahlheim had just gripped Barnes round the neck. At Berg’s instant command he had taken out his Luger and rushed to the front door, opening it as Berg came round the side of the desk, his own gun already in his hand. Barnes heard Dahlheim’s horrible groan while Berg was passing him. Shooting out his left leg, he caught the German between his own legs and tripped him. Berg was on the floor when Barnes flung his whole weight sideways, carrying himself and the chair over on top of Berg, the fall smashing the left chair arm so that his wrist was immediately released still encircled with wire. He was half on top of Berg, still tied inside the chair as he raised his left fist and clubbed him viciously in the face. Then the chair slipped and took him over farther sideways so that now he was lying on the floor" trapped by the chair behind him. He saw Berg blink, spit blood from his mouth where the fist had broken teeth, and then he raised the revolver which he still held and aimed it point-blank in Barnes’ face. Anchored to the floor by the heavy chair, just too far away to get at Berg, even in that moment of terror Barnes was aware of movement above him and then the rifle butt in Reynolds’ grip smashed down on Berg’s head with a terrible impact. The hand fell back with a thud to the floor and the Luger slipped from the hand as it went slack.

‘Good work, Reynolds.’ Barnes gasped out the trite phrase automatically and just as automatically thought of Dahlheim. ‘Make sure of that other bastard.’

‘He’s finished. Keep still while I get your hand free.’

‘Smash the support off under the chair arm with your rifle butt and then I can slip my wrist off. Go on, man, we’re hellishly short of time.’

They could hear Dahlheim groaning continually behind them as Reynolds aimed the rifle butt carefully, destroying the wooden support under the chair arm so that Barnes could slip his wrist off the end. Then he pressed the wire bracelets down over his hands while Reynolds unfastened the leather belt which bound him to the chair. Barnes had his back to Dahlheim but he could still hear the agonized moans of the SS officer, the clumping of his shoes on the floor. The moment he was released he swung round and instantly shouted a warning. Dahlheim was turned over on one side, clutching his left hand to his stomach, a hand covered with blood, his face twisted almost out of recognition with the pain, but his right hand had found the pistol. At ‘the moment when Barnes shouted the gun went off.

Dahlheim had fired at random, Barnes felt sure of it because the barrel had been wobbling all over the place. Two more shots entered the ceiling and then the gun fell harmlessly on the floor. Jerking his head round as the pistol skidded against the wall, Barnes looked up and saw Reynolds topple, an expression of amazed disbelief on his large face as he fell and hit the floor with a tremendous crash. Groggily, Barnes climbed to his feet and his legs nearly gave way under him as he picked up the rifle, wobbled forward, and took up a position behind Dahlheim who was now rolling on the floor. He managed to lift the weapon several feet and bring it down again. Even in his weakened state the force of the blow was so great that the rifle jumped out of his hands and fell beside the now motionless German. Kicking the rifle away against the wall he picked up the pistol which still held five cartridges and pushed it down inside his own empty holster, wondering what the devil they had done with his own gun.

‘Reynolds!’

He had a terrible job turning the driver over and then Reynolds began stirring and cursing foully. There was plenty of blood on his left thigh but on making a quick examination Barnes found that the bullet had passed through without lodging in the flesh. He applied a field dressing he always carried and managed to seat the driver in Berg’s chair, an operation which took away nearly all his remaining strength. Inwardly he was swearing. Of all the bloody bad luck. Davis killed by the accident of falling rock. Penn shot down by an envenomed looter. And now Reynolds wounded by a wobbling hand that had hardly been able to hold the gun, let alone aim the bloody thing. Then his eyes fell on his watch. When the chair had gone over sideways the face had been smashed in the fall and the hands had stopped at 2.40 am.

He stood by the desk for a moment, looking down at Reynolds’ haggard face, his thoughts torn and muddled between his wounded driver and the knowledge that within eighty minutes the Panzers he had seen with Jacques from the ridge above the airfield would be on the move, creeping along the underwater road which the French lad had pointed towards. He pulled himself together, refusing to give way to the fatigue clogging his limbs. Think, Barnes, there are things to do.

He opened Berg’s drawer to collect his pay-book, found his own revolver inside, still loaded, and substituted it for the German’s gun.

Reynolds suddenly became talkative and told his sergeant to leave him there since he couldn’t possibly walk or drive. But Barnes just nodded, went to the front door and looked carefully along the silent street. He wasted several precious minutes dragging the dead sentry’s body inside the house, but if a patrol came along he didn’t want the alarm raised if it could be avoided. Dropping the body next to Dahlheim’s, he took a deep breath and began the intricate manoeuvre of hoisting the driver on to his back. Bent double under the great weight, hearing Reynolds’ feet trailing on the floor, he staggered out of the house and wrestled him inside the side-car while his burden protested that the noise of the engine would give them away. Without replying, Barnes went back into the house, switched off the desk light and came out again, closing the door behind Mm.

The starting of the motor-cycle seemed a louder noise than any he had ever heard, but he had made up his mind – he must find a safer place to park Reynolds. The street was still deserted as he drove away from Lemont and reached the outbuildings, cutting the engine quickly and calling out to warn Colburn who emerged from behind a wall with a machine-pistol at the ready. They made Reynolds as comfortable as possible by sitting him on some straw inside one of the buildings – Barnes was determined that this time he would take no wounded crew member on what might be Bert’s final journey. And, he thought grimly, for this journey his crew was now reduced to two – himself and Colburn.

At 3.20 am they were ready to move, but only because they had worked like Trojans. Barnes looked up at Colburn who now occupied his own position inside the turret – the tank commander himself was going to have to drive Bert on his last trip.

‘You really think it will work, Colburn?’

‘It’s more likely to than your idea of firing shells into the dump. That way there’s no guarantee at all that you’ll get a major explosion, but you can bet your sweet life that when this lot goes it’ll -lift the whole dump sky-high – just supposing we ever get close enough and just supposing we don’t go up before we get there. If we do, they won’t have any burial problems with us. Just look down there – this tank is one ruddy great bomb.’

The floor of the turntable at the base of the turret had been tightly packed with gun-cotton slabs and to this lethal foundation Colburn had added a quantity of instantaneous detonating fuses, several cans of petrol, a quantity of phosphorus and some grenades he had found in a satchel. The remaining grenades were still in the satchel hanging from the top of the turret where he could reach them easily. Even closer to hand was the plunger mechanism and a large spool of wire. Colburn pointed to the plunger.

‘And just supposing, Barnes, that we do get a chance to get clear of the tank before this lot goes up…’

‘Don’t bet on that, Colburn.’

‘Hell, I’m not betting on a damned thing. But just supposing you’re on your own then, don’t forget to take the coil of wire as well as the plunger with you. The wire’s paid out through the gun slit so you can ram the lid shut – ramming the lid shut is important because it locks everything inside and increases the power of the explosion quite a bit…’

‘We’ve got to get moving, Colburn.’

‘For Christ’s sake, I know I’m telling you twice but it may save your life. Before you press the plunger you must turn this switch. This device is as harmless as a kitten until you do turn the switch. Come to think of it, Barnes, I reckon we’ve got rather too many "supposings" in this equation.’

‘We’ve also got seventy two-pounder shells and boxes of Besa ammunition to pep up the explosion.’

‘I know. I just hope I’m around when that lot goes up – it will be the crowning blow-up of my career to date. When I say "around" I do mean at the very end of that paid-out wire,’ he added.

‘We’d better get moving, Colburn. I’ve a nasty idea we’re too late already with riddling around with your little toy. You’ll have to handle all the observation and talk to me over the intercom. Think you can manage?’

‘A damn sight better than I’d manage driving Bert. OK. As ‘ the bomber crew guys say, this is the final run-in.’

‘Which is pretty appropriate since it’s a mobile bomb we’ve got for delivery to General Storch.’

Three minutes later the tank was moving through the village at full speed, its headlights ablaze, rumbling down the deserted street like an avenging phantom. It was their only chance, Barnes felt sure of that – to press forward as though they owned the place in the same way that Mandel had described the advance of the Panzers across France. And it was their one advantage – the element of total surprise, an element which must be rammed home ruthlessly right up to the moment when they reached the airfield, if they ever did reach it. The appearance of a tank in the early hours with its lights full on must cause a reaction of doubt, of indecision, for at least a few vital seconds, and in that time Bert should pass any patrol they might encounter. It was all a question of how soon they ran up against the big stuff.

They were moving past the house where Reynolds had saved him, he felt sure of it, although his vision was limited and he was relying heavily on Colburn’s guidance over the intercom. The driver’s seat was closed to its lowest level and the hood over his head was shut, sealing him off from the outside world so that his only view was through the slit window in front. Four inches of bullet-proof glass protected that slit while 70-mm of armour-plate shielded him from shell-fire -the thickest plate covered the front hull – so theoretically he was fairly safe. Unless the tank caught fire and when he rolled back the hood he found the two-pounder barrel pointed straight ahead and depressed to its lowest elevation, in which case the barrel would form a steel bar preventing him from climbing out at all while the tank burned. Cynical drivers said that was why the driver was issued with a revolver – to give him an easier way out than frying alive. Why the hell am I thinking like this, Barnes wondered? Perhaps only now he was really appreciating what poor Reynolds had gone through.

He hoped that if it really came to it, Colburn did know how to use a Mills hand grenade. The Canadian had told him that a British staff sergeant had demonstrated their use on a bombing range and Barnes could imagine Colburn taking a great interest in how the mechanism worked. Still…

‘Barnes,’ Colburn’s voice came clearly over the one-way intercom. ‘We’re approaching a square and from that sketch-map you. drew me we go straight over, but there may be a problem – I can see lights. Keep moving, I’ll keep you in touch.’

Up in the turret Colburn stared anxiously ahead. The lights shone through some trees in an open square surrounded with two-storey houses and the beams were stationary. He couldn’t see any sign of troops, any hint of danger, just those lights coming through the trees. Barnes had told him that as far as he had been able to make out when he reconnoitred the village with Jacques the place had been evacuated of civilians, which would be logical since the Germans were using it as a forward base. They had penetrated as far as the house of Jacques’ father and he had not been at home. So any sign of life was likely to be hostile life. The square, apparently deserted, came closer and Colburn moved from side to side as he tried to see behind the trees. There was something there, then he saw them.

‘Barnes. A couple of motor-cycles and side-cars at the edge of this square. They’ve got lights on but there doesn’t seem to be anyone about…’

Barnes coaxed a little more speed from the engines, staring along his headlight beams which now stretched across the small square to the street beyond. He sat wedged in between the boxes of detonators which were stacked on either side and the proximity of so much explosive wasn’t a comfortable feeling, but he had insisted on loading these spare boxes to increase the power of the bomb. Now he wondered whether he had overdone it. Highly unstable, British detonators, Colburn had said. The Germans used Trotyl, which was far less temperamental. And Colburn was, a man who should know. They were halfway across the square now and subconsciously he was listening for the first sound of Colburn’s voice, because if he spoke now that would mean trouble. The avenue of darkness ahead moved towards him and then they left the square and the beams stabbed along a straight street. Colburn’s voice was tense.

‘They came out just as we left the square – a couple of Germans. They stopped and stared for a few seconds and then ran for one of the bikes.’

Barnes gazed ahead. It was starting already. There was a turning down to the left he had to negotiate soon and that would mean reducing speed a lot, and this was the last moment they should be slowing down if one of those motorcycles was after them. He wished to God that the intercom was two-way, that he could warn Colburn to watch the man in the side-car, the one who would be carrying a machine-pistol. Colburn’s voice again.

‘The cycle is following us down this street. I know there’s a left turn soon but keep up your speed. Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.’

Colburn was really worried. He looked back to where the lights of the oncoming cycle were closing the gap rapidly. He realized the danger to himself perched up in the turret – if the cycle was allowed to come close enough the man in the side-; car would blast his head off with the machine-pistol he had seen him running with. He took one grenade out of the satchel and then he took another, laying the second one behind the plunger box where it couldn’t roll: it wasn’t an action that many would have taken but to Colburn the box was dead until the switch was turned. He also glanced down inside the turret towards the bed of gun-cotton. Don’t drop this little feller down there, he told himself. He had his finger inside the ring-head of the pin now. Get it right, Colburn: allow for the tank’s speed and the onrush of the cycle. And get it good. You’re pitching the ball at Toronto. Removing bomb from pin, he counted. One, two, three, four. He threw. Without waiting his hand whipped over the second grenade, inserting his finger. Withdraw. Count. He had his head down as the first grenade blew only feet in front of the Germans. A hard lethal crack split the street. The flash lit the walls and the cycle climbed, taking the side-car with it, wheels spinning futilely, the side-car ripping away from the cycle. He threw the second one from inside the turret, just to get rid of it now that it was no longer needed, and by the flash of the second bomb he saw a shadowed wreck in the street behind it. Even the lights had gone. He let out his breath and the sound travelled down the intercom to Barnes.

‘Got them.’

Colburn leant back against the turret and wiped sweat off his hands on his flying suit. He had shot men out of the air but this Was different. He had caught a brief glimpse of the man in the side-car pitching out head first towards the ground and he was amazed it was all over so quickly. He had been very frightened for those few minutes, so frightened that he had made a bad mistake in not wiping his hand earlier – that second grenade had nearly slipped, had nearly gone down inside the turret. The very thought of it made him sweat again but now that it was all over he felt enormously relieved, relieved that he was still alive. And this was a mere bagatelle, a single motor-cycle and side-car. What faced them somewhere just ahead would be on a far bigger scale. The headlights played on a distant wall with wording painted on the plaster. Restaurant de la Gare. He spoke quickly into the mike.

‘That building’s coming up – the restaurant place. Prepare to turn left. I’ll guide you.’

Barnes was already reducing speed and he began turning very slowly, bis hands an extension of Colburn’s instructions as they eased Bert round. The turning was sharp and almost at once they moved on to a downward slope of cobbles. He had to crawl round, edging his way as Colburn leaned out of the turret to check wall clearance, talking down the intercom all the time. They nearly scraped the right-hand wall, then they were round the corner, the tank straightening up and proceeding down the cobbled street, its metal tracks grinding and clattering over the stones. That was close, Colburn was thinking, but we managed it nicely between us. He peered along the beams, still savouring the sensation of relief, wondering how Barnes was feeling.

Inside the nose of the tank Barnes was experiencing a rather different sensation – Barnes was in serious trouble and he wondered whether they had a dog’s chance of making it as a chill of fear seeped through him. One of the detonator boxes had broken loose. It had happened on that last bend while he was struggling grimly to negotiate the corner and allow for the drop in street level. They were almost round the turning when he felt a heavy blow strike his right shoulder. Still in the process of taking Bert round the corner he only had time for a quick glance sideways and this showed him the heavy box projecting well beyond the one it rested on, kept stable now only by the obstacle of his own body. As he moved down the hill, the tank wobbling slightly as it rumbled over the cobbles, he tried to ease the box back into position with his shoulder. The action nearly made him jump out of his seat as pain from the maltreated wound screamed through his body, stabbing at his brain. For one terrible second he thought he was going to faint. He bit down on his lips to drive away the dizziness and reopened the cut in his mouth, tasting his own blood for the second time that night. The heavy box was pressing against his shoulder all the time and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it, except to pray that at the next right-hand turn the box would regain its balance. Was he still driving straight? He forced himself to concentrate on the view through the slit window.

‘Barnes, I can see the canal embankment beyond the bottom of this street, so we’re on the right road. And we turn right in a minute.’

Barnes had been waiting for that right-hand turn but he knew that with both hands occupied with the steering levers his shoulder was still going to have to bear the brunt of shoving that box back against the wall. Would he be able to stand the pain; Colburn’s voice again, a voice edged with tension, the sure sign of further trouble.

‘Something coming up… a soldier in a doorway, a sentry, I think. Keep moving at this speed – we’ll have to turn in less than a hundred yards…’

Colburn ducked his head inside the turret and waited, waited for the challenge, the pause, then the first burst of fire from the machine-pistol the sentry held across his chest. His own machine-pistol was gripped in his hands and he looked upward beyond the open rim of the turret. The tank clattered down over the cobbles, the dark silhouette of irregular rooftops slid past beyond the turret rim, cold specks of starlight glittered distantly in the late night sky. The moon was low now and an early morning chill prickled the back of his neck. Still no sound from the sentry. He couldn’t stand it any longer: he peered over the rim. Nothing moved but he thought that he could still see the shadowed figure by the doorway, a motionless figure. It was incredible. Some of his astonishment travelled down the intercom.

‘Barnes, he never moved – he never moved. And we’re in a British tank.’

It worked, Barnes thought, the element of surprise worked there. Perhaps the sentry hadn’t done his homework on tank silhouettes. He might have been posted there from other duties and he was tired out, so when a vehicle came down the streets of German-occupied Lemont with its headlights blazing he assumed that it must be all right. He could even have been asleep on his feet. But the main thing was it had worked once and it could work again. Colburn’s voice spoke urgently.

‘I can see the embankment clearly now – we’re close to the turn. You’ll have to watch this one, it’s narrow. I’ll guide you round…’

Barnes reduced his speed close to zero. He remembered this bend and it was the worst one they would have to negotiate. The route they were following had been so simple that he had known exactly where they were ever since leaving the farm building. Once they had entered the village the way had led straight forward down the first street, across the square, continuing along the street beyond up to the first left-handed turn down the hill. At the bottom of the hill they turned right and then it was straight on again by the side road at the foot of the canal embankment. If they could only manage this corner… They were almost round the sharp turn when it happened. They were moving slowly forward and then there was a terrific jolt and the tank stopped, its engines still ticking over. Barnes had jammed on the brake, warned by the impact and the scraping sound he had heard just before the jarring crash which rammed the detonator box savagely against his shoulder. He struggled against an overwhelming desire to be sick, too shaken to try and thrust the box back while his hands were free. Then he heard Colburn.

‘Track’s jammed against the left wall. Sorry – my fault. We’ll have to get out of here quickly – that-sentry has started to walk down the hill. Reverse slowly. We can’t go forward.’

Inside the hull Barnes heard the harsh grind of metal plate along immovable wall as he reversed carefully. Then the tank stuck. He grimaced and thought for a few seconds. If they weren’t very lucky he could immobilize them. He remembered once seeing a track split and come apart, so that the tank hull moved for a few yards while it splayed out track like unrolling a metal carpet. If that happened they were done for, and there was that little matter of the sentry coming down the hill to investigate. They couldn’t go forward so they’d have-to go back. Gritting his teeth, he reversed, hearing, feeling, the agonized grind of metal over stone. Then they were free again. And still intact. Colburn guided him round without haste and then they were moving along the next street, the headlights probing its emptiness and desolation. Barnes glanced at his watch, the one he had borrowed from Colburn. 3.30 am.

Up in the turret Colburn put the revolver back on the ledge next to the plunger box and wiped both his hands dry. The revolver had seemed a more appropriate weapon for one sentry. Taking a last look back at the dangerous corner he concentrated on observing the view ahead, issuing occasional instructions to keep Barnes in the dead centre of the street, his mind chilled. On his right a row of two-storey houses ran down the side of the street as a continuous wall, the upper-floor windows just above the level of his turret. To his left ran the high embankment of the unseen canal, a steep-sloped embankment at least twenty feet high which closed off the view across open fields. Ahead lay the street, a canyon of shadow, apparently deserted, the forward movement of the beams exposing only empty road. It seemed quite uncanny and as the tank ground forward Colburn found his nerves screwing up to an almost unbearable pitch of tension. Within the next few minutes they were bound to run into something very big.

Barnes was experiencing the same emotion, as far as he could experience anything beyond the mounting pain which gripped bis whole body. The tenderness of the shoulder wound was almost unendurable now as the side of the detonator box sagged against him, a relentless pain which should have obscured all others, but he could still feel the aching bruise on top of bis head where the German sentry had knocked him out and the back of his burnt left hand felt strangely disembodied, as though it might float off the end of his arm. And over it all flooded a tidal wave of fatigue which threatened to drown his mind, a wave held back more by pain than by any effort of will.

Another part of his mind mechanically operated the steering levers and the two control pedals – the gear-box clutch pedal on the left and the accelerator on the right. There was a hill in front of them, a hill which rose almost level with the embankment then a steady drop with a side turning off to the right, then another hill beyond that…

Colburn’s voice was taut. ‘We’re running alongside the canal embankment now – there’s a line of houses on the right. Still no sign of trouble.’

Which was exactly how Barnes was visualizing it. Had they got away with it? Already they were driving along this road at the very edge of Lemont – the village ended abruptly at the embankment and beyond there was open country. Jacques had told him that it was very much of a side road, which was why they had reconnoitred along this route. And now they had left behind what Barnes had anticipated might well be the grimmest part of their journey – the dash through the village. What lay ahead didn’t bear thinking about but it almost looked as though they might reach the airfield. In his mind’s eye he saw the lie of the land ahead. They had come in one way, along this road to the empty house of Jacques’ father, and then for safety’s sake they had come back across the fields on the far side of the embankment… He heard the shot, one single report. Then another.

Colburn had been striving to watch all ways at once – the road ahead, the road behind, the line of two-storey houses to his right and the silhouette of the high embankment which showed more clearly now against a faint glow. Dawn was on the way. He looked for his watch and remembered that he had loaned it to Barnes. The line of the embankment was dropping now as they began to move uphill. He knew that soon he would be able to see across it and he kept reminding himself to keep a sharp eye on those houses. There was no reason to suspect any danger from their darkened windows but they worried him because they were so close and the upper windows looked down on the tank. He picked up the revolver and the weapon gave him a sense of security.

The emergency happened so unexpectedly that it almost took his breath away. A window on an upper floor was flung open and the curtain must have been attached to it: a pool of light flooded out and illuminated the tank below. Colburn looked up and saw a German soldier, his pudding-shaped helmet clearly visible, staring down. He heard him shout, saw him reach back into the room and then lift a machine-pistol. Colburn reacted instantly, raising his revolver, he fired twice. As the tank moved on the German toppled into the garden below.

‘Barnes, a Jerry opened a window and spotted us. He was going to shoot but I got in first.’ Colburn wished that the damned intercom wasn’t simply one-way. It was like talking to a ghost. ‘If they’ve got a phone in the house they’ll be all over us soon now. Unless he was alone with a girl. He had his helmet on,’ he added with unconscious humour.

Barnes thought of the joke and smiled grimly. He hoped that the German had been with a girl: if that were the case she’d probably try and get a neighbour to dump the body into the convenient canal. Not that it was likely if the village had been evacuated, so they’d better assume a warning was going out. They must be close to the top of this hill now, and close to where he had crossed the canal with Jacques over that huge barge. Was there something wrong? He could have sworn he had heard Colburn suck in his breath. Colburn had sucked in his breath and now he was no longer looking at the houses or at the embankment. He was gazing straight ahead and as they moved over the hill-top his mouth was dry with fear such as he had not known since they started their fateful journey through Lemont.

From his vantage point at the hill crest he could see over the summit of the hill beyond where a chain of headlights moved towards him, an endless chain which threw up a great glow of light behind the next hill summit. He had no doubt at all that he was looking at a column of armoured vehicles advancing down the road they were moving along, probably a column sent for the express purpose of intercepting them. My God, he thought, and I was kidding myself up that we might have got away with it. We’re finished now, finished.

‘Barnes! There’s a whole stream of traffic on the road ahead. It’s still some distance off but it’s coming towards us and we’ll meet it in the next few minutes. They’re on-to us – it must be Panzers, a helluva lot of them.’

Barnes’ reaction staggered him. He felt the tank pick up speed as it moved down the hill, the tracks grinding round "faster and faster as they rumbled forward at ever-increasing pace as though Barnes couldn’t wait to meet the oncoming column in head-on collision. For a moment he thought he had gone mad and then they reached the bottom of the hill and stopped. The headlights went out and Barnes rolled back the hood. He paused for a second while he heaved the detonator box back into position, using both hands to push the case firmly against the side of the hull. Then he jacked up the seat so that when he sat down his head would be above the hatch. He called up to the anxious Colburn.

‘How far away are those vehicles?’

‘Half a mile, I’d guess. I can’t be certain.’

‘Maybe only a quarter?’

‘No, at least half a mile. Barnes, our lights have gone.’

‘I put them out. I don’t want to risk them seeing us go up the embankment.’

‘Up there?’

Colburn stared in horror up the steep slope which rose twenty feet above them. Had Barnes lost his judgement? He must have decided to make a last stand from the top of the embankment, if they ever got up there. He couldn’t have realized the strength of the column which was moving against them. He called down from the turret.

‘There must be at least twenty or thirty vehicles heading towards us.’

‘Listen, Colburn.’ Barnes’ voice was urgent. ‘We’re not going to fight them – we’re trying to dodge them. I came back over this canal with Jacques dead opposite this road behind us which leads back into Lemont. We came over a huge barge with a deck like an aircraft carrier – it almost fills the canal. We’re going to reverse into this side street until Bert’s nose is pointed up that embankment – then up there is where we go.’

‘Will the tank make it?’

‘I don’t know till we try it but it’s our only chance. It’s close to dawn, so if we don’t make it now we never will. When we reach the top there’ll he a split second for you to see whether we’re driving on to the centre of the barge. I’ll be ready to brake, but I can’t do that till we’re off the slope. You’ll have to react damned quickly. Got it?’

‘If it’s OK to go on, I’ll say OK. If it isn’t I’ll say stop.’

The side road which led off at right-angles to the embankment was wide enough to give ample room for Barnes to reverse into quickly. Then he paused briefly to flex his fingers. Without thinking about the chances against success he went forward, guessing that Colburn thought it was a maniac’s last throw, and up in the turret confidence was the last of the emotions which inspired Colburn. He would have liked to look two ways at once – up to the bill crest behind which the armoured column was advancing and straight ahead where the slope loomed like the side of a mountain. Beneath him the tracks began to claw and grind up the gradient as though finding it difficult to hold on to the lower slope and Colburn found himself tilted backwards against the rear of the turret. Barnes seemed to be going up at a fantastic pace. Supposing the barge wasn’t in the right position to act as a bridge? Supposing the enemy column poured over the hill crest when they were halfway up the embankment? Grimly he recalled his remark to Barnes just before they had started out. Were there, after all, too many ‘supposings’ in this equation? I don’t think we’ll make this one, Colburn told himself.

Barnes had decided, and now he never asked himself whether or not they could make it. His pain-battered mind was concentrated on one idea only – get Bert over the top. Because the tilt of the tank was longitudinal rather than sideways the detonator boxes were holding their position well, but could they stand up to this sort of treatment? The tank rocked badly as the forward tracks moved into a depression and then climbed out of it, the engines revving madly as Barnes fought to take the tank higher. Very unstable, Colburn had called British detonators, the Germans use Trotyl. The left-hand track sank alarmingly into another depression and the box slipped again, slamming hard against his shoulder, grating its weight into the sensitive wound. He stiffened abruptly, swearing that he would throw out that box if they ever reached the other side, and, knowing that he was approaching the summit, he accelerated.

Colburn was standing upright in the turret now, holding himself erect by grasping the front rim with both hands, because it was vital to see instantly whether they were correctly placed to move across that barge, a barge he couldn’t even see yet. But he felt the acceleration and knew that Barnes was going to rush it. Anxiously he leaned farther forward. They reached the top.

‘OK, Barnes! OK! OK!’

There it was – the barge. They were going to hit it dead centre. The tank paused, its forward tracks in the air briefly, then dropped level to the tow-path. It moved forward again across a few inches of water and landed in the middle of the flat deck. The barge shuddered under the impact of its immense visitor and the tank moved on until it was halfway across the deck. Then the engines stalled.

Colburn forced himself to say nothing. They were now trapped on top of the embankment in full view of the approaching column once it breasted the summit of the hill. He heard Barnes trying again and again to start the engine. Instinctively his eyes swept over the summit of the hill behind which the column was advancing. Nothing yet, but the front of the column must be very close now. He could imagine the scene so clearly – the first heavy tank cresting the hill, spotting them clearly silhouetted against the pale light, wirelessing back to the column, continuing down the hill as more vehicles followed, the barrage of shells aimed point-blank… He found he was holding his revolver tightly and forced himself to relax his grip. His eyes rested on the plunger below him and then he looked again at the glow of light behind the hill, a glow which seemed to grow stronger every second as Barnes repeated his efforts to start the engines without success. Colburn glanced back the way they had come and the street was still deserted.

Who had summoned the armoured column? Probably the owners of the second motor-cycle and side-car in the square they had crossed. Then the engines fired, the tank jerked forward, left the barge and plunged down the far slope at speed. At the bottom Barnes turned in a wide curve and halted the tank facing along the canal. He switched off the engines, rolled back the hood and climbed out quickly.

‘I thought we’d stall at the top,’ he remarked. ‘No sign of that column? Good. Colburn, could you come down and give me a hand to dump this bloody box?’

He checked his watch. 3.40 am. Twenty minutes to zero hour.

The field below the embankment was firm hard earth and there were no hidden quagmires to hold up their advance, although not so far off to the left was a vague glimmer of flooded areas. The tank rumbled forward as Barnes gazed through the slit window from his lowered seat, following the same course he had taken when he had returned from the reconnaissance with Jacques. The next twenty minutes would decide the whole issue, would decide whether the 14th Panzer Division would advance across the waterline to spring on an unsuspecting Dunkirk, or whether they could muddle things so drastically that the Panzers would be delayed, perhaps fatally. Colburn was talking now.

‘I think I can see the archway under the embankment.’ That archway was the end of the line, a phrase Colburn had spoken just before Barnes had set off on the reconnaissance which had deprived them of Reynolds, but without that reconnaissance they would never have reached this point. Through the archway lay an open field with the aerodrome beyond – the site of a huge ammunition dump and the laager of the waiting Panzers. Tight-lipped, Barnes peered through the slit window as the tank rolled forward in the early morning light.

He found that he had increased speed without realizing it and he wondered about that archway. Would it be wide enough? He had paced out its width, immediately thinking of Bert when he had crept under it with Jacques, and he had estimated that in an emergency they should just be able to manage it. They had to manage it – the archway was the only means of approaching the target from this side of the canal. The growing light was apparent even through his narrow window and he prayed that the defences had not been reinforced since they had left the place, but there was always the chance that the Germans would confidently rely on the heavy column they had sent along the road to investigate the intruders. He wondered how Colburn was feeling, knowing that these might be his last few minutes of life.

In the turret Colburn kept looking to the east where the pale glow of dawn was spreading across the horizon. If they had been half an hour later they would never have passed through the village successfully – and even if they had got through the 14th Panzer Division would already have been on the move. Would they really manage it? He glanced down at the plunger again with a feeling of wonderment, suddenly conscious of the fact that he might be dead within the hour, or sooner. It was an odd sensation and involuntarily he shivered. There was a sharp chill in the air now and white mist was rising off the fields. He had seen the same mist rising off the early morning fields near Manston. Then he saw the archway clearly and Manston faded.

The archway looked far too narrow to allow the passage of the tank, its stone walls so close together that Colburn thought they could let through nothing larger than a farm wagon. A feeling of bitter disappointment swept through him – they were going to be stopped at the last moment because of a single archway. There was no question of driving the tank up the embankment a second time – the slope here was even more steeply-angled, to say nothing of the fact that if they reached the top their advance would be stopped by the canal itself. A sense of overwhelming frustration was in his voice when he spoke.

‘Barnes, this archway’s too narrow to get through – I’m sure of it.’

The tank ground forward, moving away from the embankment in a wide semi-circle until Barnes had brought it into a position where it directly faced the arch, and now he could see that the field beyond was shrouded in mist, masking their approach from the Germans. Colburn gave up protesting and leaned far out as he guided Barnes forward every inch of the way, his gaze switching backwards and forwards between the incredibly narrow arch and the forward tracks. The ground was very uneven at this point and Barnes found it difficult to follow the Canadian’s instructions precisely. He was close to the archway when Colburn called out urgently for him to halt: he was too far over to the right. He reversed some distance and changed his angle of direction a fraction, moving forward at a crawl, his eyes straining to see more clearly, forcing himself not to look at the wristwatch which was ticking away vital minutes. They must get through this time. The dark archway crept towards him and now the light beyond was stronger, illuminating the semi-circle clearly. It was almost daylight now. The front hull moved inside. Suddenly there was a jarring sound, the screech of steel grating along stonework. The tank shuddered violently through the length of its hull and then stopped abruptly as Barnes braked. Perhaps it was useless. This could be one obstacle they might never overcome, not even in broad daylight. He rolled back the hood and from above him a torch beam flashed along the wall.

The vicious clash of steel against stone had frightened Colburn and now he tried to estimate the position by the light of his beam. They had driven into the left-hand wall, of course. In their anxiety not to repeat their earlier mistake they had erred too far in the opposite direction, but was the manoeuvre even possible? He flashed the torch on the other side and the light penetrated a gap between tank and wall, a gap no more than six inches wide, if that. So theoretically it was possible, but with such a narrow clearance they would be extraordinarily lucky to pass clear through the archway in this light. He called down direct to Barnes.

‘Six inches’ clearance on the other side. Six inches maximum, maybe less.’

‘Then we can do it, providing nothing gives when I reverse.’

‘It’ll take a miracle.’

‘Maybe we’re entitled to one.’

For the second time Barnes went into reverse, handling the controls with a concentration he had probably never equalled before, hearing the metal scraping harshly against the wall every inch of the way. But they were moving. The tearing sound petered out following the painful withdrawal, his heart in his mouth until he saw that they were clear of the imprisoning arch once more. They had to manage it this time. Colburn guided Barnes back a short distance and then gave no further instructions. The change of direction required was so fine that unless Barnes could feel what was needed they would end up smashing into the other wall.

Gripping the rim he saw the arch corning towards him again, his torch shining on the right-hand side now to make sure that Barnes hadn’t overdone it again. He ignored the other wall completely, knowing that if they could move through with the right-hand track barely scraping the wall they should be able to make it. So great was his concentration on the wall that Colburn nearly died at that moment. Just in time he remembered the solid stone arch coming towards his head: he dived down inside the turret and something brushed the crown of his head, and as he went down a fresh fear darted into his mind – would the turret go under the arch? He reached up a hand and felt his fingers graze stonework as the tank rumbled forward. They were almost through when their nerve ends were seared again as the familiar grinding noise started. The tank increased speed and they were out in the open, driving across the field in a weird early morning half-glow mingled with white mist.

Barnes halted the tank briefly, switched off the engines, and stood up to listen. The vaporous fog bank was dispersing and beyond it he detected a staccato mutter which sounded like the power-drills of a tank repair shop, and beyond that he was damned sure he could hear the mechanical grumble of Panzers on the move. With a bit of luck these two background noises might help to conceal Bert’s approach until the very last moment. And now he looked at his watch. 3.48 am. Twelve minutes to the Panzer attack.

‘The mist’s clearing,’ said Colburn quietly. ‘I can just see the ammunition hangar. I’ll stick it out up here until we get close and then I’ll pop downstairs and observe through the periscope.’

‘If you don’t, you’ll be dead mutton.’

‘And I’ll use the Besa when the time comes – machine guns are my forte. The mist’s clearing rapidly. That hangar is dead ahead. Good luck, Barnes. Advance!’

‘Thanks for coming, Colburn. Thanks a lot.’ It sounded trite, horribly trite, but he felt he must say something at this moment. Sitting down again, he closed the hood.

The tank moved forward rapidly over the level ground, brushing mist trails aside, picking up more speed every second. Colburn felt chilled to the bone, scared stiff of what was coming, but he looked curiously at the high bank which rose immediately behind the rear of the hangar. The houses behind the ridge were a faint silhouette of rooftops in the early morning light. It was from this ridge that Barnes and Jacques had looked down on the airfield, from here they had seen the sinister huddles of tanks which comprised the armoured striking force of the Panzer division which General Storch was about to hurl against Dunkirk. Ahead he could see the outer defences of the tank laager, a screen of barbed wire hastily thrown up to cordon off the airfield, and as the pale glow of the coming day increased he saw beyond the hangar a score or more of low dark shapes. His heart thumped when he saw them. Heavy tanks of the 14th Panzer Division. The laager was in view.

Quickly he gave Barnes an instruction to veer on to a fresh course which would head him straight for the entrance to the hangar which they were approaching,broadside on. As to going below and watching through the periscope, that would be useless: he’d have to stay in the turret to keep the perfect observation they needed. He lifted his machine-pistol. As they approached the line of barbed wire Colburn almost forgot the holocaust which must await them; there was so much to see, to note. An armoured car parked close to the hangar, the outline of another vehicle which seemed familiar, signs of movement over to the left behind the mist. He recognized the vehicle now – a giant transporter with a tank on its deck. It was then that he saw the first Germans – small figures on the deck working by the light of shaded lamps. His hands tightened on the machine-pistol as the tank rumbled closer and closer. Surely those men must have seen them, must have heard them coming? But as he watched he saw a violet glow and sparks flashed strangely in the mist. They were using welding equipment and the sound of their tools had smothered the sound of Bert’s engines. Still there was no indication that they had been spotted and the line of wire was very close now, coils of mist like gun-smoke floating behind the tangled network.

It was pure luck that he turned his head in the right direction and saw movement low down on the ground just beyond the wire, fifty yards away to the right. In the deceptive light he made out a square shield, the profile of a long barrel, a barrel which was swivelling. The barrel of the field piece was traversing as though it had not yet locked onto its target. Scrambling down inside the fighting compartment he jammed himself into the gunner’s seat, hugging the shoulder-grip, his hand grasping the traverse lever. The compartment rotated too fast and too far, so he had to bring it round again, his eye glued to the telescopic sight. The range was point blank, for field piece as well as for two-pounder. He had to get his shot in first. The cross-wires locked on to the shield smudge as he depressed the barrel a few degrees. He squeezed the trigger and the tank bucked under the impact of the recoil. God! The explosives! He waited for the tank to disintegrate but it was still grinding forward. He traversed to find the target and saw a cloud of white smoke replacing the white mist swirls. Dead on target. Climbing back up into the turret he looked round quickly. The tank had reached the wire and then the scratching noises began as it threshed over the coils. The field piece had vanished inside the smoke and from now on it all became a kaleidoscope, for Colburn as he went on speaking to Barnes automatically, guiding him towards the hangar entrance.

Men had appeared from nowhere, running towards the stationary armoured car. Colburn realized the danger at once and he raised his machine-pistol and took careful aim. As his finger pulled firmly on the trigger he swivelled the gun. He swivelled from a point close to the armoured car outwards, so that his hail of bullets cut them down before they could reach the vehicle, bringing down three men while a fourth man ran straight into the fusillade, stopping suddenly in mid-stride as he flung up his arms and fell to the ground. As Colburn inserted a fresh magazine he gave a direction change. The tank was still moving forward, passing within inches of the steel-plated sides of the armoured car, its nose pointed towards a machine gun which had just been manned by a soldier who had darted out from the shadow of the hangar. Colburn ducked, hearing bullets spatter the sides of the turret, and the tank accelerated, its steel bulk thrust forward and driving over man and gun, crushing flesh and metal under its pulverizing tracks.

Their course was now taking them close to the tank transporter and Colburn remembered the men who had worked on it. Pressing the trigger, he swept the deck with a semi-circle of fire, seeing men falling over the side. He heard a brief burst of answering fire before another German fell forward after his machine-pistol had dropped under the tank’s tracks. Colburn knew that he had been hit in the left shoulder, which had suddenly gone numb. He also realized that he had emptied his magazine as a capless figure in overalls came out from behind the tank and jumped from the deck on to Bert’s hull. Dropping his machine-pistol on to the ledge he grabbed his revolver as the overalled figure lifted something he held in his hand – a spanner? – Colburn never knew as he raised his revolver and shot the German once in the face, saw him topple backwards and fall under the tracks which ground forward over him. He spoke breathlessly into the mike.

‘We’re almost there. Keep straight on…’

It was the tanks which worried Barnes. His own kind. He knew what they were capable of. They had to reach the hangar entrance before the Germans brought up heavy tanks. Without a loader-operator to re-load the two-pounder Colburn would never stand a chance against them, even supposing he could hit one of them if he tried. Down in the tank nose Barnes never knew about the smashed field piece. He was concentrating on keeping going. The element of surprise. Ram it down their bloody throats till the end. He thought they must be pretty close now, close to General Heinrich Storch. Colburn was coping well. He could hear machine-gun bullets ricocheting off the hull now, angry metal bees glancing harmlessly off the armour-plate. Sweat streamed off his face and hands but the pain had receded as his nerves strung up to fever pitch took over for one last effort. They’d almost made it. If they were hit with a shell which penetrated, this lot round him would blow and it ought to take the dump up with it, but he’d like to be certain, absolutely certain. He wanted Bert in the mouth of that hangar. Through the slit window he saw men coming round the end of the building, but had Colburn seen them? Colburn had seen them. With great difficulty he had inserted a fresh magazine and now he was slumped forward over the turret, the machine-pistol crooked under his right armpit, his right hand curled round the trigger as he lifted the muzzle high. It was like lifting a cannon and the tank seemed to be rocking strangely like a ship in a choppy sea. His left shoulder was beginning to ache now, a thudding ache which affected his whole body as though it were being plucked like an immense violin string.

He managed it, he lifted the gun higher and squeezed hard, vibrating the muzzle madly from side to side as he sprayed it wildly over the running group of men. They collapsed in a heap, too closely bunched together to spread out in time, only one man firing a few random shots, so random that they missed even the tank which was bearing down on them non-stop. Colburn’s finger relaxed on the trigger and he slumped forward over the turret rim, still holding on to the pistol, the weapon now held up between his chest and the rim.

Colburn was still hanging on desperately to consciousness when Barnes reached the end of the hangar, braked his right-hand track, carrying the tank round on the left-hand track, advancing several yards again and then stopping in the mouth of the open hangar. Colburn was vaguely aware that they had arrived and he lifted his head, catching a brief glimpse of the shell dump, of great stacks of wooden boxes. Then his eyes switched to the next hangar corner which he instinctively felt to be the danger point. A group of helmeted figures ran recklessly round the corner and he operated the gun with one arm and one hand, swivelling the muzzle as he poured out a hail of bullets at point-blank range into the compact mass of running bodies. It became a muddle and a massacre, the front men falling, the ones behind tripping over their bodies and dying in the subsequent rain of fire. Then his magazine was empty and he knew that he could never re-load. Beyond the inert bodies he could see a squat dark shape moving from the laager towards him. He whispered down the mike.

‘Tank coming… don’t forget… close lid.’

Looking sideways, he stared dazedly beyond the open doors of the hangar into the vast stockpile of shells and ammunition, his last sight before a German soldier hidden behind a pile of crates aimed his rifle and fired once, killing Colburn instantly. The machine-pistol fell and narrowly missed Barnes who was beginning to emerge from the hatch, his revolver in his hand. He looked quickly towards the corner where the huddle of Germans lay and then switched his gaze to the inside of,the hangar. His revolver jerked up and he fired twice. The German with the half-aimed rifle collapsed behind the crates. Jumping to the ground, Barnes ran round the back of the tank, climbed on to the hull, took a quick glance at Colburn and went down inside the turret. The Canadian who had just come over for die afternoon had been shot through the temple.

Settling himself into the gunner’s seat, he remembered that the two-pounder wasn’t loaded. Cursing, he stood up, flopping in a fresh round with sufficient force to make the breech-block close, settled himself again and traversed the turret. Using the shoulder-grip, he elevated the barrel several degrees. The German tank came-up behind the cross-wires, crawling forward like a huge dark beetle, a silhouette he had seen so many times in the past battle-scarred fortnight.

He squeezed the trigger and Bert shuddered under the spasm. The shot reached the target, the German tank stopped, flames flaring over the superstructure. Bert had just killed his first German tank. Barnes climbed back into the turret and looked at the plunger. It was extraordinarily quiet all of a sudden. Without thinking about it he gripped the handle firmly, paused, then pressed down.

Nothing happened. He had forgotten the switch. He lifted his head above the rim and looked round the airfield. The burning tank was well ablaze now but he couldn’t see any sign of Germans. Again without thinking about it he picked up the plunger-box and the spool of wire. Climbing down on to the hull, he closed the lid and dropped to the ground, paying out the wire which led back inside the gun slit. Peering round the corner of the hanger along the side they had come he saw no sign of life. He began to walk rapidly back under the hangar wall, paying out wire from the spool, going past the Germans Colburn had killed, past the tank transporter where an arc welding torch lay on the deck, still spitting out a spray of sparks. Feeding out the wire behind him close to the wall, he kept on walking like a robot, wondering whether the wire would last out.

To his exhausted, pain-racked mind the act of forgetting to turn the switch had seemed a sign, a sign that he might just survive if he refused to give up. He reached the end of the hanger and found that the area between the rear wall and the high bank was deserted. Still paying out wire, he crossed the concrete strip and began to climb the slope, the same slope from which he had looked down on the airfield with Jacques before they had made a detour round the airfield to the point where Barnes had seen inside the open hangar mouth with his field-glasses. He had almost reached the top of the slope when he heard trucks arriving on the concrete strip below him. He flopped on the slope, still holding the box, and lay perfectly still, his head turned sideways. Soldiers were spilling out of the trucks and forming up into two sections, then one section made its way down one side of the hangar while the second section followed the officer along the other side. Barnes climbed over the top of the ridge and staggered down inside a huge bomb crater close to the houses. Sitting down on the floor he looked at his watch, Colburn’s watch, stared up at the pale sky he might never see again, turned the switch and pressed the plunger. At 3.58 am the world blew apart.

The initial explosion came in two shock waves which blew away from Lemont straight across the laagar – the detonation of the tank-bomb followed almost at once by the subsequent blowing of the immense dump, which was then succeeded by fire which created a chain reaction of exploding ammunition. The first two shock waves swept over the laager like a tidal wave of destruction, caving in the tank walls like paper. Beyond the laager the shock waves smashed in the walls of the farm which housed German headquarters, and when Meyer, blood streaming from his forehead, staggered into his general’s office he found Storch lying across the floor, his skull crushed under a rafter which had fallen from the ceiling, one clawed hand stretched out towards the telephone which lay in a heap of plaster. Reaching down for the phone, Meyer sank to his knees, picked up the receiver and found that the field telephone had survived. He asked for Keller. He knew exactly what he must do – he must retrieve the situation from the disaster he had always feared since that day so long ago when they had crossed the Sedan pontoons. He had already heard the report that British tanks were moving up through Lemont to attack their rear and a column had been dispatched to intercept them without success. What Meyer had dreaded had now happened – the enemy had counter-attacked. The tremendous explosion which had just killed Storch was the final confirmation : there were no enemy planes reported so the British must have heavy artillery which had blown up the dump. He heard a voice speaking and broke in.

‘Keller, this is Meyer. General Storch is dead. The British are attacking from the south – yes, the south. Cancel the order for the advance on Dunkirk immediately. Do you understand? You have the waterline at your backs so now you must…’

Halfway through the conversation the line went dead, but Meyer was satisfied that Keller had grasped his order. From the tank laager there was now a series of explosions of increasing violence and for the first time Meyer had the terrible thought that he might be wrong. He could hear planes now, planes flying low overhead, and the ack-ack guns had opened up. With a curse he left the wrecked office and ran out into the garden. He heard the whistle of the bomb coming down and turned to run, just in time to receive the relics of the farmhouse full in his face as the bomb scored a direct hit.

At exactly 3.55 am Squadron Leader Paddy Browne was approaching the coast of France, leading his Blenheims on a dawn raid. His instructions gave him unusual latitude, but then the situation was, to say the least of it, unusual. Evacuation of the BEF imminent, the German Panzers lording it over the battlefield, the position changing almost from minute to minute. ‘Fluid,’ as the war communiques would say. His primary objective was the key rail junction at Arras, but if he saw enemy ground forces and could positively identify them, the choice of target was left to his discretion. ‘But for Pete’s sake, don’t paste our own chaps,’ the briefing officer had added.

Browne wasn’t particularly concerned with the Gravelines-Lemont area, but as he led his squadron over the coast his attention was drawn to it by a huge mushroom of smoke rising into the early morning sky, a mushroom which rose higher every second as though the whole of that corner of France were detonating. We’d better have a quick look, thought Browne, so he signalled to the squadron and took his Blenheim down. Two factors quickly convinced him that this lot was the other lot -he met flak at once and his keen eye saw beetles scuttling about on the ground as though they had gone mad. He could hardly believe it for a moment but he believed it the next moment. Hun tanks —a whole laager of them. Browne exercised his discretion: he gave the order to bomb. An avalanche of high-explosive rained down and when the squadron turned away there was no sign of movement anywhere between the breaks in the smoke pall. Browne’s only comment on the way back was typical.

‘Good of them to send up a smoke signal.’

Lieutenant Jean Durand of the 14th French Chasseurs found it difficult to believe his eyes as he focused his glasses across the flooded zone. His unit was charged with the defence of this forward sector of the Dunkirk perimeter and so far it had been a quiet morning, but then this is what he had expected because how could Panzers advance across water? And, Durand asked himself, how can this idiot advance across water? Speaking into the field telephone, he asked the British liaison officer to come at once. This was a sight which must be shared.

The lone figure on the bicycle was crouched low over his machine as though he could hardly stay on it, but still he cycled steadily across the sheet of water, never once looking up, as though he knew the way by heart. Barnes had to ride in that fashion because it was the only way he could see the road surface under six inches of water. His pedalling motion had long since become mechanical, a movement which had no relation to thought. In fact, he had now reached the stage where he hadn’t looked up for some time and he had no idea he was so close to the Allied lines.

The British liaison officer, Lieutenant Miller, had now joined his colleague and his eyes narrowed behind the field-glasses as he recognized the uniform. Apart from the fact that the cyclist could cross water, this sudden arrival of another apparition was not a complete surprise to Miller because in the present state of the battlefield men kept stumbling into the perimeter with increasing frequency. A dog’s breakfast, that’s what it is, Miller told himself. All over the bloody shop.

The cyclist was within a hundred yards of where they stood when there was almost a disaster. Unknown to either Durand or Miller, because they had been unaware of the road’s existence, and unknown to Barnes because he hadn’t been this way before, the road suddenly dipped and before he knew what was happening he was cycling up to his chest in water, and then he fell off. They dragged him out spluttering and choking, holding him up between them until they reached dry land where they laid him out on the grass. Barnes was desperately trying to say something and in spite of Miller’s attempt to restrain him he burst out with it.

‘Road goes all the way… all the way to Lemont… Jerry Panzers.’

‘Got it,’ said Miller. ‘Not to worry. Hospital for you, my lad.’

Barnes spent two days at the Dunkirk field station for the seriously wounded although he kept trying to tell them that he was only seriously exhausted. In spite of his efforts to leave they refused to listen to him, so he waited his opportunity until the ward was empty of staff and then he crept out behind the hospital still in his pyjamas, his bundle of clothes under his arm. It took him half an hour to dress himself behind the hanging wall of a bombed house, and when he reached the beaches he made a tremendous effort to walk upright as though there were nothing wrong with him. He was still only vaguely aware that a total evacuation was taking place and he was frightened that they might not take him if he didn’t look fit.

Afterwards he could only recall the journey as a blur, like a film run too quickly through the projector. The endless wait on the beaches, the sand coughing up as bombs fell, the crowded boat which threatened to sink under the great weight of men who sat shoulder to shoulder, the incredible calm of the Channel as they crossed to England under bombardment and in a blaze of sunshine. Then Dover. Dover was the same thing all over again. A tremendous muddle, hundreds of men moving off in trains with hardly any supervision so far as he could see.

He waited alone for long hours, searching the sea of faces so intently that eventually he feared he was incapable of seeing what he was looking for. Twice he had persuaded a military policeman to let him wait a little longer and he was on the point of giving up when his heart jumped. Three soldiers were helping a fourth along the platform to a waiting train and he recognized the stoop of the broad shoulders, the tilt of the head of the limping man who was being helped. Reynolds! He could hardly believe it as he ran forward and when the three men saw his stripes they left the driver in his care and wearily climbed aboard the train. Reynolds managed a faint grin, leaning on his stick.

‘Those three Jocks found me outside Lemont – we helped ourselves to one of the fifteen-hundredweight trucks. I woke up as they drove inside the Dunkirk perimeter.’

They were boarding the densely packed train when the military policeman questioned Barnes for the third time, inquiring his destination.

‘Colchester,’ Barnes replied.

Colchester was his base depot. Barnes now had one fixed idea in mind. He had to get a new tank.