Tramp in Armour

TWO Saturday, May 18th

Something very strange had happened to the world in this part of Belgium. The war had gone away.

Before they drove the tank out of the tunnel, up the rubble slope, and down the other side, Barnes had made a personal reconnaissance in the brilliant warmth of early evening. The first thing that struck him was the incredible silence, a silence which was intensified by the only sound, the peaceful twittering of an unseen bird. Beyond the tunnel the railway stretched away across open country, the track empty, the green fields deserted, not a sign of life anywhere. Etreux, or what was left of it, must have petered out farther along the hillside, because over to his right there were no buildings, no people. Only the still waters of the broad canal which barred their easy way back to Etreux.

He found the silence, the absence of gunfire, so disturbing that he climbed a little way up the hillside above the wrecked tunnel entrance, but still he heard nothing, saw nothing. The war had gone far away – to where? And which way? He sat down for a moment on the grass, his nerves strangely on edge as though the peaceful landscape were full of sinister meaning. He sat there blinking against the strong sunlight, drinking in the fresh air, then he got up quickly, went back to the tank, and gave the order to advance.

There had been no question of burying Davis, for Davis was already buried under a ton of rock, so they wrote his name, rank, and number on a piece of paper and left this under a rock close to the head. Then they drove away, too exhausted to feel much emotion other than shock at the suddenness of the gunner’s death. The thought uppermost in Barnes’ mind now was that his crew was reduced from four to three. They were all capable of firing the guns in an emergency and he told Perm that when the need arose he would act as gunner. As they moved along the rail track Barnes stood in the turret, map in hand, and his mind weighed up the situation grimly. At least they had almost full fuel tanks, which meant that they could travel one hundred and fifty miles along the roads, a distance which would be reduced by fifty per cent once they began moving across country, but this was the only credit point he. could muster. One crew member short, the wireless out of action, no knowledge of where Parker might be: they almost resembled a warship sailing into uncharted seas with no means of communicating with its base. Half his mind pondered the dubious likelihood of rejoining his troop while the other half toyed with the glimmer of an idea which was to grow. Whatever happened, they must find a really worthwhile objective.

A mile from the tunnel the track reached a level crossing and it was at this point where they turned off the railway line and began to move along a second-class road which ran between low hedges bordering fields of poor grassland. Six miles farther on they should turn right along a road which would take them into the rear area behind Etreux. But where were the armies?

Standing upright in the turret Barnes strained his ears for sounds of gunfire, strained his eyes for sight of smoke or planes. The fields stretched away, empty; the sky, a vault of pale blue, stretched away uninhabited. The uncanny feeling grew, a feeling of men moving into unexplored territory. The tank tracks ground forward at top speed, the engines throbbed with power, as though determined to enjoy to the full this race across open country after the confinement inside the tunnel, and then Barnes saw the first traces of battle – the faint marks of tank tracks in the fields, the occasional crater where a shell or bomb had exploded, and as they proceeded along the deserted road the traces became more frequent, less reassuring. At one point Barnes ordered Reynolds to halt while he got down to’examine wrecked vehicles by the roadside. They were~ burnt-out tanks, five of them, and they were French Renault tanks which looked as though they had fought the entire German Army on their own, A little farther along the_road he stopped again and Penn climbed but with him to look at a mess of French equipment. In the ditch, rifles lay there as though they had been thrown down in panic flight from something awful and overpowering. When Barnes picked one up he found the weapon was still loaded. A few yards farther along there were abandoned Army packs, abandoned helmets, all French. Search as he might, Barnes could find no German equipment. Two of the helmets were occupied, the bodies lying on their backs facing the sky. Then more rifles, all of them loaded.

‘I don’t like the look of it,’ said Barnes. ‘The loaded rifles, I mean. It looks as though they just ran for their lives. Tanks against men, probably.’

‘They’ve retreated, then,’ remarked Penn quietly. ‘Looks like it. A helluva lot must have happened while we were bottled up in that tunnel. According to the map there’s a village about five miles farther on – we should get news there. I may halt Bert outside and go in on foot. I don’t like the look of this at all.’

‘It could be Jerry who has retreated,’ said Penn thoughtfully. ‘Parker may be on the Rhine now.’

‘Wars don’t move at that speed, Penn, not in either direction. As to Jerry retreating, I still don’t like the look of those loaded rifles in the ditch – they smell of French retreat. We’d better get on.’

As they moved along the road Barnes saw more and more evidence that the scythe of war had passed that way, more and more burnt-out Renault tanks, smashed guns, still figures lying sprawled in the fields, helmets. And always they were French helmets. He was still waiting to see even one sign of German casualties in either men or machines, and he had not found it when he saw in the distance the first indication of life in this eerily empty landscape – a horizontal line of smoke. The line crossed the sky just above the ground and it hung perfectly still as though drawn in with charcoal. But at one end, the end which was approaching the road half a mile farther on, the line was growing and he realized it was smoke from a train’s engine, a train which was still invisible below the level of an embankment. He scanned the sky and stiffened, his hand tightening on the turret rim. High up in the blue vastness a formation of planes was flying on a course which seemed to parallel the direction of the train. He raised his glasses and focused them. It was impossible to be sure but they looked like a squadron of British Blenheim bombers and his heart lifted at the sight of them.

As the tank trundled forward he watched the planes coming closer and then, focusing his glasses along the road, he saw the level crossing which the train would pass over within the next minute. He swivelled his glasses back to the aerial formation and caught his breath. They were moving into line now -coming in for a bombing run. He gave the order to halt and warned his crew over the intercom.

‘I think there’ll be some bombs dropping in the vicinity shortly. Don’t laugh – but they’ll be coming from our chaps.’

No one laughed as they waited in the stationary tank, the engines still ticking over. Should they reverse, wondered Barnes, and then he rejected the idea. -They might just as easily reverse into a bomb. He prepared to slam down the lid but for the moment he waited, curious to see whether the Blenheims hit their target.

‘What are they after?’ Penn called up.

‘A train, I think. It’s just about to cross the road farther along, so get ready for it.’

His glasses brought up the road ahead now and he saw the smoke line emerge from behind the embankment. The train began to move across the road into the fields beyond. Two engines, drawing a line of goods coaches. He sucked in his breath as he saw tiny figures clustered round a long barrel on a flat truck. A Bofors? He could hear the gun now as it began pumping shells into the sky. When he looked up the first bombs were falling, small black dots against the warm blue, too far away to menace Bert, thank God, but they were going to be close, mighty close, to that train. The stick of dots vanished behind the smoke and he waited for the detonations. As he stood there, his eyes glued to the smoke line, a colossal explosion murdered the evening, far more enormous than it should have been. The first shock wave swept along the road as a coach went hump-backed. The wave buffeted against the tank hull and Barnes started to scramble inside, the words screaming through his brain. Ammunition train! The second, more devastating shock wave hit the tank when he was halfway down, his hand inside the turret, the lid still open. The tremendous force of the wave unbalanced his footing and his head smashed back against the steel rim. At that very moment the undetected Messerschmitt swooped in a power dive, all guns blazing, but Barnes was already unconscious.

Saturday evening, 7 pm. The 14th Panzer Division was racing deeper into France, now well beyond Laon, coming close to the Somme. General Heinrich Storch not only had the nose of a hawk, he also had the eye of that predatory bird, and this eye was now fixed on a hump some distance away across the fields. Whipping up his glasses, he focused on the object, letting out his breath in a hiss. He spoke briefly into the microphone hanging from his neck as a shell screamed across the field towards the tank, column. A 75-mm gun, Storch told himself, the best artillery piece in the whole French Army, probably the only gun capable of taking on a German heavy tank. He looked back as the shell exploded over the road and in the field beyond. A ranging shot. The column was already obeying his command.

Storch’s tank increased speed, rumbling along the road like an angry dinosaur while the gunner followed Storch’s orders, traversing the turret which carried the barrel of his heavy gun towards the French artillery position. Behind him four tanks were moving at different speeds, so that in less than a minute they were well spaced out, making the French gun-aimer’s task infinitely more difficult. He could now aim at only one target, while at the same time four tanks were firing back without fear of retaliation. The Panzer column stopped, five long barrels aimed across the field towards the camouflaged hump. A second shell screamed towards them, fell just short of the centre tank, and exploded in the grass, scattering a rain of soil over the hull. The Panzers replied.

One hand gripping the turret rim, the other holding his field glasses, Storch felt the recoil of his own heavy cannon. This shell also fell short of its target, sending up a cloud of smoke in front of the 75-mm position. Storch spoke briefly, confident that the next shot would be on target, but his gunner never had the opportunity to fire because a shell from the tank behind landed squarely on top of the French position. It exploded, smoke blotting out the target, then there was a second explosion as the 75-mm ammunition went up, hurling the mangled bodies of the gun crew across the field. Two more tanks fired, as though encouraged by the marksmanship of their neighbour, both shells landed inside the billowing smoke, scattering the relics of the smashed gun. Storch issued the order to cease fire, his field-glasses on the target, his voice quiet.

‘Congratulations, Meyer. Your duck-shooting experience is bearing fruit.’

Inside his own tank turret Meyer tightened his lips. It was typical that Storch could not pat him on the back without in the same breath digging him in the ribs. The duck-shooting remark was a slighting reference to his aristocratic background, he had no doubt about that. While they waited, Meyer polished his monocle and screwed it back into position. He wore it on every possible occasion simply because he knew that it annoyed Storch, who regarded the eye-glass as a badge of caste. Then he heard the general’s high-pitched voice through the crackle of his earphones. They were on the move again.

Storch’s sense of exultation was growing. In his mind’s eye he was already racing ahead to the distant objective of Amiens, only twenty-five miles from the sea. His Panzer division was in the lead of the extraordinary advance and he was determined that it should maintain that position. Speaking into the microphone, he ordered the driver to increase speed, even though there was a danger that they might overtake the motor-cycle patrols, but the spotter plane had just radioed back to say the road ahead was clear.

Following up in the second tank, Meyer wiped his face clean of the dusk kicked up by Storch’s vehicle, his mood very different from that of his commanding officer. Soon they were passing through yet another French village without stopping, witnessing once again the same astonishing scene: another church, another village square, the inhabitants standing petrified against the walls, too scared or too astounded to rush indoors as the Panzer column thundered past. This can’t go on much longer, Meyer told himself grimly. They had already far out-distanced the infantry and he was going to have a word with Storch about that at the next stopping point. All Meyer’s professional instincts revolted against this wild headlong rush into the blue.

They left the village and emerged once again into the open French landscape, a sea of fields stretching away for ever, the sunlight shining down on dry pasturelands. And whereas Storch saw every evidence of a French collapse in the deserted view ahead, Meyer saw a panorama full of hidden dangers. He was well aware that the Manstein Plan envisaged a. tremendous encircling sweep which would cut off the northern group of Allied armies from the French forces in the south, a sweep which would be completed when they reached the sea, but it seemed to Meyer that this plan was based on the extraordinary assumption that the Allies would sit back and let this happen. From his Great War experience Meyer knew this to be the assumption of a madman. At any moment the enemy counter-attack would erupt, rolling like a tidal wave against the armoured column’s stretched out far ahead of the main German army. He only hoped to God that the counter attack would not materialize behind them. Another instruction came as they approached a crossroads. Storch was waiting in his stationary tank as Meyer arrived. Climbing down out of bis own vehicle he walked over and stood looking up at his general, who spoke first.

‘The spotter plane reports something on the road ahead -it’s investigating.’

‘I know.’ Meyer took a deep breath, wishing that Storch would come down out of his turret. ‘I’ve been expecting this -there’ll be a heavy counter-attack at any moment. May I suggest that we wait here until the infantry catches us up? It might even be wiser to withdraw a few miles – to consolidate.’

‘Why?’

Storch’s voice was silky. He leaned over the turret to examine Meyer, who was at a further disadvantage because the general’s peaked cap shaded his face and he couldn’t see his expression.

‘Because we have no supporting troops to hold the ground we have taken.’ He took another deep breath. ‘In fact, what we have taken may mean very little without troops occupying the ground we are rushing over like the Berlin Express.’

As soon as he had spoken he felt that he had gone too far, but having spoken he was determined not to back down and he prepared to defend himself. In any case, if things did go wrong this might well be a useful conversation to repeat at a military court of inquiry. The general did not reply immediately. Instead, he turned his head sideways, cocking his ear as though listening to something almost beyond the range of human hearing. Storch did have exceptional hearing powers and he attributed these to his total abstinence. Looking up, squinting against the sun’s glare, Meyer had a view of Storch’s profile now – an arrogant curve of nose, the thin wide mouth, the sharply pointed jaw-line.

‘It sounds like bombing,’ the general commented. ‘Our Stukas must be taking out the next town. So, you think we ought to stop here do you, Meyer?’

‘Or withdraw to a less-exposed…’

‘May I remind you, Colonel Meyer,’ Storch paused, still listening, ‘that this Panzer division is under my command, and I, in turn, am responsible to the Corps Commander, General Guderian,[1] who takes his instructions from General von Rundstedt?’

Meyer was appalled. What on earth was coming? Surely Storch was not contemplating sending him back to base? He stood stiffly as the awful realization of his tactical error dawned on him. For Storch could easily interpret what had just been said as faint-heartedness in the face of the enemy. Meyer said nothing as Storch continued in the same silky tone.

‘And may I also remind you of General Guderian’s orders that the Panzers are to be let off the leash – to push forward as far and as fast as they can while their petrol lasts out?’

For the first time the general looked down at his GSO as he pulled down his earphones in position, listened, and then lifted them again. His voice was harsher now.

‘It may interest you to know that the spotter plane has located and identified the obstacles in our path – two French farm carts. I don’t imagine, Colonel Meyer, that we should allow ourselves to be troubled by such opponents.’ He stood up in his turret, erect as a ramrod. ‘Meyer, please return to your tank – the advance will continue in the general direction of Amiens.’

Barnes sensed that something was wrong, that this was no normal waking, so he resisted the temptation to open his eyes immediately. He listened. His mind felt muddled and he was vaguely aware that he had been dreaming, dreaming something unpleasant, something to do with the war, but it had receded from his realms of consciousness. He always woke up quickly and now he pushed the dream, the nightmare, away, struggling to grasp where he was.

Where the hell was he? It was very quiet inside the building and he was lying stretched out on his back staring up at a beamed and raftered ceiling far above his head, alarm gripping him as memory surged back. The Blenheims, the long smoke line, the ammunition train, the terrible explosion, a feeling of something tearing into his right shoulder, then oblivion. Still lying on the blanket, his fingers reached up and explored the shoulder, contacting a thick dressing, sticky plaster. Yes, they’d got him, all right. But where was he now – and where were Penn and Reynolds?

He tried to sit up on the blanket and flopped back as a wave of dizziness rolled over him. His head was aching horribly and he felt weak and washed-out, hardly able to concentrate.

Under the dressing his shoulder throbbed and at the pit of his stomach was a sensation of sickness. Tentatively, still lying down, he tested his legs by crooking them at the knee; first the right knee, then the left. They seemed to be in one piece. Now for the arms. He worked them round over the blanket, clenching and unclenching his fingers. As far as he could tell his main handicap was an appalling weakness which had reduced his normally wiry frame to the consistency of a jelly. Turning his head to one side, he saw his boots standing a few feet away, placed neatly together, the toecaps gleaming like black glass. He knew they were his own boots because he recognized a tiny scratch on one toecap, and the sight of these boots heartened him because they had recently been cleaned with great care, which meant that Reynolds must have cleaned them. To take the weight off his shoulder, he moved his body over sideways, lifting his head to examine his quarters. He was inside some kind of outbuilding, probably part of a farm. Yes, in the far corner he could see an old plough and beside it some of their Army kit – a dixie supported on an improvised tripod, suspended over the ashes of a fire, and two enamel mugs. Then he saw something standing against the wall which gave him a bad turn. A German machine-pistol with the magazine protruding below the barrel, its strap coiled in a neat loop.

He tried to stand up to reach the loaded weapon but his legs gave way, so he crawled from under the blanket over his body and wobbled his way across the wooden floor on his knees, naked from the waist upwards. He collapsed as he reached the weapon. Gritting his teeth, he forced himself up on to his knees again, grabbed the pistol by its long barrel and then crawled back to his blankets. Sitting up, he began to examine the machine-pistol, extracting the magazine before he fiddled with the firing mechanism. As he found out how the gun worked it came back to him. Someone had attended to his wound, a man with red cheeks and a bushy white moustache. The same man had given him an injection, he could remember the prick of the needle in his right arm, and later the stranger had come back to re-dress his wound. He could remember that very clearly because he had resented being woken up. But how long had they been inside this place? Six hours? Twelve hours? He looked at his watch and the face was cracked, the hands stopped at 7.45. That would be about the time when the ammunition train blew up. Through a window high up in the wall he could see that it was broad daylight, another glorious day with the sky blue and hot. It must be Sunday morning or afternoon, Sunday May 19th. Then he heard someone coming. Re-inserting the magazine, he pulled a blanket up over him and sat still, the gun concealed under the blanket, his left hand under the barrel, his right hand round the trigger guard.

Two men walked in through the huge door at the far end of the building. Penn and a stranger, a lad no older than eighteen, who wore a blue denim jacket and trousers, bis shirt open at the front. He looked the picture of health, tall, well-built, his manner radiating an air of vitality. His fair hair was combed neatly back over his head and his blue eyes looked down at Barnes with curiosity. Penn looked surprised as they stopped near his bedside.

‘You’re awake, Sergeant.’

‘What did you expect to find – a corpse? Who’s this?’

‘This is Pierre. He speaks English. Pierre, meet Sergeant Barnes.’

‘I am happy to meet you, Sergeant.’

The lad bent down and to Barnes’ embarrassment he solemnly shook hands. Then he stood up and waited without saying a word.

‘Where’s Reynolds?’ demanded Barnes.

‘He’s on guard outside.’

‘Guarding Bert, you mean?’

‘Yes, Bert’s in the next shed. Don’t worry – he’s well out of sight.’

‘And what does that mean – why should I worry?’

‘How are you feeling?’ Penn inquired. ‘You’ve had…’

‘Well enough to wonder what the devil is going on. How long have we been in this place, Penn?’

‘You’ve had concussion. When the Jerry fighter dived at us you caught a bullet in the shoulder and banged your head a fourpenny one on the turret.’

‘I can remember that,’ Barnes snapped irritably. ‘Do get to the point and answer my question. How long have we been here?’

Tour days.’

The answer hit Barnes like a thunderclap. For once in his life he was speechless as the implications of Penn’s statement raced through his brain. Where was the troop? Come to that, where was the BEF? Sitting up was making the throbbing of his shoulder wound worse: he would have loved to lie down again but that was out of the question. He blinked away the muzziness of his vision as Penn spoke again.

‘You’d better listen to what Pierre has to say – he knows more about it than I do.’

Barnes looked up at the lad, his voice polite but firm.

‘Pierre, would you mind going outside and staying with Trooper Reynolds for a few minutes?’

He saw Pierre’s face drop and Penn frowned. When the lad had gone out and shut the door Penn protested.

‘I wish you hadn’t done that – we may need him. You don’t know the position here.’

‘And I won’t until you tell me.’ Barnes dropped the blanket and laid the machine-pistol on its side.

‘What did you want that for?’ asked Penn.

‘I’d no idea what was happening when I woke up – a couple of Jerries might have walked through that door. Now, what’s the position?’

Penn paused and then burst out with it. ‘We’re a helluva long way behind the German lines. Maybe twenty miles or more.’

‘We can’t be…’

‘The Germans have broken through along the whole front. They’ve torn a tremendous gap in the lines and it’s a bloody great mess – just how great it’s hard to tell because there are so many rumours…’

‘It could be a rumour that they’ve broken through, then.’

‘No chance of that – I heard this morning that the Panzers have reached Arras. The Luftwaffe has the whole show to itself – our lot and the French Air Force were shot out of the sky in the first few days. The Germans have hundreds of tanks and thousands of planes. You’ve got to face it – we’re miles and miles behind the German lines.’

‘Today is Thursday, then?’

‘Yes, Thursday, May the twenty-third.’

‘And where exactly are we?’

‘Just outside a place called Fontaine. We’re fairly close to the French frontier.’

‘What?’

For the second time in five minutes Barnes was staggered, but this time he simply stared at bis corporal grimly as he climbed to his feet. He felt his legs giving way at once, but sheer will-power stiffened the nagging muscles. Leaning a hand against the nearby wall, feeling the sweat trickling down his back with the effort of staying upright, he smiled wintrily.

‘Penn, if I haven’t gone potty I seem to recall that when the ammo train went up we were a good forty miles from the French frontier.’

Penn’s moustache quivered and then his sense of humour got the upper hand and he spoke lightly.

‘Sergeant Barnes, you have been away from this wonderful world of ours for four days – in other words you’ve been out cold, so it was up to me to see you home safe and sound, if you can call this home, although personally I’ve known better ones. Supposing you just let me tell you what’s happened and then you’ll feel a lot happier. You won’t,’ he added with a grin, ‘but you know I always phrase things in the most tactful way.’

‘The floor is yours.’

‘When the train blew up we were attacked by a Messerschmitt and you collected one in the shoulder. You managed to smash your head good and hard at the same time. On the way down you did get the lid shut and that’s why I’m talking to you now -I heard half a beltful of bullets rattling on the turret before Jerry pushed off. When I checked the state of your health you were dead to the world and bleeding like a stuck pig, but I managed to get a dressing on.’ He took a deep exaggerated breath to illustrate the drama of it all. ‘For the next few hours, till well after dark, we were dodging Jerries. It was a sheer fluke that we got away with it – mostly by driving across open country. Eventually, hours later, we ended up here and here we’ve been ever since.’

‘You drove through the night?’

‘Yes, there was a moon which helped, considering we daren’t use the headlights. When we got here I hadn’t the slightest idea where we were. And before you blow my head off about that, you can’t read a map at night when you’re travelling across country, keeping an eye open for Jerry, and popping down to see whether your tank commander is still in the land of the living. At least,’ he ended with a grin, ‘I can’t.’

‘You did damn well, Penn. Thanks. What made you stay in this place?’

‘I found a Belgian doctor who was willing to look after you without letting anyone know we were here. These buildings are outside Fontaine and the village still don’t know about us. The doctor’s a nice old boy called Lepin and the last time he called he said it was just a matter of changing your dressing and waiting till you came round. I doubt if he’ll be back again – he could be shot by the Germans for treating you. The main thing is we haven’t been spotted yet…’

‘Pierre has spotted us.’

‘I’ll come to him in a minute. How are you doing?’

While they had been talking Barnes was testing himself, walking slowly round the floor and keeping close to the wall as he forced his reluctant legs forward. The wound was thumping him good and proper how but the dizziness was receding.

‘Fine,’ he said quickly. ‘Go on.’

‘Lepin was a godsend. You probably don’t remember it -and that’s your good luck – but while you were drugged he took out the bullet. He said you’d need at least ten days’ rest -that’s a week starting from yesterday.’

‘Arras – where did you get that news about Arras?’

‘It came through on the radio bulletin. I go into Fontaine once a day to listen in. Lepin’s house backs on to a field and he leaves the wireless set in a shed for me.’

‘The French radio may not be reliable.’

‘I’m talking about the BBC.’

- A chill ran down Barnes’ spine. Arras was halfway to the sea. He still found it difficult to grasp the extent of the catastrophe and he still held on to the hope that the reports were wildly exaggerated.

‘We must have some idea of how far behind the German lines we are,’ he said sharply.

‘I’ve no idea at all.’

Barnes paused to hold himself up against the wall. ‘Look, Penn, there must be a front line somewhere. Don’t the radio bulletins give any indication at all?’

‘Sergeant, you still haven’t grasped it. The French to the south of Etreux took an awful bashing. The whole weight of the German armour was thrown against them from what I can make out, and there isn’t a front line down here any more. Everything’s all over the place. Jerry has torn a bloody great gap in the line and it’s getting bigger every day. And the BEF is a long way west of Brussels now.’

‘There are no Germans in Fontaine?’

‘Not up to this morning. A column of tanks went through two days ago but that’s the way they seem to be operating -they didn’t leave a single soldier behind.’

Barnes found that interesting. He thought about it while he picked up his clothes and started dressing with difficulty. At least he was still wearing his battledress trousers so he wouldn’t have to struggle with them. Then he resumed his cross-examination.

‘The tank’s next door, you said. In what condition?’

‘Engines are in full working order. The Besa’s OK. So is the two-pounder. The Wireless is still US but the intercom’s OK. We can talk to each other but we’re cut off from the outside world. Reynolds and I have spent most of our time on maintenance while you were playing Rip Van Winkle.’

‘One thing bothers me, Penn. This lad, Pierre. How does he come into the picture?’

‘He’s helped us enormously. He saw us coming into this place when we first arrived and he’s been around ever since.

He knew we were here so I thought the best thing was to make friends with him – and the fact that he speaks English as well as his native French is a godsend…’

‘He’s Belgian?’

‘Yes, his parents come from the north and he’s lost touch with them. He was visiting an uncle in Fontaine when the war started.’

Barnes asked a lot more questions while he finished dressing and among other things he learnt that it was now two o’clock in the afternoon. At the end of the conversation he returned to the subject of Pierre.

, ‘You said he was visiting an uncle here when the war started – you mean way back in September last year?’

‘No, I meant when the Germans attacked Belgium a fortnight ago. I still say Pierre could be useful. We both know a little French but if we’re going to get out of this we’ll need someone who can talk to the locals, and he’s as keen as mustard to come with us. How the hell will we know where we are if…’

‘Bring him in to me.’

Barnes picked up the machine-pistol, extracted the magazine again and began testing the mechanism.

‘Pierre brought that…’ began Penn. ’

‘I said send him in.’

Barnes went on riddling with the gun after Penn had brought in Pierre and he kept him waiting while he went on examining the weapon. He was looking down at the gun when he fired his question at Pierre.

‘Where did you get hold of this?’

‘I found it on the road outside Fontaine. I saw a car stop and the driver threw it into the ditch. Then he drove away very fast. It is in good order, Sergeant Barnes.’ He pronounced it ‘Burns’. ‘I tested it myself. After first taking out the magazine,’ he added proudly.

‘I see. Where did a lad of your age learn about things like this?’

‘My father works at the Belgian small-arms factory at Herstal. He can fire all the pistols and machine guns.’ Again the hint of pride. ‘Including your own Bren gun. They call it by that name because it was first made in the city of Brno in Czechoslovakia.’

‘You have an uncle living in Fontaine?’

Barnes looked directly into the lad’s blue eyes and his gaze was returned steadily. Pierre’s eyebrows were so fair that he almost appeared to have none., which gave him a curiously older appearance.

‘Not any more,’ he replied. ‘My uncle fled from the Germans three days since.’

‘I see. Why didn’t you go with him?’

‘Because I am not scared. I am going to fight the Germans.’ He went on talking quickly. ‘I shall be eighteen,years of age by July so I am quite old enough and my knowledge of weapons means that training is not necessary. Corporal Penn said that I could come with you.’

‘Steady on, laddie,’ Penn interjected. ‘I said you’d have to ask Sergeant Barnes and that isn’t the same thing at all.’

Barnes opened his mouth to say that he couldn’t come under any circumstances and then he changed his mind. There was no point in antagonizing the lad before they left Fontaine. Instead, he asked a question.

‘Where did you learn to speak such good English?’

‘Thank you, Sergeant.’ Pierre glowed with pride% ‘My father sent me to spend six months with the British firm of Vickers in Birmingham so that I could learn about British weapons. They tell me that I have a Midland accent.’

‘You’d better go and talk to Trooper Reynolds, Pierre, while I have a look at -the tank with Corporal Penn.’

Barnes started to explain to Penn how the machine-pistol worked, handing the weapon to him to demonstrate a point while Pierre was leaving the building.

‘The temptation with this gun is to hold on to the magazine, but you’ve got to grasp it higher up just under the barrel… that doctor, Lepin, did you talk to him much while he was here looking after me?’

‘Hardly at all – he’s a very quiet type and I left Pierre to interpret for me.’

‘You’ve been into Fontaine yourself?’

‘No, I kept well clear of it except when I visited Lepin’s garden shed to hear the news. I thought the Germans might occupy the place at any moment and I wanted to lie low till you were better.’

‘Who owns these buildings – they belong to some farmer, I imagine?’

‘Yes, they do, but he’s cleared out with the refugees so we should be all right here for a while until the roads are quieter. The main one through Fontaine is still crammed with refugee traffic and the place itself is lousy with them. We may have to sit it out here for several days.’

‘Get the map for me, Penn. Staying in one spot behind the German lines for four days isn’t a healthy idea at all and I’d say our luck is due to run out at any moment. We must get moving.’

‘You’ve only just got up…’

‘And I intend to stay up. Warn Reynolds to make any last minute checks he thinks necessary so that we’re ready to move at a moment’s notice. And I could do with something to eat if there’s anything left.’

The atmosphere was changing already with every word Barnes said, and Penn could sense it. A feeling of urgency had begun to animate Barnes and that feeling communicated itself to Penn, but he made one last effort.

‘I still think you ought to rest up at least…’

‘I’m going into Fontaine with Pierre to see for myself. When I get back we must be ready to move. Make no mistake about it, Penn, we’ll be out of this place well before nightfall.’

The feeling that they ought to be on the move, away from this place, tugged insistently at Barnes as he marched steadily along the road to Fontaine with Pierre. The afternoon sun shone down brilliantly over the fields of France, beating down on their faces and warming their hands, a physical sensation of pure heat. Barnes had two reasons for his reconnaissance: he wanted to smell the atmosphere for himself and he wanted to test his own staying power. The blazing sunshine added to the discomfort of his wound, so that now as well as the throb-throb he could also feel a pricking sensation round the edges of his dressing, a sensation which made him wont to tear off the bandage. His head was aching and he walked rigidly, forcing himself to take long strides, each footfall thudding up into the sensitive shoulder like the impact of a small road-bumper. But he was still on his feet, so he was all right. In his holster he carried the Webley .455 revolver and the flap was unbuttoned.

‘There’s the village, Sergeant Barnes.’

‘What on earth is that lot on the road?’

‘They are the refugees. They go through Fontaine all day and all night. It is difficult to cross the main square.’

A grey slate church spire rose up from a huddle of stone walled buildings and from that distance they could see on both sides of the village a road which ran at right-angles to the road they were walking along. The main road was packed with an incredible congestion of traffic, a slow-moving column which travelled at such a snail’s pace that it hardly seemed to move at all. Barnes turned off the road and began to cut across the fields diagonally along a course which would take them to the eastern outskirts of the village.

‘Are we riot entering Fontaine?’ inquired Pierre.

‘I want to have a look at that column. Later, I want to go in to buy some food.’

‘You will not get any – the village store is empty and the storekeeper has left two days before. He was very frightened and said it was time to go.’

‘Frightened of the Germans?’

‘No, of the villagers. He said that soon they would take what they wanted without paying him a franc. One man did call him a robber – I saw it myself. Other people in the store were threatening him.’

The incident had an ugly ring and Barnes began to feel alarmed. The sooner they got out of this area the better, but he must check the state of the roads first. We’re in a jam, all right, he told himself. If all the main roads are like this we’ll have to move across country, and that will slow us down and double our fuel consumption. They were approaching the refugee line broadside on, a line which stretched as far as the eye could see. A dozen yards from the roadside they stopped in the field and watched the spectacle. The road was crammed" from verge to verge with a swollen river of fleeing humanity -several cars, a large number of horse-drawn carts piled high with bed linen, mattresses, and a jumble of household goods. On one cart he saw a brass-posted bed which threatened to lurch over the edge at any moment. But above all the road was congested with people on foot and Barnes had never seen more pathetic faces, the faces of men and women at the end of their tether, their expressions weary and despairing, their eyes fixed dully on the vehicle ahead as they trudged along under the merciless heat of the sun.

‘We’ll never get through that lot,’ he said eventually.

‘There is a road which turns off over there.’ Pierre pointed across the fields to a low hedge. ‘You could take your tank along that road. No refugees have come from that direction since the Germans attacked.’

‘Do you know where it goes?’

‘Of course. It leads to Arras. I have never been there but my uncle has told me. I have been along it for many miles and it is wide enough for a tank.’

What Pierre was saying agreed with the map Barnes had studied and he found his thoughts turning more and more towards the town of Arras. Penn had told him that a news bulletin that morning had reported an Allied counter-attack developing in the area of Arras, a counter-attack of British tanks, and the town was the one fixed point where the Allies seemed to be engaging the Germans. He looked to the right as he heard a car coming closer, its horn blaring persistently. It was an open touring Renault, a green four-seater, and superficially it had the appearance of a military staff car. For one split second Barnes thought he might have re-established contact with the Allied forces, and then he saw that the only occupant was a woman. The horn blared again and again as she stopped and then edged forward a few more yards. Barnes felt that she must be crazy, but as he watched her he was filled with a sense of unease, an odd foreboding. To add to her idiotic behaviour she had not even offered a lift to any of the exhausted wretches who trudged in front of her on foot.

‘How provocative can you get?’ growled Barnes.

‘Pardon?’

The German attack came without warning, without mercy, came out of clear blue sky from in front of the sun so that it was almost impossible to detect their approach, but Barnes heard them coming.

‘Down!’

He shouted the word again and again to the bewildered crowd and then dropped flat on the grass beside Pierre as the first Messerschmitt swooped along the column, its engine screaming, its machine gun blazing non-stop. The crowd was dazed, stunned with terror, unable even to attempt to run for safety in the shock of the sudden onslaught. In front of him Barnes saw an old man turn and stare at the plane as it came straight along the road with a scream and a stutter. He must have taken a dozen bullets in the chest before he crashed back against a cart. As the first machine screamed past, Barnes tugged out his revolver and waited for the next one, steadying the gun barrel across bis arm. The second Messerschmitt pulled out of its dive and sped over the procession almost immediately. Barnes saw the outline of the pilot’s helmet, the black cross on the fuselage, the swastika on the tail. He fired three times in rapid succession, knowing that it was hopeless. Unless a .455 bullet burst through the petrol tank he might just as well be armed with a bow and arrow, but he had to try something. The third machine was coming now, its nadir so low that it almost skimmed the heads of the panic-stricken refugees. Barnes fired, swearing foully as he switched his eyes to the west where another one was coming, and at that moment a horse went berserk, dragging its cart off the road as people scrambled desperately to escape this new menace.

There were six machines altogether, and when they had flown away from the carnage the afternoon was suddenly horribly quiet. Only the heart-broken cries of sobbing women disturbed the stillness as Barnes clambered to his feet and ran over to the stationary Renault. When he reached the car and looked inside he clenched his teeth: the woman in the Renault had taken the full blast of the machine gun and now she was hardly identifiable even as a blood-soaked corpse. The engine was still running so he leaned over and switched off the ignition. He would give these refugees what help he could and then head for Arras non-stop.

The tank rumbled southwards at top speed and the road ahead was clear as far as the eye could see, another panorama of Belgian pastureland spreading away with hardly a tree anywhere, which meant no cover from air attack.

Standing in the turret, Barnes concentrated on keeping all-round observation: the deserted road ahead, the road behind, the fields on either side where people worked a long way off and never seemed to notice the passage of a British tank and, above all, the sky overhead where the most instant danger could strike without warning. Below him Penn occupied Davis’ old position behind the guns, while in the nose of the tank Reynolds sweltered as he handled his driving levers, his head thrust up through the open hatch, relieved that once again they were on the move and that Barnes was in command. To Reynolds, all was well with the world so long as Barnes was in command. Behind the turret sat Pierre. He was perched outside the tank on the engine covers and already had grown accustomed to the gentle wobble of the hull as the huge tracks ground farther south with every revolution. There had almost been a row between Barnes and Penn over taking the Belgian lad. At first, Barnes had refused point-blank.

‘We need him for information,’ Penn had protested. ‘He knows the country and we don’t. Supposing we’re inside a town close to the battle area – accurate information will be vital. Our lives may depend on it and the only one who can get it quickly from the locals is Pierre. He’s taken some chances with us already – he was with us in the building all the time the Panzer column was moving through Fontaine. We didn’t know it at the time but if he’d been caught with us they’d have shot him. And he brought food for us.’

It was probably the gesture of bringing food which had finally persuaded Barnes to let Pierre travel with them until he could drop him off in an area more peaceful than Fontaine. They were on the point of departing when Pierre had come running back from the village with sticks of French bread under each arm and a satchelful of tinned meat hanging from his shoulder. He even had a packet of coffee in his pocket. No one had inquired too closely as to how he had obtained these provisions: after all, there was a war on.

And now, as the tank left Fontaine far behind them, Barnes was weighing up many things. It was pleasant to have the sun shining down on them, but it was from the sun that the Luftwaffe made its sneak attacks, so frequently he shaded his eyes to scan the sky, straining his ears for the first warning sound of approaching engines. The landscape ahead was beginning to undulate and he kept a careful observation along the ridges to detect any signs of gun positions which might lie in ambush. So far they had only met Belgian horse-carts on this lonely road which seemed to go on for ever, horse-carts which plodded past while their drivers stared at the tank as though hardly able to believe their eyes. As he kept up his vigilant watch Barnes was also trying to locate on the map the road they were travelling along and he was puzzled. There was a road from Fontaine which led south-west in the general direction of distant Arras, but this road had gradually turned until they were heading due south Without mentioning his discovery, he kept an eye open for landmarks.

They were going to run into trouble soon now, Barnes could feel it in his bones. They were travelling with their guns loaded and the power-traverse on, and Barnes bad given Pierre strict instructions that in case of trouble he must immediately leave the tank and take cover. The farther they moved along this peaceful road, the only witnesses to their progress cows grazing in the fields, the tauter Barnes’ nerves became. It was only a matter of time before they met something big and when that happened he’d have to take a lightning decision. He only hoped that he was up to that. He had reached the stage where he accepted the throbbing and. pricking of his shoulder as a permanent burden, as much a part of himself as breathing, but he did wish that the dreadful pounding headache would go away. Under the circumstances it was remarkable that he reacted at all when the emergency arose, and the fact that he reacted instantly was little short of a miracle.

At the time they were travelling at reduced speed on his instructions because they were approaching a hump-backed bridge. The character of the countryside had changed again and now there were low hills close to the road. Even from the elevated vantage point of the turret he found it impossible to see the stretch of road immediately beyond the bridge, so as they drove forward his gaze was fixed on the crest which was still a hundred yards away. Instinctively, he didn’t like the look of the bridge. He began to give precautionary orders, just in case.

‘Two-pounder. One hundred. The bridge ahead.’

Below him, Penn’s head was pressed hard against a padded bracket, his eye peering steadily through the telescope at the small circle of countryside which centred on the bridge crest. The two-pounder’s leather-bound grip was fixed tightly round his shoulder, under his armpit, so that only the slightest movement of that shoulder automatically raised or depressed the muzzle of the gun. His left hand gripped the power-traverse lever while the other hand gripped the trigger handle. Now the cross-wires inside the glass circle were aligned dead centre on the bridge crest. The range was set, he was ready, and all this had taken only a few seconds.

Barnes had hardly completed giving the orders, Penn had just completed obeying them, when it happened. Straight over the crest of the hump-back, travelling at high speed, recklessly high speed, hurtled a large covered truck. Barnes registered its identity in a flash – even to the soldier peering round from the back, leaning well out, a pudding-shaped helmet set squarely on his head. A German detachment of motorized infantry.

‘German truck! Fire!’

The barrel dropped slightly, because now the truck was over the hump, still tearing towards them. Knowing what to expect, Barnes gripped the turret rim. The tank shuddered under the stomach-jerking spasm of the recoil, the shell screamed forward, its target rushing to meet it. The two missiles met in frightful collision, the shell smashing into the truck just above engine level, exploding with a roar, ripping apart metal, canvas, flesh. Inside the turret the air reeked of cordite fumes as Barnes, who was now behind the gun, re-loaded, flipping in a fresh round with a certain force to make the breech-block close. Then he scrambled back to the top of the turret, the tank still trundling towards its target. In the nose of the vehicle Reynolds stared at the truck with grim satisfaction. God, that had been a close one!

The truck was pulverized, but the force of explosion plays strange tricks and this explosion had hurled from the open back several German soldiers still clasping their machine-pistols, throwing them out on to the grass verge where they lay stunned for a second. But when Barnes looked out from his turret they were recovering, jumping up off the grass, the reflex of fear speeding their movements as they darted into the field, spreading out the target. In a matter of seconds, if they were well trained, they would be circling round the tank. Barnes gave instant orders.

‘Driver, right, off the road, right. Besa. Besa. Right. Well right. Fire!’

Penn’s trigger hand jumped to the Besa. Reynolds swerved off the road, through a low wire fence, over the grass, heading straight for the running men. The Besa began to stutter, a hail of bullets catching the man on the right-most flank, catching him in mid-stride, in mid-air as he began to flop, his body hiccupping convulsively, the machine-pistol falling from his grip.

‘Besa. Traverse left, left…’

Coolly, without panic, Penn’s mind and hand paralleled Barnes’ intentions and the turret began to swing, taking the flail of bullets with it. Get the one on the far right first, then sweep left against the forward movement of the running men, catching all five men as they desperately tried to spread, depressing the Besa to sweep it at ground level over those who had dropped to the grass. In half a minute it was all over and Barnes gave the order to take the tank back on to the road.

The smashed truck sagged grotesquely to one side, still on its wheels but keeled over at a crippled angle, flames licking over the bonnet, the torn canvas at the back catching alight. Then the petrol tank went up, a dull thump. Flames soared up and the canvas flared, burning rapidly, exposing the metal framework. Halting the tank, Barnes waited until the conflagration had died down, his eyes’ scanning the summer sky constantly for aircraft, but it was empty of any sign of war. Only on the ground death disfigured the gloriously sunny day. As soon as the flames began to peter out Barnes gave the order to move the tank forward. The shelled truck now blocked the way, the wreckage standing in the middle of the road. Carefully he guided the tank along the grass verge, turning it so that the front hull faced the truck broadside on.

‘Driver, move forward slowly and tip it over the edge.’ The tank crawled forward, its tracks bumping the side of the truck. Foot by foot, it thrust the truck backwards towards the slope at the end of the bridge, a slope which Barnes now saw led down to the canal. From the turret he could see over the hump of the bridge and the road beyond was clear for miles. He could also see on the floor of the cab and inside the truck itself a huddle of clothes which bore little resemblance to uniformed soldiers. The truck was almost on the brink now, pushed backwards by the tank which was manoeuvring the vehicle like a bulldozer shifting waste material. As the truck began to topple a helmeted figure scrambled out from under the bodies, dropping to the roadway and swinging his machine-pistol round in one movement. God knew how he had managed to survive the holocaust but now he survived only seconds. As the machine-pistol came round Barnes fired his revolver at the same moment as the Besa began to stutter. The German fell back over the edge a few seconds before the truck toppled, crashing down the slope on top of him with a jarring grind of crumpling metal as the vehicle landed on the edge of the canal, settling like a crushed concertina. There was an unpleasant smell of burnt rubber as Barnes gave the orders to reverse, drive forward over the bridge, and halt on the far side. Then he clambered down into the road and went back over the bridge.

He saw Pierre in the distance, climbing up out of the ditch where he had jumped as soon as the truck appeared. Now he walked slowly along the road as Barnes scrambled down the slope to investigate the carnage. It was like a miniature battlefield. In its fall down the slope, the truck had thrown out its grisly load, scattering bodies along the canal bank. One man lay half in the canal, face downwards. The smashed and twisted bodies were all dead, all except one^ Grimly, Barnes walked over to the moaning man, the moans reminding him of an animal in mortal pain. Both his legs had been blown off and he lay on his stomach, the lower part of his body a bloodstained stump. He had lost his helmet and appeared to be biting the ground. It was quite clear that in a short time, half an hour at the most, he would be dead, but during that half an hour he was a creature who would be racked by unendurable agonies. Christ, thought Barnes, why didn’t you have the sense to die too? He clenched his teeth bitterly. You poor bastard. He mouthed the words silently for fear that the man might hear him, might even manage to turn his head. Leaning down, unaware that his teeth were locked rigid, he held the muzzle of the revolver within an inch of the man’s head and before he could think about it he pulled the trigger. The German gave a quick convulsive movement and lay still. Barnes let out his breath. As he straightened up he sensed that he was not alone and he turned round. Over the parapet of the bridge two faces stared down. Penn and Pierre.

‘Pierre,’ shouted Barnes, ‘come down here a minute.’

The lad came down slowly, watching his feet as he slithered down the slope, not looking at what lay beneath him. Up on the bridge Penn still looked down, his face like stone. When Pierre reached the bottom he stopped and looked at Barnes, his hair freshly combed, his expression blank.

‘Take a good look, Pierre,’ invited Barnes. This is the war you were so eager to get mixed up in. When you reach your age group you’ll get called up – and it’s my bet the war will last long enough for that. But don’t ever think that it’s going to be fun.’

Pierre’s eyes wandered over the bodies, his face still devoid of all emotion. He stood very erect.

‘Take a good look,’ went on Barnes, watching him closely, ‘These are the bastards who machine-gun women from tanks and planes.’

‘Can I go now?’ Pierre asked coldly. He omitted to add the word ‘sergeant’.

‘Yes, go straight back to the tank and wait there with Trooper Reynolds. Perm, come down here a minute.’

He waited. Pierre had disappeared over the bridge when Penn reached the tow-path, his eyes blazing, his voice sharp-edged.

‘Did you have to do that to him?’

‘I had my reasons. Now find two machine-pistols in working order and as many spare magazines as you can. That’ll give us one each and they may come in handy.’

They worked in silence. Barnes counted the bodies and as far as he could make out the truck had carried a complement of twenty men including those lying in the field on the other side of the road. He would have liked to search the clothes of the officer who had undoubtedly sat in the cab beside the driver, but in; this jumbled horror such a search would have taken hours. Instead, he went back to the man without legs, felt under the body, and extracted his Army pay-book. Gustav Freisler, the 75th Field Regiment. At least that’s what he thought the long German word identifying the unit meant. He put the pay-book in his pocket. It would positively identify the unit when he reached the Allied lines and also he wanted the report of this poor devil’s death sent back to Germany via the Red Cross as soon as possible.

When they returned to the tank, Barnes spent a short time explaining to Penn and Reynolds how the German machine-pistols worked and he made them practise using them without magazines. While this was going on Pierre sat on the engine covers and gazed up at the sky without taking the slightest notice of Barnes. Penn practised with his pistol diligently and said hardly a word, climbing up into the tank when the exercise was over with an expressionless face. Only Reynolds seemed unaware of the coolness in the atmosphere and he spoke with conviction as he turned to get down inside his hatch.

‘Good old Penn. He can really use that two-pounder.’ ‘Good job he can – there were twenty of them inside that truck.’

Good old Penn. Reynolds was right there. If he hadn’t clobbered that truck with his first shot, the dead German officer might well be examining their pay-books now. But it was what lay ahead of them that was occupying Barnes’ thoughts now, and as he screwed up his eyes to check the late afternoon sky he felt sure that they couldn’t hope to get through the coming night without very serious trouble.

There was an element of danger in his decision, but Barnes took a calculated risk when he decided to spend the night by the river bridge. Since leaving the shelled truck by the canal they had experienced an evening of tension which had played havoc with their already strained nerves, and since both Penn and Reynolds had taken it in turn to mount guard during the four nights when Barnes lay unconscious at Fontaine, all of them were in a state close to physical exhaustion. Probably the factor which more than any other drained their resources was the knowledge that they were moving behind the enemy lines, that at any moment they might encounter an overwhelming German force which would easily annihilate them in a matter of minutes. Most of all, Barnes feared that they would meet a Panzer column head-on.

The rising tension made itself felt in different ways. Two hours had been wasted by the roadside when the engines broke down and they struggled to find and repair the defect. During this time Pierre, who had to leave the tank when they pulled open the engine covers at the rear, sat on the grass verge without speaking. Barnes suspected that even Penn was beginning to wish that he hadn’t been so keen to bring the Belgian with them, but he couldn’t be sure because the corporal himself was unusually silent. Reynolds worked stolidly on the engines, noticing nothing wrong, but then Reynolds was never oversensitive where atmospheres were concerned. They found the cause of the trouble eventually, repaired it, had a drink of water, and then moved on, leaving the road to circle round a town. So far they had avoided three towns by moving across open country in wide sweeps, returning to the road well beyond each town. This tactic, too, had caused an argument with Penn.

‘Why don’t we risk it?’ he had pressed. ‘We have Pierre and one of us can sneak in with him to get some news.’

‘We may have to do that later, but not yet,’ Barnes had replied firmly. ‘I want to have some better idea of where we are first.’

‘Doesn’t the map tell you that?’

The engine had just been repaired and before starting out again Barnes and Penn had wandered off into a nearby field as Reynolds made his final checks.

‘No, it doesn’t, Penn. We’ll go round this place like we went round the last one.’

From where they stood they could see the town in the distance. A tall church spire, several factory chimneys, a long line of buildings. A flight of Stuka dive-bombers crossed the sky very high up, heading for the north-west. Since leaving Fontaine they had stopped four times while enemy planes flew out of view. Irritably, Penn persisted.

‘But if you just trace the road down from Fontaine…’

‘Penn, the road we’re travelling on doesn’t correspond with the road we thought we were taking. It doesn’t correspond with it at all. We’re travelling south-west now, I know, but for a long time we were heading due south.’

‘The compass may be playing up. It does sometimes with all that metal…"

‘I’m going by the sun – that isn’t affected by the metal, is it?’

‘You mean we may have got back on to a different road when we made one of our detours?’

‘I mean there’s something damned peculiar about the whole business. So,’ Barnes spoke emphatically, ‘we’re not going near any town today. We’ll go round this place, wherever it is. We’d better get moving.’

It was very close to dusk when Barnes saw the bridge, a large stone affair with a broad span which could easily take two lanes of traffic. They were in the middle of open country miles away from anywhere and within half an hour they wouldn’t be able to move without putting on the headlights, a course of action he was anxious to avoid at all costs. As they came closer he noticed a copse of trees to the right of the bridge. He stopped the tank and went forward with Penn to investigate.

‘This might be a good place,’ Penn suggested. ‘Bridges are lucky for us. We could park Bert in these trees.’

But the copse was a hopeless cover. It was simply a handful of thin-trunked saplings staggered at intervals through the grass. No matter how they parked the tank, Bert would still be visible from the road, and it was the road which worried Barnes. Penn thought differently.

‘This is an ideal spot, particularly at night.’

‘Not correct, Penn. Any vehicle coming over that bridge from the south will swivel its headlights straight over this spot. We’ve been lucky so far — I think the German invasion has cleared all normal traffic off this road but that doesn’t mean Jerry won’t be sending more troops this way. We’ve got to find somewhere we can park Bert completely out of sight. Under that bridge might do the trick.’

’Under the bridge?…’

But he was talking to himself. Barnes strode off-back to the road and scrambled down the bank by the side of the bridge, pushing his way through thick brambles to the river at the bottom. Yes, there was ample room under the high stone arch, but how deep was the river? Bert could comfortably wade through three feet of water provided the fording flap was closed over the rear air outlets. He found that under the bridge the water was less than a foot deep and blessed the fact that it hadn’t rained for over a fortnight. Even better, the bed of the river was surfaced with smooth rocks and between the rocks was a fine gravel.

An old footpath ran along the north side of the river, a footpath half-submerged under weeds and tall grass, and this would give them a place to sleep close to the tank. Looking up under the arch he judged that there was sufficient clearance to take Bert’s overall height of eight feet. Now for the question of concealment. He walked along the footpath under the bridge, pacing out the distance. Twenty-six feet. Bert’s overall length was eighteen feet so he would rest well inside the archway. The only problem lay in getting the tank down to the river bed – the banks were at least twelve feet high and steeply inclined, their slopes covered with a jungle of brambles and undergrowth. He went back to the tank and issued instructions, leaving Pierre by the roadside while he guided the vehicle some distance across a sun-baked field and well away from the bridge before they attempted the descent to the river bed: he was determined to leave no traces of their presence by smashing down undergrowth close to the bridge.

He checked the river depth again, returned to the tank, and ordered Reynolds to switch on the headlights, disliking the precaution but knowing that it was essential because it Was almost dark now below the level of the banks. Then the tracks began to descend, smashing down undergrowth, dropping with a bump as the tank’s centre of gravity pivoted on the brink and then plunged downwards, slithering and grinding over the brambles, hitting the water with a splash, the tank turning as Reynolds briefly halted the right track so that the revolutions of the left one swung the hull round through an angle of ninety degrees to face downstream. When Barnes shone his torch beam he saw that the river level was no more than a foot up the side of the tracks. As usual, Reynolds was handling the driving brilliantly even in this unusual environment. The tank advanced towards the bridge, a clearance from the banks on either side of several feet, moving forward over the firm river bed until they halted under the archway. Inside the hull Penn sat listening to the peaceful lapping of water round the tracks.

‘Now,’ said Barnes briskly, ‘time for supper. Penn, you take up temporary guard duty on the bridge while Reynolds brews up – I’ll come up and relieve you as soon as it’s ready. I wonder what the devil has happened to Pierre?’

He climbed down to the footpath and started to climb the bank when he heard Pierre coming along the footpath from upstream; the lad was carrying something in bis hands. When he switched on his torch he saw that Pierre was holding a large fish.

‘I caught it in a pool higher up – we can have it for our supper. There are many more – easily enough for one each.’

Penn paused, halfway up the bank on his way to the bridge. ‘What a marvellous idea – my mouth’s watering already. Pity we haven’t some chips to go with them.’

‘Give it to me!’ Reynolds thrust an eager hand forward and Barnes remembered that the driver had been a fishmonger before he had signed on. ‘I’ll start cleaning it as soon as I get the brew-up going.’

‘You really want raw fish for supper?’ Barnes asked quietly.

‘Raw?’ Penn protested. ‘We can cook the damned thing in no time.’

‘There’ll be no cooking here tonight. It’s a warm evening, the air’s absolutely still, and a cooking smell could linger round this bridge for hours. I’m not risking it. We’ll have to make do with tea and bully beef. We’ve got the French bread Pierre brought, too,’ he added.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ exploded Penn.

‘You’re supposed to be up on that bridge keeping a lookout,’ replied Barnes with deceptive calm.

‘Sorry,’ Penn spoke stiffly, turned away, and clambered up to the top of the slope.

Reynolds said nothing and went back to preparing a brew-up on his little stove. Barnes waited for the Belgian lad’s reaction with interest. Putting his hands back behind his head, Pierre hurled the fish as far as he could downstream and sat down on the footpath, not looking at Barnes. Under the archway, Reynolds worked in silence, unpacking his spirit stove, inserting white metaldehyde tablets, applying a lighted match, and then replacing the metal cap over the flame. When he went off upstream to fill his kettle he was gone for several minutes and Barnes guessed that he had taken water from Pierre’s pool so he could look at the fish.

The stove was not standard issue, but many of the items they carried, such as their sheath_knives, had never appeared on any official list of equipment: Barnes had long ago decided that his tank must be able to operate as a self-contained unit without the normal supply facilities when necessary, although never in his wildest theorizing could he have visualized a situation like this where they would find themselves behind the enemy lines, cut off from all contact with their own army, let alone their own troop. I took the right decision, he told himself as he thought of Penn’s irritability and watched Reynolds’ abnormally slow movements in preparing the supper. Those two haven’t enjoyed more than four hours’ sleep a night since we landed at Fontaine and today was no picnic. Until we get some rest none of us is capable of taking part in action against the enemy, so the only thing to do is to keep our heads down until we’ve recovered. I hope to God we get a peaceful night. He went up to the bridge to relieve Perm.

Too tired to talk, they ate in silence by the light of the nickering spirit stove -Pierre, Penn, and Reynolds sitting side by side along the pathway under the arch while the water gurgled past the tank’s tracks. It was quite dark now and in the pale blue flame the tank looked enormous and strange, as though it stood in some war museum. Penn clapped a hand on the back of his neck and swore: it was after ten o’clock but the air was warm and muggy and the mosquitoes were active. He could hear one buzzing close to his ear and the blighter wouldn’t go away. He hurried his meal, because until he had finished, Barnes, who was standing guard on the bridge, would have to go hungry. Now that he had got used to the idea, Penn rather liked the feeling of security of being tucked away under the bridge: it was like camping out in a cave, something he’d always enjoyed as a boy. He must remember to change Barnes’ dressing and he’d insist on taking first guard duty on the bridge. It would make up for some of his grumbling during the day.

Half an hour later he had changed the dressing and had gone up to the bridge to mount guard. Barnes was sitting on the footpath as he put on his jacket again, thankful that the emergency dressing had been applied and feeling sufficiently better to appreciate his own state of incredible fatigue, but at least he felt more comfortable. As he dressed himself he looked sideways at Pierre. He had been conscious of the lad’s fixed stare for several minutes.

‘We may find somewhere to drop you off tomorrow,’ he told him.

‘That is for you to decide.’

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it? You’d better get some sleep now. We may have a long day ahead of us.’

‘Can I take my share of guarding the bridge, Sergeant?’

‘We’ll see. Shut up chattering now and get down.’

Five minutes later Pierre was stretched out full length along the path, his feet to Barnes’ head, his back against the wall of the bridge, an Army blanket loosely draped over his body. Reynolds had finished washing up in the stream and was settling down at the foot of the bank on the other side of Bert. Normally, he was a restless sleeper and he had wrapped himself in his blanket for fear of throwing it into the water during the night, but he had hardly put his head down before he was snoring loudly, deep in a sleep of sheer physical exhaustion.

Barnes, on the other hand, felt exhausted but not sleepy. It was eleven o’clock and jn two hours’ time he would take over guard duty from Penn and later hand over to Reynolds for the last turn. His mind raced round like an engine out of control: the great thing now was to find some really worthwhile objective, to give the Germans a tremendous blow on the nose. Without realizing it, he eventually fell into uneasy sleep, in spite of a tiny portion of his mind which desperately begged him to stay awake.