Tramp in Armour

EIGHT Saturday, May 25th

The Stuka bomber, one hundred feet up, smoke pouring from its tail, was heading straight for them as though aimed at the mouth of the quarry. Barnes stood perfectly still, his gaze fixed on the approaching projectile as he prayed that it would maintain its height for at least a few hundred yards more. It screamed in closer, its nose dipping like a suicide bomber guided to penetrate the quarry mouth and explode against the rear wall where Bert was parked. Beside him Colburn froze as he automatically assessed the Stuka’s line of flight. Then it roared over them, still losing height, and ten seconds later they heard it hit France a mile away as its bomb load blew up.

‘This place reminds me of high-explosives,’ said Colburn.

The tank was parked inside a chalk quarry cut out of the hillside and the giant alcove was filled with shadow. It was half past six in the evening and they had been standing at the narrow entrance while Reynolds mounted guard on the rim of the quarry high above them. The driver shouted down to tell them that the plane had crashed a long distance off and then resumed his all-round observation.

‘I’m none too fond of high-explosive myself at the moment,’ Barnes replied drily as he swirled tea in his mug.

‘That’s because you’ve been on the receiving end – I’m talking about quarry-blasting operations. There’s something very satisfying about laying the charges just right, going back to the plunger, pressing it, and seeing exactly the right area of rock slice away.’

‘I thought you just supplied the stuff.’

‘Oh, they were always asking me for advice and I ended up by doing the job for them. I have a talent for destruction, Barnes. What’s more to the point, I enjoyed my work.’

They walked away from the tank and through the narrow defile which formed the entrance to the quarry. Stopping in the entrance, they looked out across the fields of France. They had done very well, Barnes was thinking, and he estimated they were now less than thirty miles from Calais. All through the late afternoon and early evening Bert had moved at top speed along the road and only twice had they stopped and prayed. Once when a flight of German planes had flown across the eastern sky, and once when a cloud of dust had warned them of the approach of a German supply column. For over half an hour they had waited concealed inside a nearby wood, only emerging when the last escorting tank had driven out of sight in the opposite direction. And then Bert had ground forward non-stop heading north, always north towards Calais.

They had finished their meal and once again bully beef hadn’t been featured on the menu. When they re-opened the parcel which Mandel had provided they had found several sticks of French bread, an earthenware pot of butter, a whole cold chicken, and four bottles of wine. They had dined well but Barnes had not enjoyed it because at the beginning of the meal he had remembered Penn who had never tasted any of the food. As a crew they were probably in better condition than at any time since they had left Fontaine, except that now the fighting crew comprised only two men – unless Colburn could absorb enough of a rudimentary training to make him useful. Beyond the quarry, several miles across the sunlit plain, Barnes saw a long thin trail of dust moving at an oblique angle to where they stood. It looked as though the column were heading for the coast. He focused hi? glasses.

‘Panzers?’ inquired Colburn.

‘Probably. Too far away to see properly and that dust is fogging the view. They’re not coming this way, which is something to be thankful for. Now, Colburn, let’s see how much you can learn about a tank in no time at all.’

At the most, Barnes had hoped he might show Colburn how to use the Besa, but the Canadian was no sooner down on the turntable when he wanted to know how to traverse the turret. Within five minutes he was showing that he possessed real mechanical aptitude and an ability to grasp the traverse system which surprised Barnes, a surprise which grew as he experienced the Canadian’s endless persistence. Once he found he was able to traverse he asked Barnes to go up to the turret and give him instructions over the intercom. Settling down to indoctrinate his quick-witted pupil Barnes showed him no mercy, correcting his faults with the ruthlessness of a drill-sergeant.

‘Right, Colburn! I said traverse right! You now have the distinction of presenting our bloody rear to the enemy. That’s better. Left! Traverse left!’

It quickly dawned on Barnes that he had a tiger by the tail. Colburn wouldn’t give up until he could operate the traverse on instruction without mistake. He simply went on and on-and on, tirelessly as though his life might depend on getting this right. And, Barnes thought, it could just work out that way. In all his experience he had never trained a pupil who learned so quickly, even though it was only the rudiments he was grasping. When he went back into the fighting compartment Colburn demanded to know something about the two-pounder, but here Barnes felt that any attempt to show him how the weapon worked would be a waste of time. He suggested, instead, that Colburn should tackle the Besa.

‘Five minutes will do that,’ said Colburn briskly.

Barnes stared. So the Canadian was a braggart, which meant he would be totally unreliable in an emergency. Colburn read something of the thought in his expression and grinned.

‘You may have forgotten, Barnes, that we do carry a certain armament in the Hurricane. Like the Besa it’s called a machine gun.’

‘Sorry.’ Barnes closed his mouth tightly. The throb-throb of the shoulder wound had started up again and was pounding his mind to a jelly. ‘I’d overlooked that. As you say, five minutes should do the Besa.’

Two hours later Barnes called a halt to the training exercise. It would be dark in half an hour and he wanted to move farther north to a more open position which still provided some cover: being trapped inside the quarry for the night didn’t appeal to him when he remembered their experience under the bridge. By now Colburn had grasped some of the basic lore of how to fight a tank, including the use of the periscope for observation by the gunner. It was quite impossible to cram months of basic training into two hours even for Colburn, but Barnes was amazed at how much the Canadian had picked up. Calling Reynolds down from the top of the quarry he prepared to depart.

‘That was fun,’ said Colburn with enthusiasm. Tm not quite the spare wheel I was two hours back.’

‘You’ll do – in an emergency.’ Barnes smiled drily.

‘At least I can cope with the traverse and the Besa, so try and find me some running Germans within range, but if you’re counting on the two-pounder,’ he grinned, ‘you’ll be lucky.’

It struck Barnes that perhaps he shouldn’t be too surprised at the Canadian’s achievements; after all, it needed plenty of mechanical ability to handle a plane and the one quality no fighter pilot could do without was quick-wittedness. He was more surprised still when Reynolds spoke, pausing as he climbed down into the hatch.

‘It just goes to show, Sergeant, that training course is far too long like I’ve always said – strictly for village idiots. A right old load of bullshit.’ He disappeared inside his own compartment.

For the first time it flashed through Barnes’ mind that maybe Reynolds had always been so silent because Penn had always been so talkative-. The relationships inside the unit were changing rapidly, and he was pleased to see that Reynolds obviously liked Colburn.

Three minutes later the tank left the quarry, moved on to the road and headed north. Up in the turret Barnes’ expression was grim: he was conscious that they were approaching a crisis and that within the next twenty-four hours at the outside they might well all be dead or taken prisoner. There was, of course, the third alternative – that they might get the chance of striking a great blow against the Germans. If only they could locate a really vital objective. Over seventy two-pounder shells under me, he thought. They could make a mess of something.

He was still turning over an idea which he had not yet mentioned to the others – the idea of keeping going through the night, headlights ablaze like the Panzers. The Germans won’t be expecting anything coming up behind them. He felt sure that their eyes would be glued to the battlefield ahead, and a vehicle moving through the night with its headlights full on looked very innocent from a distance, until they had the enemy within two-pounder range, anyway.

They were moving into a more populated area and now he saw people working in the fields some distance from the road. To the north several orange-coloured tractors moved slowly across the landscape which was so flat that it reminded him of Holland, although there was a small ridge over to the right. They were in the heart of the Pas de Calais now, roughly midway between Bethune and Etaples. It was incredible, thought Barnes, to have come all this way from Etreux in a vast semicircle round the southern flank of the battle zone – but no more incredible than the lightning dash of the Panzer spearhead from the German border to the gates of Boulogne. I’ll go on through the night, he decided, by God, I will. The people in the fields had stopped work to watch the tank, standing as motionless as scarecrows on a windless day. Then ‘he caught sight of movement to his left, lifted his glasses, and his heart jumped. Another of those sinister dust clouds, only just visible in the fading light, but under the cloud he could see small square shapes moving towards him across country. Panzers!

He issued orders instantly and the tank turned off the road to the right, moving over the field towards the low ridge, the only defence feature in sight. When they reached it he manoeuvred Bert until he faced the oncoming enemy in a hull-down position, the greater part of the tank concealed behind the ridge so that only the turret projected in the open. A quarter of a mile away a farmer on his orange tractor changed direction, heading across the field to take a closer look at the intruder. Flip off, Barnes told him mentally, or you’ll cop a Jerry shell.

‘Two-pounder. Traverse right. Right! Steady!’

The turret swung him round and steadied. Perfect. Davis could have done no better, and Davis had been good.

‘Range six hundred. Six hundred.’

Barnes had the glasses pressed into his eyes as he watched the dust cloud’s progress. It appeared to be moving across their line of fire now. Was it possible that in the uncertain light of dusk that they hadn’t been spotted after all? In less than five minutes he knew that the Panzers had another objective altogether, somewhere far to the north. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. It was almost dark as he gave them the news over the intercom, following it up with the order to advance.

To save tune and to avoid the farmer on the tractor who was close behind him now, Barnes guided the tank towards the road along a different course from the one which had brought them to the ridge, moving at an oblique angle which would take them back on to the road some distance north of the point where they had left it. The tank completed its quarter-turn and rumbled forward over the grass, leaving a faint trail of chalk as the substance disengaged itself from the tracks. It may have been the treacherous light of dusk, or it may have been the throbbing of his wound which grew worse towards night: it may have been a combination of these two factors which momentarily robbed him of his normal lynx-eyed observation, but whatever the cause Barnes failed to see the change in the texture of the land they were crossing, failed to see that whereas a moment ago they were passing over green grass and baked earth, now the grass was sparser, growing in isolated tufts, and even where it grew its colour was a strange, almost sinister acid green colour.

His first warning of the danger was the moment when the tank stopped moving forward, although its huge tracks continued to churn round, moving uselessly as the whole tank slowly began to tilt. The tilting motion was in a backward direction, so slight that at first Barnes wondered whether he was suffering from an attack of dizziness, but as the motion continued and he looked quickly over the side the awful truth dawned. They were sinking, sinking more rapidly as the quagmire sucked at the tracks, dragging over twenty-six tons of tank downward into its drowning grip.