Tramp in Armour

NINE Saturday, May 25th

His instinct was to give the order to reverse, to take the tank backwards on to the firm ground they had left. Opening his mouth, he closed it again without speaking. Work this out, Barnes, and quickly. The front seems stable, so it may be on solid ground; only the back is going down. If you reverse you may never reach firm ground. Switching on his pocket torch, ‘ he swept the beam behind the tank. They appeared to have broken up a very thick crust of earth baked hard by weeks of sunshine, exposing a horrible sticky ooze lower down which gleamed in the torchlight. Go forward then? Climbing out of the turret he walked forward over the left-hand track, sat down and gingerly lowered one leg. Firm enough. But in the beams of the headlights he had told Reynolds to switch on he could see the same type of pallid baked earth, the surface cracked with tiny fissures. Was that firm ground or were they perched on an island of solidity with more quagmire ahead? At least the tank had stopped tilting backwards now, as though it had found a precarious equilibrium. Colburn came out of the turret and climbed down on to the hull.

‘What are you playing at, Sergeant?’

‘We’ve run into a bog. It’s as soft as butter behind us now and I’m not too sure of this lot. Get ready to grab me – I’m going to test it for firmness.’

He lowered his full weight on his right leg and the ground held, but it was rather like treading on a sponge. He slipped the other leg down and stood up, felt a crumbling sensation under his left leg and the ground caved in. He started to go down, suddenly up to his knees in filthy ooze. Hands grabbed him from behind, hauled him bodily backwards and lifted, sitting him back on the track, legs astraddle it. Carefully, he turned round and scrambled back on to the hull.

‘Thanks, Colburn. You just about saved my bacon there. No way ahead and no way back. Get me a rope from that box near the compass. I’ve got to find out how far away we are from the shore.’

He waited until Colburn had emerged from the turret again and then tied a loop under his shoulders, handing the free end to the Canadian. The tractor had arrived now and it stood on the bank of the quagmire with its headlights beamed direct on to the tank, blinding Barnes as he made his way along the rear track while Colburn stayed on the hull. The farmer was shouting non-stop across the quagmire in French and with his limited knowledge of the language Barnes, couldn’t understand a word. If only they’d speak slower. He shouted back slowly in English that he was crossing to the bank and received an outburst in reply. Looking back to make sure that Colburn was in position, he pulled a face.

‘Pity you don’t speak French as well as handling machine guns.’

‘I know German. Do you think he might savvy that?’ ‘Don’t try it, for God’s sake. He’s probably only friendly because we’re British.’ ‘How can he know that?’

‘Because of the uniform – he must have seen enough of them before we decided to trot off into Belgium. Here goes. Don’t haul me back unless I’m in real trouble. I’ve got to find out how far it is to the bank.’

‘You can see that by the tractor.’

‘He’ll be yards farther back than he need be. It must be his quagmire.’

Reaching out sideways well beyond the track his right foot touched firmness. But for how long? He put his full weight on it and the ground held. He put his other leg down and there was no feeling of sponginess. He was away from the tank now. Get on with it. A bold step forward with the right leg: it landed on more firmness, a tuft of grass. Were they really as close as this to safety? He lifted the other foot and when it reached the earth it went on going down at an alarming rate, straight through the crust into liquid mud which sent up a dank nauseating smell. Jerking his other foot off the tuft he thrust it forward as far as he could and it hit solid earth, his legs splayed wide apart in front and behind him. He tried to heave the rear foot loose but found he was in serious trouble: it had sunk in up to the knee and the quagmire was wrapped round his leg like some monstrous sea creature determined to suck him down into its lair. Fighting down a rising sense of panic, he heaved again with all his strength, feeling the leg coming up reluctantly, mud oozing and sucking as he pulled. Then it came free with a jerk and he fell flat on his face, aware that the ground under his body was hard and still. Strong hands locked under his shoulders and helped him to his feet. By the light of the tractor’s beams he looked into the farmer’s face, the long lean face of a man in his forties, still babbling away in French.

‘Thanks,’ said Barnes. ‘Can you speak more slowly?’ ,

Unlooping the rope from his shoulders, he looked behind the Frenchman to where the tractor stood and then walked up to it. Tied to the side were half a dozen iron stakes with ring heads: the stakes were at least sis feet long and the farmer had obviously been erecting a fence.. With sign language he indicated that he needed the stakes and the farmer nodded his head vigorously in agreement. Cutting the rope with his knife he carried three of the stakes to the bank and called out:

‘Get Reynolds up on to the hull. He’s to get the two steel tow-lines and attach them to the rear of Bert. I need a hammer over here, too. This chap’s got some iron stakes – if we can fix the tow-lines to them it may stop Berk sinking any deeper while we think up something.’

‘OK.’

While he was waiting the farmer began to make a great effort to tell him something in a few words of English, spacing out the words one by one in his anxiety to convey the message.

‘Stop… stop… there!’ He pointed at the tank. ‘I bring big big wood.’ He was gesturing madly, scooping his hand as he pointed at the tank again. ‘Big wood. Back soon. You wait.’

What the hell else can we do, Barnes wondered. Colburn had reacted quickly and he threw the hammer into the pool of light from the tractor just before the machine was driven off. To start with, Barnes had to hammer the stakes down in the dark, but once he had them firmly embedded he held the torch in his left hand and hammered with his right. Reynolds had attached the two lines to the rear of the hull long before Barnes had driven in the stakes so deep that he thought they should hold up Bert for at least a while, at least until the farmer came back, if he came back.

The quagmire was an eerie place at night and even though it was now completely dark he could see the tank’s silhouette outlined against its own lights. The shadows of Reynolds and Colburn waited on the hull and somewhere far above them a squadron of planes flew through the night at a great height. It was still very warm and muggy and the mosquitoes were active now, biting the back of his neck. He was only satisfied when the stakes were several feet into the ground and then he flashed his torch to show the edge of the quagmire.

‘Before you throw me the tow-lines, is Bert still sinking?’

‘I don’t think so.’ Colburn’s voice. ‘I think the tank’s balanced on the island for the moment but it’s still badly tilted at the back.’

‘As far as I could make out that farmer is coming back with a load of heavy wood. That’s all I could get but I imagine he’s got some idea of bridging this gap. Now, I’ll stand well back, Reynolds, so throw me the first line.’

The loop landed within inches of the stakes where Barnes had left his lighted torch on the ground. He wrapped the line tightly round the stakes close to the ground and then passed the end through an iron ring. When the second tow-line arrived he repeated the process. Now all they could do was to wait, hoping that the farmer would come back and that he would bring something they, could use. Occasionally he called out to the men on the tank, but carrying on a conversation across the quagmire seemed pretty unsatisfactory so soon they said nothing and the minutes dragged by with agonizing slowness. Leaving the headlights on bothered Barnes because this drew attention to them from the road, but he decided that they must risk keeping them on to make sure that the farmer could find them. They waited a whole hour before lights appeared across the field behind them, and then the tractor chugged across the grass and pulled up close to the bank. Barnes ran forward to see what the farmer had brought, and for a moment he couldn’t see anything until the man pointed to behind the vehicle. He had dragged across the field two immense beams of wood which were attached to the back of the tractor by chains. While the farmer undid the chains Barnes measured their length by pacing. About ten feet long. He would have put the distance between the shore and the front of the tank at twelve feet, but that was only a rough guess. They’d just have to try it, anyway – as a fighting vehicle Bert might just as well be at the bottom of the swamp as immobilized on that island when daylight came. He stood on the bank and explained the plan carefully to Colburn and Reynolds, but that was the easy part. He now had to explain it to the farmer, and this was only achieved by careful gesturing. It became clearer when Reynolds had thrown two coils of rope on to the bank, and then they started.

The first stage involved careful cooperation between Barnes and the farmer because the wooden beams were enormously heavy and extremely unwieldy. They tied one rope tightly round the end of the longest beam and then began to invert it so that the roped end was lifted over their heads. As the huge beam rose higher and higher Barnes kept a firm grip on the loose end of the rope. The beam was slowly moving up to the vertical but the really tricky part was coming when they tried to Control its falling movement as it passed beyond the vertical, lowering it under control so that the far end could be dropped just below the right-hand track and form a bridge to dry land – if the beam would reach that far. The beam reached its apex and began to topple. They just managed to prevent it crashing down as they both held-on to the rope, and the farmer was sensible enough to let Barnes guide its controlled fall. It dropped lower and lower, scraped the front end of the right-hand track and settled. Would it begin sinking or had they managed to prop it on the tip of the island? The lights of the tractor were again beamed directly on the tank and as far as he could tell the beam was stable.

‘Nice work,’ shouted Colburn. ‘Looks OK to me.’

‘Right. Now for the next one.’

The second beam was successfully manoeuvred in direct line with the left-hand track, but it fell short. Not more than a foot, Colburn informed him, but it had fallen short of the island and was sinking slowly. Slowly? Barnes wondered – did that mean it had settled on a patch of fairly firm ground? The quagmire must be unusually solid at this particular point if a beam of such enormous weight was sinking slowly – whereas Barnes had felt his leg knifing through the -mud. They’d just have to risk it, and at least they had the two beams placed so that they formed a bridge from the present position of the tank to the shore. He reached up and felt his shoulder gingerly. He’d ripped that wound open again. When he was lowering the second beam he had been aware of a slow tearing sensation and now he could feel stickiness round the edge of the dressing. He set about enlisting the farmer’s aid for the final, possibly fatal, stage, and this time he was able to explain quickly what he wanted by sign language. They undid the tow-lines from the iron stakes after the farmer had reversed his tractor, then re-attached them to the rear of the tractor, Barnes tried to explain that he must synchronize his movements with those of the tank – that they must both move at the same moment, and he hoped to God that the farmer understood that the signal would be when Barnes shouted ‘Maintenant’. Now. Since the farmer went on repeating the word about two dozen times Barnes felt that he had probably grasped it. Now to get back to the tank.

He was careful to choose the right-hand timber and when he walked along it he lit his way with his torch beam which splayed over the edge, showing a gleam of insidious ooze waiting for him where the crust had broken. Reaching the tank, he checked the position of the timbers. The right-hand one was fine, perfect, in fact, but the left-hand one wasn’t at all good. The breadth of the gap between timber and island looked more like eighteen inches. He explained it carefully to Reynolds.

‘You’ll have to reverse back along exactly the course we came over – then the tracks will move along the beams. This isn’t going to be a picnic and you might as well know what could go wrong. The beams could crack under Bert’s weight, and they probably will at some stage. One of them could slip off this island after we’ve started. Or your tracks could slip off the beams – take your choice.’

‘Not much of a choice, is it, Sergeant? But we can’t stay here.’

‘That’s the whole point – we’ve got to risk it. You’ll have to follow my orders very precisely. I’ve fixed up with that farmer chap to shout "Maintenant" when we’re coming, and I’ll do that as soon as you start moving. He’ll drive his tractor like hell to help pull us out – every extra bit of power might just turn the trick. That’s why he’s revving up now.’

‘You’ll give me the usual order when you want me to go?’

‘No, in this case I’ll say "Now". I want you to rev up first so that when we do go we’ll go back at a hell of a lick. If we can shoot back fast enough before those beams give way there’s a chance the rear tracks will reach the bank. If they do we might just make it – with the added pull the tractor will give us. "And I can’t guarantee it will work.’

‘You’re telling me you can’t,’ said Colburn. ‘Once this weight moves on to the beams my bet is they’ll sink like a stone.’

‘You’re probably right – but by then our impetus may take us on to the bank. There’s no other way, Colburn. We’re damned lucky that farmer turned up.’

‘You’re right there – I wonder if he has any idea what he’s risking if a German patrol turns up? Don’t tell me he can push off in the dark because he can’t – not with all those tons of tank tied to his tail.’

‘He must know that,’ replied Barnes quietly. ‘If the generals had fought this war the way some of these people fight when they get the chance we’d be over the Rhine by now.’ He paused. ‘I want you to stay on the rear of the hull, Colburn. Then if anything goes wrong you jump. We’re bound to move back at least a bit and with your legs you should be able to hit the bank.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll be jumping off myself as soon as Reynolds is clear of the hatch.’

‘Let’s just see what happens, shall we?’ Colburn suggested. ‘And for your information you can stop treating me as a privileged person. There won’t be any passengers on this trip.’

Reynolds moved on to the front of the turret to lower himself inside the driving compartment but Barnes stopped him.

‘There’s one point, Reynolds, and I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a good one – and no reflection on your driving abilities.’ He grinned drily. ‘When we do start to move be sure that you are in reverse gear!’

‘I’ll do, my best, Sergeant,’ Reynolds replied stolidly. He climbed down through the hatch and began revving up.

At the last moment Barnes scrambled down inside the hull, collected a second torch, and handed this to Colburn when he emerged from the turret, telling him to shine it along the right-hand beam. He used his own torch to illuminate the other beam: at least they could now see where they were going and it was vital that he had as much warning as possible if they were on the edge of disaster. Any moment now. He waited a little longer to give Reynolds more time to warm up – the ultimate disaster would be an engine failure when they were halfway back along those beams. And as he contemplated the weird scene behind the tank he felt that their attempt was doomed to failure. The torchlight showed up clearly the improvised bridge they hoped to move over and above it the tow-lines were taut and strained, vanishing in the darkness where they continued across to the rear of the tractor. In the brief intervals between the deep-throated revving up of the tank’s engines he could hear the snarl and spit of the tractor’s motor. Would there be enough horsepower to get them clear in time before the beams sank so deep that mud engulfed and choked the tracks – because of one thing Barnes was perfectly sure: those beams were going to sink rapidly under the tank’s weight and they would probably split in half long before Bert reached the bank. Standing on the engine covers at the rear of the tank, Colburn should make it so long as he jumped quickly, but if their first rush didn’t carry them to the bank Barnes didn’t think that he would make it – he would have to stay behind to help Reynolds, and the driver had to climb upwards out of his hatch before he was even standing on the front hull. There was every chance that the twenty-six ton weight of the tank would sink like a stone long before Reynolds had come out, in which case they would both die without the aid of enemy action just as poor Penn had died. In fact, just as Davis had died. Barnes had an awful vision of what would happen as the tank went down, the mud and ooze rising hungrily up over the tracks, enveloping the hull, welling up over his chest and neck, his head going down as the quagmire swept over him and shut out the world for ever. His hand gripped the mike and he spoke.

‘Now!’

Then he immediately bawled out ‘Maintenant!’ three times at the top of his voice and the tank was moving backwards. The tow-lines drooped, went slack. The farmer hadn’t heard him! He opened his mouth again and saw the lines whip up, tighten, twanging as the tractor lurched forward. The tracks were on the beams now and instantly he was aware of a sinking sensation. Both beams had slipped off the island and Reynolds’ end was going down. He was revving up non-stop and the tracks were churning through mud, sending up great gouts of ooze which sprayed through the torchlight rays as their bridge sank deeper and deeper. They weren’t going to make it. The front end of the bridge was still firmly anchored to the bank so the rear end submerged more and more and now the tank was climbing at a steep angle. He looked back and saw liquid brown ooze lap over the end of the rear tracks, bubbling and slithering over the top. Soon the hull would be under. It was going to be too late, too late ever to reach firm ground and the tank was dropping like a slow-moving lift. Colburn still stood on the hull, leaning back now against the turret but still aiming his torch along the right-hand beam. Hand over the mike, Barnes shouted to him to jump, removed the hand and sucked in his breath to order Reynolds up. Looking back he saw that the quagmire had reached the top of the hull – Reynolds must be frightened out of his life.

Inside the nose of the tank Reynolds was more terrified than he had ever been while under German bombardment, and he had been terrified from the moment he lowered himself through the hatch. His seat was jacked up so that when he sat down his head was well clear of the hatch rim and he could see exactly what was happening. It was the change of angle which finally confirmed that he was going to die horribly. Before Barnes had given the order to move the tank was tilted so that the nose was higher than the tail and this had been of some comfort to Reynolds while they waited for him to rev up. If the tank did start to go down at the rear he might have time to get out and jump back on to the island. It was at least a chance. In the earphones he heard Barnes’ order. Now! The tank began to move backwards, dropping to an even keel as the nose left the island and proceeded over the beams. Seconds later the angle began to change, so that now the nose was sinking, leaving the rear higher, and Reynolds knew that he was finished. The floor seemed to go down at an alarming pace and he could see mud flying past the headlights as the tracks churned deeper and his compartment went on sinking. The downward angle let him see the mud rising up over the tracks and he knew that in the next few seconds it would come over the line of the hull and creep towards his chin. Then, suddenly, it would be pouring into the hatchway, flooding his compartment as the quagmire swamped him. But Barnes hadn’t yet given the order to bale out, so he stayed.

Colburn still hadn’t jumped and Barnes had taken in breath to order Reynolds up when a tuft of grass flew past his torch ray. A second later the rear of the tank dropped and there was a slight bump as the tracks hit something solid. Colburn was shouting sentences Barnes couldn’t hear but he understood what had happened. Climbing up over the steeply-angled beams the tracks had moved on upwards into the air until the centre of gravity had passed the end of the beams and they dropped. They had reached firm ground. The tracks went on up the shallow slope of the bank as he spoke quickly into the mike.

‘Keep it up! We’ve done it!’

At that moment the engine coughed, sputtered, stalled, but they were ashore. The tow-lines were still taut as the tractor heaved at its immense load so Barnes jumped to the ground and ran forward to tell the farmer to stop. When the engine was switched off he thumped the Frenchman on the back and kept on thanking him regardless of the fact that the man couldn’t understand half he was staying. He stopped suddenly as he heard Colburn calling out urgently and when he turned round to face the quagmire his body went completely rigid and he froze.

The giant vehicle must have driven along the road while they were preoccupied with saving the tank. They wouldn’t have heard its motor because of their own engines and that of the tractor, and Reynolds, the only one facing the road, must have been too concerned with what was happening to notice the road. Worse still, the new arrivals could easily locate their position because Bert’s headlights were still on, to stay nothing of the tractor’s lamp. The moon had now risen and this enabled Barnes to make instant recognition of the huge vehicle and the silhouette of its load – a tank transporter with a tank aboard. As if to complete the process of recognition a soldier walked past the headlights of the transporter, a soldier carrying something which could only be a machine-pistol and wearing a pudding-shaped helmet. The Germans had arrived. It took a very short time for Barnes to recover from his stunned state, and this was replaced by an upsurge of cold, murderous fury. They had come all this way; they had lost Davis and Penn; they had almost lost their tank and their own lives a few minutes ago, and now this lot was poking its nose in to snatch it all away from them. Running back to the tank, he leapt on to the hull, grabbed a machine-pistol off the ledge inside the turret, and jumped down behind the tank. He spoke briefly to Reynolds and Colburn.

‘Wait here – behind Bert. Don’t switch the lights off – that will alert them.’

Then he was running back into the field, following as closely as he could the course the tank had taken when it first turned off the road. To avoid any risk of going into the quagmire he ran a little farther round than he thought was necessary, circling back so that he would come out on the road a good hundred yards behind where the transporter was parked. And as he ran his mind worked with icy detachment. How many Germans would there be? One transporter carrying one heavy tank to the repair shop: four men at the most, he guessed. Possibly only three – the Germans were short of ground troops. He dropped flat suddenly. The first soldier he had seen was standing in the field just beyond the grass verge, and now a second one had walked in front of the headlights and he was looking in Barnes’ direction. He didn’t think he had been spotted. He had kept his body crouched low and the moonlight wasn’t very strong yet, its illumination blurred by a faint white mist rising off the field. The second soldier joined his companion and they both stood staring across the field. They couldn’t be too worried yet because otherwise they wouldn’t have walked in front of those headlights, and they could have no reason to suspect the presence of hostile troops in this area. Had they done that in the first place they would never have stopped the transporter. A third soldier appeared and stood right in front of the headlights, his machine-pistol clearly visible. He walked forward to join the others.

Barnes was very close to the road now and when he stood up the road was only a dozen yards away. A curtain of mist floated between himself and the Germans and he ran forward, crossing the road and continuing several yards into the field beyond. When he turned, the bulk of the transporter shielded him from where the soldiers waited. Why didn’t they either investigate or go away? He found the answer when he looked back across the road and saw that the scene on the edge of the quagmire from that distance looked like anything but what it was. The lights of the tank were tilted downwards and he remembered the shallow slope at the edge of the quagmire.

The odd angle of Bert’s headlights gave the strange impression that there had just been a car crash. The turret of the tank was invisible and the light of the tractor was too far away to show up the tank’s silhouette. The Germans might well be imagining that there was another road just across the fields, and from the passive way they were standing by the roadside he felt certain that Bert’s engine had stalled just in time, otherwise they must have recognized the grind of the tracks. It was a tableau made to order, if only he could take advantage of it in time. He moved across the field towards the transporter, his boots making no sound on the grass.

He was close to the rear of the vehicle when he heard someone call out in German. Peering round the end he saw two soldiers still standing on the verge just beyond the front of the transporter while a third one made his way across the field, flashing a torch in front of him. The mist was blurring Bert’s lights now and hung over the quagmire like a noxious gas rising from the swamp. Was there a fourth man in the cab? The two Germans by the roadside presented a tempting target but Barnes waited. He had to try and get them all at once to avoid them scattering.

The soldier walking across the field had stopped, the machine-pistol tucked under one arm while he waved the torch with the other hand. The curtain of mist had drifted lower now and soon he would have to walk into it. He shouted across the field in German, waited, and then shouted again, several sentences. It was deathly quiet when he stopped shouting. The transporter’s engine had been switched off and the mist seemed to cover the field like a leather glove which smothered even the slightest sound. Barnes waited. The Germans waited. He was fairly sure that the soldier in the field was going to give up his search and return to the others, which meant that for a brief moment all three men might be close together. He hoped so because as he stood by the elevated ramp at the rear of the transporter an entirely new idea was developing at the back of his, mind, an idea which made it imperative that he would wipe out the whole German escort. Then he heard one of the men-who stood by the roadside call out; the soldier with the torch answered and began to move deeper into the field, sweeping his torch towards the mist wall which was now less than a dozen yards ahead of him.

It happened without warning. The German walked up to the remnants of a wire fence, paused at a point where two posts tilted at a drunken angle, the wire between them sagging, and stepped over the wires, walking forward again. Then he fell forward,; losing his torch which skidded sideways over baked mud, and shouted. His shout rose to a shriek of alarm. Jesus, thought Barnes, he’s in the quagmire. One of the soldiers by the roadside ran forward, flashing on a torch beam, while the other stayed to guard the transporter. It was at this moment that Barnes climbed silently up on to the side of the huge vehicle, creeping forward and taking up a fresh position behind the German tank. The soldier was running across the field now, waving his torch in front of him as his comrade in the swamp screamed his head off, a scream of pure terror. As the running soldier stopped abruptly his torch beam focussed on a horrifying sight: the first German was already up to his waist as the quagmire sucked him steadily downwards; his arms were waving frantically as he kept padding them down on the mud to arrest his sinking movement and he was still shrieking frenziedly. The third German by the roadside ran up to the transporter, feeling under the tank only feet away from where Barnes was crouched, pulled out a coil of rope and started running across the field. The soldier in the quagmire had sunk in up to the chest now, waving his arms high above his head, and only a few feet from where he struggled the lighted torch he had dropped lay on the top of unbroken crust. The man with the rope was close now and while he ran he held the rope coil ready to throw. As he reached the spot where the German holding the torch stood the struggling man sank lower, only his head and upstretched arms visible now, his voice an agonized moan. The rope was thrown, falling several feet short. The head in the swamp sank out of sight, the voice dying in a strangled gurgle, the vertical arms sliding under the surface, vanishing. Barnes wiped sweat of his forehead, slipped his finger back inside the trigger guard, stood up behind the tank and waited.

The two Germans came back slowly, machine-pistols hoisted over their shoulders, talking in low tones. They were less than a dozen yards away when Barnes lifted the machine-pistol. He fired one continuous burst, shifting the muzzle slightly from side to side to cover them both. They were still collapsing to the ground when he ceased fire, half a magazine still unused. At that moment the engine of the transporter kicked into life. There had been a fourth man – the driver, with instructions never to leave his cab. Barnes leapt down on to the grass verge and the door on his side was still open as he ran forward, pulling up short just before he reached the opening. Keeping back out of sight he shoved the muzzle of his pistol round the corner, aiming it upwards, firing one short burst. As he ran back to the rear of the vehicle, round the end and along the other side, the engine was still ticking over but the transporter hadn’t started moving. He was still cautious when he reached the closed cab door. Grabbing the handle, he hauled the door open and jumped back, his pistol levelled, but the precaution wasn’t necessary. As the door opened the driver’s body toppled sideways, landing in the road with a soft thud. The German was dead, bis right side riddled with bullets. Switching off the motor, Barnes went across to have a look at the other two soldiers. They were also dead. Sergeant Barnes was in sole possession of one German tank transporter.