Weaver

XXXIV

It was around five in the afternoon when the full-scale English assault at last fell on them. It came from the west.

The column broke again. The infantry dug in, scrambling for ditches and abandoned English foxholes. The engineers laboured to set up the field guns, and the Panzer tanks charged west, off the road, their big guns roaring.

Ernst and Heinz Kieser found themselves in an abandoned Home Guard pillbox, splashed with blood and stinking of cordite and smoke. Through a ragged slit in the scorched concrete, Ernst could see the open country the English were coming from. He saw vehicles, tanks, and scurrying troops, advancing amid the detonations of shells and the rattle of small-arms fire. This was not local defence; this was not the Home Guard. This was the English army, kept in reserve since the invasion; this was the counterattack they had been expecting all day.

And while the battle was joined on the land, over Ernst's head the aerial war was raging. It was clear that the English air force must be attacking the German advance, all along the roads back to the south, hoping to slice up the columns and then destroy the isolated elements. But now the English bombers and fighters were at last challenged by flights of Messerschmitts roaring up from the south, and Stuka dive bombers screamed down on English emplacements. The air was full of streaking planes and the howl of engines and a lacing of fire – and, from time to time, a plume of smoke, an explosion in the air, the distant drifting of parachutes. A three-dimensional war, then, in the air and on the land.

Ernst knew roughly where he was. Suffering from the attrition of the defenders' assaults, vehicles failing one by one for lack of fuel, the dwindling column had managed to push on through the towns of Haywards Heath and Horsham. The countryside was becoming progressively easier, less intensively mined, lighter and sparser defences at the crossroads and bridges and rail junctions. Now they were only a few miles south of Guildford, their target for the day, though they were far behind schedule. And if only they could go just a little further, if only they could reach the line of the Thames, the country would be open before them.

This was the crux. Ernst had the feeling that both sides were pouring all they had into this one conflict zone, that here was the spearhead, the assault that would make or break the German invasion of England.

There was a loud explosion, directly above Ernst's head. He flinched, grabbing his helmet. An English plane, a Hurricane by the look of it, had taken a strike. Its tail was gone, its right wing crushed, and it was heading straight for the ground, spinning like a corkscrew. Ernst saw the pilot struggle to get out of his cockpit, a tiny figure clambering desperately. The plane speared down, falling somewhere behind the German line, and an explosion rocked the ground.

A shadow passed over Ernst's face. He turned to look through the slit in the pillbox. Somebody was looking right back at him, not a foot away, through the thickness of the concrete. He had crept up while Ernst was distracted by the plane. The man's hand was raised. He held a grenade.

Kieser saw the same thing. 'Oh, shit!' His rifle cracked. A bullet ripped past Ernst's ear and slammed into the Englishman's hand, and one of his fingers burst in a shower of blood. He screamed.

Kieser's heavy hand slammed down on Ernst's back. 'Down, man!'

The explosion made the pillbox shudder. Leaves and bits of dirt were thrown up and then rained down.

On their bellies, they scrambled around the wall of the broken pillbox. The English soldier lay on his back, cradling a shattered hand. Kieser stuck the muzzle of his rifle in the man's face. 'Hello, goodbye,' he said in his broken English.

'Fuck you.' The English laughed, though tears rolled down his cheek with the pain of his hand. 'Fuck you for Peter's Well. And Wisborough Green. And Rotherfield. And Bethersden. And-'

Kieser's fist slammed into his jaw. 'And fuck you for Versailles.'

'Pretty boys!' They glanced over. Unteroffizier Fischer, crouching in the dirt, was waving. 'Leave him for the mop-up units. We're moving on.'

They scrambled back towards him. The three of them huddled by the side of the road, crouching, flinching from the shell fire and the bursts of automatic fire that sporadically raked the column. But the column was forming up again, the tanks and trucks lumbering back onto the road.

Kieser shouted, 'Unteroffizier? Are you serious?'

'That's the order. Listen to me. The English have fielded everything they've got, but we're still standing. And what's left of the second wave is heading our way. Always reinforce success – isn't that what the Fuhrer says? And we're the spearhead. Let the English slice away at our rear, let us lose half our bloody vehicles for lack of fuel – what of it? Mobility, that has been the key to this war – our mobility. If Seventh Panzer can only get into Guildford, with us following up – it's only a few more miles – if just a few of us can only get that far tonight, then we will have a chance of establishing a bridgehead. And tomorrow, when the English are exhausted, we can consolidate. Do you see?' He grinned. 'The order has come from Guderian himself, it is said. Berlin is sceptical, but Berlin is far away. What a man! Come on, get back into the truck.'

So, with the air war screaming overhead and the English assault continuing furiously from the left, the column roared on towards Guildford, led by the remnants of Seventh Panzer. The English shells hailed all around, and one by one the trucks and tanks and field guns were knocked out, and others died from lack of fuel, yet the rest simply closed up and moved on. The English desperately tried to throw up road blocks, even shoving their own vehicles across the road, but the tanks simply smashed through.

For Ernst this was a dash through hell. The men in the troop carriers could do nothing but cower, each of them waiting for the bit of shrapnel or the sniper bullet or the automatic-weapons burst from some English plane that would end his life. But they whooped and roared as the truck clattered over the pocked road, throwing them around like toys in a box, and Ernst found it impossible not to join in. This was madness. They wouldn't have the fuel even to drive back to the coast. But maybe, just maybe, this bold stroke was going to work, the English defences would be scattered and the Battle of England won.

But now they approached a crossroads. A mesh fence had been thrown across it, with barbed wire and a few tank traps. Ernst expected the Panzers simply to blast this lot out of the way and move on. He was astonished when the Panzers slowed with a grinding of their huge gears, and his own truck squealed to a stop.

Ernst exchanged a look with Heinz Kieser. Kieser just shrugged.

Unteroffizier Fischer jumped down to the road surface, and Ernst followed. The fence stretched to left and right across the road, and off into the fields beyond. A flag, a Stars and Stripes, flew boldly from a pole rising from beyond the fence. A single soldier armed with an automatic weapon stood right before the muzzle of the lead Panzer. He was short, burly, with belt and straps heavy with grenades and ammunition clips. His uniform looked crumpled. Apparently fearless, he was chewing gum.

There was a sign fixed to the fence, neatly lettered. Ernst squinted to make it out: