Колин Форбс - Tramp in Armour

‘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.

‘Sergeant! Wake up! Wake up!’

Barnes opened his eyes instantly, blinking once, his hand automatically closing over the revolver he had hidden under the blanket.

‘What is it, Penn?’

‘Come up to the bridge – we’ve got company.’

Barnes had slept in his boots and now he sat up with the minimum of movement, glancing back at Pierre as he switched on the torch, shading it with his hand. Switching it off again immediately, he clambered to his feet and nearly fell into the river. Pierre lay in exactly the same position as when he had fallen asleep, one large hand resting limply outside the blanket. From the far side of the tank came a deep-throated snore. Reynolds was still putting his time to good use. Following Penn, Barnes climbed up the bank, digging in his toes and using his hand to follow the line of the wall. The illuminated hands of his watch, the watch he had borrowed from Penn, registered 1.30 am. Another two and a half hours to dawn. And Penn had let him oversleep by thirty minutes.

Coming up on the bridge he stopped as a chill ran through him. The moon was up and through the palely illuminated night to the south a column of lights was advancing towards them. In the heavy stillness of the early morning he could faintly hear the purr of many engines. He made a quick estimate of the number of vehicles, stopped counting when he had reached twenty, which was only a fraction of the total number of tiny lights.

‘Penn, go down and wake Reynolds – quietly. Tell him to get his damned boots on.’

‘What about Pierre?’

‘Don’t wake him on any account.’

Barnes stood and waited, shivering a little from the cold. The nearest lights seemed closer now, the sound of the engines distinctly louder. This was no procession of refugees heading for the bridge: he could tell that from the orderly advance of the headlights, just sufficiently well spaced out to allow the whole endless column to move forward at a rate of about twenty miles an hour. Cocking his head to one side he listened carefully, but there was no sound of aircraft in the cloudless sky. Standing there on the bridge he could hear the gentle lapping of the river as it swirled round Bert in the cavern below, but the water sound was now being muffled by the steady revolutions of the motors of the approaching armada, which he was quite certain now was an Army column of enormous striking power. British, French, or German? Their very lives might hang on the answer to that question. A few minutes later he was listening even more intently as Penn stood by his side. No, he had not been mistaken. Above the engine rhythms he could detect a familiar sound – the steady rumble of tank tracks. They were standing in the path of an armoured column.

Scrambling down the side of the bank, finding his way by feel, he went in under the bridge and switched on his torch briefly. Reynolds was up and standing on the same side of the river as Pierre who had just laced up his shoes. The lad’s hair was freshly combed and he was staring up at Reynolds who held a revolver in his hand.

‘They’ll be coming over the bridge in a few minutes,’ Barnes snapped. ‘It may be a Panzer column. Whatever happens you both stay here until I come back. Get it, Reynolds?’

He looked meaningfully at the driver and then scrambled back up the bank to where Penn still waited at the northern end of the bridge, just in time to see the corporal leave the road in a hurry as he plunged down the far side of the bridge. Instantly, Barnes moved sideways along the bank and hid himself behind a thick clump of wild shrubs. The next moment he heard the buoyant burst of a motor-cycle. Lights flashed, crossed the bridge, swerved round the corner, and headed north, immediately followed by a second cycle. The lights of the second patrol briefly lit up the first and in the side-car he caught a glimpse of a seated soldier who wore a pudding-shaped helmet, a machine-pistol cradled across his chest. It was Jerry all right. Christ!

Instead of following the first patrol towards Fontaine, the second motor-cycle reduced speed, swerved on to the grass, its headlights sweeping over the shrub where Barnes lay, then stopped, its engine still running. The soldier in the side-car stepped out and the cycle drove off, leaving the sentry who walked back to the bridge. Barnes lay very still as the German peered over the parapet on his side. A powerful torch beam flashed on and swept over the bank where they might have taken Bert down by the direct route to the river bed. Then it went out and he heard the sentry’s feet march back to the end of the parapet. The torch flashed on again, pointing down the bank. It began to move forward and behind it feet slithered, recovered, and then started to feel their way down over the brambles. Barnes gritted his teeth. This was a thorough bastard. He was going to check under the bridge.

Without a sound, Barnes brought his right hand up to his hip, grasped the hilt of his knife and withdrew it from the sheath. The sound of the oncoming engines was much louder. He would have no time at all to work this trick. He lay still, listening to the sentry moving down the bank, praying that Perm wouldn’t open fire. The German was only a few feet from Barnes as he passed him and his feet were making a row as they trod through the undergrowth. Lifting himself carefully to his feet, Barnes moved across to the wall under cover of the sentry’s shuffling feet, leaning out his hand to contact the stonework. Then he began to follow the German down, left hand on the wall, right hand gripping the knife. He had to finish him with the first thrust. He could see the silhouette of the sentry clearly against the torch glow: any second now the torch would swivel left and shine on the stationary tank. What the German’s reaction would be when he found that under the bridge was really something for the book. Stealthily, he went down the bank. There was one horrible moment when he nearly slipped, digging in his right heel desperately, his knife hand waving all over the place, but he regained his balance without the sentry hearing him. The German was about four feet ahead of him now, and beyond the bridge the purr of the motors grew steadily louder. He had to get a little closer. He stepped down farther and at that moment the German swung his torch sideways and the beam glared full on the menacing hull of the hidden tank, its two-pounder pointing downstream. Barnes sprang forward, knife held high, his body lunging forward and downward in one leap. The knife reached the sentry’s back and stabbed clean through the greatcoat, penetrating the body deeply under the impetus of Barnes’ violent thrust. They fell forward together on to the bank, the sentry groaning once as Barnes landed on top of him. The torch splashed in the river.