Колин Форбс - Tramp in Armour

‘Something like that. It’s a good job we stopped here instead of pushing on downstream – we’d have run into them, or they’d have seen us after we’d passed the bridge. The river goes through open country just beyond there. And they’ve posted a sentry, of course. The chap was looking this way when I had a dekko through some trees.’

‘So we just sit tight?’ Penn made a note in the book Barnes had left him. ‘I could do with a drop to drink before you start counting again.’

‘I’ll get your bottle from the tank.’

Barnes turned to make his way down the bank and froze.

Something had just floated downstream past the tank, a misshapen object which was now picking up speed in the current. Reynolds hadn’t seen it because he had an engine cover up and was kneeling on the hull with his back to the near-side channel, but Penn had spotted it and he swore foully.

‘That’s the sentry’s body – that German on the next bridge will see it.’

‘You stay here!’

Barnes stumbled and slithered his way down the slope and then started to run along the overgrown bank side as though all the devils in hell were after him. He ran flat-footed, hammering bis feet down and then lifting them straight up again to try and avoid tripping over the brambles which snared his path, and as he ran black despair threatened to smother his mind. Of all the bloody bad luck. It had all seemed so simple up to this moment: all they had to do was to keep their heads down and remain out of sight until the Panzers on both roads had dis-appeared to the north. And now this. It was like a drowning man within an ace of the shore suddenly feeling himself swept up by an ebb-tide. And the tide of the river was carrying their safety away from them in the form of the dead sentry’s body. What the hell could have happened? It must have got caught on something and then later the current had freed it again. Barnes could have wept; instead, he kept on running, watching the ground but continually glancing up to see the progress of the corpse which was so clearly that of a German soldier.

The body was face down in the water but the shoulders and back arid legs were well above the surface, exposing the jacket and trousers of, a German infantryman, and it wouldn’t take some bright officer too long to wonder why this had appeared now on a stretch of river between two bridges being crossed by the Wehrmacht. He increased speed, took several paces forward, and fell flat on his face. Scrambling up again he hardly noticed the tear and rip of the thorns as they re-opened recent wounds, but he had fallen sideways on his right shoulder with a heavy thump and he did notice the sharp throb of his wound which immediately started up again. Swearing briefly, he ran on desperately. He had to reach that corpse before it swept round the bend and flowed on in full view of the sentry on the bridge, a sentry who had been looking this way. He fell flat again, his foot trapped by ropes of bramble, dragged himself to his feet, began running and then stopped. The floating body was approaching the bend, still drifting in the centre of the river. It was now or never. He threw off his battledress tunic, tore off his boots, and dived in.

The chill of the water took his breath away but he ignored the shock and began swimming rapidly downstream, his arms flashing through the water, his body shooting forward under a momentum which was increased by the flow of the current. While stationed in India as a professional soldier before the war Barnes had been champion swimmer in the division but he broke all records now, swimming as though his life were at stake, which it probably was – and the lives of two others. Under his shirt the wound was throbbing steadily, sucking away his energy when he needed it all for just the next few minutes. He swam with his teeth clenched, knowing that he was beginning to overtake the corpse. Foot by foot the gap closed, and foot by foot the bend came closer. He was only a few yards behind the floating body when his leg hit a rock under the surface, the blow sending an agonizing pain from his kneecap to his thigh. It stopped him for a second, then he was swimming on, his eyes fixed on the bend which was almost on top of him, the corpse still several yards ahead. The hump of German uniform picked up a little speed, bobbing slightly as it swept round the bend in full view of the bridge. He hadn’t made it.

He had a quick glimpse – the curved bridge, the low parapet, the sentry on the far side, his back turned. Barnes took a deep breath and dived under, swimming now almost along the bed of the river, thrusting forward with powerful strokes until he saw a grey mass above him, barely one foot above him. He reached up with one arm, grabbed the body round the middle, hauled downwards with all his strength, feeling he was trying to drag down a ton-weight. It came down suddenly, rolling over sluggishly, and now his arms tried to swim two men. The bridge was very close to the bend but the distance seemed endless as he swam forward while the body tried to take on a life of its own, threatening at any moment to slip from his grasp. As he fought to retain control he was keeping a close eye upwards for the first sign of a change in the light which would warn him he was going under the bridge, and at the same time he was fighting his bursting lungs, his teeth a tight trap to hold back the carbon dioxide, to force his lungs to hold out just a few seconds longer as he felt the blood pumping like a steam-hammer. No sign of a light change yet. He began to expel air, saw a shadow on the water surface, heaved upwards, broke surface under the bridge, blew out, took in oxygen as he threshed to the bank and grabbed at it with one hand.

A tank was crossing the bridge, he could hear the steel rumble, so no one would hear him threshing about. He clung on to the bank with his left hand while the right pinioned the sentry. Now for the rough part – getting out. The tank had gone, so he waited. When the next one approached he started to climb out and then he had the devil’s own job hauling out the sodden body which seemed suddenly to have increased its weight ten-fold, at one point almost dragging Barnes himself back into the water as he lay face down in brambles while he struggled to heave the leaden burden up over the edge, both his arms wrapped round the waist and his hands locked together to make quite sure that it wouldn’t slip back and float into view at the last moment. It was a grisly task and it became even more grisly when he succeeded in hoisting the corpse on to the bank because it rolled and he rolled with it, lying for a moment flat on his back with the sentry almost on top of him, sodden, dripping with water, its face close to his, the hair plastered flatly over the white skull.

He waited until another tank arrived and then he worked furiously to push the body deep inside a jungle of brambles, treating it like a sack of cement as he finally jerked the legs and bent them to thrust them after the rest of the corpse. The bridge he now lay under was much smaller than the one higher up, wide enough only to take single-line traffic, and the footpath had disappeared altogether long ago when the brambles flourished and took over the whole bank up to the stone wall. There, he’d done it. No one would find the sentry unless they searched for him and by now Barnes was becoming familiar with German bridge procedure: they checked underneath it before the column arrived but they certainly wouldn’t come poking around down here a second time. Not unless he attracted attention.

Barnes was temporarily exhausted, the wound playing him up badly now, his kneecap aching steadily, his hands and face scratched to blazes with the ripping of the brambles. He lay quite still for several minutes, his revolver in his hand, although whether the weapon would work after its soaking was anybody’s guess. He listened to the column rumbling past overhead and gradually he revived, his mind revolting at the thought that he was back to square one again. When he cautiously peered through the far side of the arch he saw the long shadow of the sentry above him spread over the upper bank, the top half of his body, the pudding-shaped helmet absurdly stretched out. The bastard was on the right side of the bridge -downstream – and Barnes had had a bellyful of being cooped up under bridges. He decided to risk it. And Penn would be doing his nut if he didn’t get back soon. The real danger was that his swimming form might be spotted under the water before he reached the bend, but the river here was about four feet deep so he’d just have to swim with his face on the bed. Because a tank commander erect in bis turret has an elevated view Barnes waited until one of the vehicles had moved across the bridge and then he took a deep breath, slipped back into the river noiselessly and began swimming upstream along the river bed.