Колин Форбс - Tramp in Armour

‘As far as I can make out,’ Barnes went on, ‘The BEF is roughly north of this line with the Belgian Army on its left. We’re standing in the middle of a huge no-man’s-land…’

‘The gap,’ said Colburn.

‘You mean they’re actually calling it that?’

‘Yes, it’s referred to as that on our briefing maps. As you say, you’re slap in the middle of it but there’s a lot of argument as to how wide it is. My squadron came over to mix it with Hun fighters but as a sideline we were told to shoot up any Panzers we found. They think reinforcements may come through here soon.’

‘They were right – they came through early this morning.’

‘Late again.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Going back to those Panzers, I raised a query about the risk of shooting up our own guys and you’re not going to like the answer they gave. They said that if we found a whole lot of heavy tanks strung out along a road they were bound to be German – the British only have a handful and the French have cleverly scattered theirs in penny packets over the whole front.’

‘You don’t seem to know a great deal more than I do, Colburn.’

‘Sergeant, you’re over here in the thick of it, and it’s my opinion that you’re far to close to be able to take in the general picture.’

‘That, Colburn, said Barnes irritably, ‘is what I’m trying to extract from you. You get detailed briefings before you take to the air, you fly over the battlefield – if anyone has a general picture it should be you.’

‘Oh, I’ve got it, all right, but from your questions I get the idea you’re looking for some sort of clear pattern I should draw you, some nice neat little map which will show the Germans here, your lot there, and the French some other place. Well, I can’t do that, and again it’s only my opinion, but I’m pretty sure that when this war is only a memory and the historians get busy with their tidy little analyses they still won’t be able to say exactly which unit was where and on what day.-This, for what it’s worth, is the biggest muddle of a battle that ever was.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘That there isn’t any information worth a damn – these boys, the generals, are just making it up as they go along. Just like Wellington in the Peninsular War when he said it was like knotting a rope – you tie one knot, then you tie another and hope for the best. But don’t try to kid me that any of them are working to a tidy little plan in a war room any more.’

‘Not even the Germans?’ Barnes asked quietly.

‘Not even those bastards.— not any more. Ask me how I know and I’ll tell you it’s the well-known Colburn intuition -that and the fact that I’m a minor student of the history of warfare. But there’s one thing, Barnes, I’d bet money on – I’d bet that at this moment the German generals are so intoxicated with their success that they don’t know what to do with it. Generals are always divided into pushers and pullers – one lot will be saying press on, push ‘em into the sea, and the other lot will be yelling blue murder that they’ve over-reached themselves and had better dig in quick before they get their heads chopped off.’

‘It doesn’t help me much,’ remarked Barnes.,

‘Well, maybe this will help you. When I flew in today I came down south-east over Calais and I’m pretty sure there’s another gap between the coast road and the main battle area to the east. That could just be the way for us to go.’

‘It is the way we’re going.’

‘So I get a free ride to Calais, but on one condition – that you don’t ever ask me again for the general picture. There isn’t one. This is such a bloody mixed-up mess they’ll never be able to describe it – not in a hundred years’ time. Not unless they call on the aid of Shakespeare who did have a word for a complete one hundred per cent shambles. The general picture, Sergeant Barnes, is hugger-mugger.’

‘Which simply means we could run into Jerry at any time now.’

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.