Колин Форбс - Tramp in Armour

‘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.