Колин Форбс - Tramp in Armour

He was close to the rear of the vehicle when he heard someone call out in German. Peering round the end he saw two soldiers still standing on the verge just beyond the front of the transporter while a third one made his way across the field, flashing a torch in front of him. The mist was blurring Bert’s lights now and hung over the quagmire like a noxious gas rising from the swamp. Was there a fourth man in the cab? The two Germans by the roadside presented a tempting target but Barnes waited. He had to try and get them all at once to avoid them scattering.

The soldier walking across the field had stopped, the machine-pistol tucked under one arm while he waved the torch with the other hand. The curtain of mist had drifted lower now and soon he would have to walk into it. He shouted across the field in German, waited, and then shouted again, several sentences. It was deathly quiet when he stopped shouting. The transporter’s engine had been switched off and the mist seemed to cover the field like a leather glove which smothered even the slightest sound. Barnes waited. The Germans waited. He was fairly sure that the soldier in the field was going to give up his search and return to the others, which meant that for a brief moment all three men might be close together. He hoped so because as he stood by the elevated ramp at the rear of the transporter an entirely new idea was developing at the back of his, mind, an idea which made it imperative that he would wipe out the whole German escort. Then he heard one of the men-who stood by the roadside call out; the soldier with the torch answered and began to move deeper into the field, sweeping his torch towards the mist wall which was now less than a dozen yards ahead of him.

It happened without warning. The German walked up to the remnants of a wire fence, paused at a point where two posts tilted at a drunken angle, the wire between them sagging, and stepped over the wires, walking forward again. Then he fell forward,; losing his torch which skidded sideways over baked mud, and shouted. His shout rose to a shriek of alarm. Jesus, thought Barnes, he’s in the quagmire. One of the soldiers by the roadside ran forward, flashing on a torch beam, while the other stayed to guard the transporter. It was at this moment that Barnes climbed silently up on to the side of the huge vehicle, creeping forward and taking up a fresh position behind the German tank. The soldier was running across the field now, waving his torch in front of him as his comrade in the swamp screamed his head off, a scream of pure terror. As the running soldier stopped abruptly his torch beam focussed on a horrifying sight: the first German was already up to his waist as the quagmire sucked him steadily downwards; his arms were waving frantically as he kept padding them down on the mud to arrest his sinking movement and he was still shrieking frenziedly. The third German by the roadside ran up to the transporter, feeling under the tank only feet away from where Barnes was crouched, pulled out a coil of rope and started running across the field. The soldier in the quagmire had sunk in up to the chest now, waving his arms high above his head, and only a few feet from where he struggled the lighted torch he had dropped lay on the top of unbroken crust. The man with the rope was close now and while he ran he held the rope coil ready to throw. As he reached the spot where the German holding the torch stood the struggling man sank lower, only his head and upstretched arms visible now, his voice an agonized moan. The rope was thrown, falling several feet short. The head in the swamp sank out of sight, the voice dying in a strangled gurgle, the vertical arms sliding under the surface, vanishing. Barnes wiped sweat of his forehead, slipped his finger back inside the trigger guard, stood up behind the tank and waited.

The two Germans came back slowly, machine-pistols hoisted over their shoulders, talking in low tones. They were less than a dozen yards away when Barnes lifted the machine-pistol. He fired one continuous burst, shifting the muzzle slightly from side to side to cover them both. They were still collapsing to the ground when he ceased fire, half a magazine still unused. At that moment the engine of the transporter kicked into life. There had been a fourth man – the driver, with instructions never to leave his cab. Barnes leapt down on to the grass verge and the door on his side was still open as he ran forward, pulling up short just before he reached the opening. Keeping back out of sight he shoved the muzzle of his pistol round the corner, aiming it upwards, firing one short burst. As he ran back to the rear of the vehicle, round the end and along the other side, the engine was still ticking over but the transporter hadn’t started moving. He was still cautious when he reached the closed cab door. Grabbing the handle, he hauled the door open and jumped back, his pistol levelled, but the precaution wasn’t necessary. As the door opened the driver’s body toppled sideways, landing in the road with a soft thud. The German was dead, bis right side riddled with bullets. Switching off the motor, Barnes went across to have a look at the other two soldiers. They were also dead. Sergeant Barnes was in sole possession of one German tank transporter.

They were roaring through the night like a thunderbolt, twin headlights ablaze, the long beams stretching far into the darkness, the giant transporter swaying gently from side to side as Reynolds stepped up the speed. Fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five miles an hour. On the other side of the cab Barnes gazed along the beams which still showed only endless open road, while between them Colburn turned round to peer through the tiny window at the back of the cab.

‘Don’t worry,’ Barnes assured him. ‘Bert’s still there – his weight alone will keep him on board even moving at this pace.’

His mind travelled back to what had taken place at the edge of the quagmire before they started their headlong dash to the north, and he smiled grimly as he thought that whatever happened now they had been responsible for eliminating at least one German heavy tank, even if the method used had been, to put it mildly, unorthodox. When he had examined the vehicle he found that it was in perfect working order except for the machine gun and the wireless set. To Barnes’ mind it should have been possible to repair the firing mechanism in a few hours but instead the Germans had loaded the tank on to a transporter. This action alone pointed up the Germans’ prodigal use of equipment. He had just finished his examination when he heard a heart-warming sound – the sound of Bert’s engines tuning up faultlessly. By the time that Reynolds and Colburn arrived inside the tank he had decided exactly what he was going to do.

He was going to head all-out for Calais, the last port before Dunkirk, possibly the twin keys to the whole campaign. If they could come up behind the Germans, causing the maximum possible damage to their rear, then they might be able to strike a heavy blow at a decisive moment. Above all else, he prayed that they would find a really major objective. Bert, going all-out, had a maximum speed of fifteen miles an hour, whereas the German transporter if driven to its utmost limits, could multiply that rate by four. But as a preliminary they had to get rid of one Wehrmacht heavy tank. This operation took less than thirty minutes.

First, they made a cautious reconnaissance to find out where the quagmire began. The wire fence proved to be the boundary and a short way from the gap through which the German soldier had walked to his death they found a faded notice board which carried a warning. The next stage was an even more cautious reversal of the transporter to a position close to the edge of the swamp. Barnes drove the vehicle while Colburn guided him with a torch. The third stage was the lowering of the ramp at the rear of the vehicle, followed by the infinitely satisfying moment when Barnes climbed into the driving compartment of the tank, fiddled with the controls, drove it backwards and forwards a few feet along the deck, and then reversed it for its final journey. He climbed out of the hatch and jumped clear as the machine was clattering down the ramp.