Колин Форбс - Tramp in Armour

‘You turn left,’ Jacques had just told Barnes, ‘just beyond that white building.’

Barnes gave the order. ‘And that farm you mentioned, Jacques, those isolated outhouses…’

He broke off as the tank turned down a narrow track. At the , edge of the headlights he could see a strangely familiar shape, and when the track curved the beams played full on the bulky silhouette. Barnes stiffened and as Jacques pointed to the farm buildings beyond an open gateway he gave the order to halt.

The stationary vehicle which had startled him was tilted over at an acute angle, lying just inside the field with one track caught in a deep ditch. It was Bert’s twin brother – a Matilda tank. Jumping to the ground he walked towards it, hearing Colburn’s footsteps behind him. When he played his torch over the tank he saw that it was derelict, half the turret blown away, its right-hand track torn loose, the rear of the hull burnt black.

‘Looks like one of yours,’ Colburn suggested quietly.

‘It’s one of ours all right. There’s been a helluva scrap here. Look.’

In the field behind the tank uniformed bodies lay scattered across the grass, on their stomachs, on their backs, on their sides, and sometimes the uniforms were German but many were British and all dead. Barnes picked up several rifles and found them empty. There was only one tank, the single Matilda, and in its solitude it seemed to emphasize the terrible shortage of armoured forces with the BEF.

‘The Panzers came through,’ he remarked to Colburn, who made no reply.

They walked farther down the track and by the gateway they found more empty rifles, British .303s, their dead owners lying close by. Barnes followed his torch beam cautiously into a yard surrounded by outbuildings and when they searched them they found that the place was deserted – deserted of human life but there were several British fifteen-hundred-weight trucks parked round the edges of the yard which had obviously been some minor transport depot. Inside the buildings were more trucks and further evidence that a unit had been in residence recently – a pile of unwashed billy cans, a dixie full of scummy water, several respirators and a Lewis gun without a magazine.

‘I’d like to have another look at that truck in there,’ said Colburn, flashing his torch on a truck with an RE flash at the rear.

‘I’ll be back in a minute. I want to get Bert parked.’

Barnes left the Canadian and explored the area immediately round the buildings, finding only empty fields which were strangely still and silent in the pale warm moonlight, the air heavy and muggy as the earth released the heat of yesterday, the buzz of unseen insects in his ears. Across the fields he could see a roof-line which looked as though it had been cut from cardboard – the roofs of Lemont – and behind them a solitary searchlight wearily probed the sky. When he returned to where he had left the Canadian he found him inside the truck which carried the RE flash. He was shining his torch over layers of wooden boxes.

‘I want to do a recce into Lemont on foot from here,’ Barnes told him. ‘Jacques has agreed to take me in so I’m leaving you and Reynolds with the tank. This is a better place than I thought we’d get to park Bert – the Germans are hardly likely to come poking around a place where there’s already been a dust-up and this stuff’s no use to them. It’s only a handful of bits and pieces, anyway.’

‘There’s more than a handful of these, Barnes. You know what they are, of course – detonators. There’s enough stuff here to blow up half Ottawa – including gun-cotton, a plunger, and God knows what else. This truck belonged to a demolition unit.’

‘For God’s sake mind what you’re doing, then… Sorry, I’d forgotten. Detonators are your business.’

Barnes sat down on an old wooden crate pushed against the wall and tried to think straight. His shoulder wound had been playing him up foully ever since he had crashed back into the tank transporter when he was trying to reach the deck from the cab. It was pounding like an iron hammer now and he wondered whether he had the energy to walk one step farther. Well, he’d have to walk quite a few steps farther if they were going to try and find out what the position was inside Lemont, and Jacques had blithely told him the best thing would be to try and reach his father. The fact that his father lived in a house in the main part of the village on top of a small hill overlooking some private airfield, and that this meant a long walk from where they were now, hadn’t seemed to worry Jacques. but it worried Barnes when he thought of them making their way through enemy-held streets. He made the effort and was walking out to give instructions to Reynolds when he stopped in the doorway in surprise. Colburn was whistling under his breath, a tuneless melody. Colburn was in his element as he explored more boxes.

‘Barnes, there’s wire here – there’s even some phosphorus. This goddamned truck is one huge potential bomb…’

‘Well, we shan’t be needing any bombs,’ Barnes replied, his voice edged with irritation.

‘Can’t understand the bastards leaving this lot unguarded.’

‘They haven’t got enough men to guard their own stuff according to Jacques.’

‘This I could really do something with, Barnes. I haven’t had my hands on such a hoard since I joined the RAF. If I’d bumped into this outfit instead of your own mob I could really have earned my daily bread. And say, look you here…’

Barnes wasn’t too interested in Colburn’s enthusiasms and the Canadian’s burst of energy seemed to underline his own state of desperate fatigue to an extent which made him feel more irritable than ever. He spoke quickly.

‘I’m off with Jacques now. Reynolds is staying with Bert next door so you’ll have someone to chat to.’

Tm quite happy here. You’re going to Jacques’ father’s place?,’

‘I doubt if we’ll get that far.’

‘The old boy might know what’s what. And watch yourself – we don’t want any nasty accidents now we’re at the end of the line.’

‘That’s right. So for Pete’s sake, Colburn, don’t drop one of those detonators.’

Barnes checked his watch, Penn’s watch. 2.25 am. Ninety minutes to dawn. The recce was. completed and they were almost home, if you could call ‘home’ three outbuildings they had never known before, one of them stuffed with high-explosive. He looked back along the silent street and saw Jacques a long way behind him – Jacques who was still a problem because the village of Lemont was abandoned, all the inhabitants either evacuated or driven away by the Germans when the tide of war had rolled this way. The lad waved a hand and pointed ahead, an unnecessary precaution because Barnes was already trying to locate the German sentry they had skirted on their way in. He had been standing on guard outside a small single-storey house where light had shown round the edges of drawn blinds. On the outskirts of Lemont all the houses were single storey and this was the only house which had shown any sign of life in the deserted tree-lined street. Who was hidden behind those drawn blinds? And where was that damned sentry now? The empty motor-cycle and side-car was still parked in front of the house.

He took several cautious steps forward again and halted. He could still see the light round the blinds but the sentry had vanished. It worried Barnes and he glanced back again to make sure that the lad was still behind him. Jacques opened his hands to express puzzlement and Barnes knew that he also had spotted the sentry’s absence. The only thing to do was to go round the back way as they had before, but cautiously. He held up a warning hand to indicate to Jacques that he should stay well back and then he crept forward, turning down a path which led between the houses.