Колин Форбс - Tramp in Armour

His nerves were keyed up tautly, his mind oscillating between two impulses – the need for caution on the last lap and the need to move quickly because they were running out of time just when he had found his supreme objective. The path was bordered with shoulder-high stone walls and he knew that when the path turned at the bottom the walls continued along the backs of the houses. Keeping his head down, his revolver in bis hand, he crept past a closed gate let into the wall. He was concentrating on placing his feet carefully because he remembered that there was a deep ditch on the left. Perhaps he heard something at the last moment. He might even have started to turn his head, but he could never remember the details afterwards. A rifle butt struck his head with such vicious force that he lost consciousness immediately…

When he woke up he knew that he was going to be sick, but he forced it down into the churning pit of his stomach. His wound ached abominably but now the pounding hammer was at work inside his head, and because it felt hollow he seemed to receive each blow twice as the blows echoed. Get a grip on yourself, man. With an immense effort he forced open eyelids which felt to be made of lead. A blinding light hit him, so he closed them quickly. A voice spoke gutturally. In English.

‘So pleased you are recovering, Sergeant Barnes.’

Barnes jerked his eyes open a fraction and peered through slitted lids. From behind the lamp a uniformed arm appeared and lowered the light cone so that it shone on to the desk. The arm belonged to a thin-faced man of about thirty who wore the uniform of a German officer. Glancing round the darkened room Barnes could see no sign of Jacques; the French lad must have escaped into the village during the ambush.

‘Tell me when you are ready to speak,’ the German suggested.

Barnes swore inwardly. He was seated in a high-backed wooden chair and his wrists were bound with wire to the arms. When he tried to shift his body surreptitiously he felt a broad band strapped round his waist; only his legs were still free. They had sewed him up nicely. Another uniformed officer appeared from behind his chair and like his colleague behind the desk he was wearing bis peaked cap. He spread pine needles along the desk under the cone of light, arranging them carefully in varying lengths, apparently taking no notice of Barnes while he completed his little display. Barnes gritted his teeth, wondering whether the prelude to torture was a bluff to sap his nerves. The officer behind the desk spoke.

‘I am Major Berg. You, of course, are Sergeant Barnes.’ He lifted a British Army pay-book off the desk and waved it. ‘And if you are wondering why I speak such good English it is since I was military attache in London before the war.’ His voice changed and he spoke rapidly, his manner bleak. ‘Barnes, where is your unit and from where will the British be attacking us in the rear?’

Barnes said it. Name, rank, serial number. Then he shut his mouth. He opened it a moment later when the officer who had been bending over the desk swung the stiffened side of his hand savagely across Barnes’ lips. He felt something give inside his mouth, felt around with his tongue, tasted blood, and spat out a broken tooth. Through half-closed eyes he saw Berg shake his head as though cautioning his fellow officer.

‘I should have introduced you,’ Berg went on. ‘This is Captain Dahlheim. Normally our method is to ask questions politely first and then exert pressure later, but we are short of hours. I should warn you that Captain Dahlheim becomes annoyed when people do not answer my questions properly.’

Barnes said it again. Name, rank, serial number, adding that under the Geneva Convention this was all the information he was obliged to give. Dahlheim was fiddling with the pine needles now and while his body temporarily masked him from Berg, Barnes lifted his wrists hard against the wire. It was quite impossible to get his hands loose.

‘But you are a spy,’ went on the unseen Berg. ‘Show him the clothes he was wearing when we found him.’

Dahlheim picked up a bundle from a chair and showed the clothes. For a horrible moment Barnes wondered whether they belonged to Jacques but he saw that they were a jacket and a pair of trousers of blue denim, common apparel for French workers in the fields. Jacques had worn a lounge suit. He must have escaped.

‘I’ve never worn those in my life and you know it.

‘Captain Dahlheim can confirm that we took those clothes off you while you were still unconscious. We can say you wore them to hide your uniform. And you had no means of identification. No pay-book.’ He dropped the pay-book into a drawer and closed it. ‘So you are a spy and can be treated in any way we like.’

Was Berg bluffing? Barnes could see his white face now and as he became accustomed to the single desk light he thought the German was older than he had thought at first. He felt sick with fury. He had been on the last lap, had completed the most difficult reconnaissance he had ever undertaken, had been within a five-minute walk of Bert’s refuge, and because of a momentary lack of alertness he had been captured. And as the realization dawned on him, the realization of how unlikely it was that he would ever escape, he found one thought torturing his mind. He had come to Lemont because the battle plan they had taken from the German staff car showed beyond doubt that here was the point of maximum peril for the BEF. And now he believed that he had found a way of striking a blow against the 14th Panzer Division, the spearhead of the attack on Dunkirk, only to find himself a prisoner. What was it Berg was saying?

‘We have not a great deal of time, Sergeant Barnes.’

‘None of us have that here.’

‘For various reasons it is a matter of urgency that you answer my questions quickly. Where is your unit? What is the British plan?’ He paused. ‘Dahlheim! Barnes is not going to reply again.’

Dahlheim straightened up and turned round. The needles were arranged in a neat row, their sharp points turned towards Barnes under the cone of light. Beneath the peaked cap Dahlheim’s face was round, his eyes seeming half asleep, and for the first time Barnes saw that he wore a black and silver collar-patch bearing a curious runic sign. Captain Dahlheim was a member of the SS.

By now Barnes found that his eyes were growing accustomed to the semi-darkness beyond the cone of light and behind the seated Berg he could see a window. The curtain was drawn across it but at one side there was a gap, and because of the deep shadow beyond the desk light he could see a wedge of moonlit night. Dahlheim was reaching his hand to his side and Barnes expected him to draw the pistol from his leather hip holster, but instead he took a length of cord from his pocket and wrapped it round both hands, He took his time over this little exercise, watching Barnes carefully, then without speaking he went past the chair and disappeared behind it. Guessing what was coming, Barnes tensed himself.

Reynolds could see the sentry standing outside the small house and he also saw the stationary motor-cycle and "side-car close by. It was the first sign of life he had seen since entering the village. He took several quiet paces away from the road down a pathway between stone walls. Now he was well under cover, two houses away from where the sentry mounted guard. For a minute he stood there, undecided what to do. It was probably the first time in his Army career that he had performed these two actions and both of them worried him – he had disobeyed an order and he had taken an initiative without reference to any superior. He kept wondering whether he ought not to go back.

Barnes had specifically told him to stay with the tank and now Bert was a good five minutes’ walk away. Only an overwhelming feeling that something had happened to Barnes had prompted his action and he had firmly refused Colburn’s offer to come instead. A pilot’s place was in the air – they weren’t much good on the ground, Reynolds had reasoned to himself. Now his great dread was that he had missed Barnes and Jacques coming back and that already his sergeant was asking Colburn where the devil Reynolds was. He’d better go back, he decided, but not along the road – that was far too dangerous. There must be another way back along the rear of these houses. Yes, he’d go back immediately. Barnes was able to look after himself.