Iain Gale - The Black Jackals

Leaving the men with Bennett, Lamb dodged across the columns. ‘I need to find the GOC. I have a vital message for him. Do you know where he might be?’

The man looked blank and did not stop waving his arms. He shook his head. ‘Can’t say, sir. Sorry. Last time I heard he was in the town hall, but that copped it in the last raid. He’ll have moved on by now, sir. Things are very fluid at present.’

Lamb smiled. ‘Very fluid.’ The classic army euphemism for shambolic. Nonetheless, he decided it would after all be best to make for what was left of the town hall.

‘Thank you, Sarnt. You couldn’t, I suppose, point us in the direction of the town hall?’

‘Just carry on the way you’re going, sir. Can’t miss it. Great big barrack of a place, it is. Good luck, sir.’

They continued into the town and within minutes were standing in a small park in the centre of which, as the MP had predicted, stood his ‘great barrack of a place’, a seventeenth-century château lumped onto part of a medieval monastery. At the moment, though, it looked rather less than imposing. Bombs had rained down here, and the grass was pock-marked with craters. But where the carefully manicured gardens had not been touched the flowers still bloomed. It was a grotesque sight, made all the more so by the row upon row of corpses which were being laid out on the grass, their legs sticking out grotesquely from beneath the blankets and sheets in which they had been wrapped to preserve something of their dignity in death. He saw a few legs in battledress but they were civilians mostly. Children too. Lamb didn’t bother to count. The town hall was a mess, with its roof caved in, rafters sticking up like teeth and two walls gone. It seemed to him unlikely that it was still functioning as the British HQ. On the right, though, a smaller, similarly elegant building was still standing. Outside two British soldiers stood sentry.

Lamb turned to Bennett. ‘I’m going in there, Sarnt. Looks more promising. Get the men away from here, will you? Don’t want them looking at any more dead bodies more than they have to, particularly civilians.’

As Bennett led the platoon away across the park, Lamb crossed the grass to the door of the building and to his delight managed to talk his way past the sentries by mention that he had a message from Brigadier Meadows. Once inside he was met with a scene of some confusion. Men were walking and running across his path and no one seemed to be aware of him. He tried to accost a passing captain but was ignored. Directly ahead of him was a passageway lined with nineteenth-century portraits of black-clad council officials, and more from instinct than anything else he walked down it. No one stopped him. At the end was a door; Lamb turned the brass handle and entered. He found himself in a large library, lined on all sides with well-stocked mahogany shelves.

At the far end of the room, beneath a low-hung chandelier, a tall, lean man, a colonel from his insignia and red tabs, was pouring over several maps spread out over a table with another staff officer, a major. As Lamb entered they both looked up.

The major spoke. ‘Yes? What is it now? We’re very busy in here. If it’s that bloody mayor again, tell him that his surrender to the Jerries will have to wait. We’re not planning to go anywhere just yet.’

He turned back to the map.

Lamb coughed and saluted. ‘No, sir. Lieutenant Lamb, sir. North Kents.’

The colonel looked up this time, returned a casual salute and raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes?’

‘I have a vitally important message from Brigadier Meadows, sir, from 1 Corps. He ordered me to get it to GHQ by whatever means possible.’

The major and colonel looked at each other, then the colonel spoke, smiling. ‘And I suppose I’m the nearest thing that you can find to GHQ?’

‘Yes, sir. I suppose so, sir.’

‘Yes, you’re very probably right. I think I am.’ He turned to the major. ‘I am, aren’t I, Simpson?’

‘Yes, sir. I’m very much afraid you are. At least here in Tournai at present.’

The colonel frowned. ‘A signal from Dewy Meadows? A vital message? That hardly sounds likely. Not from Dewy.’

Lamb cringed. He had of course thought all along that the brigadier seemed an unlikely source of vital information, if not actually bogus. But nothing surprised him now in the army.

The colonel continued, puzzled, ‘Where did you find him?’

Lamb knew as he said it that his answer would sound absurd. ‘At Waterloo, sir. On the battlefield, that is. He was bivouacked there.’

The colonel laughed out loud. ‘Waterloo, eh? Trust Dewy. What the devil was he doing there?’ He looked down at the map. ‘Isn’t that in the French sector anyway? Simpson?’

The major nodded. ‘French Second Corps, sir. Though we think they’ve been overrun by now.’

‘Poor old Dewy’s probably in the bag by now then. That’ll teach him to get lost.’ He turned back to Lamb. ‘He was lost?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you got through to here with the message? How the devil did you manage that?’

‘I just followed the map, sir, and stayed off the main roads. There were air attacks, dozens of them, sir, and refugees. Thousands. But we just read the map. It wasn’t that difficult.’

The colonel nodded. ‘We? How many men are you?’

‘My platoon, sir. That is, less casualties. Twenty-six at present.’

‘You brought twenty-six men with a message from Dewy Meadows, cross-country to here, presumably through enemy lines, and then you found me. You did well. You’re quite a man, Mister . . . what did you say your name was again?’

‘Lamb, sir. Peter Lamb.’

The colonel paused for a moment, then looked at the major. ‘Lamb? Wasn’t that last dispatch about a chap called Lamb?’

The major nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Report came down from the Coldstreams. Apparently he held up a German division at the Dyle. Took out a bridging party single handed with grenades. They thought he might be mentioned in dispatches.’

‘Was that you?’

Lamb nodded. ‘Yes, sir. I suppose it was.’

The colonel thought for a moment and then looked at the major. ‘Do you think?’

‘Well, sir. If he is who he says he is, then he’s the best we’ve seen here. It’s worth a go, sir.’

The colonel looked back at Lamb and seemed as if he was about to say something. But then he stopped and stared hard at Lamb. ‘Hold on. Who won the cup last year?’

Lamb frowned. ‘Sorry, sir?’

‘Who won the cup, man? The cup. The football league. Who won it?’

Lamb racked his brain. Names tumbled out – Everton, Liverpool, Chelsea. Football had never been his game. Rugby and cricket, yes, from school. He had been in the first XV, full back. But football? He had of course mugged up enough to be able to talk to the men about it. A fellow officer had once told him that was one of the smartest things a subaltern could do. He tried desperately to remember. The colonel was looking worried. He turned to the major who, Lamb noticed, had flipped open the flap of the holster at his belt.

Then suddenly Lamb had it. ‘No one won it, sir. There was no league last year. It was abandoned after war was declared. Everton won the first division . . . and Portsmouth won the FA Cup.’

The colonel gave a sigh of relief and smiled. ‘Good God, man. That was close. Didn’t think you’d get it. Thought we’d have to shoot you. Well done, Lamb. Sorry. Can’t be too careful. Fifth columnists. Now where’s this vital note?’

Lamb walked forward and handed over the paper to the colonel, who carefully unfolded it and read.

Lamb was astonished. Here he was surrounded by chaos and yet somehow the news of his exploit had reached the staff. Some things, he thought, still worked in the British army. And then he wondered whether, if they knew about that, they had also heard of his blowing up the civilians on the bridge. He hoped that Fortescue had been discreet.