Iain Gale - The Black Jackals

Bennett smiled at the expression.

Lamb went on. ‘So let’s get to it, shall we? We need to make for Arras. That’s about thirty-five miles away. We’ll see how we do and try to find a billet on the way.’

But Valentine hadn’t finished. ‘May I ask, sir, what the nature might be of this “important job” we have to do?’

Lamb detected the sarcasm in his tone, but didn’t show his annoyance. ‘No, I’m sorry, Corporal. I’m afraid that I can’t tell you that. At least not yet. Suffice it to say that it is important and we should feel honoured to have been given it.’

Valentine smirked in that way that irked Lamb so intensely. He ignored it and turned to Bennett. ‘All right, Sarnt, let’s get on. We don’t want to be caught in any more air raids here.’

Unsure of his bearings, Lamb retraced their steps through the ruined town amid the sound of more explosions as more streets were torn down by the Royal Engineers, and they found themselves back at the crossroads. The MP sergeant had gone, to be replaced by another whose efforts, to judge by the jam of trucks and staff cars on all sides, were meeting with a similar lack of success. Leaving the chaos behind, Lamb wheeled them to the left, through the sad, dusty streets, into the Rue St Martin, past broken houses and the smashed possessions of their absent occupants lying across the cobbles. Ahead of them a long line of refugees stretched away far down the road. For a change, though, there were none of the usual accompanying files of British soldiers, and they seemed to be the only unit heading south west. Lamb was hardly surprised. If the British were to use this road it would be to fall back on Arras, and according to the major they were not planning to go anywhere at the moment.

They marched at a steady pace, in single file, with each section or weapons group of the platoon travelling on alternate sides of the road, passing the slow-moving civilians, who hardly gave them a glance, so caught up were they in their own private miseries. No one spoke and there was no sound save for the steady tramp of the men’s boots and the clattering and jangling of the pots and pans hanging from the civilian carts. As they reached the outskirts of the town and the shattered buildings began to give way to open fields and trees, Lamb fell back to his usual position on the march in the ‘O’ group, with Smart and with Valentine and Briggs, the commanders of number two and three sections, close behind with the two runners.

They had gone no more than a mile down the road when they heard it. From directly behind them a series of explosions tore through the afternoon. They turned and saw the skies behind them above Tournai filled with a swarm of black aeroplanes and watched the bombs falling like evil confetti from their open bellies. As they hit the ground the earth shook, flames leapt up and great columns of black smoke rose high above the city.

Smart summed up all their thoughts. ‘Christ. Poor devils.’

The refugees had seen it too, and a terrible wailing now began to come from them. Their homes were being torn apart, and friends and family they had left behind were dying with the British under the black rain.

Lamb turned back to the front. ‘Come on. Nothing we can do about it now.’

He wondered if the colonel and the major had found shelter, and the frustrated MPs. The town would be even more chaotic after that lot, he thought, and for an instant the idea came to him again of abandoning the colonel’s madcap mission. Perhaps the man had been killed. Who then would know about his order? But the idea passed as quickly as it came, with a feeling of guilt at having even considered it. He had been given an order and it was vital that he should transmit the colonel’s message to General Fortune, though yet again he wondered at why a mere colonel should be giving a message to a general. And what on earth was all that Colonel ‘R’ business about, he wondered. It was like something out of a novel by Childers or Buchan. For a moment Lamb wondered whether he might be being drawn into something more complex than merely delivering a message. But then he thought the better of it and dismissed it as fantasy.

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