Tramp in Armour Page 12

  He waited until another tank arrived and then he worked furiously to push the body deep inside a jungle of brambles, treating it like a sack of cement as he finally jerked the legs and bent them to thrust them after the rest of the corpse. The bridge he now lay under was much smaller than the one higher up, wide enough only to take single-line traffic, and the footpath had disappeared altogether long ago when the brambles flourished and took over the whole bank up to the stone wall. There, he'd done it. No one would find the sentry unless they searched for him and by now Barnes was becoming familiar with German bridge procedure: they checked underneath it before the column arrived but they certainly wouldn't come poking around down here a second time. Not unless he attracted attention.

  Barnes was temporarily exhausted, the wound playing him up badly now, his kneecap aching steadily, his hands and face scratched to blazes with the ripping of the brambles. He lay quite still for several minutes, his revolver in his hand, although whether the weapon would work after its soaking was anybody's guess. He listened to the column rumbling past overhead and gradually he revived, his mind revolting at the thought that he was back to square one again. When he cautiously peered through the far side of the arch he saw the long shadow of the sentry above him spread over the upper bank, the top half of his body, the pudding-shaped helmet absurdly stretched out. The bastard was on the right side of the bridge -downstream - and Barnes had had a bellyful of being cooped up under bridges. He decided to risk it. And Penn would be doing his nut if he didn't get back soon. The real danger was that his swimming form might be spotted under the water before he reached the bend, but the river here was about four feet deep so he'd just have to swim with his face on the bed. Because a tank commander erect in bis turret has an elevated view Barnes waited until one of the vehicles had moved across the bridge and then he took a deep breath, slipped back into the river noiselessly and began swimming upstream along the river bed.

  This time he was going to swim the distance in two stages, pausing halfway along the stretch under the lee of the bank where long grasses trailed into the water. In fact, swimming as he was now against the current, he was going to have to take two bites at the cherry, a favourite Penn phrase for seeing the same girl twice. His face close to the flat-rocked bed, he was having to swim all-out to make headway against the current which was stronger than he had expected; he began to veer in close to the bank, expelling air slowly, bis eyes gazing ahead for underwater boulders as soft mushy weeds brushed against his face unpleasantly. When he reached the bank and surfaced behind the trailing grasses he found that he had covered half the distance. He stood crouched against the bank, his nose just above the water, watching the approach of yet another German tank, and it was rather like observing it through a green bead curtain, his first close-up look at the weapon which was sweeping across the plains of France in an annihilating wave.

  As he waited hunched under the bank his mind raced over the problems ahead: taking Bert downstream when the coast was clear was something they might just manage in this depth, and beyond the bridge he could leave the river where the banks came lower, a fact he had observed from under the bridge. The tank was crossing now, the commander leaning out of the turret to check clearance. Once we get away from this lot, Barnes thought, we'll head west-south-west: in spite of Seft's deception he was confident that he had a rough idea of where they were because he had found two places on the map which could correspond to the fictitious Fontaine. And west-southwest should lead in the general direction of Arras. The tank had crossed now. He slipped under the water.

  He was immediately aware that his movements were slower, that his strokes lacked thrust, so he redoubled his efforts, determined that this time he must get round that bend or else he was going to be spotted. He had pushed his luck to the limit and far beyond, so whatever happens, keep going, he told himself, for God's sake keep going. In his anxiety to succeed he took a short cut, veering to the left to take himself straight for the turn in the river, seeing a forest of trailing weeds ahead and projecting himself through the diabolical mess. He was almost through when he felt a tug above his right kneecap, the one he had injured, and when he endeavoured to swim forward he remained anchored to the spot where the weeds had twined themselves round him. Pausing for a split second, he lunged out savagely, felt the weed stranglehold tighten, and he didn't move forward an inch. He was running out of air: the only thing to do was to surface. He made to swim up and the grip tightened like the tentacles of an octopus. You can't drown in four feet of water, Barnes. But you can, you know - if your upper leg is locked down tight close to the bed. A tremble ran through his brain and transferred itself to his body as he felt panic rising. Grimly, he fought down the emotion and concentrated on freeing his damned leg. Think it out, quickly! Forward is no use - try sideways, out into mid-stream. His lungs were protesting again, building up a horrible balloon-like pressure, the water gyrating ..fiddly, a singing in his ears growing. He thrust out sideways, felt the weed tighten. God, he really was done for this time. Keep moving, Barnes! He made one last effort, felt the weed tearing away as though reluctant to give up its victim, then he was free, stroking his way upstream, still under water until he came to the surface choking and spluttering as he gulped in water, his head turning automatically to check his position. He was round the bend.

  And if it goes on like this much longer he thought as he headed for the bank, we'll all be round the bend. But his instinct told him that it would probably get worse.

  Eight and a half hours later, at three o'clock in the afternoon and thirty miles away from the bridges, the tank was like a hunted animal, still alive but only because of the sharp eye and keen instinct for danger of its controller who had saved it on four separate occasions from detection by the hunters. At the same time the animal was still viciously armed with over seventy two-pounder shells and ten boxes of Besa ammunition secreted within its innards.

  By 8.30 am the Panzers had gone from the river area and by 9 am the tank crew had shaved - at Barnes' insistence -and they had eaten bully beef and the last of the French bread Seft had brought, which reduced their rations to a meagre quantity of remaining bully beef and nothing else: the two tins of meat Seft had supplied were found to be blown, whether by accident or on purpose didn't matter any more, but it did mean that they were desperately short of food. They were also running low on water but this was due to an accident and an oversight which were the result of chance and fatigue-Before leaving the river they had attended to the radiator and filled a dixie with water for their own use: the accident had taken place an hour later when they mounted a steep bank into a wood to escape being spotted by a flight of Stuka bombers. The dixie had. fallen over and spilt its precious contents on the turntable floor. The oversight was the fact that only Barnes had remembered to fill his water-bottle - he blamed himself for not checking to make sure that the others had filled their own. In a word, there was now one water-bottle to quench the growing thirst of three men. Although only briefly mentioned, the thirst was the reason for a bitter argument between Barnes and Penn soon after one o'clock.

  'I think we ought to risk going in,' Penn had said emphatically, pointing towards the town on the skyline.

  'We'll go round it, instead - across country,' Barnes had replied quietly.

  Across the sun-baked fields, the town - another church spire and a line of buildings - had looked like a mirage as it trembled gently in the dazzling heat haze, an impression heightened by the absence of workers in the fields, although normally the farmers would have been busy at this time of the year. This absence of people troubled Barnes and strengthened his decision.

  'It is possible to get a bit too cautious,' said Penn hotly.

  'It's also possible to walk into something we won't get out of. There's no one about and I don't like the smell of it.'

  'There's been no one about for miles - what makes this place so ruddy different?'

  'The fact that there's a town over there. If it's under G
erman occupation the locals may be lying low indoors - these are cultivated fields so there should be someone working them.' Barnes put a foot on the hull to climb back into the tank. 'Any more questions before we start?'

  'We've seen no sign of Jerry on the ground since we left the river - what makes you think he's anywhere near here?'

  'Penn, I've no idea where Jerry is. From what I've seen and from what you told me about those radio bulletins my guess is that the Germans have torn a huge gap in the Allied lines which may be up to twenty miles wide* - at the moment we're somewhere inside that gap but until I know more about it we'll avoid all towns and villages as long as we can. We're moving off now.'

  * Barnes had badly underestimated the position: at this moment the gap torn in the Allied lines by the Wehrmacht was between fifty and sixty miles wide.

  Two hours later they were moving along a deserted country road under the furnace blaze of the afternoon sun, and during those two long hours they had stopped three times to avoid detection by aircraft, halting twice in the lee of hedges and sheltering once inside an abandoned dairy farm where they had been surrounded by empty milk churns. As they had waited for the Stuka bombers to disappear a small herd of cows had gathered behind a fence, their udders horribly swollen, their strange cries a pathetic sound which had affected them more than the distant roar of the Stuka engines. But there was no one to milk the beasts so they had gone away, thankful when Bert's engines drowned the echoes of animal pain. It was not only people who were suffering in this war, Barnes had thought.

  As they drove steadily along a hedge-lined road between a sea of empty fields which stretched away on all sides Barnes knew that he was feeling the strain, the strain of standing upright in the turret for long periods while the sun beat down fiercely on him, so fiercely that his shirt and trousers were almost as generously soaked with sweat as they had been with water when he had emerged from the river. His task of endless observation was arduous enough to test the strength of the fittest person since it involved keeping up a constant watch -on the road ahead and behind, on the landscape on both sides of the road, and above all on the sky, since they had good reason to know now that a moment's unguarded relaxation might be punished by the sudden swoop of a Messerschmitt. But Barnes was not feeling at his strongest and a further drain on his strength was the non-stop pounding of his shoulder wound which he was finding it impossible to ignore, while at the same time he had to take his weight on the left leg because the right kneecap was badly bruised where it had struck the underwater rock. Mentally, Barnes was still functioning, but physically he was in a state.

  Shading his eye against the sun's glare he stared along the road to where a small building stood by the verge, or rather to where the relics of a building stood. It must have received a direct hit from shell or bomb. But what caught his attention was a pole which spanned the road outside the wreckage, a red and white striped pole. He spoke into the mike.

  'The frontier's dead ahead. We are just about to cross the border into France.'

  He could see now that the Customs post beside the pole had camouflaged the existence of a gun position, a gun position which had been completely wiped out. The 75-mm barrel lay by itself and several French helmets were scattered across the ground, but there were still no German helmets to indicate that the enemy had also died. Bert rumbled forward, smashing aside the pole like matchwood. They were on French soil. When Penn asked permission to come up into the turret for a minute Barnes readily agreed. It must be like an inferno down inside the tank this afternoon.

  'Back on home ground,' remarked Penn lightly.

  'We're still a long way from home,' Barnes replied grimly.

  'Any chance of a drop of mild-and-bitter?' He meant water.

  'Not yet. We're down to half a bottle.'

  'I do think we should have gone into that town,' Penn said hoarsely.

  'And run into a Jerry ambush most likely. Tanks aren't for towns - not tanks on their own roaming about behind the enemy lines. It only needs a couple of anti-tank guns at either end of the street with us in the middle and we're finished. You should know that by now.'

  'Well, we can't go on like this much longer. Reynolds must be near the end of his tether stuck out there in front driving on and on hour after hour.'

  'Reynolds has not complained,' Barnes answered drily.

  'But Reynolds is a good boy.'

  'If this is going to be the quality of your conversation you'd better get back behind your gun.'

  Perm clambered down into the fighting compartment without a word and Barnes immediately regretted his reply, but having said it he had to leave it. God, the strain must be telling for him to say a damned silly thing like that, but the tension was the product of strain. He reckoned it up. In twenty-four hours he had enjoyed barely two hours of uneasy sleep and Reynolds had made do with the same ration, but Penn hadn't slept at all, and prior to that both of them had made do with four hours' sleep a night for four nights while Barnes lay unconscious. Yes, they badly needed a safe bivouac for the night. And eight hours' sleep. He scanned the sky again.

  Inside the hull the temperature was ferocious, the air almost non-existent. Penn sat in his vest and trousers, hugging the shoulder-grip, his hand close to the trigger guard. Their experience with the lorryload of German infantry which had roared over the bridge in their faces had impressed on all of them the need for a constant state of alertness, although at this moment it was purely a reflex action with Penn to take up the position. His brain was becoming numbed, numbed with the heat, with the diesel-fuel odour, with the endless throb of the engines, with the hypnotic grind of the tracks. He had reached the stage where he was frightened he might faint and this was why he had gone up into the turret. The dizziness increased and he kept shaking his head to clear it. The thirst he was suffering from was so intense that his tongue clove to the top of his mouth and he could almost see foaming tankards of beer, wishing to God that his imagination wasn't so strong. The tank ground on.

  In the nose of the tank Reynolds wore a stolid expression. He was hot and sticky and he was thirsty, too, but they would get a drink when Barnes gave permission. In the meantime he could wait. He was neither worried nor resigned - he was just doing his job, driving Bert in accordance with instructions. He had experienced a little trouble with the monotony of the road rolling towards him on and on like a slow-motion conveyor belt which never stopped, but he countered this by glancing sideways across the fields frequently. So they were inside France now, were they? It didn't seem to make much difference to Reynolds - one field was like another and if they hadn't put up that pole you'd never have noticed any change. Fuel was going down, of course, but Barnes would do something about that. The tank ground on.

  Water, fuel, ammunition, food. These were the basic commodities, in that descending order of priority, vital to their existence as a fighting unit, and they always loomed in the front of Barnes' mind. They loomed large now while he was coping with his aching wound, his bruised kneecap, the heat and the thirst, maintaining all-round observation at the same time. He knew exactly what the position was - they had sixty gallons of diesel left, but the tanks at the rear of the hull had a capacity of ninety gallons; they had half a bottle of water; a meagre quantity of bully beef, sufficient for another meal, and some tea. They were stuffed to the gills with ammunition, of course. A pity they couldn't eat that. He began to think that perhaps they had better investigate the next place they came to and he shaded his eyes to make sure that he wasn't seeing things. No, there it was - a line of buildings on the horizon straight ahead of them. He spoke into the mike.

  'We're approaching a town. I'll be taking us in to have a look at the place.'

  From that moment the whole atmosphere changed for the better. Glancing down inside the turret Barnes saw Penn looking up at him. The corporal grinned and winked. Even Reynolds reacted,-sitting up a little higher on his seat, straightening his shoulders, gripping the steering levers a little more tightly. It was
like the approach to the promised land for them. Water, fuel, ammunition, food. If they were very lucky they might load up with everything they needed. And information, an item which Barnes was tempted to add high on his priority list. If they could only know exactly where they were what a weight off his shoulders that would be! He called to Penn to come up out of that hothouse again and the corporal almost sprinted up into the turret, his voice positively light-hearted.