Tramp in Armour Read online

  Seizing the crowbar which had fallen with the boulder, he rammed it behind the rock above the opening and began heaving and twisting with all his strength. Barnes shouted a warning, but Davis either didn't or wouldn't hear him. He felt the rock moving easily and dropped the crowbar. Reaching up to his full height he pushed, both hands flat against the rock, which fell outwards, enlarging the window considerably, enlarging it enough for Davis to climb up into it, crouching inside the alcove on his knees as he pushed with his hands at the loosened rock above. Barnes was still shouting when disaster struck.

  The upper rock was held in position over the opening by ledges on either side of the aperture, but it moved loosely on the ledges so that when Davis again pushed his full strength against it the rock wobbled and then fell outwards under the fierce pressure of Davis' hands. As it fell away it unhinged the centre of gravity of the wall above. Davis was still crouched in the aperture when there was a low rumbling sound. The whole upper wall began to quiver and disintegrate. Barnes was running forward to grab Davis when Penn grasped his arm firmly and hauled him back against the side of the tunnel. A second later an avalanche of rock and rubble poured down over the floor where Barnes had been standing, spilling tons of debris along the centre of the rail track, filling the tunnel with a roaring sound which deafened them. Then they were bending over and choking and spluttering as the dust invaded their lungs and blinded their eyes.

  It was only when the dust began to settle that Barnes saw what had happened. On the far side of the tunnel, his back against the wall, Reynolds was safe. Beside Barnes, Penn was wiping his eyes to try and clear bis vision. But it was the entrance to the tunnel which was the most awe-inspiring sight. The new landslide had completely cleared the upper part of the tunnel, leaving a great gap above the rubble slope which now stretched deep inside the tunnel, a gap through which they could see the blessed evening sky, a gap through which-Bert could be driven once he had mounted the slope.

  It took them several minutes to locate Davis, and they found the gunner only a few feet away from where Barnes had been standing after Penn had jerked him back out of the path of the falling wall. At least, they found Davis' head. The rest of his body was buried under the fall and it needed only a second's examination for them to realize that he was dead.

  TWO

  Saturday3 May 18th

  Something very strange had happened to the world in this part of Belgium. The war had gone away.

  Before they drove the tank out of the tunnel, up the rubble slope, and down the other side, Barnes had made a personal reconnaissance in the brilliant warmth of early evening. The first thing that struck him was the incredible silence, a silence which was intensified by the only sound, the peaceful twittering of an unseen bird. Beyond the tunnel the railway stretched away across open country, the track empty, the green fields deserted, not a sign of life anywhere. Etreux, or what was left of it, must have petered out farther along the hillside, because over to his right there were no buildings, no people. Only the still waters of the broad canal which barred their easy way back to Etreux.

  He found the silence, the absence of gunfire, so disturbing that he climbed a little way up the hillside above the wrecked tunnel entrance, but still he heard nothing, saw nothing. The war had gone far away - to where? And which way? He sat down for a moment on the grass, his nerves strangely on edge as though the peaceful landscape were full of sinister meaning. He sat there blinking against the strong sunlight, drinking in the fresh air, then he got up quickly, went back to the tank, and gave the order to advance.

  There had been no question of burying Davis, for Davis was already buried under a ton of rock, so they wrote his name, rank, and number on a piece of paper and left this under a rock close to the head. Then they drove away, too exhausted to feel much emotion other than shock at the suddenness of the gunner's death. The thought uppermost in Barnes' mind now was that his crew was reduced from four to three. They were all capable of firing the guns in an emergency and he told Perm that when the need arose he would act as gunner. As they moved along the rail track Barnes stood in the turret, map in hand, and his mind weighed up the situation grimly. At least they had almost full fuel tanks, which meant that they could travel one hundred and fifty miles along the roads, a distance which would be reduced by fifty per cent once they began moving across country, but this was the only credit point he. could muster. One crew member short, the wireless out of action, no knowledge of where Parker might be: they almost resembled a warship sailing into uncharted seas with no means of communicating with its base. Half his mind pondered the dubious likelihood of rejoining his troop while the other half toyed with the glimmer of an idea which was to grow. Whatever happened, they must find a really worthwhile objective.

  A mile from the tunnel the track reached a level crossing and it was at this point where they turned off the railway line and began to move along a second-class road which ran between low hedges bordering fields of poor grassland. Six miles farther on they should turn right along a road which would take them into the rear area behind Etreux. But where were the armies?

  Standing upright in the turret Barnes strained his ears for sounds of gunfire, strained his eyes for sight of smoke or planes. The fields stretched away, empty; the sky, a vault of pale blue, stretched away uninhabited. The uncanny feeling grew, a feeling of men moving into unexplored territory. The tank tracks ground forward at top speed, the engines throbbed with power, as though determined to enjoy to the full this race across open country after the confinement inside the tunnel, and then Barnes saw the first traces of battle - the faint marks of tank tracks in the fields, the occasional crater where a shell or bomb had exploded, and as they proceeded along the deserted road the traces became more frequent, less reassuring. At one point Barnes ordered Reynolds to halt while he got down to'examine wrecked vehicles by the roadside. They were~ burnt-out tanks, five of them, and they were French Renault tanks which looked as though they had fought the entire German Army on their own, A little farther along the_road he stopped again and Penn climbed but with him to look at a mess of French equipment. In the ditch, rifles lay there as though they had been thrown down in panic flight from something awful and overpowering. When Barnes picked one up he found the weapon was still loaded. A few yards farther along there were abandoned Army packs, abandoned helmets, all French. Search as he might, Barnes could find no German equipment. Two of the helmets were occupied, the bodies lying on their backs facing the sky. Then more rifles, all of them loaded.

  'I don't like the look of it,' said Barnes. 'The loaded rifles, I mean. It looks as though they just ran for their lives. Tanks against men, probably.'

  'They've retreated, then,' remarked Penn quietly. 'Looks like it. A helluva lot must have happened while we were bottled up in that tunnel. According to the map there's a village about five miles farther on - we should get news there. I may halt Bert outside and go in on foot. I don't like the look of this at all.'

  'It could be Jerry who has retreated,' said Penn thoughtfully. 'Parker may be on the Rhine now.'

  'Wars don't move at that speed, Penn, not in either direction. As to Jerry retreating, I still don't like the look of those loaded rifles in the ditch - they smell of French retreat. We'd better get on.'

  As they moved along the road Barnes saw more and more evidence that the scythe of war had passed that way, more and more burnt-out Renault tanks, smashed guns, still figures lying sprawled in the fields, helmets. And always they were French helmets. He was still waiting to see even one sign of German casualties in either men or machines, and he had not found it when he saw in the distance the first indication of life in this eerily empty landscape - a horizontal line of smoke. The line crossed the sky just above the ground and it hung perfectly still as though drawn in with charcoal. But at one end, the end which was approaching the road half a mile farther on, the line was growing and he realized it was smoke from a train's engine, a train which was still invisible below the level of an
embankment. He scanned the sky and stiffened, his hand tightening on the turret rim. High up in the blue vastness a formation of planes was flying on a course which seemed to parallel the direction of the train. He raised his glasses and focused them. It was impossible to be sure but they looked like a squadron of British Blenheim bombers and his heart lifted at the sight of them.

  As the tank trundled forward he watched the planes coming closer and then, focusing his glasses along the road, he saw the level crossing which the train would pass over within the next minute. He swivelled his glasses back to the aerial formation and caught his breath. They were moving into line now -coming in for a bombing run. He gave the order to halt and warned his crew over the intercom.

  'I think there'll be some bombs dropping in the vicinity shortly. Don't laugh - but they'll be coming from our chaps.'

  No one laughed as they waited in the stationary tank, the engines still ticking over. Should they reverse, wondered Barnes, and then he rejected the idea. -They might just as easily reverse into a bomb. He prepared to slam down the lid but for the moment he waited, curious to see whether the Blenheims hit their target.

  'What are they after?' Penn called up.

  'A train, I think. It's just about to cross the road farther along, so get ready for it.'

  His glasses brought up the road ahead now and he saw the smoke line emerge from behind the embankment. The train began to move across the road into the fields beyond. Two engines, drawing a line of goods coaches. He sucked in his breath as he saw tiny figures clustered round a long barrel on a flat truck. A Bofors? He could hear the gun now as it began pumping shells into the sky. When he looked up the first bombs were falling, small black dots against the warm blue, too far away to menace Bert, thank God, but they were going to be close, mighty close, to that train. The stick of dots vanished behind the smoke and he waited for the detonations. As he stood there, his eyes glued to the smoke line, a colossal explosion murdered the evening, far more enormous than it should have been. The first shock wave swept along the road as a coach went hump-backed. The wave buffeted against the tank hull and Barnes started to scramble inside, the words screaming through his brain. Ammunition train! The second, more devastating shock wave hit the tank when he was halfway down, his hand inside the turret, the lid still open. The tremendous force of the wave unbalanced his footing and his head smashed back against the steel rim. At that very moment the undetected Messerschmitt swooped in a power dive, all guns blazing, but Barnes was already unconscious.

  Saturday evening, 7 pm. The 14th Panzer Division was racing deeper into France, now well beyond Laon, coming close to the Somme. General Heinrich Storch not only had the nose of a hawk, he also had the eye of that predatory bird, and this eye was now fixed on a hump some distance away across the fields. Whipping up his glasses, he focused on the object, letting out his breath in a hiss. He spoke briefly into the microphone hanging from his neck as a shell screamed across the field towards the tank, column. A 75-mm gun, Storch told himself, the best artillery piece in the whole French Army, probably the only gun capable of taking on a German heavy tank. He looked back as the shell exploded over the road and in the field beyond. A ranging shot. The column was already obeying his command.

  Storch's tank increased speed, rumbling along the road like an angry dinosaur while the gunner followed Storch's orders, traversing the turret which carried the barrel of his heavy gun towards the French artillery position. Behind him four tanks were moving at different speeds, so that in less than a minute they were well spaced out, making the French gun-aimer's task infinitely more difficult. He could now aim at only one target, while at the same time four tanks were firing back without fear of retaliation. The Panzer column stopped, five long barrels aimed across the field towards the camouflaged hump. A second shell screamed towards them, fell just short of the centre tank, and exploded in the grass, scattering a rain of soil over the hull. The Panzers replied.

  One hand gripping the turret rim, the other holding his field glasses, Storch felt the recoil of his own heavy cannon. This shell also fell short of its target, sending up a cloud of smoke in front of the 75-mm position. Storch spoke briefly, confident that the next shot would be on target, but his gunner never had the opportunity to fire because a shell from the tank behind landed squarely on top of the French position. It exploded, smoke blotting out the target, then there was a second explosion as the 75-mm ammunition went up, hurling the mangled bodies of the gun crew across the field. Two more tanks fired, as though encouraged by the marksmanship of their neighbour, both shells landed inside the billowing smoke, scattering the relics of the smashed gun. Storch issued the order to cease fire, his field-glasses on the target, his voice quiet.

  'Congratulations, Meyer. Your duck-shooting experience is bearing fruit.'

  Inside his own tank turret Meyer tightened his lips. It was typical that Storch could not pat him on the back without in the same breath digging him in the ribs. The duck-shooting remark was a slighting reference to his aristocratic background, he had no doubt about that. While they waited, Meyer polished his monocle and screwed it back into position. He wore it on every possible occasion simply because he knew that it annoyed Storch, who regarded the eye-glass as a badge of caste. Then he heard the general's high-pitched voice through the crackle of his earphones. They were on the move again.

  Storch's sense of exultation was growing. In his mind's eye he was already racing ahead to the distant objective of Amiens, only twenty-five miles from the sea. His Panzer division was in the lead of the extraordinary advance and he was determined that it should maintain that position. Speaking into the microphone, he ordered the driver to increase speed, even though there was a danger that they might overtake the motor-cycle patrols, but the spotter plane had just radioed back to say the road ahead was clear.

  Following up in the second tank, Meyer wiped his face clean of the dusk kicked up by Storch's vehicle, his mood very different from that of his commanding officer. Soon they were passing through yet another French village without stopping, witnessing once again the same astonishing scene: another church, another village square, the inhabitants standing petrified against the walls, too scared or too astounded to rush indoors as the Panzer column thundered past. This can't go on much longer, Meyer told himself grimly. They had already far out-distanced the infantry and he was going to have a word with Storch about that at the next stopping point. All Meyer's professional instincts revolted against this wild headlong rush into the blue.

  They left the village and emerged once again into the open French landscape, a sea of fields stretching away for ever, the sunlight shining down on dry pasturelands. And whereas Storch saw every evidence of a French collapse in the deserted view ahead, Meyer saw a panorama full of hidden dangers. He was well aware that the Manstein Plan envisaged a. tremendous encircling sweep which would cut off the northern group of Allied armies from the French forces in the south, a sweep which would be completed when they reached the sea, but it seemed to Meyer that this plan was based on the extraordinary assumption that the Allies would sit back and let this happen. From his Great War experience Meyer knew this to be the assumption of a madman. At any moment the enemy counter-attack would erupt, rolling like a tidal wave against the armoured column's stretched out far ahead of the main German army. He only hoped to God that the counter attack would not materialize behind them. Another instruction came as they approached a crossroads. Storch was waiting in his stationary tank as Meyer arrived. Climbing down out of bis own vehicle he walked over and stood looking up at his general, who spoke first.

  'The spotter plane reports something on the road ahead -it's investigating.'

  'I know.' Meyer took a deep breath, wishing that Storch would come down out of his turret. 'I've been expecting this -there'll be a heavy counter-attack at any moment. May I suggest that we wait here until the infantry catches us up? It might even be wiser to withdraw a few miles - to consolidate.'

  'Why?'

>   Storch's voice was silky. He leaned over the turret to examine Meyer, who was at a further disadvantage because the general's peaked cap shaded his face and he couldn't see his expression.

  'Because we have no supporting troops to hold the ground we have taken.' He took another deep breath. 'In fact, what we have taken may mean very little without troops occupying the ground we are rushing over like the Berlin Express.'