Tramp in Armour Page 6

  'I see. Where did a lad of your age learn about things like this?'

  'My father works at the Belgian small-arms factory at Herstal. He can fire all the pistols and machine guns.' Again the hint of pride. 'Including your own Bren gun. They call it by that name because it was first made in the city of Brno in Czechoslovakia.'

  'You have an uncle living in Fontaine?'

  Barnes looked directly into the lad's blue eyes and his gaze was returned steadily. Pierre's eyebrows were so fair that he almost appeared to have none., which gave him a curiously older appearance.

  'Not any more,' he replied. 'My uncle fled from the Germans three days since.'

  'I see. Why didn't you go with him?'

  'Because I am not scared. I am going to fight the Germans.' He went on talking quickly. 'I shall be eighteen,years of age by July so I am quite old enough and my knowledge of weapons means that training is not necessary. Corporal Penn said that I could come with you.'

  'Steady on, laddie,' Penn interjected. 'I said you'd have to ask Sergeant Barnes and that isn't the same thing at all.'

  Barnes opened his mouth to say that he couldn't come under any circumstances and then he changed his mind. There was no point in antagonizing the lad before they left Fontaine. Instead, he asked a question.

  'Where did you learn to speak such good English?'

  'Thank you, Sergeant.' Pierre glowed with pride% 'My father sent me to spend six months with the British firm of Vickers in Birmingham so that I could learn about British weapons. They tell me that I have a Midland accent.'

  'You'd better go and talk to Trooper Reynolds, Pierre, while I have a look at -the tank with Corporal Penn.'

  Barnes started to explain to Penn how the machine-pistol worked, handing the weapon to him to demonstrate a point while Pierre was leaving the building.

  'The temptation with this gun is to hold on to the magazine, but you've got to grasp it higher up just under the barrel ... that doctor, Lepin, did you talk to him much while he was here looking after me?'

  'Hardly at all - he's a very quiet type and I left Pierre to interpret for me.'

  'You've been into Fontaine yourself?'

  'No, I kept well clear of it except when I visited Lepin's garden shed to hear the news. I thought the Germans might occupy the place at any moment and I wanted to lie low till you were better.'

  'Who owns these buildings - they belong to some farmer, I imagine?'

  'Yes, they do, but he's cleared out with the refugees so we should be all right here for a while until the roads are quieter. The main one through Fontaine is still crammed with refugee traffic and the place itself is lousy with them. We may have to sit it out here for several days.'

  'Get the map for me, Penn. Staying in one spot behind the German lines for four days isn't a healthy idea at all and I'd say our luck is due to run out at any moment. We must get moving.'

  'You've only just got up...'

  'And I intend to stay up. Warn Reynolds to make any last minute checks he thinks necessary so that we're ready to move at a moment's notice. And I could do with something to eat if there's anything left.'

  The atmosphere was changing already with every word Barnes said, and Penn could sense it. A feeling of urgency had begun to animate Barnes and that feeling communicated itself to Penn, but he made one last effort.

  'I still think you ought to rest up at least...'

  'I'm going into Fontaine with Pierre to see for myself. When I get back we must be ready to move. Make no mistake about it, Penn, we'll be out of this place well before nightfall.'

  The feeling that they ought to be on the move, away from this place, tugged insistently at Barnes as he marched steadily along the road to Fontaine with Pierre. The afternoon sun shone down brilliantly over the fields of France, beating down on their faces and warming their hands, a physical sensation of pure heat. Barnes had two reasons for his reconnaissance: he wanted to smell the atmosphere for himself and he wanted to test his own staying power. The blazing sunshine added to the discomfort of his wound, so that now as well as the throb-throb he could also feel a pricking sensation round the edges of his dressing, a sensation which made him wont to tear off the bandage. His head was aching and he walked rigidly, forcing himself to take long strides, each footfall thudding up into the sensitive shoulder like the impact of a small road-bumper. But he was still on his feet, so he was all right. In his holster he carried the Webley .455 revolver and the flap was unbuttoned.

  'There's the village, Sergeant Barnes.'

  'What on earth is that lot on the road?'

  'They are the refugees. They go through Fontaine all day and all night. It is difficult to cross the main square.'

  A grey slate church spire rose up from a huddle of stone walled buildings and from that distance they could see on both sides of the village a road which ran at right-angles to the road they were walking along. The main road was packed with an incredible congestion of traffic, a slow-moving column which travelled at such a snail's pace that it hardly seemed to move at all. Barnes turned off the road and began to cut across the fields diagonally along a course which would take them to the eastern outskirts of the village.

  'Are we riot entering Fontaine?' inquired Pierre.

  'I want to have a look at that column. Later, I want to go in to buy some food.'

  'You will not get any - the village store is empty and the storekeeper has left two days before. He was very frightened and said it was time to go.'

  'Frightened of the Germans?'

  'No, of the villagers. He said that soon they would take what they wanted without paying him a franc. One man did call him a robber - I saw it myself. Other people in the store were threatening him.'

  The incident had an ugly ring and Barnes began to feel alarmed. The sooner they got out of this area the better, but he must check the state of the roads first. We're in a jam, all right, he told himself. If all the main roads are like this we'll have to move across country, and that will slow us down and double our fuel consumption. They were approaching the refugee line broadside on, a line which stretched as far as the eye could see. A dozen yards from the roadside they stopped in the field and watched the spectacle. The road was crammed" from verge to verge with a swollen river of fleeing humanity -several cars, a large number of horse-drawn carts piled high with bed linen, mattresses, and a jumble of household goods. On one cart he saw a brass-posted bed which threatened to lurch over the edge at any moment. But above all the road was congested with people on foot and Barnes had never seen more pathetic faces, the faces of men and women at the end of their tether, their expressions weary and despairing, their eyes fixed dully on the vehicle ahead as they trudged along under the merciless heat of the sun.

  'We'll never get through that lot,' he said eventually.

  'There is a road which turns off over there.' Pierre pointed across the fields to a low hedge. 'You could take your tank along that road. No refugees have come from that direction since the Germans attacked.'

  'Do you know where it goes?'

  'Of course. It leads to Arras. I have never been there but my uncle has told me. I have been along it for many miles and it is wide enough for a tank.'

  What Pierre was saying agreed with the map Barnes had studied and he found his thoughts turning more and more towards the town of Arras. Penn had told him that a news bulletin that morning had reported an Allied counter-attack developing in the area of Arras, a counter-attack of British tanks, and the town was the one fixed point where the Allies seemed to be engaging the Germans. He looked to the right as he heard a car coming closer, its horn blaring persistently. It was an open touring Renault, a green four-seater, and superficially it had the appearance of a military staff car. For one split second Barnes thought he might have re-established contact with the Allied forces, and then he saw that the only occupant was a woman. The horn blared again and again as she stopped and then edged forward a few more yards. Barnes felt that she must be crazy, but as he watch
ed her he was filled with a sense of unease, an odd foreboding. To add to her idiotic behaviour she had not even offered a lift to any of the exhausted wretches who trudged in front of her on foot.

  'How provocative can you get?' growled Barnes.

  'Pardon?'

  The German attack came without warning, without mercy, came out of clear blue sky from in front of the sun so that it was almost impossible to detect their approach, but Barnes heard them coming.

  'Down!'

  He shouted the word again and again to the bewildered crowd and then dropped flat on the grass beside Pierre as the first Messerschmitt swooped along the column, its engine screaming, its machine gun blazing non-stop. The crowd was dazed, stunned with terror, unable even to attempt to run for safety in the shock of the sudden onslaught. In front of him Barnes saw an old man turn and stare at the plane as it came straight along the road with a scream and a stutter. He must have taken a dozen bullets in the chest before he crashed back against a cart. As the first machine screamed past, Barnes tugged out his revolver and waited for the next one, steadying the gun barrel across bis arm. The second Messerschmitt pulled out of its dive and sped over the procession almost immediately. Barnes saw the outline of the pilot's helmet, the black cross on the fuselage, the swastika on the tail. He fired three times in rapid succession, knowing that it was hopeless. Unless a .455 bullet burst through the petrol tank he might just as well be armed with a bow and arrow, but he had to try something. The third machine was coming now, its nadir so low that it almost skimmed the heads of the panic-stricken refugees. Barnes fired, swearing foully as he switched his eyes to the west where another one was coming, and at that moment a horse went berserk, dragging its cart off the road as people scrambled desperately to escape this new menace.

  There were six machines altogether, and when they had flown away from the carnage the afternoon was suddenly horribly quiet. Only the heart-broken cries of sobbing women disturbed the stillness as Barnes clambered to his feet and ran over to the stationary Renault. When he reached the car and looked inside he clenched his teeth: the woman in the Renault had taken the full blast of the machine gun and now she was hardly identifiable even as a blood-soaked corpse. The engine was still running so he leaned over and switched off the ignition. He would give these refugees what help he could and then head for Arras non-stop.

  The tank rumbled southwards at top speed and the road ahead was clear as far as the eye could see, another panorama of Belgian pastureland spreading away with hardly a tree anywhere, which meant no cover from air attack.

  Standing in the turret, Barnes concentrated on keeping all-round observation: the deserted road ahead, the road behind, the fields on either side where people worked a long way off and never seemed to notice the passage of a British tank and, above all, the sky overhead where the most instant danger could strike without warning. Below him Penn occupied Davis' old position behind the guns, while in the nose of the tank Reynolds sweltered as he handled his driving levers, his head thrust up through the open hatch, relieved that once again they were on the move and that Barnes was in command. To Reynolds, all was well with the world so long as Barnes was in command. Behind the turret sat Pierre. He was perched outside the tank on the engine covers and already had grown accustomed to the gentle wobble of the hull as the huge tracks ground farther south with every revolution. There had almost been a row between Barnes and Penn over taking the Belgian lad. At first, Barnes had refused point-blank.

  'We need him for information,' Penn had protested. 'He knows the country and we don't. Supposing we're inside a town close to the battle area - accurate information will be vital. Our lives may depend on it and the only one who can get it quickly from the locals is Pierre. He's taken some chances with us already - he was with us in the building all the time the Panzer column was moving through Fontaine. We didn't know it at the time but if he'd been caught with us they'd have shot him. And he brought food for us.'

  It was probably the gesture of bringing food which had finally persuaded Barnes to let Pierre travel with them until he could drop him off in an area more peaceful than Fontaine. They were on the point of departing when Pierre had come running back from the village with sticks of French bread under each arm and a satchelful of tinned meat hanging from his shoulder. He even had a packet of coffee in his pocket. No one had inquired too closely as to how he had obtained these provisions: after all, there was a war on.

  And now, as the tank left Fontaine far behind them, Barnes was weighing up many things. It was pleasant to have the sun shining down on them, but it was from the sun that the Luftwaffe made its sneak attacks, so frequently he shaded his eyes to scan the sky, straining his ears for the first warning sound of approaching engines. The landscape ahead was beginning to undulate and he kept a careful observation along the ridges to detect any signs of gun positions which might lie in ambush. So far they had only met Belgian horse-carts on this lonely road which seemed to go on for ever, horse-carts which plodded past while their drivers stared at the tank as though hardly able to believe their eyes. As he kept up his vigilant watch Barnes was also trying to locate on the map the road they were travelling along and he was puzzled. There was a road from Fontaine which led south-west in the general direction of distant Arras, but this road had gradually turned until they were heading due south Without mentioning his discovery, he kept an eye open for landmarks.

  They were going to run into trouble soon now, Barnes could feel it in his bones. They were travelling with their guns loaded and the power-traverse on, and Barnes bad given Pierre strict instructions that in case of trouble he must immediately leave the tank and take cover. The farther they moved along this peaceful road, the only witnesses to their progress cows grazing in the fields, the tauter Barnes' nerves became. It was only a matter of time before they met something big and when that happened he'd have to take a lightning decision. He only hoped that he was up to that. He had reached the stage where he accepted the throbbing and. pricking of his shoulder as a permanent burden, as much a part of himself as breathing, but he did wish that the dreadful pounding headache would go away. Under the circumstances it was remarkable that he reacted at all when the emergency arose, and the fact that he reacted instantly was little short of a miracle.

  At the time they were travelling at reduced speed on his instructions because they were approaching a hump-backed bridge. The character of the countryside had changed again and now there were low hills close to the road. Even from the elevated vantage point of the turret he found it impossible to see the stretch of road immediately beyond the bridge, so as they drove forward his gaze was fixed on the crest which was still a hundred yards away. Instinctively, he didn't like the look of the bridge. He began to give precautionary orders, just in case.

  'Two-pounder. One hundred. The bridge ahead.'

  Below him, Penn's head was pressed hard against a padded bracket, his eye peering steadily through the telescope at the small circle of countryside which centred on the bridge crest. The two-pounder's leather-bound grip was fixed tightly round his shoulder, under his armpit, so that only the slightest movement of that shoulder automatically raised or depressed the muzzle of the gun. His left hand gripped the power-traverse lever while the other hand gripped the trigger handle. Now the cross-wires inside the glass circle were aligned dead centre on the bridge crest. The range was set, he was ready, and all this had taken only a few seconds.

  Barnes had hardly completed giving the orders, Penn had just completed obeying them, when it happened. Straight over the crest of the hump-back, travelling at high speed, recklessly high speed, hurtled a large covered truck. Barnes registered its identity in a flash - even to the soldier peering round from the back, leaning well out, a pudding-shaped helmet set squarely on his head. A German detachment of motorized infantry.

  'German truck! Fire!'

  The barrel dropped slightly, because now the truck was over the hump, still tearing towards them. Knowing what to expect, Barnes g
ripped the turret rim. The tank shuddered under the stomach-jerking spasm of the recoil, the shell screamed forward, its target rushing to meet it. The two missiles met in frightful collision, the shell smashing into the truck just above engine level, exploding with a roar, ripping apart metal, canvas, flesh. Inside the turret the air reeked of cordite fumes as Barnes, who was now behind the gun, re-loaded, flipping in a fresh round with a certain force to make the breech-block close. Then he scrambled back to the top of the turret, the tank still trundling towards its target. In the nose of the vehicle Reynolds stared at the truck with grim satisfaction. God, that had been a close one!

  The truck was pulverized, but the force of explosion plays strange tricks and this explosion had hurled from the open back several German soldiers still clasping their machine-pistols, throwing them out on to the grass verge where they lay stunned for a second. But when Barnes looked out from his turret they were recovering, jumping up off the grass, the reflex of fear speeding their movements as they darted into the field, spreading out the target. In a matter of seconds, if they were well trained, they would be circling round the tank. Barnes gave instant orders.