“You. Yes you. You’ll do.”
The major’s hand was on Turner’s shoulder. He stopped and saluted before he knew what he was doing. The corporals were behind him. The major had a little toothbrush mustache overhanging small, tight lips that clipped his words briskly. “We’ve got Jerry trapped in the woods over there. He must be an advance party. But he’s well dug in with a couple of machine guns. We’re going to get in there and flush him out.”
Turner felt the horror chill and weaken his legs. He showed the major his empty palms.
“What with, sir?”
“With cunning and a bit of teamwork.”
How was the fool to be resisted? Turner was too tired to think, though he knew he wasn’t going.
“Now, I’ve got the remains of two platoons halfway up the eastern . . .”
“Remains” was the word that told the story, and prompted Mace, with all his barrack-room skill, to interrupt.
“Beg pardon, sir. Permission to speak.”
“Not granted, Corporal.”
“Thank you, sir. Orders is from GHQ. Proceed at haste and speed and celerity, without delay, diversion or divagation to Dunkirk for the purposes of immediate evacuation on account of being ’orribly and onerously overrun from all directions. Sir.”
The major turned and poked his forefinger into Mace’s chest.
“Now look here you. This is our one last chance to show . . .”
Corporal Nettle said dreamily, “It was Lord Gort what wrote out that order, sir, and sent it down personally.”
It seemed extraordinary to Turner that an officer should be addressed this way. And risky too. The major had not grasped that he was being mocked. He seemed to think that it was Turner who had spoken, for the little speech that followed was addressed to him.
“The retreat is a bloody shambles. For heaven’s sake, man. This is your one last good chance to show what we can do when we’re decisive and determined. What’s more . . .”
He went on to say a good deal more, but it seemed to Turner that a muffling silence had descended on the bright late morning scene. This time he wasn’t asleep. He was looking past the major’s shoulder toward the head of the column. Hanging there, a long way off, about thirty feet above the road, warped by the rising heat, was what looked like a plank of wood, suspended horizontally, with a bulge in its center. The major’s words were not reaching him, and nor were his own clear thoughts. The horizontal apparition hovered in the sky without growing larger, and though he was beginning to understand its meaning, it was, as in a dream, impossible to begin to respond or move his limbs. His only action had been to open his mouth, but he could make no sound, and would not have known what to say, even if he could. Then, precisely at the moment when sound flooded back in, he was able to shout, “Go!” He began to run directly toward the nearest cover. It was the vaguest, least soldierly form of advice, but he sensed the corporals not far behind. Dreamlike too was the way he could not move his legs fast enough. It was not pain he felt below his ribs, but something scraping against the bone. He let his greatcoat fall. Fifty yards ahead was a three-ton lorry on its side. That black greasy chassis, that bulbous differential was his only home. He didn’t have long to get there. A fighter was strafing the length of the column. The broad spray of fire was advancing up the road at two hundred miles an hour, a rattling hailstorm din of cannon rounds hitting metal and glass. No one inside the near-stationary vehicles had started to react. Drivers were only just registering the spectacle through their windscreens. They were where he had been seconds before. Men in the backs of the lorries knew nothing. A sergeant stood in the center of the road and raised his rifle. A woman screamed, and then fire was upon them just as Turner threw himself into the shadow of the upended lorry. The steel frame trembled as rounds hit it with the wild rapidity of a drumroll. Then the cannon fire swept on, hurtling down the column, chased by the fighter’s roar and the flicker of its shadow. He pressed himself into the darkness of the chassis by the front wheel. Never had sump oil smelled sweeter. Waiting for another plane, he crouched fetally, his arms cradling his head and eyes tight shut, and thought only of survival. But nothing came. Only the sounds of insects determined on their late spring business, and birdsong resuming after a decent pause. And then, as if taking their cue from the birds, the wounded began to groan and call out, and terrified children began to cry. Someone, as usual, was cursing the RAF. Turner stood up and was dusting himself down when Nettle and Mace emerged and together they walked back toward the major who was sitting on the ground. All the color had gone from his face, and he was nursing his right hand.
“Bullet went clean through it,” he said as they came up. “Jolly lucky really.”
They helped him to his feet and offered to take him over to an ambulance where an RAMC captain and two orderlies were already seeing to the wounded. But he shook his head and stood there unaided. In shock he was talkative and his voice was softer.
“ME 109. Must have been his machine gun. The cannon would have blown my ruddy hand off. Twenty millimeter, you know. He must have strayed from his group. Spotted us on his way home and couldn’t resist. Can’t blame him, really. But it means there’ll be more of them pretty soon.”
The half dozen men he had gathered up before had picked themselves and their rifles out of the ditch and were wandering off. The sight of them recalled the major to himself.
“All right, chaps. Form up.”
They seemed quite unable to resist him and formed a line. Trembling a little now, he addressed Turner.