'Come on, Tanner, chop, chop!' said Captain Barclay, as he walked past the Krupp. 'The road's clear. We need to get a move on.'
'Yes, sir,' he replied, making no effort to hurry.
'Come on, Sergeant,' called Blackstone. 'Didn't you hear the captain? Run!'
To hell with him. Tanner ignored him.
'Tanner!' called Blackstone.
He looked up and saw that Lieutenant Peploe, Sykes and the men behind were watching him and this sudden altercation with Blackstone. Damn! He turned slowly to face Captain Barclay and the CSM.
'Oh, for God's sake,' muttered Lyell from the front of Barclay's vehicle, 'you're acting like bloody kids.'
'Sergeant Tanner, did you not hear what the captain said?'
Tanner sighed. 'Yes, Sergeant-Major.'
'And you thought you'd ignore what Captain Barclay ordered you to do?'
Tanner said nothing. He knew he was trapped. No matter what he said, Blackstone would use it to humiliate him further.
'What was that? I didn't quite hear it, Sergeant,' said Blackstone.
'I apologize, sir,' he said to Captain Barclay.
'No respect, Tanner, that's your problem,' said Barclay. 'Think you can do it all on your own. Now apologize to the CSM here, and then I want you to run to your truck. We're wasting valuable time.'
Tanner clenched and unclenched his fists, swallowed, then turned his face up to Blackstone and forced himself to say, 'Sorry, Sergeant-Major.'
'Get back to your truck, Sergeant,' Blackstone said, in a voice loud enough for all those in the truck behind to hear, 'at the double!'
'I'm sorry about that,' said Peploe, as Tanner got back into the cab. 'That was completely unnecessary.'
'They're just flexing their muscles, Sarge,' added Sykes.
Tanner took out a German cigarette and lit it. 'Let's just get to Arras,' he said.
At the BEF command post at Wahagnies, twenty miles north-east of Arras, General Lord Gort left his spartan office, went down the stairs and into the large drawing room, now busy with numerous staff officers, liaison officers and clerks working from makeshift trestle-table desks. The clatter of typewriters and the collective hubbub of different conversations filled the room. Dust particles hung faintly in the air, illuminated in the sunlight that shone through the tall french windows; cleaning the building after requisitioning it from the owners had not been a high priority and, in any case, Gort's large command post staff had brought their own dust and dirt with them.
Careful to make sure he looked as fit and energetic as ever, he strode purposefully towards one of his aides-de- camp and said, 'Get someone to bring a bite of lunch out to me in the garden, will you?'
'Right away, sir,' the ADC replied, getting to his feet.
'Good man.' Gort nodded to the others, said, 'Carry on, carry on,' then walked briskly to the glass doors, stepped out onto the terrace and trotted across the lawn to the bottom of the garden where, beneath a large cedar and out of sight of the house, there stood a wooden bench. Sitting down, he rubbed his hands over his face and allowed himself a wide yawn. For a moment, he gazed at the small pond in front of him. At its centre stood a stone cherub, discoloured with age, whose mouth emitted a trickle of water. In the murky pond, goldfish showed intermittent flashes of golden-orange. Somewhere near by a wood pigeon cooed soothingly.
Lord Gort sighed and yawned again, then briefly closed his eyes. Damn it, he was exhausted. He reckoned he'd had about two hours' sleep last night, and not much more the night before. But that was only the half of it: since 10 May, from the moment he had been awake to the moment he had gone to bed, he had been on the go constantly, trying to organize his forces, attempting to get some sense from Gamelin, Georges, Billotte and the rest of the French high command, sending missives and orders, meeting with commanders and liaison officers, seeing the troops, and trying to keep London informed of increasingly confused events.
A bee hummed lazily in front of him and he followed its path enviously. It had been a devil of a morning. Up at five with the news that the chief of the Imperial General Staff himself, General Ironside, was about to visit. At six o'clock on the nose, Tiny Ironside had walked in, blustering as usual, to hand-deliver a personal message from the war cabinet. At the conference soon after he had pointed to the map hanging in Gort's office and announced that the entire BEF should withdraw southwest to Amiens, closer to their lines of supply. 'We've all agreed this plan,' he had announced. 'Churchill and the cabinet were unanimous.'
Gort had patiently pointed out that it was not the war cabinet who were commanding the BEF and explained that to leave their positions on the Escaut en masse and move the best part of a hundred miles directly across the flanks of the German panzers' advance was not merely impossible but plain suicide. Of course, the CIGS had quickly come round to his point of view, but this, Gort felt, should have been perfectly clear to him back in London. What Gort had offered to do, however - and he'd been thinking about it since his meeting with Billotte the previous night - was use his two reserve divisions, the 5th and 50th, for a counter-attack south of Arras and the river Scarpe to the east of the town. If the French mounted a similar attack from the south, Gort had suggested to the CIGS, it might be possible to close the gap that had been punched by the German panzer divisions between the Allied armies north of Arras and the Scarpe, and those south of the river Somme.
It was a positive plan at least - one that promised aggressive action rather than passive defence, and Ironside had seized it wholeheartedly, just as Gort had known he would. The CIGS had immediately headed straight off to see Billotte and Blanchard, taking Pownall with him, determined to put some resolve into the French commanders and persuade them to join in Gort's proposed attack.
Gort took off his cap with its red band and laid it on the bench beside him, ran his hand over his largely bald head, then closed his eyes, letting the May sunshine warm his face. He wondered how Ironside and Pownall were getting on. It was essential that the French should play ball but his conversation with Billotte the previous evening had left a deeply unfavourable impression.
Perhaps they could yet turn it around but all morning he had been unable to banish the niggling suspicion that the French had shot their bolt completely. Once again, he found his thoughts returning to what now seemed a horrible inevitability: evacuation of as much of the BEF as possible.
A cough brought him from his thoughts and he opened his eyes to see a young RASC lance-corporal holding a metal tray on which there was a bottle of beer and a plate of bread, cheese and chocolate. 'Your lunch, sir.'
'Thank you,' Gort replied. He indicated the bench. 'Just put it down there, will you?'
The orderly left him and Gort continued to sit where he was, drinking his beer and eating the cheese and bread. This end of the garden was a peaceful haven: warm, softly scented and alive with the calming sounds of early summer. Nonetheless, the soothing ambience could do nothing to relieve the gloom that swirled in the British commander-in-chief's head - a gloom that would only deepen as the afternoon wore on.