Chapter Thirty-Eight: Dunkirk, Round Two
We were all flying around up and down the coast near Dunkirk looking for enemy aircraft which seemed also to be milling around with no particular cohesion.
Ostend, Belgium
“Sir, look out!”
Captain Stuart Robinson didn’t hesitate. He took one look into the air, saw the shape closing in on them, and threw himself out of the truck, rolling as he hit the ground hard enough to hurt badly. The deafening noise as the Russian aircraft opened fire stunned him; he covered his ears and fought to keep low as the lorries exploded and the Russian aircraft banked away, mercifully not bothering to attempt to strafe the British soldiers on the ground.
“Fuck,” Robinson hissed, as he checked himself out. Nothing was broken, thankfully, but his body ached. He hadn’t felt so bad since his first day at the training camp. “Anyone hurt?”
Sergeant Ronald Inglehart was looking down at one of the soldiers. “He’s dead, sir,” he said, as he checked the body and removed the tags from the soldier’s body. Robinson took one look at the body and knew there was no point in hunting for a pulse; the man’s chest had been literally punched through by a bullet. “Chris came all this way with us and…”
Robinson forced down his own feelings. They had been lucky, driving mainly at night to avoid Russian aircraft, but they’d had to move faster to pick up their ride home and the Russians had caught them. It was a bloody miracle that they hadn’t lost more men; the handful of tiny injuries and two broken bones looked a small price to pay for getting home… if they managed to make it home without losing any more men. The once-proud EUROFOR had been reduced to hundreds of bands of stragglers, trying to make their way back home; he wondered what had happened to Generalmajor Günter Mühlenkampf and the remains of his force. Had they made the Russians pay for their attack on Europe?
“We have to start walking,” he said. They had passed several bunches of refugees, people fleeing into the countryside and trying to escape, others heading towards the coast in hopes that the Royal Marines would pick them up as well as the British and European soldiers. “We can’t stay here.”
“Sir,” one of the soldiers protested, “can’t we bury him?”
Robinson knew what cold logic dictated they should do. The body should be abandoned. But he couldn't bring himself to do that, not now and not ever.
“Quickly,” he said, hunting for a spot where the body could be buried quickly. Inglehart and Mathews organised a digging party; seven soldiers worked rapidly to bury their fallen comrade, before they started the long march to the west again. “I don’t think that we have much time.”
“No,” Mathews muttered, as they started walking. “Have you been listening to the aircraft?”
Robinson thought about it. “I think I understand,” he said finally. “There are air battles going on as well, aren’t there?”
Mathews nodded. “Back in 1940, the Germans threw a lot of air power at Dunkirk, but failed to close the door on the escaping forces,” he said. “The Russians will be coming after us with everything they can bring to bear on us, and you know that the handful of Germans we passed won’t be able to slow them down for long. They have weapons the Germans could only dream about, as well; all they have to do is sink a few larger ships and… we’re fucked.”
A nightmarish hour passed as they walked onwards. The temperature was rising quickly, becoming almost tropical; the noise of unseen battles in the sky echoing around them, the occasional sight of an aircraft flying east or west forcing them to duck for cover. Robinson hoped, from the noise, that the RAF was beating the shit out of the Russians, but he knew something about the balance of power in the air. The RAF was likely to be doing the best they could, but the Russians would have more aircraft and more resources. It would be a nasty confrontation…
“Halt,” a voice bellowed, in English. The accent was pure cockney. “Identify yourselves!”
“Captain Stuart Robinson,” Robinson called back. “Identify yourself.”
“Captain Roberto Grey, Royal Marines, 3 Commando,” the voice called back. “Remain where you are; we must check your identity before we can proceed.”
“Oh, joy,” Sergeant Ronald Inglehart muttered. “It’s the Royal Latrines.”
“They’re the best we have at the moment,” Robinson reminded him dryly. The Royal Marines came out of hiding and revealed themselves; there was no mistaking their uniforms or their attitude. If they were Russians, they were doing a very good job of pretending to be British soldiers; they carried themselves with a mixture of competence and confidence. His mouth fell into a smile. He recognised one. “Bob!”
Sergeant Bob Patterson stared at him, and grinned. “Captain Robinson, as I live and breathe,” he shouted. The tension drained away; Robinson had felt his men preparing for a desperate last stand. It would have been typical of the unexpected war for his men to die in a brief battle with friendly forces. “We kicked your arse at Salisbury Plain!”
“And we kicked yours in the Highlands,” Robinson shouted back, remembering a mock war game that had ended up with everyone falling into a bog. A lot of friendships had been forged that day. “How do we get home?”
“We check your biometrics first, and then we send you back,” Grey said firmly. He was a dour-faced man; Robinson pressed his fingertips to the scanner he held and sighed in relief when it cleared his identity. He had had no doubt that the Marines would have opened fire if there had been a single mistake. “The British soldiers can pass, but the non-British have to go unarmed.”
Robinson opened his mouth to protest. “Sorry,” Grey said quickly, “but we have already had one case of an infiltrator — we think he was a Russian in Dutch clothing — and we dare not risk another. This operation is working on the margins as it is…”
“I see,” Robinson said. “Jean, everyone…”
The foreigners surrendered their weapons reluctantly; Robinson motioned to his men to take them. Grey saw and decided not to argue. “Now,” Robinson said, as an aircraft flew overhead. “What do we do now?”
“Follow the road to the west, around the towns and city, and head to the coast,” Grey said. “One of the other Marines will show you where to go to board one of the ships; the Russian bastards managed to fuck up the port and so we have had to improvise. Once we get you back to England, you’ll be debriefed and given new orders.”
Good thing we didn’t keep the CADS, Robinson thought, thinking about Hazel. She had to have been worried sick about him in Edinburgh; how much did the citizens know about the war? They started the long walk towards the west feeling much better than they had in weeks; one of the soldiers even began to sing a long and filthy song. Others called out equally obscene requests; Robinson didn’t bother to stop them as they encountered a second Marine patrol, which pointed them down onto a breach that had been torn apart by tanks and other heavy vehicles. He could see two more CADS positioned to provide air cover; as he watched, one of them launched a missile towards a low-flying aircraft that had appeared out of nowhere, sending it crashing into the city.
Inglehart sounded stunned. “What about the civilians?”
Robinson said nothing. The civilians had paid the price for their government’s failure. A handful of Marine medics gave basic medical treatment to his injured men; they had walked all the way to the beach without complaining, or needing to be carried… not that he would have abandoned them, of course. They were too important to be abandoned by their fellows.
“The boat will carry you to the larger ship,” a harassed looking Marine Colonel said. Robinson hadn’t realised how few soldiers had made it out of Poland, let alone Germany; he couldn’t see more than a few hundred soldiers at most being prepared for the trip across the Channel. “Once you’re onboard, find somewhere to sit and keep out of the fucking way, understand?”