‘Surely they couldn’t have spotted us?’
‘No, I think they were coming here anyway. I wanted us well clear of those walls.’
‘But they’ve already smashed the place to bits…’
He stopped and they listened, staring at each other. The scream was starting again, the scream of a Stuka falling into a high-speed dive before it released its deadly load. Another stick was coming, but this one was different. The first explosion was a long way off, the next one closer, the third closer still, a frightful nerve-shattering crump. Penn began conducting an unspoken conversation with himself. It will be the next one that gets us, the next one… The bomb exploded in their ears and the shock wave was like a hammer-blow. The hull of the tank shook, wobbled, settled again. Then a fifth crump farther off. A sixth, fainter still.
‘They must be stark raving bonkers.’ Penn sounded indignant, a highly strung form of indignation. ‘They did the job last time – are they running out of space to store their perishing bombs?"
‘There’s an encouraging side to this,’ said Barnes, going on quickly as he saw Perm’s expression. ‘They must have come back to make the place absolutely impassable – which looks as though they’re frightened Allied reinforcements will be moving up here soon.’
‘Glad to hear it. I feel so much better, Sergeant, now you’ve told me that.’
The scream of another plane starting its dive commenced, a plane which sounded to be directly overhead, the scream rising to a crescendo as it came down as though the machine were out of control, a scream which sent cold water down Barnes’ spine. Then the explosions came, heart-shaking crumps landing all round them, pinpointing Bert’s position. Between explosions he heard another distant sound, a heavy thump. One of the remaining walls had gone. At least he had taken them clear of those insidious hanging walls. Barnes was well aware that the majority of casualties during an air raid on a built-up area are caused by the inhabitants being buried under collapsing masonry. He glanced at Penn to see how the corporal was standing up to the bombardment and Penn looked back, deliberately quivering the ends of his moustache in mock terror.
Mock terror? Penn’s nerves were shuddering like plucked violin strings. Another bomb exploded almost on top of them and the tank rattled like a toy under the impact, fitments coming loose and falling on to the turntable. Bombing is a grim experience wherever the recipients may be hiding, but it is particularly grim for those inside a tank. Penn had an awful sensation of being exposed: the brick wall of a building may give as little protection as the 40-mm steel which protects the lower sides of a tank, but inside a building there feels to be more protection, and locked inside the Matilda the assault on the eardrums was tremendous. As Penn sat tensely the sound of the explosions seemed to slice clean through the metal skin, but once inside the hull the cannonade reverberated from wall to wall as though a ten-ton hammer were beating on the plates, setting up vibrations which shook him to the guts. While the raid proceeded he struggled to put his mind into cold storage^ as he had on the bridge when the Panzers were moving past, but now the method didn’t work. He had decided to count up to a hundred explosions, telling himself that long before he reached that figure the raid would be over, but already he had lost count and he gave it up, living now from one explosion to the next.
In the nose of the tank, locked away from the other two men, Reynolds sat huddled forward, his hands still gripping the steering levers, his brain dazed with fear. It wasn’t so much the thought of a direct hit which frightened him, because if that happened there would be nothing to worry about. Instead, Reynolds was desperately trying to forget a technical factor in the construction of Bert – the four six-volt batteries which were housed in the nose of the tank. And above all else Reynolds had a gibbering horror of being blinded. He was well aware that even a near-miss could deal the hull such a shattering blow that those batteries might burst – spilling sulphuric acid all over his face and hands. He sat there silently, waiting for the next one, cursing the man who had designed the Matilda for exposing him to this terrible hazard. Miss us or kill us, he prayed, gripping his hands even tighter as they slipped wetly on the levers. Here it comes, right in front of me. Oh God, no! The explosion battered the nose and he heard debris spatter the armoured glass beyond the slit window, then he realized he was all right this time. He still sat with his head down, facing his lap, his eyes tightly closed.
‘So far, so good,’ said Barnes, repeating Penn’s joke.
‘Yes.’
Penn spat out the word, wondering how much longer it was going to last, his imagination working at a feverish pitch as he saw so clearly what was coming – the bomb which was a direct hit. The hull would rip open, letting inside the monstrous gases which are the product of high-explosion, tearing their flesh apart, disintegrating the three men and scattering their pulped relics across the rubble. No one would ever know what had happened to them: they would simply disappear. ‘Reported missing in action…’ My God, he thought, my poor people. I was just going to write to them the day we moved across the frontier. That was how many days ago? He couldn’t work it out and he didn’t even try to any longer as the next stick came down, straddling the tank so that for a few agonizing seconds three men were convinced that they were on the verge of death.
The raid lasted fifteen minutes and during that time they were bombed almost non-stop. After a short pause they endured a series of near-misses which terrorized poor Reynolds very close to breaking-point: it was probably only the unseen presence of Barnes just beyond the plate behind him that saved the driver from opening the hatch and climbing out to escape those dreaded batteries. He had reached the stage where he was quite prepared to take bis chance out in the open. Then the second pause came, a pause which went on and on while they waited for the bombardment to start again. It was Barnes who recovered first, climbing up into the turret and cautiously raising the lid, starting to cough as soon as he had poked his head up into the dust-laden air, feeling the heat of the sun on the back of his neck. The turret rim was hot to the touch.
Many of the hanging walls were no longer there and over the whole area was suspended a pall of dust, a pall so dense that the sun was a blurred disc. He looked down and saw that the hull was coated with a film of dust as though Bert had been camouflaged to operate across a grey desert, and when he stepped down on the hull his foot slipped and he almost banged his knee again. He told both of them to get out of the tank and join him where they could breathe in the dust for themselves, but at least they were out in the open, outside the claustrophobic confines of what had so nearly become a metal coffin.
The tank stood inside an old square in the western, less-ruined sector of the town while its crew waited for the unknown intruder to make his appearance, the first sound of life they had met since entering the devastated town. The square was enclosed by hanging walls and the weird tomb-like atmosphere seemed to grow as they waited, Reynolds still in his driver’s seat, Penn standing in the turret grasping a machine-pistol, while Barnes stood next to a corner of the square with his back to a wall. Instinctively, he did not lean against it and be held the revolver across his chest so that the muzzle was aimed at the corner.
Little more than ten minutes after they had stopped inside the square for Reynolds to check the tank, Barnes’ acute hearing had detected the sounds, odd rustling sounds as though the approaching feet were scuffling furtively through rubble. The footsteps were very close now, moving more quickly. Barnes elevated his gun and at the same moment Penn aimed his machine-pistol. A man came round the corner and stopped abruptly.