‘Shouldn’t we say something over him?’ mumbled Reynolds.
‘No,’ said Barnes abruptly, ‘nothing. Didn’t you know – he was an agnostic.’
When they had filled in the grave they erected a crude marker, and they used a shovel because it was the only instrument they could find for their purpose. The shovel was dug deep into the ground and on the handle Barnes had inscribed simple wording which he cut into the wood with his knife. ‘18972451 Corporal M. Penn. Killed in Action. May 25th, 1940.’
Before they moved off he asked Colburn to check his shoulder wound. While he had been leaning over into the grave, at the moment when the body had suddenly slipped down into its resting place, he had jerked his shoulder, feeling something give: he had ripped open the wound again. He sat on the warm hull while the Canadian removed the bandage and Colburn’s voice spoke volumes of disapproval.
‘I can see this dressing hasn’t been changed recently.’
‘You mean it’s turned septic?’ Barnes inquired quietly.
‘No, you were lucky there. I’m talking about the state of the outside of the dressing. You’ve reopened it again, all right, but it looks clean and that’s the main thing. Now, keep still. This may hurt.’
Cleaning the freshly-opened wound thoroughly, he applied a new dressing and then helped Barnes on with his shirt and jacket. The shoulder was starting to throb steadily, a nagging ache which absorbed far too much energy. When he was dressed he took out a pencil from the pocket containing Penn’s pay-book and diary, spread out his map over the hull and roughly marked the spot where the corporal was buried. One day Penn’s parents might wish to make a pilgrimage to this spot, but by then anything could have happened to the shovel. Really, he told himself, it’s a waste of time. All he could hope for was that the whole ruddy war wasn’t a waste of time. He began discussing the battlefield situation with Colburn but soon found out that the Canadian could tell him little more than he already knew.
‘As far as I can make out,’ Barnes went on, ‘The BEF is roughly north of this line with the Belgian Army on its left. We’re standing in the middle of a huge no-man’s-land…’
‘The gap,’ said Colburn.
‘You mean they’re actually calling it that?’
‘Yes, it’s referred to as that on our briefing maps. As you say, you’re slap in the middle of it but there’s a lot of argument as to how wide it is. My squadron came over to mix it with Hun fighters but as a sideline we were told to shoot up any Panzers we found. They think reinforcements may come through here soon.’
‘They were right – they came through early this morning.’
‘Late again.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Going back to those Panzers, I raised a query about the risk of shooting up our own guys and you’re not going to like the answer they gave. They said that if we found a whole lot of heavy tanks strung out along a road they were bound to be German – the British only have a handful and the French have cleverly scattered theirs in penny packets over the whole front.’
‘You don’t seem to know a great deal more than I do, Colburn.’
‘Sergeant, you’re over here in the thick of it, and it’s my opinion that you’re far to close to be able to take in the general picture.’
‘That, Colburn, said Barnes irritably, ‘is what I’m trying to extract from you. You get detailed briefings before you take to the air, you fly over the battlefield – if anyone has a general picture it should be you.’
‘Oh, I’ve got it, all right, but from your questions I get the idea you’re looking for some sort of clear pattern I should draw you, some nice neat little map which will show the Germans here, your lot there, and the French some other place. Well, I can’t do that, and again it’s only my opinion, but I’m pretty sure that when this war is only a memory and the historians get busy with their tidy little analyses they still won’t be able to say exactly which unit was where and on what day.-This, for what it’s worth, is the biggest muddle of a battle that ever was.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘That there isn’t any information worth a damn – these boys, the generals, are just making it up as they go along. Just like Wellington in the Peninsular War when he said it was like knotting a rope – you tie one knot, then you tie another and hope for the best. But don’t try to kid me that any of them are working to a tidy little plan in a war room any more.’
‘Not even the Germans?’ Barnes asked quietly.
‘Not even those bastards.— not any more. Ask me how I know and I’ll tell you it’s the well-known Colburn intuition -that and the fact that I’m a minor student of the history of warfare. But there’s one thing, Barnes, I’d bet money on – I’d bet that at this moment the German generals are so intoxicated with their success that they don’t know what to do with it. Generals are always divided into pushers and pullers – one lot will be saying press on, push ‘em into the sea, and the other lot will be yelling blue murder that they’ve over-reached themselves and had better dig in quick before they get their heads chopped off.’
‘It doesn’t help me much,’ remarked Barnes.,
‘Well, maybe this will help you. When I flew in today I came down south-east over Calais and I’m pretty sure there’s another gap between the coast road and the main battle area to the east. That could just be the way for us to go.’
‘It is the way we’re going.’
‘So I get a free ride to Calais, but on one condition – that you don’t ever ask me again for the general picture. There isn’t one. This is such a bloody mixed-up mess they’ll never be able to describe it – not in a hundred years’ time. Not unless they call on the aid of Shakespeare who did have a word for a complete one hundred per cent shambles. The general picture, Sergeant Barnes, is hugger-mugger.’
‘Which simply means we could run into Jerry at any time now.’
EIGHT
Saturday, May 25th
The Stuka bomber, one hundred feet up, smoke pouring from its tail, was heading straight for them as though aimed at the mouth of the quarry. Barnes stood perfectly still, his gaze fixed on the approaching projectile as he prayed that it would maintain its height for at least a few hundred yards more. It screamed in closer, its nose dipping like a suicide bomber guided to penetrate the quarry mouth and explode against the rear wall where Bert was parked. Beside him Colburn froze as he automatically assessed the Stuka’s line of flight. Then it roared over them, still losing height, and ten seconds later they heard it hit France a mile away as its bomb load blew up.
‘This place reminds me of high-explosives,’ said Colburn.
The tank was parked inside a chalk quarry cut out of the hillside and the giant alcove was filled with shadow. It was half past six in the evening and they had been standing at the narrow entrance while Reynolds mounted guard on the rim of the quarry high above them. The driver shouted down to tell them that the plane had crashed a long distance off and then resumed his all-round observation.
‘I’m none too fond of high-explosive myself at the moment,’ Barnes replied drily as he swirled tea in his mug.
‘That’s because you’ve been on the receiving end – I’m talking about quarry-blasting operations. There’s something very satisfying about laying the charges just right, going back to the plunger, pressing it, and seeing exactly the right area of rock slice away.’
‘I thought you just supplied the stuff.’
‘Oh, they were always asking me for advice and I ended up by doing the job for them. I have a talent for destruction, Barnes. What’s more to the point, I enjoyed my work.’