Not Flag or Fail Read online

  “Blinking anythink is better than that tomb, Bomb! I hated it, but this is like home to me, back on a boat at last, even if it is only a flipping barge!”

  We heard the Captain fiddling about and I wondered what he was doing I didn’t have to wonder for long, the flame of his lighter illuminated our surroundings, as he lit a cigarette.

  “I don’t believe this!” I said as I used both hands to snatch the cigarette and the lighter from him. “Bombardier how dare you?” he shouted.

  “Sir,” I replied “are you trying to blow us all up? Don’t you know how inflammable coal dust is?”

  “Inflammable … consider yourself under open arrest. I’m putting you on a charge of insubordination; now give me that lighter this instant!”

  I did nothing, waiting to see what he would do next.

  “Don’t make me draw my pistol Bombardier.” said the Captain, we could hear him fiddling about in the dark.

  “Permission to speak Sir?” said Ronny.

  After the Captain had given him permission Ronny in his best conciliatory tones, suggested that using the pistol might draw attention to us and that as an alternative he and the rest of the crew could put me under close arrest once we had left the barge. The Captain agreed to this but told Ronny to get the lighter back for him. Ronny asked me to pass it to him, however as I put my hand towards him he told the Captain that he’d dropped it in the dark, he wasn’t to know that I hadn’t even attempted to hand it over to Ronny.

  Everything settled down again eventually, a silence descended over us. I don’t think any of us wanted to speak, for fear of starting the Captain off again. After some time the tarpaulin was pulled back and the barge-master came into our hideaway. He had a big jug of hot coffee and some cups that he handed over to Harry and Jack. He spoke to Ronny, who in turn told us that we were making good speed.

  We drank the coffee and settled down again, now we could hear the sound of bombing with shellfire in the distance. À quick peek out from under the tarpaulin showed a distant horizon being lit up by flashes from intermittent explosions.

  Much later we felt, rather than saw, the barge slowing down and eventually stop with a few slight bumps, which I assumed were when it pulled into the wharf.

  After a few minutes we heard footsteps and the barge-master pulled back the tarpaulin and with a small hand-torch, he gestured for us to follow him.

  “vous et ici, vite, vite!” we all knew enough French to know what he meant. We grabbed our few belongings and followed him through the coal and out of the hold.

  He turned off the torch, put his head up, out of the hatch, looked around and then went up on deck again, indicating that we should follow him. He led us to a plank, spanning the gap between the barge and the land, wished us ‘bonne chance’, and as each of us jumped ashore he gave us all an encouraging pat on the back…

  We slipped into the shadows and watched as he went into his wheelhouse, no doubt relieved to have completed his task.

  Quickly we walked away putting a safe distance between us and the barge. Eventually we entered a short tunnel and as we got towards the end we took the opportunity for a rest, we all crouched down looking out towards Dunkirk. In the distance, the night sky was still being lit by the occasional flash. As we neared the darkest hour we could tell that the bombing had reduced considerably from that which we had briefly witnessed earlier.

  “Ok lads,” I said, “We can risk a fag and then I think, we’ll get going while it’s still dark.” They didn’t need telling twice, the tins of cigarettes were soon out and Harry, shielding the flame of his lighter, gave us all a light.

  “You really should not be telling us what to do Bombardier,” said the Captain, “have you forgotten you are under arrest for insubordination?”

  I didn’t answer him, it seemed pointless, we now had only six miles left to do before we would join up with other British troops, although I realised with this man with us, we were not going to make it, he was a liability, capture was inevitable.

  I tried to think what to do, this crew was my responsibility, yet the Captain, despite his obvious lack of any common sense was still an officer. I knew that if we didn’t obey him, in the British Army there could be no justification for our insubordination. Although I didn’t care for myself, I was not going to risk capture or worse for my crew, just for the sake of this man’s ego.

  With the Captain in our midst I had no opportunity to discuss the problem with the others, however I should have known better and had more faith in them and in their ingenuity.

  We set off again, walking along the canal towpath which was on an embankment raised from the flat land below. The Captain was leading, with me behind him, the rest of the lads in close order behind, he was strolling along with no effort at concealment, seemingly unaware of any danger.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked behind to see that the others were missing and there was only Fishy who had a finger to his lips and was pointing down off the embankment, I followed him quietly dropping down away from the path, leaving the Captain striding away into the darkness. I couldn’t help but grin as the rest of the lads gathered around me “Does this mean I’m not under arrest any more, I whispered?” “Bloody hell Bomb, we thought you was bad enough but he was even worse!” whispered Fishy in reply, we all chuckled.

  We carefully made our way down to the bottom of the embankment and got into the hedgerow, while Ronny checked the map. He worked out a route heading more north-west than we had been doing. He told us this would both increase the distance between us and the Captain and take us more directly to the beaches, perhaps knocking half a mile off the way that we had been going.

  Ronny had chosen well, the road we were going down was little more than a single track lane, bordered on each side by tall hawthorn hedges.

  We had been walking along in silence for about twenty minutes, Ronny leading and Fishy, who was regularly glancing behind him to ensure the Captain didn’t find us again, bringing up the rear. Ronny put his hand up to stop us and we moved over to the side of the road.

  “What is it?” I whispered. “I’m not sure, but something’s isn’t right.” he whispered back, putting a finger to his lips before the others started to talk. Fishy leaned over from the back of the group “I know,” he whispered, “I feel it too.”

  We stayed crouched down at the roadside imagining all sorts of things, when after a couple of minutes Fishy pointed to the hedgerow on the other side of the road and about twenty yards in front of us.

  We watched as a match flared and was replaced by the red tip of a cigarette then we heard German being spoken softly.

  It looked as if they had set up posts, probably with machine guns, in the hope of catching stragglers on their way into Dunkirk.

  We huddled closer together, whispering, we had heard only two distinct voices earlier so we figured that there would only be two soldiers probably with a motorbike and sidecar. Jack wanted to lob a hand grenade across but I felt that it would draw too much attention to us and that any more Germans in the area would come to see what was happening to their mates, even rifle fire would probably have the same effect.

  We did not have a lot of time left, the sky was already starting to lighten in the east, another half an hour and we would be plainly visible.

  I decided that our priority should be to get past them rather than to fight them. This was definitely a case where discretion was going to prove the better part of valour.

  We found a hole in the hedge on our side of the lane and crawled through into the field beyond. When we were all through I set off parallel to the lane keeping low down behind the hedge, the wet grass in the field deadening any sound from our boots. Soon I judged we were level with the German position, banking on the two hedges giving us sufficient cover, I continued along the hedge side not stopping to find out .Eventually when we were a good fifty yards or more past the German position we came to a gate that led out of the field and back onto the road. Ignoring it I chose
to stay within the field, the main advantages being that you could not hear our footsteps and we were hidden from the road.

  Daylight was breaking fast now and no sooner was it light. We heard the sound of aircraft. Looking up I saw that they were coming in from the same direction that we had come from and like us they were heading for the beaches. We hid in the cover of the hedge as Stuka’s flew overhead, behind them and higher still came several waves of Dornier Bombers.

  When they had passed we quickly got on our way again and before too long found ourselves at the end of the field. There was no gate, but it was obvious from the size of the hole in the hedge, that we were not the first to use this as an exit.

  The bombing sounded very close now and as I cautiously put my head out through the hedge I could understand why. In front of me I could see a crossroads with a signpost indicating that ‘la plage’ was only two kilometres. We all got onto the road and having had a good look around set off in the direction of the beach.

  The noise of the bombing and the return anti-aircraft fire was so distracting that we were on top of the soldiers almost before we had seen them, only this time we were pleased to see them as they were our own troops. Several vehicles and a light tank were parked at the side of the road, about thirty men, all armed with rifles and several with Bren guns set up on their stands. They all carefully watched us walk in. several of them levelling there rifles. A tall Sergeant in a camouflage smock called us over towards him, he sat down on the edge of a wooden table at the side of the road.

  “Papers.” he said, holding out his hand. I took out my ID card and handed it over to him, as the rest of the lads got ready to do the same, he looked at it for a while and then put it onto the desk. “Ok.” he said looking at Harry who was farthest away from me,” what’s his name?” he said pointing at me. Harry answered him straight away and without hesitation, which must have satisfied the Sergeant, who then handed me back my ID card and told us to carry on down the road towards the beach, where someone else would tell us what to do next.

  We walked along the road at the side of the beaches, it was an unbelievable scene. In front of us, thousands of men were spread out everywhere, all along the beaches, in the dunes, on the jetties, under the jetties. There were vehicles in the dunes, some damaged beyond repair, others looking like you could just drive away in them.

  Stretcher parties were carrying men away from the beach fires burned here and there from the bombing raid we had seen earlier. Queues of men stood at the water’s edge, waiting to be taken out to the ships that were standing out to sea. When we looked we could see that some of those were damaged too. Farther out we could see the mastheads of ships that had been sunk. Everywhere there seemed to be frantic activity. Not all of it seemed too well organised and in some instances officers had there pistols drawn pointing them at the men as they shouted out orders.

  We kept walking, not really encouraged to join the throngs on the beach, we passed posts that had been set up for some reason or other that wasn’t clear, they usually contained officers or NCOs and sometimes both but no one seemed interested in us so unchallenged we just kept walking.

  Eventually we came to a shelter that I suppose in happier times had been used by holiday makers to sit in and admire the sea views, now though, all of the windows had been blown out and parts of the roof were missing, but the bench inside was still serviceable so we went in sat down and got the fags out.

  We were about five or six hundred yards away from the sea and as we smoked our cigarettes we watched as the navy tried to organise the queues of soldiers into small boats some of which seemed to capsize as soon as they were loaded. Other boats appeared overloaded and were stuck on the bottom causing men to be off loaded again. Further out a destroyer was being strafed by ME 109’s, which in turn were being chased off by three of the RAF’s new Spitfire fighters.

  “This is flipping, organised, flipping, chaos this is!” said Fishy.

  “Yes and we’ll soon be part of it.” I said, lighting another cigarette from the butt of my previous one; we had gone a long time without a smoke. Jack blew a smoke ring and then almost sighing said “I could murder a cup of tea!”

  “Me too, why don’t we go and get one then?” Ronny Answered

  “That’s a good idea, where from?” I asked.

  “Well…” said Ronny, “we’ve done alright on our own so why don’t we take a stroll down the prom and find a little café. If we find a little boat instead, then we can see if our friend Fishface here really is the expert boatman he keeps telling us he is. We’ll see if he can get us back home any better than the Navy seems to be doing with that lot, and then we can have a proper cup of tea.

  “You’re not serious are you, isn’t that classed as desertion?” I asked.

  “Certainly not, didn’t our Lieutenant tell us it was every man for himself? Isn’t that what we are doing using our initiative?” replied Ronny

  “You just find me the boat” said Fishy “I’ll get us home, you flipping watch me!”

  We straightened up our uniforms as best we could, shouldered our rifles and then, with me leading and the others behind me marching in pairs as smartly as we could, we marched right down the seafront right out of Dunkirk. No-one stopped us, no one even challenged us. I think there must be something about soldiers marching that puts officer’s minds at ease. Soon we had left the British military behind, the problem now was, would we encounter any Germans? We didn’t want to risk it, so as soon as we felt it was safe to do so we took cover in the sand dunes.

  I suppose that technically we had deserted, although we only saw it as using our own initiative to get back home. We took the time to have some hardtack and water, then after organising the guard, we took turns in getting wrapped in our groundsheets, then in the comfort of the dunes and warmed by a sun that shone on both sides of this conflict with equal favour we took some well-earned sleep.

  It was mid-afternoon by the time we had all had an equal amount of sleep, I for one felt much better, Harry and Jack were up at the top of the dune, lying down, watching the dramas in the sky over the Dunkirk beaches. Looking back it seemed we were now about three miles away and were definitely out of the danger zone, we were also out of the rescue zone but somehow I think we all felt confident we could get out of this on our own.

  I went up to the top of the dune on the other side of the dip we had used to conceal us and took the time to take in the lay of the land. The sand dunes petered out about a mile further on and were replaced by scrub and gravel at the bottom of some fairly low cliffs. What was beyond the cliffs we could not tell as they were a headland, what I could tell however was that whatever was beyond we would be able to see for ourselves, as the tide was out and it looked possible to walk around at the present time.

  I slid down the dune and called the others together, I told them it was time to move out, explaining what I had seen and that we would have to cross about half a mile or so of open ground between the dunes and the cliffs, where we would be totally exposed. After I had finished, Ronny informed us that we were back in Belgium, around the headland lay the town of Nieuwpoort, although what we would find there would be anyone’s guess.

  We didn’t hang about thinking about it but gathered our kit together and set off. Twenty minutes later we had reached the open part of the land, as soon as we did so, not wanting to prolong the danger more than was necessary, we broke into a fast trot. In far less than ten minutes we had reached the safety of the cliffs. Breathing heavily we squatted down, our backs to the cliffs and in celebration out came the fags, “That was a bit scary.” said Jack, a smile breaking out all over his face. “Well so far so good eh?” Harry said rubbing his knuckles over Jack’s head.

  “Ok … We’re not home yet” I said, trying to bring them back to the fact that we were still in a lot of danger. After we had finished our smoke we set off again, keeping well in to the base of the cliffs. After about an hour or so later we got our first glimpse of what lay around
the corner.

  From where we stood at the edge of the rocks, more sand dunes faded in the distance to a flat wide sandy beach. On the far headland stood a lighthouse and in between the two points stood what looked like quite a substantial town, which I had no doubt would be full of German soldiers.

  Nearer to, several wooden rowing boats were pulled up onto the dunes, there were no ropes or buoys so it was fairly plain that the tide didn’t come in this far. Unfortunately they hadn’t left the oars but then I hadn’t envisaged rowing back to England anyway. Further out, several small fishing boats bobbed at anchor and I noticed for the first time just how choppy the sea was on this side of the headland.

  “Eh look at that …” said Jack and turning to look I saw that he was pointing at a hole in the rock that we hadn’t noticed before. It was about twelve feet up and could only be seen from this side of the rock. “Go on then.” I said, and Jack scrambled up. He went into the hole and quickly came out again, gesturing for us to follow him up. We entered the hole which opened out once inside to a cave about ten foot wide and at least twenty foot long. It was reasonably light in there, especially around the entrance; we could see a few old wine bottles, scraps of papers with some old magazines and newspapers on the floor by the side of the entrance, so it was obviously not an unknown spot.

  “We can stay here,” I said “but what do we do next? We can’t row back to England in a boat with no oars can we?”

  “No we can’t but if we can get out to one of them fishing boats surely we can motor back to England can’t we?” replied Harry, sounding a little desperate.

  “Anyone got any suggestions then?” I asked.

  “Fishy, if we all used our rifles, would we be able to paddle out to the boats in one of the rowing boats? “Ronny asked.

  “Doubt it, looks too blooming choppy to me. No, if we’re going to get out there we need proper oars.” he replied.

  “What do you do with your oars?” I asked him.