Ride Out The Storm by John Harris Page B

Not only for our own people but for anybody we might lift. I gather some of ’em haven’t eaten for days. Guns’ crews, damage and fire control parties will be closed up from the minute we leave harbour. I suspect we’re going to be busy.’

    It was becoming only too clear to a lot of people that they were going to be busy. Even the commander of the BEF. There were no more reserves now and nothing he could do, because the battles that were being fought now were in the hands of his corps, divisions and brigades, and the regiments who were clinging to fragments of village and unnamed stretches of waterway. Slowly, defending its positions desperately, the army was falling hack to form a defensive perimeter round the only port left – Dunkirk.
    The French were still demanding an attack to the south but there was an air of unreality about the whole idea, because even as it was decided to find out if headquarters could be moved to Cassel the town came under shellfire and almost immediately afterwards a message came from the Belgian king to inform them that he would soon be obliged to surrender. As the new headquarters was finally set up at Houtkerque nine miles to the north, a telegram arrived from London. ‘ Sole task ,’it said, ‘ is to evacuate to England maximum of your forces possible. ’
    The end seemed to have come.

    Fortunately, the German tank attacks had stopped. With the French army to the south still undestroyed, it was becoming dangerous to allow the wastage to continue, though Jocho Horndorff’s unit was still probing forward.
    Hard as the campaign had been, they were infinitely better off than the French who had lacked petrol, repair crews, brakes for their cannon, and had the wrong ammunition for their Hotchkiss machine guns, while most of their officers were new from St Cyr. The British had had the right spirit but hardly any tanks, and whoever had been responsible for their design must have been suffering from a considerable weight on his conscience. The principal influence brought to bear on them had been the cavalry school of thought which had tried to make them as much like horses as possible, so that they were fast and lightly armed and could run away quickly but were useless when brought to battle. The British cavalry regiments had used them with their usual élan, charging like the run-up to the first fence at a race meeting, but this method had changed to others more wary as it was curbed by the diminishing stock of dashing officers and the dearth of tanks. One after another they’d been abandoned with broken tracks or other mechanical defects, and now littered the French countryside, square and ponderous, like garden sheds on wheels and about as flimsy.
    The roads in front of Horndorff were jammed with refugees and blocked with broken vehicles but no one got in the way. Horsed carts were dragged off the pavé, cars and vans were driven into the ditches and hedges, their occupants jolting wildly as they bumped over the verge. Men and women pushing barrows and perambulators and bicycles flopped into the grass. Others abandoned their suitcases and packages, leaving them strewn across the road to be chewed to shreds by the tank treads as their owners bolted for safety. There was no shooting but more than one van, moving too slowly, was nudged from the road, and once Horndorff saw a cart slide sideways into a canal, a wheel buckling under it, the horse dragged backwards to the water, screaming with fear. He didn’t stop.
    When they reached Scheywege they halted and the radio crackled with the news that the British were setting up guns. ‘Resistance is stiffening,’ the instructions came.
    ‘But of course,’ Horndorff growled as he took the report. ‘We missed our chance. All right–’ he gestured ahead ‘–forward.’
    The countryside was featureless now, nothing on its surface to break the monotony but scattered groups of cottages or a level crossing. It was dangerous because there was