WC02 - Never Surrender by Michael Dobbs Page B

long ago Don's motorbike, an AJS, had stood there on the gravel, leaning drunkenly and leaking oil. It was an ancient machine and Don had spent many hours repairing it, not always successfully. The Reverend Chichester hated motorbikes. As a young man he'd almost killed himself on one and he was afraid that Don would do the same. So he had objected to the bike. He was trying to protect his son, but instead of a discussion about caring it had been reduced to a shouting match about filthy sinks and oily clothes. Ridiculous. Pointless. Splinters in the eye, for in spite of Don's offensive language, he knew it was his fault. It seemed he would say anything rather than admit to his son that he loved him.
    The previous evening he had returned to the vicarage to discover that his occasional gardener had cleaned up the soiled gravel. It was in pristine condition, no trace of the bike. Every fragment of Don's memory was being leached from his life, leaving them to stumble around his dreams.
    He began to prepare another solitary breakfast, his newspaper propped up above the sink. Across the Channel that lay beyond his kitchen window, a new war was raging. He could see and hear nothing of it, there was little to witness apart from the calm of the sea and the outline of Calais beginning to emerge from its morning veil, but the headlines gave him the story of a Total War' in which the "R.A.F had triumphed'. One hundred and fifty enemy machines shot down. Good news, great news, God's work. Set out in The Times.
    Yet, as seemed increasingly to be His habit, God moved in ways that left mysteries in their wake. As the vicar pushed aside his breakfast plate, the same newspaper announced that the Belgian army was falling back, the Dutch, too. Yet only yesterday it had announced that the BEF was sweeping forward. Backwards, forwards this was unlike any war the Reverend Chichester knew.
    The Times assured him that the Belgians and Dutch were withdrawing 'without heavy casualties'.
    Which puzzled the Reverend Chichester. For why, in God's name, if they had suffered no heavy casualties, were they moving back?
    Where had they gone, those people who only days before had been smiling, blowing kisses and shouting their encouragement as the 6th had made its way to the front? Now, on the way back, there was no greeting, no warmth, nothing but tired eyes that spoke of concern and even contempt.
    Don's unit were withdrawing to a suburb of Brussels called Boitsfort in a tight convoy consisting of fifty ambulances, water trucks, troop-carriers and other vehicles. A few refugees had begun to appear on the road in front of them with their cars and overladen carts. Progress began to slow, and a sense of fading order crept up on them. The 6th had seen no direct combat yet, but planes had begun to appear overhead, high in the clear sky, and they came from the east. They must have seen the convoy; you couldn't hide an entire field unit, not with all their bright red crosses painted on the roofs.
    They passed a single bomb crater at the side of the road. A dead horse lay beside it, the carcass still smouldering, its stench sweet: the first casualty of Don's war. And moments later there were others, Belgian soldiers, a group of them at the side of the road, abandoned and bleeding. Some were badly injured from shrapnel wounds. They kept gesticulating towards the sky, but otherwise there was little sense to be had from them in their strange language, and no one seemed inclined to delay in order to discover more. The wounded were loaded into the back of the ambulances and other vehicles. First blood. Belgian blood.
    Yet, that evening, Boitsfort displayed the air of a prosperous suburb whose mind was fixed on moving gently into the embrace of nothing more threatening than a glorious summer. The gardens were full of flowers, the restaurants and cafes crowded, the young women gay, even while in the back of Don's vehicle a soldier was bleeding silently upon the floor.