Dave Dawson at Dunkirk Part 20

Everybody was waiting, waiting. Waiting for what, they did not know. Or if they did they kept it to themselves. News of the battles sifted gradually into the hospital wards. Some of it was true, and a lot of it was false. But all of it rasped nerves and cut deep into the tortured minds of men.

And then, on the third day, it happened!

The news flew from lip to lip, and a pall of misery and bitterness hung over the entire hospital. Belgium has quit! The Belgians have thrown down their guns and given up! The whole left side of the British Army is now exposed to the Germans racing down out of Holland! On the south the French and the British have been split by a German wedge driven straight across France to Abbeville on the Channel coast. The entire British Army, and part of the French, is surrounded on three sides. There is only one door of escape left open. That door is Dunkirk!

The instant they heard the news Dave and Freddy rushed to the office of the medical captain. They found there a very worried and very hara.s.sed man. He was just hanging up on the telephone when they burst in. He saw them, started to wave them outside, but suddenly checked the motion.

"Come in, you two," he called to them. "How do you feel?"

"Swell," Dave said.

"Very fit, sir," Freddy said.

The medical officer nodded and then stared at them a moment or two and drummed nervous fingers on the top of his desk.

"You've heard the news?" he suddenly asked.

They nodded, and waited.

"It puts us in a tight corner," the officer said. "And it puts me in a _very_ tight corner. I've just received orders from G.H.Q. to evacuate this hospital at once. There are over five hundred wounded men here, and only a dozen ambulances. We're to evacuate to the Base Hospital at St.

Omer. Now ... You chaps told me the truth, eh? You _do_ feel fit?"

"Gee, yes!" Dave exclaimed. "We came in here to see if there wasn't something we could do to help. We feel swell, honest."

"That's right, sir," Freddy nodded. "And there _is_ something we can do?"

"There is," the medical officer said. "I haven't enough ambulance drivers, and we've got to get these wounded men out of here at once.

Before tonight, in fact. I'll tell you the truth, boys. At the speed the Germans are advancing, now that the Belgians have given up, they'll be here in Lille, tonight!"

"Gee!" Dave breathed softly. "Right here in this place, tonight?"

The medical officer nodded and held up a hand.

"Hear those guns?" he said gravely. "They are not more than twenty miles away, and they are German. We've got to work fast, boys. Every man we have to leave here will become a German prisoner of war. I wouldn't ask you, except that the situation is desperate. By rights, you two should go along with the wounded, instead of driving them. But it is a grave emergency, and every one who can, _must_ help."

"We're ready, sir," Freddy said quietly. "What are your orders?"

A smile of deep grat.i.tude flickered across the officer's face.

"Get into your regular clothes, first," he said with a smile. "Then report to Lieutenant Baker in the ambulance parking lot by the south wing. And, thank you, boys. We'll meet again at St. Omer."

The two boys grinned, then turned on their heels and raced back to the ward for their clothes. The wounded soldiers suspected that something was up, and a hundred questions were hurled at them. They didn't bother to answer any of them. They simply piled into their clothes and hurried outside and around to the parking lot by the south wing.

"Gee, Freddy!" Dave panted as they raced along side by side. "I was afraid I was going to stay in that hospital for the rest of the war, and not get another chance to do anything."

"A bit worried, myself," Freddy said. "I was afraid that we'd done our job, and that it was all over as far as we were concerned. But, I have a feeling, Dave, that perhaps it's really just beginning for us."

And Freddy Farmer never spoke a truer word in his life, as they were both soon to realize!

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

_Fate Laughs At Last_

"Right you are, lad, off you go, and good luck!"

The voice of the Lille hospital orderly came to Dave as though from a thousand miles away. It came to him like a voice awakening him from a sound sleep. He lifted his head and mechanically reached for the brake lever of the Daimler built ambulance and stared out of bloodshot eyes at a scene that had become as familiar to him as his own face when he looked into a mirror. It was the dirt road that wound away from the Lille Hospital, curved about the small pond and then disappeared from view in some woods a half mile to the east.

How many times had he driven over that road today? He didn't know, and he didn't even bother to guess. Probably a hundred. Fifty at least. His brain had stopped thinking about things hours ago. For hours his actions had all been mechanical. A mechanical routine over and over again. Help fill the ambulance at the Lille Hospital. Get in behind the wheel and start the engine, and take off the brake, and shift into first. Start down the winding road and shift into second, and then into high. A stretch of brown road always in front of him. Driving, driving, always driving forward. Skirting sh.e.l.l and bomb craters. Pulling in under the nearest group of trees whenever he heard the deadly drone of Stuka dive bombers. Sitting crouched at the wheel while death whistled down from the sky to explode in the ground and spray slivers of screaming steel into all directions.

Climbing in back to put a slipping bandage back in place. Lighting a cigarette for some poor wounded soldier who couldn't use his hands.

Giving them all a grin to cheer them up. Saying, "We'll be there in a couple of shakes," a million times. Starting on again. Stopping again.

And then finally pulling into the St. Omer Hospital court. Helping to unload, and then the wild ride alone back to Lille for another load of wounded. Fifty trips? A hundred trips? He had no idea. Maybe this was his one thousandth trip. Was he asleep or awake? He wasn't sure of that, either. His body had stopped protesting against the aches and pains long ago. He simply didn't feel anything any more; didn't think anything. He only acted. He drove ... and drove ... and drove. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else mattered but doing his share to make sure that not a single helpless wounded soldier was captured by the hordes of n.a.z.i troops streaming across northern France and Belgium in a mad race to cut off the British from the last open Channel port, Dunkirk.

As he took off the emergency brake he became conscious of somebody climbing into the seat beside him. He turned his head to stare into Freddy Farmer's haggard, dirt streaked face.

"What's the matter, Freddy?" he mumbled. "What are you doing here?"

"Start her off, Dave," came the dull answer. "This is the last load. I'm riding with you. The Captain and his staff are using my ambulance. Man, but I'm tired!"

"Check," Dave grunted and shifted into first. "The last load, huh? And it's just getting dark. Well, anyway, we licked 'em. The n.a.z.is won't find anything there. Lean back and try to get a nap, Freddy."

"And you perhaps fall asleep at that wheel, and tip us into a ditch?"

Freddy said with a forced chuckle. "No thanks. I'll stay awake and try to keep you that way, too. By the by, though, Dave. You've made more trips than anybody. Want me to drive this one?"

"Not a chance!" Dave said and suddenly realized that he was laughing for the first time in hours. "I still remember that ride you gave me in that Belgian scouting car. Nix. I'll do the driving. You just relax, Freddy. But, boy, will I be glad when this trip is over!"

"I'll be jolly well pleased, myself, you can bet!" Freddy murmured and stretched out his legs. "I think I shall sleep for another eight days, and not care a darn what the blasted n.a.z.is do about it."

For the next twenty minutes that was the last spoken between the two.

They were both too tired even to talk. Besides, there was little to talk about save the experiences they had had on the road. Those they could save until another day. And after all there was still this trip to complete. And so they rode along in silence. The sun slid down over the western lip of the world, and night and the Germans came sweeping up from the east. Dave kept his head lights switched off until it was too dangerous to continue further without them. Perhaps it had just been chance, or perhaps Goering's pilots had found out that the Lille Hospital cases were being evacuated over that road. Anyway, the Stukas and the light Heinkels had given it a terrific pounding all day long, and it was now well spotted with craters. To try to drive along it in the dark would be exactly the same as driving the ambulance over the edge of a cliff. It would be suicide, to say the least.

Dave hesitated a moment, though, with his hand on the switch and listened intently. Behind him there was the incessant dull rumble of the guns, punctuated every now and then by the loud thunder of a land mine going off. In the sky there was the drone of wings, but the droning was not close.

"Keep an eye peeled, will you, Freddy?" Dave said and turned the switch.

"I've got to have lights or we'll go right into a sh.e.l.l hole. If you hear something coming, yell, and I'll switch off these things."

"Right-o!" Freddy called wearily and stuck his head out the door window and looked up. "All clear, now, though. None of the blighters near us. I say, what's up, now?"

Dave didn't bother to answer. He, too, had spotted the waving flashlight just up the road. He slipped the car out of gear, steered it around the rim of a yawning bomb crater and let it roll to a stop. A British infantry officer, with a Military Police band on his tunic sleeve, ran up to Dave's side of the ambulance and flashed his light in Dave's eyes for a second.

"Where are you headed, lad?" he asked.

"St. Omer," Dave said. "We've got the last load of wounded from the Lille hospital."