Dunkirk Spirit Part 63

The Commander held the cork firmly in his left hand and slowly twisted the bottle, and then he paused. 'b.u.g.g.e.r it!' he thought. 'I'm not at home now.' He gave the bottle a tiny shake and then sent the cork ricocheting around the remains of the room. It came to sudden halt with a dull dong, hitting the side of an upturned enamel bath that had fallen in all probability from the top floor. 'Dong!' he thought. 'Dong!'

'Well, h.e.l.lo little Sago! I thought you'd gone and abandoned me!' Binky's heart turned to lead. Little Sago squeezed out of the tunnel. There was the note, still threaded through the collar. 'b.u.g.g.e.r!'

Binky lowered himself to the floor, hardly minding the rubble that pressed into his flesh. 'Come here you little scallywag!'

Sago, having sensed the Commander's seeming disappointment, suddenly burst into a broad grin. His tongue lapped quickly in and out. In a single bound, the little dog landed on his lap and rubbed raw sewage over his mackintosh.

'You're a p.i.s.s poor messenger, I'll tell you that for nothing,' he told the dog. 'What have you been doing all day? Why haven't you made lots of friends?'

Little Sago appeared to nod.

'Oh, you have, have you? You've made lots of friends?'

Yes, nodded Sago again.

The Commander suddenly tired of the game and dropped the silly voice. 'Why didn't you bring them back here then?' For a terrible instant he found his hand caressing the grip of his Webley. He lifted himself to his knees and crawled back to his open bottle beside the bath.

'Dong! Dong! Dong!'

The explosion when it came took the Commander so completely by surprise that a small quant.i.ty of urine trickled into his underpants. He did not, however, spill a single drop of the champagne. He even had the presence of mind to shield the one unopened bottle with his body the very instant that the flash lit up the cellar. The actual explosion did a considerable amount of damage to the one remaining portion of ceiling and the Commander and Sago were lucky to escape injury by sitting directly beside the bathtub.

In all, it took a full ten minutes for the sappers to clear a sufficiently large tunnel for the Commander. He poked his head out through the broken boards of the shop's ground floor and blinked like a mole.

'Up you come, chum!' A burly Royal Engineer sergeant grasped Binky's wrist and tugged him out of the hole. 'We got your note,' he told him. 'I a.s.sume you got ours!'

'What?' asked Binky. He looked down at the happy little dog.

'We thought it was our ticket home!' laughed a lance corporal, busy rolling up fuse cord and tucking it into a satchel. 'That dog's bloomin' priceless! You should hang on to him.'

The sergeant scanned the Commander for signs of rank and, seeing none, was a.s.sured of his seniority. He snapped to attention and delivered a salute as solid as a railway signal.

'I shouldn't hang about, sir. The Jerries are just over there.' He nodded down the street.

'You haven't got a cigarette, have you?' asked Binky.

21:10 Sunday 2 June 1940.

East Mole, Dunkirk, France 'Our duty in this country is plain. We must make good our losses and we must win this war. To do that we must profit by the lessons of this battle. Brave hearts alone cannot stand up against steel. We need more planes, more tanks, more guns. The people of this country must work as never before. We must show the same qualities, the same discipline, and the same self-sacrifice at home as the British Expeditionary Force have shown in the field. Their spirit must be our banner, their sacrifice our spur.'

That was the Right Honourable Anthony Eden, M.P., Secretary of State for War.

The ship's steel decking groaned underfoot as her twin screws surged. Over the side, the black water was suddenly sucked away from the wooden piles, exposing the barnacles, and replaced by a bubbling cauldron. Cragg heard the mechanical clank of the fo'c'sle windla.s.s as it gripped the headropes and drew HMS Cameron towards the Mole.

Soapy spun his wheel, lifting the sharp barrel of the 20mm over the heads of the men lining the frail wooden structure. There came a groan of steel against timber and concrete. Cragg, Nipper and Soapy stared.

Although the pier was narrow, and could only accommodate five men abreast, a single line of soldiers, men of the Green Howards, stood at intervals with bayonets fixed.

'What are they for, then?' asked Soapy.

Nipper shrugged.

'Keep the Frogs in order, I guess,' put in Cragg.

'I don't see any Frogs,' said Soapy. He scanned the long line of weary and shattered men. 'And this lot look far too knackered to give trouble.'

The seamen ran gangways across to the jetty and quickly men began to shuffle aboard. Gunfire, much closer now than ever before, came from the direction of the flaming town and Cragg and his crew stood tense, their nerves stretched as if on tenterhooks. He looked up into the evening sky and flexed his trigger hand, feeling the knuckles crack in sequence.

'Oy! Keep moving,' he called to the troops that now began to clog the companionway. 'You can't swing a b.l.o.o.d.y cat here! Come on! Give us some b.l.o.o.d.y elbow room. Move!'

Soon there was nowhere else to move to and Cragg was obliged to let the troops drop where they stood. The deck was quickly strewn with men out for the count.

Cragg turned in his harness. 'And no b.l.o.o.d.y smoking! Put that light out!'

A corporal, Cragg's equivalent in rank, curled his lip. 'Give it a rest, pal,' he sneered. 'The whole town's on f.u.c.king fire and you're worried about one b.l.o.o.d.y match!'

'Give us a puff, then.' Cragg lent backwards in the harness and stretched out a hand. The corporal drew hard on his cigarette and handed it across. Both men smiled.

'I didn't think you lot were coming back,' said the corporal. He cradled a well-worn Lewis gun in one arm, its b.u.t.t on the deck. 'Talk about skin of the teeth! Not ten minutes ago we was popping off Jerries, so I wouldn't hang about.'

'Ain't up to me, mate.' Cragg pa.s.sed the hot b.u.t.t over to Nipper who took a grateful toke, the nicotine instantly making his head swim.

'How far are they, then?' asked Soapy, the only non-smoker in the gun crew.

'Far?' asked the corporal. 'They ain't far.' He laughed. 'They're b.l.o.o.d.y here!'

Cameron's bells clattered for a full minute. The bosun's pipe shrilled its unnecessary call of hands to stations and Gordon, the ship's first officer, peered over the side. The telegraph bells rang on the bridge and their faint answer came up the pipes from the engine room. The tall tower of the town hall flickered in the flames. He looked across at the Skipper who, in turn, nodded. HMS Cameron slipped cautiously away from the Mole.

'Wreck on the port bow!' called the lookout.

'Starboard five,' called Gordon into the pipes. The protruding mast of a sunken trawler pa.s.sed within feet of the ship's side. 'Half astern both!'

Less than a mile north of Dunkirk's harbour entrance lay another bombed wreck: HMS Mosquito, a former Yangtze river gunboat a long way from China, her upper-works above water.

'Signal from the wreck, sir!' called a lookout. 'Gibberish to me, sir!' The destroyer was making a good twenty knots as she backed away from the congestion.

'Room for a few more, sir?' asked Gordon.

'Why not.'

Cameron came to a swift and turbulent halt; she edged her sharp bows alongside the gunboat. Gordon struggled to keep her steady in the falling tide. Three men, artillery officers, clambered their way across the boat's contorted deck.

'Move lively!' shouted Gordon.

The men hesitated and then hopped across.

'Full speed astern,' called Gordon. 'Port twenty. Full ahead!'

Cameron came to a sudden halt, the sea erupting in a bubbling burst of foam astern, the deckplates groaned, and then she surged ahead. A sudden breeze kicked up, sending warm smoke-filled air from the town as it burned in the twilight.

'Home,' said the Skipper softly. 'Take us home, Number One. I think now we can finally call it quits.'

'Aye, aye, sir.'

22:05 Sunday 2 June 1940.

Bray Dunes, France 'Hey, you! Soldier!' called Commander Babbington. 'What d'you think you're doing?'

'Catching my breath? All right?'

'No, it's not b.l.o.o.d.y all right,' called back the Commander. He stepped briskly up the sand towards the dunes and the small knot of men. 'On your feet! You'd better pull your d.a.m.n finger out if you want to get home.'

'We're not too late then, sir?' asked another man sprawled across the ground, his arms in crucifixion. He raised his head to watch the Commander.

'On your feet!' he shouted. 'Form up, form up. That's it. Attention! Shoulders back, chest out!'

The Commander raised an arm and pointed along the strand towards the port. 'Left turn! By the front, at the double, quick march!' He watched them trot along the sand. 'And don't stop until you get there!'

Commander Babbington turned and looked back out to sea. A bright searchlight continued to play across the surface, highlighting the flotsam and jetsam of the evacuation. Slowly he began the long walk to the water's edge. The beach lay littered. An odd sensation washed over him. Hector Babbington: the last man at the party, obliged to clear up before heading to bed. He watched the searchlight illuminate the open bridge of the grounded minesweeper. And then he heard the call.

'Is anybody there? Is anybody there?'

'I am,' thought Binky.

'Is anybody there? Is anybody there?'

'Over here!' he called. The Commander waved both arms above his head. The light tore away from HMS Devonia and raced across the flickering surface of the sea. Suddenly, he was dazzled.

'Ahoy!' called a voice.

The Commander shielded his eyes. 'Ahoy there!'

The motor torpedo boat opened her throttle. 'Any more for the Skylark?' called the voice.

Binky wanted to laugh. It was becoming an old and rather tired joke. 'Got room for a little one?' he called back.

'We can't come in any closer. You'll have to swim out!'

'b.u.g.g.e.r!' said Binky to himself. And then he called aloud: 'I can't b.l.o.o.d.y swim!'

He heard the voice for a final time. 'Then goodnight, sweetheart. Happy dreams!'

The MTB roared, her bows lifted out of the water, and away she went.

23:45 Sunday 2 June 1940.

HM Dockyard, Dover, Kent

'Well, thank G.o.d for that!' The Skipper took the steaming mug of cocoa from Francisco's hand and blew across the surface. He savoured the rich, heady aroma of rum. 'Do you know,' he said to Gordon. 'I counted just fifteen stretchers coming on board but I counted fifty going ash.o.r.e.'

'I'm not surprised,' said Gordon.

'Magnificent, really, when you think about it. The triumph of discipline and morale over the wracked human body. Not a complaint, nor a groan.'

'I shall think twice next time I want to complain,' smiled Gordon.

The Skipper looked up from his mug. 'I'll hold you to that Number One.'

'Only if we can still hold you to the party, sir.'

'Good heavens! Party? Yes.'

Gordon sipped at his hot drink. 'It will do the men tons of good, sir. They have been wonderful. I think we can give ourselves a pat on the back. A really tight crew. Cheers!' He tapped his mug against the Skipper's.

'But not too tight, eh, Number One!' He laughed. And then he stopped. A rating had climbed the steps to the bridge and stood patiently holding a sealed buff envelope.

'Sir!' he announced.

The Skipper let out a deep breath and placed his mug on the binnacle. He took the envelope. 'I feel like putting this in my pocket and forgetting about it,' said the Skipper. 'What do you think? Hide it in a drawer somewhere?' He waved the envelope in Gordon's direction.

Gordon grimaced.

'You read it,' the Skipper told the rating, handing it back.

'Me, sir?'

'Yes, you, sir. What does it say?'

The Young seaman ripped open the seal and took a deep breath. 'It's from Admiral Ramsay, sir.' He seemed to pause for an eternity. 'It just says: BEF evacuated. Sir.' He broke into a broad grin.

So did the Skipper. 'In that case,' he announced grandly. 'Cocoa all round, please Frank, and a tot for the men.' He smiled at his first officer. 'And Gordon, break out that bunting!'

Day Nine.

06:00 Monday 3 June 1940.

12th Casualty Clearing Station, Chapeau Rouge, Dunkirk.