Walcot. Brian Aldiss
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brought by the war Hitler had wished upon you. It was a still day. Smoke lay like layers of mist, generated by buildings reduced to smouldering wrecks. A car burned quietly, its driver hanging dead from its open door.
The hospital had suffered a direct hit. Injured persons were lying under blankets in the grounds, with unharmed people thronging about, nursing the dying, weeping, or trying to administer medicines or water to the wounded. A young boy was crawling on hands and knees towards the church, dragging a bloody leg.
The church and its grounds were crowded with frightened people; nuns went among them, smiling and gentle, to soothe or to pray. Two men in uniform were dragging a corpse towards the cemetery. When they saw your vehicles, they stopped and stood rigidly to attention, saluting your unit until every tank had passed.
All shops were closed. A once cheerful main street was completely dead. A queue had formed outside the shutters of a boulangerie. There were no signs of looting.
The number of bomb craters had been exaggerated. Your tanks experienced greater difficulty negotiating the rubble of collapsed houses strewn across the thoroughfare. It took two hours before you had picked your way through Yvetot, and were on the road to Rouen – or ‘the road to ruin’, as the troops put it.
What were you thinking at the time? Do you remember?
I hardly thought. Oh, I suppose I was relieved in a way to see the devastation, the suffering. I told myself that this was how it had always been, that this was simply part of the tragic human condition. Or maybe I thought all that later, when there was time to think, when I was in prison.
Were you aware that this was a peak moment in your life?
No – for once I was totally preoccupied by the present.
You were not more than a kilometre down the road, and were passing through a grove of poplars lining each side of the road, when three Stukas came roaring overhead. The bombs they dropped whistled as they fell, to add to the terror of the attack.
No order was needed for you to dive for cover under or beside your vehicles. Hapless refugees fled to either side of the road among the tall trees, to crouch in ditches. Fortunately, the bombs did little damage, exploding in nearby fields.
‘Stay where you are,’ Montagu shouted. ‘The blighters are liable to come back.’
Indeed the planes did come back. They wheeled and returned from the north-west, flying low down the road, machine guns blazing. Many refugees were hit; several were killed. Some did not die outright; screams of pain and terror rang out long after the planes had gone.
You heard a dog yelping terribly with pain. Suddenly it was silenced.
You had First Aid kits with you, and administered what help you could to the injured. A peasant woman, herself with a badly damaged shoulder, sat nursing a dead child. Over and over, in a choking voice, she cried, ‘Putain de bordel de merde! Putain de bordel de merde!’ You let her drink from your water bottle.
A ragged hound was lapping up blood on the road. You kicked it aside. The scene was one of chaos, of splinters, of ruined limbs. A horse lay struggling in its death agonies, entangled in reins. It had broken a wheel of the cart to which it was attached. One of your troop, a young soldier called Palfrey, put his rifle to the horse’s head and shot it. He helped three men to cut the horse free and drag its body and the ruined cart to the side of the road. An adolescent girl, seemingly unharmed, was leaning against a tree, covering her face, weeping.
Your wireless operator called to the major. An RT message awaited him. Montagu beckoned you to follow him. You stood by the wireless truck while he spoke intermittently in an incomprehensible language, all the while watching the chaos nearby. He finally pronounced an English ‘Out’, and returned the handset to the operator. He locked his hands behind his back and spoke quietly to his two officers, Captain Travers and you.
‘I thank God that a comrade of mine is in the Southampton HQ. We once took a holiday in Ootie together. We can bolo in clear Urdu to each other. Security is maintained – I doubt many Huns bolo Urdu.
‘The news in whatever language is extremely poor, gentlemen. Advanced German Panzer columns have overwhelmed Amiens and Abbeville, on the River Somme. In case you don’t know, those cities are not too far distant from here; about sixty miles.’
He nodded towards the north-east.
‘Now the Panzers are heading this way. We aren’t making the progress we had anticipated. The Germans are making the progress we did not anticipate. We are in some danger of being cut off. The Prime Minister of France, Paul Reynaud, is talking of giving up the struggle.’
‘I always said the French were a bunch of cowards,’ said Travers. He was a wiry man with a lean, hard face, handsome in its way. You had always found him reserved and unfriendly. ‘I’ll wager they lose their nerve.’
Montagu frowned, but let the remark pass. ‘If France packs it in, we shall have a few problems on our hands. Indeed, we have some already.’ The nod of his head was directed towards your men, who were standing in front of their vehicles, rifles pointed at a group of ten or more men and a woman, who were attempting to take possession of the two supply lorries.
One of the soldiers fired his rifle in the air, low over the heads of the advancing group.
The major removed his hands from behind his back and marched briskly to where his men stood. He addressed the French mob in English. He told them that you were a detachment going to help defend their capital city, that their actions threatened to upset military plans, and that the Boche were closing in rapidly on their position.
‘In other words, clear off, the lot of you!’
Whether the refugees understood what he said was doubtful. But his firm, reasonable and authoritative voice had its effect. The mob slunk away and returned to help their wounded comrades.
‘Danke schön,’ said Montagu calmly, turning back to you officers. ‘Now then, I have received orders for a slight change of plan. Somewhere to the west of here lies the city of Rennes, in Brittany. About one hundred and seventy miles away as the crow flies. There’s a firm in Rennes called Colomar, part British-owned. Their HQ is on the Place de Bretagne, a main square, thik hai?’
‘What’s all this to do with us, Major?’ Travers asked.
Montagu continued as if he had not heard the question.
‘Colomar currently hold three-million-pounds-worth, sterling, of industrial diamonds. We don’t want this haul to fall into German hands. You, Fielding, what are industrial diamonds used for?’
You replied, ‘They are essential for the manufacturing of machine tools, and tools necessary for making armaments.’
‘Full marks. The way the war is going, we do not want these diamonds falling into German hands, for obvious reasons. Our orders are for one of us to press on immediately to Rennes, take charge of the diamond stock, and to transport it to Saint Nazaire, a port on the south coast of Brittany at the mouth of the River Loire. I gather there may be some difficulty in persuading the company to hand the diamonds over. However, we are armed and they are not. A persuasive point.’
He stood there sturdily in the middle of the road, looking at you.
‘Rennes is a long way from home. Why is it up to us, for God’s sake?’ asked Travers.
‘Because we are on the spot, Captain. We happen to be British troops farther to the south than other units.’ He spoke briskly, before turning to you.
‘Fielding, you are young and brave, I am delegating you the task of taking one of the vehicles and collecting the diamonds from Colomar.’
You asked why there was this sudden change of plans.
‘Better ask the fornicating Germans that.’ Montagu continued with his instructions.
‘You will drive with the diamonds, going like the