there, to be driven up towards London and the north.'
'I was thinking of sleeping a bit.'
'Sleep. God, I could do with a bit of that. Not just now. The next hours are critical.'
She nodded reluctantly. 'All right, George. Look – the others, Hilda and Gary-'
'I haven't heard from them since Friday. Seems like years ago.'
'I left a note in the Anderson shelter. Said we should meet at Battle, if the opportunity arises.'
He nodded. 'Not a bad idea.'
'What about you?'
'It's my job to stay here, Mary. I'm a copper.'
'Your German is lousy.'
'I'll be fine. And so will you.' He took her hand, carefully avoiding her burns. 'You're brave. If you're an example of what Americans can do, the sooner you're in this war the better.'
'Brave? I think I'm just numb. I'll pay for all this one day.'
'Well, so will Hitler.' He'd finished his bread and cheese. He glanced down at his crystal set. 'Of course I can't take this.' He slipped off his boot, and without hesitation brought it crashing down like a hammer on the components of the set. 'Right, that's done. Come on, Mary, let's find you that ointment.'
XIX
Leutnant Strohmeyer had a map. He spread it out on Pevensey's dewy ground. Strohmeyer was a tough, humourless soldier who had served the Reich's armies across Europe, from Poland to France. And now here he was sitting before a camp fire in the ruins of this ancient fort in England itself. When one of the lads dared to make a comment on this, Strohmeyer said only, 'Funny old world, isn't it? Now shut up and listen.' He began to outline the day's objectives, Day S Plus One, for these elements of the Twenty-sixth Division.
It was another filthy, drizzling morning. Ernst, wrapped in his blanket, cradling the rifle he had been cleaning since dawn, tried to focus on what Strohmeyer was saying.
He never would have believed he would sleep so well, tucked up in a corner of this dismal old fort under no more cover than a tarpaulin. Yesterday, the day of the crossing, had been a vivid, unreal day, a day of a kind he imagined he would never experience again, no matter how long his war lasted. He supposed the raw tension of it had carried him through. But he had woken this morning to find that he was still here, he really was in England, and now he had to get through the first of what might be many days of combat. He felt drained, exhausted, even shivery; he woke with no energy. Even the men with him were strangers; in the turmoil of the landing he had become separated from the men he had trained with in France, and he knew nobody here.
He kept thinking of Claudine. He longed to be lying with her in her apartment in Boulogne, her long limbs beside him in the bed, so that she could soothe away the aches of his body and the trauma of his bruised mind.
The man next to him whispered, 'What's he saying? I can't see the wretched map.'
Another replied softly, 'Marching. That's all you need to know, lads. When the Panzers come over in a day or two they'll rip about the place. But until then it's just us, and it's foot-slogging. Best not to know how far.'
So they stood, and began to form up.
Elsewhere in the fort, Ben Kamen and a couple of other prisoners from the observation post at Pevensey were roughly woken by coarse German shouts.
They rose stiffly. They were given cups of water to drink, and told in German to make their toilet in the corner of the room, if they needed it. Ben, not wanting to stand out, affected not to know any German – his bit of cheek yesterday had earned him a clubbing – and he acted dull, slow and baffled like the rest. In fact it wasn't hard, as his head was still throbbing from the blow he had taken yesterday.
They had been given nothing last night. No food or water, no blankets. Ben had slept in his clothes, huddled on the cold stone floor of one of the converted rooms. All night he had had broken dreams, glimpses of past and future, of the type that had so intrigued Rory and Julia back in Princeton. But none of them made any sense, and none was any comfort.
One prisoner, a burly Canadian, drank a bit of the water and spat it out. 'Horse's piss,' he yelled at the German corporal who had brought it. The corporal actually replied quite politely, in calm German, saying that the man's rights would be protected when the German army had the resources to grant them, and that in the meantime his best course was to behave with self-respect.
As far as Ben could see these elite-type combat troops had been reasonably civilised with their prisoners. Maybe it was true that the Germans, still intent on an eventual armistice with England, were under instructions to be restrained. But then, he reminded himself, the best of the Wehrmacht were not representative of the culture of modern Germany.
The prisoners were shortly brought out, at gun point. There were other prisoners, brought here from emplacements along the invasion shore, regular soldiers and Home Guard and a few flyers in RAF blue and leather jackets. The fort was full of activity, as vehicles were serviced, horses fed, even bicycle wheels oiled. Ben tried to listen to the snippets of German conversation around him, hoping to learn something useful, but all he heard were typical soldiers' gripes about the cold food, the lack of alcohol, and the absence of women in this soggy place.
These men were all survivors of the battles yesterday, Ben reflected; save for the odd paratrooper, not a single German could have come here any other way but across that treacherous stretch of shingle. There was a smell of war about them all, with their unshaven faces and grimy clothes, a scent of cordite and diesel and petrol and dust, of burning and of blood.
The prisoners were marched up to the Bexhill road. A column was forming up here, men, horses, vehicles, guns, even one amphibious tank. Ben guessed these units were heading towards Bexhill and perhaps Hastings. As for the prisoners, maybe they were being marched to a POW camp somewhere. Ben didn't know where he was going, and he supposed he didn't need to know; he had no choices left, nothing to do but do what he was told, and survive.
As the column set off, Ernst walked behind the single tank. It had been made waterproof for its amphibious landing, but now the protective coverings and snorkel had been cut away, and its turret turned this way and that, questing, as the crew tested out the vehicle. There were a good number of trucks, some of them with seawater stains on their canvas tops. The horses were harnessed up to carts and mobile field weapons, and the infantry marched in their files on either side of the road. Some troops rode bicycles, many of them harvested from Holland and brought over on the invasion barges. There were even a few commandos out-riding on motorcycles; they were to be used as scouts, running ahead of the main column.
So they marched, north away from Pevensey. Their first objective was five miles or so inland, a place named on the leutnant's map as Windmill Hill. They soon left behind the rather dilapidated seaside villas at Pevensey. The column followed minor roads and farm tracks, but made reasonable progress over the level salt marshes beyond. The day stayed grey, even as the light gathered, and the drizzle and mist was depressing. 'If this is England, Churchill can keep it,' one man murmured.
But as Ernst walked with his comrades, swinging his arms and stepping out, he felt his blood flow, his heart pump, the clean English air filling his lungs, and he began to feel alive again. Why not? He was young, he was strong, his training was good, and he was with the best army in the world, a fact proven by accomplishment. He dared to look ahead, to the future. Perhaps he would be in London when the Fuhrer made his entrance – by barge, perhaps, along the Thames. What a grand day that would be!
The men rumbled into a marching song – 'Bomben auf Engelland', a popular favourite on the French beaches.
But this mood did not last long. Aircraft buzzed across the sky, out of sight above the lid of low cloud. Ernst winced every time one came close; he had seen troop columns strafed from the air on the continent. But no harm came from that quarter. Rumours went around the column that the RAF today was targeting the embarkation ports in France and the returning fleets of barges and tugs, trying to disrupt the invasion's second echelon.
And as the morning wore on the going became slow, disjointed. The first serious resistance they encountered was at a crossroads near a pub called the Lamb Inn, a location that commanded the levels behind them. That didn't
