'On the other hand,' said Wimpy, 'if they did expect another attack, those civilians wouldn't be picking over the ruins either—they'd be down in their cellars.'
That was it! From what they had seen, and from the sad silence of defeat from the direction of Belleme, it was obvious that the Germans had been successful in this sector of the front. So, if they'd got a bloody nose at Colembert —then where were they now?
'I wonder why they haven't attacked again?' said Bastable, half to himself.
Of course, Colembert wasn't important; and, it also had to be faced the Prince Regent's Own presented no threat to the sort of German forces he'd seen. So perhaps they'd simply repelled a chance encounter with a smaller un-armoured unit which had lost its way and blundered off the main line of advance, and been thereafter left alone?
'My God!' murmured Wimpy suddenly. 'And we've got no patrols out, either—Nigel would have had patrols out in the woods, watching the road—'
No threat, Bastable was thinking grimly The false Brigadier would have apprised the enemy of that for sure. 'What—?'
'They could have pulled out,' said Wimpy. 'I rather think they have, too.'
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'Where to?'
'The South. Towards the Somme—where the French Army will be.'
'But if the Germans are at Peronne?' Bastable couldn't bring himself to mention Abbeville. Anyway, even if the Germans had set out for Abbeville, there was no proof that they'd reached it. The further they went, the more of the BEF they'd encounter. 'If they were at Peronne yesterday . . .'
'Christ! I don't know!' snapped Wimpy. 'But that old Froggie peasant said there were no Germans in Colembert—and I can't see any, either. So let's bloody well go in and find out for ourselves. Harry—come on!'
They advanced cautiously down the road, dodging in and out of the trees at its side.
Harry Bastable worried desperately for little Alice in his arms. He ought to have put her down, he felt. But then, if he had put her down she would inevitably have woken up, and then she would have realized how wet and hungry and thirsty she was, and then she would have shrieked out as loudly as she had done when the pram had collapsed... until he had picked her up again.
This way, at least, they were approaching Colembert quietly.
There was a motor-cycle ahead, at the edge of the field just off the road—a big, grey-painted motor-cycle, smashed and dummy4
surrounded by a scatter of earth.
But there was no sign of its rider . . .
And then a great tangled wall of fallen branches—the first of Major Audley's blocking-trees. In fact, the whole road from here on, into the ruins, was a mass of fallen trees.
'We got one of the blighters!' exclaimed Wimpy, pointing into the tangle.
There was a German armoured car in the tangle. It looked as though one of the trees had actually hit it, and from the shredded look of the tangle as though it had then been fiercely attacked with machine-gun and mortar fire. The hatch on the top was open.
'Good for B Company!' said Wimpy enthusiastically.
But still no German bodies, thought Bastable.
And ... if the Prince Regent's Own had knocked out its first German armoured vehicle—and not a very big one, at that ...
it was a commentary on the state of the battalion that it had had to do the job with a tree. With a wooden club, in fact.
Bastable remembered that one awful vision he had glimpsed of the fields full of tanks, and thanked God that Colembert-les-Deux-Ponts hadn't been in their way.
They passed down the tangle of fallen trees. It was about here, Bastable recalled, that Audley had had one of his two Boys anti-tank rifles, in a camouflaged position. He searched dummy4
among the chaos for the tell-tale signs of the more wilted leaves on the branches with which the firing position had been covered when he'd last seen it.
There it was . . . He pulled a branch aside with his free hand, but the position was empty now, except for the rifle itself and a scatter of used cartridge cases—Bastable knew exactly how many there were of them without any need to count. But, practice ammunition or not, they had used it.
'Empty?' asked Wimpy, and there was something in his voice which made Bastable look at him questioningly.
'Same with the slit-trenches. Seems they've scarpered—just cartridge cases, like here,'
Wimpy nodded sorrowfully. 'The Prince Regent's Own appears to have found pressing business elsewhere.'
A dog started to bark in the town somewhere, beyond the great mound of rubble, and the barking noise emphasized the silence it had broken.
'In the circumstances, though, undoubtedly a prudent retreat... or, as they say, 'a strategic withdrawal according to plan' ... I suppose somebody higher up must have suddenly noticed that they'd left the poor old battalion behind in the wrong place and ordered 'em out—the Old Man would never have done it off his own bat with Tetley-Robinson to advise him,' continued Wimpy, more to himself than to Bastable and typically disparaging of his Commanding Officer's intellectual capacity.
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Yet that must have been the way of it, decided Bastable—it must have been an order after what the false
