'Grim news, I'm afraid. Looks like most of D Company's had it. The Norwegians had promised transport to get them out, but apparently it never showed up. We're hoping most are PoWs, but we've had no contact from Company HQ since the early hours and Jerry's only just south of the town. The colonel's beside himself. Looks like a company of Leicesters have been overrun too.' Tanner nodded. 'Amazing to think I was talking to Captain Kirby only last night,' Lieutenant Dingwall continued. 'And poor old Richie - I mean, Lieutenant Richardson. I was at school with him, you know. We joined up the same day. Hard to believe. Hope to Christ he's all right.'
'I'm sure he will be, sir.'
'Are you? Yes, you're probably right. Probably a prisoner. I'm sure they treat their prisoners fairly. They're signed up to the Geneva Convention and everything, aren't they? But, my God, you can hardly believe it, can you? We watched them march off last night, and they've gone - a whole bloody company, devoured . . .'
'Best not to think too much about it, sir,' said Tanner.
'No . . . no, you're quite right, Tanner.' He bit his lip and then his eyes glanced from Tanner's breast pocket.
Tanner followed his gaze and realized the lieutenant was studying the tiny ribbon, blue, white and red stripes, of his Military Medal above the left breast pocket of his battle blouse. He quickly buttoned his leather jerkin.
Dingwall looked embarrassed. 'Sorry, Sergeant,' he said, and swallowed hard. Then, smiling weakly, he added, 'Our turn to face the Germans soon.'
'You'll be fine, sir,' said Tanner. He wanted to give his platoon commander some reassurance but it was a difficult line to tread; it wasn't his place to undermine the man's authority. Yet he could see the fear in Mr Dingwall's eyes and it was important the lieutenant did not show it to the men. Nonetheless it was natural that he should feel apprehensive. If Tanner was honest, the tell-tale nausea in his stomach and the constriction in his throat were troubling him now. He tried to remind himself it was the anticipation of battle that was the worst; once the fighting began, adrenalin took over. Even so, the Germans were brushing them aside as though they were little more than toy soldiers. The enemy had control of the skies and, he'd heard, had tanks, armoured cars and large amounts of artillery; 148 Brigade had none of those things, and neither, it seemed, did the Norwegians. So how the hell were they supposed to stop them? He understood now what it must have been like to be a Mohmand warrior, armed only with muskets and swords against British rifles, artillery and Vickers machine- guns.
Tanner looked to the south and noticed Lieutenant Dingwall follow his gaze.
'When do you think the bastards will attack?' the subaltern asked.
'Shouldn't think it'll be long.'
'What about all these stores? We've not cleared half of them.'
'We'll have to leave them, sir. Might be worth mentioning to Captain Webb that we should think about blowing it up, sir. Don't want Jerry to get his mitts on it.'
'I'll do that right away, Sergeant, thank you.'
Tanner followed the subaltern as he strode toward Captain Webb. However, just as Lieutenant Dingwall began speaking with the quartermaster, two lorries arrived back for another load.
'Jerry's not here yet,' Captain Webb told him, 'and so, for the moment, we'll do no such thing. Let's get your men busy, Lieutenant, and load up these trucks pronto.'
Tanner groaned to himself. The bloody fool, he thought.
Half an hour later, with the trucks despatched and the working party of Foresters already gone, he broached the matter with Lieutenant Dingwall again. 'Sir, I really think we need to get this place wired and move out. The Jerries could be here any moment.'
'Yes, all right, Sergeant,' Lieutenant Dingwall snapped. He paused, then said, 'Well, surely you've got other things to do, Tanner,' and strode off.
He had not gone ten paces, however, when there was a brief roar of aero-engines followed by whistling and a series of colossal explosions. Seconds later two more aircraft hurtled over, flying at no more than a few hundred feet off the ground.
Tanner immediately fell flat on the ground but turned his face to see a stick of bombs falling, thankfully wide of the yard but still terrifyingly close. As the bombs exploded, with an ear-shattering din, he felt the air around him sucked away before he was lifted clean off the ground by the blast and smacked back down again. He gasped, the wind knocked out of him. The air seemed full of debris and he closed his eyes as stones, grit, shards of wood and glass rained down around him. Choking dust and smoke shrouded the yard and warehouse. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, dampened it with water from his bottle, then clamped it to his mouth and staggered to his feet. Christ, the Germans would blow up the stores for them at this rate.
'Number Four Platoon,' he shouted, 'to me!' Men stumbled towards him, including, he was pleased to see, Lieutenant Dingwall. 'Right, lads,' said Tanner. 'Get your kit. Make sure you've got everything attached to your webbing, that your rifles are loaded, then grab as much ammunition as you can easily carry. It's time we got the hell out of here.' Wide-eyed and silent, the men did as he asked. He turned to Lieutenant Dingwall. 'I hope that's all right, sir. I'm assuming that since Jerry's started his assault we should hurry back to the new lines.'
Lieutenant Dingwall nodded.
By the warehouse, Captain Webb was also barking orders for them to retreat. 'Everyone fall back!' he shouted. German guns had opened fire too. Shells were now thumping into the southern parts of the town. 'Leave everything!' yelled the quartermaster. Tanner saw him hurrying to the civilian car the lieutenant had been driving earlier with the regimental quartermaster sergeant.
'Goddamn it,' said Tanner, as he grabbed his own rifle and kit. Two shells hurtled overhead, whooshing through the air like a speeding train, before exploding some several hundred yards to the north.
'All right, men!' shouted Lieutenant Dingwall. 'Let's move.'
Tanner hurried to his platoon commander. 'Sir, I'll follow you out.' Lieutenant Dingwall swung his arm above his head, then down below his shoulder, signalling to the men to run from the yard.
Tanner stood back. 'Move it!' he shouted. 'Come on, get going!' Spotting Hepworth, he grabbed him, and said, 'Not you. I need you to help me with something.'
More shells whistled overhead. Hepworth looked distraught. 'But, Sarge, the Jerries'll be here.'
'We won't be long. Now, follow me,' he snapped. Tanner was fuming - with Captain Webb for not thinking ahead and for cutting and running before the others, but also with the lieutenant for not pressing the quartermaster hard enough. As a result, they were leaving the stores in too much haste and risking letting a mass of valuable war materiel fall into the enemy's hands - weapons and ammunition that any advancing force would gladly use against them.
They ran to the side of the warehouse. There, out of sight of the yard and platform and partially covered by overgrown bushes, they saw a small shed.
'What's this place, Sarge?' asked Hepworth. 'Can't say I'd noticed it before.'
'That'll teach you to have a proper scout round in future, won't it?'
Hepworth was not alone, however, certainly, no one else had thought to use it. But Tanner had, the previous day, and as dusk had fallen, he had quietly, without being spotted in the darkening night, moved half a dozen four- gallon tins of petrol there. He had also taken the opportunity to discard some of his kit and replace it with a number of items carefully put aside during the day's unloading. His gas-mask had been taken out and instead he had filled the respirator bag with a tin of detonators and two five-pound packs of Nobel's gelignite. From his large backpack, he had taken out several other items of kit. His hairbrushes and canvas shoes had been pulled out with barely a thought, but abandoning his greatcoat had been a harder decision. However, he had kept his thick, serge-lined leather jerkin, which would keep him warm and also allowed him to have his arms free; he had always hated them to feel restricted ever since he had begun shooting as a boy. Anyway, he reckoned he could always find another greatcoat if necessary. He filled the pack with a number of cartridges of Polar dynamite, a round tin of safety fuse, half a dozen hand grenades, ten rounds of Bren-gun tracer bullets, and as many clips of rifle rounds as would fit.
'Leave your pack and rifle here for the moment,' he told Hepworth now, 'and help me with these cans.'
'What are we doing with them, Sarge?' Hepworth asked, as he pulled the large green canvas pack off his back.
