Darkest Hour

on the roads. Craters pocked the streets. A number of houses were burning, and all of them had suffered some kind of damage. Walls had tumbled into the streets; half-destroyed roofs shorn of their tiles hung above exposed bedrooms or attics. Debris lay everywhere - masonry, rubbish, weapons, even dead bodies, of troops and civilians alike. The stench was appalling - of decaying flesh, dust and smouldering rubber. Troops scurried past. Many, Tanner noticed, were drunk, swaying awkwardly as they tried to dodge the detritus of war.

'Damn me!' exclaimed Captain Hillary. 'Where the hell do we begin?'

'We need to get to the port, sir,' said Tanner. 'We'll get a better picture there.'

They were stopped several times, and forced to reverse down blocked streets, but eventually they reached the seafront at Malo-les-Bains and saw, for the first time, the true scale of the evacuation. Thousands of men were crammed onto the beaches like ants. Others drifted in lines from the beaches out to sea where a number of small boats and whalers were coming as close to the shore as they dared. Yet more vehicles had been driven onto the sand. Trucks, guns, carriers stood abandoned, with endless piles of boxes and discarded kit. Out at sea, ships of all sizes filled the horizon. The sound of battle, now that they were free of the noise-deadening effect of the buildings, was deafening. Guns from warships were firing, the pom-pom-pom of Bofors mixing with the heavier, thunderous sound of bigger artillery. Further out to sea, a ship was burning; they could just see its hull tilting, angry flames and thick black smoke pumping skywards. Aircraft swooped and dived overhead, engines racing. A number of Stukas were attacking the port behind them to their left, while machine-gun fire could be heard above. On their left, a sea wall ran behind the beach to a long pier. More than half a dozen ships were moored alongside this delicate mole, while a dense column of men spread out along the wall onto the pier. For more than a minute, the three sat in the car, speechless, staring at the scene before them.

'It's pandemonium,' said Captain Hillary at length. 'Utter, bloody pandemonium. I'll take out the rotor arm and then I suggest we leave the car here for the moment. I'll have a look on the beach. You, Corporal, try and get along the sea wall, and Sergeant, go into the town. They'll only have been here a short time, so hopefully they won't be too far along in these queues. But let's face it, the chances of us finding them can't be high. We'll give it a go, then head back.' He looked at his watch. 'It's a quarter to one. Let's meet back here at two.'

Tanner slung his rifle across his shoulder and brought the MP35 to his waist. Since his ducking in the moat, he had stripped and cleaned the sub-machine-gun twice, then dried and oiled the bullets in the magazine he'd had loaded at the time. Now it worked perfectly. Like the Spandaus they had captured in Norway and in France, he reckoned the weapon was a masterpiece of engineering - nicely balanced, beautifully put together and with some fine touches of workmanship, like the safety catch above the trigger that was so easy to click on and off. He still had another half-dozen magazines in his respirator bag, but after that the sub-machine-gun would be useless, unless he could find some more of the same calibre bullets. Perhaps, he thought, he would hand it over to someone at Enfield or in the War Office if he ever made it back - he reckoned the British Army could do with a weapon like it.

He wandered along the seafront a short distance, then cut along a back-street towards the centre of Dunkirk. Electricity cables lay on the ground, while halfway down another house had been blown out. He trudged on towards the port and saw some British troops coming towards him. Glancing at their sleeves he saw they were gunners, not Yorkshire Rangers.

'Who are you looking for, mate?' one of them asked.

'Yorks Rangers. Seen any?'

'Try the cellars. Most people have been hiding in them. It's the only safe place around here.'

'Cheers.'

He entered the nearest building, and immediately heard men coughing. A cellar door ran off the main hallway and it was open. He nearly gagged at the stench of alcohol, sweat, damp and stale urine. He shone a torch inside but blank faces stared back at him, not just soldiers but women and children too.

'Any Yorks Rangers here?' he asked. No one answered.

He tried several more buildings near the port, but got the same empty reply from each, then headed back towards the seafront at Malo-les-Bains to check the cellars there. This place, he thought, as half a dozen Junkers 88s swept over. He crouched in the middle of the road, and a moment later the bombers dropped their loads, which whistled, then exploded. The ground quivered and, not a hundred yards away, he heard a great crash of tumbling masonry, wood and glass.

At the sound of footsteps he swung round. A group of soldiers was running towards him and at the end of the street three men were hurrying in the direction of the mole. His heart raced. In a moment the three men had passed out of his view but he was sure that two of them had been Blackstone and Slater. They couldn't have been, he told himself, but already he was running back down the street. At the end he looked back towards the seafront and the mass of soldiers. 'Where the hell did they go?' he muttered, and set off again. Other troops were walking along the street, blocking his view, but suddenly he saw them again, eighty yards ahead. He ran on, faster, then lost them once more as another group of soldiers cut in. 'Damn it!' Tanner cursed. He ran on, pushing past some, swerving between others, then paused briefly to look into one of the streets that ran parallel with the seafront. Nothing.

'Sarge!' came a shout. He turned to see Sykes thirty yards away, coming towards him.

Waving for him to follow, Tanner ran on until he reached the seafront and saw their car still waiting at the side of the road. He stopped again to scan the troops wandering mindlessly along the corniche.

'Who have you found?' panted Sykes, as he reached him.

'Blackstone and Slater,' said Tanner, still craning his neck. 'I'm not a hundred per cent sure but it looked like them.'

Sykes joined him in gazing along the seafront. 'There! Sarge, up ahead! It was them! It was!'

Tanner set off again, Sykes following. Now he could see them too. They were walking quickly, not running, and Tanner and Sykes were gaining on them. Suddenly, the three men stepped off the road and into a building under a shredded cafe awning, but as Tanner and Sykes drew level they saw that the awnings covered not one but two cafes, and that there were two more doors as well.

'Damn!' said Tanner. 'Where have they gone?'

'Let's try the cafes first. I'll go into this one and you check next door,' said Sykes.

Tanner nodded. Inside, at least thirty men sat either drinking or sleeping. Bottles lay smashed on the floor, while the mirror behind the bar was also broken. 'Anyone see three men come in?' Tanner demanded.