Darkest Hour

A bee hummed lazily in front of him and he followed its path enviously. It had been a devil of a morning. Up at five with the news that the chief of the Imperial General Staff himself, General Ironside, was about to visit. At six o'clock on the nose, Tiny Ironside had walked in, blustering as usual, to hand-deliver a personal message from the war cabinet. At the conference soon after he had pointed to the map hanging in Gort's office and announced that the entire BEF should withdraw southwest to Amiens, closer to their lines of supply. 'We've all agreed this plan,' he had announced. 'Churchill and the cabinet were unanimous.'

Gort had patiently pointed out that it was not the war cabinet who were commanding the BEF and explained that to leave their positions on the Escaut en masse and move the best part of a hundred miles directly across the flanks of the German panzers' advance was not merely impossible but plain suicide. Of course, the CIGS had quickly come round to his point of view, but this, Gort felt, should have been perfectly clear to him back in London. What Gort had offered to do, however - and he'd been thinking about it since his meeting with Billotte the previous night - was use his two reserve divisions, the 5th and 50th, for a counter-attack south of Arras and the river Scarpe to the east of the town. If the French mounted a similar attack from the south, Gort had suggested to the CIGS, it might be possible to close the gap that had been punched by the German panzer divisions between the Allied armies north of Arras and the Scarpe, and those south of the river Somme.

It was a positive plan at least - one that promised aggressive action rather than passive defence, and Ironside had seized it wholeheartedly, just as Gort had known he would. The CIGS had immediately headed straight off to see Billotte and Blanchard, taking Pownall with him, determined to put some resolve into the French commanders and persuade them to join in Gort's proposed attack.

Gort took off his cap with its red band and laid it on the bench beside him, ran his hand over his largely bald head, then closed his eyes, letting the May sunshine warm his face. He wondered how Ironside and Pownall were getting on. It was essential that the French should play ball but his conversation with Billotte the previous evening had left a deeply unfavourable impression.

Perhaps they could yet turn it around but all morning he had been unable to banish the niggling suspicion that the French had shot their bolt completely. Once again, he found his thoughts returning to what now seemed a horrible inevitability: evacuation of as much of the BEF as possible.

A cough brought him from his thoughts and he opened his eyes to see a young RASC lance-corporal holding a metal tray on which there was a bottle of beer and a plate of bread, cheese and chocolate. 'Your lunch, sir.'

'Thank you,' Gort replied. He indicated the bench. 'Just put it down there, will you?'

The orderly left him and Gort continued to sit where he was, drinking his beer and eating the cheese and bread. This end of the garden was a peaceful haven: warm, softly scented and alive with the calming sounds of early summer. Nonetheless, the soothing ambience could do nothing to relieve the gloom that swirled in the British commander-in-chief's head - a gloom that would only deepen as the afternoon wore on.

Chapter 14

Around the time that General Lord Gort was eating his lunch, D Company, 1st Battalion, the King's Own Yorkshire Rangers, finally reached BEF Headquarters. It was not, as Captain Barclay had assumed, in Arras itself, but centred around a chateau in the small village of Habarcq, some seven miles to the west.

They had learned as much on entering the city where, in the town hall, they had found the headquarters of the town's garrison. A Welsh Guardsman had redirected them, having confessed he had no idea where 13th Brigade were, or 5th Division, and least of all the 1st Battalion, the Yorkshire Rangers. Captain Barclay had cursed irritably, but Lieutenant Peploe, who had woken as the truck rumbled over the broad cobbles of the Grande Place, had been glad of the brief detour into the town. Despite a splitting headache and light-headed- ness, he had been sufficiently compos mentis to wonder at the reconstructed beauty of an ancient town that he had seen before only in a selection of picture postcards taken soon after the last war - which his mother had brought back after a visit to find his uncle George's grave. He remembered them well: the squares of broken buildings, the piles of rubble and, not least, the skeletal town hall and its damaged belfry. Now, however, it was as though the postcards had depicted a lie. Arras had emerged, phoenixlike, from the wreckage, as splendid and opulent as it must have been a hundred or more years before.

Peploe followed Captain Barclay and Lieutenant Bourne-Arton unsteadily through some impressively ornate iron gates to the side of the chateau, then along a gravel pathway to the main entrance of the white-stone building. The place seemed a hive of activity. Doors opened and closed, staff officers hurrying to and fro with an air of grave intent. Phones rang, typewriters clacked, orders were barked. The three men were told to wait in the hall and did so in silence, watching the comings and goings until, after about a quarter of an hour, Captain Barclay stood up and began to pace.

'Now look here,' he said eventually, accosting a pale subaltern, 'how much longer are we going to have to wait? We've got an injured pilot who needs proper medical care and we need to know where we can find the rest of our battalion. Damn it, surely someone here can point us in the right direction.'

'What unit are you, sir?' asked the subaltern.

Barclay sighed. 'D Company, First Battalion, King's Own Yorkshire Rangers.'

'All right,' said the subaltern. 'I'll send an MO.'

'And what about the rest of First Battalion?' said Barclay, his mounting frustration showing in his tone.

'Just a moment, sir,' said the subaltern, and disappeared.

'For God's sake,' muttered Barclay.

It was a further twenty minutes before the medical officer arrived, apologizing for keeping them waiting.

'Take the MO to Lyell, will you, Lieutenant?' said Barclay, to Bourne-Arton.

'Right away, sir.' Bourne-Arton led the doctor outside to the trucks.

'Let's hope that's the last we've seen of him,' muttered Barclay.

'Your brother-in-law, you mean, sir?' said Peploe.

'Yes. Bloody pain in the arse. Wish I'd left him in that damned field. The CSM was right.'

'You couldn't have left him there, sir.'