Darkest Hour

the enemy see them as they crossed it? He peered through his binoculars. The guns were firing ever more regularly now, the blasts sending tremors through the ground. Lying flat, he wriggled forward to the edge of the track. A British tank, some three hundred yards away to their left, had almost reached the railway, but had been hit. It was one of the more heavily armoured Matilda IIs, but it was burning, smoke and flames gushing from the turret. He wondered whether the crew had got out. Probably not. Poor bastards. He looked again at the copse but while he could see muzzle flashes and hear the guns ever louder, he couldn't distinguish a single enemy soldier.

'If we can't see the enemy, sir,' said Tanner, 'then hopefully he can't see us.'

'Then we must make a dash for it, Tanner,' said Peploe. He sighed. 'Come on, then.'

Platoon Headquarters went first, then Sykes's section, followed by Cooper's and Ross's, the men nipping one by one across the narrow stretch of the railway.

'Well,' said Peploe, once they were all over, 'if they did spot us, they're not letting on.'

They pushed on, keeping low or crawling, along the dusty, stony track until they reached a bend where the hedge thinned. They were now almost at the summit of the ridge. Forty yards ahead, the track forked. To the left, it ran straight to the farm, but in front of the buildings. To the right, it ran down the other side of the ridge - presumably, Tanner guessed, to the village of Wailly. He glanced around. Where was that other gun? About a mile away there was a wood - in there. Yes, he was sure of it. Those Jerry gunners would have hidden themselves well: near the edge of the trees with plenty of aerial and ground cover, but with a clear line of fire in front of them. On the far side of the wood there was another village - Beaumetz? - while directly behind them Berneville was as clear as day. Warlus must be behind the next ridge, where he hoped the rest of the company were still waiting. He could now see several burning tanks, stopped between the two ridges, their tracks having carved dark lines across the fields of young crops. Others were still wheeling about, creeping in beetling lines across the open countryside, easy targets for the German gunners now only a hundred yards or so away. The battery in the copse was doing its job effectively, round after round being fired. Past the copse, away to their left, machine- gun fire and the dull thump of the Matilda IIs' guns could still be heard amid the din of German artillery. Suddenly a shell hit the edge of a barn, knocking out a chunk of stone. Probably, Tanner guessed, a two-pound shell from one of the Matildas. Good. They're still coming.

'What do you think, Tanner?' said Peploe, sidling up to him.

'We need to find out what's on the other side of the ridge. Then we'll know if we can use the barns to cover our approach or even sweep round the back of the position undetected. But the less movement the better, so let me have a dekko on my own.'

'All right.'

Still crouching, Tanner hurried to the summit, past the track that veered left to the farm. Reaching the crest at last, he lay flat and squirmed forward on his stomach. He realized the track he was now on was the long side of a triangle. The fork to the farm was one of the short sides, while another led at right angles to join the main track by a walled cemetery. A number of vehicles - two Krupps, an eight-wheeled armoured car and three half-tracks - were clustered there. But no massed infantry. He looked down towards the village. Several houses were on fire, the flames dulled by the smoke. Through the haze he saw vehicles moving. The battery, still booming a short way to his left, was hidden by the farm and he breathed out heavily, the tension momentarily eased, then wriggled back a few yards and signalled urgently to Peploe to bring the rest of the men up.

'Don't let anyone go beyond this point, sir,' he said, as Peploe joined him. He glanced at the men approaching, then back to the farm. 'We've done the tricky bit - got here without being spotted - so we can cut across this pasture and take cover behind that brick barn. I reckon there's at least four guns there. Ideally, we want to attack from two different angles, but the most important thing is surprise. That means working out a good plan first, then hitting them hard and quick. I'll scout ahead now, if it's all right with you, sir, and take Corporal Sykes with me.'

'Of course. I'll wait for your signal to bring the men over.'

Tanner ran back, beckoned Sykes to follow him, then the pair climbed over the fence and ran fifty yards through a flock of anxious sheep to the edge of the barn. Pausing briefly to catch his breath, Tanner delved in his pack and pulled out his Aldis scope, unwrapping the cloth round it, then screwed it onto the pads on his rifle. Pushing his helmet to the back of his head, he said to Sykes, 'Stan, go down the other end of the barn and have a quick dekko,' then went to the nearside edge of the old brick and stone building. When he reached the rubble that had been blasted from the wall a few minutes before, he crouched as several guns boomed in succession. Another incoming cannon shell hit a building out of his line of vision. There was machine-gun fire too - a rapid chatter. A Jerry MG. The slower, more laboured rattle of a British machine-gun responded, but much further away, and no sooner had he caught its sound than it was smothered by battery guns unleashing yet another salvo. The noise was deafening; Tanner's ears began to ring and deaden.

Taking off his helmet, fearing the silhouette of its distinctive rim would be a give-away, he peered cautiously through a gap in the rubble. No more than seventy yards away, half hidden under a large ash tree, a small anti-tank gun, the like of which he had seen several times in Norway, was pounding out its shells. His heart began to thump, though, when he realized what stood just beyond it, partially hidden from view by the trees and foliage. It was an enormous artillery piece, resembling the 3.7-inch anti-aircraft guns they had had at Manston. The difference was that, instead of pointing into the sky, the barrel was tilted straight down the ridge to the valley below, where a number of British tanks were still groping their way towards them.

A big barrel thundered and recoiled - a double crash - then another gun boomed, and Tanner saw the tip of a second identical barrel recoil from the bushes and trees some forty yards on. Just five seconds later they fired again in staccato, their reports reverberating around the farm, shaking the ground and pulsing through Tanner's body, while the smaller gun continued hurling out cannon shells as well. Several fallen bricks near him tumbled further onto the ground. What a gun, he thought.

They were indeed anti-aircraft guns, but were being used in an anti-tank role. A simple idea, but brilliant. He'd seen those 3.7-inch ack-ack guns fire before - they could send a shell more than twenty-five thousand feet into the sky. The velocity was incredible. And now these beasts were firing over open sights at the advancing British armour. Christ. No wonder the tanks' advance is stalling.

Two further guns, he now realized, were also firing - howitzers of some kind, by the sound of them - from somewhere within the trees. Several men were coming out into the open between the small and large anti-tank guns - so there's a hollow - and, to his astonishment, he saw that the one nearest to him wore the collar tabs and red striped breeches of a general. Bloody hell, he thought. What's he doing there?

Leaning on the fallen bricks and masonry, he brought his rifle into his shoulder. His ribs still hurt like hell; more so now that he was lying on knobbly rubble. He grimaced, which split his lip again. The general was peering through a pair of field-glasses. The two big guns crashed again and Tanner counted. One, two, three, four, five, six. Boom-boom. He counted again, his scope aimed at the general's head.