“It’s a free country, for the moment,” Horton responded. “Be my guest.”
Aghast, Lance raised his voice. “What are you doing? We have to go.” To his surprise, other soldiers along the casing had also lit up.
Horton turned to Lance with a peaceful smile. “I smoked them until I ran out, except for this one.” He waved it in the air, its wispy rings carrying the aroma. “It’s my last cigarette, and I’ve been saving it for the right occasion.” He grinned. “This seems to be it, and I’m going to enjoy it.”
He shifted his view to the men struggling in the water below and then the small crowd gathered on the casing. “Blokes up there are dead and dying,” he continued, “and same for the ones below. For the time it takes to smoke this cigarette, at least I can do it here in peace.” He put the cigarette back between his lips and inhaled.
Off to their right, someone started singing “Roll Out the Barrel,” and was soon joined by others gathering in greater numbers on the shelf, belting out the jovial lyrics. When they had finished, they became more somber, singing the defiant words to “There’ll Always be an England.” Then, they fell silent.
Suddenly, a wide-eyed Horton sprang to his feet. “Look,” he exclaimed, pointing.
Lance gazed toward the midship. There, a fuel-oil slick had ignited, and soldiers swam desperately to escape the flames, their screams heard clearly across the distance. Some emerged with burned scalps and arms. Some beat the water furiously, attempting to swim out of the flames. Some succumbed and disappeared, not to be seen again.
Lance stepped in front of Horton. “If we’re going to get past our own oil slick down there…” He thrust a finger at the area immediately below them.
“I know, I know,” Horton snorted, taking one last puff and snuffing out the cigarette on the hull. “We’ve got to go—” He started ripping off his clothes. “Our boots have to come off now,” he grumbled, pulling at them. “It’s a lot harder to do in the water, and they are bloody hell for swimming.”
Undressed to their skivvies, the two men took only enough time to look over the edge, find an opening among the struggling soldiers, and leap into the oily water below.
21
Streaked with oil, Lance and Horton clung to opposite ends of a thick board floating on the seas. They had survived the jump, swum out of the oil patches, and tried for shore, but found that the current carried them farther and farther out to sea. Each of them wore a Mae West life jacket, taken from corpses whose necks had been broken on impact. The mistake of the unfortunates had been to put on the jackets before leaping. The impact of their chins striking the water had thrown their heads back hard against the device intended for lifesaving, sealing their fates.
Weak swimmers and non-swimmers had thrashed in the water, grabbing for anything or anyone that floated. Before Lance had acquired his Mae West, a big man grabbed for him. Both of their bodies were slick with oil. Nevertheless, the man managed to get an arm around Lance’s neck. He held on, and they both sank.
Lance had gulped air just before going down, and the two struggled underwater, the man desperately grasping, and Lance pushing to break contact. Just when Lance thought his lungs would burst, the man’s body went limp, his arm relaxed, and he floated away.
On breaking the surface, Lance had heaved for air. Horton, who had not seen the struggle, saw him surface gasping, and swam over to check on him.
“Are you all right?” he called. Lance drew closer and told him what had happened.
Despite the calm sea, wavelets obstructed their ability to see very far. But when they had swum a distance sufficient to be safe from the Lancastria’s suction on its final plunge, they turned to watch, fascinated by the spectacle.
The aft section of the ship’s keel rolled to the side, high in the air. Soldiers, presumably non-swimmers, still clung at the shaft casing on a slant below the propeller. One by one, they slipped into the brine and struggled in the gathering suction. Then, with an audible rush of air, the vessel slid below the surface and was gone.
Five hours had passed since the sinking, during which time the receding tide and the current from the estuary carried Lance and Horton farther out to sea and dispersed the bobbing heads, bodies, flotsam, and jetsam. At one point, a ship seemed headed their way only to be blown up by a flight of Junkers.
Land was still within sight, but they could no longer make out definitive shapes close to shore. They had seen a fighter plane fly over and drop flares into oil globs, igniting them, and then strafe the ships and men in the water.
For several hours, the two companions floated alone, holding onto a board that might be their final means to salvation. Most of the time, they did not speak, their numb minds dreaming of home, a meal, and clear, cold drinking water.
For Lance, a darker thought pervaded. “I mucked this up,” he croaked to himself.
Horton heard the words barely enough to catch their meaning. “What?”
Lance let out a long breath. “I keep thinking about that big man back there. He just wanted to live, like the rest of us. I pushed him away to a horrific death.”
“If you hadn’t, you’d be dead too.”
“I know, but then there are the others.”
“What others?”
“Our group from Dunkirk. I lost five of them; I don’t know about the two I told to jump onto the coaler at Saint-Nazaire, and then there was François.” He paused as his jaw quivered. When he spoke again, his voice caught. “I caused his death.”
Horton slid along the board closer to Lance. “I want you to listen to me and listen good.” He threw an arm up over the board and rested his chin on it to
