One by one, the men stood, spat out mouthfuls of grainy spittle and shook off their rind of dust. Then they gazed ahead.
For days they had known that they would be the last of the last. The fourth battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment had been among the ill-fated chosen to form the rear-guard, allowing the rest of the British Expeditionary Force to evacuate. At every bridge they had crossed, sappers had waited, detonating their charges just moments later.
Yes, they knew they were the last of the last, but they hadn’t expected this. Evidence of the final hours of tens of thousands of soldiers was encapsulated in the detritus which appeared on the beach like an uninterrupted lurid tide line: countless bicycles with frames twisted beyond recognition; dozens of axe-smashed motorbikes; hundreds of thousands of smashed rifles, stacked in an enormous pyre; an unimaginable quantity of helmets; thousands of burned out cars and trucks; horses with bullet holes behind their eyes; crashed and wrecked RAF aircraft.
And the dead.
All around them, the dead.
A ragged mongrel chewing on the fingers of a corpse.
‘Your land is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Your fields—strangers are devouring them in your presence; it is desolation.’
Laurie turned to Bill Rhodes, who had just uttered those words and wondered when he had last heard him speak. Had he spoken today, before now? Had Joe spoken today? Or had the three of them just walked, one foot in front of the other, as they had done since the order had been given to evacuate? Five days ago, the bleakness of their situation had percolated down through the ranks, when an order to retreat to high ground at Mont des Cats had been issued. Somewhere in the region of seven thousand men and bumper-to-bumper queues of British army transport had ascended the hill for the dubious sanctuary of the Gothic monastery. But the order of Trappist monks residing there could not offer them any protection from the twenty Luftwaffe warplanes that had relentlessly bombed and machine-gunned the hill, nor could the monks protect them from the blasting that followed from approaching German tanks and mortar fire, nor from the advancing line of infantry. Chaos had infiltrated the infallible precision of the British army, and finally the order had been given to abandon the monastery and head twenty miles north-east to an evacuation point at Dunkirk. It had been, and continued to be, every man for himself.
Tears welled in Laurie’s eyes.
Amidst the carnage, there was hope.
A snaking line of soldiers—a few hundred, Laurie guessed—wound its way from the beach, through the shallows of the English Channel, past the carcasses of several destroyed vessels, to two small navy warships, where the men were being dragged aboard. Above them, a swarm of Nazi Stuka dive-bombers circled rapaciously. Waiting.
It was Laurie who went first. He broke into a run, summoning the last of his energy for the short distance to the end of the line that led—in surely just a few hours—to the embracing shores of England. To home.
He reached the blood-stained khaki of the final soldier in line and fell to the sand behind him, at last surrendering to the pain that blistered his mind and body.
A hand squeezed his shoulder and Laurie turned and smiled. It was Joe Morrison, his oldest friend. He and Joe had signed up together for six months’ service in July 1939, when the absolute certainty of war had yet to disseminate to the working men being recruited into the militia. Why had they even signed up? He had no idea, now.
Directly above Joe, Laurie caught sight of the first of the Stuka bombers manoeuvring into a descent at almost ninety degrees, its inverted gull wings silhouetted in the sun’s hazy periphery. The hideous, terrifying wail of the plane’s Jericho trumpet pre-empted his warning cry and the line of men dispersed chaotically, the desperation to run outweighing the certain knowledge that they had nowhere to go.
Laurie fell to his side and covered his head with his hands.
The guns opened up, loud and staccato, ripping through the sand right beside him, the wail growing to a deafening crescendo.
There were screams and shouts all around him, as bullets tore into flesh.
Laurie rolled to his front and closed his eyes, sand raining down on his back, knowing that his life was all but over.
Finally, just a few feet above the beach, the Stuka pulled up, heading into a steep climb to re-join the rest of the group circling above them. But another had just begun to dive.
The hope of rescue and setting foot back in England dissolved, escaping him like a drop of water on the sand. He wouldn’t get to see his wife, Elsie, or his mother or sister ever again. He would never have children. He would never grow old. The knowledge that he was going to die in France, all alone, crushed the final grains of his resolve. With that clarity of understanding came a weakening of his muscles and a speeding up of his heart. He urinated on himself and began to sob.
The ear-splitting cry from the Jericho trumpet signalled the imminent opening up of the Stuka’s guns.
Something—he didn’t know what—forced him to open his eyes.
With his hands clasped to his ears, he watched as the Stuka’s bomb cradles opened in the air directly above them, and four hundred-and-ten-pound bombs came hurtling down in his direction.
Paradoxically for Laurie Finch, the seconds of helpless waiting as the bombs fell, were both brief, giving him no time to react, move or speak and yet also simultaneously drawn out, allowing him the time to realise and accept his fate.
Chapter Two
21st June 1940, Bramley Cottage, Nutley, East Sussex
Elsie Finch stood at the open back door of her cottage, gazing out into the garden. It was so perfect
