'Ah, Tanner, there you are!'
Tanner turned to see Lieutenant Peploe emerge from the farmhouse. Swallowing hard and taking a deep breath, Tanner walked towards him, saluting as he reached him.
I’ve got good news,' said Peploe. 'That is, good news for you but rather disastrous for me.' He took off his cap, squinted, and put it back on again. 'We've now been officially absorbed into First Battalion. As of now, we're D Company, although we're going to lose our fourth platoon.'
'It's under strength anyway, sir, so that won't make much difference.'
'Yes, but it's going to join B Company and be brought up to two full sections. And this is where you come in. There aren't enough officers, so someone needs to be promoted to platoon sergeant-major and take command of that platoon. It's a WO III post.'
Tanner felt his mood lighten. 'And move across to B Company?'
'Yes. As you're the senior sergeant in the company it'll almost certainly be you.'
There was no denying he was the senior sergeant - and by some margin too.
'I see, sir,' he said. He wanted to laugh with relief. Of course, he'd be sorry to leave Sykes and the others, and even Lieutenant Peploe, but the chance to get well away from Blackstone was like the answer to his prayers.
'Bloody hard luck on me, though,' added Peploe, 'but I can see that you more than deserve your chance.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'And you've done a good job getting everyone settled in. I'm afraid it's still a bit unclear what's going on but it seems the French First Army have been getting into trouble to the south of here and so have the Belgians to the north ever since the Dutch surrender, so although our chaps have been doing well, we've all got to fall back to keep in line with the others. Tomorrow we're moving up not to the river Senne but to the Brussels-Charleroi canal. We're going to hold the line there while the rest of One and Two Corps fall back through our position. It wasn't clear to me at first which was the canal and which was the river, but I found them both on my map eventually.'
'At least you've got a map, sir. The lack of them seems to be a feature of this war.'
Tanner left Peploe and went back to the barn, where he lay down on the straw and closed his eyes. He had joked with the lieutenant about the maps but, really, it was no laughing matter. He couldn't shake off the thought that, once again, the Army had been sent to fight a campaign without the right tools for the job. He reminded himself that at least this time they were better equipped. He had seen plenty of guns - heard them too - and there seemed to be transport on the roads, even if they had been made to march. Nonetheless, it had been a disquieting couple of days - today especially, with the refugees clogging the roads, and enemy aircraft appearing to dominate the skies. And the British Army was on the retreat - again.
Tanner chided himself. Just get on with it, man. There was no point in worrying about matters that were beyond his control. Instead he thought about the platoon he would soon be commanding. A life without Blackstone, now that was a prospect to lift the spirits. This evening, or perhaps the next day, he would be free of the man.
Chapter 7
For Sturmbannfuhrer Otto Timpke the past week had been one of deep frustration and mounting agitation. For two whole days the division had remained at Ludwigsburg, vehicles and kit at the ready, waiting for the signal to move. The order had finally come the previous Tuesday, 12 May, but having sped north of Cologne, then west through Aachen to the Belgian border, they had gone no further. In the meantime, Timpke and his colleagues had had to listen to wireless bulletins proclaiming the sweeping successes of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe. In the north, crucial forts had been captured in Belgium; Rotterdam had been bombed and after four days the Dutch had capitulated. As if that was not galling enough, Army Group A had made even more dramatic and far-reaching progress. It seemed General Guderian's panzers had achieved total surprise as they had attacked through the thick forests of the Belgian Ardennes. The gutless French had crumbled, so that the tanks had managed to cross the river Meuse - a crucial obstacle to have overcome - and had swept all before them.
They had not been idle - Eicke had made sure of that, insisting that his commanders keep the men busy, something with which Timpke agreed entirely. None of his men had seen front-line action: most had been former camp guards and SS reservists, and although they had trained continually since the end of the Polish campaign, Timpke was determined that until they were in a position to draw on combat experience, they should fall back on rigid discipline instead. For four days, as they had waited in the rolling border country, Timpke had drilled them, sent them on long marches and given them rifle practice, as well as despatching them on manoeuvres and making them practise their codework and radio telegraphy. He had also made them clean, re-clean, then clean again their vehicles, weapons and uniforms. On two separate evenings, he had sat the men on the banks of a shallow hill overlooking the camp and had lectured them on one of his favourite subjects, National Socialist and SS ideology, reminding them that the German Reich was rising, phoenix-like, from the ashes of despair into the greatest nation the world had ever known. It was their destiny that they, the chosen ones, should be the elite of this new Aryan order.
Then had come the news that Rommel and Guderian had advanced as much as forty miles the previous day, Thursday, 16 May. Forty miles! An advance of that speed was unheard of. A strange anxiety had gripped Timpke. Surely it wouldn't all be over before the division had been thrown into the line. It couldn't be, yet as every day passed, with reports of outrageous gains made, Timpke became increasingly concerned that the Waffen-SS would be ignored once again by the Wehrmacht, left to idle out the campaign in their makeshift camp on the Belgian border.
Although he was not a man who had ever needed much sleep, he had slept particularly badly that night; outside, it had been warm and humid, but his mind had been unable to put aside the news of the day's fighting. Major-General Rommel's 7th Panzer Division had reached Avesnes, only thirty-five kilometres south of Mons. Timpke had never heard of the place before, and had been stunned when he had discovered just how far into northern France the town was. On the map, the French coast had seemed impossibly close to the leading panzers. The huge extent of the German thrust was astonishing, and he had been struck by a wave of despair. Soon the war would be over, and the Wehrmacht would take all the credit.
Unable to clear such thoughts, he had risen, washed and shaved, then turned to his desk, keeping himself busy by writing further company training exercises. As a consequence, he had already been up for several hours when the company clerk knocked at the door shortly after seven. Entering, he had handed Timpke a note.
Timpke read it, grinned, then crunched the paper into a ball and threw it away.
'Good news, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer?' his orderly, Sturmann Reinz, asked.
'Most definitely,' Timpke replied, putting on his jacket. 'Very good news indeed.'
Downstairs, in the officers' dining room, he found his company commanders, Saalbach, Beeck and Hardieck, already there, drinking ersatz coffee.
'Look at his face,' laughed Saalbach. 'Our boss is happy at long last! I'd begun to think we'd never see you smile again, Herr Sturmbannfuhrer.'
'Part of Army Group A! It couldn't be better. With luck we'll be at the van with von Rundstedt.' Timpke slapped Hardieck's back, then smacked a fist into his open hand. 'At last!'