very hard fighting, as they thought to rest; but they had no sooner reached the billets allotted to them at Nosseghem than they had been ordered out again with new instructions to retire through Brussels to Assche. 'Hence,' he added with a smile, 'our rather part-worn appearance; it's four days since we've had a chance to clean up.' From that point on they passed many units of the B.E.F. Some, which had borne the brunt of the early fighting, looked pretty war-worn, while others were spick and span, being units of reserve divisions that had not yet been thrown into the battle. As the twilight deepened the numbers of refugees gradually lessened, until the road became almost entirely occupied by the military. Peachie was now pulling up at every hundred yards or so to ask passing officers if they knew the whereabouts of his unit and at last on a crossroad, among a group of officers who were standing there studying their maps, he saw his own Colonel.
The Colonel told him that the Guards were at Uccle, just south-west of the capital, and that if he took the road to the right he would find the village about three miles along it. Peachie then introduced his passenger and said that Gregory was anxious to get through to Brussels as he had work of importance to do there.
'I'm afraid it's too late to do that,' said the Colonel promptly; 'the Germans have already occupied the city.'
'That won't stop me,' Gregory replied. 'I speak German fluently and I have a German passport, so I could easily pass myself off as a German agent.'
The Colonel brushed up his moustache and eyed Gregory with considerably more interest. 'In that case it's up to you, but I'd strongly advise you to wait until morning.'
'Why, sir?'
'Because, although the whole front is in a state of flux, we have established some sort of line just behind Brussels, so there's a mile or two of territory outside the suburbs which is more or less no-man's-land at the moment. It will be dark by the time you get there and during the night the sentries on both sides will be potting at any moving object they may see, so the fact that you're in civilian clothes won't be the least protection to you. But if you wait until daylight you should be able to walk straight through the battle-zone and you only have to risk being killed by a stray shot or shell, as neither side is likely deliberately to shoot down a civilian.'
Gregory immediately saw the sense of this argument. Ever since he had been released from the Police Headquarters in Rotterdam he had been cursing the succession of delays which had prevented his getting back to Erika, but now that the Germans had got to Brussels before him there was no longer quite as much point in his pressing forward without the loss of a moment. He felt confident that she would have had the sense to evacuate before the Germans arrived, and was probably now somewhere among one of the columns of refugees that had left Brussels that morning; so his only reason now for wishing to get into the city was because he felt sure that she would have left some message for him in her flat to say where she intended to go.
Once he knew that, even with the country in its present state of confusion, he would probably be able to reach her in another twenty-four hours; but as long as he had no idea at all where she had gone, with every form of communication broken down, it might take him days—or even weeks—to find her. It seemed, therefore, that for the sake of securing any message she might have left him it was not worth risking being shot in a night-crossing of no-man's-land, when by waiting for a further eight or ten hours he would be able to cross it with comparatively little danger.
Peachie suggested that Gregory had better come with him to Uccle and take pot-luck for the night about any accommodation that might be going there; so on Gregory's agreeing they took leave of the Colonel and turned down the side-road.
At the village they found Peachie's battalion temporarily resting, as there was now a lull in the fighting, the Germans being fully occupied with the take-over of the Belgian capital. A Mess had been established in a large farmhouse and while Gregory and Peachie ate a meal there they listened to the accounts given by several officers of the last two days' fighting. All of them were extremely bitter about the Fifth Column activities in Belgium. One of their brother-officers had been shot through the back of the neck and killed when walking down a road miles behind the line, and another had halted his car in a quiet area to offer two Belgian peasant women a lift, upon which one of the women had pulled out a pistol and shot him through the head.
They said that we had no weapon at all to compete with the Germans' small, quick-firing howitzer and that at short range our old-fashioned rifles were almost useless against the tommy-guns which were carried by every German infantry-man. On the other hand, everyone present agreed that the Germans were a poor lot when it came to hand-to-hand fighting; thy would not face the bayonet at any price and, in spite of constant bombardment and machine-gunning from the air, every time our men got a chance to get at the enemy they were putting up a magnificent performance.
In the Mess Gregory saw a copy of the order that General Gamelin had issued that day. It said: 'Any soldier who cannot advance should allow himself to be killed rather than abandon that part of our national soil which has been entrusted to him.' So, clearly, for the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies to have played his last card by such a backs-to-the-wall command, the situation was really critical.
The farmhouse was filled to capacity but Peachie managed to secure a double bed for Gregory and himself in a cottage near by, and they slept on it in their clothes, ready to be up and doing at a moment's notice in any emergency.
At five o'clock they were wakened by shells screaming into the village and knew that the battle was on again. The Germans had taken Brussels in their stride and now that daylight was approaching they were launching new attacks upon the hard-pressed British. In the farmhouse the Mess orderlies were going about their business quite unperturbed and to Gregory's surprise and pleasure he was given bacon and eggs for breakfast as well as lashings of hot tea. Reports had come in from the advance company that German tanks were approaching so the remainder of the battalion was already mustering in the village street. Gregory saw no cause to delay any further and knew that he would only be in the way of the others if he did, so he thanked his hosts and, wishing them luck, set out along the road to Brussels.
There were a number of other civilians about, mostly villagers or refugees from the city. With what appeared to Gregory the height of foolhardiness, they ignored the German planes which were once more buzzing overhead and the shells which were bursting only a few hundred yards away, to stand about on the higher ground so that they could get a good view of the battle that was opening, but their presence suited him very well as it meant that he was in no way conspicuous.
He had scarcely covered half a mile when the planes dive-bombed the village; but fortunately, by that time, the troops had moved out of it, scattering to north and south to take up their positions. A few hundred yards further on a crossroad was being crumped every few moments by the shells of a German heavy battery, so he took to the fields and gave it a wide berth. Five minutes later a British Tommy popped up from behind a hedge and called on him to halt, threatening him with a rifle; but Gregory spoke to him in English, giving him the names of half a dozen officers of his battalion, and told him that it was his job to go forward to get information.