'All right, men!' shouted Lieutenant Dingwall. 'Let's move.'
Tanner hurried to his platoon commander. 'Sir, I'll follow you out.' Lieutenant Dingwall swung his arm above his head, then down below his shoulder, signalling to the men to run from the yard.
Tanner stood back. 'Move it!' he shouted. 'Come on, get going!' Spotting Hepworth, he grabbed him, and said, 'Not you. I need you to help me with something.'
More shells whistled overhead. Hepworth looked distraught. 'But, Sarge, the Jerries'll be here.'
'We won't be long. Now, follow me,' he snapped. Tanner was fuming - with Captain Webb for not thinking ahead and for cutting and running before the others, but also with the lieutenant for not pressing the quartermaster hard enough. As a result, they were leaving the stores in too much haste and risking letting a mass of valuable war materiel fall into the enemy's hands - weapons and ammunition that any advancing force would gladly use against them.
They ran to the side of the warehouse. There, out of sight of the yard and platform and partially covered by overgrown bushes, they saw a small shed.
'What's this place, Sarge?' asked Hepworth. 'Can't say I'd noticed it before.'
'That'll teach you to have a proper scout round in future, won't it?'
Hepworth was not alone, however, certainly, no one else had thought to use it. But Tanner had, the previous day, and as dusk had fallen, he had quietly, without being spotted in the darkening night, moved half a dozen four- gallon tins of petrol there. He had also taken the opportunity to discard some of his kit and replace it with a number of items carefully put aside during the day's unloading. His gas-mask had been taken out and instead he had filled the respirator bag with a tin of detonators and two five-pound packs of Nobel's gelignite. From his large backpack, he had taken out several other items of kit. His hairbrushes and canvas shoes had been pulled out with barely a thought, but abandoning his greatcoat had been a harder decision. However, he had kept his thick, serge-lined leather jerkin, which would keep him warm and also allowed him to have his arms free; he had always hated them to feel restricted ever since he had begun shooting as a boy. Anyway, he reckoned he could always find another greatcoat if necessary. He filled the pack with a number of cartridges of Polar dynamite, a round tin of safety fuse, half a dozen hand grenades, ten rounds of Bren-gun tracer bullets, and as many clips of rifle rounds as would fit.
'Leave your pack and rifle here for the moment,' he told Hepworth now, 'and help me with these cans.'
'What are we doing with them, Sarge?' Hepworth asked, as he pulled the large green canvas pack off his back.
'Just grab that fuel and do as I say, Hep. Come on, iggery.'
'Iggery, Sarge?'
'Yes, Private, iggery - it means get a bloody move on.'
They ran back to the yard. Tanner pulled out his seventeen-inch sword bayonet and stabbed the top of the flimsy tins, while Hepworth returned to the shed for the rest of the fuel. The sergeant then poured the petrol liberally over the remaining stores. When Hepworth returned, they finished their task. A dozen Heinkels thundered overhead, no longer concerned with the station but with the new front line. Small-arms fire from the Allied lines two miles ahead could faintly be heard, followed by a dull ripple of explosions. Suddenly there was a clatter and squeaking from the buildings to the south of the station yard.
'Tanks,' said Tanner. 'Quick! To the shed.' They sprinted back, Tanner putting on his jerkin, then heaving his respirator bag and pack onto his shoulders. They were heavier than he'd imagined, and he cursed to himself. Slinging his trusted Enfield on his back, he said, 'Right, let's go. Follow me, Hep.'
As they ran round the front of the warehouse, the sound of tank tracks grew louder. Then, from the side of a house, the front of a German tank swung into view. The two men ran on, until Tanner slid into a ditch by the far side of the yard.
'You'd better be quick, Sarge,' said Hep, his face taut with fear.
Tanner said nothing. Instead his shaking hands struggled to pull out a single .303 tracer round and push it into the breach of his rifle. German troops were now moving up round the sides of the tank, half crouching in long, field-grey coats and their distinctive coal-scuttle helmets. So, face to face with Germans at last, he thought.
One of the enemy troops shouted and, with his rifle, pointed to the stacks of boxes.
'Sarge!' hissed Hepworth.
'Wait, Hep, wait,' whispered Tanner. He watched as a dozen or more German troops ran across the yard towards the stores. He pressed the wooden stock of the rifle against his cheek, gripped the wood surrounding the barrel with his left hand, and felt his finger press against the metal trigger. Just over a hundred and fifty yards. Closing one eye, he aimed at a box of gelignite he had doused heavily with petrol and upended to make it stand out. Holding his breath, he squeezed the trigger.
The flash of the tracer round streaked across the yard and struck the wooden box. Immediately an explosion ripped the air, sheets of flame burst out and engulfed the largest stack of stores, followed in succession by a second, third and fourth explosion as the fireball engulfed the yard. The first half-dozen Germans were caught in the inferno, and Tanner saw three more catch fire amid screams of shock and pain.
'Run!' shouted Tanner. 'Run, Hep!' Then the two were scrambling to their feet, minds closed to what was going on behind them, concentrating on sprinting northwards for all they were worth, away from the yard and warehouse to safety.
Above the din of further explosions, the rattle and whizz of bullets detonating, Tanner was aware of a cannon shell whooshing past him only a few feet away and punching a hole through a wooden building up ahead. A few seconds later, machine-gun bullets fizzed over their heads. He and Hepworth dropped to the ground a few yards short of the bridge over the Mesna river. Tanner rolled over, unslung his rifle and pulled it into his shoulder. A little over three hundred yards, he reckoned. He could see the black-jacketed tank commander's head sticking out of the turret; he was now firing the machine-gun towards them. Tanner pulled back the bolt and fired. The man's head jerked backwards. When it righted itself, half his face had gone and the machine-gun was silent. He yelled at Hepworth to start running again. More soldiers were crouching by the tank. Tanner pulled back the bolt again and, without moving his face from the stock, hit a second man. Two. Pull back the bolt, fire. Three. Again. Four. This time he only clipped a soldier. Back came the bolt. Five. Six. Seven. Three rounds left. That'll do.
He turned and ran, ten yards, twenty, thirty - over the bridge and away from the inferno, away from the startled enemy. Ahead, the road turned, still running parallel to the railway but, he knew, out of sight of the yard. A bullet fizzed past his ear. He could see Hepworth had already made it. Another bullet zipped by, and another, and then he was safe, for a moment at any rate, out of sight of the enemy.
Hepworth was up ahead, slowing now, and Tanner paused, hands on his hips, leaning backwards, gasping for breath. Now that he had momentarily stopped, he felt his pack cutting into his shoulders. Bending double to relieve the weight, he grimaced, then began running again, albeit more slowly. Behind him, vast clouds of pitch-black smoke rolled into the sky.
Tanner drew level with Hepworth, who grinned. 'Some explosion, that one, Sarge. I reckon there's a few Jerries there who won't be bothering us no more.' He watched as Tanner pressed another clip of bullets into his magazine. 'Shoot a few of the buggers, did you, Sarge? Did you get that tank man?'
'Less of the chit-chat, Hep,' said Tanner. 'Let's concentrate on catching up with the others and getting out of here in one piece.'