‘Lights on,’ he ordered, automatically as Bert thundered towards the tunnel.
The first Stuka was peeling off now, falling sideways, ejecting black eggs from its belly. Barnes slammed down the lid, dropped to the turntable floor and rotated the periscope so that he saw the tunnel moving towards them.
‘Wait for it,’ he warned the others, but mainly to warn Reynolds who was driving.
They heard it coming., a high-pitched whistle growing to a piercing shriek which easily dominated the engine sound, penetrating the armoured walls as though they were papier-mache. It’s a direct hit this time, thought Penn. He looked at Davis, but the gunner’s eyes stared fixedly at the turntable floor, his jaw muscles clenched, his forehead moist with sudden sweat. Penn looked at Barnes, but the sergeant had his eyes glued to the periscope as he watched the tunnel coming closer. God, thought Penn, he’s got no nerves at all. The thing was screaming like a banshee now. Would it never land? Up in the nose of the tank Reynolds could hear it coming, too, but he was wrestling with two separate fears. Reynolds had no imagination but as he saw the mouth of the tunnel looming towards him through the slit window he remembered a story he had once read in a newspaper. It had happened in Spain during the Civil War – a scout car racing towards a tunnel to escape bombing had met an express train coming out of the tunnel at high speed… But nobody would be running trains in the battle area. The tunnel mouth yawned towards him and the bomb exploded.
The shock wave dealt the armour-plating such a blow that it rattled the plates, seeming for a moment about to blow the tank off the embankment. Fitments clattered down on to the turntable floor and the detonation reverberating inside the metal room was so loud that they were all deafened. Then they heard the next one coming. First the whistle, then the scream. This time Barnes felt fairly sure they were going to get it: the scream was much louder, its aiming point seemed to be dead centre down the turret. It had to happen to someone during the war – a bomb dead centre through the lid, exploding inside that confined space… The bomb hit, detonated. It rocked the tank like a toy, smashing at the plates with a hammerblow, the acrid smell of high explosive seeping inside the fighting compartment. That one had been close! He glanced at Davis, who still stared at the floor as though his life depended on it. Penn had gone as white as a sheet, his small neat moustache quivering before he clenched his lips together and then unclenched them to speak.
‘Knock, knock. Who’s there?’
Nobody laughed, nobody smiled. They just looked at each other strangely, as they heard the next one coming. In the driver’s seat Reynolds kept the tank going full out, conjuring up reserves of speed from Bert that even he hadn’t known existed. The tunnel mouth now filled the breadth of his slit window. He had forgotten all about trains coming out of hillsides. His hands holding the steering levers were as wet as though he had ^dipped them in water. Sweat streamed off his broad forehead and dripped into his eyes, but he kept them open, seeing the beams of his headlights inside the tunnel now. Then the third one started to come down. The tunnel rushed closer and closer as the bomb fell lower and lower, louder than its predecessors. Please, Bert, please! Reynolds whispered to himself. The walls of the tunnel rushed forward and they went inside as the bomb detonated. The force of the explosion seemed to take hold of Bert’s rear and shove him inside the hill, followed by an appalling clattering sound, a low rumble behind them, then the ground under the tracks shook and they felt the vibration inside the tank. Barnes swore, swivelled the periscope through one hundred and eighty degrees, and stared back to where should have been an arched frame of daylight, seeing nothing but pitch blackness. The last bomb had caught the top of the entrance, blowing the hillside down over the track and sealing off the outside world.
‘Halt,’ Barnes rapped out into the mike, ‘but keep the engines revved up.’
The last thing he wanted inside this tunnel was an engine failure. He looked at the others and they stared back, stunned now by the nerve-racking silence. Except for the engine sound it was uncannily quiet. No shells whining past, no projectiles screaming down from above.
Cautiously, he climbed into the turret and pushed back the lid on its telescopic arms. It was like emerging into an underground cavern, a subterranean cave weirdly lit by Bert’s headlights. Barnes felt a tightening of his stomach muscles as he swivelled his torch beam into the dark corners, moving it slowly over the enormous rock pile. Through the intercom he told Reynolds to switch off the headlights and at the same moment he doused his own torch. Not a glimmer of light anywhere: the entrance was well and truly blocked. He climbed down off the tank and used his torch to guide him to the rock wall. Still no sign of daylight. The only way out was forward to the far end of the tunnel. When he climbed back into the tank he found Penn was still examining the wireless set. He put on his headset and ordered Reynolds to switch on the headlights. The corporal looked up and pulled a wry face.
‘It’s hopeless. Two valves went when the bullet charged in. Mind you, I’d sooner have it nestling in there instead of in my pelvis, but I haven’t any spares so we’ll have to wait till we get back to squadron HQ.’
Barnes tested the intercom again. At least that was still working, but being cut off from Parker was serious. Thank God, he had sent out one warning about the gap in the French lines. Taking the map case out of the rack he climbed down on to the hull and Penn followed, watching over his shoulder as he spread out a large-scale map of Belgium and Northern France over the engine covers at the rear of the tank. His torch focused on the area round Etreux.
‘This tunnel’s a damned long one, Penn. We’ll just have to jog through it and then make our way back as best we can, Jerry permitting. At least we’ll have a pretty good report on the area when we do eventually land back.’
‘It’s going to be a long way round, isn’t it?’ queried Penn. ‘As soon as we get out of the tunnel that canal bars the route back for miles. We’ll have to go over that bridge, then follow this road…’
His finger traced a wide semi-circular course which would take them back into the rear outskirts of Etreux. Barnes agreed that this was the only way and he cursed inwardly at the breakdown in wireless communication. Parker would be wondering what on earth had happened to them and meanwhile he’d have to fight the German onrush with two tanks instead of three. It couldn’t be helped, but they’d better get cracking. Climbing back inside the tank he explained the position to Reynolds and Davis, giving Reynolds a word of caution over the intercom.
‘This tunnel won’t be straight, you can bet your life on that, so keep your speed down to five miles an hour or less and watch for bends. I’m going up into the turret to help guide you. What’s the matter, Davis?’
The burly gunner with the squarish face and red hair had a hunted look and an air of tension radiated from him. He opened his mouth and closed it again without speaking.
‘Come on, spit it out, man,’ snapped Barnes.
‘You’ll think it’s stupid, Sergeant, but I’ve always had a horror of tunnels. I was a miner once, as I told you. I was in a colliery disaster in 1934 – we were locked in for five days and we thought we’d been buried alive…’
‘Well, Davis, this happens to be a railway tunnel and we’ll be through it in ten minutes, so get your mind on your guns. You never know,’ he smiled grimly, ‘we might meet a Panzer division coming up from the other end.’
He had reached the turret and given the order to advance when the hollowness of his joke struck him. If the Germans had just happened to break through at the other end, it might seem a very good idea to send tanks along the tunnel in the hope of taking Etreux on the flank. He decided that he’d better keep a close lookout ahead and his mind began to calculate the possible effect of two-pounder shells exploding inside the railway tunnel. The powerful headlights penetrated some distance into the tunnel and soon Barnes was warning Reynolds of a curve in the line. Now that they were away from the battle area the driver had rolled back the hood from the hatch and jacked up his seat so that his head protruded above the hull like a man in a Turkish bath cabinet. The journey along the tunnel was eerie and strange, the grind of the tracks and the throb of the engines echoing hollowly, probably very much like riding through a mine shaft, Barnes thought, and he glanced down into the compartment below. Penn was still fiddling with the wireless set as though hoping to perform an act of faith, but Davis sat rigid as a stone behind his guns, his body thrust hard into the shoulder-grip, his hand on the two-pounder’s trigger. Undoubtedly, Trooper Davis’ idea of a private hell was meeting a Panzer column deep underground.