It took them several minutes to locate Davis, and they found the gunner only a few feet away from where Barnes had been standing after Penn had jerked him back out of the path of the falling wall. At least, they found Davis’ head. The rest of his body was buried under the fall and it needed only a second’s examination for them to realize that he was dead.
TWO
Saturday, May 18th
Something very strange had happened to the world in this part of Belgium. The war had gone away.
Before they drove the tank out of the tunnel, up the rubble slope, and down the other side, Barnes had made a personal reconnaissance in the brilliant warmth of early evening. The first thing that struck him was the incredible silence, a silence which was intensified by the only sound, the peaceful twittering of an unseen bird. Beyond the tunnel the railway stretched away across open country, the track empty, the green fields deserted, not a sign of life anywhere. Etreux, or what was left of it, must have petered out farther along the hillside, because over to his right there were no buildings, no people. Only the still waters of the broad canal which barred their easy way back to Etreux.
He found the silence, the absence of gunfire, so disturbing that he climbed a little way up the hillside above the wrecked tunnel entrance, but still he heard nothing, saw nothing. The war had gone far away – to where? And which way? He sat down for a moment on the grass, his nerves strangely on edge as though the peaceful landscape were full of sinister meaning. He sat there blinking against the strong sunlight, drinking in the fresh air, then he got up quickly, went back to the tank, and gave the order to advance.
There had been no question of burying Davis, for Davis was already buried under a ton of rock, so they wrote his name, rank, and number on a piece of paper and left this under a rock close to the head. Then they drove away, too exhausted to feel much emotion other than shock at the suddenness of the gunner’s death. The thought uppermost in Barnes’ mind now was that his crew was reduced from four to three. They were all capable of firing the guns in an emergency and he told Perm that when the need arose he would act as gunner. As they moved along the rail track Barnes stood in the turret, map in hand, and his mind weighed up the situation grimly. At least they had almost full fuel tanks, which meant that they could travel one hundred and fifty miles along the roads, a distance which would be reduced by fifty per cent once they began moving across country, but this was the only credit point he. could muster. One crew member short, the wireless out of action, no knowledge of where Parker might be: they almost resembled a warship sailing into uncharted seas with no means of communicating with its base. Half his mind pondered the dubious likelihood of rejoining his troop while the other half toyed with the glimmer of an idea which was to grow. Whatever happened, they must find a really worthwhile objective.
A mile from the tunnel the track reached a level crossing and it was at this point where they turned off the railway line and began to move along a second-class road which ran between low hedges bordering fields of poor grassland. Six miles farther on they should turn right along a road which would take them into the rear area behind Etreux. But where were the armies?
Standing upright in the turret Barnes strained his ears for sounds of gunfire, strained his eyes for sight of smoke or planes. The fields stretched away, empty; the sky, a vault of pale blue, stretched away uninhabited. The uncanny feeling grew, a feeling of men moving into unexplored territory. The tank tracks ground forward at top speed, the engines throbbed with power, as though determined to enjoy to the full this race across open country after the confinement inside the tunnel, and then Barnes saw the first traces of battle – the faint marks of tank tracks in the fields, the occasional crater where a shell or bomb had exploded, and as they proceeded along the deserted road the traces became more frequent, less reassuring. At one point Barnes ordered Reynolds to halt while he got down to’examine wrecked vehicles by the roadside. They were~ burnt-out tanks, five of them, and they were French Renault tanks which looked as though they had fought the entire German Army on their own, A little farther along the_road he stopped again and Penn climbed but with him to look at a mess of French equipment. In the ditch, rifles lay there as though they had been thrown down in panic flight from something awful and overpowering. When Barnes picked one up he found the weapon was still loaded. A few yards farther along there were abandoned Army packs, abandoned helmets, all French. Search as he might, Barnes could find no German equipment. Two of the helmets were occupied, the bodies lying on their backs facing the sky. Then more rifles, all of them loaded.
‘I don’t like the look of it,’ said Barnes. ‘The loaded rifles, I mean. It looks as though they just ran for their lives. Tanks against men, probably.’
‘They’ve retreated, then,’ remarked Penn quietly. ‘Looks like it. A helluva lot must have happened while we were bottled up in that tunnel. According to the map there’s a village about five miles farther on – we should get news there. I may halt Bert outside and go in on foot. I don’t like the look of this at all.’
‘It could be Jerry who has retreated,’ said Penn thoughtfully. ‘Parker may be on the Rhine now.’
‘Wars don’t move at that speed, Penn, not in either direction. As to Jerry retreating, I still don’t like the look of those loaded rifles in the ditch – they smell of French retreat. We’d better get on.’
As they moved along the road Barnes saw more and more evidence that the scythe of war had passed that way, more and more burnt-out Renault tanks, smashed guns, still figures lying sprawled in the fields, helmets. And always they were French helmets. He was still waiting to see even one sign of German casualties in either men or machines, and he had not found it when he saw in the distance the first indication of life in this eerily empty landscape – a horizontal line of smoke. The line crossed the sky just above the ground and it hung perfectly still as though drawn in with charcoal. But at one end, the end which was approaching the road half a mile farther on, the line was growing and he realized it was smoke from a train’s engine, a train which was still invisible below the level of an embankment. He scanned the sky and stiffened, his hand tightening on the turret rim. High up in the blue vastness a formation of planes was flying on a course which seemed to parallel the direction of the train. He raised his glasses and focused them. It was impossible to be sure but they looked like a squadron of British Blenheim bombers and his heart lifted at the sight of them.
As the tank trundled forward he watched the planes coming closer and then, focusing his glasses along the road, he saw the level crossing which the train would pass over within the next minute. He swivelled his glasses back to the aerial formation and caught his breath. They were moving into line now -coming in for a bombing run. He gave the order to halt and warned his crew over the intercom.
‘I think there’ll be some bombs dropping in the vicinity shortly. Don’t laugh – but they’ll be coming from our chaps.’
No one laughed as they waited in the stationary tank, the engines still ticking over. Should they reverse, wondered Barnes, and then he rejected the idea. -They might just as easily reverse into a bomb. He prepared to slam down the lid but for the moment he waited, curious to see whether the Blenheims hit their target.