It was a magnificent spectacle, he told himself: a conjunction of forces, on land, at sea and in the air, the largest invasion across this ocean since the Romans. He would write a book about it one day. But for now Ernst felt very small, very vulnerable, a tiny disregarded piece of a vast machinery.
And somehow none of it seemed real. After the months of playful training, all the saloon-bar arguments about the relative strengths of navies and air forces and the sea-going capabilities of river barges, suddenly the order had come. It was strange to sit here and share a cigarette with a man, trying to believe that by this time tomorrow you might be in England, and there was a good chance that either he would be dead, or you would, or both, trying to believe this was serious, not just another exercise.
And here, out of nowhere, came Josef. He strode along the harbour wall, his black SS uniform standing out against the camouflage green battle dress. The men glared at him, or deliberately ignored him. Traditionalists in the Army had never accepted the SS. But Josef rose above it all. When he spotted his brother he beckoned.
Ernst glanced at his obergefreiter, who shrugged, his head wreathed in cigarette smoke. Ernst slipped his arms out of his pack, leaving it on the ground, and stood and crossed to Josef.
'Brother.' Josef shook his hand warmly. Then he studied Ernst's face. 'You don't seem very pleased to see me.'
'I'm pleased enough.' He glanced back at his unit. 'It's just, I don't know, I feel like a junior worker in a factory favoured by the manager.' In fact, that was the aura Josef gave off, with his strutting about in his glamorous uniform. But then, Ernst thought, 1940 was a good year to be a Nazi with ambition.
'Never mind these jealous dolts.' Josef said this loudly so the others could hear. 'Look, you should appreciate me being here. I've been pretty busy these last hours.'
'Doing what? Shagging that English girl?'
He laughed. 'No. Planning. Preparing. You must be aware of the detail involved in an operation like this. The Fuhrer's final commit order has been broken down in the planning until we are visualising every footfall of every soldier on every beach. As for Julia, don't mock her. She, and the rest of her Legion of St George, will be crossing in the second wave with me. I have a feeling Julia Fiveash is going to be very useful to us in the days of the occupation to come.'
'She's as mad as a rabid stoat.'
'You're much too cynical, Ernst. Look, I found you because Mother would want to know that we shook hands at least before we parted for England.'
Ernst was touched. 'Well, that's true. Thank you for finding me.'
'Not that that was easy, in a mob like this. Now listen to me, Gefreiter Ernst. You are caught up in the detail, you will be a mere pebble on those shingle beaches. But you must see the bigger picture. The Fuhrer has determined that Churchill will never be reasonable, that England must be eliminated from the war – and that we have just enough to make Sea Lion work. And so by the force of his personality he has brought his great generals together for the project. Even Goering!' He waved a hand. 'And now we are ready; you can see it. Goering has beaten back the RAF, just enough. The Kriegsmarine with its barriers of mines and purloined French ships can keep the Channel clear for the crossing, just enough. Even the weather is behaving itself – just! And so the Fuhrer has ordered that we go. Within six weeks we will have half a million men in England, the British army, weakened by Dunkirk, will be scattered, and Churchill will be suing for peace, if he has not been deposed or shot.'
Ernst said, 'Six weeks? In the ranks it is said that the Panzers will run out of petrol in three days.'
Josef snorted. 'I believe there is petrol in England.' He gripped his brother's shoulder. 'Listen to me. We will find each other tomorrow or the next day, the two of us, brothers on English soil. Yes?'
The obergefreiter nudged Ernst. 'Hey, Trojan. Smile for the camera.'
A truck was driving along the length of the sea wall, with a camera crew set up in the back, and a woman shouting directions. It was Leni Riefenstahl, who had followed the Nazis from Nuremberg to Poland, and now to the edge of the sea. The men waved and shouted cheerful obscenities.
More planes thundered overhead, in layers stacked up tall in the air, so many of them that they turned the grey afternoon sky black.
XI
Once the raid started it went on and on, the planes rumbling across the sky, and the little shelter shuddered and rattled as the bombs slammed into the carcass of the town. Mary supposed the whole south coast was getting it, a final softening-up before the invasion forces landed.
Oddly she wasn't afraid. She had lived through too many raids.
When the others had gone running off to their posts, Mary had pulled on an overcoat, collected her bag and gas-mask, and went down to George Tanner's Anderson shelter. She got there just before the first planes came over. George had made the shelter a bright little place, like a den. He had painted the interior white, lined it with canvas to keep out the damp, and brought in blankets and deck chairs and a wireless set. There was even a camping stove to make a cup of tea. But the wireless delivered only static. Maybe the raids had knocked out the transmitting towers, silencing the BBC.
She had been back to the house a couple of times, trying to remember what needed to be done. She'd turned off the lights, switched off the gas, and filled sinks and the bathtub with water in case the mains got cut off. She had her briefcase with her research materials, and she packed a small rucksack with clothes and bathroom stuff. But then it was back to the shelter. She felt useless stuck down here, contributing nothing.
There were safer places to be than this. The best shelter in Hastings was a system of caves called St Clement's, which had been fixed up to hold a few hundred. And it would be safer yet to get out of town altogether and head off inland, where she could evade both the bombs today and, presumably, the stormtroopers that were likely to land here tomorrow.
But she didn't want to leave the house. This was the last point where they had all been together, she and her son, his new wife and her father, and even poor sweet Ben. She wished she had thought to arrange a way they could contact each other.
It occurred to her that even if the house was bombed flat, as seemed highly likely right this minute, the Anderson shelter might survive. Here, then. She scrabbled in her bag for her lipstick. It was an American brand, and she used it sparingly; cosmetics were just one item in desperately short supply over here. She made an experimental mark on the white-painted wall. The lipstick was bright red; you couldn't miss it, and, in the interior of the shelter, it wasn't likely to get washed off or rubbed away.
But where should she tell them to meet? Nowhere in Hastings itself; the place would be crawling with Germans if they landed. Somewhere nearby, somewhere memorable. She held up her lipstick, and wrote clearly:
MEET AT BATTLE. MW 20/9/40.
It was just as she dropped the lipstick back in her bag that the big bomb fell.
XII
Ben and Hilda had driven off in Mary's car, her rented Austin Seven. Hilda had to get to her radar station, and Ben to his Home Guard assignment at Pevensey.
With Hilda at the wheel they barrelled along the coast road, heading west through Bexhill and onwards. They drove past the long fortified beaches with their huge coils of barbed wire and emplacements of superannuated Navy guns. The traffic was heavy, as the men of the Home Guard and the army detachments struggled to get to their pillboxes and machine-gun nests, and WAAFs and Wrens hurried to their naval gun emplacements. But the road was clogged with civilians, fleeing from the towns. There were a few cars, and carts drawn by horses and donkeys, amid files of pedestrians pushing prams and wheelbarrows heaped up with luggage and furniture. All of this got in the way of the military vehicles, and of the ambulances straining to get through.