A German medical orderly was tending wounded, mostly German but one British with a shot-up kneecap. Some prisoners had been taken, men in battledress sitting with their hands on their heads, watched over by more SS troopers. The captured men were a mixed lot, mostly older men but some younger, aged eighteen, nineteen, twenty perhaps, men who had grown up during the years of the occupation.
And one man, aged perhaps twenty-two, looked familiar to Ernst.
Ernst spoke to the SS guard, offering him a cigarette. 'May I talk to that man?'
The guard took the smoke. 'Makes no difference to me or him. Partisans get nothing but a bullet, you know that.'
Ernst stepped forward and squatted down before the man.
The Englishman watched him with a kind of insolent curiosity. 'What's your problem, Fritz?'
'My name is Ernst Trojan. I am an obergefreiter of the Wehrmacht. You are surprised at my English.'
'Not that you speak it. You sound like you've picked up a Sussex accent.'
Ernst smiled. 'That would not be unexpected. I have spent much of the three years since the invasion billeted with a family, in a farmhouse near Battle. And you I recognise from their photographs. You are Jack Miller.'
Jack raised his eyebrows.
'Your family believe you are a prisoner on the continent. Or, perhaps, dead. They have not heard from you for a long time.'
Jack looked angry, as if he had been reprimanded. He was a young man, but Ernst saw in him something of his father's stubbornness. 'Well, you can see how I'm fixed, Obergefreiter. I broke out of a stalag in Hampshire pretty sharpish back in '41, and got picked up by this lot, and I've been with these blokes ever since. I had to stay off the radar, see. I've become a UXB specialist, if you want to know. These old men need somebody with a bit of military expertise to give them backbone.'
This banter was directed at his comrades. They grinned. 'Yeah, yeah. You tell it like it is, Windy.'
'And did you receive any of the letters sent from your family?'
'Not since I left the stalag. This isn't the kind of location you can send a postcard to, is it? But we've all got our duties to do, haven't we, Obergefreiter?'
'That is true.'
Jack hesitated. 'So how are they, the family?'
Ernst sighed, and wondered how to compress three years of family news, and such difficult news, into a few sentences. And yet he must try. 'Your father is well. He rages against the occupation.'
'So he should.'
'Your mother – you have a new little sister. Myrtle, born in 1941.' That perplexed Jack. 'That's a shock.'
'Your brother Alfie joined the Jugend. He had little choice.'
'And Viv? Wow, she must be seventeen now.'
'She is fine.'
'I did read about you. Those early letters to the stalag. They said you were a decent man, for a German.'
'Praise indeed.'
Fischer nudged Ernst. 'Time to move on, Trojan.'
Ernst stood.
Jack said, 'Herr Obergefreiter – my family-'
'Yes?'
'If you find a way, will you tell them, you know…'
Ernst tried to keep his voice level. 'Yes, of course. I will write. I will tell them how I met you. And when all this nonsense is over you and I will drink English beer together, two old men talking about the war.'
'You're bloody paying,' said Jack.
Ernst walked back to his unit, which was ready to move out. The conferring officers seemed to have come to a decision.
'So now what?' Heinz asked Fischer.
'We have new orders,' said Fischer. 'We split up. We Wehrmacht elements will make for the Hastings bunker, with the tanks. Meanwhile the SS and the Party men will make a dash for the town, hoping to get to the transports before the harbour is closed.' Everybody knew what he meant: the Wehrmacht men were expected to lay down their lives to cover the escape of the SS. Fischer said, 'The SS are going to take these prisoners with them.'
Heinz asked, 'Why not just shoot the bastards here?'
'The SS officers are concerned about due process.'
'Rubbish,' Heinz said. 'They're concerned about their own arses. They don't want to leave another mass grave, not with Tommy and the Amis half a day away.'
'Well, whatever, these are our orders. Form up.' Fischer walked around, blowing his whistle, calling for his men. 'Form up! Form up!'
Ernst looked for Jack again. But the prisoners had already been loaded onto a troop carrier, which roared away, dashing south.
XI
It was about three in the afternoon by the time Gary reached the strongpoint. It straddled the Battle road two or three miles north of Hastings, near a hamlet called Telham.
It was a formidable bunker, a concrete block set down uncompromisingly in the middle of English countryside. A triple wire fence surrounded it, and the bare earth between the fence and the building was no doubt riddled with mines and other nasties. The Germans did build well, you had to say that for them. An impressive anti-aircraft gun installation had been mounted on the roof, but that was a twisted tangle of metal, already taken out from the air.
There was a fire fight going on, closer in. Stray shots came pinging, and occasionally there would be the thump of a mortar. The Germans in the bunker were evidently still putting up a decent fight. But Gary could see that a Wolverine, a big mobile gun, had been drawn up to face the bunker. It was firing shell after shell, and was making craters in the concrete wall. A Sherman stood behind the Wolverine, quiet, its shoulders massive. It was like a huge beast waiting to pounce, Gary thought.
The countryside around was littered with the wreckage of battle. Gary and his mates approached along a road lined with burned-out tanks and mobile guns and armoured cars and trucks, shoved aside to clear the way. There were bodies too, stacked up in a field. Some had their faces covered by their jackets, but others had been stripped of boots and shoulder boards and other mementoes.
They were halted beside a burned-out Sherman tank, some way short of the bunker. While Danny Adams crawled forward to find out what was what, Gary, Willis and the rest of their platoon huddled in the cover of the tank.
They swapped cigarettes; the smoke dispelled the stench of burned oil and rubber from Gary's nostrils. Willis napped a bit. They were all exhausted, even though the exhilaration of the advance pepped them up.
Adams came crawling back. 'All right, lads, here's the picture. We've surrounded the bunker, the wireless masts have been shot up, the telephone lines cut. The Jerries are isolated in there and have got to be running out of ammo and fuel. But they're still fighting.' He sketched on a bit of paper. 'What we've got is actually three houses in a terrace, farm workers' cottages. The Nazis plated over the whole terrace with concrete. Inside you're going to find lots of little rooms, doorways, cellars. Outside, you've got this triple wire fence around the perimeter, and this whole area between bunker and fence is mined.'
'Lovely,' said Willis.
'Shut up, Betty Grable. Now here's what's what. As soon as that wall gives way we'll be one of the lead units going into the compound.' Adams drew stabbing marks on the paper with his pencil. 'We'll go in through the west fence, here. We'll have a sapper unit with us to cut the wire, and we'll make our way across the mines with a few Bangalores. At the bunker, in we go if we can, and the sappers will have a go at the wall with their picks. And meanwhile in the rear, more sappers will be clearing a channel for that Sherman. At the same time a Marine commando will be going in from the east side. Any questions?'