Walcot. Brian Aldiss

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СКАЧАТЬ with a barn beside it, the whole making a disturbingly peaceful picture.

      The major, returning from the French pick-up, said to you in an aside, ‘Chap doesn’t speak Urdu, or much English, but it seems we should get a move on. We proceed via Rouen. There’s a straight road from Rouen to Paris, but we may encounter refugees en route.’

      ‘Move immediately, Sir?’

      ‘What else? Get on with it, Fielding.’

      As you climbed into your tank, a faint siren blast sounded from across the water. Your supply ship was turning, leaving France to make the return journey back to England. At that point you felt isolated. You thought there were perhaps half a million British troops on French soil, many engaged in battles with the Wehrmacht, but none of them were anywhere near your detachment. You prickled with a sense of peril and excitement.

      The vehicles rolled. You began the trek south-west on the more important road. Almost immediately, you encountered refugees. Many were on foot, travelling in families, fathers pushing prams loaded with provisions and cooking utensils; some were in cars of ancient vintage, with mattresses tied to the roof; some had carts, farm carts of various sizes, drawn by horses, with bedraggled sons and daughters of farmers who were trudging alongside the turning wheels. This was what the great French nation had been brought down to.

      The road you were taking was raised above the level of the surrounding fields to prevent it from flooding. Many refugees had problems getting up on the road from the fields; carts had to be heaved with a united effort, babies and small children had to be carried, grandmothers had to be pushed, cars in some cases to be abandoned. It was a terrible scramble, involving shouting, cursing and screaming. The fear was always that Stukas would fly over and strafe the crowds. Fortunately none appeared; the skies remained clear.

      But your progress was painfully slow. Some refugees, travelling on foot, seized the opportunity to climb on the sides of the tanks for a brief respite. You did not have the heart to order them off. Captain Travers had the passengers of his tank turned away.

      Your company had landed at dawn. Cloud had blown away, leaving blue skies. Just before one o’clock you arrived at the town of Yvetot, to find much of it in flames following a German bombing raid. A mixed bunch of soldiers and gendarmes was barring entrance to the town.

      Major Montagu handed over command to Captain Travers and went on foot to order the mayor to give us permission to pass through. He returned after ninety minutes, during which time the men had ‘brewed up’. One of the men handed you up a mug of tea. Montagu looked grim. The mayor had been injured by a bomb blast and his harried second-in-command had no control over affairs. He claimed that bomb craters had closed the streets and there was no road open to Rouen: you would have to turn back.

      The Major had persuaded or forced the man to sign a piece of paper, which he waved at the soldiery on guard. A large blond Frenchman wearing an old-fashioned helmet came forward and bellowed at the gendarmes to let the British tanks through.

      Moving slowly along the shattered streets, you all had your first close glimpse of the destruction brought by the war Hitler had wished upon you. It was a still day. Smoke lay like layers of mist, generated by buildings reduced to smouldering wrecks. A car burned quietly, its driver hanging dead from its open door.

      The hospital had suffered a direct hit. Injured persons were lying under blankets in the grounds, with unharmed people thronging about, nursing the dying, weeping, or trying to administer medicines or water to the wounded. A young boy was crawling on hands and knees towards the church, dragging a bloody leg.

      The church and its grounds were crowded with frightened people; nuns went among them, smiling and gentle, to soothe or to pray. Two men in uniform were dragging a corpse towards the cemetery. When they saw your vehicles, they stopped and stood rigidly to attention, saluting your unit until every tank had passed.

      All shops were closed. A once cheerful main street was completely dead. A queue had formed outside the shutters of a boulangerie. There were no signs of looting.

      The number of bomb craters had been exaggerated. Your tanks experienced greater difficulty negotiating the rubble of collapsed houses strewn across the thoroughfare. It took two hours before you had picked your way through Yvetot, and were on the road to Rouen – or ‘the road to ruin’, as the troops put it.

       What were you thinking at the time? Do you remember?

      I hardly thought. Oh, I suppose I was relieved in a way to see the devastation, the suffering. I told myself that this was how it had always been, that this was simply part of the tragic human condition. Or maybe I thought all that later, when there was time to think, when I was in prison.

       Were you aware that this was a peak moment in your life?

      No – for once I was totally preoccupied by the present.

      You were not more than a kilometre down the road, and were passing through a grove of poplars lining each side of the road, when three Stukas came roaring overhead. The bombs they dropped whistled as they fell, to add to the terror of the attack.

      No order was needed for you to dive for cover under or beside your vehicles. Hapless refugees fled to either side of the road among the tall trees, to crouch in ditches. Fortunately, the bombs did little damage, exploding in nearby fields.

      ‘Stay where you are,’ Montagu shouted. ‘The blighters are liable to come back.’

      Indeed the planes did come back. They wheeled and returned from the north-west, flying low down the road, machine guns blazing. Many refugees were hit; several were killed. Some did not die outright; screams of pain and terror rang out long after the planes had gone.

      You heard a dog yelping terribly with pain. Suddenly it was silenced.

      You had First Aid kits with you, and administered what help you could to the injured. A peasant woman, herself with a badly damaged shoulder, sat nursing a dead child. Over and over, in a choking voice, she cried, ‘Putain de bordel de merde! Putain de bordel de merde!’ You let her drink from your water bottle.

      A ragged hound was lapping up blood on the road. You kicked it aside. The scene was one of chaos, of splinters, of ruined limbs. A horse lay struggling in its death agonies, entangled in reins. It had broken a wheel of the cart to which it was attached. One of your troop, a young soldier called Palfrey, put his rifle to the horse’s head and shot it. He helped three men to cut the horse free and drag its body and the ruined cart to the side of the road. An adolescent girl, seemingly unharmed, was leaning against a tree, covering her face, weeping.

      Your wireless operator called to the major. An RT message awaited him. Montagu beckoned you to follow him. You stood by the wireless truck while he spoke intermittently in an incomprehensible language, all the while watching the chaos nearby. He finally pronounced an English ‘Out’, and returned the handset to the operator. He locked his hands behind his back and spoke quietly to his two officers, Captain Travers and you.

      ‘I thank God that a comrade of mine is in the Southampton HQ. We once took a holiday in Ootie together. We can bolo in clear Urdu to each other. Security is maintained – I doubt many Huns bolo Urdu.

      ‘The news in whatever language is extremely poor, gentlemen. Advanced German Panzer columns have overwhelmed Amiens and Abbeville, on the River Somme. In case you don’t know, those cities are not too far distant from here; about sixty miles.’

      He nodded towards СКАЧАТЬ