Alarm, p.15
Alarm, page 15
So Mr. Pigott knew from minute to minute precisely how long they had been racing on this southward course. Even so, though the hour was almost up, the bridge signal caught him by surprise.
A harsh, abrupt, imperious clang exploded suddenly. The three pairs of eyes flew up to the telegraph dial to see the hand jump from FULL to STOP, as if snatched by a devil. And then these three men deep down in her steel-enclosed vitals had the intimate sensation of knowing that she had arrived at the beach.
“Stop her!” bellowed Mr. Pigott.
The roused and pursuing Germans had no need of caution in their approach up the slope from the house; they knew their enemies were trapped. So that when Pomeroy whirled at his lieutenant’s exclamation and followed the line of his pointing arm he could see clearly a row of helmets growing like giant mushrooms from the very top of the slope. If he had any doubts of what he saw they were dispelled by the crackle of light which ran along the crest and the vicious whine of bullets over their heads.
Pomeroy’s snapped order was unnecessary, but he gave it all the same as he dived for the sand:
“Dig in! Throw up a mound of sand!”
The scene might have been humorous if its urgency had not been so plainly indicative of looming disaster—grown men on their bellies on the beach desperately throwing up individual sand-castles before their noses.
Sand, especially when it is wet, is an effective stopper of rifle bullets when the bullets are originating from a point more or less level with the sand-mounds. Unfortunately the Germans were considerably higher than their targets, and the commandos would need to build a breastwork several feet high to assure complete cover.
Under the heavy fire now directed upon them, this was impossible. Pomeroy knew that they still had plenty of ammunition—they had fired their tommy- guns hardly at all—and he snapped:
“Give it back to them! Keep ’em down! Jones, Mathieson, Thomas, throw up sand!”
They knew plainly what he meant. As soon as the machine-guns began stammering, the three men named worked like beavers to raise the level of their protection.
The Germans were normal shots, about as accurate as any soldier: the commandos were experts, assiduously and individually trained, and their bullets whined and spanged all around the line of helmets on the crest. The sandy edge was suddenly clear of enemy heads.
As soon as the helmets jerked back Pomeroy ordered the cease-fire; the need to conserve ammunition was imperative. He had expected perhaps a minute’s respite. But when after five minutes had passed, and his staring eyes could see no tell-tale movement on the ridge, and the breastwork of sand had assumed comforting dimensions, two thin lines of puzzlement cut down his forehead above his nose.
“What the hell are they up to?” he growled to Uckrose. “The devils are probably on their way to outflank us on either side.”
Uckrose shrugged, a negligent lift of one thin shoulder.
“They still have to get at us over the sand,” he said, his voice vicious.
“Our ammo won’t last for ever,” Pomeroy countered.
“We’ve got enough to take a lot of the devils with us!” his lieutenant gloated. Pomeroy glanced at him, briefly. You’re actually enjoying this, he thought. It was an irrelevant thought, for his eyes and his attention were concentrated on the ridge and both ends of it.
So were the remaining commandos. They lay stretched full length, the muzzles of their weapons making little V-shaped embrasures in the hump of sand in front of them, and through these each man kept a vigilant and despairing eye on the sector of ridge before him.
They knew, as Uckrose had indicated, that many German soldiers would die before they were themselves killed or captured, but that was an unsatisfactory solace, especially now that they had performed the object of their mission so brilliantly and completely, and could have expected to be taken off the beach and home to Alexandria ... which they easily could have been if the Australian destroyer had fulfilled its part of the contract.
But no man of them complained, or gave voice to the bitterness he felt: nor did he think of voluntary surrender. They would lay down their arms when they were overwhelmed; until then, they would work their weapons while they still had ammunition.
Pomeroy dropped his stare from the ridge and ran his eyes along the quiet backs of his men. The least suggestion of a smile twisted at the corners of his sinewy lips. You’re a good bunch, he thought, a bloody good bunch!
He fell the compulsion to speak rising in his throat. His toughness and his training worked immediately to stifle the urge, and his human desire overcame them. He cleared his throat, and he saw some heads turn a little towards him.
“You did a nice job, you tough commandos,” he said, and he suddenly did not care that his voice was husky. “I couldn’t have wished for a better bunch.”
They heard, and he knew they heard, but they kept their heads turned to the front. “We’re in a hole, and we won’t get out of it. You know that. But I don’t want you to blame that destroyer. I know her skipper, and I know what he can do. And has done. If he’s not here now, it’s because some clot reckoned he was needed more urgently elsewhere. I’m sure of that, and I want you to know it.” He paused, and his eyes automatically swept the ridge. “I’d like to know the result of our little party back in the house, whether the Eighth do any good out of it. But even if we never …”
“Listen!” said Uckrose abruptly.
Pomeroy jerked his head up from his crouched position behind the sandbank. He heard the sound clearly, though he could see nothing, and the nerve-endings crinkled under his skin. The sound awoke a sharp sting of awareness in his mind, but he could not place it for certain. And then as the noise rumbled and grew he felt as if a star shell had burst inside his brain. Understanding dawned upon him in a blinding light.
“Tanks!” he whispered, as though they could hear him.
“And more than one,” Uckrose supplemented. “No wonder the swine weren’t in a hurry to rush us!”
Pomeroy’s eyes were on the crest, tracing the position of this unfightable threat by its sounds, and his brain was churning with the forced impetus of all his vast experience, striving to find some way out of this steel trap.
He thought for one blind moment of taking refuge in the sea, ducking their heads to confuse the tanks’ aim, but the remedy was so futile he did not bother to follow it for more than a second after he thought of it. The Germans would simply fire at them at will, either killing them with blast or splinters. or else simply wail till they were exhausted with trying to keep afloat.
“Stand by to receive,” said a grim voice from the right of the line, and Pomeroy saw a juggernaut shape rear suddenly into his vision directly in front of them.
The tank, which they identified at once as a huge Tiger, teetered a little on the thin edge of the crest and then it came to rest with its nose pointing at them, and slightly downhill. They saw the barrel of the big gun come up and shake a little, as if it were sniffing at them. And then it was still.
A second or so after the first tank fired, its mate lumbered up beside it, to squat in a precisely similar position. They did not see this, for their heads were down in the sand as a banshee wail screamed over them and ended in a flung gout of white water behind them.
The second tank’s first shell was also over. In his mind Pomeroy could see the tank’s captain giving his correction orders, and the gunner applying them to his range dial.
For one wild moment Pomeroy considered breaking cover and making a desperate dash up the slope—a few hand grenades through those gun-slits would alter the position drastically. But he knew, with a dull and definite hopelessness, that they would be cut down by the tanks’ and ground troops’ machine-guns before they had gone twenty yards.
He flattened his belly along the sand, tucked his head in his arms and waited for the next salvo.
Both tanks fired almost at the same time. The crack of the discharge and the burst of the explosion were nearly simultaneous, the range was so short.
In front of Pomeroy the sand heaved and he felt the shock as a miniature earthquake all along his prone body. He felt more than heard the slam of shell splinters into the sandbank in front of him now, and then the thrown-up sand cascaded down over their bodies.
It was the fourth salvo which got Uckrose. One shell landed a little over, bursting on the beach twenty feet below them, almost at the water’s edge. Most of the splinters threw forward and built a little picket-fence of white pouts on the calm sea; a few of them came back, up the beach.
Uckrose was lying on his right side, so that he could lift his head for a moment after each salvo and check that they were not being rushed. Pomeroy, lying beside him, did not hear the jagged lump of metal strike: he heard only a short gasp, as if Uckrose had been surprisingly punched in the solar plexus. He had been, only it was more a ripping rapier thrust which had slit his tunic and abdomen wide open for a length of about eighteen inches.
Pomeroy jerked his head up and twisted sideways to look at his lieutenant. He saw Uckrose on his haunches, with his hands, the fingers spread out in a confining gesture, pressing across his stomach. He seemed all right, until Pomeroy spoke to him.
Uckrose glanced back at his leader with no recognition, his thin, hard mouth contorted curiously with shock. Through a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.
Pomeroy fumbled in his haversack, but because he was lying stretched out Uckrose had time to stagger to his feet before the major had drawn out a bandage.
“Get down, Clarry! Down!” Pomeroy snapped, and rolled over on his side to grab Uckrose’s leg. Uckrose stepped away from him and before he could be grabbed he was round the right-hand end of the sandbank and heading in a crouched-over, unsteady run up the slope towards the tanks.
“My God!” Pomeroy whispered, and they watched the erratic, hopeless, valiant effort. Uckrose kept one hand against him to prevent his entrails spilling out, and with the other he dragged a grenade from the pouch on his belt. His intention was obvious, and so was its ultimate fate.
The barrel of the right-hand tank swung a little, and steadied. They watched with helpless hatred chilling their blood; they saw the gun fire, and they saw, in almost instant reaction to the burst of smoke and flame, Uckrose’s body jerk over, with the middle of his back forming the curve of the U.
The wet sand was hard and resistant enough to explode the shells’ fuses, but Uckrose’s mid-section was too soft: the shell passed through him, continued on and exploded at the water’s edge. His body lay ten feet back from where it had been hit, resting on the sand and jack-knifed round together like an enlarged foetus.
It was a good thing that the other tank’s next shell landed just then: it occupied their horrified minds with their own danger, and it gave Pomeroy’s quick brain a chance to think. He swung his head to the left and spoke quickly, and then the same to the right.
“They’re going to finish us off,” he ended. “They can’t let any of us get back to spread the glad news about Grunthal. But we’ll take a few with us. Standby Mathers—you’re first.”
Two shells this time landed in a stunning concussion six feet in front of their shelter. The man called Mathers rose up in full view of the tanks, pirouetted round with his arms flailing, then sank down out of sight.
“Like a bloody ballet dancer,” Pomeroy grinned mirthlessly. “That’s the stuff. Now you, Thomas. Just throw up your arms this time. Don’t overdo it.” It was a dreadful pantomime, waiting for each salvo to explode in ear-shattering shock before you jumped up and did your act. They had all done their best to convince the watching Germans of their demise when Mathers, the “ballet dancer,” put on his second, and best, act.
The tanks had not fired for a minute, and Pomeroy was exulting that his stratagem had worked. Then, apparently as a final warning, or an extra safeguard, the right-hand tank, the one which had got Uckrose, fired another round.
It burst in front of Mather’s position, on the actual slope of their defending mound. Mathers rose to his feet as if he had been jerked up on a wire: he uttered no sound, but he teetered round twice and then took four steps and leaned forward and fell flat on the sand, in full view of the ridge. The top of his head had been clawed off by a splinter.
“All right,” said a throaty Yorkshire voice beside Pomeroy, “that’s enough. If they don’t come now I’m goin’ up there after them!”
Pomeroy laid his hand on the quivering arm.
“They’ll come,” he said simply. His voice took on a raspy note of command. “You’ll fire when I give the order. And that won’t be till the range is fifteen yards!”
They came, as Pomeroy had promised. They came in cautious twos and threes, spread well apart, machine pistols and rifles at the ready, bodies crouched over, and their movement cast grotesque hunchbacked shadows on the brightly lit white sand.
No vengeful fire met them, no flung grenade from the British position, and before the vanguard had come twenty paces there were fifty or seventy German soldiers running down that now-quiet slope.
“Steady now, steady,” said Major Pomeroy thickly. “We can get the lot and we will get the lot. Wait for it ...”
The Germans came on. Sixty yards off the leaders halted, as if some sixth sense had cautioned them, or some slight movement of a tommy-gun barrel.
The others clustered behind them. Pomeroy watched with his eye running along the line of his gun-barrel, watched for them to come closer—the range was yet too long for maximum effective fire of their Sten guns.
There’s one thing, he thought with grim appreciation. They’re smack in front of the tanks—so those swine can’t fire!
The next instant it seemed as if he had been proved wrong. At a guttural shout the whole German mass jerked into motion and came charging down upon the sandbank—and something whined over Pomeroy’s head and exploded in four abrupt geysers of sand and flame dead in front of the advancing mob.
Pomeroy had to see half a dozen bodies flailed high in the air before his stunned brain could assimilate the fact that the shells had burst in front of the Germans, a position they could not possibly have achieved if fired from the tanks.
His head swivelled, and he glared back over his shoulder, back to where a long low grey shape, its paintwork glinting in the moonlight and a smudge of brown cordite smoke drifting from its fo’c’sle, came nosing in toward the beach.
“Hell!” he said softly, “the destroyer …”
The rushing wind of Wind Rode’s fast passage had drowned the puny rattle of small-arms fire from the ridge, but the coughing crack of the tank guns had reached them clearly enough.
Bentley had altered course so that he would appear from behind the protecting shoulder at the end of the beach, his earlier departure point. It was then Mr. Pigott had received the order to stop his engines.
Through his glasses as they eased slowly past the point, Bentley had sized up the situation at once—it needed little interpretation. He had grabbed the director phone and said to Lasenby:
“Can you direct fire on to those German soldiers?”
“Yes, sir, I think I can,” Lasenby had answered.
“I don’t want to know what you think! Can you hit them?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Then open fire!”
It was a heavy responsibility for the Gunner—he also could clearly see Pomeroy’s hiding place. But he pinned his faith on the excellence of his instruments, on the fact that the range was point-blank for big guns, and that the trajectory of the high-velocity shells would be perfectly flat—and on his own judgment.
Mr. Lasenby’s faith in all these things was justified.
“Nice shooting, Guns,” Bentley said into the director phone. “I think we can leave Pomeroy to handle what’s left. Those two tanks up the slope look unfriendly.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the Gunner answered abstractedly. He had already given the order for range to be elevated. and was watching his bursts leave the milling mob of soldiery and climb up towards the tanks.
Naval guns have a much higher muzzle velocity than comparative sizes in the Army. Wind Rode’s shells were flung out by their hefty cordite charges at a velocity of more than two thousand feet per second, and they weighed forty-five pounds. When he shifted target to the tanks, Lasenby did not change his ammunition from the direct-action shell he had fired at the soldiers—armour-piercing at that range would have punched right through a tank and clean out the other side.
He hit at them with shells that burst on impact. Even so, the force was so great that the first tank, struck between her tracks, was hurled bodily over on one side before the big shell exploded and blew her nose open and flung a killing flail of white-hot splinters round her interior.
Lasenby was using the two forrard mountings, which meant he was delivering four shells every broadside. Outclassed and outranged, the second tank had turned to scuttle down behind the protection of the slope when both A-gun’s messengers hammered at her exposed side in a slamming blast that ripped her open like a jam tin and flung her over so that she came to rest on the turret. From her gutted innards a fierce flux of flame poured up into the watching sky.
“Cease firing,” Bentley ordered, and then he told Randall to get the multiple pom-pom to work on what was left of the German troops.
Gellatly’s pom-pom shells fled across the short stretch of water in bright red stitches of tracer and ended their brief flight in bites of flowering red among the running troops.
Bentley saw half a dozen figures leap from behind the sandbank and come racing for two dark shapes on the water’s edge. He saw a figure who by its size he judged to be Pomeroy halt, turn back, pick something up, fling it over his broad shoulder and then continue his run.
And he saw them cluster round the shapes on the beach and then look with despair in their faces at the ship.
Though Bentley had not foreseen that the dinghies would be slashed to ribbons by shell splinters and bullets, he had seen that the commandos would have to get aboard in much quicker transport. Hooky Walker was on the job, and in not more than a few seconds after Pomeroy’s men reached the water Wind Rode’s motor-cutter was bow-waving round the stern and making for them.
