Silence Over Dunkerque Read Free

penetrated the surrounding din. “Attention... attention... attention....”

CHAPTER 4
    T HERE WERE THREE of them squeezed in on the front seat of the lorry—Three Fingers Brown, a former London bus driver, who was the best driver in the battalion, a young Scotch boy named MacPherson, and the Sergeant. For two days and nights they moved north with the columns of fighting men, gradually getting nearer the conflict yet never actually seeing action. All the time that horrible pageant moved past going south, the long lines of refugees and their vehicles blocking one side of the road. On the third day they came under fire for the first time.
    “Listen! Listen there, Sarge,” said the Scotch boy. “What’s that noise?”
    The procession stopped. Behind them the antiaircraft men fell out and hastily began setting up their guns in an adjacent field, while all around people left their cars, jumping for the side of the road and the shelter of the bordering trees. One minute the peaceful countryside was friendly and smiling in the spring sunshine, the next came that awful shrieking above.
    Before they could move from the front seat the antiaircraft guns began to bark, and three hedge-hopping planes with large black crosses upon their wings zoomed down, machine-gun bullets spattering the paved road ahead.
    The Sergeant cringed. Half the lorry was loaded with tins of gasoline, and he knew they would go up in flames if a bullet struck them, yet he was incapable of moving. He was chained to his seat. There he stayed, slumped down in a kind of bad dream, shielding his head in his hands. Most of the refugees were racing for the ditches, but death was faster. Men, women, and children tumbled to the pavement, flopping forward in the queer twist of the dying. One or two just stumbled, pitched forward, and fell on the black-topped road.
    Directly before them was a peasant with a little girl of four or five strapped to the wicker basket of his bicycle. Caught in a moment of panic, he stood feverishly trying to untie the knots that held her. The rain of lead hurled them both to the ground.
    It was there, it was here, it was gone. The zooming and shrieking died away, the machine guns in the fields ceased barking, and the three men sat silently in the front seat.
    “I’m going to be sick,” said the Scotch boy, sticking his head out the window.
    The Sergeant waited, understanding, and put his hand on the boy’s knee. It was their first time under fire, and he had sat paralyzed with fear like the boy.
    The line of refugees ahead was in disorder. Beyond them several automobiles were burning. The dead and dying spattered the road on both sides, showing exactly where the German planes had passed. Along the pavement, horses, dogs, people lay twisting in agony, or lifeless and silent under the tall poplars beside the road.
    The Sergeant nodded to Fingers, who pushed the starter. He moved the lorry gently forward, eased around the wrecked bicycle on top of which were heaped the peasant and his little girl. Just ahead a dispatch rider in khaki writhed in pain beside his motorcycle. The machine guns from above had treated child and soldier impartially.

CHAPTER 5
    F INALLY THE REGIMENT reached their positions along the river Dyle in Belgium. The next day Sergeant Williams was ordered to send out a patrol to reconnoiter the terrain in front of his battalion. He could have dispatched another non-com, but he wanted to see for himself what the country across the river was like.
    He chose a corporal who was alert and intelligent, and Three Fingers Brown, as driver. Brown had been refused enlistment early in the war, because he had only three fingers on his right hand. He had then challenged the recruiting sergeant, and they had gone to a shooting gallery where the non-com was so badly beaten that Fingers’ enlistment was immediately accepted. Short, stocky, cheerful, and dependable, he was a good man to have around.
    Armed with pistols and a machine