The Black Baroness (24 page)

The Colonel had not been out of his clothes for a week and they could see from his drawn, lined face how the strain of his responsibilities was telling on him. Soon after he had told them the bare facts he dropped off to sleep, in spite of the bumping they sustained from the ruts of the road which had been badly cut up by the heavy military traffic.

Twice during the afternoon German planes came over and machine-gunned them from the air, but even that did not wake the Colonel, and the chauffeur seemed already to have had sufficient experience of this form of attack to evade it by clever
alterations of his pace from a crawl to sudden spurts, which put out the Germans’ aim until they flew off to find easier targets. Gregory and Gussy, too, dozed between these strafings as they were both feeling the effects of the restless night they had spent, and neither the general situation nor the grey, wintry-looking afternoon was an encouragement to cheerful conversation.

At seven o’clock they drove into a small town and the car pulled up in front of a good-sized brick building which had the appearance of a school; but there were no children about. One of its wings had been shattered by bombs, and a British sentry was posted on the gate, beyond which were parked a number of camouflaged cars, so Gregory rightly assumed that the place had been taken over as a British military headquarters. As the car stopped the Colonel roused himself and, glancing round, told them that they had arrived at Andalsnes.

‘Thank God for that nap,’ he muttered as he got out. ‘I’m feeling lousy now, but after a cup of tea I’ll be myself again, and I don’t suppose I’ll have a chance to shut my eyes for another forty-eight hours if I’m to get through the work that our new movements will entail. Come inside and I’ll arrange for somebody to fix you up with permits to get out of this damned country; I’m sure you’ll understand if I have to leave you in someone else’s hands from now on.’

As they thanked him Gregory thought what a lot of utter nonsense was talked about the cushy jobs of the gilded staff. However desperate a battle the troops could generally doze for a few hours during the nights and had to be taken out of the line to rest after ten days’ fighting as the absolute maximum, but in an operation of this kind the staff had to work on indefinitely, day and night, with the responsibility for every move on their over burdened shoulders.

The Colonel passed them on to a hollow-eyed captain, who attached a special chit to each of their passports, then took them into a Mess where he told an orderly to look after them and said that they had better wait there until they were sent for.

No regular meals were being served in the Mess but there were plates of sandwiches and biscuits laid out on the table and the orderlies fetched them a fresh pot of tea. Staff-Officers came in from time to time, munched a few sandwiches, gulped down cups of steaming tea, exchanged laconic remarks and hurried back to their work again. The evening had closed in grey, wet and cold, a misty rain streaked the windows and it seemed to
Gregory and Gussy that they sat there for an interminable time.

At last, about one o’clock in the morning, the Captain returned and put them in charge of a Corporal, who, he said, would take them down to the harbour. Gregory asked if he thought that they would have to wait long on the ship before it sailed, to which he replied with a grim smile:

‘I don’t think so; quite a number of ships will be leaving Andalsnes for England tonight.’

In the darkness they could see little of the town or the fifth-rate harbour with its one rickety jetty, where the Army had performed the remarkable feat of landing an Expeditionary Force when at last the powers that be had completed their long-drawn-out arrangements and decided that the force should sail. German planes were overhead again and others were dropping bombs somewhere further to the south while searchlights swept the sky and anti-aircraft guns manned by the British in the town replied to the raiders. By the flash of the bombs they could make out the silhouette of destroyers and cargo-boats standing out in the deeper waters of the fjord, while by the light of the parachute-flares that were being dropped they could discern many smaller craft and rafts nearer inshore.

Down on the wharf there were several hundred soldiers and they soon discovered that many of the troops were French, so at first they assumed that the British were being reinforced by a new landing of Allied troops; but they soon discovered that, on the contrary, the French were loading their gear on to the small boats preparatory to going back to the ships that had brought them, and that the English troops were also man-handling guns and carriers on to the rafts that lay at the water’s edge.

Gregory and Gussy looked at each other as another parachute-flare dropped from a German aircraft and lit the scene. ‘Got it?’ said Gregory.

‘Yes,’ said Gussy. ‘We’re chucking our hand in.’

‘That’s it. Hitler’s made Norway too hot to hold us. I expect the decision was taken only a few hours ago as a result of the German outflanking movement from the Osterdal towards Dombaas. I only hope to God that the Boche don’t hear that we’re evacuating before we get clear of the harbour.’

‘They will if
La Baronne Noire
learns of it through French sources,’ Gussy remarked pessimistically.

Next second there was a blinding flash as a bomb fell on some sheds fifty yards from the wharf’s edge. There were shouts and
yells as the men ran for cover and flung themselves flat. Another bomb—another—and another came down, all within a radius of a hundred yards, and when the din of the explosions ceased they could hear the screams and moaning of the wounded.

When Gregory cautiously got to his knees he found Gussy beside him but they had lost the Corporal in the confusion.

‘Come on,’ said Gregory; ‘any damned boat’ll do; it’s no good staying here to be murdered.’ As he spoke he swung himself down into a motor-launch that was bobbing at the wharf’s edge, already half-f of soldiers, and stretched up a hand to help the still partially-disabled Gussy in after him.

More men scrambled down until the boat was packed, then the naval petty-officer who was at the tiller gave the order to cast off and the launch cautiously nosed its way out among the other craft.

Even during those few minutes three more sticks of bombs had dropped, this time on the town, and lurid flames leapt up from the shattered buildings. Overhead there was a horrid, irregular droning as the Boche planes circled above their targets, and before the launch was thirty feet from the jetty it suddenly seemed almost to leap out of the water. Another salvo had been dropped plumb on the embarking troops.

The fires that had been started now lit an incredible scene of horror and confusion. Some of the boats, with their human cargoes, had been blown to fragments; others had capsized, having been thrown right over on their keels by the huge waterspouts that the exploding bombs had sent up, and others, again, partially damaged, were now sinking. Scores of men were struggling in the water, yelling for help, and as they were hauled aboard the undamaged craft their clothes dripped red from the blood of their dismembered comrades.

The overloaded launch shot forward again; the naval petty-officer steering it with what seemed miraculous skill, between other boats and wreckage, to get away from the wharf which was now a roaring furnace. Out in the fjord the ships had switched on their searchlights and were replying with their antiaircraft guns. The whole sky was like a firework display of bursting shells and sweeping arcs of light; but wave after wave of German planes still came over, launching their bombs upon the town, the ships and the wharf with equal persistence.

Just before they reached the destroyer for which they were heading there was a slight lull and Gregory said to Gussy: ‘This
is no ordinary raid; it’s Fifth Column stuff; the Germans have been tipped off about the evacuation and they’ve sent up every plane they’ve got that’s capable of getting off the Norwegian airports.’

‘That’s it,’ Gussy agreed, pulling his long moustache. ‘I only hope it’ll be a lesson to our people to take a stronger line with the Fifth Columnists we’ve got at home.’

The destroyer on to which they were taken was soon crowded with troops, but it did not put to sea, as its boats were needed to carry more British and French troops off from the wharf to the transports which were further down the fjord. The sailors who were not manning the anti-aircraft guns or the boats had turned themselves into nurses and were tending the wounded to whom all the available below-deck accommodation upon the destroyer was turned over; so the unwounded had to remain on deck in spite of the bitter cold.

By the light of the burning houses, the bursting shells, the parachute-flares and the searchlights the scene was now lit nearly as brightly as if it were day, so even distant groups of figures could often be made out quite clearly. From their position on the deck near the stern of the ship Gregory and Gussy could see that all attempt to embark guns, vehicles and material had now ceased. The men were just jumping off the burning wharf into the first boats that could take them, but there was no pushing and no panic, in spite of the frightful gruelling that they were receiving, so evidently they were abandoning their equipment under orders.

For an hour or more Gregory assisted by passing ammunition for an anti-aircraft gun. The work kept him warm and gave him the satisfaction of feeling that he was helping in the uneven fight against the enemy. But they were firing at such a rate that the ammunition gave out, after which he could only crouch, shivering, behind a ventilator.

At last the short, terrible night was over and the grey light of dawn began to dim the searchlights and the flash of the explosions. Some of the transports were already moving down the fjord and at about half-past four the destroyer hoisted in her boats and followed; but the evacuation was by no means over. Gregory knew that the troops which had been coming off in the past few hours were only recently-arrived reinforcements; few of them had even been outside Andalsnes, let alone seen any of the fighting. It would be days before all the troops
that could be saved from the Gudbrandsdal Valley
débâcle
could be got back and embarked; and now that the Germans knew what was happening they could be trusted to see to it that not a shipload escaped without its quota of casualties.

The seamen cooks had been working without cessation, boiling great cauldrons of tea lashed with rum for the cold and exhausted soldiers, and as the destroyer steamed out of Andalsnes Gregory managed to procure two mugs of the piping-hot brew for Gussy and himself. When he got back from the queue he saw that they had rounded the bend of the fjord but the position of the town was still marked by a dense pall of black smoke that hung over it. With chattering teeth they gulped down the welcome tea but they had not yet seen the last of the enemy. As the convoy formed up in the broader waters a flight of bombers roared over and one small steamer nearby received a direct hit on its stern, which caused it suddenly to list to port, then turn right over.

The convoy hove-to and boats were lowered to rescue the survivors who were floundering about in the ice-cold water. Before the boats were well away the German bombers turned and came hurtling down again. The ships had long since run out of anti-aircraft ammunition, so they were virtually defenceless except for the Bren and Lewis guns with which some of the soldiers opened fire. As Gregory watched, one plane burst into flames and, turning over, pitched headlong into the fjord. A sudden cheer went up, but it wavered out into a groan as the other planes drowned it in a hellish tattoo, deliberately machine-gunning the survivors from the capsized troopship and the boats that were setting off to their rescue.

With muttered curses and half-choked by the intensity of their bitter fury the spectators stood there impotent to help their comrades but vowing vengeance in their hearts. More dripping, wounded and exhausted men were dragged on to the already crowded decks of the destroyer and she proceeded on her way.

By the time they reached the open sea the men had sorted themselves out a little. A number of those who had fallen in the water were now in borrowed clothes lent to them by the sailors; others had stripped and stood shivering in their greatcoats while their uniforms were being dried in the boiler-rooms. Every one of the sailors had given up his bedding, under which, and a number of tarpaulins, the troops sheltered as best they
could from the bitter wind and the salt spray that was now flying over the bow of the ship. Many of them were seasick and the long day and night that followed seemed like a timeless span of unending misery.

At midday on the Tuesday they put in to a Northern port and the heterogeneous collection of French and British troops, some with uniforms, some without, hollow-eyed, stubble-chinned and incredibly weary, crawled ashore to the reception stations on the docks that had been made ready for them.

As civilians with special passes Gregory and Gussy were allowed out of the dock at once, and an hour later they were on a train for London. Gregory had secured a paper, and before settling down in his corner to sleep he glanced at the front page; a short news item caught his eye and he began to laugh uproariously.

Three neatly-dressed business men and a spick-and-span officer, who shared the carriage with them, and had eyed the two bedraggled strangers with considerable misgiving, glanced up disapprovingly.

‘What is it?’ Gussy asked, as his friend continued to laugh almost hysterically.

Gregory controlled his shouts of mirth and spoke with sudden intense bitterness. ‘Two days ago a German was caught with a camera in a forbidden area on the South Coast. The magistrate fined him twenty shillings and let him go. Is Sir John Anderson a traitor or a lunatic; or is it just that nobody has yet told him that for eight months Britain has been at war with the most formidable, unscrupulous and merciless horde of fanatic-ridden brutes that have ever blackened the pages of history?’