Читать книгу This Above All - Eric Knight - Страница 3

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When spring was almost done the war began in earnest. In that town, people walking along the Esplanade could hear the guns.

The people were somehow relieved. They said: “The sitzkrieg’s over at last.”

They walked in the hard sunshine, and waited for news of victory and listened to the guns. The guns were not loud for they were far away, far up the Channel, over on the Continent. But when the fine breeze came in gladly from the sea the sound of the guns came muttering with it, and people said: “Hear that? Now he’s catching it!”

Sometimes the sound was a single one, a trembling of air as if someone had stroked a big drum with one finger. Sometimes the sound overlapped into a long mumbling like a dog’s first growling.

But still the holiday people and the seashore trippers walked gladly in the unusually good weather. They promenaded on the stone-faced Esplanade, breathing deeply of the rotting-kelp and brine smell of the sea. Only occasionally they would stop and say:

“Listen! Hear that? The guns!”

“Yes. Now he’s catching it at last.”

They listened half anxiously because it was, after all, a war, and half gladly because now all the nervous strain of waiting was over. But they were confident about the boys over there and the Allied armies, and the sounds were too crooning and remote to have evil meaning.

In a curious way they were personally proud when they heard the far-off cannonading. It was as if hearing the guns allowed them to take some small but important part in the war; as if, by the mere act of listening, they also were serving.

The weather was beautiful for walking. Sometimes the people strolled out beyond the town, going up to the cliff top. There, high up over the Channel, the sea breeze came over more steadily, like greater music. That steady wind always blew. The grass tops were riffled in sweeping planes so that they reflected the blue of the sky. Far below in the bays and coves the waves moved in like a slow motion-picture.

The guns sounded much plainer up there. Just sitting or lying there and listening made one feel in some indefinable way like a pioneer.

The guns sounded louder in the town, too. Some of the holiday people started leaving.

After that, to the regular townspeople, the unusual spell of beautiful sunshine began to seem like a wasteful gesture of nature, like an oversupply of fruit in a peculiar glut season, or an inexplicable run of herring when every fishing smack had such a remarkable catch that no one could sell any in the overcrowded market. For fine weather in that town was a business.

If there hadn’t been a war the place would have been jammed: all the boarding houses, all the hotels—even the Channel Hotel which was the most exclusive. That was the only way to make money—to be packed to capacity in the fine weather.

They said:

“After all, it’s only a short season at best, and you have to make what you can to carry you through the winter.”

Now, at last, they had good weather, and yet the place was, as they said, getting practically empty. They did not blame the war much. Rather, they blamed the weather. It wouldn’t have been half so bad, they said, if it had only been rainy. They wished it would rain, so that all the fine sunshine wouldn’t go to waste.

But they tried not to complain. After all, they said, there is a war on. One should be ready to do his bit without complaining—now that the war had really started at last and you could hear the guns.

You could hear them very plainly now, especially at night when the blackout made the town unusually still and hushed. Then the place went dead. People went for a short stroll after dinner, and when they came back for a nightcap in the bar they said it was curious how clearly you could hear the guns at night.

They listened to the B.B.C., and discussed tactics. Just let him wait a while. It wasn’t Poland or Norway this time. He was up against a real army and he was getting a nasty shock. The French generals were the best in the world. Hitler had made his big mistake at last. The way the guns were going meant that we were giving him hell.

No one thought of it the other way round, not even when the gunfire came nearer—not even when it got so that you could hear gunfire at night when you were indoors.

You didn’t have to go out on the Esplanade or on the cliff top any more. Lying in bed, you could hear the sound of the steady wind, and the sound of the waves thumping—but you could hear the thump of the guns, too. The windowpanes would chatter. Sometimes you could even hear the shells going through the air.

There would be a boom and then a long, sighing sound. It was like a train in the Underground, only heard at a great distance. The sighing would go on for thirty seconds, forty seconds, fifty—and then a crrrump. That was the way it sounded. Boom—then a sigh for as long as you could hold your breath—then crrrump! It had landed. The sound blanketed in the air. More often than not the crrrump was louder than the boom.

Before May became June you could see the gunfire. The sky to the southeast blinked and flashed and sometimes broke into a sustained glow. Each night the glowing crept farther west.

The situation seemed confused. In the Channel Hotel bar everyone listened stolidly to the B.B.C., but that didn’t make it any clearer. When the news was over they said, well, you couldn’t expect the B.B.C. to broadcast information that would give away our plans to the enemy, could you?

It was all very confusing until Churchill declared it was the Battle of the Bulge. That made it easier to understand. The Germans had pushed into a great salient. If you drew a picture you could see how simple it was. All we had to do was press at the neck from the north, the French do the same from the south. Anyone could understand it. One wondered why the Germans had been so utterly foolish as to get into such a situation.

But soon no one spoke of the Battle of the Bulge any more; just as no one spoke about Hitler missing the bus any more.

Now the guns were drumming away and rattling windows all the time. They blazed away to the southeast, the south, and finally to the southwest, too.

The war was going farther and farther along the Channel, and everyone seemed so impotent. Something seemed to be wrong. It was as if the Esplanade were a grandstand and the war was parading past right under your eyes—and you couldn’t do anything to help.

The guns drummed away all day and all night; but no longer they said: “Now he’s catching it!” For at last they began to think that it could be the other way round. The shells might be dropping on their own men.

For the first time, people began to think about high explosives and screaming steel and human flesh.

All but a handful of the few remaining visitors packed up and left. It was too terrible to sit in the glorious sunshine all day while the guns told you of this horrible thing happening almost under your eyes. The British army was being slaughtered, practically as you looked on. For it was clear now that it wasn’t the German right wing that was surrounded—it was the British army.

It came out over the B.B.C. that the Belgian king had surrendered, and left the flank open. The Belgians had let them down. The French had let them down. There was nothing now but the British army, surrounded by greatly superior forces. The Germans had Calais. They were within a few miles of Dunkirk. The British army was fighting for its life.

And then, at last, war became terrible. When people heard the guns they shuddered. It was horrible to think of that endless cascade of shells being poured in on the tightly compressed body of the British army.

The nights became a torture of sound. There were crashes that almost shattered the windows. It meant the warships were in action. The Fleet was trying to help hold back the German army.

Now, at night, the skies erupted bursts of light and glowed with flame. In the day V-shaped squadrons of planes went roaring out over the cliffs. They snarled away at top speed, and people knew they were racing to help plug up the leaking left flank. The planes tore away and came back. They shuttled over the Channel with their loads of bombs so endlessly that it seemed as if both men and machines should drop from the sky, in defiance of aerodynamic laws, from sheer weariness.

It was then that, at last, the fine weather ended. It turned foggy.

The very last of the visitors left. They felt it had been a terrible experience, but they had stuck it out. And one thing, the weather had been fine. It was no use staying now that the one good thing about it had come to an end.

The fog kept up for two days. In those two days they got the British army out. Naval craft, private craft, it didn’t matter. Tugs, destroyers, yachts, trawlers, barges, pleasure boats, rowboats, canoes—anything that could float. They got in and got them out while the rear guard fought the enemy off. The beggars’ flotilla went back and forth—all day and all night and all the next day and all the next night—as long as boats stayed afloat, men sailed them.

That way they got most of the British Expeditionary Force home again. But not all. For the fog lifted and it was fine again.

The guns still went on pounding, and people knew that some of the rear guard was still alive in Dunkirk. Those men fighting knew there wasn’t much chance of getting boats to them now—now that the fog had lifted, but they fought on.

As long as the guns went on it meant there was a rear guard left. Standing on the Esplanade, the people of the seashore town knew that. They thought that and listened to the guns, pounding away at human flesh. They stood in the sunshine and thought of it, over and over. They were hearing the British rear guard being smashed to bits.

Suddenly everything became very quiet. The sun shone uselessly and splendidly on the holiday town. It shone on the empty splendor of seaside resort magnificence—the Esplanade, the unbroken regiments of ornamental lampposts, the steadfast battalions of benches.

The guns had stopped. It was all over. The Germans had Dunkirk.