Times assured him that the Belgians and Dutch were withdrawing ‘without heavy casualties’.
Which puzzled the Reverend Chichester. For why, in God’s name, if they had suffered no heavy casualties, were they moving back?
Where had they gone, those people who only days before had been smiling, blowing kisses and shouting their encouragement as the 6th had made its way to the front? Now, on the way back, there was no greeting, no warmth, nothing but tired eyes that spoke of concern and even contempt.
Don’s unit were withdrawing to a suburb of Brussels called Boitsfort in a tight convoy consisting of fifty ambulances, water trucks, troop-carriers and other vehicles. A few refugees had begun to appear on the road in front of them with their cars and overladen carts. Progress began to slow, and a sense of fading order crept up on them. The 6th had seen no direct combat yet, but planes had begun to appear overhead, high in the clear sky, and they came from the east. They must have seen the convoy; you couldn’t hide an entire field unit, not with all their bright red crosses painted on the roofs.
They passed a single bomb crater at the side of the road. A dead horse lay beside it, the carcass still smouldering, its stench sweet: the first casualty of Don’s war. And moments later there were others, Belgian soldiers, a group of them at the side of the road, abandoned and bleeding. Some were badly injured from shrapnel wounds. They kept gesticulating towards the sky, but otherwise there was little sense to be had from them in their strange language, and no one seemed inclined to delay in order to discover more. The wounded were loaded into the back of the ambulances and other vehicles. First blood. Belgian blood.
Yet, that evening, Boitsfort displayed the air of a prosperous suburb whose mind was fixed on moving gently into the embrace of nothing more threatening than a glorious summer. The gardens were full of flowers, the restaurants and cafés crowded, the young women gay, even while in the back of Don’s vehicle a soldier was bleeding silently upon the floor. Someone mentioned they were passing near the battlefield of Waterloo.
The 6th drew up in front of an imposing building, the Hôtel Haute Maison. Inside the hotel a dinner-dance was in progress. Most of the male dancers were Belgian officers in freshly pressed uniforms, with women on their arms and champagne at their tables. As the British marched in bearing the bloodied casualties, a woman screamed, but in a moment the surprise was overtaken by a hurried calm. A Belgian officer began issuing orders to the hotel staff, the tables were cleared, the women ushered out, the band dismissed. The maître d’ passed calmly from table to table, extinguishing candles, removing bottles, everything else being swept up in the starched linen tablecloths so that it took only moments for the tables to be laid bare. The two largest of these were then positioned beneath the chandeliers, their tops scrubbed with disinfectant and transformed into operating tables. The walking wounded slumped into the dining chairs to wait their turn, while those who were beyond helping themselves were carried in on stretchers that were already stained beyond cleansing. The maître d’ brought in armfuls of clean towels and napkins to use as bandages, tears pouring silently down his cheeks. A priest arrived.
There was little time, often not enough time for the anaesthetic to take effect. More casualties arrived throughout the night, some civilian, all Belgian. The surgeons did whatever they could; often it was not enough. The dead were laid out in the ballroom.
War had at last caught up with Don.
Then, as the sun rose, the 6th were given fresh instructions. New orders. Fall back. Again.
‘How is it possible? How can it be that three armies have fallen back because of the approach of a mere handful of Nar-zi tanks?’
Churchill hunched over the map spread before him on the Cabinet table and held it down with his clenched fists. For many long moments he stood like stone as he studied what lay before him, refusing to believe. All day long he had been pacing up and down as reports flooded in of ever-spreading disaster, his head bent forward as though he intended to butt his way towards victory, but no matter how furiously he paced he couldn’t prevent disaster from catching up with him. The Dutch had surrendered, laid down their arms, given up. The Maginot Line was broken: the French were falling back, the Belgians with them, while the Germans had pushed beyond Sedan and were now halfway to the Channel. Luftwaffe bombers were now at airfields no more than thirty minutes’ flying time from the English coast. That morning he had been shaken awake by a telephone call from the French Prime Minister Reynaud. ‘All is lost,’ he had said in English. ‘The road to Paris is open. We have been defeated.’
And all through the day the calamities had continued.
‘Impossible!’ Churchill’s fists pounded the table and he exploded back into life. He turned to his right, to where Newall, Chief of the Air Staff, was sitting. ‘How many planes? How many planes do we have in France?’
‘Prime Minister, we had four hundred and seventy-four. I regret to tell you that as of this morning we had barely two hundred left still operational.’
‘In five days? We have lost more than half our strength in five days?’ Churchill gasped.
‘The Germans have lost a great many more machines,’ the Air Marshal responded sharply. ‘But we are outnumbered. I’ve heard of three Hurricanes taking on flights of thirty or forty enemy planes. They fight magnificently, but the French fuel is poor, their landing fields a disgrace and their radio communications nonexistent. This morning we attacked the pontoon bridges around Sedan. We sent in nearly eighty planes. Thirty-seven of them failed to return.’ He glared defiantly at Churchill through exhausted eyes. ‘If the RAF is in peril it is not through want of courage. Or of sacrifice, Prime Minister.’
‘The French want more. They want us to send over more squadrons.’
‘To what purpose, Prime Minister?’ Newall countered. ‘If the French are already beaten it would be like cutting out the heart of the RAF and offering it on a plate to Goering. There’s no point in sacrificing our aircraft simply to help the French improve their terms of surrender.’
‘We must keep them in the fight! No surrender. If France were to fall …’
The thought was so terrible as to be inexpressible. He left it hanging half-formed before them. A military aide came in, offered a smart salute and with lowered eyes placed another map before the Prime Minister. An update from the front. It showed an arrow through the place where the heart of the French Ninth Army should have been.
‘Dear God,’ Halifax whispered from his seat opposite Churchill. ‘I despair.’
‘Despair does not appear on the agenda of this Cabinet, my lord,’ Churchill growled. ‘Why, there is opportunity in such chaos!’
‘Then it eludes me, Prime Minister,’ Halifax responded calmly. ‘Opportunity for what?’
‘For counterattack! To mobilize our forces and take advantage of their tired and overstretched panzers before they can recover. I remember the twenty-first of March 1918. All experience shows that after five or six days they must halt for supplies – I learnt this from the lips of Marshal Foch himself. Look, look!’ His finger stabbed at the enemy salient protruding into France. ‘Once more they have exposed their neck like a wretch stretched out on a guillotine. So let us grab the moment to cut it off!’
‘This time, I fear, the French are fighting with a decidedly blunt axe.’
‘Then what do you propose as an alternative?’ Churchill all but spat, his frustration bubbling over.
‘Prime Minister, I have neither your abilities nor experience in the military
