‘Glad you made it. It’s every man for himself under fire. We’ll hole up here for a while. God knows who they’re really aiming at, but it means there must be a unit nearby. We’re on the right track,’ he said, gaining his breath.
‘Good to think I can rely on you in a crisis,’ Ronnie said. He made light of the situation but for a while there, he had feared for his life. Being a pilot didn’t prepare a man too well forcombat. He liked to think that, had it come to it, Jean wouldn’t have left him behind but would have fought with him, by his side. They settled down for the wait until the bombardment stopped or the Germans moved on. Ronnie hoped it wouldn’t be too long.
While they waited and listened for the receding fire, Ronnie thought of home. He fixed the names of Ypres and Somme in his memory. He would ask Dot and his mother if there was some sort of family connection to this part of France. It was almost as if he was destined to be here.
After several hours of waiting, the guns finally stopped. There was still some light left in the sky.
‘Come on,’ said Jean, standing up and grabbing his pack. ‘Time to get out of here.’
‘Exactly where are we going?’ Ronnie asked. ‘You haven’t told me yet. Do you have a plan for me to get back to England?’
‘We can’t go into Dunkirk obviously — too many patrols,’ Jean replied. ‘I’m taking you to meet with members of the Resistance who have contacts with the British army. There are plans to evacuate more troops, the ones who got left behind like you.’
This sounded very vague to Ronnie. He was far from being safe, but he had no choice. He wondered where Tilly was now. Was she back home? He hoped so.
Chapter 23
Tilly was as far from home as Ronnie was. She stayed out of sight, trapped in the cellar for another whole day and was only allowed out under cover of darkness. What were they going to do with her? She couldn’t stay locked up until the end of the war, but safe routes home to England were becoming less and less viable. Tilly was told that the only safe passage available was far from Dunkirk but there were rumours that other evacuations were planned where the presence of the German army was not as strong, further down the coast.
‘We have a job for you to do in exchange for help to reach England,’ Celine said.
Tilly listened as Celine explained to her that there were many dead and injured French soldiers lying in a wooded area to the west of Dunkirk. They had been providing support to British troops but in the scramble to evacuate the town, they had been left behind. There was a possibility that some of the soldiers were still alive, but nobody had been able to reach them.
‘We want you to drive an ambulance there tomorrow and retrieve any wounded. We have one driver, but we need to rescue as many men as possible. If you join us then we can help more men to survive,’ Celine explained. ‘I will send two stretcher-bearers and an armed guard to assist you.’
Tilly knew that she would be putting her own life at risk, but if she wanted to get home she had to agree to this task.
She nodded her agreement.
‘Let’s get on with it, then,’ she said.
The group set out to find the casualties as the sun was going down. There would be just enough light to find the men and then bring them back under cover of darkness. She hoped that there would be enough room to save the injured but if she had to make more than one journey, at least she would know the way.
As the sun dipped below the horizon, Tilly left the safety of the cellar. They moved from doorway to doorway through the back streets to the outskirts of the town where they commandeered two ambulances from the hospital. They were lucky not to encounter any German soldiers as they cleared the outskirts of the town. As they approached the dark wooded area, Tilly prayed that there would be enough light. They parked as close to the edge of the wood as they could and set out on foot with the stretchers. The silence that surrounded them was eerie. Although there was no sign of any enemy soldiers, they dared not shout to discover where the men were. They crept along. The only sound was of cracking twigs and branches under their feet. An owl hooted somewhere up in the trees and a fox screamed. Tilly froze. She thought she heard something. She indicated to her companions to be still and listen. It was the sound of moaning. They followed the sound and eventually came to an area where some makeshift shelters had been constructed. This group of men had obviously been defending this woodland for quite some time. She was finding it difficult to see. She stumbled over something lying in the undergrowth and when it gave way under her feet, she tripped and fell. She held her hands out to save herself and her face came nose to nose with that of a dead man. His eyes were wide open and his mouth grimaced as if he had been startled by what was about to happen to him. What had happened to him was a slash across his throat that had released the life blood from his veins. The still sticky mass had soaked into his hair and, as Tilly tried to extricate herself from an entanglement with his flesh and blood, she tried not to breathe in the stench of death. But she couldn’t escape it.
She pushed herself to her feet, wiped her hands on her trousers and fought back the nausea that threatened to rise in her throat. She was used to seeing dead bodies, but somehow the immediacy of being this close to a decaying body was enoughto make her retch. The other French Resistance fighters were moving among the litter of bodies that lay across the woodland floor. She scanned the area, listening for any signs of life.
One of the fighters called out, ‘Il est vivant.’
The stretcher-bearers lifted him carefully. Tilly checked him over quickly and told them to take him to the ambulance. He was hanging on to life and would probably make it. One of the other casualties was not so lucky. He had received a bayonet wound to the stomach. Would he survive? She looked at him. Who was she to make these life-and-death decisions? If they loaded him into the ambulance and he died en route, they would be forced to come back for others who stood a better chance, then his place would have been wasted. She looked at him. His eyes were closed and he didn’t look as if he was suffering. His breathing was shallow. It pained her to do so, but she looked up at the stretcher-bearer and shook her head. If there was room in the ambulance, when they had rescued others, she would come back for him. She stood over him. If he had opened his eyes then, if he had grabbed her hand, she would have taken him. He didn’t. Reluctantly, she moved on.
As they picked their way through the bodies, they lifted as many as they could and transferred them to the two ambulances. Once the wounded realised they were being rescued, they began to call out to reveal their hiding places. Some of them had managed to crawl away during the attack and hide themselves deeper in the woodland. The search for these men took them longer than expected. As the last of the light faded, they made their way back to the town. They had managed to retrieve twelve soldiers. All of them in a bad way physically or so traumatised by their experience that they simply were too terrified to speak. Some of them had given up. They were too weak or unable to walk to drag themselves back to the town and medical help. Tilly administered morphine to those most in pain and they set off forthe sanctuary of the hospital. As she drove off, she thought of the man she’d left behind. Would his face ever leave her?
That night, she finally dragged herself onto her pallet in the cellar and managed to get two hours’ sleep before activity started around her. She could hardly move for exhaustion, but the work of the Resistance didn’t stop because Tilly Truscott needed her rest. She finally gave up when Celine arrived and began to thank her enthusiastically for what she had done. Celine was doubly relieved because her younger brother was among those Tilly had saved.
‘I didn’t know whether he had survived the attack. I just hoped that you would find him. I’m so grateful to you,’ Celine said.
Tilly wondered if Celine would have been quite so insistent on sending a rescue party if her own brother hadn’t been one of the soldiers trapped in the woods. But then she reprimanded herself for ungenerous thoughts. Wouldn’t she have done the same for Ronnie?
‘If only I could persuade you to stay,’ Celine continued. ‘We could do with brave women like you to fight our cause. You could do so much more to help your English soldiers if you stayed.’
For a moment, Tilly wondered if she was right. Providing a safe escape route was as important as retrieving men to patch up and send back to fight again and possibly die. But her own family needed her too. She must let them know that she was safe. If she lost contact with the British army, they had no way of knowing if she was alive or dead. She needed to get back home. If this war went on longer than anyone wanted or expected, then there would be other opportunities to serve. Her body was exhausted and her mind disturbed by all she had seen. She would be more use to everyone if she recuperated.
‘I need to get back to England,’ Tilly said. ‘I’ve done what you asked. Now keep your half of the bargain.’
‘Then prepare yourself for a journey. We have discovered that a troop train will be taking survivors to Cherbourg and the British are sending a ship to transport them back to England. You need to board that train. The evacuation is planned for June thirteenth.’
* * *
