Lamb stared at him and was just about to challenge his remark when a voice from his rear shattered the opportunity.
‘Sir, look. Over there. In the trees.’
Lamb raised his field glasses and looked through them across the river towards a spinney of poplars by the edge of the road. At first he thought the shapes he could see were more refugees, but then he saw the flash of steel and knew at once that they were the enemy.
‘All right, here they come. No one fire until I give the command. Parry, set up the mortar over there. Zero in on the centre of the bridge. They might try and use the wreckage to get across.’
He had hardly spoken when there was a burst of machine-gun fire from the opposite bank. ‘Take cover.’
Lamb pulled his revolver from the canvas holster on the left side of his webbing belt and yelled, ‘Sarnt Bennett, Corporal Briggs. Get that Bren working. Thompson, you and Massey get on the anti-tank rifle. Save it till you see any tanks. The rest of you save your ammunition until you see a good target, then let them have it.’
He felt anger now. Anger at what he had just been compelled to do, an act that sickened him and went so much against everything that he believed in. Killing helpless civilians. And here now was the chance to assuage that anger, against the men who had caused it. He heard the Bren rattle into action and saw the flash from the muzzles of the German rifles as the enemy responded. There were shouts from across the river.
Lamb yelled at the section closest to him, ‘Perkins, Dawlish, all of you, keep your heads down and your guns trained on the road. See the first flash of field grey that comes into range and you open fire. Smart, get on the blower back to Company HQ. Tell them we have contact. Enemy tanks, estimate zero six, infantry four zero plus.’
As his batman spoke into the handset of the .38 radio, the enemy machine gun crackled again and turned over a few sods of earth on the lower part of the riverbank. Smart turned to him. ‘Can’t raise them, sir. Line’s dead. Not a thing.’
‘Keep trying.’
Lamb opened the chamber of his revolver, checked that it was full and snapped it shut again. His fellow officers agreed: the Enfield pistol was a sad excuse for a sidearm. They said the enemy had automatics that never jammed and fired like a dream. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on one. But that of course would mean either taking one off a dead German or winning one himself in hand-to-hand fighting. Perhaps, he thought, in the next few minutes he would have a chance to do both. But his keenness quickly turned to disappointment.
Bennett was at his side. ‘Pull back, sir. CO’s orders. We’re to pull out.’
Lamb shook his head. ‘What?’
‘We’re pulling out, sir. From the CO.’
Lamb shook his head again and laughed. ‘No, Sarnt Bennett. This is no time for one of your pranks. There’s hundreds of Jerries over there and it’s our business to deal with them and see they don’t get across this damned river.’
‘Sorry, sir. It came direct from Battalion, it did. Our orders are to withdraw. Clear as day, sir.’
Lamb frowned. This was no joke. ‘You must have got it wrong. We can’t be pulling out, Bennett. We’ve just blown the bloody bridge and we’ve got the enemy pinned down. And what about those poor bloody civilians down there dead in the river? I’m telling you, man, the Jerries won’t get across here for hours, and then we’ll be waiting for them. You can see that. What we need is reinforcements.’ He turned to his batman. The poor man was still trying to contact company HQ. ‘Anything?’
Smart shook his head.
‘Right. Is that runner still here, Sarnt?
‘Sir.’
‘Then get him to take this message back to Company HQ: “Need reinforcements soonest. Your order not understood. Please send help. Enemy now in range preparing to engage.”’
The sergeant pursed his lips and nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Mister Lamb, sir. That runner is straight from the CO. It was quite clear, sir. Pull everyone out, he said. Everyone, sir. And that means us. I’m sorry.’
Lamb stared at him. This was madness. First they tell him to stand his ground and to blow a bridge, killing dozens of innocent people, and then they tell him to abandon the position.
Lamb shook his head. ‘I’m sorry too, Sarnt.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry because I just can’t do that. Not until we’ve killed a few more of them, at least. Then perhaps we’ll come along. Eh? Why don’t you tell the Major that we’re . . . I know. Just tell a runner to tell him we’re caught up in a firefight and trying to disengage. Tell him that we’ll be with him presently. Just as soon as we can retire without the risk of taking any further casualties.’ He was damned if he was going to pull back now.
The sergeant looked at him and smiled. He had somehow sensed that Lamb wasn’t going to take an order like that without some sort of protest. ‘Very good, sir. If that’s your orders, that’s your orders.’
‘That is an order, Sarnt Bennett. Send one of the men back to the CO. Thank you.’
The sergeant turned and was about to go when he looked back. ‘There was one other thing, sir. Runner said that he’d heard on the wireless at Battalion HQ that Mr Chamberlain’s been given the heave-ho. Winston Churchill’s the new PM. Fat lot of good that’ll do us though, sir, eh?’
‘Thank you, Sarnt.’
Lamb smiled and, as his sergeant turned and trotted off at a running crouch to send word to Battalion HQ that they would not be obeying the new orders, he turned back to his front. It was strangely quiet again now, save for the occasional groan from one of the wounded. So Chamberlain, the great appeaser, had finally gone and Churchill was in. He wondered what his father would have made of that. He had never had a good word to say for Churchill after the Dardanelles. Lamb frowned. The man was damned old, too. Didn’t the country need new blood now? A young man at the helm? The news did nothing to raise his downcast spirits. He peered across the river and began to make out small grey-clad figures darting through the trees. They were moving up in some strength. Within minutes he knew they would be dug in. Focusing his field glasses, he froze as he noticed that at the edge of the road across the bridge, where the charge had blown a hole, a party of men were climbing down into a section that remained above the river bed, passing down planking and metal sheets. A bridging party.
Without thinking he shouted to Valentine, who was in the neighbouring trench, ‘Corporal, how many grenades do you have in that hole?’
‘Dunno, sir. I’ve still got mine, and White has the same. Then there’s Perkins and Butterworth.’
‘Right. Get them all over here to me and yell across to Mays to do the same with his lot. Double quick. And bring a sandbag.’
‘A sandbag, sir?’
‘You heard me. A sandbag. Empty.’
He was staring intently now as the Germans began to dig themselves into holes around the places where the debris of the bridge had already raked the earth into shallow holes.
Mays came running up to the trench, clutching four hand grenades against his tunic. ‘Here you are, sir. Corporal Valentine’s on his way.’
‘Thank you, Mays. Get back and keep up a steady sniping fire against those men. Tell Sarnt Bennett to get the Bren firing at them too. Long range, I know. Just try to stop them digging in.’
Mays went off and Lamb watched him go. He admired his lanky stride and remembered a cricket match back at the depot at Tonbridge, officers versus men, when Mays’s spin bowling had caught them all on the wrong foot. He was a mild-mannered man, a farmer’s boy who wrote letters home at any lull in the fighting, and, though he would never admit to it, had been going out with the same childhood sweetheart since he was 16.