Declarations of War

‘You knew I was going to demolish the tank and the cowshed?’

‘I didn’t know anything about a cowshed, but I knew the salvage crew for Cindy Four had been taken off the roster. It was easy to guess what that meant for Cindy.’

‘Why did you go out to the farm then?’

My bloody knee, that’s the second time. It’s damned dark! This field must be full of Conner cans, and the remains of the corned beef stinks to high heaven. God, what a smell. Why was he here, that was a good question. He had no orders to be risking his neck, in fact he had no permission to be absent from the laager. If he copped it tonight – and the chances were that he would – he’d be posted as a deserter and neither his Mum nor his Gran would get the money. Stop. Still, absolutely still. Ugh! What had he touched: crap? No, it’s all right. It’s only Keats. A swarm of bloated flies buzzed around his face. Angrily he waved them away and, so dozy were they, his hand hit some of them in mid-flight. Poor Keats with half his head missing, you poor old sod. I would have let you play for Celtic, Keats. I would have given half my Gran’s fields to have you play once for Celtic, with me in front of the stand, eh? With a funny hat and rattle. Just that afternoon Keats had said, ‘You know, Corp, you’ve changed my bleeding life in a way. You’re right, I mean anybody can do bleeding anything, Corp.’

Careful; stinging nettles, and beyond them the ditch. Lucky that there’s no moon. The night was cloudless; he could see every star for a million miles, except where a piece of night sky without stars was the Sherman tank. Another pile of cans. Just one tin-can makes a noise like a peal of bells on a night as quiet as this. Listen. He froze quite still. He could hear his blood pulsing.

At his Gran’s the net curtains were floor length. At night the wind made them billow and arch as if a thousand phantoms were climbing through the window, one behind the other. But these were no ghosts. No ghost for Keats, no ghost for any of them.

Bloody hell!

There were voices whispering. Whispering sounds the same in all languages, but that won’t be any of our boys standing out here in the dark on the German side of that Sherman. He put his hand upon the tracks; it was tight and true this side. One foot went on to rubber tyre and the other on to the suspension. Silently he eased open the turret hatch and put one foot down on to the breech of the gun…

‘No, no, no,’ said Pelling. ‘You can’t get away with that rubbish. Talk about hiding under a tank and I might believe you, but climbing into a tank to avoid being seen is like climbing Nelson’s Column to avoid being arrested. Anyway, I timed you that night. You’d only been gone eight minutes before the tank engine started. We were scared stiff, we thought the Mark IVs were returning.’

‘You don’t climb into a tank,’ Wool corrected primly, ‘you mount it. She started first go. Of course, I knew she would. I bet Sergeant Anderson she would. Five bob. He knew I wouldn’t tell a lie about it. Paid up as nice as ninepence when I came back.’ Wool reached behind him for another chocolate bar. Pelling didn’t want any, but Wool bit into it greedily. ‘Can’t keep off them,’ he explained waving the bar in the air. ‘Mind you, they are damned good; butter, eggs and four ounces of full-cream milk in every one. The kids love…’

‘Where did you learn to drive a tank?’

‘Haven’t you been following me, Colonel? I was the tank driver.’

‘The tank driver?’

‘Of Cindy Four. That was mine, that tank. I came out to get her back in, didn’t I?’

‘Tank salvage team?’

‘Tank salvage team,’ Wool repeated in scathing mockery. ‘Those stupid bleeders. Those knacker’s-yard attendants. I was a real tank driver. I was Cindy Four’s driver.’

‘You’d come out to get your tank without permission?’ Pelling’s incredulity as a Colonel was tempered by his understanding as an engineer.

‘My skipper – Sergeant Anderson – knew, he was covering for me. The rest of the crew knew too. They all wanted to come at first, but me alone was best.’

‘But it was a thousand to one she wouldn’t have started. The tank had been there four days.’

‘A thousand to one,’ scoffed Wool. His voice was scornful, as sometimes Pelling’s had been when questioned by those who were mechanically illiterate. ‘I knew Cindy Four like I know my old woman. Better. Better than my old woman.’

He pushed the rest of the Munchy into his mouth. ‘I told that berk Lieutenant Kirkbride that I was the only driver who understood her. But no, he must have his own driver: that little twit Abbott, it was. They had to abandon: gearbox jam. Pausing, that was all you had to understand. Especially coming down from fifth into first. I told him never to use first, she’d start away fine in second even on a mountainside. But he has to use first. They were in a bit of soft-going, a ditch near the water trough. A good driver watches out for that sort of thing and doesn’t get stuck in the first place. Pausing…you know.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘I could have strangled bloody Kirkbride when I heard. And Abbott. But luckily for them they’d copped it already. Machine-guns got all four of them. Course, I was pleased they’d got themselves out. I’d have never been able to lift four bodies out and get her going.’

‘I think you might have done almost anything that night.’

‘Yeah,’ grinned Wool. ‘I suppose I would have done, but not in eight minutes.’

‘You did all that, just for your vehicle?’ asked Pelling. It was comforting to know that there were other maniacs. Men who would risk their lives to save that of a machine.

‘This wasn’t a vehicle,’ explained Wool, repeating the word with studied distaste. ‘This was a Sherman Firefly. Perhaps you don’t understand what she was. Five 6-cylinder Chevrolet engines on a common crankshaft and a 17-pound gun. Nothing could stop it, nothing.’

‘But the German Mark IVs were still at the end of the track. They could have brewed you up, from that close.’

‘Wilson – our gunner – thought of that. He told me to elevate and traverse the 17-pounder so that the Teds would get an eyeful of it against the skyline.’

‘But you were alone. You couldn’t have loaded, fired and driven the tank, all by yourself…’ But already Pelling wasn’t so sure.

‘No need. If I’d been in those Mark IVs I would have scarpered, too. Tank men understand that. You don’t hang around to get brewed. Our 17-pounder was ace of trumps. They buggered off, didn’t they?’

‘They must have thought it was an ambush,’ said Pelling.

‘They didn’t know what to bloody think. I had them doing their nut. I fired my revolver, all six rounds, at both of them. I knew that they’d hear that O.K., and that’s all the commanders would need to keep their swedes under cover. When you are closed down you can’t see bugger-all. Only tank crews understand how bloody helpless you feel with the lid on. You’re always convinced that there’s some sod of an infantryman farting about under your elbow with a bazooka. That’s all it needs to brew you, whether you’re in a Panther or a pantechnicon.’

‘I never realized that the visibility was so poor,’ said Pelling.

‘Good God, yes. And then there were those bloody ditches. I never saw any of those in the south, but as soon as we reached that bloody ditch country I’d do anything to avoid driving down even a long straight road in daylight unless we had the hatches up and the old Andie shouting left and right. It’s no picnic, I tell you.’

‘But you were hit.’

‘Yeah, funny that. Only time, too. That bugger in the second Mark IV let me have a 75-mm. armour-piercing over his shoulder as he went over the ridge.’

‘We heard it strike the armour.’

Wool chuckled. ‘I’ll bet you did; so did I. Made my head sing for a week and took about a quarter of a hundredweight of metal off the side of the turret. Gouged it out as neat as a chisel mark.’

‘We thought you were a goner.’

‘The whole inside of the tank lit up bright yellow. I could see my controls and the gears and stuff, brighter than I’d ever seen it before! Then it went orange and glowed red hot at the point of impact before it all went dark again. I thought I was going to brew. The old Sherman had a terrible reputation for brewing. Ronsons, they called them; automatic lighters, see?’

‘Didn’t they ask you about the damaged turret when you got the tank back to leaguer?’

‘You say leaguer, do you. My mob always said laager. No. Well, yes, they did, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want any trouble about it. They guessed it was me that brought it back, of course, but nothing was ever said.’

‘They must have thought it was an ambush, Mr Steeple.’

‘But who the devil’s driving it, sir?’

‘It must have been that little Corporal of yours, Steeple. The one who never stops smiling.’

‘He’s not one of my chaps, sir. I thought he was with you.’

‘Deserves a medal, whoever he is. I’d get your chaps together and pull back until first light, Steeple. You can’t defend this place with half a dozen Lee Enfields and a Bren. We can congratulate ourselves upon not going into the bag this night.’

‘Indeed, sir, or worse.’

Pelling’s voice was flat. ‘Or worse. Quite so.’ Was it fatigue that made him daydream so readily?