‘Oh, fuck,’ Watson said, slamming on the brakes and immediately swinging over to one side of the road to do a U-turn.
‘That SS bastard is fucking clever,’ Dawson muttered, aiming his rifle towards the oncoming soldiers. But he didn’t fire because he knew that at that range, from a moving vehicle, he’d hit nothing.
‘You said that before, but you’re right.’ Watson swung the truck round to face the other way, the tyres bumping over the grassy verge, then pressed down on the accelerator pedal. ‘He’s bloody well one step ahead of us again.’
The truck started to head back the way it had come. Then a volley of shots cracked out as some of the German soldiers spotted it and opened fire with their Mausers. But within seconds Watson had driven the vehicle around the bend and they were shielded from view by the trees and were safe – at least for a couple of minutes.
‘So now where the hell do we go?’ Watson demanded. ‘Those fucking Jerries will have mounted up by now and that lorry will be coming after us.’
Dawson was desperately studying the map, looking for a way – any way – out. They couldn’t go too far east, because that would take them back to the main road. Taking one of the tracks through the forest would be a risk, because he didn’t know exactly where they were, and most of them only seemed to penetrate a short distance into the woods, according to the map. The worst possible outcome would be to leave the road, get stuck up some path that ended only yards from the road and be sitting ducks when the lorry-load of German soldiers appeared.
They didn’t have many options, as usual. Dawson tossed the map back on the floor and looked ahead, searching the woods on either side of the road. ‘I don’t like it, but we’re going to have to take to the forest again, Dave. It’s our only possible way out. If we keep heading this way on the road, we’ll end up trapped between the main road and that lorry.’
‘Which track?’
‘Buggered if I know. The map’s no help – it’s not detailed enough for that. Just pick the first track that looks wide enough to take this truck, and preferably too narrow for that bloody lorry.’
Watson slowed down – if they were going to leave the road, he wanted to drive straight up whatever track they picked, not have to reverse and manoeuvre, because they hadn’t got time to do that.
‘That one looks OK,’ Watson said.
Dawson saw where he was pointing and nodded.
Watson steered the truck across the road to the left-hand side. The vehicle bounced over the verge and plunged between two large trees down a track that was a couple of feet narrower than the vehicle itself. Not that that mattered, because at the speed the truck was travelling, it simply smashed all the undergrowth and vegetation out of the way.
‘Good choice,’ Dawson said, looking back over the rear of the vehicle towards the road. ‘The lorry can’t get through that gap.’
‘That won’t stop the bloody Jerries following us on foot, though, will it?’ Watson muttered gloomily.
‘No, so keep going as long as you can. Then we’ll have to bail out and start hiking.’
The trail was narrow, and getting more so the deeper they went into the forest. Soon it petered out almost completely, but Watson kept the truck moving, smashing down saplings and bushes, making his own trail. Then they found themselves heading steadily downhill, with rising ground on either side of them.
‘I don’t like this, Eddie. Do you want me to turn round and try and find another route?’
Dawson shook his head. ‘No. Just keep going. We’ve covered well over a quarter of a mile since we left the road. If the Jerries are following on foot, we’ve got a lead over them.’
‘They’ll be able to follow this track easily enough,’ Watson pointed out, gesturing at the churned-up ground behind them and the torn branches.
‘I know, but I don’t think that matters. In fact, it might even help us. Maybe we can use this vehicle to slow them down a bit.’
‘How?’
‘Let’s find a good place first, then I’ll show you.’
The ground in front of them continued to slope downwards, and the land on either side still rose steadily as they headed down into a narrow and steepening valley. The truck ploughed on, bouncing and shuddering as it crashed into small trees and bushes.
‘There,’ Dawson said, pointing straight ahead.
In front of them, the ground levelled out slightly into a reasonably clear area, and the only way forward was through a gap between two huge rocks embedded in the rising sides of the valley, a space perhaps only four or five feet wide.
‘That’s ideal. Drive the truck into the gap between those rocks. We’ll leave it there and walk. That’ll block the track behind us, and hopefully it’ll look as if we tried to drive it through and got stuck.’
‘They’ll be able to drag the truck out, or just climb over it,’ Watson said.
‘I hope they do – or rather, I hope they try to.’
Watson shrugged and drove the truck into the gap until it jammed against the sides, then switched off the engine. ‘What now?’ he asked. ‘I suppose we might as well dump these fucking coal-scuttles.’
Dawson shook his head. ‘No, we’ve got to hang on to them, at least for the moment. They might come in handy again. Let’s grab our stuff and get the hell out of here, once I’ve left a little present for the Jerries.’
The two men picked up their own British-issue helmets. Then they each slung a Mauser over their shoulder and a Schmeisser around their neck, and took the grenades and all the ammunition they could carry, climbed over the front of the truck, through the gap and out the other side.
Dawson turned round, opened the bonnet of the truck and peered inside. Then he took one of the stick grenades and removed the cap from the end of the handle, which he lobbed away into the undergrowth. Then he carefully tied the cord and ceramic ball around the oil filler cap and rested the grenade itself beside it, perching it on top of the engine. Then he gently closed the bonnet and walked away.
‘If they start the engine, or even try to climb over the truck, that grenade will topple,’ he said. ‘Not even that German officer will have expected that, I hope. Now let’s move.’
Dawson glanced at his watch, then checked his compass and pointed. ‘That’s west,’ he said, and the two men started jogging away as quickly as they could.
The woods were quiet, birdsong the only sound they could hear, apart from their own laboured breathing as they struggled to cover as much distance as they could, as fast as possible – not easy with the ground underfoot fairly soft and leaf-strewn and laden down as they were with weapons and ammunition.
The valley continued downwards for some distance, ending in a stream that was barely more than a trickle, and then the land started to rise on the other side. They crossed the stream and continued up the slope.
‘OK,’ Dawson said, his breath rasping in his throat as they crested the next rise, ‘let’s take a breather.’
He looked back down the slope towards the point where they’d abandoned the truck. There was no sign of the place through the trees, nothing visible at all, which meant they were themselves invisible to the pursuing Germans.
‘We must have come about two or three hundred yards now, so let’s move a bit more slowly and carefully. Those bastards are bound to be tracking us soon, if they aren’t already.’
The land in front of them was more level, though still uneven, and they started working their way forward.
‘How far have we still got to go?’ Watson asked.
Dawson stopped, slung his Schmeisser behind him and fished the map out of his pocket. He unfolded it and studied it for a few seconds.
‘That’s the road through this forest,’ he said, pointing at a minor road that was shown as passing through an area shaded light green on the map. ‘I reckon we left it somewhere near here.’ He pointed a grubby finger at a spot on the map, then moved it to point slightly further to the north. ‘So we’re probably about here.’
‘Where’s the border?’
Dawson unfolded the map to the next section and gestured at a wiggly black line running more or less north-south. ‘That’s the border,’ he said, ‘so we’re maybe two and a half miles away from it now, more or less.’
‘What’s that other line?’ Watson asked, indicating a dotted line in grey that ran east-west, almost through the town of Münzingen.
‘Hang on a second,’ Dawson looked at the map and opened it wider. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Just the boundary between two different German districts. To the south of it is Saarland, and north of it is Rheinland-Pfalz. That’s all.’
Suddenly, the silence of the forest was shattered by a single loud crack, and both men span round to stare back the way they’d come.
Dawson looked at his watch. ‘That sounded like our stick grenade alarm clock, and it’s just over eight minutes since we planted the weapon, so that’s how far they are behind us. It’ll take them a while to either drag what’s left of the truck out of that gap or risk climbing over it, so I reckon we’ve got at least a quarter of an hour’s start on them, maybe twenty minutes.’
‘Fifteen or twenty minutes isn’t a hell of a lot,’ Watson said.
‘No, but the further we go into the forest, the bigger the search area gets, and the more chance we have of slipping away. That SS officer has probably guessed we’re trying to get into Luxembourg, but he can’t know where we’ll try to cross the border, because we don’t know ourselves yet— depends what we find when we get there.’
‘So he’s got to follow us if he’s going to stop us? Is that what you’re saying?’
Dawson nodded as he replaced the map in his pocket. ‘Yes. So we keep moving, keep heading west, and try to avoid leaving any traces. I haven’t heard any dogs, so as long as we don’t do anything stupid like drop a bit of equipment or break a branch off a tree, that kind of thing, we should be able to lose them.’
He checked his compass again and pointed through the trees in front of them. ‘That way,’ he said, and they set off once more, walking at a steady pace. ‘Move carefully, but keep up a reasonable speed and we should reach the border in about two hours.’
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ Watson pointed out. ‘So that should help us.’
‘Yeah, and hinder the bloody Jerries.’