When Adolf Hitler ordered the invasion of France, German tanks had crossed the River Meuse and had opened up a gap in the Allied front. The Luftwaffe was given the green light to fly low and shoot refugees in the roads to slow down the French and British troop movements.
A train was preparing to leave. The station was deserted, except for a man in a grey suit struggling with three bags of luggage as he stepped up to one of the carriages. A conductor in a blue suit with gold buttons and an official hat helped the man onto the train.
‘Hava, why aren’t there any people?’
She seemed to be in a trance, unaware of the silence, the empty platforms, the solitary train with few passengers.
Once the man with the luggage stepped into the train, the conductor waved vigorously to us. ‘Hurry! You’ll miss the train. It’s leaving now. Hurry.’
I always liked sitting next to a window at the rear of the train and when the train curved to the right, I could see the engine guiding the train between the trees or into a tunnel.
On my first train holiday with my father, we went to the Zwin, a small part of the coast on the North Sea. Holland and Belgium share the Zwin, and their beautiful fields of sea lavender. I arranged the flowers in my hair saying to my father, ‘Look at me! I’m Greta Garbo!’
My father was very angry when I said this. ‘How do you know who Greta Garbo is?’
‘At school, Mary Noel had a magazine about Hollywood. She showed me a picture of Greta Garbo. She had flowers in her hair like this.’ I tried to turn my head as Garbo did in the magazine picture.
‘She’s nothing but a silly German actress. Don’t copy her.’
And my father pulled the sea lavender from my hair and told me to go and swim with a group of girls who were already in the water. She isn’t even German! I had wanted to argue.
That was the first time I heard my father’s disdain for Germany. I was eleven years old, and I had yet to know that my father’s arm had been destroyed in the First World War by a German bullet. I was just annoyed that he didn’t think I looked like Greta Garbo.
For the second time, Hava and I were on a train without knowing its destination.
When the conductor walked by, I asked him where we were heading.
‘Dunkirk, mademoiselle.’
‘Is it far?’
‘No, mademoiselle.’
‘Perhaps we should have taken a later train. My friend and I are so hungry and tired.’
The conductor looked over at Hava. ‘But, mademoiselle, this is the last train. Didn’t you know? The Germans will be here in a day or two. The British and French troops are being pushed into the sea by the tanks and planes. This will be the last train out of the station.’
I thanked the conductor as he continued down the aisle.
Turning to Hava, I said, ‘We’ll be okay. The Germans are quick, but we are quicker. We’re still ahead of them. They can’t catch us. We’re Belgian.’ I took Hava’s hand.
Hava looked out of the window and whispered, ‘Simone! They’re already here!’
Through the window, with each passing moment, with every inch we travelled west, the fields grew thicker and thicker with soldiers; thousands of soldiers in green uniforms carrying packs and rifles.
Hava’s shoulders slumped. ‘They’re already here. We’re lost.’
‘No,’ I said after a few minutes of scanning the fields. ‘No, they’re not German soldiers. Look at their helmets. They’re British and French helmets. My father has a collection of helmets like those in his study at home, and he’d never own a German helmet. They’re French and British soldiers.’
We passed roads lined with hundreds of army trucks carrying men and pulling heavy artillery. As our train curved to the left, we saw the sea, the shoreline, and thousands of soldiers. Hitler was pushing from the east. The British and French troops were trapped.
‘Mademoiselle?’
I turned from the window.
‘Ici. For you and for your friend.’
The conductor handed me a small bag. ‘It’s all I have. You’ll find food in Dunkirk but this will help you for now.’
I opened the bag, and before I could look up and say ‘thank you’, the conductor had disappeared into the next carriage.
Inside the bag was a thick piece of bread and a pork sausage. I broke the bread and gave half to Hava.
‘No, you eat it all, Simone. I’m stronger than you are.’
‘No, you’re not,’ I said. ‘I’m just as much a Belgian as you are. We’re like sisters, and sisters split everything down the middle.’
Hava and I ate our bread in silence as we continued to stare out of the train window. Soldiers stood near the tracks, and as we slowly made our way some waved. We waved back. One man blew us a kiss. Hava returned the kiss and waved. I thought about Sergeant De Waden.
When I offered Hava the sausage, she whispered, ‘It’s forbidden. You eat. Be my strong gentile, Simone.’ I felt so guilty because I could have given Hava all the bread and I could have eaten just the sausage. After that day, I never ate pork again.
Suddenly, the train squealed to a stop. The passengers were silent. The sunlight danced on the floor in little squares. The train’s engine idled in a slow rhythm. ‘Why have we stopped?’
Hava stood up, pulled down the window, and stuck her head outside. ‘Why have we stopped?’ she asked a group of soldiers walking along the side of the tracks.
‘To marry me!’ a redheaded soldier called out in a British accent.
‘Why has the train stopped?’ Hava insisted.
The redheaded soldier pointed towards the front of the train. ‘No more track. It’s been blown away; it’s twisted and bent. But my marriage proposal is still on the table!’
‘Maybe at the next war,’ Hava said as she sat back down beside me.
‘We can’t stay here,’ I said.
‘Everybody off. End of the line,’ the conductor announced confidently as if announcing the train had just arrived in Paris. ‘End of the line.’
‘Let the others off first,’ Hava suggested. ‘We may as well sit for as long as we can.’
We remained in our seat and watched children being led down the aisles holding the hands of their parents. An old woman steadied herself with the backs of each seat as she made her way to the exit. Two women in elegant furs and stockings stood up with startled expressions on their faces. One of the women turned to the other two. ‘How can we walk in these shoes?’
When the carriage was empty, the conductor stepped in. ‘Mademoiselles, you have to leave. The train has stopped, and we can go no further. Dunkirk is just four more miles. You’ll have to walk, I’m sorry. There is nothing we can do.’
As Hava and I headed towards the exit, I asked the conductor ‘And you?’
‘Ah, mademoiselle, I will stay with my train. It’s my duty. Duty still counts.’
‘But the Germans are coming.’
‘If not the Germans, then old age will catch up with me.’ The conductor shrugged.
Just before we stepped off the train, I turned to the conductor. ‘Vive la Belgique.’
He looked at me, and smiled. ‘Vive l’amour.’
When the train had been moving it seemed that all else was still. When the train stopped, and Hava and I stepped onto the ground, everything else moved: horses, trucks, columns of soldiers, refugees moving forward in massive turbulence and disorder. Even the spring blossoms seemed to move forward, leaning away from the advancing wind.
In a distant field, soldiers were shooting a herd of cows, their guns a terrifying companion to the cow’s horrible lowing.
‘Simone, why are they shooting the cows?’
A man behind us said, ‘Because they’re in pain. They haven’t been milked. No one can milk them. They’re suffering.’ It was the redheaded soldier.
‘But I can milk them,’ Hava said. ‘I know how.’
‘Sure. You can milk all the cows in France, but there’s no time. The Germans are hot on our tail. We must keep moving, ladies. Keep moving.’
And then, as if a curtain had been drawn back, Hava and I looked ahead. Cannons, trucks, tanks had been abandoned. A dying horse kicked its legs in a ditch. A sea of humanity walked towards a tall plume of black smoke. The landscape was charred, farm houses were in flames. Their skeletal frames trembled, collapsing into piles of ashes.
‘That’s Dunkirk,’ the redheaded soldier said as he pointed forward. ‘The Germans have dropped a few calling cards there already. At least we know where we’re going now. The smoke is a good marker.’ He seemed almost nonchalant, like he couldn’t smell the terrifying stench of rot and decay.
‘What should we do?’ I asked the soldier.
‘Do? Why, my little lady, it’s every man for himself. This is a retreat. The Panzer divisions have already crashed through Brussels. We were supposed to retreat to the west. The word is out that Dunkirk is our last stand. There’s nowhere else to go. The sea is to the west and the Nazis are to the east.’
Hava and I walked with the redheaded soldier between us. ‘We tried to stop them,’ he continued, pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. ‘Want one?’
We both declined.
‘We were even told to blow up your bridges to slow them down.’ The soldier lit a cigarette, inhaled with vigour, and blew smoke out of his mouth. ‘Didn’t help. They’re organized: first the planes, then the tanks, then foot soldiers and trucks swept right through. We lost thousands of troops. We’ve already lost the war. Start learning German, girls.’ He inhaled on his cigarette once again, coughed, and repeated, ‘Start learning German.’
I hadn’t expected a plane. I hadn’t expected the sudden panic and shouting. From over the tops of the thick trees to our left a German Stuka appeared, banking right, flying low over the stream of people staggering along the narrow country road. Then the machine guns began, one under each wing. Helpless, desperate people dropped to the ground, hands covering their heads hoping to hide from the onslaught. The bullets spat from the plane with a quick, cracking sound.
More people began to drop as the plane flew closer. Our redheaded companion yelled, ‘Get down!’ and pushed Hava and me as if we were two rag dolls on either side of him. I fell hard to the ground and rolled into the ditch. Hava and the soldier disappeared into the sea of people. The plane droned relentlessly overhead with speed and horror. I could not hear much over the noise, but I could hear screaming.
Lying there on the cold ground, hugging my arms and trying to pretend that I was anywhere else, I heard the plane finally return to wherever it had come from. The ear-splitting whirring of the engines became a distant hum, giving me enough courage to sit up. Crying, shaking, terrified, I look around and tried to work out how long it had been. Seconds? Minutes? Hours? I looked down and saw blood on my dress. I stood up on my wobbly legs and climbed out of the ditch back onto the road. A few others stood up around me. The road was covered with blood and bodies, some moving an arm or a leg, but most not moving at all. Children wailed, and the black smoke of Dunkirk continued to plume into the horizon.
‘Hava!’ I croaked, my voice hoarse with desperation, ‘Hava!’ And there she was in the middle of the road like Michelangelo’s Pietà, cradling the dead redheaded soldier in her lap, looking into his face. She didn’t look sad. She didn’t look shocked. She held him as his blood trickled onto her arms and legs. And then she looked up at me and said as she stroked his hair, ‘I would have married him if we had met in Tahiti.’
Another plane appeared over the trees.
‘Hava!’
Gently she laid the British soldier onto the ground and kissed his cheek. I reached out for her hand. The plane flew lower. I pulled her to her feet and we both ran for the ditch just as more bullets began cutting once again into the people who were running and diving for cover.
The pilot pulled up the nose of the plane, rose quickly into the clouds, and disappeared.