Michaels and Dawson reached the outskirts of Rouen early that evening, their progress slowed considerably for the last few miles by the greatly increased level of traffic they encountered on the roads, both fleeing civilians and military vehicles. And, inevitably, there were roadblocks that they had to talk their way through. Michaels spoke reasonable French, and that helped, as did the fact that the car they were driving was clearly owned by the British army, and that they were wearing British uniforms. But of course all their documentation was written in English, so getting through each checkpoint still took some time, and there were frequently longer delays when they found themselves in a queue of other vehicles that all had to be checked and cleared through, before they could take their turn at the barrier.
As they got close to Rouen, the road ran parallel to a large river on their left-hand side, and Michaels pointed it out to Dawson.
‘That’s the Seine,’ he said. ‘But of course we’re on the south bank. We need to get through the town and then turn to head back more or less the way we’ve come, but along the north bank.’
The city appeared to be in a state of somewhat confused tension. The military presence, both French and British, was obvious everywhere they looked. Squads of soldiers marched along the streets, more roadblocks were manned on many of the junctions, and military cars and lorries were parked haphazardly along almost every road.
And Rouen, of course, wasn’t their objective: it was the north bank of the River Seine and the oil refineries and tank farms that were clustered along it all the way to Le Havre. Those vital assets were what they had been told to reconnoitre, and they had to get through Rouen and out of the other side of the town before they could start doing so.
‘This place is a bit of a bloody mess, sir,’ Dawson said, as they drove slowly away from yet another roadblock. Michaels was sitting beside him, studying the map and providing directions. ‘Do you want to press on and get out of here, or find somewhere to bed down for the night?’
‘Bedding down might be a bit of a luxury,’ Michaels replied. ‘It’ll be dark quite soon so we can’t do any useful investigation tonight. I know there’s still plenty of petrol in the tank, but I think it would be a good idea to fill it up anyway while we’re here, and then we need to get through the town so we have a clear run tomorrow morning. So the first thing we need to do is find a British army fuel depot.’
They hadn’t passed any filling stations on the route they’d been following, which Michaels had plotted so as to avoid the majority of the main roads and hopefully most of the roadblocks, so Dawson stopped the car beside a group of British soldiers standing near an army truck to get directions.
It turned out that they were quite close to a British army fuel station. Dawson drove only a short distance down the street and then around a couple of corners and onto the main road, where they joined a queue of about half a dozen vehicles at the station, each of their drivers waiting his turn at the pumps.
While Dawson sorted out the fuelling, Michaels got out of the car and walked over to the other side of the road where a couple of British officers were standing and talking. He showed them his identification and exchanged a few words with them, and then walked back to sit down again in the passenger seat of the staff car, at the same time Dawson, again, took his seat behind the wheel.
‘Learn anything useful, sir?’
‘Not much. According to those two, the French high command here seem to be pretty certain that their military will be able to stop the German advance well before it reaches this area. The British are equally convinced that Adolf’s blitzkrieg tactics and sheer weight of armour will punch a hole through the Allied lines any day now. Between you and me, the British generals are believed to be formulating plans for a mass evacuation from Le Havre and probably from Cherbourg as well once the Germans get a bit closer, and I think that’s probably true. We genuinely haven’t got anything to stop them, and that’s why those tank farms are going to have to be destroyed. We can’t afford to let the Jerries get their hands on that oil.’
Dawson steered the staff car down the street, again following Michaels’ directions.
‘So what do we do now, sir?’
‘We get clear of Rouen and head towards Le Havre, and then we find ourselves somewhere to sleep.’
Getting out of the centre of the city took even longer than getting in, entirely because of the number of roadblocks they had to negotiate. There were several bridges spanning the Seine in Rouen, and Michaels directed Dawson to the most westerly crossing point, near what looked like a small dockyard. It was one of the biggest bridges they’d seen over the river and there was, inevitably, a roadblock guarding it on the southern side, with another queue of vehicles waiting to cross.
‘I don’t know what the French are hoping to achieve with all these blasted roadblocks,’ Michaels said. ‘The Germans aren’t here – or not yet anyway – so all they’re doing is slowing up movements within the city. And that seems pointless to me.’
By the time they finally saw the open road in front of them, on the north bank of the river, it was almost dark. The main road headed north-west, but that wasn’t the way they needed to go, so Dawson steered the car west towards a village called Canteleu, which was only a few hundred yards from the riverbank.
‘Right, this should be far enough,’ Michaels said. ‘We’re a few miles short of the first tank farm, but we’ll be able to see what we’re doing much better in daylight. Let’s see if we can find somewhere to sleep.’
They drove through a wooded area just before they reached the village, and when they emerged from the clump of trees there didn’t seem to be much in the place, just a few narrow streets dotted with houses, many of them seemingly deserted. They saw a handful of cars, all parked, and no pedestrians.
‘It looks as if this place has been abandoned,’ Dawson said.
But what they were seeing didn’t seem to surprise Michaels.
‘I’ve been to France a few times,’ he explained to Dawson, ‘and the French, particularly those who live outside the towns, always seem to go to bed really early. I’ve stayed in villages which were really quite lively during the day, but by about eight o’clock in the evening all the lights were extinguished and every door was shut and locked. God knows what they do with themselves each night.’
They drove around the village and then, over on the western side, Dawson spotted a large building near an open square that had a couple of lights showing on the ground floor.
‘That could be a hotel,’ he said, pointing at it.
Michaels nodded.
‘Let’s take a look.’
Dawson stopped the car outside and switched off the engine. Then they both climbed out and walked over to the door.
‘We could be in luck,’ Michaels said. ‘This is what the French call a pension, a kind of small hotel or boarding house. Let’s see if they have a couple of rooms available.’
Before he left Gravesend, Michaels had been supplied with enough French francs to cover their anticipated expenses, so paying for a room would not be a problem.
The solid wooden door of the building was both closed and locked, unsurprisingly, but a minute or so after Dawson hammered on it they heard the sound of bolts being withdrawn, and then the door was eased open cautiously and they found themselves looking at a small, hunched man with a wispy grey beard and an overly large nose who regarded them suspiciously with a pair of surprisingly blue eyes. He addressed them in high-speed French, clearly asking their business.
Michaels replied in a slower version of the same language, with what sounded to Dawson like a very English accent, but the proprietor obviously understood exactly what he was asking, because he shook his head firmly and began pushing the door closed. Then Michaels fished a large wad of francs out of his pocket and waved them in front of the Frenchman’s face.
The man hesitated, with his hand on the half-closed door, and then he nodded and opened it wide. Money was money, even in wartime. He and Michaels exchanged a few more sentences, all incomprehensible to Dawson, and then the three of them trooped up a narrow staircase, the treads of which squealed alarmingly under Dawson’s weight, to the first floor. There, they were shown two bedrooms, each with a small double bed, and minimally equipped with a scarred wooden table on which stood a china washbasin and a pitcher of cold water, and with a chamber pot underneath it.
Michaels nodded his satisfaction, produced his wad of currency again, peeled off a few notes and handed them over.
The proprietor nodded, bowed to them and backed out of the room.
‘That’s good,’ Michaels said. ‘Now we have a bed each. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to bunk down in that blasted car. And, talking of which, before we make ourselves comfortable here, we’d better nip down and immobilize it. Take off the rotor arm or something. We absolutely need that car for what we have to do tomorrow. If somebody steals it, we’re buggered.’
That didn’t take long and, with Michaels holding a torch so that he could see what he was doing, Dawson removed the distributor cap and the plug leads as well, as an additional safeguard, from under the bonnet of the Morris. Then they climbed back up the narrow staircase to their bedrooms, each man carrying his kitbag, Dawson also carrying his Lee-Enfield and Michaels their box of depleted rations.
‘The proprietor told me they had no food here,’ Michaels explained, ‘but what he probably meant was that we’re too late to eat an evening meal because he’s sent the cook home. Or maybe he’s the cook and it’s too much trouble to open up the kitchen again. Either way, it doesn’t matter because we still have these delicious cheese sandwiches we can enjoy. And you’ve got your beer and I’ve got a bottle and half of wine. Or what looks like wine, even if it tastes like vinegar. So we’ll manage.’
They parted at the top of the stairs, each taking their half of the ration pack.
‘Get a good night’s sleep, Dawson,’ Michaels said. ‘Tomorrow could be a long day, and we’ve got a hell of a lot to do.’
His mattress was hard and somewhat lumpy, and somewhere outside Dawson’s room an owl apparently felt the need to serenade him, which kept him awake for some time. But eventually the bird departed on business of its own, and he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.