Dawson quickly worked the bolt of his rifle, chambered another round and aimed again, this time much lower, intending to blow out the front tyre. But as he fired, the front of the lorry suddenly dipped as the wheels crashed down into a gully or hole in the road, and the bullet hit the side of the engine compartment instead.
In the event, this was just as devastating, because the engine stopped immediately when the .303 bullet smashed into some vital component, and an instant later a gout of flame erupted from the cooling vents in the side of the bonnet. Dawson guessed that his shot had probably ruptured the carburettor, spraying petrol everywhere, and a metal on metal spark had done the rest.
For a few seconds, there was no sign of any movement, but then he saw the door on the opposite side of the cab open. A couple of figures dropped down and lay flat on the ground on the far side of the immobilized vehicle, immediately vanishing from his sight, and two more men suddenly appeared from the cargo area and did the same thing. All of them, as far as Dawson could see, were carrying rifles, and that almost certainly meant they had Mausers, a weapon every bit as good as the Lee-Enfield he was using.
‘Dawson,’ Rochester called out from somewhere fairly close behind him. ‘The sappers have lit the fires and we need to go right now. So just forget about the Jerries.’
‘I just hope they forget about us,’ Dawson replied, getting to his feet cautiously and stepping away from his firing position as he hitched the sling of his Lee-Enfield over his shoulder. ‘But I’m not sure that’s very likely.’
A ragged fusillade of shots rang out from the other side of the river, where the engine compartment of the lorry was now well ablaze. The bullets ploughed through the undergrowth of the copse, but came nowhere near the two men. He knew that the Germans must have guessed where the shooter had to be located – the stand of trees was the only patch of cover outside the tank farm – and were firing blind to make him keep his head down.
But Dawson’s work there was finished; they had plenty of other sites to visit that day.
‘So how do we get out of here, sir?’ he asked, ‘now that there are four German soldiers pointing their Mausers at us from the other side of the river?’
‘We’re staying off the road along the riverbank,’ Rochester replied. ‘It’s not much more than a track anyway, so from now on we’re going cross-country. That way, we can approach each tank farm from the rear, and that should keep us out of range of any German rifleman on the other side of the river.’
‘Do you think the staff car will be able to cope with that?’
Rochester stepped out of the stand of trees and into the lane and shrugged. Another volley of shots echoed from across the water, but again the copse acted as a very effective shield.
‘Hopefully it will,’ he replied, ‘because the land around here is fairly flat and agricultural. Certainly the Morris truck will be able to handle it with no problem at all, so if we have to ditch the staff car, we’ll all have to ride in the back of the lorry.’
Dawson stared at the tank farm. It was another glimpse into the gates of hell. The demolition had been completed: every tank was surrounded by the flames of its burning fuel, and most of them would clearly continue to burn, possibly for several hours, depending upon their size. Plumes of black smoke rose above the site and had drifted across the river, partially obscuring the view of the opposite bank. That would provide them with the opportunity they needed to cross the open ground and then get behind the tank farm.
‘Where’s Captain Michaels?’ Dawson asked, making sure that the safety catch on his Lee-Enfield was set before placing it on the back seat of the staff car.
‘He’s in the lorry,’ Rochester said, pointing at the larger vehicle that had already turned off the lane and was making its way slowly across the ploughed field at the side of the tank farm. ‘We decided there was safety in separation.’
Dawson looked puzzled.
‘He’s the officer in charge,’ Rochester explained, ‘and I’m his second in command. It makes sense for us to travel in different vehicles in case the Jerries manage to hit one of them.’
Dawson steered the Morris staff car through the gap in the undergrowth that the lorry had just created and followed its tracks across the field. Rochester’s earlier comment about the unmade road turned out to be correct: driving across the field felt about the same, although the softer ground meant that Dawson had to keep the engine revolutions fairly high to ensure they didn’t get bogged down.
They heard a few more shots from the German troops behind them, but the drifting clouds of black smoke meant that even the most accomplished rifleman or sniper would have had difficulty hitting them, simply because he would be unable to see his target for most of the time. In a few minutes, they drove behind the tank farm and were safe. At least temporarily.
Ahead of them, and across more fields, they could see the next tank farm, this one with what looked like every oil storage container ablaze, and the Morris CS8 lorry changed direction slightly and headed straight towards it, Dawson following a few yards behind.
When they got slightly closer, they could clearly see a small group of men clustered near the rear of the perimeter fence, two of them waving at the approaching vehicles. The lorry stopped beside them, the staff car next to it.
‘Any problems?’ Michaels asked.
‘Not really, sir, no,’ the sapper replied. ‘A bunch of Jerries turned up on the other side of the river last night and set up a kind of observation post over there, so we kept out of sight as much as we could. They started shooting at us when we began prepping the charges for the demo, but none of the bullets came anywhere near us. We thought they might have had orders not to hit any of the tanks. They fired again when the first tanks blew, but we were already making our way through the site to the rear, and when everything was properly alight we just came out through the back gate and waited for you.’
The four men climbed up into the rear cargo area of the Morris lorry to join their comrades. It was already cramped, and by the time the two vehicles had picked up the next group of sappers waiting at the third tank farm, it was standing room only in the back of the truck.
That set the pattern for the rest of the day, the two vehicles – the number increased to three and then four when other 15-hundredweight trucks joined the small convoy – driving cross-country from one tank farm to the next, checking that all the demolitions had been performed correctly, picking up the waiting sappers and then driving on again.
German soldiers were still in evidence, but only on the opposite bank of the river, which obviously placed them at a severe disadvantage, being unable to take control of the tank farms directly. All they could really do was run interference, trying to shoot at the sappers but at the same time avoiding doing any damage to the tanks. And once the demolition started and the first tank was alight, they could do nothing at all.
‘I suppose we’re lucky that the Seine is such a big river,’ Dawson said, as they headed across another large field, ‘and we haven’t, so far, seen any bridges that the Jerries could use to get across to this side.’
‘Most of the bridges are in Rouen,’ Rochester said. ‘Or perhaps I should say that they were in Rouen, because my guess is that most of them are now just piles of shattered masonry and twisted steel. Until we get closer to Le Havre about the only way across the river is to use a ferry, and there aren’t very many of those either.’
On their way around the loop of the Seine nearest to Rouen, they’d passed a ferry near a village called Sahurs, but the vessel was not only on the northern side of the river, but had had a large hole blown in one side of its hull, rendering it useless without extensive repair work. That had probably been done by the same teams of French soldiers who had been destroying the bridges in the city.
‘So what are our chances of finding that bridge near Codorbek Anchor still standing?’
‘Caudebec-en-Caux,’ Rochester corrected him, ‘and I have no idea. All I can tell you is that the Germans are probably still heavily occupied trying to take control of Rouen, and so the more distance we put between us and that city, the more chance we have of finding our way across the river. Hopefully, their advance patrols won’t have got to the bridge yet.’
To their surprise, once they drove away from the large southern loop of the Seine and began heading north towards Yainville and Le Trait, they saw no signs of either German vehicles or soldiers, which Rochester ascribed to the fact that their supply lines had to be stretched almost to breaking point due to the incredibly rapid speed of their advance.
‘They’ve probably reached the stage where they have limited fuel, limited ammunition and are very likely running low on food and drink. When you get to that point, the advance into enemy territory simply has to stop until the supply convoys catch up with you. Pushing on is no longer an option.’
To their surprise, and undoubted relief, the bridge at Caudebec-en-Caux – it was actually about a couple of miles to the east of the town – was undamaged. There was a roadblock at each end, neither of which held up the five-vehicle convoy for more than a few minutes, and a team of engineers were working on the structure, busily planting explosives where they would cause the most damage to it.
Captain Michaels talked for a couple of minutes with the officer in charge of the southern roadblock, and then joined Rochester in the staff car.
‘Our timing, Gordon, has been pretty much impeccable. According to that French lieutenant, they should finish rigging the charges within the next couple of hours, and he expects to get the order to blow it later this afternoon. So if we hadn’t started our demo when we did, I reckon we’d still have been stuck on the wrong side of the river when the Germans pitched up in force.’
‘Any sign of our other lorries?’ Rochester asked.
‘He said there’d been a lot of traffic over this bridge today, so he couldn’t be certain, but he also told me that the other bridge, the one nearer to Le Havre at Tancarville, was still intact, and so they should have crossed to the south bank there rather than coming here. But there’s nothing we can do about it either way.’
They had a choice of roads from Caudebec-en-Caux, which lay at the most northerly point of the River Seine, and decided to take the more or less direct route that ran almost due south, between two of the large loops followed by the river, and almost immediately they entered woodland that led seamlessly into quite heavy forest. The lorries would take a slightly longer route closer to the south bank of the river, because it was wider and had a better surface.
‘This extends for a few miles,’ Michaels said, looking up from a regional map. ‘We need to get to a place called Bourneville.’
‘Like the chocolate?’ Dawson asked. ‘That dark stuff?’
‘Like it, yes, but this Bourneville contains the letter “e” twice, not just once. Anyway, we need to turn west just beyond it, so keep your eyes open for signs for the village.’
A couple of miles into the woodland, with the Morris tilly travelling as briskly as the road conditions would allow, Dawson suddenly hit the brakes and then immediately started accelerating again.
‘What is it?’ Michaels asked.
‘I don’t know. I thought I saw something in the trees back there. A couple of figures, maybe in uniform. Maybe in grey uniforms.’
Michaels and Rochester immediately turned round to look out of the back of the staff car, and Dawson split his attention between the road in front of him and what he could see in the rear-view mirror. But all that was visible, as far as he could see, was the road behind them cutting a fairly straight path through the forest.
And then, in an instant, everything changed.