XI

It was about three in the afternoon by the time Gary reached the strongpoint. It straddled the Battle road two or three miles north of Hastings, near a hamlet called Telham.

It was a formidable bunker, a concrete block set down uncompromisingly in the middle of English countryside. A triple wire fence surrounded it, and the bare earth between the fence and the building was no doubt riddled with mines and other nasties. The Germans did build well, you had to say that for them. An impressive anti-aircraft gun installation had been mounted on the roof, but that was a twisted tangle of metal, already taken out from the air.

There was a fire fight going on, closer in. Stray shots came pinging, and occasionally there would be the thump of a mortar. The Germans in the bunker were evidently still putting up a decent fight. But Gary could see that a Wolverine, a big mobile gun, had been drawn up to face the bunker. It was firing shell after shell, and was making craters in the concrete wall. A Sherman stood behind the Wolverine, quiet, its shoulders massive. It was like a huge beast waiting to pounce, Gary thought.

The countryside around was littered with the wreckage of battle. Gary and his mates approached along a road lined with burned-out tanks and mobile guns and armoured cars and trucks, shoved aside to clear the way. There were bodies too, stacked up in a field. Some had their faces covered by their jackets, but others had been stripped of boots and shoulder boards and other mementoes.

They were halted beside a burned-out Sherman tank, some way short of the bunker. While Danny Adams crawled forward to find out what was what, Gary, Willis and the rest of their platoon huddled in the cover of the tank.

They swapped cigarettes; the smoke dispelled the stench of burned oil and rubber from Gary's nostrils. Willis napped a bit. They were all exhausted, even though the exhilaration of the advance pepped them up.

Adams came crawling back. 'All right, lads, here's the picture. We've surrounded the bunker, the wireless masts have been shot up, the telephone lines cut. The Jerries are isolated in there and have got to be running out of ammo and fuel. But they're still fighting.' He sketched on a bit of paper. 'What we've got is actually three houses in a terrace, farm workers' cottages. The Nazis plated over the whole terrace with concrete. Inside you're going to find lots of little rooms, doorways, cellars. Outside, you've got this triple wire fence around the perimeter, and this whole area between bunker and fence is mined.'

'Lovely,' said Willis.

'Shut up, Betty Grable. Now here's what's what. As soon as that wall gives way we'll be one of the lead units going into the compound.' Adams drew stabbing marks on the paper with his pencil. 'We'll go in through the west fence, here. We'll have a sapper unit with us to cut the wire, and we'll make our way across the mines with a few Bangalores. At the bunker, in we go if we can, and the sappers will have a go at the wall with their picks. And meanwhile in the rear, more sappers will be clearing a channel for that Sherman. At the same time a Marine commando will be going in from the east side. Any questions?'

'Can I go back to the stalag?' said Willis.

'No.'

There was a throaty rumble, a ragged cheer from the men. Adams looked around. The concrete wall of the bunker, riddled by Wolverine shells, was crumbling, revealing a dark interior shrouded by dust.

'No time like the present,' Adams said with a grin. 'At this rate we'll be in Hastings before the pubs are open. All ready? Go!'

Gary, Willis and Dougie scurried across the open ground towards the bunker, always keeping low, bullets singing around them. They lobbed smoke grenades ahead for cover. They were in an assault group of eight men, armed with grenades, sub-machine guns and daggers. They were followed by reinforcement groups with heavier weapons and flame throwers, and then by sappers with explosives and pickaxes, and finally by reserve units.

The going was slow. They all carried bits of a 'Bangalore torpedo', steel pipe crammed with explosive. It was awkward to carry, and Gary had always felt nervous of this crude bit of kit anyhow.

Willis, though, seemed fearless, as always. He soon outstripped Gary, and was one of the first to reach the fence. Gary watched as the sappers prised back the layers of wire. Amid a hail of covering fire, the men fitted the torpedo together, then pushed it through the wire.

The torpedo went up, detonating the mines. Earth was thrown up in a string of muddy fountains.

Willis was already scrambling ahead. Gary followed in Willis's tracks over the ground into the minefield, head down and feet tucked in under his body, praying that all the mines had been cleared. It was hard going. The ground was broken by trenches, and now it was churned up by the craters of the mine detonations.

At the wall, he and Willis threw themselves flat on the ground. The upper edge of the broken wall was only about three feet above them.

Gary glanced back the way he had come. More men were following under covering fire. They swarmed over the muddy, broken ground, looking oddly rat-like. Around them the sappers were working to clear more mines and to bridge the trenches for the tanks to follow.

Willis grinned, his teeth white in his blackened face. He hefted a grenade. 'Ready for a bit of the old Stalingrad two-step?'

Gary pulled out a grenade of his own. 'After you.'

Willis counted down on his fingers. Three, two, one. They pulled the pins out of their grenades and hurled them over the wall, and huddled during the double explosion. Then they stood up so they were looking over the wall, their Thompson guns raking fire into the room. A machine gun emplacement had been wrecked by the grenades. Two men lay dead, but another ducked out of an open doorway, firing a pistol at the invaders.

Gary and Willis swept their legs over the wall and clambered in.

They pushed forward, moving from room to room. It was a routine, throw a grenade, follow it up with automatic fire, then on to the next. Gary made sure he raked the walls and even the ceilings. Some of the rooms were crowded, and they used concussion grenades, smoke or phosphorus to cause confusion and panic, before wading in with their weapons, leaving behind corpses, wounded and prisoners. They had been trained up for this sort of operation by Soviet advisors, who had learned hard lessons about a new kind of infantry warfare in the streets of Stalingrad, and they had exercised in bombed-out districts of London.

The complex was quite elaborate, with communications gear and a range of weapons, including mortars and some larger pieces. The individual houses under their shell of concrete were connected by knock-through doorways and tunnels. Many of the rooms were lit only by slit windows in the concrete shell. Under one window, Gary found a sketch of the countryside painted on the wall, with ranging information for the guns.

He crashed at last through one more doorway, grenade in hand, ready to draw the pin.

A soldier of the Wehrmacht faced him, a torch in his hand, his arms aloft. 'Please.' The man swung his torch around. The room was full of people in civilian clothes, many of them women; their faces swam in the dark before Gary, their eyes wide, their mouths open. There was a stink in here, of urine and shit and vomit. The Wehrmacht man said, his English good, 'I am Obergefreiter Ernst Trojan. I am the only military personnel here. These are civilians. German civilians. There is no need to injure them.'

Gary hesitated. 'Don't I know you?'

Trojan stared at him. 'From Richborough? A Roman spear, a raid? Another life…'

'What the hell are these people doing here?'

'They are civil servants. Brought from Germany to Hastings to help run the protectorate. You see? They are clerks, telephonists, typists. When the counter-invasion came they were brought to this bunker for safety. Where else were they to go?'