The Arsenal Files 6/The Arsenal Files 6 (Arsenal Computer).ISO/epub/df9601r.zip/DFL

Text File | 1996-01-01 | 12KB | 257 lines

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MARBURY ROSE
  BY JD BEATTY
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  Grace watched the dim dawn over the smoke-enshrouded coast.
Small boats bobbed and wallowed around her in seas much too rough
for them. Marbury Rose, her Uncle Edmund's 100-foot Thames yacht,
led a long column of day-sailors, trawlers, coasters and fishing
smacks. They were to pick up what was left of the tattered British
Army and carry it home while the Luftwaffe tried to destroy the
boats that had no business being there. The RAF occasionally
swooped down just to see the flotilla rolling in the angry Channel
swells, doggedly making for the dark, forbidding Dunkirk shore.

  Grace watched the fighter planes in their swirling, deadly
dance overhead. It reminded her of circling scavenger birds in
American cinemas. Occasionally a plane would explode or a parachute
would appear to break the illusion. It all seemed so unreal, with
her Colin there in France, perhaps hurt, perhaps worse.

  Closer to shore the sea flattened, but there were greater
hazards. A minesweeper was laying half-sunk on a sandbar, but two
of her guns still fired at the Stukas that broke through the RAF
umbrella. A pier on the south end of the beach swarmed with men,
but in the water long queues snaked out from the shore, patiently
waiting for the next rescuer.

  A ship's boat motored from the stranded minesweeper to the
incoming boats. A young man wearing a helmet, life jacket, sweater
and shorts, looking grimy and tired, hailed Marbury Rose while
perched precariously on the boat's prow. Edmund heaved-to, hoping
the boats behind would do the same. "Ho there," the young man
shouted over the din of engines and popping ack-ack, "is this your
first trip?"

  "Aye," Edmund shouted back, "where d'we start?"

  "Start with the nearest queue. Pick up wounded first if you can.
Are you armed?"

  "Nay. Should we be?" "If you're not armed don't pick up any
Germans: if you are armed do as you like. Smaller vessels should
ferry out to the larger ships off-shore, especially the wounded.
Good luck to you." The grimy young man climbed down and motioned
for his coxswain to return. Marbury Rose headed for the nearest
queue a hundred yards distant.

  As they drew near they could make out men, sodden, hollow-eyed
and dirty, chest-deep in cold, filthy water, holding their weapons
and wounded over their heads. In her first stop Marbury Rose took
on fifty men and six litters -- Welsh Borderers, Royal Artillery
from Kent and some Irish Engineers.

  Grace helped a Medical Corpsman from Devon with the wounded
and sick. The men sat or stood or lay about quietly, muttering
"Thank you miss," and "God bless you miss," when she gave them
blankets, cigarettes, tea, cocoa, water or anything else that was
on-board to be offered.

  She cheerily asked those that seemed the most lucid if they
knew where Colin's battalion was. The answer was always "No, miss,"
or "Sorry, miss," and the speaker looked away to the shore, or a
shake of the head and the same, pained glance away.

  When Marbury Rose delivered her first load to a corvette
already swarming with men, the able-bodied went up the scramble-
nets as the others were helped. The litters were hoisted up by a
hundred hands, and ship's boats and rafts hovered about already
laden but taking on what they could. An ensign called down from
the corvette's bridge. "Do you need anything?"

  "Blankets," Grace called up, "and something hot to feed them, if
you please." Several heads turned to look.

  "You've a woman down there," the ensign called back, querulously.

  "Yes, all the boys say the same thing," Edmund answered. "Irish
blood in the family, you know. Otherwise she'd as soon not be here
as any of us." This was met with general laughter. "About the
blankets . . ."

  "Yes, of course," the ensign replied, "and something hot as well.
Half a tick."

  As the last of the men hauled aboard the corvette a bundle of
blankets swung out on a davit followed by a large urn of steaming
liquid. "The cooks call it soup," the ensign called down. Thus
provisioned, Grace and Edmund threw off the lines and headed for
the beach again.

  The first trip blended into the twentieth, long into the
night and the next day and the next. Marbury Rose tied up in the
lee of a destroyer the second night, too weary to go on. When they
started again the queues seemed just as long, the noise from the
beach just as loud. The Luftwaffe swept the beach with machine
guns, and dropped bombs on the queues, on the boats, and the ships
offshore. The Devonshire medic was still with them, tending to the
wounded, replenishing supplies, clearing off debris. It occurred
to Grace that they didn't even know his name. On the third night
she was accompanied by a minelayer back to Ramsgate, hauling an
important group of Belgian and French officers.

  At one unclear time a machine gun on a shoulder-high pedestal
mount had been fastened to the roof of Rose's cockpit, standing
silently guard. An RAF armorer declared it operational,
demonstrating its use. Equipment, bandages, uniform parts,
cigarette butts, dirty wet blankets, and mugs were scattered
about the previously pristine yacht. "And Uncle Edmund had taken
such joy in the cleanliness of his Rose . . ." Grace thought.

  As they approached a queue again three German fighters broke
through the low-lying scud, spraying the sea with machine guns.
Grace leaped onto the roof, spun the machine gun around, braced
against the recoil, and let fly with short bursts as if at geese
over the heather, swinging the gun as fast as she could.

  Watching the long streamers of tracers arching up after them
she realized short bursts would not work and clamped down hard on
the trigger. An instant after the cowling of a German fighter
ruptured, and black smoke belched from underneath the nose. As the
Messerschmitt passed over she swung the gun to follow. There was
another belch of smoke, a ball of flame, and the plane sideslipped
down into the water, skipping before vanishing beneath the cold
waves.

  As one the beach and water cheered, and ships sounded whistles
and horns. "Hurrah!" Edmund yelled, "Three cheers and a tiger for
us! Mark up a Hun for the House of Henley and Marbury Rose! Hurrah!"

  "Good shooting, laddie," boomed a distinctly Highland voice
from a nearby queue. "Ye potted 'im good, ye did! To the Devil
with ye, infernal blaggard!"

  "'Lassie' if you don't mind" Grace yelled back, "but thank
you, kind sir!" And with that, off the French Channel coast, on
a rolling yacht roof, surrounded by a shattered army and tired
civilians trying to save them, Grace executed the most elegant
ballroom curtsy she had ever performed in her life. The cheers
and applause that followed were distinctly heard miles inland.

  It was the last trip back from that war-torn shore that stayed
in Grace's mind. Marbury Rose was fully laden with some of the only
rear-guards that would get off the beach; the headquarters section
of a Highland battalion, most of them wounded. By then the fighting
around the shrinking perimeter could clearly be heard, and although
they hadn't been told officially, the flotilla knew this was the
end.

  The French shore was a dim line on the horizon and the men
grew sullen and quiet. The glow of cupped cigarettes and the
occasional heavy sigh were all that distinguished the sodden,
exhausted soldiers from inanimate objects in the dark.

  Grace had long before stopped asking about Colin, her original
reason for going to that cold, terrifying shore lost in long lines
of struggling, wet, weary men, gunfire, air attacks, and the minor
legend of "Annie Oakley of Dunkirk."

  One boy had lost both legs at the hip and was strapped to a
litter, full of morphia and raging with fever. Grace sat with
him in the crowded cockpit, stroking his head, muttering weary,
soothing words. He suddenly reached up for her head.

  "I'm all right, miss," he said quite clearly, running his
shaking, dirty fingers through her disheveled hair. "I'm all
right. I'm all rig . . . I'm all . . . oh," and he died,
clutching her hair during his last breath.

  "Colin," someone called, "Colin, are you there?"

  "Was that his name? Colin? Was that his name," Grace asked
the voice, the name sounding familiar.

  "Aye it was miss," came the answer. "Colin MacTavish of
Edinburgh."

  "Goodby, then, Colin MacTavish of Edinburgh," she whispered,
folding his hands over his chest. "May you find rest." Only the
rumbling of the engines and the lapping of the sea could be heard.

  "Didn't he have a wife, then, Adam," another asked.

  "Aye he did," said another voice, "and two wee ones too. Pity."
And the cockpit was silent once more.

  After a few minutes Grace went out on the deck and stared out
at the black, cold sea, crying silent tears, wondering if her Colin
too had died alone among strangers. It was near midnight when
Marbury Rose pulled up to the Ramsgate seawall. A harbor tug took
her towline of four smaller boats. Quietly the men got off, and
each thanked Edmund and Grace with a nod or a tip of the headgear.
Ambulances hauled off the litters, and a truck appropriately
painted black took the dead boy away. Silently the rest fell into
a formation of two ragged ranks.

  When the sergeant had taken the role, he reported to his major,
"Forty-four present, sixteen in hospital, nineteen dead, twelve
missing, SAH!"

  "Very good, Sergeant-Major. Sir," he called out to Edmund,
"if you and the young lady would be so kind as to join us for a
moment." Puzzled, Grace and her uncle clambered up to the formation.

  "We would be honored if you would accept induction."

  Edmund, knowing Highland units from the last war, knew what
was meant, but Grace didn't. "It's a great honor, Grace; the
highest they can give. Just accept," he whispered.

  "Yes," they answered, "we accept."

  "Grand. Sergeant-Major, inform the Clans that by the authority
vested in me I declare that from this day forward Edmund Branson
Gorshen, Duke of Mayfield and Peer of the English Realm, and Miss
Grace Henley of Cornwall, are to be regarded as Kinsmen of the
Clans of the Black Watch, and are to be granted all honors and
privileges of other kinsmen. So, then, have we a wee dram among us?"

  The old NCO spun on his heel. "Campbell! Your flask!" In
smart military fashion a weary Highlander marched up and thrust a
silver bottle forward. "Cognac will have to do, SAH!"

  The flask was passed around, each swigging of the thick
liqueur, reciting: "Campbell . . . MacLeish . . . Frasier . . .
McDermott . . ." one by one, symbolizing acceptance of their
ancient clans.

  "Sergeant-Major," the major called out again, the flask put
away, "up the street to the left we've billets for the night. March
the men to quarters. O'Bannion, you Irish renegade, they don't know
we're here yet: Scotland the Brave. Pipe our dead through Hell and
let Saint Peter know they're coming on to Him."

  Then, turning to Edmund and Grace, "Thank you for our lives my
lord, miss. You're one with our clans now. Goodbye and keep well."

  He marched off after his men, their song echoing in the
dark night, bagpipes skirling in the blackness, the heavy tread of
their marching feet resonating in the shadows.

                               (DREAM)

Copyright 1996 JD Beatty, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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J.D. is a historian and writer of fiction/nonfiction from suburban
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and a US Army veteran of over 20 years. He's
the author of CROP DUSTER, a novel of air warfare in Europe in
1942-43, and THE SWORD OF PROMETHEUS, a history of military flame
weapons. Email: [e-mail] or [e-mail]
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