Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell? by Horace Greasley Read Free Book Online

frankly Horace I am disgusted. I hope she was worth it. I cannot understand how you could have stooped so low, especially after I gave myself so freely to you. Your words seem so empty now; your actions so false and insincere and I wonder if I have it in my heart to ever forgive you. I do not think it possible at this stage to take you into my arms again.
    Eva went on to say that when Horace returned home he would get a piece of her mind. Horace would not be looking forward to that day. But neither Horace Greasley nor Eva Bell knew at the time just how many years it would be before that meeting took place.

CHAPTER
THREE
    I t was mid-May 1940 when the 2nd/5th Battalion Leicesters got the call for action. Germany had invaded France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Neville Chamberlain had resigned and Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
    The Third Reich was on the march. Luxembourg had been occupied and General Guderian’s Panzer Corps had broken through into Sedan in France, a strategic disaster for the Allies. Churchill tried to rally the country with his ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ speech. Rotterdam had been carpet-bombed by the Luftwaffe, causing thousands of civilian deaths, and the Dutch army had capitulated. Churchill had made a surprise visit to Paris and to his dismay found that French resistance was all but over. Effectively the United Kingdom stood alone in Europe.
    Only the rumbling of the slow, four-ton troop-carrier could be heard; the lorry’s occupants were silent. There were unsubstantiated rumours that the Maginot Line had been breached by the Germans and they were advancing through France. The Maginot Line – made up of concrete fortifications, tank obstacles, artillery casemates and machine gun posts – had been established during the First WorldWar. It was designed to repel any attack by the Germans and thought to be impregnable.
    Sergeant Major Aberfield had denied the rumour and said the line had held firm. He’d also said the battalion was on its way to Belgium to welcome the Hun. Horace had asked his sergeant, a high-ranking lieutenant and then Sergeant Major Aberfield how the war was going and where exactly they were heading. Each time he received a different answer. He got the impression that nobody really knew.
    Horace held a roughly drawn diagram he’d sketched from the one map of northern France his section of 29 men had in their possession. It belonged to Sergeant Major Aberfield, who’d left it unattended while eating dinner the previous evening. Horace had sketched it in pencil and had filled in the towns of Lille and Lorraine, and several little villages in the Alsace region. He’d carefully shaded the borders of Belgium and Luxembourg, and plotted his section’s progress as they passed through the villages and towns en route.
    So now he was more than a little puzzled. Only a little while ago they’d passed through Caudry and, he supposed, on to Hirson in the direction of the Belgian border. To his surprise they’d turned and headed north and now, in the town of Hautmont just 25 miles from the border, the convoy had stopped and the men told to disembark for a quick fag and a pee. Several officers had assembled and were chatting over a large map spread on the ground. Sergeant Major Aberfield was pointing a stick at the map, but Horace couldn’t quite hear what he was saying.
    They all returned to the truck and the driver now turned west in the direction of Cambrai. Horace held his drawing on his knees, and his hands began to tremble as the awful truth dawned on him. The battalion had about turned… they were on the retreat.
    An hour later the lorry stopped and the troops were told to disembark again. It was if the whole section heard it at the same time, just a split second after the engine of the lorry had spluttered to a halt. Gunfire. There was no mistake.
    Gunfire and artillery shells – the sound wafted in on the wind from the east. It was hard