Silence Over Dunkerque by John R. Tunis Read Free Book Online

captain at all, but a retired sergeant major of the Guards, who worked in the customs on the Dover Pier and lived near them on the Folkestone Road.
    “Cap’n!” Everyone called him that. “Fancy meeting you here!”
    “Yes, and fancy my recognizing you with that beard! Knew you at once by your walk, laddie. I’d recognize that walk anywhere.”
    “How’s the family? How’s everyone at home? Everyone all right?” he asked eagerly.
    “Family is fine. Saw the twins yesterday, and the missis too; she’s busy as usual. The town? We haven’t suffered too much yet. They say, though, the Germans are mounting long-range guns at Calais that will reach us.” He looked around. “My word, bit of a mess this, isn’t it?”
    The Sergeant nodded, watching his men trudging through the sand. The Airedale, of course, was at his heel. “Yes. Bad business. How’d you get over, Cap’n?”
    “With a small boat of the Dover patrol. The boys all volunteered to come. We’re anchored right off there. Like a nice ride home?”
    His heart jumped. Home! There it was, in front of his eyes. “Great. How many can you handle?”
    The face of the Captain grew stern. “Ah... just you, laddie. We’re full up as it is; they’ll take you along, though, if I give them the word.”
    The Sergeant hesitated. Who wouldn’t? Then he glanced up the beach again. His little group stood irresolute, watching him converse with the man in blue. Perhaps they realized the offer that was being extended to him. At any rate, the dog did. She rubbed hard against the Sergeant’s leg; her paw went up.
    It was his men’s attitude of indecision, their air of obvious anxiety that he was leaving them, this, as much as his sense of duty, which caught his throat. His voice was tight.
    “Sorry, Cap’n, we’re due to leave from Bray-Dunes up there. I better stay with my men. Be sure and tell them at home you’ve seen me, that I’m fine, and coming back.”
    “Good lad,” said the elder man, putting one hand on the shoulder of the Sergeant. A former non-com himself, he understood. “Luck to you, boy. By the way... you’ve got yourself a nice dog there. Looks like that Airedale of yours. What was her name?”
    “Candy,” said the Sergeant eagerly, happy that the temptation had passed, was over and done. “Yes, you’re right, exactly like our Candy.”
    “H’mm... guess you didn’t know maybe, George, that your dog was killed.”
    “Killed? No! It’s not possible. How? Where?”
    “Down in the town. She was run over by an army lorry in the blackout. So you best take this one along with you. Well, all the luck, my boy. You’ll be in Dover afore me, most likely.”
    “Perhaps.”
    They shook hands, and he moved back toward the waiting group ahead. They all seemed relieved to have him with them again. The tail of the dog waggled violently.

CHAPTER 10
    I F YOUR MEN get no sleep, have them shave every day and eat frequently. But there was no water to drink, much less shave in, and no food. Suppose you have nothing to eat; what then? Every store in each village through which they had tramped had been pillaged, plundered, and overrun by half a dozen units. Even the corpses lying in the fields had been searched.
    Standing on the hard sand, he glanced down at the dog, who looked up at him appealingly, her left paw in the air. He knew she wanted what they all wanted—food and water. Like his men, her only meals for three days had been a couple of army biscuits. Like them, she had no water, because Dunkerque had been waterless for a week. Like the men, she also was near the end of her strength.
    “Good dog, good Candy.” He called her this, because she resembled his dog, who had been killed, and because merely the sound of the name made home seem nearer. Curiously, she responded. With that peculiar instinct of a pet pampered by a family, she stayed close, never losing him from sight, always able to distinguish the Sergeant from the thousands of men