Silence Over Dunkerque by John R. Tunis Page A

difficult to push, although each man took turns between the shafts. At noon they paused under some poplars beside a tiny stream to eat. It was the trees, the Sergeant decided, that made the French roads such a pleasure. He loved the disciplined trees of France—the oak, the birch, the beech, the plane tree, the chestnut, and the poplar. Especially the tall, elegant poplars, edging road and river.
    He refilled the stone water jug, gave the dog all she wanted to drink. Then he bathed her wounds with water, tied up the worst of them with bandages, hoisted her again to the top of the jolting cart. There she sat, paws forward, bandages around her flanks, surveying the procession, completely content to be with her people again.
    Half an hour, an hour, on they went. Finally they reached a crossroads where a stone marker bore the sign: Calais par Coulogne, 5 k.
    This was the back road they wanted, and there were but a few miles left. It was a winding country lane through tree-lined marshes on both sides. The Englishmen, pushing the heavily loaded cart, sweated in the hot sun. The dog panted on the pile of clothes. Nobody spoke; everyone was weary. On they went, the cart creaking and groaning beneath its heavy load. As they came to a sharp bend, there, unexpectedly, was the German army in battle dress advancing toward them.
    The dog, knowing well friend from foe, gave two short, sharp barks.
    On the right side of the road was a ruined and overturned Mark IV Panzer tank which half blocked their passage. To get by, someone had to give way, as there was not sufficient room for the files and the refugees to pass each other.
    Instinctively the two Englishmen slowed down, intending to stand aside and wait. Not the girl. She sized the situation up and took command. “Allons” she ordered.
    At the precise moment they reached the ruined tank, the head of the column, with an officer and non-com in front, arrived there also. Someone had to yield ground and it wasn’t that little Girl Scout.
    Giving the officer a glance full of hatred that was not assumed, she tugged at her braids, tossed her head, and moved resolutely by. Less resolutely the English with the cart and the dog followed. It was a contest of wills. The officer started to wave them off the road, stopped, looked at her again, turned, hesitated, and gave an order to the Feldwebel. The non-com stood still, barked a command to the long column, which immediately swung to the edge as the girl pressed on.
    There was real malevolence in her glance, a dislike of the invader all too plain. She did not disguise her feeling, and the Frenchiness of her was evident. It could not have been invented or assumed. To the officer, she was a native. So also were the men in sabots and smocks at her side.
    Anyhow this was what the young Hauptmann decided as he stood under a poplar tree at the edge of the road watching them pass. He was tall, blond, with an agreeable face under his coal-scuttle helmet, trying hard to be liked. If he had any intention of checking their papers, the girl’s scornful look as she went by put it from his mind. Few men would have cared to accost her at that moment.
    The troops beside the road, rifles slung over their shoulders, stood like a regiment being reviewed by a general officer. The dog half rose on her haunches at the top of the pile of clothes on the cart, and barked her distrust sharply. It was a convincing act, it was no act, it was the way the girl felt and the animal too. Her head in the air, the little figure in the khaki skirt stalked firmly past the German files standing beneath the poplar trees.
    The Sergeant, less firmly, followed with the cart. He desired to imitate her look; it was not easy. Because here was a regiment on a route march exactly like his own. How often they too had lined the side of the road for a flock of sheep, a herd of cows, a farmer with a tractor or a mowing machine, waiting in much the same way as these men, to have them pass. These