WC02 - Never Surrender by Michael Dobbs Page B

make sure it would be used for the war effort. She'd heard that German women were giving up their wedding bands, and she wanted to do her bit. He had pressed it back upon her. If that was the practice in Germany, he told her, it was the best reason he could think for an Englishwoman not to do anything of the sort. That, too, had helped.
    With every word of comfort, the reputation of the Reverend Chichester rose in the eyes of his parishioners. It left him feeling a fraud. He made most of it up. God knew what the answers were to their questions, but he didn't. How could he talk to others about the wickedness of lies, when he wouldn't own up to the truth about his own son? He praised others for maintaining their moral codes, yet that was precisely what he had condemned Don for. The certainties in his life had gone, and what was left was obscured in clouds of spiritual dust.
    He couldn't find sanctuary even in his church. He'd had another visitor that morning, a man from the War Office with a large paper file and a considerably smaller map of Dover, who had announced that he was requisitioning the tower of St. Ignatius for use as an observatory. They were going to watch for enemy parachutists. Chichester had enquired whether this was wise since St. Ignatius was the only tall building in the area that didn't have a telephone, but the man from the ministry was adamant, warning that he could have Chichester arrested if he caused difficulties, vicar or no vicar. Chichester responded that the lack of a telephone would be more likely to cause the difficulties, and left it at that. Perhaps he'd ask for a good peal of the bells at the weekend, just to ensure that those above the belfry were awake.
    Even those wretched maps of the battlefield in The Times had begun causing trouble. He'd pinned the latest one up in the porch that morning. Still no fronts marked on it; in fact, it contained very little information at all. To the untrained eye they all looked the same. Except the Reverend Chichester noticed that the map, day by day, was moving ever farther westward.
    Convoy. The dictionary talked about an escort designed for honour, guidance or protection. If that were so, the 6th no longer seemed to merit the term. They had moved back, even beyond the defensive works the BEF had spent so many months constructing, but it had done nothing to halt the tide of withdrawal. They had begun the day based at a chateau, had moved back to a small brewery at Laventie and were now on the move for the third time that day. The order and discipline that Don had associated with a life in the army had broken down with astonishing speed they had lost all contact with the Casualty Clearing Station and had no idea where it had been moved. The station was supposed to assess the injured and hand them on for treatment, but now the 6th had to carry the wounded with them, crammed into the back of the ambulances. Many were too badly injured to make it. They were left behind with large red crosses pinned on their uniforms.
    The number of casualties had begun to grow. Belgians, French, a few British, many civilians. The Luftwaffe was attacking indiscriminately, firing at ambulances, women, children, farm stock anything to increase the mayhem and slow down the retreat. There could only be one point to this: the panzers weren't far behind.
    The BBC announced that Brussels was not threatened -news that would have come as a shock to the grieving owner of the circus. And if Brussels wasn't being threatened, how was it that Don could hear the din of battle around Tournai, thirty miles further west?
    The Medical Corps manual he'd trained with was no bloody use. It had nothing about how to deal with confusion and chaos. Don found himself doing whatever was required -tearing up sheets for bandages, boiling tools for the surgeons, disposing of the waste bits of war. He even had to start foraging for food a NAAFI truck had driven past shortly after dawn, throwing out a little