The Black Jackals by Iain Gale

Author:Iain Gale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

They drove on through the night, sticking to the minor roads, even though it did not make things easy for them as Lamb had ordered Bennett to drive without lights. Looking across the fields to a major road which ran roughly parallel with their own, Lamb could see enemy trucks and smaller vehicles racing in the opposite direction, presumably towards the base. A whimper from the rear reminded him of the casualties, and finally, when they were a good five miles clear of the base and in the midst of a thick forest, he told Bennett to stop.

Opening the door and rushing round to the rear, Lamb pulled himself up into the truck. The wooden floor was slick with blood and four bodies lay slumped against the rails. Archer and Mitchell were obviously dead, their sightless eyes staring to the heavens. Lamb searched quickly for Madeleine and was happy to see her in the back of the truck tending the wounds of a fifth casualty, Sergeant McKracken. He looked at the others. Driscoll and Blake were goners too. Tapley was mumbling something about his mother and didn’t look long for the world. Of the other eight men, miraculously none had been badly wounded. He found Mays.

‘Well done back there, all of you. There’ll be a few less bombs falling on our chaps tomorrow. We need to ditch the dead here, I’m afraid. And we’ve no time to bury them properly.’

They placed the four men in the woods to their right, and covered them as best they could with brambles. Lamb stood for a few moments beside the sad, makeshift tombs and muttered a few words of commendation, then they all piled back into the truck. Madeleine was cradling Tapley’s head in her lap. Lamb looked at her and there was no need to speak. He could see the tears running clear down her face in the moonlight. He shook his head and she lowered hers.

Lamb turned away, jumped off the tailgate and climbed back up into the cab, closing the door. ‘Let’s go, Sarnt. They’re sure to be right behind us.’

Peering at the map by the light of a small torch, Lamb took them through the woods and south again, skirting a small hamlet, until once again they were in open fields. They were on nothing more than a farm track now, and Lamb was pleased. He knew that they were almost there, but at the same time was well aware that this would be the hardest part of their journey.

He was in two minds about what to do. Very soon he knew they must hit the rear echelons of the German front line. It stood to reason that if the 51st had drawn a line from the coast along the Somme, as the colonel had told him they would, then the advancing Germans would be directly opposite. So their task now was to break through the German lines once again but this time from the rear, pushing their way out.

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