CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

_Thunder In The West_

The cold, clammy air of early dawn finally pried Dave's eye lids open and brought him back to the conscious world. For a moment he stared dully at the mass of grey shadows all around him. Then gradually he realized that the shadows, most of them, were rocks and huge chunks of cement, and that light was filtering down through cracks and holes between them. That realization brought back memory of where he was. Then swiftly followed recollection of all that had happened and why he was there. He started to get to his feet, and his movements awakened Freddy Farmer slumped against him. The English youth groaned, opened his eyes and stared blankly around for a moment. Then they cleared as fragments of memory came racing back to him, too. He sat up and gingerly flexed his arms and legs.

"Gee, it's morning!" he exclaimed.

"And the Stukas have gone, thank goodness," Dave said. "Lets get out of here. Maybe the train's back and we can get aboard it this time. Gosh! I'm stiff as a board."

"I can hardly move!" Freddy moaned and got slowly to his feet. "Man, I never thought a chap could fall asleep while bombs were falling. My father told me that he once slept through a ten hour bombardment in front of Amiens, in Nineteen Seventeen. I aways thought he was pulling my leg, but now blessed if I don't believe him. I say, what's that?"

Dave cocked his head and listened to the sudden strange sound.

"Troops marching!" he breathed. "That's what it is. Troops marching. The train must be back. Come on, Freddy!"

Dave scrambled forward and started crawling up out of the cave and between the rocks to firm ground. He suddenly stopped short as he glanced through a crack that gave him a clear view of the road that ran along in back of the bomb shattered station. His heart leaped up into his throat, and for a second or two he couldn't utter a word. Freddy, scrambling up behind, bumped into him and started an exclamation. Dave whirled and put a silencing hand to his lips.

"Pipe down!" he hissed. "Freddy! For gosh sakes, take a look through that crack. Gee! What do you know about that?"

The English youth squirmed past him and peered out through the crack. His young body stiffened, and there was the sharp sound of sucking air into his lungs. He turned around and stared wide eyed at Dave and licked his lower lip.

"Germans!" he whispered. "The beggars are all over the place. We've been left behind, Dave. Our boys must have moved on when the Stukas went away. But we were asleep."

"Yeah, I guess that was it," Dave said and nodded. "Holy smokes, Freddy, what shall we do?"

"I don't know, except to stay where we are," the English youth replied in a tight voice. "If we show our heads they're sure to grab us. There must be thousands of them!"

"Millions, it looks like!" Dave said with a gulp. "Yes, the best thing to do is stay right here and hope they don't find us. Maybe they'll move off after awhile, then we can beat it. Gosh! I had all I want of a being a German prisoner. Sure, let's stay right here."

"At least we won't starve, no matter how long they take marching through," Freddy said. "We both have plenty of chocolate bars we got at the hospital. And I didn't have to give any of the water in my canteen to the wounded I carried. Did you?"

"Not a drop, it's full," Dave said, and patted the canteen at the end of the strap hooked over his shoulder. "You're right, we won't go hungry or thirsty. But gosh, I hope they don't stick around too long, or we'll never get out of this place. Maybe we were crazy to duck in here, huh?"

"And maybe we would have been crazier to have gone some place else," Freddy murmured and pulled a bar of chocolate from his pocket. "At least no bombs hit us here."

"That's right," Dave agreed. Then with a stiff grin, "And it's a cinch that none are going to hit us, either, while those Germans are out there. But I sure hope all those British troops got away. I guess they did, though, or we'd hear fighting right now. Gee! Can you beat it?"

"Beat what?" Freddy asked through a mouthful of crunched chocolate bar. "What's the matter?"

"I was just thinking, and maybe it isn't so funny," Dave said. "We sort of started all this business behind the German lines, and here we are again. I sure hope we don't end it that way! Wonder how long we'll have to wait? Until it's dark, I guess."

Freddy didn't answer. He crawled up the stones and peered through the crack again. When he came down his dust and dirt smeared face looked most unhappy.

"Until it's dark, at least," he said with a sad shake of his head. "And more war music, too. I just saw them wheeling some guns into position in back of the railroad station. Yes, I'm afraid the blasted beggars are planning to stay here a bit, too."

"Well, when it gets dark we get out of here," Dave said grimly. "Guns or no guns."

"You bet," Freddy said and fell silent.

As though their silence was a signal to the gunners above, the earth and the sky once more began to shake and tremble as the gun muzzles belched out their sheets of flame and steel-clad missiles of death and destruction that went screaming far off to the east. To get away from the shuddering, hammering pounding as much as possible, the two boys crawled far back into the wall cave and tried to make themselves comfortable.

Seconds clicked by to add up to minutes, and minutes ticked by to add up to an hour. Then eventually it was two hours, then three, then four. And still the guns hammered and snarled and pounded away at their distant objectives. It seemed as though it would never end. Try as they did to steel themselves against the perpetual thunder, and the constant shaking and heaving of the earth under them, it was right there with them every second of the time. Their eardrums ached, and seemed ready to snap apart. They tore off little pieces of their shirts and used them as plugs to stuff in their ears. That helped some, but it made speech between them impossible.

Roaring, barking thunder all morning, and all afternoon. But along toward evening it died down considerably. And when the shadows of night started creeping up it ceased altogether. The two boys crawled forward and up the bomb-made rock steps and peered through the crack between the stones. The hopes that had been born in them when the guns stopped seemed to explode in their brains. The guns were not being hooked onto the tractors. Nor were the swarms of troops climbing into the long lines of motorized Panzer trucks. On the contrary, mess wagons were being rolled forward, and flare lights were being set about all over the place. Even as Dave and Freddy crouched there watching with sinking spirits two flare lights sputtered into being directly above their heads. With sudden terror gripping their hearts they scuttled back deep into their hiding place.

"No soap, I guess," Dave said bitterly. "We'd stick out like a couple of sore thumbs. What do you think, Freddy?"

"The same as you," the English youth said unhappily. "We'd be fools to budge an inch. I most certainly wish we had blankets. These are the hardest rocks I ever felt."

"You said it," Dave muttered and ran his hand over the hard surface that was unquestionably going to serve as his bed for another night of terror. "Maybe, though, they'll pull out before dawn. Or maybe in the morning, for sure."

If the gods of war heard Dave Dawson's words they must have laughed loud and with fiendish glee, for they knew how false his hopes were. The Germans did not leave during the night. Nor did they leave in the morning. As soon as it was dawn they started their devastating bombardment again. And for another whole day the boys huddled together in their hiding place and struggled with every bit of their will power to stop from going stark, raving mad from the thunder of the guns.

Then, suddenly, when there was still an hour of daylight left, the guns went silent for keeps, and instead there were all kinds of sounds of feverish activity. Harsh orders flew thick and fast. Men shouted and cursed. Tractor engines roared into life. Truck transport gears were meshed in nerve rasping grinding sound, and as the boys watched through their look-out crack they saw the Germans move slowly off down a road leading toward the southwest. Neither of them spoke until the last truck had passed out of view. And by then it was pitch dark, save for a shimmering red glow to the east and to the south.

"Boy, I thought it would never happen!" Dave said in a shaky voice. "Come on! Let's get going before others arrive here. Which way do you think we'd better head?"

"The railroad track, I think," Freddy said after a moment of silence. "It must have been blown all to bits by those Stukas, or else there would have been a train come up to take those Germans away. Instead, though, they headed down the road to the southwest."

"Check," Dave said. "And that track is supposed to lead to Dunkirk. Gosh, I hope the British are still there."

"They must be there," Freddy said firmly. "You can still hear the guns up ahead, so there must be somebody besides Germans around. I say, look at that fog, or is it fog? Yes, it is. And it's beginning to rain, too. Well, thank goodness for that. We won't be seen or heard so easily. Right-o, Dave. Let's get on with it. Like the chaps in the R.A.F. say, Tally-ho!"

"Tally-ho!" Dave echoed happily and started scrambling up out of the cave.

Walking side by side, and gripping hands to hold up the other fellow in case he slipped and started tumbling into a bomb crater, the two boys struck out boldly along the single line of track. Before they had traveled a hundred yards the railroad tracks stopped being what they were supposed to be. They became a long stretch of twisted steel and pulverized ties. But though the road bed was constantly pock marked with bomb craters it served as a guide eastward for their crunching footsteps.

Layers of fog came rolling in from the east, and with every step a fine chilling rain sprayed down upon them. But rather than being annoyed and uncomfortable, they were buoyed up by the miserable weather. It gave them added protection from any German patrols in the neighborhood. It hid them from the rest of the world of dull constant sound, and the shimmering glow of red to the east and to the south. There was more sound, and a more brilliant glow of red to the south, and as they heard it and saw it their hearts became even lighter. If there was all that sound to the south it must mean that the Germans had not been able to cut off the retreating armies at Dunkirk. And of course that was true, for as they trudged and stumbled along the bomb blasted strip of spur railroad track some fifty thousand do or die British soldiers were holding back the savagely attacking German hordes at Douai, and at the Canal de Bergues, so that some three hundred and thirty thousand of their comrades might escape the trap from Dunkirk and reach England in safety.

Of course Dave and Freddy didn't know _that_ at the time. Yet, perhaps they sensed it unconsciously, for their step did become faster, their hearts lighter, and the hope they would get through somehow mounted higher and higher in their thoughts. And so on and on they went. A thousand times they stumbled over things in the darkness; went pitching together down into bomb craters, or barked their shins and raised lumps on their tough bodies. Always forward, though. They stopped talking to conserve their energy, for they had no idea how many miles of bomb blasted roadbed lay ahead of them. The fog and the rain dulled the sound of the guns so that they couldn't tell if they were drawing nearer or actually heading away from them. And although they looked at it a million times apiece the dull red glow ahead of them seemed always to remain the same. It never once brightened up or faded down. It got so that it seemed as though they were walking on a treadmill. Walking, walking, yet never seeming to get any place. Never seeing anything different to give them proof they had covered ground. Every piece of twisted track they stumbled over was the same as the last. A bomb crater into which they fell sprawling was no different from all the others. And the darkness, the fog, the rain, the boom of the guns, and the shimmering red glow were always the same in the next second, in the next minute, and in the next hour.

Grit, courage, and a fighting spirit resolved never to give up, forced them forward foot after foot, yard after yard, and mile after mile. Even thoughts ceased to stir in their brains, and there was nothing there but the fierce burning flame that drove their tired legs and bodies forward.

Then, suddenly, their separate worlds seemed to shatter before their eyes in an explosion of sound. To Dave it seemed close to an eternity before the sound made sense in his dulled brain. Then in a flash he realized that nothing had exploded. A loud voice not three feet in front of them had bellowed out the challenge.

"_Halt!_"

Even then neither of the boys could grasp its true meaning. The voice shattered their hopes, gripped their hearts with fingers of ice, and seemed to drain every drop of blood from their bodies. Fate was having the big laugh on them at last. The worst, the one thing they had dreaded had come to pass. They had stumbled headlong into a nest of Germans!

"Halt, you blighters, 'fore I run this through your bellies!"

Then truth crashed home, and the boys let out a gurgling cry of relief as they realized the voice was _speaking in English!_