Weaver

XVII

It took until noon before Pevensey Bay was secured, with the railway line crossed at the halt, and the road to Bexhill taken, and the assault groups were at last able to form up, ready to move out. The tide had long since turned, and the barges and motor boats were desperately trying to reach the sea, for they were needed to bring across the second echelon, but they were having trouble finding clear water through the wreckage of boats and the tangles of corpses. The casualty rate must be high, Ernst thought, a quarter, a third of this first wave lost; he was lucky to be alive. But he had been forced to watch many comrades die.

And then, after all that, four hours after Ernst landed, the gas came.

Just one shell was dropped by a Blenheim bomber, onto the beach where Ernst himself had landed. It seemed to detonate harmlessly, causing few casualties. But then the gas spread, and men fell, crying out, clawing at their eyes and their blistering skin. Those officers with experience of the first war knew what this was: mustard gas. Fear spread through the ranks of the men, still massed tight on the beaches. They scrambled for gas-masks, fearing they might have been ruined by immersion in the sea.

But there was only that one plane, that one shell. Perhaps this attack was carried out by a rogue unit, disaffected officers of the RAF. The British did not quite have the inhumanity to use this last resort – or, some said, the courage.

Whatever, the incident served only to enrage the men. Ernst felt it himself.

He was in the group that took Pevensey Castle. The defences here were feeble, and surrendered quickly when a flame tank, a flammenpanzer, forced its way through the west gate. Ernst was one of the first into a garrison that had been built into the ruins of the inner bailey, and he himself took several prisoners.

One small man, dark, in the uniform of the Home Guard, dared to speak to them in German: 'Welcome to England.' Ernst used his rifle-butt to club him to silence.