Weaver

XXIII

All that Sunday George picked up bits of news from the folk coming and going at the town hall.

There was a ferocious battle for Folkestone. The defenders were mostly a New Zealander division. Far from home, they fought well, but by two in the afternoon the Germans had taken the town. But the retreating troops blew up the harbour with its wharves and cranes.

Some German units had made it over the Channel today. But the hinge of the invasion would come overnight, when the bulk of the second echelon would try to make it across to their landing points at dawn on Monday. In advance of that a major battle was unfolding in the Channel. The RAF was strafing the flows of shipping and bombing the embarkation ports, all the while battling it out with the Luftwaffe, and trying to fend off bomber attacks on London and other inland cities. Its resources spread thin, the RAF was near collapse, so the rumours went. The Royal Navy also had split objectives, with a mandate to protect the Atlantic convoys even while the invasion was underway. But today the Home Fleet was fully deployed in the Channel. The destroyers and torpedo boats were taking on the Kriegsmarine, and were getting among the lines of barges and tugs returning from England.

And in Hastings, the Germans were here.

The first German troops arrived on bicycles at about six in the evening. They were soldiers, Wehrmacht as far as George knew, and they must have been scouts. They cycled casually, their rifles on their backs. They were unopposed. George stood at his post at the door of the town hall just off Queens Road, in his police uniform, helmet on, his canvas gas-mask bag slung over his shoulder. The scouts looked him over but otherwise ignored him.

Next came more infantry. They moved cautiously, walking so they hugged the walls to either side of the street, their rifles raised. They peered at upstairs windows, evidently fearful of snipers. But some of them kicked in the front doors of houses or smashed shop windows, and went in to emerge with clocks or bits of silver. After them came a motor-cycle detachment with route signs in German, replacements for the signs long taken down, cardboard placards which they strapped to lamp-posts and nailed to doorways.

Then followed a group of military policeman, the feldgendarmerie, with some junior Wehrmacht troopers. The MPs studied the town hall, and glared at George. Muttering in German, they picked out the building on a map. They ordered two of the soldiers to remain here, evidently on sentry duty. Then they strode on.

The men posted here looked at George, but, seeing he had no weapon and no intention of impeding them, got on with their work. They took a hammer and nails from a canvas bag, and nailed a poster to the town hall door. When they were done they took up their own position by the door, lounging, ignoring George, sharing a cigarette.

George glanced at the poster. It read,

PROCLAMATION TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND: