Tramp in Armour Read Online Free PDF Page A

people in the village were symbolic: the shock of the armoured hammer had smashed French morale, had brought on a state of psychological paralysis. We must keep moving, on and on. And on and on raced the German spearhead, a spearhead tipped by the 14th Panzer division, commanded by General Heinrich Storch.
    The tank crew had been entombed inside the tunnel for over twenty-four hours and the strain was telling. In spite of the fact that they had spent over two-thirds of their time in back-breaking toil, removing large boulders with their bare hands, carting away hundredweights of debris with the shovels they carried on the tank, their state of near-physical exhaustion still couldn't prevent them from thinking, and the longer they re mained trapped inside the hill the more they began to wonder whether they would ever leave the tunnel alive. Barnes paused to lean on his shovel, wiping sweat from his dripping forehead as he looked at his watch in the headlights. Seven o'clock in the evening of Friday May 17th.
    They had driven into the tunnel at eleven o'clock on the morning of the previous day and there was still no sign that they had more than scraped the surface of the landslide. At the rock face, its impenetrable solidity, only too apparent in the pitiless headlight beams, Davis and Reynolds wrestled to haul out a massive boulder from the left-hand side of the wall. The two men were working together as a team while Barnes and Penn wielded the shovels - a sensible division of labour since the two troopers were easily the strongest men in the crew. Barnes stood back and watched them working while he began his fifteen-minute break. He had organized the work routine so they had fifteen minutes off in every hour, and he had further arranged that the breaks should be taken in pairs, so that each man had someone to talk to, but at the same time he was encouraged by still seeing the work in progress. Four men resting at the same time, all voicing their fears, could have a disastrous effect on morale.
    'Time for a break, Penn,' he called out.
    'In a tick - I'll just finish shifting this lot.'
    Thirty-four years old, Barnes was not only the oldest member of the crew, he was also the smallest. Barely five foot seven inches tall, he was small-boned and slim, but his frame was wiry and on a long-term endurance basis he could probably outlast the other three on sheer will-power alone. His face was lean, clean-shaven, and above prominent cheekbones his brown eyes were still alert and watchful as he studied Reynolds and Davis. In size there wasn't a great deal to choose between them; they were both large, heavily-built men, but there was an enormous difference in temperament. Whereas Davis, the ex-miner, was subject to moods of melancholy, Reynolds could be relied upon to carry out any task he was set until he dropped, showing neither enthusiasm nor depression at any stage. As for thirty-year-old Corporal Penn, he was easily the most intelligent and best-educated of the four men. At the outbreak of war he could have obtained a commission but he had turned it down for reasons which were never quite clear. Slim and tall, he was the most light-hearted of the crew, and at the same time the most sensitive. Dropping his shovel, he wobbled over to Barnes in an exaggerated manner.
    'There should be extra pay for this, there really should. Working underground doesn't come within my agreed sphere of duties, you know. I'll have to look it up in King's Regs. Mind if we take a stroll along the promenade?'
    Along the promenade was Penn's version for walking through the tunnel, so Barnes got up off the hull where he had been sitting and walked with Penn, his torch beam showing the way. As soon as they were out of earshot of the other two men Penn began talking.
    'I don't like the look of Davis. I don't think he can stand much more of this.'
    'He'll have to - it's the same for all of us and we may be through to the other side any moment now.'
    'Do you really