Dave Dawson at Dunkirk

by Robert Sidney Bowen

Those and countless other questions crowded through his brain. Then, as though somebody had pulled a curtain aside, memory came back to him and he knew all the answers. Of course! A Stuka bomb. It had dropped close. He had been trying to shelter that old woman. Yet, that had been on the road by a cart, and here he was under some trees. How come? Had the exploding bomb blown him under the trees? Was he wounded but still too dazed to feel any pain? Good gosh, it was night now, so he must have been here for hours!

Thought and action became one. He put out his hands and pushed himself up to a sitting position. Almost instantly he regretted the effort. A hundred trip-hammers started going to work on the inside of his head. The night and the stars began to whirl madly about him. He closed his eyes tight, and clenched his teeth until things stopped spinning so fast. That helped the pounding in his head, too. It simmered down to a dull throbbing ache that he could stand without flinching.

For a few moments he sat there on the grass feeling over his body and searching for broken bones or any wounds he might have received. There was nothing broken, however, and his only wound was a nice big goose egg on the left side of his head. Thankful for the miracle wrought, he got slowly to his feet, braved a hand against a tree trunk and peered about him in the darkness.

It was then one more little surprise came to him. He was in a field and as far as he could tell there wasn't a road any place. No unending stream of refugees, no wagons, no carts, and no road. It was as though he had dropped down into the very middle of nowhere. Completely puzzled by the strangeness of his surroundings, he glanced at the sky, found the North Star and started walking northward. Way off in the distance there was a faint rumbling, like thunder far far away, but he knew at once it was the roar of heavy guns. If he needed any proof he had only to stare toward the northeast. There the faint glow of flames made a horizon line between the night sky and the earth.

"But where am I?" he asked himself aloud. "I couldn't have just been blown away. I haven't even got a sprained ankle. Gosh! I wonder where the Lieutenant is? And those poor refugees. I sure hope French planes caught those Germans and gave them some of their own medicine. And...."

He choked off the rest and started running. In the distance off to his left he had suddenly seen a pair of moving lights. One look told him that it must be some kind of a car on a road. He would stop it and at least find out where he was. Perhaps he might even get a ride back to Paris. He would be crazy to try and reach Calais, now. The best thing for him to do was to get back to Paris as fast as he could and send word to his father.

"But how can I?" he gasped as sudden truth dawned on him. "I don't even know where Dad's staying in London. He was to meet me at the station. I didn't bother to ask Lieutenant Defoe where Dad was staying!"

The seriousness of his plight added wings to his feet. He raced at top speed toward the pair of moving dim lights. And with every step he took, fear that he would not get to the road in time mounted in his breast. But he had been the star half miler on the Boston Latin High School track team, and finally he reached the edge of the road a good fifty or sixty yards in front of the advancing pair of lights. Disregarding the danger of being run down in the dark he stepped to the center of the road and waved both his arms and shouted at the top of his voice. The sound of the car's engine died down, brakes complained, and the car came to a halt.

"I say there, what's up?" shouted a voice from behind the lights. "I jolly well came close to running you down, you know. Just spotted you in the nick of time."

Dave gulped with relief at the sound of an English speaking voice. He trotted toward the lights and then around them to the driver's seat. It was then he saw that the car was an ambulance. It was a nice brand new one, and only a little dusty. Painted under the red cross on the side were the words ... British Volunteer Ambulance Service.