Dave Dawson at Dunkirk

Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

Hitler Gives The Order!

The first thing Dave Dawson saw when he woke up was the combination clock and calendar on the little table beside his bed. He stared at it sleepy eyed and tried to remember why he had put it where he would see it the very first thing when he opened his eyes. He knew there was some reason, an important one, but for the life of him he couldn't remember.

He struggled with the problem for a moment or two and then sat up in bed and glanced about the room. For one brief second the unfamiliar sight startled him. Then he realized where he was and grinned broadly. Sure enough! This was his room in the Hotel de Ney in Paris, France. This was just a little part of the wonderful dream that had really come true!

The "dream" had begun two weeks ago. It had begun with the thundering roar of the Dixie Clipper's four engines that had lifted Dave and his father from the waters of Port Washington Bay, Long Island, on the first leg of the flight across the Atlantic to Lisbon, Portugal. His father had been sent to Europe on a government mission, and after much coaxing and pleading had consented to take Dave along. The thrill of a lifetime, and during every minute of these last two weeks Dave Dawson had been living in a very special kind of Seventh Heaven.

To fly to a Europe at peace was something, but to fly to a Europe at war was something extra special. It was a trip a fellow would remember all the days of his life. It was an adventure that he'd tell his grandchildren all about some day. The Clipper roaring to a landing at Bermuda, then on to the Azores, and then farther eastward to Lisbon. The train journey across Portugal to Spain, then up across Spain and over the Pyrenees into France. Finally on to Paris and all the beautiful things that beautiful city had to offer.

Not all of the things, however, had been beautiful. There were lots of things that were grim looking and made a fellow think a lot. The things of war. True, the war was a long, long ways from Paris. It was far eastward between the great Maginot Line of the French and the Siegfried Line of Adolf Hitler's Nazi legions. There it had remained for eight months, now, and people were saying that there it would remain. Hitler would never dare attack the Maginot Line, and eventually the war would just peter out.

Yes, that was the talk you heard all over Paris, but the grim things were there for you to see with your own eyes just the same. The batteries of anti-aircraft guns strategically placed about the city. The fat sausage balloons that could be sent up to great heights as a barricade against raiding German bombers, should Hitler ever decide to send them over. Then too there were the French Flying Corps planes that patrolled almost constantly over the city day and night. The army trucks, and small tanks that rumbled through the suburbs day after day. The lorries filled with solemn eyed French troops going up to battle stations. And at night ... the black out. No lights on the streets save the tiny blue flashlights that the people carried. At first it made you think of a crazy kind of fairyland. Then the faint crump-crump of a distant anti-aircraft battery going into action, and the long shafts of brilliant light stabbing the black skies, would remind you that France was at war, and that danger might come to Paris, though as yet it had not even come close. But....

At that moment the musical chimes of the French alarm clock cut into his thoughts. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was exactly fifteen minutes of seven. He glanced at the calendar, too, and it told him that the date was May 10th, 1940.

May Tenth! In a flash the elusive bit of memory came back to him. He let out a whoop of joy and flung back the covers and leaped out of bed. May Tenth, of course! Gee, to think that he had actually forgotten. Why, today was doubly important, and how! For one thing, he was now exactly seventeen years old. For the other, that swell French officer, Lieutenant Defoe, of the 157th Infantry Regiment, was going to take Dad and himself on a personally conducted tour of the famous Maginot Line! The Lieutenant had said he would come by the hotel at seven thirty sharp. That's why he had put the clock so close to his bed! To make sure he would hear the alarm, in case his dad in the next room over-slept. Heck, yes! Seventeen years old, and a trip to the Maginot Line!

He danced a jig across the room to the tall mirror that reached from the floor to the ceiling and took the stance of a fighter coming out of his corner for the knock-out round. For a couple of minutes he shadow boxed the reflection in the glass, then whipped over a crushing, finishing right and danced back.

"Boy oh boy, do I feel good!" he cried happily and tore off his pajamas. "Bring on your Joe Louis. Hot diggity, the Maginot Line. Me! Oh boy!"

In almost less time than it takes to tell about it he was bathed and fully dressed and ready to go. He started for the door leading into his father's room but checked himself as he saw the camera on the bureau. He took a step toward it, then snapped his fingers as he remembered Lieutenant Defoe had said that the Maginot Line was one place where even the President of France could not take a camera. For a second he was tempted to take one anyway, but sober judgment quickly squelched that idea....