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their arms and legs and tossed them into the flames of their stricken aeroplane. As their screams came, the Senegalese, with the same unmoved expression, picked up the bodies of the remaining two, and flung them after their comrades. Then they formed up again and marched back to the road to continue their westward trudge.
    By this time the confusion was appalling and the air was alive with rumours of parachutists and motorcyclists across the path of the retreat. It was Dicken’s opinion that they were just rumours because most of them appeared to be hearsay and the damage was being done entirely by fear and lack of knowledge. But there was no question of standing and fighting. The French army had collapsed. Some regiments had fought to the last man but the conscription system had produced poor regiments officered by middle-aged men, and the German intelligence had been good. The Stukas had smashed a colossal hole in the French front through which their armour was now pouring en masse and, fanning out behind, were creating chaos by the spreading of alarmist stories.
    Still undefeated but feeling they were surrounded, the French had fallen back to try to establish a line of the sort their generals remembered from the last war. But there was no line and they went on searching until the Germans rounded them up in groups. The British army was already pinned against the coast at Dunkirk and it was obvious they were about to get out of the Continent. But the Stukas were taking a tremendous toll of ships and there was already a horrifying loss among the destroyers.
    All the lines of communications troops had long since gone with every scrap of equipment that could be got away, followed by the experienced soldiers who had fought against the Germans and knew their tricks. But there was no longer time to pick and choose. It was now a case of every man for himself, and it was with the crisis at its worst that they learned from an agitated telephone call from a British attaché in Paris that the wounded pilots there were still awaiting transportation to the coast. Frantic contacts with London showed that Diplock had already reached home.
    Barratt gestured. ‘Get off there, Dick,’ he said. ‘Round ’em up. Get ’em away. Most of them will be able to fight again and we’re going to need them. Get them to Dieppe or out via the Gironde.’
    Driving to Paris, Dicken found its inhabitants already leaving for the Mediterranean coast, Bordeaux and Brittany, and, rounding up a fleet of ambulances and cars, he stuffed them with men in blue wearing bandages and plasters and set them on the road south. By the time he had finished, it was possible to hear anti-aircraft firing and the sound of aeroplane engines. Crumps, bangs and whistles were followed by the clink and clatter of falling splinters and the rush of tumbling brickwork. Great billows of black smoke were rolling across the city from St Denis, the Seine and St Germain to the west.
    The following day he learned that nearly 300 people had been killed and there had been a lot of damage at the Citroën Works, city aerodromes and the French Air Ministry. People were still cramming the stations for the south and west and heading in streams for the Porte d’Italie, their cars laden with household goods, mattresses draped across the roofs in the hope of keeping out the bullets of strafing German aeroplanes.
    There were still a few British service personnel about the city and, since Dicken had started the exodus south, they began to approach him for instructions. Commandeering service and private vehicles, he sent them after the others. It was clear by this time that the Germans would occupy Paris before long, but there were still a few people around who refused to be hurried. The American Ambulance Corps was still busy about the city, and, searching for a wounded sergeant, Dicken saw one of them, a woman with a sweet face and a low voice, holding the hand of a boy of about nineteen, who