head lights switched off until it was too
dangerous to continue further without them. Perhaps it had just been
chance, or perhaps Goering's pilots had found out that the Lille
Hospital cases were being evacuated over that road. Anyway, the Stukas
and the light Heinkels had given it a terrific pounding all day long,
and it was now well spotted with craters. To try to drive along it in
the dark would be exactly the same as driving the ambulance over the
edge of a cliff. It would be suicide, to say the least.

Dave hesitated a moment, though, with his hand on the switch and
listened intently. Behind him there was the incessant dull rumble of the
guns, punctuated every now and then by the loud thunder of a land mine
going off. In the sky there was the drone of wings, but the droning was
not close.

"Keep an eye peeled, will you, Freddy?" Dave said and turned the switch.
"I've got to have lights or we'll go right into a shell hole. If you
hear something coming, yell, and I'll switch off these things."

"Right-o!" Freddy called wearily and stuck his head out the door window
and looked up. "All clear, now, though. None of the blighters near us. I
say, what's up, now?"

Dave didn't bother to answer. He, too, had spotted the waving flashlight
just up the road. He slipped the car out of gear, steered it around the
rim of a yawning bomb crater and let it roll to a stop. A British
infantry officer, with a Military Police band on his tunic sleeve, ran
up to Dave's side of the ambulance and flashed his light in Dave's eyes
for a second.

"Where are you headed, lad?" he asked.

"St. Omer," Dave said. "We've got the last load of wounded from the
Lille hospital."

"Well, you can't take them to St. Omer," the officer said. "A mile up
ahead there's a road to the right. Take it and keep going until you're
stopped. Whoever stops you will give you further directions. All right,
off with you. Good luck."

"But, hey, why not St. Omer?" Dave blurted out. "We've been taking them
there all day."

"I know," the officer said in a half angry and half bored voice. "But
they've all been evacuated again. To Dunkirk. Hitler's lads are in St.
Omer, now. Better hop it. They may be here, soon."

Dave slammed the ambulance into gear and started off. Raging anger
surged up within him. He gripped the bucking wheel until his hands hurt.
Nazis are here! Nazis are there! Nazis are every place! Even thinking of
the name made him want to start screami