Marriott gripped his seat and watched the hundreds of figures at work with picks and shovels, while bulldozers and tractors stirred up even more dust in the hazy sunshine. It felt like an age since they had put to sea to make a rendezvous with the coaster Ronsis, and yet nothing had changed, or had it? When Commander Meikle had driven to the end of the pier to collect him Marriott had noticed an army three-ton Bedford easing along a narrow track through the piled-up rubble and twisted girders. Just days since the young RE captain had driven a shovel into it to mark the end of the buried roadway. How they must have laboured, he thought, all day, all night, until it had become wide enough for the German sailor with his wheelbarrow. And now a three-tonner was able to get through. Easy for the army driver after what he must have seen in all the eleven months since Normandy, D-Day. Meikle wrestled with the wheel and swung off the track to avoid a parked army tank, one with the Guards Armoured Division's crest painted on it. He said, 'No consideration at all.' He could have been driving down the Strand or round Hyde Park Corner, Marriott thought. They halted at some barbed-wire gates for a cursory check, then with smart salutes from some red-capped military police Meikle accelerated out of the scarred gateway and on to the main road. Marriott realised dully that it was the first time he had been outside the dockyard. There was little difference here.
