by Thomas Wood
“Blimey, you’ve made a bit of a mess.”
“Yeah. Turned out he didn’t really want to die in the end. Suits you,” he said, nodding towards my new headgear.
“Have you ever considered joining the Nazi party?” he said mockingly, finally wiping his knife on the grass and swinging the man’s rifle over his shoulder.
“Right then, Sir,” he said, sighing as he did so, “shall we carry on?”
I looked around and realised that, from here, you could make out the two hangars and I stared at them for a few moments, trying to see if I could catch any of the others moving about there, as they set their charges on all the aircraft.
There was no movement, none whatsoever, everything was perfectly still. In amongst all the aggression and death that we had just brought on the two now lifeless corpses, everyone else carried on with their midnight routines.
The fighter planes still stood on their standings, ready to scramble at a moment’s notice to intercept the British bombers that were floating over the channel, completely unaware that, within a few minutes, they would be nothing more than a pile of molten metal as they exploded into a giant fireball.
The lights still glared from the tops of some wooden posts that carried the telephone cables, lighting up the forecourt of the hangar and the control tower. I could make out bodies inside the tower, carelessly walking around, thoroughly bored out of their minds.
From within the building that we were about to enter, I made out the faint warbles of a record player or wireless set as it entertained those who were on standby throughout the night, in case something happened. I wondered whether they were always expecting something to happen or if they saw it as a completely pointless exercise in staying up through the night, to await the enemy that never arrived.
It felt weird, preparing to go into battle without the likes of Red by my side, my trusty tank driver who had waited for me in the woods as I escaped the besieged farm, only to have been shredded to pieces by a mortar round that fell silently into his path. I missed him, I had done every day since he had gone, but standing in that airfield, I needed his wit and the confidence that he exuded more than ever. I wasn’t feeling confident. I knew that I should be dead by the end of the evening and perhaps that is what Jimmy would have wanted.
He wouldn’t have wanted the execution of a high ranking German officer to have come back on the British, and so it would be a huge relief to him and his department if the man who had pulled the trigger was dead himself, that way, they would be able to deny all knowledge of my existence. I would just become a rogue runaway, one who had refused to return home and was now leading raids on airfields and headquarters with no authority from the British.
A wild conspiracy began raging through my head about how everyone seemed to want me dead in every scenario that I played out in my mind. Jimmy wanted me dead, Joseph did, even Louis did. Red wanted me dead in my dreams, even Clarkey my tank gunner had wanted to see me lifeless, and Cécile too wanted me to join her on the other side of the mortal realm. My paranoia really began to explode as I prepared to meet with death.
“Ready boss?” Ray repeated, growing increasingly frustrated at the mannequin who was meant to be in charge, but was instead staring out over the airfield, not taking anything in, just locked in the innerworkings of his own mind.
“Yes. Sorry, let’s go.”
He led the way, his brand-new rifle still slung over his shoulder and instead opting to have his knife drawn as his primary weapon, tucked down by his side so that it wasn’t immediately visible to anyone who may challenge us. By the time that they had caught sight of it, it would already be embedded in their neck, in a repeat of the de-gutting we had just carried out on our respective sentries. We wanted to make it look as though we were meant to be where we were, and so, entering the building with rifles raised and in the aiming position, wasn’t exactly the most inconspicuous way of going about things. So, we opted to shoulder our weapons, or carry them around carelessly, letting the dim lights and silhouettes take care of the rest, it was why I had my newly acquired helmet on.
Ray confidently walked around to the front of the building and stood boldly in front of the door, in much the same way that the sentry before him had done, just in case there were any observing comrades that might grow suspicious at the sentry who appeared from the darkness and straight into the building. I did the same, and that was where we stood, for a moment or two, both with knives drawn, taking in the scene before us, and making mental notes about where we could expect reinforcements to come in from, and where our stiffest opposition might be. I wondered if the anti-aircraft gun that was stationed at the side of the runway itself could be redirected towards us and, if it had the potential to fire at ground targets, then we would need to neutralise that one first. From what I could see, at this moment in time, it was unmanned, so we would just have to stop someone from hopping on it.
While I was further surveying the defences, I also had half an eye on my exfil plan, and where I would go once I had done the deed of putting a bullet in between the eyes of the German officer. I ran through multiple scenarios in my head; whether I would be alone or have Ray with me, or if I would have an entire German garrison on my tail, right the way up to thinking the impossible – stealing one of those planes. I had no idea how to fly one, so the idea was immediately propelled from my mind, but I made a note to learn as soon as I got back, as it would have been jolly handy had I been able to at least get one going.
I caught sight of a lone figure, running from the fighters that were waiting at dispersal, over to a small tanker that was waiting close by. How I had not seen him before I did not know, and I rebuked myself for not being so alert that I hadn’t seen him placing the charges on the fighter. If I hadn’t seen him, then there was a chance that I had missed something glaringly obvious, like an enemy soldier making his way over to us, or the fact that there was an open gate in the perimeter wall.
But then I told myself that these men were the best of the best, and they would have had many months of learning and practice in the art of sneaking around in the darkness, trying to avoid enemy detection.
Seeing him made me think of all the charges that were hopefully now sitting in the cockpits of the planes, waiting for the curtain to rise and for the big break. I prayed that none of the charges or explosives had got wet somehow in transit, as even a small amount of moisture would have been able to render them completely useless and could lead to us all being butchered with nothing to show for it. Even if the officer wasn’t in his quarters, then at least we would have succeeded in blowing up a handful of German planes and the facilities which they used to house them. If those charges didn’t go up how they were meant to, then we would be a laughing stock.
It took me longer than it should have done to realise that, now those charges were set, the fuses on them would already be hissing nicely, which meant we had only ten minutes to go before they tried to throw bits of plane in every direction. That didn’t leave us too long to get inside the building, find the officer, kill him and get out again in time for the party.
Turning to look at Ray, I supposed that he must have had the same thought as I had done at that exact moment, as I met his eyes looking expectantly at me, which I met with a nod. He immediately turned and slowly drew his rifle from his shoulder, as he gently pushed the door open and entered the building that could so easily be the place that we were killed.
I waited for a second or two at the bottom of the steps, expecting a hail of bullets to come hurtling through the door frame as he was peppered with rounds, before I too turned and brought my weapon up slightly, ready to fire from the hip if necessary.
My eyes burned as I left the pure darkness of the airfield and into the brightly lit interior of the billet. Resisting every urge that I possessed to close my eyes, I kept them peeled, allowing them to adjust far quicker that way, and took in every single detail of the layout before me.
The bulbs above me buzzed as I
struggled to deal with the light that was bouncing off the impossibly bright, blue walls. When my eyes finally allowed me to open them completely, I was able to take a good look round the building that I was now in.
Ray and I were at the end of one, straight, quite small corridor, with doors leading off into various rooms on either side of it. From where we stood, I could make out five separate doors, the likelihood being that there were five different rooms in here. Judging that the timers were already ticking down, that meant that we would not have very long in each room trying to find the officer that was on my kill list.
I needed to find him and all without Ray working out what I was doing, but also, quietly. From the noise that was being generated by one room in particular, the first room on the right, there was more than just one officer in here, I could already make out at least three very distinctive voices coming from there. Our only hope would be that they were nowhere near their weapons wherever they were in the room.
Fortunately for us, the doors on either side of the corridor did not correspond with one another, so as long as we remained as silent as we could, there would be no way the occupants of the other rooms would see us bursting in, unless they came for a chat with one of their comrades.
Ray gave up on his rifle and instead slung it over his shoulder diagonally, opting instead for his pistol, which was a wise choice in such closed conditions. I would stick with my MP40 for now and hope that its rapid rate of fire would help me to mow down as many people as I possibly could with one swift flick of the trigger.
We approached our first door on the left, the door slightly ajar so that Ray could pass over to the other side undetected. He looked at me with a smirk as we prepared to burst into the room, causing me to quickly check chamber on the MP40 to ensure that it would actually fire if I needed to squeeze the trigger.
As I eased the cocking handle forward on the MP40, effectively making it an operational weapon, I thought about folding the stock away too, to give myself some more manoeuvrability in the confines of the poky building. It was a lightweight weapon, one that was ideal for this sort of warfare, but it also could have the tendency to jam as the two waiting queues of rounds in the magazine merged into one, single feed. I had spent hours inspecting and firing this weapon back in Britain, and it quickly secured a place in my heart as one of my favourites, so I was naturally chuffed to pieces to finally have my hands on one in the midst of battle.
Ray inched the door open slowly, not wanting to burst in and make a racket as the door rebounded off the wall behind it. There was no noise coming from behind this door, so one could only assume that there were either no occupants or if there were, they were sound asleep.
But I was wrong.
19
Ray began bouncing around on his tiptoes as he squeezed his way through the door. I saw that there was one solitary figure, sitting at a table on the far side of the room, that had a perfect view of the surrounding airfield. I wondered if Ray had felt as relieved as I had done that he had taken out his sentry further down the building, otherwise he undoubtedly would have blown the whole mission by ripping out the poor man’s throat in front of his best friend.
The room was totally silent, and the figure sat in an accompanying stillness that made me doubt that there was even life in the room at all. The room wasn’t a sleeping quarters as I had imagined, but some sort of radio room and telephone exchange. A series of radios and headsets lay strewn all about the table that the figure was sitting at, with the final set of headphones perched on this man’s head, as he patiently waited to hear a message crackle over the radio or for something interesting in the slightest to suddenly happen. He had three mugs, all empty, sitting beside him and I wondered how long this poor man had been made to sit here, waiting for the silence to finally end, allowing him to actually do something. His head peered out of the window wistfully and I could see that his fingers were twiddling a pencil in between them, presumably just to keep himself awake.
On the left-hand side of the room was the telephone switchboard, a smaller one than I had seen before, presumably to redirect the calls all over the airfield. Again, a task that seemed completely irrelevant at this time of the night, but it would be this man that would be ringing for reinforcements as soon as the fuses ran out, and the explosions let rip in the cockpits of the planes.
The lone figure must have sensed some sort of presence in the room or a change in the air pressure, as he began to pivot in his chair to thank the soul that had compassionately carried him another cup of coffee to help see him through the night. It wasn’t the kick of caffeine that he experienced though, but the sudden force of a pistol being whipped across his face, as Ray struck him so hard that I thought he had caved the man’s skull in like a walnut. He swayed groggily in his chair for a moment, before falling backwards with a thump, his head coming to rest on the table that was now behind him, his face staring up into the sky.
He was still conscious, awake enough to now be aware of what was going on, but in enough pain to realise that shouting out to his comrades in the nearby room would get him nowhere at all. I stood in the doorway, keeping half an ear out in the corridor behind me, in case a platoon of soldiers suddenly emerged from the other room, or some others returned from their perimeter checks and wanted to talk to their best mate in the telephone exchange.
Ray got to work on him with a sickening efficiency, immediately pulling his pistol up in front of him and ramming it down the man’s throat. The figure began to gargle as he struggled for breath, the steel tongue that he now possessed blocking his airway and threatening his life. I noticed saliva quite quickly began dribbling out of his chin and down Ray’s hand, as he held the man’s head steady and forced him to look into his eyes.
“How many are in here?” he asked with such a murderous aggression that I was jolly fortunate to be on the same side as him. I had seen numerous propaganda films and reports that said that the Germans were the evil ones in this war, but I started to think that it was us that were the wicked ones in this war, shoving pistols down men’s necks, ripping their throats out and ordering assassinations on their officers.
Ray automatically switched from English to German, “Wie viele hier drin?” He asked with what sounded to me like the perfect German accent. I was glad for it, if the others in the room across the corridor suddenly decided to sit in silence, they would have heard speaking voices and to hear an inch perfect German accent would have set them all at ease, instead of hearing the soft tones of an English dialect that they had been trained to detect from a mile away.
He repeated his question, obviously not working out that the poor man wouldn’t be able to answer unless he gave him a reprieve from the choking pistol. Slowly, threateningly, Ray removed the pistol just enough from the man’s throat so that he was able to speak. The man stared down the barrel of the gun, knowing that if he decided to be a hero here, Ray would have no qualms in squeezing the trigger and putting a round through the man’s throat. I couldn’t see Ray’s face and I was glad that I was unable to, as I became utterly convinced that his eyes would be a glowing red colour as he enjoyed every second of this sadistic game that he was playing.
Eventually the man began to whimper an answer, just as the blood from the pistol whip began to trickle from the side of his head and into his mouth.
“Funf oder sechs. Funf oder sechs.” Five or six. That was doable, I could sort that out myself if it came to it. It would be noisy, but I could do it.
Ray had all the information that he needed. Withdrawing the pistol from the man’s mouth fully, he let him sit back up in his chair letting me lock eyes with him for the first time since we had entered the room. He immediately knew that the whole airfield must be under attack, two men clothed in khaki with faces smothered in paint and dirt had stormed in to take out the airfield’s communications, before destroying the rest of the area. His eyes were filled with fear, which was slowly knocked out of him as Ray delivered another perfect blow against t
he man’s cheekbone, which caused a sickening crack loud enough to be heard in any of the other rooms in the building.
“Search the room for intelligence, I’m going to check the other rooms.”
The room directly opposite the telephone exchange was still rowdy as ever, the wireless being cranked up a few notches to satisfy the desires of the man sitting closely to it, struggling to hear what was being sung over the chatter and general noise of his fellow soldiers. The door was slightly ajar, enough so that I could see into it for a brief snapshot as I walked past, but not enough so that all the occupants of the room would see me saunter past. I daren’t look back as I passed it, in case someone was camped by the door, waiting for intruders.
It wasn’t that room that I was interested in, they would only be the enlisted men or the non-commissioned officers who were tasked with staying on the base for twenty-four hours at a time. It was the room further down the corridor, the one on the left that really had my interest piqued. There was a plaque on the door, a name tag, but it was the only door in the whole building that was pulled firmly into its place in the door frame. That meant it was either locked for security, or that the occupant was trying to sleep. I was convinced that it was the latter, this must have been where Standartenführer Rudolf Schröder was residing for the night. My target.
The noises of the men listening to the wireless and chatting to one another, as well as the smoke that had seeped from the room and into the corridor, began to fade from my mind completely, as I began to allow myself to only think of the target and what other challenges I may face on the other side of the door. I quickly checked my watch, we had less than five minutes to go before the charges kicked off.
Twisting the door handle, I was relieved to find that it was unlocked, and I pushed my shoulder into the door to force it from its frame as quickly as possible.
