Commando- The Complete World War II Action Collection Volume II

by Jack Badelaire

  McTeague’s mouth drew into a thin line and he nodded towards the end of the passage and the ladder leading up to the next deck.

  “On with ye, and keep yer opinions to yerself,” McTeague answered in a low voice. “If ye’d wanted to see out the war safe and sound, ye shouldn’t have volunteered to wear that patch on yer shoulder.”

  Lynch and his bunkmates slowly made their way up to the deck above, where the Commandos packed themselves into the galley and an adjacent recreation deck. The seas were too rough to light the galley stoves, so the galley crew passed out biscuits for the men to nibble on, most of which were waved away by men too seasick to even think of eating. Lynch took a biscuit and chewed it absently, preferring to have a little something in his stomach if he got seasick, rather than spend the rest of the night dry-heaving.

  For the next several hours, the men sat quietly, a few trying to make jokes about the bad weather, although their comrades found little humor in their comments. Other men made their way to the corners of the galley, where they were noisily sick, making good use of the additional tin pails left by the ship’s crew. Now and then, a blast of cold, wet air entered the galley as one of the crewmen or one of the Commando sergeants came and went from the open deck above. More than once, Lynch had tried to peer through a nearby porthole and gauge the status of the storm, but it was too dark to make out anything other than a vague blackness - it was impossible to tell where the ocean ended and the night sky began.

  One thing Lynch did notice, was that although the storm continued to howl around them unabated, and the waves slammed into the ship’s hull just as hard as before, the Prince Charles wasn’t rolling as severely as it had been earlier in the night. When he mentioned this to Bowen, who’d sat down at Lynch’s table when they’d all come up from below deck, the sniper thought for a moment, then made a worried face.

  “If we’re not rolling as hard, but the storm hasn’t subsided, that means we’ve got more ballast along the keel,” Bowen said.

  “Bloody hell,” Lynch replied. “That means we’re taking on more water.”

  Bowen nodded. “And if we’re not rolling as easily, the sea will just batter us even harder. We’re like a boxer who can’t roll with an opponent’s punch.”

  A moment later, a blast of frigid air announced McTeague’s arrival again in the galley. The Scotsman made his way through the press of bodies and over to the men of his squad.

  “Some of the compartments on the lowest deck are flooded,” he said quietly. “The old girl’s batterin’ her way through the waves, and it’s buckling the hull plates.”

  “Will we have to abandon ship?” Bowen asked.

  McTeague shook his head. “We’re near to Sullom Voe, where we’ll drop anchor and see what’s to be done. There’s no way we’re to make it to Vaagso carrying all this seawater in the ship’s belly, so she’ll have to be pumped dry at the very least.”

  As McTeague moved on to spread the word, Lynch stood up carefully and made his way to the porthole. Hanging onto a nearby length of pipe coming out of the deck and disappearing above his head, Lynch peered out into the predawn gloom. The skies were still dark grey, clouds racing and churning in the sky, and the waves were jagged and tipped with foam. With some effort, Lynch saw ahead just enough to spy a distant shoreline, as the sky to the east began to turn a lighter shade of blue-grey.

  Bowen appeared at Lynch’s side and looked out the porthole towards their rear, where a couple of their destroyer escorts were back far enough to be seen.

  “I think we all made it through the night without sinking,” the Welshman said.

  Lynch glanced at his wristwatch and clapped the shorter man on the shoulder. “Merry bloody Christmas, mate. We’re not dead yet.”

  It was Christmas day, and they hadn’t drowned.

  Chapter 8

  South Vaagso, Norway

  December 25Th, 0600 Hours

  Arna Landvik awoke just before the dawn. She made her way downstairs and lit a fire in the stove, her breath fogging in the air as she struck a match and lit the kindling already put in place the night before. Holding the copper kettle under the tap, she filled it with ice-cold water and set it on top of the cast-iron kitchen stove, then fed several larger pieces of wood into the flames crackling in the stove’s belly.

  While she waited for the kettle to boil, Arna produced a loaf of bread from the pantry. She sliced thick pieces of bread from the loaf, placing these on a long porcelain serving platter. Then from the icebox, Arna removed a large filet of smoked salmon and a bowl of hard-boiled eggs. She cut and layered the salmon across the bread, then cracked, peeled, and sliced the eggs, placing them on top of the salmon. Finally, she added a small pile of sweet pickled beets and a quarter-wheel of cheese to the platter.

  Checking the kettle, Arna added a heaping scoop of ground coffee and stirred it around with a spoon before capping the kettle again and waiting for it to boil. Coffee wasn’t cheap - it was a luxury item these days - but as it was Christmas morning, Arna decided she’d make it stronger than usual today.

  The creak of the wooden floorboards above her head signalled the awakening of her parents. Arna placed the serving platter on the dining room table and fetched plates and silverware, along with mugs for the coffee. By the time her parents were descending the stairs, Arna was setting the kettle onto a cast-iron stand on the kitchen table.

  “Merry Christmas!” Arna said, moving to hug her parents. “I thought I’d get up early and make breakfast.”

  Gregert, Arna’s father, hugged her fiercely before limping over to the table and sitting at its head, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Hilda, Arna’s mother, pulled a wrapped parcel from the pocket of her robe and handed it to her daughter.

  “I had to work on it a little bit at a time while we weren’t busy at the shop, so you didn’t suspect anything!” she said.

  Arna smiled and kissed her mother on the forehead, before the two women sat down to join Gregert. Hilda noticed that Arna had set a fourth place at the table and caught her daughter’s eye.

  “Maybe, it is time…” she began.

  “Please, not this morning, eh?” Gregert asked.

  Hilda nodded. “Of course. It is a good gesture, we all miss him.”

  Arna wiped a tear from her eye as she piled her breakfast onto her plate and poured some coffee. She had insisted on setting a place at the table for Mats, her older brother, every day since they’d received word he’d died fighting against the German invaders the previous April. The letter they’d received provided no details, other than the fact that Mats had been killed in the fighting around Narvik. Arna, only seventeen at the time, hadn’t believed the letter, and so she’d started setting a place at the table for her brother, hoping that the act would somehow result in him returning home. Now, more than a year and a half later, Arna did it without thinking, and as much as she knew it was a pointless gesture, she couldn’t bring herself to stop.

  “I forgot to ask last night,” Gregert said to Arna, “are you working a normal shift today?”

  Arna shook her head. “They said I could leave early. I wanted the full hours, but it sounds like most are taking the time off, so there’s no point - not enough people will be there to run the factory.”

  “Would you be willing to come and work with me?” Hilda asked. “Many of the Germans are turning in items for repair, since they are receiving parcels from home. There’s a lot of work to be done right now.”

  Arna nodded. “Of course. The more we get done now, the easier the work will be tomorrow.”

  “I will be bringing home some extra this evening,” Gregert added. “Ditlef told me to bake extra of whatever I liked to take home to you girls.”

  “He’s such a good man,” Hilda replied. “Be sure to bring him the sweater I knitted.”

  “Speaking of which,” Gregert said, turning to Arna, “open the present your mother gave you.”

  “When I’ve finished, I don’t want to get anything on it!�
� Arna answered.

  Arna began to eat in earnest, trying to finish her breakfast quickly. Of course, she’d known her mother was knitting her a new scarf for a couple of weeks. When she’d started wearing her old scarf again this winter, her mother had picked it up and examined it more than once, and Arna had seen several skeins of yarn in her mother’s bag shortly thereafter, in colors that matched her heavy woolen winter coat and hat. Later, while visiting her mother at the tailor’s shop, she’d seen a partially-completed scarf on her mother’s table with those same colors, so she knew it wasn’t for a customer.

  With her brother gone, Arna liked to make sure her mother and father felt their gifts to her were greatly appreciated, especially during these leaner times. Last year, her father had suffered an injury due to an accident at the fish oil processing plant where he’d worked. His leg had been broken in two places, and even after it had healed, he walked with a bad limp, and could not stand for long periods of time. Arna had taken his job, while Ditlef, a friend of the family who owned a bakery, had hired on Gregert. Her father could sit or lean against a stool and mix bread or handle sales at the front counter. Ditlef had lost a son as well during the German invasion, and his wife had died suddenly six months ago, so although under tragic circumstances, the arrangement was favorable to both families. Ditlef’s daughter was also only a year younger than Arna, and the two were good friends. The two households often shared Sunday meals together, because during such times as these, any way in which they could all support one another was important.

  Finally, Arna finished her meal and drank the last of her coffee, then attacked the brown paper wrapper of her present. In seconds she was holding up a beautiful new woolen scarf, a beaming smile stretched from ear to ear.

  “I love it! And, it matches my coat and hat!” Arna exclaimed. She got out of her seat and gave her mother and father big hugs and a kiss on each of their cheeks. “Merry Christmas to both of you!”

  After helping her mother clear off the table, Arna bundled into her outdoor clothes and bid her parents goodbye. The fish oil refinery where she worked wasn’t that far away, only a half-kilometre north of their house, but the plant opened early, and she liked to get there a little before everyone else so she wasn’t rushed.

  Stepping out into the cold, Arna saw the sun hadn’t come up yet. The sky to the east, on the other side of the fjord, was an iron-grey blanket of clouds that hadn’t yet dispersed from the storm the previous night. A couple inches of new snow was on the ground, and Arna took a moment to grab the broom and brush off the steps so that when her father left for work, he wouldn’t have that chore. Arna was a big girl, tall, strong, and broad-framed. She was young and her factory work - combined with the lean rations they were all living on due to the war - kept her from growing fat, but she knew as she got older, she would have to pay close attention to what she ate, or she would grow a tummy and backside that would rival her bosom, which was already big enough to be a source of embarrassment for her at times.

  Having finished brushing off the steps, Arna began to walk to work. She saw other locals beginning their day, as well as a handful of German soldiers going about early-morning duties. Arna was thankful the winter weather meant she was bundled up inside a large, shapeless woolen coat and scarf, because although she did not consider herself a beauty, she admitted she possessed a certain wholesome youthfulness, and the young German men were drawn to her ample chest and her long, golden-blonde hair, which was currently in a tight braid. When the weather was warmer, she often noticed the German soldiers eying her as she walked by, and she received a number of comments, most of which she thankfully didn’t understand, although there were a few gestures made towards her that required no fluency in German to translate.

  It only took a couple of months after the German occupation for rumors to begin circulating that certain young (and even not so young) women in South Vaagso had begun trading sexual favors for certain amenities. Worse, in the last year, four girls had been taken by force. The German garrison commander had been approached each time and justice demanded, but on only one occasion did anything happen, and that only resulted in the young man accused of the crime being shipped off to another post. That was small comfort for the women who had been violated, for even though they were adamant that the act had been forced upon them, cruel things were said behind their backs, and one of the girls disappeared a month after the rape, never to be seen again. Some thought she’d committed suicide, while others whispered that she’d joined the resistance.

  After the first act of rape, Arna’s mother had come into her room with something wrapped in a bit of cloth. It was her brother’s game-skinning knife, with a stout fifteen-centimetre blade honed to razor-sharpness.

  “I cannot tell you what to do if one of those German pigs tries to force himself on you,” her mother had said to her, “but I want you to take this and keep it with you whenever you are out of the house. If you must use it, aim for the belly or the throat, and strike as hard as you can.”

  Her mother had been unable to look Arna in the eye for days after giving her the knife, but she carried it every day. Using a few leather scraps from her mother’s shop, Arna made several different sheaths for the knife, so she could carry it in different ways depending on what she was wearing. Now, as she walked to work in her winter coat, the knife was tucked safely away in a sheath sewn inside her coat pocket. When her parents weren’t around, Arna practiced drawing the knife while standing, sitting, and even laying on the ground. She even practiced driving the knife into a wooden support beam in her bedroom when no one was home, growing used to the shock of the impact so she wouldn’t lose her grip on the knife.

  Arna wasn’t stupid - she knew what would happen to her if she killed a German soldier, no matter the circumstances. But she also knew she would never be one of those women violated and then scorned and mocked by her fellow countrymen through no fault of her own. It would be a terrible blow to her parents, losing both of their children to the war, but if Mats could die defending Narvik from the Germans, Arna could die defending her own body.

  With that dark thought on her mind, she reached the entrance to the fish oil factory. A young German soldier stood at the door, huddled in his greatcoat, a rifle slung over his shoulder. The German nodded to Arna as she opened the door, then glanced down at the bulge of her chest before looking back up at her face and giving her a smile.

  “Guten Morgen, Fraulein,” he said.

  Arna nodded, unsmiling, and went inside the factory.

  She imagined what it would feel like to drive her brother’s knife through the young German’s neck.

  Chapter 9

  Sullom Voe, Shetland Islands

  December 25th, 1800 Hours

  Lynch and the other Commandos sat down to a simple Christmas dinner in the galley of the Prince Charles. Although they were aboard the troopship on their way to battle, it was clear that Mountbatten, Durnford-Slater, and the other officers intended for the men to have a suitable Christmas meal, no matter the circumstances. The men were served portions of turkey, roasted potatoes, Brussels sprouts, parsnips, stuffing, canned cranberry sauce, and a ladle of thick gravy. Someone had even managed to scrounge together some pigs in blankets - little sausages wrapped in strips of bacon. The men wondered if some of the meal’s contents were ferried over from the islands, because they couldn’t imagine all of this being prepared aboard the ferries, including the small portion of Christmas pudding they were served for dessert.

  “What, no Christmas crackers?” Higgins joked at one point during the meal.

  “Fancy wearing your bloody crown, eh wot?” Nelson jeered from the other end of the table.

  “My brother and I used to get into quite the row over the toy,” Higgins went on. “I bloodied his lip one year, and my mum threw it into the fire.”

  “Serves you right,” Nelson said. “Only thing I got for Christmas most years was a tot from me mum’s gin bottle and a kick in me arse if I tried fo
r seconds.”

  Despite the prevalence of seasickness the night before, most of the Commandos had fully recovered by midday, with mugs of tea and porridge for breakfast and bacon sandwiches for lunch. Many of the Commandos had taken part in what were called “sea experience voyages”, short ventures aboard various Royal Navy vessels. These “seasick trips”, as the men nicknamed them, were designed to expose the men to the sensations encountered while aboard smaller vessels on the open water, because the top brass knew they were counting on the Commandos being able to storm beaches and fight effectively even after a rough sea passage. While most of the men enjoyed these trips, often taken in between training exercises, some never grew their “sea legs”, and Lynch noticed men here and there throughout the galley picking uninterestedly at their meals, their appetites still lacking after last night’s stormy voyage.

  The Christmas meal was concluded with a splash of brandy in every man’s cup, and the men drank a series of toasts to each other, to Lord Mountbatten, to the King and the Union Jack, and just about anything else they could think of, including Hormel Foods and their ubiquitous cans of Spam.

  “Merry Christmas, Tom,” Bowen said, tapping his canteen cup against Lynch’s. The little sniper sat across from Lynch, his cheeks rosy from the brandy in his system.

  Lynch raised his cup and nodded. “You too, Rhys.”

  The two men took a sip from their cups and sat in silent contemplation for a moment, before Rhys cocked his head to the side.

  “D’you hear that?” he asked.

  “Hear what?” Lynch replied.

  Bowen got up from the table and moved to the nearest porthole, cracking it open a few inches. The sound of bagpipes playing carried through the porthole, causing many men to hush and listen.

  “What the hell?” Nelson asked.