by Hall, Ian
“Hände in die Luft! Schnell!”
Our hands shot into the air like rockets.
“You’ll answer quickly here!” Charles snapped, keeping the German going. “We’ve got no time to waste on narren!” He looked around the room with an expression that brooked no tolerance at all. “Do you all understand?”
“Yes, sir!” I said with force.
“Answer in German!” Charles strode back and forth, the German words coming out of his mouth looked strange considering his British uniform. “Always in German. Repeat after me. ALWAYS IN GERMAN!”
“Immer Deutch!” We shouted, again, and again.
“In conversation, in private, in the bar, in the mess hall.” Charles continued his pacing. “To the commanding officer, to me, to every instructor, and every visitor you meet.”
He turned to face us, his face distorted in the force of his presentation.
“Understand?” he bawled. “VERSTANDEN?”
“Yes.” A chorus of jawohl’s.
“If you hear English, you’ll look at the man in wonder, you will not understand English. Clear?”
“Yes!”
And so began six weeks of training all in German. Every minute we got new words, new phrases.
Oh, and shaving… that daily task so hated by all men, was optional. Men with moustaches and beards were regarded as non-military, so therefore less likely to be stopped and searched in a civilian situation. Many of our missions, we were told, might be in countries where beards were downright obligatory. So, we didn’t shave.
And sheets to memorize. Sheets about the new me; Eric. My home town, my nation.
My name was Eric Volland.
I came from Stuttgart, in Baden-Württemberg, coat of arms black horse on yellow. I got used to being tested on my basic Stuttgart knowledge. I supported the ‘reds’, the premier team in the city, and detested the Stuttgart Kickers, a far more lowly football organization. I transferred the idea from Hibs and Hearts in Edinburgh, milking my love of the game.
In the evenings we tested each other, not giving away information like a list, but learning to divulge small pieces in conversation, casually, naturally, sometimes in anecdotal form.
Each day we watched films of Hitler’s speeches, from his close entourage, his followers-on.
And we shunned English like it were the plague.
If I’d considered my training in Fife to be thorough, I soon disabused myself of such thoughts. Ten single hour classes filled my day, punctuated with meals of high quality. The days soon took on a structure which we molded our minds to.
Breakfast, then four hours of classes.
One hour break for lunch and a trip to the bar if we had time.
Three hours of classes.
One hour break for dinner, and bar.
Three hours of classes.
Supper, bar, then deep, restful sleep.
And all in German. “Immer Deutch!”
And the lectures were never light-hearted; always hard, probing, making us work for every morsel of information we gained.
In one class I learned to talk about nothing for five minutes.
“A whole five minutes without giving away anything about yourself.” The instructor said. It was far harder than it first seemed.
In time the meals changed to German staples, bratwurst, cabbage recipes, and my favorite; Stollen, slices of thick fruity cake or bread, covered in yellow custard. Pure bloody luxury.
Some lectures duplicated the training we’d received elsewhere, then always went further.
Stripping a Luger pistol blindfolded. Hand to hand combat taught by men old enough to be my grandfather, yet able to throw me on my back like I were a little boy.
We learned shooting techniques I’d never even considered, shooting from the hip. Shooting while falling down. Shooting while being held from behind. Shooting while rolling, tumbling, eating, pissing.
Underneath two of the huts were dark firing ranges, but not your shoot at a target kind of thing; these were mazes of fallen masonry, rooms with dummy soldiers, instructors who would run at us, knocking us over, and all done with live ammunition; not a blank round issued, never.
I got taught how to walk over a grass field without leaving a visible trail behind me, my footfalls impossible to follow.
We got shown how to take down a motorcycle rider with a wire, a rope, a 4 x 2. How to stop a moving car, board a moving truck, a moving train. And of course, how to jump off one again.
I sat through lectures on German uniforms, badges, insignia.
Then came my first taste of interrogation.
Tied up and beaten, water poured over my face and down my throat.
And all that came in the first three days!
Near the end of the initial week I stood outside the hut in the rain as a truck dumped a pile of clothes onto the grass.
“Okay,” an instructor called Wilfred said, the German commands a little strange on his lips. “Get back to your room, strip to the buff, then get back here and dress German!” I ran with the rest, and wasn’t first back at the pile of clothes, but certainly not last. “Get stuff that fits!” Wilfred barked as he walked amongst our naked bodies. “Get authentic stuff! You’re looking for clothing that wouldn’t give you away. You’re German, remember?”
I found trousers right away, the label inside said ‘Berlin’, then struggled to find underpants. I found a shirt, a white one, then a vest, an old stringy type that made me wrinkle up my nose when I put it on.
Soon I stood, shoes tied, watching the tail-enders, Mikel, Frantz, Wilhelm. I no longer thought of their English names, these were now my German friends, Mikel from just outside Munich, Wilhelm an orphan from Austria, Frantz a bad-tempered cuss from the Sudetenland.
One by one, Wilfred made us strip again, examining the clothes we’d picked, pointing out our faults, our mistakes. Conrad had found an English pair of underpants; Marks & Spencer’s of all things. Wilfred held up the St. Michael’s label for us all to see. “This little fault will get you shot!” he said, his eyes boring into my skull as he passed. I tried to remember my own choices; I was certain I’d checked every label. Tomas, the man next to me, hadn’t checked the pockets of his jacket; a crushed pack of American cigarettes lay inside. Again, it would get him shot.
Once we’d got our authentic kit, and Wilfred had announced it free of ‘spoilers’, we got to keep it in our chest of drawers. I didn’t know it then, but it was the beginning of my ‘ops kit’; my authentic behind-enemy-lines garb.
I also got my watch back, my precious Omega; presumably because of its links to Germany, making me appear more authentic.
Slowly as the weeks would progress, I would add little ‘markers’ to my ‘ops kit’ to make it more convincing; German cigarettes, a full document make-over, stubs from football tickets, a photograph of a middle-aged lady standing in front of Stiftskirche, the college church in Stuttgart. She was instantly adopted as my German mother.
One day the instructor placed a cardboard box on Berti’s desk. Inside were fifty wallets, all taken from captured German soldiers. I carefully rummaged, collecting money, football cards, and receipts; anything that a hoarder would collect. Then I chose a nice wallet to put them in. It had the German staff insignia embossed on the front; a true gem.
As the days passed, I could feel the training ramping up. I mean, it had already started at such pace, I thought there was nowhere higher to go, but as we progressed towards week 3, we began to be given far more complex tasks.
We’d be pushed into a totally dark room, and told to build a weapon from the parts on the floor. An easy enough task normally, but when they’d littered the floor with other parts, from other weapons, it was unbelievably difficult.
Some evenings when we thought we were going to bed, we were told to get into ‘ops kit’ and we’d walk to the nearby railway lines, planting dummy explosives on lines, cattle trucks, engines, basically anything we could get our hands on. And we’d have to do
it under the watchful eyes of the Canadian Army guards who patrolled the railways regularly. If caught, we’d be fined a few days wages, banned from the pub for a day, and ridiculed by the rest of the group.
Each week we’d be assessed, each week we’d be graded, and if we slipped towards the bottom, there would be warnings of being dropped, discarded back to our old positions, never to be used by any organization again.
After one such warning, I soon pulled my boots up, pushing myself to new heights, renewed my efforts in class and outside.
At the main gate of the camp stood a tall wooden scaffolding, perhaps sixty feet high, our parachute trainer.
After the first week was over, we did five drops per day, every day, tied to elastics and a mechanism, simulating being dropped by parachute. On one such jump, Manny, a coal-miner from Karlsruhe twisted his ankle on landing, breaking it severely. I heard the snap from twenty yards away. Our group was down to eight, and the threat of expulsion shifted one man closer.
The next day we were driven into Oshawa, dropped off outside the town, and told to steal an item of value. The winner would have free beer in the bar that night, paid by everyone else.
I set off through the streets with a purpose.
I soon found out that actually stealing anything would be a difficult task; the camp antics had made the townspeople wary of strangers to a huge degree. After being chased from three shops without as much as a by-your-leave, I soon changed my tactics.
Entering the only bar in town, the surprisingly named Murphy’s Drop, I made straight for the barman who stood cleaning glasses with an extremely white towel. “I’m from the camp down the road, you probably guessed already.”
“I did. No mistaking you bunch.”
“What gives us away?”
He laughed. “Listen, mate. Anyone strange in town is from Camp X. You guys have tried this thievery thing twenty times already. I’ve heard every con-trick known to man, and you’re going to be no different.”
“So is there a way to beat the system?” I asked.
The barman smiled, stopped his cleaning. “You’re a strange one. What’s it worth to me?”
I thought quickly. “Who supplies the bar on the camp? You?”
He shook his head. “That probably comes from Toronto, or maybe direct from the Army.”
“So what’s it worth if I can get some of your beer onto the camp and into the mess?”
He looked at me suspiciously. “How do you intend to do that?”
“Our commanding officer probably likes Scotch Whisky. A good bottle, not your blended pish.” I pulled myself over the bar slightly. “If I can give him a bribe, maybe I can get your beer into the camp.”
I’ve never quite been scrutinized like I was at that moment. “Okay,” the barman shook his head. “I know this is probably a scam, but I’m going to go along with it. I’m a gambling man, so I’m taking a chance. Wait here.”
He disappeared for a moment, then returned carrying a bottle, wrapped up in a brown paper bag.
“What is it?”
“Glenfarclas.”
“Speyside, huh?” I nodded. “That might be enough to do it.”
We shook hands, but when I tried to disengage, he held on. I resisted the instinctive parts of new training, the urge to pull his body over the bar, the need to chop the throat. “I’m putting twenty bucks of trust in you…”
“Eric,” The name was past my lips before I knew it.
“Eric,”
I pulled my hand from his weakening grip, slipped the bottle in my inside jacket pocket, and left the bar.
The camp lay three miles away; less than an hour’s walk.
Jumping Out of a Perfectly Good Plane
The seats in the back of the truck hit my backside with every bump in the road. Taken just after breakfast, I nursed the need for a bathroom trip, my nervousness not helping the situation.
Mikel had overheard the driver say ‘airfield’ as we’d gathered nearby. I felt sure I was headed to my first ever parachute jump.
Frantz and Siggy were at the rear, the only places we could see outside the lashed tarpaulins. They described the scenery we’d passed; fields, farms… “Military fence,” Siggy said, his expression as concerned as mine.
The truck stopped, and as the engine died I heard voices behind me.
The driver. “… nine forty.”
“Where are you from?” The sentry?
“Bakersfield,”
Then I heard an airplane take off, clear as day, maybe half a mile away, perhaps less. The voices outside were lost in the noise. “Hear that?” I asked. Everyone nodded. “Transport plane.”
We drove off, travelled half a mile or so. When the tarp was untied from behind the truck, we were in a small aircraft hangar, no windows. One by one we were taken into a small room. We knew what was coming, the questions, the slaps, the beatings.
When my turn came, I passed a tight-lipped Frantz, but his eyes held no warning for me. No beating then. We’d grown into a team, a band of brothers held together by trust, and proximity against the one enemy. We hardly needed to talk anymore, we communicated by grunts and facial nuances; the smallest expressions we’d been taught to look for. The stuff that most people knew nothing of, the stuff that gave people away.
Small room, coat rack, three jackets, all Air Force blue.
“Where are you?” Wilfred asked. The German language didn’t quite sit well on this man from Norfolk, our group had discussed it often.
“Canada,” I replied dryly.
“Be more specific.”
“On an airfield, twenty-miles or so east-ish from the camp.”
“How did I get here?” he asked.
“Probably in a staff car, you didn’t travel in the truck.”
“How do you know that?” he expressed a genuine interest; he really wanted to know the answer. I felt quite amazed that he’d made his curiosity so obvious.
“I only heard one door open and close on the truck.”
“I could have been quiet.”
I shook my head. “Not on that truck, the passenger side is stiff; you’d never have managed it without me hearing.”
Wilfred nodded. “Okay, get outside, send in the next man.”
I remained impassive. Frantz had been escorted from the room, back to our truck. I was being allowed to go on my own. Something wasn’t right, and I knew it. I rose slowly, opened the door, and caught a movement in the space near the hinges. I swung it outwards hard, and heard a comforting thud, an expression of pain, an English curse. I walked out into the hangar ready to inflict more damage, but my job had been done, the man was crouched, looking away from me, his hands covering his face.
I think I’d maybe broken his nose.
The group were watching, and they all contained their laughter reasonably well.
Once we’d all been questioned, we were issued with parachutes, finding the same rigging and pull-cord we’d used so often on the harness in the camp.
Standing in line with our chutes on, however, did necessitate a few of us making trips to the restrooms. Seems I wasn’t alone in my nervousness.
Led outside in single file, we boarded a Halifax, a converted Canadian Air Force bomber. The open door halfway along the fuselage had been crudely cut, maybe four feet across.
“When you land… you make for the yellow smoke.” Wilfred shouted against the noise of the four idling engines. “Is that clear?” he looked along the line, we were all nodding. “Yellow smoke!”
Inside we found we didn’t even have anything to sit on.
Cross-legged, with an open door just six feet away, we taxied, then began to take off.
The noise was quite incredible.
I must have taken a good twenty minutes to reach the required altitude, the Halifax circling slowly.
A red light came on near the doorway, and a member of the aircrew appeared, carefully walking along the rough floor. He made a motion to stand, there was no way we’d hav
e heard him anyway. Then he pulled at Siggy’s rip cord, waved it in the air, and clipped it theatrically onto a tight wire just over head height.
We all followed suit. That action gave us our jumping order; I would be fourth out of the plane. Through the open door I could see small square fields, clouds, little else.
A moment later, the red light went out, and a green one next to it lit up.
There was no moment of indecision. I surprised myself, shuffled quickly to the door, and followed Mikel’s falling figure out into space.
The first instant was a headlong dive, then a flapping of cords and silk above me. It almost came as a shock when the harness caught, seemingly jerking me upwards, catching my body under my arms and my crotch. Ow! I’d adjust that area of the harness more carefully in future.
Silence.
A distant squeal of pure adrenaline.
I caught onto the two groups of webbing above my shoulders, looked down.
I garnered the idea that I’d savor the whole experience, but in actual fact there was little time to do so. Before I knew it, there was red smoke in a field to my right, and the ground was coming to meet me damned fast.
My last thought was of a dart heading to a dartboard, and I swore I’d be more careful next time playing the game in the pub.
Then my feet hit the ground, my knees crumbled, and my body rolled just like the exercises had trained it to. In seconds I was on my feet, gathering the swirling mess of cord and silk to my body.
Red smoke.
I crouched, aware that at least one other figure was down close by me. He waved, and began to run over.
Berti. Of all the men in our group, I felt I knew him the least.
“You okay?” he asked, puffing.
I nodded, looking at the rising smoke, maybe a quarter of a mile away.
“Come on, let’s go.” He grinned.
“Red smoke.” I said, keeping crouched.
A frown crossed his face and he sank to the ground. “Maybe they just got the color wrong.”
I shook my head. “Or maybe it’s another test.” I looked around, noticed a small walled enclosure, the obvious place to hide. To our left lay a row of trees, perhaps following a stream. “I’m being cautious.”
