Avenging Steel 5: The Man From Camp X

by Hall, Ian

  “Then I’m with you.” Berti said, and we sloped off towards the trees, watching the smoke as we ran.

  I found a dip in the ground as we neared the trees, and stopped, ridding myself of the parachute. “I’m not carrying this all day.”

  The smoke canister died away, and we slid along the ground, getting closer to its position. A jeep sat nearby, a driver sitting inside, and Wilfred standing by the bonnet. Three men sat on the ground. “Are their hands tied?” I asked.

  Berti shook his head. “I can’t see.”

  Wilfred took another canister from the back of the jeep, pulled the tab, tossed it on the ground. Fresh new clouds of red smoke foamed upwards.

  “Red smoke.” I hunkered down. “It’s a bloody trap.” Then I saw Mikel walk past us, no more than fifty yards away from our position. Berti rose to call, but I jumped on him, slamming his face to the ground. “No.” I hissed. “Wilfred would see. We’d give away our position.”

  Then Wilfred got in the jeep, and drove up and down. “Come on, for pity’s sake!” he roared. “Come out come out, wherever you are; the game’s a bogey!”

  Yes, the age old hide-and-seek ending was delivered with consummate clarity… but it was also said in English. I lay back, happy in my decision that it was indeed another test.

  Wilfred waited for over an hour, then a truck arrived, six men got on the back, and both vehicles drove away.

  “What now?” Berti asked, seemingly a little frustrated at my stoicism.

  “We walk.”

  Thankfully, we were in uniform, and it took less than five minutes walking along the road before we were offered a lift. Two hours later, or thereabouts, we presented ourselves at the camp gate.

  “You two are to go straight to the Quartermaster.”

  We walked to the stores, where Bushy waited behind his flip top counter. We’d learned that Arthur ‘Bushy’ Bushnell was a captain, but never let on to anyone. He liked to be called bushy to distinguish himself from the other Arthur on camp, the commander. Bushy looked at his watch. “Not bad, you’re just an hour and a half late.” For a split-second I doubted myself. Then he broke into a huge grin. “Well done! You drink for free tonight!” he lifted the counter-top and embraced us. “We expected everyone to fall for it, but to get back to the camp just ninety minutes after the failures? Quite splendid.”

  The relief I felt was overwhelming, and we congratulated ourselves many times.

  “Don’t overdo the drink though…” he watched our faces. “there’s an exercise tonight, just after eleven.”

  “What happened to the rest?” I asked.

  “Oh, they’re doing laps.” Bushy laughed, then looked at his watch again. “If you got yourselves to the mess hall, smartish, you’ll probably still be in time for the last sitting of lunch. Re-join your classes when you want to.”

  I ate my mince and potatoes in smug satisfaction, and asked for a large helping of sauerkraut, just to wallow in my German-ness. I’d saved a morning of running laps around the camp, but I’d also rescued another from the same. After we’d leisurely finished our food, we sat in the deserted mess hall for over thirty minutes, reading the latest copies of German newspapers sent over Lake Ontario from the USA.

  We were interrupted from our reverie by the camp speakers, and I looked outside in consternation. I could make out an American voice, a newsreader, and immediately thought of it as another test. I walked to the main door, then outside. The sounds faded before we got out, but I still heard a crackle through the speakers. Then it started again. I listened to it four times before the import of it fully hit me.

  “Hello NBC, Hello NBC. This is KGU in Honolulu, Hawaii. I am speaking from the roof of the Advertiser Publishing Company building. We have witnessed this morning from a distance, a view of a brief full battle of Pearl Harbor and a severe bombing of Pearl Harbor by enemy planes, undoubtedly Japanese. The city of Honolulu has also been attacked and considerable damage done. This battle has been going on for nearly three hours. One of the bombs dropped within fifty feet of KGU tower. It is no joke, it is a real war.

  The public of Honolulu has been advised to keep in their homes and await results from the Army and Navy. There has been fierce fighting going on in the air and on the sea. The heavy shooting seems to be… 1,2,3,4 just a moment, we’ll interrupt here.

  We cannot estimate yet how much damage has been done, but it has been a very severe attack. The Navy and Army appear now to have the air and the sea under control.”

  Berti and I looked at each other. We’d been sworn to not think in English, and that we should look surprised when we heard the language, but the mood in the camp grew more anxious by the minute.

  The guards on the gates were doubled.

  Reveille was called at three in the afternoon.

  Our class were issued with side-arms and told to be ready for anything.

  Even a classroom studying German uniforms was suddenly switched to talk of America’s plight.

  I’m quite sure in that moment in history, the whole world talked of nothing else.

  Pearl Harbor

  Over the next couple of days we got the full story. In the breakfast hours of Sunday 5th October, as Berti and I had cadged a lift back to base from our first parachute jump, the Japanese fleet had attacked Pearl Harbor with devastating effect.

  They’d also hit Manilla, and three other pacific islands; far less was said about that. Pearl harbor was the worst hit; four battleships lost, one aircraft carrier, two cruisers, and maybe 4000 men. Newspapers disputed the number of casualties.

  We still paid attention in class… we memorized the fifteen softest places to slide a knife into a person for best effect. We did another parachute jump, this time with no shenanigans at the landing site. We practiced our ‘drunk walk’ across the grass, our observation techniques, shaping C4 into fancy charges to blow holes in locomotive boilers, toppling trees, opening doors.

  But each break, lunch, dinner, supper, was a mad dash for the newspapers to learn more.

  The next day, Japan hit Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong.

  The Old man, Churchill, didn’t take his proposal anywhere, he just declared war. I sat in a little bit of smugness at the ease in which our country’s leaders took to the idea; matter of fact.

  America, it seemed, even under the onslaught poured on Pearl Harbor, took more convincing.

  On the day that Britain declared war on Japan, President Roosevelt took a superb speech to congress, and they debated for some three hours. The result was that America declared war with Japan the next day, but then the German papers took over the next part of the story. The Japanese Ambassador to the Third Reich, pushed Ribbentrop to join the fray; under the basis of the Tri-party Agreement, Germany technically had to declare war to keep up the alliance.

  Under such pressure, Hitler declared war on the USA two days later.

  We now had a setting for the main scene of the play; every nation in the world that mattered was at war with someone… the world had chosen the side they were fighting on.

  It was the heavyweight fight of the century, USA, Britain, and Russia, versus Germany, Italy and Japan.

  However, as the week headed for the weekend, and we were told we were getting a day pass, the news of the war slid to the back-burner. All we seemed to speak of was what we were going to do with our single day off.

  “I’m going to sleep for the whole day,” Berti announced.

  Siggy improved on the idea. “I’m going to get drunk, then sleep!”

  Frantz, of course, couldn’t leave the thought of getting some female company, even if he had to pay for it. “I’ve got no time for niceties, no time to dilly dally; I’ve got to go for the kill, then get drunk, then sleep. Maybe on top of her!”

  We all laughed.

  I had no idea what to do, and told them all.

  In the end, I got on the truck at eight in the morning, and let myself be driven into Toronto. We found a bar down by the dock that was open e
arly, and hit it hard. I think we were drunk by ten o’clock.

  Leaving the group, I drifted into a park, and sat feeding ducks with some bread shared with a young girl and her mother.

  “You’re not from round these parts, are you soldier?” the mother asked. I gave her a wan smile, knowing my speech wasn’t up to her conversational level, and we fed the ducks some more. We had a cup of tea in a café, where the little girl read a comic from end to end.

  The tea lifted my spirits, and I told her my story.

  It wasn’t until I’d said goodbye, waving to them both, that I realized I’d been speaking in German the whole time.

  I found a cinema, Sergeant York, starring Gary Cooper.

  By the time I’d hit the streets again, I felt sober.

  As I passed a bar, I heard music from inside, and found myself in a wonderful place. I ignored the couples dancing, and fell in love with the girl on the microphone. It seemed her voice never ran out of songs to sing.

  I was woken up by two MP’s, red hats, red arm-bands. “You okay, feller?”

  I found my bearings quickly and nodded. “I’m fine. I’m on a furlough.” I looked in my pocket, found my day pass. It had the camp number stamped clearly.

  “Come on,” They lifted me up, but I shook them off. I had no reason to leave.

  “It’s not time to go yet.” I said with n rancor, but they were drawing batons, and suddenly didn’t look too friendly towards me. “Hey, come on guys” I asked again, this time tapping my wrist. “It’s not time for me to go.”

  Our transport was due to pick us up at the train station at ten, and I told them so. I was met with blank stares and gathering storms.

  Crap. In German.

  I switched to English instantly. “Sorry, training. Truck picks us up at ten,”

  The men relaxed instantly. “That’s better, kiddo.”

  “Sorry, one day off…” I almost mentioned my training, and stopped myself in time. “Are we close to the train station?”

  “Up the road and round the corner,” They stuck their batons in their belts. “You going to be okay?”

  I nodded, and asked the passing waitress for tea, lots of it.

  I’d body-swerved the MP’s quite nicely.

  Not everyone did.

  Berti and Frantz were not at the train station at ten. Or half past.

  They joined us Sunday morning, not looking the best for their night in jail.

  Our camp tormentors gave them no respite. We did laps, we did canoe work on the calm lake, we jumped from the scaffolding, we memorized more German insignia; secret police, regional police, town police.

  I didn’t think the training could get much more crammed, but I was wrong.

  We did night raids every second night, ‘blowing up’ railway lines, stealing innocuous stuff from garden sheds, then breaking into the folk’s houses, leaving their spades on their beds as they slept.

  We grabbed guards, gagged them, tied them up, left them lying outside their guard-huts.

  We planted timed explosions on the edge of the lake, many men woke at eight the next morning to the distant ‘whump’ vibrating up the hill.

  On Monday morning of week five, we were told to change into our ‘ops kit’ and taken to Toronto in the back of the obligatory truck.

  Expecting another parachute drop, we were surprised when we were booked into the Champagne Hotel. This was a fancy piece of architecture; not quite to the standard of the Ritz, but very plush; bell-boys, doormen, the works.

  We were shown into one suite.

  It held six beds, not bad for eight of us. As we explored the suite, the first instructions arrived. A bellboy, holding a box.

  We disabused him of his cargo, dismissed him, and went through the box’s contents.

  Eight street maps of Toronto, eight letters, each addressed to a Toronto home.

  One note of instruction.

  Get the letter to the address.

  If you are caught, you will be returned to the hotel and must start again.

  Three fails, and you stay in the room, self-imposed house arrest.

  You have 24 hours.

  I hate to say, my first try was a complete disaster.

  I didn’t get two streets away.

  Two burly MP’s descended on me, and drove me back to the hotel. I recognized Wilfred, but the other was unknown to me.

  “You made your exit far too obvious,” Wilfred said, his voice loud against the roar of the open-topped jeep. “You all left within five minutes of each other, your appearance hadn’t changed, you looked like a man on a mission. Relax, Eric, this is not a speed test, take your time, plan it better. The hotel’s being watched. We, the enemy, know you’re inside.”

  I lay on the bed for an hour. Then I set off exploring the hotel. I soon found a Bell boy willing to talk.

  “What time do the shifts change around here? You guys, the doormen?”

  “Four.”

  I knew that gave me over an hour to arrange something. The inkling of a plan was forming. Suspecting that some of the staff could be colluding with the camp, I knew I couldn’t rely on their good will to allow me to borrow them. Stealing a razor and cream from an adjoining room, I shaved, the first time for many weeks. At three fifty, I dallied around reception, watched the seamless change of personnel, and followed the doorman into the hotel’s back rooms. The screwdriver handle I thrust into his back left him with no doubt of my intentions.

  “Walk to suite 201.” I instructed. “Or your family is one less tonight.”

  We soon stood in the room, where Conrad and Tomas studied their maps, obviously back for a second try.

  “What’s your name?” I pressed the screwdriver harder.

  “Bill.” He said through gritted teeth.

  “Well, Bill, strip down to your underwear, I need your uniform.”

  I explained my idea to the team in German, adding a new level of tension into Bill’s reticence. “Where do you go now, Bill?” I asked. “What’s your routine? Home? A beer?”

  “I go straight home… well, I do a bit of shopping first.”

  And for the next five minutes, as I donned his clothes, he went through the route, where he bought his evening newspaper and bottle of fresh milk, his final address.

  Siggy entered the room, disheartened.

  “Immer Deutch.” I said, nodding to Bill.

  “Yawohl.” He even gave me a Hitler salute, cheeky pup.

  I tied Bill up, leaving him no doubt if he tried to escape, we’d kill him, if he behaved, he’d be released.

  I pulled on the hat, Bill’s glasses, and folded the overcoat over my arm; just like Bill said he did. Then I sauntered from the back door like I’d done it every day for five years… like Bill.

  Except inside the maroon overcoat were my own trousers and jacket.

  My exit was picked up right away, by a man opposite, reading a newspaper, leaning on a lamppost of all things. “I’m leaning on a lamp… you may think that I’m a tramp…” I sung under my breath, the high voice of George Formby making me smile. I felt smug about my relaxed state; people on missions rarely smile.

  As I turned the next corner, I found he hadn’t continued to follow me.

  So, as I walked towards his bus stop, I searched in vain for the second man, for surely there should be one.

  Bill lived just fifteen minutes from the hotel, a short bus ride away. I saw no followers on foot, no cars, nothing.

  The bus arrived and I got on.

  It took three minutes to change trousers, and stow the coat under my seat. I got off immediately.

  An hour later, I pushed the letter into the Toronto letterbox.

  Job done.

  Now all I had to do was organize a complete breakout of everyone, most of us acting as decoys to let the others deliver their letters.

  In all we got five out of eight delivered in our allotted 24 hours.

  And so our training continued, more of the same, then a bolt out of the blue; we
had a new assignment in town, in a different hotel. This time we were following another class, we were staking out our own suspects. This time we had the jeep and the MP’s uniforms.

  As soon as that operation was over, I started letting the beard grow again.

  I can honestly say my time in STS 103 was thrilling, interesting, and hectic all at the same time, but it never was boring.

  When the last day of the six weeks arrived, I was both happy to be leaving and sad to say goodbye to the men I now knew better than anyone else in the world.

  I never saw Mikel, Tomas, Wilhelm and Conrad again. We embraced fiercely, tears streaming unchecked down our faces.

  Frantz, Siggy, Berti and I got on the same train bound for Niagara Falls, where we acted as tourists for an hour. We bought postcards, drank beer while watching the falls, then surreptitiously crossed the border, changed the ID’s in our wallets, and each caught a separate bus. I travelled first to Cleveland, then down to New York, where I bought some more postcards.

  We had an ultimate objective, provided by the camp’s commander, but first we had a mission to perform.

  When we met in Central Park, it seemed Frantz hadn’t made it.

  When we arrived at the second rendezvous, a day later, he still wasn’t there.

  We each sent a postcard to the camp, addressed simply to ‘Arthur’.

  We’d proven the camp had been infiltrated; we’d done our first task.

  The New York Passport Bureau

  William Samuel Stephenson was an unimposing man, and the information I’d been given; Great War flying ace, medals won, escaping from a German POW camp, didn’t fit his diminutive frame. Yet, even from a distance, he did exude a certain something, a grace under fire, a calmness. I looked over the secretary’s head, through the spotless glass behind.

  “No, Mr. Stephenson doesn’t have an appointment booked.”

  “Thanks love,” I set forth my practiced New York drawl, and she never flinched. “My mistake,”