by Colin Gee
The Sergeant and Corporal who had started placing them in the roof space did so for the right reasons, but simply forgot to tell anyone of their actions. She was satisfied that there was no dishonest intent on their part.
Having tracked down those responsible and halted the activity, she was now faced with sorting through the effects and ensuring their proper distribution.
After taking a break and recharging her caffeine levels, Presley returned to her cataloging and labeling.
Moving a bundled greatcoat, she found a small canvas duffle bag with a card label attached.
‘Ramsey.’
She remembered the British officer fondly, and immediately reminded herself to take his wife up on the offer of afternoon tea.
Removing the contents of the bag, nothing of huge significance met her eye.
A garish tassled hat with red and white squares on was first to fall under her eye. Presley would not have known a Glengarry bonnet by name, but she set it aside, secretly admiring the traditional Scottish headgear. Following quickly came a brown corduroy flat hat, which she greeted with less enthusiasm, a lighter, a pristine copy of Ronald Syme’s ‘The Roman Revolution’, and a uniform jacket that gave the impression of having been through a hedge backwards.
Intending to wash the jacket, Presley pulled it out and unfolded it, immediately understanding that Ramsey had been wearing it at the time of his last battle.
Normally, she might have discarded it, but the impressive row of ribbons stayed her hand, and she decided to go through with washing.
The blood and mud stains were all quite dry, and in any case, Major Jocelyn Presley was no stranger to the products of violence, so she fished about in the pockets without concern.
Pulling a few scraps of paper out, she laid the jacket aside, ready for the wash.
The first note was an official order, the one that moved Ramsay’s unit to Barnstorf for that awful October bloodbath.
Second, and tricky to unfold, was some sort of poem, obviously something the British Major had been working on.
Third seemed to be a relatively straightforward hand written note.
Except it wasn’t.
Ten minutes later, Presley handed it to the camp intelligence officer, who also couldn’t read it.
It was not until nearly an hour later that they found a Corporal Potin on Ward 13 who had sufficient language skills to decipher the note.
“Jeez, yeah. Ain’t read any of this stuff since ma Grand-pappy got out his old newspapers from the first war.”
“So?”
Presley was impatient.
“Yes, Ma’am. It’s Cyrillic.”
He scanned it quickly, turning it over and whistling as he reached the end.
“Guy first named’s a Major Ramsey. It’s about a fight at a place called Barnstorf. Man who signed it is a Commie Colonel called Yarishlov.”
“So what does it say!”
Alexey Gregorevich Potin, whose family had come to America to avoid the Revolution, read the text word for word.
He finished to the sort of silence that seems oppressive.
The camp IO spoke first.
“Wowee… now, ain’t that something.”
1530 hrs, Saturday 16th March 1946, the Billiard House, Hameau de la Reine, Versailles, France.
Major General Kenneth Strong, in the chair, called the meeting to order.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you all for coming, and a particular thank you to our three new members who have responded at such short notice.”
Whilst each of the people sat around the table was known, if only by name, Strong went through an introductory process.
“Dudley, author of the Cascade operation and head of ‘A’ Force.”
Brigadier Dudley Clarke’s credentials were impressive. Cascade had been the operation to alter the German perception of the North African order of battle, and had been wholly successful in convincing the enemy of the existence of many divisions that were solely recorded on paper. ‘A’ Force was the prime deception unit on the previous Italian Front. Dudley had been involved in some of ‘J-Cip’s work already, but had been brought in to provide first-hand critique and advice.
“Jane from MI5.”
Second to be introduced, and with less of a flourish, was Jane Archer, former head of MI5’s Soviet Intelligence Department, and brought in for her understanding of the Soviet psyche.
One look at her was sufficient to understand that the woman was all business and could stand her ground.
Again, with the lack of information due to those from the shady world of intelligence, Strong introduced the final arrival.
“And lastly, Harold. Most of you know Harold from MI6 Counter-Intelligence.”
Nods of recognition acknowledged the new member.
Additional copies of the ‘Ash’ file were passed around and the group go down to the business of fooling the Soviet Union as to Allied intentions.
The meeting broke up later than expected, the new arrivals having been able to provide some excellent insight into Soviet thinking, as well as offering a few tweaks to the disinformation programme that would run throughout the summer.
As they strode from the Billiard House, dispersing to their various destinations, Major General Harold R. Bull waited to pull two people aside.
“Mrs Archer, can you spare me a minute?”
She went to take leave of her companion but Bull continued.
“Both of you please.”
Bull produced two tan folders from his briefcase.
“Needless to say these are top secret. We’ve not yet acted on their contents, so perhaps you could have a look and have some ideas ready for the next ‘J-Cip’ meeting?”
Jane Archer noted the cover, with its impressive markings denoting the highest security requirements, alongside the file’s two names.
“Mother and son, General Bull?”
Archer was well up on her Greek Mythology, as was her companion, who followed up Jane Archer’s comment.
“So we have an Achilles to worry about?”
Bull laughed.
“No, Mr Philby.”
“Please do call me Kim.”
“No, Kim, it’s Thetis that’s more our concern.”
Dropping into the back of the US Army staff car he had been assigned, Kim Philby struggled to maintain his composure, believing, rightly as it happened, that the driver was an intelligence operative. The knowledge that he was now aware of a great deception being inflicted upon the Soviet Union nibbled constantly at his composure, as did the concern that he would be in time to prevent the damage it could inflict.
With a fifteen minute drive to his quarters ahead, he decided to read the Achilles/Thetis file as a light distraction.
It proved anything but.
1318 hrs, Sunday, 17th March 1946, Bickenholtz area, France.
Their mission was to go wherever the Legion training detachment went, and bring them safe back to the 16th when they had finished the job.
The small unit could have waited it out in the warmth and comfort of their barracks, but that wasn’t the way their senior NCO did things.
So 2nd Special Platoon, 16th Armored Military Police Battalion, found themselves secreted in the countryside outside of Bickenholtz, carrying out a practice anti-partisan surveillance and interception mission, all at the behest of First Sergeant James Hanebury, which experienced NCO, moving between apoplectic and incredulous, was about to visit himself upon the squad commanded by a man who was about as unfit to be a soldier as Hanebury had ever encountered.
“What in the name of the Almighty do you think you’re doing, Sergeant Smith?”
The rotund NCO almost jumped out of his skin, so unaware had he been of the approach of his nemesis.
“Top, we’ve set up an OP here, and we’re logging movement through the area, as ordered.”
Hanebury gathered himself.
“As ordered? Look at this position! It’s fucking useless… no height�
� no cover worth a fucking damn… and you’re set up watching one side. Where’s your security? Where’s your rear cover eh? Goddamnit Smith, but I fucking walked up on you and your sorry bunch and none of you had a snowball’s that I was here!”
Hanebury’s eyes bored into the hapless Smith, burning deeply but, as usual, failing to find anything capable of absorbing the lesson.
“This position is shit. Find another.”
The experienced First Sergeant looked around, assessing the area, seeking a suitable point to set up and observe from.
There were three choices immediately apparent.
Smith had summoned Corporal Buzzy to his side, a man that Hanebury considered to be equally as useless.
“I’ll be back directly. Get it fucking sorted by the time I return, Sergeant.”
Smith waited for the grizzled Non-Com to get out of earshot before shaking his head and spitting into the mud.
“Sargeant fucking Lucifer the Perfect says we gotta move to a better position. Where d’yer figure, Buzz?”
Transferred in from a Maintenance section, the new MP was as clueless as his squad leader.
“The old church there?”
He pointed to the far distance, just west of Bickenholtz.
“Too far, I reckon. How about the trees there. Looks like plenty of brush too… and we got a good field of vision.”
Buzzy checked his map against the place Smith was pointing at.
“Yeah, I reckon that’ll do. Plus, no way for old Lucifer to sneak up on us.”
In the distance they could hear the sounds of Hanebury chewing someone’s ass.
“That fucker should’ve joined the fucking infantry if he wanted to play general.”
The imminent return checked their conversation.
“Well, Sergeant?”
“We’ve sorted a good position. You wanna check it out, Top?”
Hanebury held up his hands.
“Nope. Just get your squad settled in, call me up on the radio, and I’ll come back and make sure you’ve got things properly sorted. OK, now let’s move, Sergeant.”
“Hey, Phelps.”
“Sarge?”
Phelps forced his eyes open.
“You still got those special radio parts tucked away?”
“Sure have, Sarge.”
“Get ‘em fitted a-sap will ya. Want to be outta touch with old Lucifer for a while.”
Phelps grinned.
“I’m on it, Sarge.”
Smith, although pretty much a waste of space, was not without some cunning, and he had ordered the defective radio parts kept for occasions when he wanted autonomy and peace.
The subterfuge had fooled Hanebury once before, and he figured it would do so again.
Within minutes, both radios were disabled.
Hanebury, back at his own position, accepted the piping hot coffee from his driver, Collier.
“From your face, I’d reckon that Snuffy ain’t flavour of the week eh, Top?”
Smith’s nickname was not intended to be complimentary
“Typical Smith set up. Total SNAFU, Corporal. He’s sorting it out now… I hope.”
Hanebury took the approach of putting all his crap in one pot, which was why the expectations of Smith’s squad were pretty much non-existent.
Smiling to himself, and without the slightest hint of humour, Hanebury wondered which of the possibles he had spotted would become Smith’s chosen location.
“What’s the odds on him getting it right second time ‘round, Top?”
Hanebury grinned the grin used by senior NCO’s the world over; the simple expression that announced hell was coming.
“I ain’t taking bets, Lou.”
In any case, for totally different reasons, all bets were off.
1339 hrs, Sunday, 17th March 1946, Route 46, eight hundred metres north of Bickenholtz, France.
“Shit, what was that?”
“Just a mangy old dog, Sarge.”
“It dead?”
“You fucking betcha it’s dead.”
The unfortunate beast had decided to run out of its cover and engage the new arrivals in play.
Smith was trying to remember if such an incident was reportable, and whether Old Lucifer would want a ream of paper on the matter. His thought process was suddenly interrupted as he realised how close he was getting to the copse.
“Whoa up there, cowboys!”
The convoy of three vehicles that transported Smith’s squad ground to a halt as ordered.
Using his binoculars, Smith surveyed the small copse, noting the ramshackle wooden house for the first time.
Shouting across to the Dodge, Smith passed on the good news to his friend.
“Hey Buzz. Good call eh? Even got us some shelter.”
Smith dithered, as was his normal approach to military matters. Eventually, he made up his mind.
“Right, just in case the old bastard’s watching, I’m gonna do this proper. OK… Buzz, move your vehicle to the right there and oversee with the .50cal. I’ll move left and do the same...”
He looked around and saw a slovenly soldier chewing gum like it was the finest beef steak.
“Hey Idiot, Purple Heart opportunity! Oi, Hartnagel…,” the unpopular private pretended not to hear his Squad leader, “Hartnagel, you work shy piece of shit!”
“What?”
Hartnagel was simply the most disliked person in the MP battalion, bar none. His ability to avoid any sort of work was only equalled by his genuinely nasty nature and untrustworthiness.
“Get down the track and check out that stand of trees.”
Hartnagel snorted his disgust.
“Bike’s playing up, Sergeant.”
“Then fucking walk for all I care. Move your ass.”
Muttering obscenities, Hartnagel gunned the motorbike and moved off towards the copse, the Dodge 4x4 and jeep moving to either side.
Hanebury did not believe in travelling light when it came to weaponry.
He ensured his vehicles were kitted out with anything and everything he could lay his hands on.
The Dodge had a .50cal pedestal mount, and an MG42 jury rigged for the front seat passenger to have a whale of a time with, in the right circumstances. A special housing held a bazooka and two panzerfausts, and four grenade stations inside the vehicle held three deadly missiles each.
The jeep was only slightly less of a handful, with its own .50cal pedestal, and a .30cal mounted in place of the MG42. The jeep also carried three satchel charges. Hanebury had seen action at the Bulge, and understood the definite advantage of having a lot of firepower and high-explosive to hand.
The squad leader’s vehicles also benefitted from long leather holsters bolted to the doorposts, in which lay silent but deadly Winchester M-12 pump-action shotguns, two per vehicle.
Whilst the MPs traditionally wore white helmets, each man had a combat grade helmet issued as well. ‘Snowdrops’ they may be but, as Hanebury was want to put it, ‘anyone who messes with us better be prepared for a goddamned world of hurt, and the biggest butt fuck of their short life.’
The only problem with the theory was that this particular portion of their world of hurt was in the hands of the less than competent Smith.
“Quiet.”
The whispered command had an immediate effect and silence took over again.
The officer continued, his eyes never leaving the approaching enemy.
“Just one man, but the others are fanning out either side. Ten men in total. No shooting.”
Elite troops are always the same; minimum orders required, maximum violence when needed.
Captain Yulian Akinfeev relayed orders to his two senior NCOs with well-practised hand signals.
Serzhant Vetochkin slung his PPd over his shoulder and unsheathed the Finnish Puukko knife that he carried for the close and silent work so often required of the elite reconnaissance platoons of the Red Army. Dropping to his belly, he silently crawled out through the hole in
the side wall.
Starshy Serzhant Urusov slipped upstairs to the small window, and settled behind his Mosin sniper rifle.
The remaining members of 322nd Guards Reconnaissance Platoon remained hidden.
Hartnagel hadn’t lied completely, because the bike was having problems; starting problems, which was why he left the engine running as he slipped off to investigate the building.
Perhaps if he had switched it off then the telltale smell of Soviet tobacco might have warned him, but petrol exhaust fumes masked all of that. Perhaps the small sound made by Vetochkin’s PPd snagging on a branch might have warned him, but engine sounds exceeded the softer sounds of his approaching death.
Vetochkin waited until the enemy soldier was out of sight before acting.
He grabbed the MP’s mouth, kicked his legs away, and dropped him to the ground. The razor sharp Puukko opened Hartnagel’s throat, everything done in one swift and easy motion, and in such a way as to avoid getting too much red liquid on the man’s uniform. Dragging the corpse back by its feet, in order to clear the puddle of blood, Vetochkin stripped the tunic and helmet from Hartnagel.
Other men crawled silently through the vegetation, unseen, but he knew they were there.
He slipped into the tunic but quickly gave up trying to button it up. Hartnagel’s wiry frame required smaller clothing than the muscular Russian could comfortably wear.
Watching Akinfeev closely, he waited until he received the signal.
When it came, he carelessly stepped into view, maintaining enough cover to make him seem familiar to the Americans, and yet indistinct, using the uniform and helmet to appear to be Hartnagel waving them forward.
Both vehicles moved forward, and those observing saw signs of relaxation.
Moving into column, Smith’s jeep arrived first. The Squad commander stepped out immediately, keen to see how much comfort he could expect from his new surroundings. He suspected ‘Lucifer’ would leave them to stew for the evening, before introducing himself at some sort of stupid o’clock.
