“There are times,” Stahl said without any hope that Wulfenbach would understand, “when I think that the training and induction courses include too much propaganda and too little common sense. The British intend to launch as powerful an attack as they can muster, one that will aim to punch through the defence lines and push us into the sea. We need Rommel to handle that part of the invasion, which means, for the moment, doing as Rommel orders.”
Wulfenbach worked it out slowly. “So what are we going to do?”
“What we have been ordered to do,” Himmler had issued them his orders personally, and Stahl was determined to see that they were carried out. Of course, if he failed, he meant to ensure the Army got the blame. “We’re going to keep Felixstowe and the surrounding area as peaceful as possible.”
He yawned suddenly, ignoring the shock on Wulfenbach’s face as he continued, “And that will keep us occupied and free of any tint of the blame for failure. Yes, we may fail and lose the lodgement, and if that happens, the SS must not be blamed, understand?”
Wulfenbach nodded slowly. Stahl said. “Good. You are dismissed.”
Stahl’s mind raced as soon as Wulfenbach closed the door behind him. He still hadn’t solved the mystery of what Brigadefuhrer Franz Deininger had been doing with the French tart, something that only fed his frustration. Had Deininger organised his own torture and interrogation? Stahl doubted that Deininger had that sort of courage. It was possible that he might have done just that and somehow hidden it from Stahl and his investigators, or maybe his crazy tale was true. He’d been packed off back to Berlin, and was probably shaking his head in relief at having left Occupied Britain, but Stahl had gotten something out of it. He removed his tunic before standing.
He went into the next room. He had wanted to keep the girl close, and no one would bat an eyelid at an SS man taking a local mistress. He ordered, as he undid his pants, “Stand up and bend over the bed. Now, bitch!”
“Jawohl, Herr Übermensch,” Janine said as she bent over. Deininger, Stahl considered, had definitely found a spectacular piece of ass. Sweet, obedient, and very aware of what could happen to her if she failed to obey. “I am here to serve.”
* * *
“Fuck you,” Gregory Davall growled as soon as they had all appeared in the hidden shack. “I don’t fucking care any longer.”
McAllister looked at him grimly. “What have you done with James?”
“I sent him to one of his friends and asked them to take care of him for a few weeks,” Davall hissed. “How the fuck do we tell him that his mother died because his father was too much of a fucking coward to give himself up?”
He punched the ground hard enough to hurt. “The poor boy doesn’t really understand, not yet. Did I ever tell you that he got married to one of the Davidson girls? Oh, they were just toddlers at the time, but they pretended to be husband and wife for a few days until they got bored of the game. He doesn’t even understand that he won’t see Sally again, let alone his mother and…”
“You had no choice,” McAllister said. “Kate was dead the minute they took her…”
“How can you be so fucking cold?” Davall demanded. “What are you made of?”
“I know that the Germans have done this everywhere and will do it here unless we stop them,” McAllister hissed. “I work in the docks, remember? I worked with Frenchmen, Danes, even Spaniards who landed and came out for some rest and relaxation. They talked after a few drinks, Greg. They talked about their lives under the Nazis. There wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t have wanted to live in Britain or America instead, not one… and do you know why? It’s because the Nazis were slowly making their lives unliveable!”
“We all knew what the Nazis were doing up here,” Davall said tapping the side of his head. He moved his hand to his chest. “We just didn’t believe it down here. I have been involved in this movement since 1940, in one role or another, but very few of us really believed just how bad it could become…”
“It’s going to get worse,” McAllister said. “The Germans talk as well, you know, and the BBC was right. They lost a lot of ships at the hands of the boys in the navy.”
“Our boys,” Davall said.
McAllister shrugged. As someone affiliated with the Merchant Navy, he tended to hold the Royal Navy in a certain kind of contempt. He replied, “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the Germans have lost most of their supply lines.”
Davall shook his head. “So?”
McAllister blinked and stated, “So? So the Germans are going to be short of food, fuel, weapons… everything they need to fight the war. What that means, as far as we are concerned, is that the Germans are probably going to start putting people on short rations…”
“Well,” Davall snapped, “they’ve certainly reduced the town’s population a little, haven’t they?”
“And they’re going to start restricting us even more,” McAllister continued. “I must say that I find your attitude a little odd… because a little bird told me that the Germans are about to face the might of the British Army.”
Davall looked up, feeling, for the first time, some real hope. “The Army is going to get the Germans out of here?”
“They hope so,” McAllister said. He had taken over some of the communication duties when Davall’s mood had turned too black and depressed. “They want us to do as much as we can to hammer the Germans, cutting their supply lines, harassing their rear areas…”
“Encouraging them to make more reprisals,” Davall added mournfully.
“You don’t have anything else to lose,” Rigby said. “You’re free and easy.”
Davall almost smashed him in the nose.
“I’ve lost my wife,” he complained. The raw pain in his voice made the others flinch. “They want one final effort, right?”
“Right,” McAllister said. He reached out and placed a comforting hand on Davall’s shoulder. “You could sit this one out if you want, Greg. No one here would think any less of you…”
“Count me in,” Davall replied harshly. He wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass him by. “There is one condition. The SS bastard, Stahl, I want him dead and screaming in Hell. I don’t care anymore about rules or something that will let the bastards in London allow him to get away with his crimes. I want him dead!”
In the distance, an owl hooted softly. Davall frowned at the reluctance in McAllister’s voice and understood, but he was beyond caring about anything, but revenge. “That won’t be easy. Greg, I’ll come with you, but he’s well protected.”
“Or so he thinks,” Davall said, hearing the noise of a fox moving through the undergrowth. The old thrill was gone, replaced now by a cold murderous desire… and an understanding of what it would take to get at his enemy and kill him. “Guess who he’s taken into his bed.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
South of Colchester, England
Alex DeRiemer watched Monty addressing a group of officers and stood back, as he reassured a pair of them and issued final orders to the others, remaining calm all the time. He didn’t understand how Monty could be so calm. After nearly a week of heavy preparation, the counter-attack was about to begin. Hundreds of tanks, thousands of guns, tens of thousands of soldiers… all emplaced and prepared for the greatest offensive the British Army had ever launched. Few of the lads had really expected to be fighting a war in their backyards, but they had responded splendidly. Montgomery was confident of victory. DeRiemer hoped he was right. The Germans might well have other surprises up their sleeves.
He rubbed the bruises on his arm. No one had expected Kim Philby, of all people, to be a German spy. If his experience had been like the other spies who had been rounded up and interrogated, Philby had believed he was spying for the Russians, something that bothered Churchill greatly. The Communists had a wide appeal that the Nazis lacked, and they might well have subverted others… and, if the Germans had understood that, they might have subverted hundreds who didn’t really know who
they served.
MI5 had put together an entire series of teams working on the question of just how much Philby had told the Germans, but a person in his position could have told them almost anything from the files. Hollis, at least, had had the dignity to commit suicide once he’d figured out the truth. The others, most of whom had come from Cambridge, didn’t wanted to believe the truth. Churchill had cracked a joke about how Oxford boys were more loyal to the country, but the truth was that they no longer knew who to trust. The only advantage they had was that the Germans might not know that the remainder of the spy ring had been broken.
DeRiemer had urged Churchill, as strongly as he dared, to leave Skorzeny’s death a mystery. Churchill had turned it down; the chance to gloat on the BBC about how Skorzeny had been killed by an old man was too good to pass up, particularly with the reputation the Germans had created for their champion. He had done most of the things they said he had, but in the end, he’d taken it a step too far. Even DeRiemer hadn’t known that Churchill was armed. The Government of Britain would survive.
Monty strode over and clapped a hand on DeRiemer’s back. “Welcome back, hero. How’s the Prime Minister?”, needling DeRiemer just a little. Churchill’s praise of DeRiemer’s actions under fire had spread far and wide. DeRiemer didn’t want to admit that he barely remembered what had happened. As far as he was concerned, he had flunked his first trial under fire.
Churchill hadn’t accepted more than a quick check-up by the doctor. The Prime Minister had shrugged off Skorzeny’s death before returning to his office and cheerfully informing the nation — and the Germans — that the rumours of his death were gravely exaggerated.
“The Prime Minister is fine,” DeRiemer answered Monty, keeping a web of complex emotions off his face. “He wants a final progress report before the attack is launched. Do the Germans know that you’re coming?”
“I’d be surprised if they didn’t know,” Monty said grimly. “I’d like to hope that we obtained perfect surprise, but under the circumstances, I would be astonished if they didn’t have any idea that we were coming. We’ve been probing the German lines with infantry and commando forces of our own for the past week, but the Germans haven’t been probing us with anything like as much vigour, something that worried us and actually had us standing to attention in the face of a possible attack.”
DeRiemer lifted an eyebrow. “You expected an attack?”
“Any attacker needs to know the positions of the enemy and the lay of the land,” Monty said. “The German probing attacks before their massive assault against the Colchester Line were intended to scout out our locations and identify formations in their positions, but they reduced their operations for a few days before the operation began, in hopes of catching us off guard. If they were doing the same here…”
He shrugged and continued, “Be that as it may, we have all four forces in position and prepared for the offensive. Once I blow the whistle, everything we have will advance against the enemy, under cover of thousands of guns and as many aircraft as we can scrape together. One of the stay-behind units managed to put a German airfield out of action, hampering their attempts to resupply themselves from the air, so the Germans will have to send aircraft in from the continent. That gives us an advantage.
“At the same time, commando teams we have inserted behind enemy lines and the forces trapped in Colchester and the smaller towns will make their own attacks,” he concluded. “The Germans will have to respond to multiple threats at once, each one potentially lethal on its own, not unlike they did to us the night they landed. We’ll break their force, break them, and then race to Felixstowe.”
“I hope you’re right,” DeRiemer said slowly. “How long until the offensive?”
Monty checked his watch. “Two hours. Do you want to join me in the command vehicle?”
DeRiemer considered it. Truthfully, he would have preferred to return to London, but Churchill had wanted a personal report — had even seriously considered coming north himself to join Monty. It had taken the combined efforts of several people to talk him out of that, but DeRiemer still worried about it; Churchill, he was starting to suspect, didn’t want to live on past the end of the war. He’d been removed from office once, only to have to watch as the next government betrayed the country he had fought so hard to protect; he didn’t want to do that again. The world was changing and Churchill, the bulldog Prime Minister, was slowly growing out of place.
“I’ll remain with you for the moment,” DeRiemer said. He owed Churchill that much. “What happens if the assault fails?”
Monty looked disgustingly confident and said dryly, “It will be back to the drawing board. Don’t worry about it too much, Alex. This assault has everything going for it. If it fails, it will be through lack of determination on our part, and the men have all the determination that they could need. The German atrocities have ensured that for us.”
* * *
All along the line, British, American and Commonwealth soldiers waited impatiently. Huddled in bunkers, they nervously checked their weapons and wrote letters to loved ones. As they prepared for the big push, thousands of the men prayed that their faith in Monty was justified.
Some were filled with foreboding as they worried over their first combat action. Others relished the thought of finally going into battle and taking the offensive. These eager beavers had never experienced battle either. The combat vets took care of the details and didn’t think about the big picture or the future. It would come when it came, and not a moment before.
For the survivors of the Home Guard units, this was their chance for revenge. They had been born and bred in the occupied areas of the country, and the news about the German atrocities had shocked them deeply. Some of them were the only survivors of their towns and villages, others knew that their relatives and friends were in the hands of the Germans, and felt a cold determination to return and free their loved ones. After weeks of combat, the Home Guard was impossible to distinguish from a regular army unit, and their preparations mirrored the rest of the line as they readied themselves to face the heartbreaking scenes they were sure to face in the very near future. One way or another, they were going home.
Monty sat alone in his command vehicle. He had no one to turn to for reassurance. The loneliness of command gripped him firmly and refused to let go. He’d maintained a brave face in front of DeRiemer, but it hit him now that if he failed, the Germans might just have a chance to strike back and still win the Battle of Britain. He maintained a confident appearance… and he knew, now, that he wasn’t confident at all. He had issued all of the orders, made his plans and trusted in his subordinates to carry them out, but what if they failed?
Ten miles to the north, the German soldiers checked their own weapons and supplies, knowing that they were desperately short of both. They trusted Rommel, had more faith in him than they had in the Fuhrer, but they knew just how short the supplies actually were. They weren’t beaten, not yet, but the exhortations from Radio Berlin to stand and fight were more demoralising than looking up and seeing a wave of British tanks advancing towards their position.
Two miles to the south, the gunners prepared their weapons and checked their targeting coordinates. They had been ordered to plaster the German lines before the assault began and intended to hammer them into dust, but they had to be careful; in places, British and German forces were so close together that fratricide was almost bound to occur.
All along the line, they waited…
* * *
Colonel Harry Jackson braced himself as the guns fired in unison, a shattering roar that seemed to erupt from right behind him, sending shells arcing up, and down onto the German line. The blinding flashes and deafening explosions in the distance watered his eyes and rang in his ears as the shells detonated, hammering the Germans.
He winced as the first shells crashed down around his headquarters The Germans were shelling them in an attempt to break up their attack before it could be launched.
The weight of German shells seemed lighter, somehow, than it had been before; the noise, too, somehow seemed less deafening. Jackson wondered in a moment of dark humour if the Germans had intended to deafen them all. The first taste of shellfire had been terrifyingly loud, but he’d grown used to it.
The first line of tanks rumbled forwards, their commanders watching carefully for any Germans trying to block their path, and Jackson waved to his men. They trusted him now and so they streamed out of the trenches, heading north as fast as they could move behind the tanks. It wasn’t quite certain where they would meet the Germans; their trenches were surrounding Colchester itself and spreading out in a barrier, but no one really controlled the no-man’s land between the two sides. The noise of the tanks was drowned out completely by the shells, still crashing down on the Germans, and Jackson hoped that that would give them the advantage of surprise.
His men kept their heads down as they advanced, following the tanks as they picked up speed, trying to punch into the German lines before the Germans knew that they were there. The streak of a German antitank rocket, coming from a position that might once have been a small hamlet before both sides had fought over it, knocked out one tank, but the remainder kept going and the infantry assaulted the German position, carefully avoiding the machine gun fire from the remains of a house.
“Two prisoners, sir,” Sergeant Wilt reported after taking the ambush position. Jackson nodded. “They’re both infantrymen. The others fought and died.”
“Send the prisoners back to the rear, alive,” Jackson ordered tightly. They didn’t have the manpower to guard them indefinitely, and the two men had to be protected as POWs. He wouldn’t have put it past some of the soldiers to kill them in revenge. “The remainder of us will continue to advance.”
The landscape was torn and cratered. The area had once been a small town, but the Germans had assaulted it during their massive offensive. The Royal Irish Guards who had guarded this town had been added to the lists of heroes of the war. As the tanks spread out, Jackson’s men assaulted the position, knowing that it was a linchpin of the German defences surrounding Colchester. The Germans wanted to keep the forces in Colchester trapped… and now, with the Germans being attacked from the south…
The Invasion of 1950 Page 47
