The Steel Fist

by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Five and a half days later, on their first free afternoon, a Saturday, they all felt as though they had not ceased to run up or down some hill or mountain from the moment their boots had touched the hard and inhospitable Murdo ground.

  It was the first opportunity Taggart had had for detached reflection in which he could look back on the Texel raid and see it in perspective. For the past fortnight it had been too recent an event to assess dispassionately.

  Now he could recall the quickened heartbeat, the throbbing in his temples, the dryness and constriction of his throat, the recurrent feeling that every bullet and mortar fragment was about to shatter his skull. In the aftermath he had felt drained of physical strength, while charged with galvanic mental energy. His senses had remained sharp and attuned to swift reaction for hours after the battle was over. Paradoxically, his limbs felt heavy, every movement seemed sluggish even though he knew he made it in a perfectly normal manner. When he wiped the black paint from his face and, having showered, was towelling it, he saw in the mirror that he appeared as though he had shed pounds of flesh. His cheeks were hollow, his eyes sunken. Sleep left him unrefreshed, after he had lain, clean and safe, courting it for an hour. It was only food and alcohol that had restored him.

  He wondered if every raid was going to have the same effect on his mind and body. He wondered about the others, but these were not matters one could discuss. There were questions one never asked and confidences one never offered.

  He recalled the silence and how, knowing the enemy might be anywhere, he had from time to time interpreted the night sounds of a countryside as threats. A rabbit scuttering through grass became jackboots approaching. The flutter of an owl’s wings became the rustle of field-grey uniforms. Its call sounded like a signal, a warning that British soldiers were on the prowl.

  He had bumped into Udall once when they flung themselves down on the dyke, and Udall had been trembling. Taggart wondered how many of the others he would have found were shaking if he had touched them. And was it fear or tension that caused it? Or even an unbearable excited pleasure?

  For there was a certain pleasure to be found in these clandestine and violent excursions. He recognised it in himself: when, for instance, he had for the first time ever plunged his knife accurately into a human body that had, in a few seconds, passed from life to death in his hands. Will I get him before he gets me? Will I stab him in the right place, or will the blade hit a button, a buckle, a bone... a Bible in his pocket? For a few seconds he had been on the verge of instant death himself, but the enemy had been too slow, he himself as swift as a snake. It made for a good feeling of skill and strength.

  The rush of dread when the enemy discovered the Commandos’ presence before they had laid their first demolition charges. The flood of anger when a man at his side had drowned within a stride or two of safety. There were many powerful emotions to recall, but the strongest was of anger and hatred, which gave him an intense desire to do it all over again; and, this time, to lose no one and to kill every German on the site of whatever would be their target. He had come back from France with a burning hatred from the German air crews who fed on defenceless civilian refugees and on clearly marked hospitals. Now he felt the same hatred for German soldiers.

  On Saturday afternoon he slipped away on his own for a couple of hours, to tramp the heather-clad lower hills. If only there were a farm where he could stop for tea and a chance to talk to people who had nothing to do with the war.

  He chanced on such a place and when he knocked at the door and asked the farmer’s wife if she catered for holiday-walkers, she smiled and said “Aye, come in. But you’re no holiday-maker.” While she buttered freshly baked scones and set out poached eggs and home-made jam, she talked about her two sons.

  “Aye, they’re good laddies. Thank God they’re alive; and well, I daresay, unwounded I know, but half-starved I’m sure.”

  “Fifty-first Division? Prisoners of war?”

  “Aye.”

  One couldn’t, he realised, escape the war anywhere in Great Britain.

  “Never mind. We’ll make Jerry sorry for what he’s done.”

  “Aye, I don’t doubt you will. But it’ll still be a long wait before I see my Angus and Donald again, for a’ that.”

  Her husband came in before Taggart left. Saturday afternoon was no different from any other afternoon for him, with his two sons away.

  “I was in the Fifty-first in the last war, sir. I’d never held a rifle before I joined in August ‘fourteen, but I finished four years later as company sar’-major. My two boys never had the chance of promotion. They’d have a nice little nest egg of back pay waiting when they come home, if they’d had time to earn a stripe or two.”

  The practicality of the farmer’s unsentimental philosophy made Taggart smile inwardly; and did more to restore his sense of balance than all the solitary tramping away from the military environment.

  He was feeling calm and refreshed when the Colonel sent for him on Monday morning.

  * * *

  Abberley was seated in front of the Colonel’s office table. The Colonel gestured Taggart to a chair and came straight to the point.

  “You speak French and German.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “War House are sending an Intelligence wallah — a major — up by air this afternoon to talk to us about a task. Looks as though it’ll be your pigeon.”

  Taggart nodded. I’m nodding blankly, like a dummy, he thought. But what can I say? Better say something. “I understand, sir.”

  “Damned if I do, Rodney.”

  The Colonel’s hot eyes showed amusement.

  “Presumably some job that calls for French and German, sir. Which presumably means a quick return trip to France.”

  “Somewhere where Jerry’s massing invasion barges, I suspect.”

  “I’ll try to bring back some camembert, Colonel. Or do you prefer brie?”

  Taggart heard Abberley chuckle, admiring his style. The Colonel smiled.

  “A decent cheese would go a long way to brighten one’s life here, I must say.”

  “He’ll be crossing on the ferry, sir?”

  “Yes. Unless his aircraft is delayed. We could do with a landing strip here.”

  Abberley looked disapproving.

  “I don’t think we should encourage anything to make communications easier, Colonel. That would mean more brass hats visiting. And it would give a suggestion of permanence to our stay on the island.”

  “What makes you think it’s not permanent already, Hugh? In between operations, of course.”

  Abberley looked glum.

  Taggart withdrew to take his section on a sixteen-mile speed march up and down the hills in battle order. It was the regular start to 100 Commando’s week. Abberley was at his heels. No one escaped the speed march. The Colonel himself set the pace. He also left the office now.

  After their sixteen miles across rough country, showers and lunch, they were allowed to lie down: at the firing point, where they practised with Bren, Tommy gun, rifle and revolver.

  The ferry boat arrived punctually in late afternoon while the commando was at tea: the senior N.C.Os eating heartily, the officers making do until dinner time with toast and jam, and sandwiches filled with fish paste.

  When Taggart went back to the C.O’s office with Abberley, the Intelligence Corps major stood up to shake hands. He looked exactly as Tagart had anticipated: donnish, spectacled and... intelligent! What else, in the I. Corps? he asked himself.

  “We want you to take a small raiding party ashore on the coast of Normandy, Taggart.” The visitor looked and spoke as though he deprecated the notion, almost deplored it.

  “Invasion barges, sir?”

  “We don’t know. Hence the exercise.”

  “Hardly an exercise, Major, surely? Isn’t it an operation?”

  Abberley, familiar with Taggart’s reverence for the correct use of his native tongue, grinned.

  The Intelligence
expert looked cross. He also looked at Taggart’s build, his tough face and M.C.

  “Quite. The object of the operation. We don’t know how many of the barges at this particular spot are dummies; if any. It’s your job to find out. You’ll be ashore for two days and nights. While there, you’ll blow up as many barges as you can, real or fake. To let Jerry know he can’t take us by surprise.”

  “When, sir?”

  “Two weeks, when there’s no moon. You’ll be taken across in a submarine and you’ll paddle the last mile or so in canvas boats. You’ll be given a contact on the other side who will help you to hide the boats until you need them to rejoin the sub.”

  “How many of us, sir?”

  “Six altogether. Hardly enough to do much blowing up. But few enough to make concealment fairly simple.

  It depends on one’s yardstick for simplicity; but I’d better not say so.

  Taggart looked at his Colonel.

  “Who’ll pick the team, sir?”

  “You, Rodney.”

  “I can tell you now, sir: Sergeant Duff, Corporal Smith, Lance-Corporal Udall, Wallace, Gallagher,” Taggart turned to his troop leader. “All right, Hugh?”

  “Good team.”

  “The boats and an instructor will arrive tomorrow morning,” the Intelligence officer said. “You’ll be given your detailed briefing later: I’ll be coming up again next week.” He smiled and it gave him the air of a benevolent housemaster wishing his eleven well in the cock house cricket final. “I’m sure you’ll make a first-class job of it. If you can suggest any improvements to the boats, please say so.”

  When Abberley and Taggart were alone, Abberley said “I’ve noticed that Wallace and Gallagher have cottoned on to one another.”

  “They’re an interesting pair.” The thought amused Taggart and he sounded it. “Gallagher as townie as they come, the authentic Glasgow and South London tough. And Wallace, as Highland as they make ‘em, a wild man from the outer islands, whose idea of a big city would be Stirling or Kircaldy. Coming back to his native heath has obviously made Gallagher more Scots than ever. I’ve know him for years, of course, in the T.A.; but sometimes now I can hardly understand a word he says. He lays on the accent as thickly as he can.”

  “How d’you feel about the job?”

  “Sounds interesting. And worthwhile... useful.”

  “What about the boats?”

  “Considering the development work Roger Courtney’s been doing in the Firth of Clyde, I should think they’ll be pretty good.”

  * * *

  When Taggart and his raiding party were introduced to the sixteen-foot Folboat two-man canoe, the next morning, they saw a frail-seeming craft made of rubberised canvas on a wooden frame that looked fast but unstable. With a beam of two feet six inches and a depth of one foot, it could be folded into a pack that measured four feet eight inches by one foot by one foot. The two paddles were double-bladed. There were two separate cockpits. On the floor of the after one was a good compass. There was just enough room to stow a small amount of kit and a weapon for each man.

  The instructor said “You put the boat on, like a suit. You have to make it an extension of your body, feel it’s a part of you. It’s easy to capsize, but it’s also very easy to learn to control. It’s fast and it’s silent. In three days you’ll all be experts at handling it.”

  In the first few hours of instruction all six of them took more than one ducking. But by the third day they were all agreed that it was, as they had been assured, easily controlled, fast and silent. From that moment they became jealously possessive of their new acquisitions and Gallagher and Wallace were heard issuing challenges to “a ficht” to anyone who had an adverse word to say about the Folboat.

  “It’s no’ for you landlubbers,” Gallagher declared. “Ye have tae be amphibious, like us, to appreciate it.”

  “If ye dinna like for to get wet,” Wallace said, “ye’ll never learn to handle her. All ye need is pairfect balance and no objection to a bath now and then.”

  A sharp man from Birmingham asked “If you’ve got perfect balance, how would you tip over?”

  Gallagher, in support of his crony, advanced on the Brummie and lowered his bullet head threateningly.

  “D’you want me to gi’ ye the bun, as we say in Glasgie?”

  “Wotcher mean, Jock?”

  “It means I’ll butt yer teeth in.”

  “Don’t take on, Jock: it was only a joke.”

  “The Folboat’s no’ a joke: she’s a bluidy fine craft and it takes a good man to handle her.”

  “O.K., Jock, O.K. I don’t want a mouthful of yer dandruff.”

  Taggart and Udall, Sergeant Duff and Gallagher, Corporal Fysshe-Smith and Wallace: thus were the three canoes crewed. The man in the stern cockpit was in command and steered by the compass, to read which he had to part his knees and peer down at its luminous face.

  They had to find an exact spot on a stretch of sandy beach. It was a place where the unimaginative Germans would least expect a clandestine landing. There were tempting sheltered coves and bays, but Intelligence knew that these were guarded.

  The War Office major had spent three days on Murdo. His final instructions were, thought Taggart, interestingly imprecise. The map reference was almost the only item which the I.O. spoke with total certainty.

  “There is a minefield you’ll have to negotiate. The northern limit is three miles offshore; as far as we know. The captain of the sub will put you in the latest picture. There’ll be no exchange of light signals between you and the person waiting to meet you on the beach: we can’t risk even one short, faint glimmer of a masked torch. But, allowing for the difficulty of precise navigation in the dark and with a tide running, the welcoming party will cover 400 metres of waterfront. The password for you is ‘canoe, canoe’. The acknowledgment by the shore party is ‘pagaie’...”

  Taggart, who resented being told the meaning of words in a language he manifestly knew better than the major, to judge by the latter’s execrable pronunciation, said “Paddle.”

  The major blinked. “Er... quite. Paddle. Yes. Canot and pagaie. You will pack the canoes and your guide will show you where to conceal them. You should have time for a quick recce before you are taken to a safe house. You, Taggart, will have to put on civilian clothes that will be provided for you, with an identity card, and go out to find out as much as you can about the landing barges. That night you can report to the person you’ll know as ‘Pagaie’ what you’ve learned and what our local informers have been able to learn, and, with local advice, you can make your plan for the following night. So, on the third night, you can place your explosives, set delay fuses and launch your canoes for an R.V. with the same sub at a map reference and time you’ll have agreed with her skipper.”

  Taggart heard teeth-sucking. He did not need to look to know that it emanated from Udall. A glance at Sergeant Duff’s face told him that Duff’s reaction to the briefing was the same as his: too little information, because not enough was known about conditions at the place where they were going. He did not catch the corporal’s eye: he was in no mood for Fysshe-Smith’s irony.

  They would each carry a Tommy gun, a revolver and two grenades, with a spare magazine for the sub-machine gun and twelve extra rounds for the hand gun. They would also take rations, benzedrine tablets, French money and a large quantity of explosives.

  They flew to an aerodrome near Portsmouth in an R.A.F. Anson with their canoes and were issued with explosives and detonators on arrival.

  An hour after sunset they boarded the submarine, whose captain, a lieutenant-commander with carroty hair and an exuberant manner, immediately offered them all a drink; which Taggart regretfully refused. Lieutenant-Commander Merrick’s grin widened.

  “On the way back, perhaps? Just to prove you really have been ashore, how about bringing back a few bottles of bubbly?”

  “What brand would you like?”

  Merrick was delighted. “I’ll give you some
rum to take with you, if you like. You might get bloody cold out there, groping your way to the beach. And while you’re ashore, see if you can find a decent goatsmilk cheese and perhaps a well matured port salut, there’s a good chap.”

  “You don’t expect much of our navigation, it seems? We’ve only got three miles to go, in a straight line.”

  “Sorry to disillusion you, old boy, but we’ve got to decant you six miles offshore. The R.A.F. have been sowing mines beyond Jerry’s defensive minefields, in the hope of blowing up the odd E-boat. And as for a straight line: you were briefed about the tides and currents, I take it?

  “We were, but in view of the fact that we were misinformed about the mines, you’d better fill us in, if you don’t mind.”

  By the time the submarine surfaced on the south side of the Channel, Taggart had reconciled himself to a ten-mile paddle. He borrowed some thin line from the Navy and attached the three canoes to one another, bow to stern, so that they would not separate more than twenty yards from each other.

  With faces and the backs of their hands blackened, and wearing R.A.F. “Mae West” life vests, also painted black at Murdo, the six men settled in their canoes and three sailors pushed them away into the night. Above the murmur of small waves against the submarine’s hull Taggart heard Merrick’s quiet “Good luck. See you in forty-eight hours, here.”

  I hope you’re right, he thought.

  He felt a tug on the line attached to the stern of his craft as Corporal Fysshe-Smith’s and Wallace’s canoe fell back to the full length of the securing line. Then the tugging stopped and he knew that they had paddled closer.

  Sergeant Duff and Gallagher were at the rear.

  And now for the minefields: first the R.A.F’s and then, closer inshore, the enemy’s. A dog-leg course to be steered to take them through the narrow clear areas and to offset the effects of tide and current. Taggart peered at his compass. Water had slopped into the canoe and large drops partly obscured the glass. He wiped it clean. Then his nose began to run and he fumbled for a handkerchief; he almost upset the narrow craft as he dug into a pocket. He had to stop paddling and Udall looked round.