Contents
Title Page
CHAPTER ONE Gusen, Austria - Thursday
CHAPTER TWO St. Georgen Gusen Mauthausen - April 1945
CHAPTER THREE The Yanks are coming - April 1945
CHAPTER FOUR Sussex - Today, Saturday
CHAPTER FIVE Gusen, Austria - Sunday
CHAPTER SIX Monday
CHAPTER SEVEN Vassili Urosov
CHAPTER EIGHT Gusen - Tuesday
CHAPTER NINE The Men from the Ministry
CHAPTER TEN Release!
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Ratline
CHAPTER TWELVE Entombment
CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Hills are Alive
CHAPTER FOURTEEN A Brace of Swallows
CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Watchers
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Missing in the Mountains
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Last Flight Out - 1945
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN That Bleeping Machine
CHAPTER NINETEEN The Gold Rush
CHAPTER TWENTY Climb Ev'ry Mountain
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Bombs Away!
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Graun Im Vinschgau
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Grand Theft
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR War Profiteering
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Don't you just love it when a plan comes together?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX A Nazi Memoir
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN A Missing Mercedes
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The chase is on
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE A Trashed Truck
CHAPTER THIRTY Decoy
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Passo Stelvio
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Bonanza!
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE The Old Road
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR A Rockpile
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Not so Secret
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Blinded by Gold
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN A Mountain Shelter
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Buried Treasure
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE A Revelation
CHAPTER FORTY Pee
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE Exhumed!
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO The Watchers
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Attack!
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR Street Fighting Men
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE Germany Calling.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX Russian Roulette
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN Three months later
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT Epilogue
Copyright © 2019 Martin J Cobb
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9781090959065
To my friends and family who have provided
much-appreciated support and advice.
And to ‘Biggles’ who has shared some of my
more unusual moments.
CHAPTER ONE
Gusen, Austria - Thursday
Luca Schäfer was the youngest of three brothers. They lived with their divorced mother in a small, but beautifully maintained, guest house which she ran with the help of her elder children in a small village just outside Linz in Austria. At the age of 9 Luca was too young to be of much help around the house although he kept the woodpile by the large fire in the main lounge stocked up from the store outside. This particular Thursday the guest house was quiet. His mother had gone shopping in the village, his brothers were at college and they didn’t have guests to cater for that particular night. Luca had ducked off school again even though his mother had warned him of severe consequences the last time he played truant. He hated school. When the sun was shining as it was today he had to be outside playing in the woods and hills that surrounded the village. The weather recently had been so bad he had had little opportunity to play and explore, he’d heard his mother talking to their neighbour who had said it had been the wettest April on record. On a trip into town with his mother, the speed and size of the normally docile Danube River that ran right through to Linz itself had amazed him. He could see lakes of standing water in the fields all along the way and several houses close to the river banks had even piled sandbags in front of their doors.
Luca was an unusual boy. He loved playing with his soldiers or his toy cars in preference to watching television, playing online computer games or any other form of electronic entertainment. This slight peculiarity rather set him apart from his peers and had contributed to his preference for his own company rather than any of the group of boys who went to his school or lived nearby and who mercilessly teased him. He was never happier than when playing alone, lost in his own thoughts and make-believe world. He was truly a loner.
Luca drained the glass of milk he had poured himself, packed his school backpack with a packet of biscuits and a cooked sausage wrapped in cling film he’d found in the fridge and left the house. He ran across the neighbouring paddock, over the picket fence and headed for the gently rolling hills to the East avoiding the road in case he bumped into his Mother or somebody who might recognise him. Reaching the lower slopes of the hillside, he vaulted over fences and dodged through the woods. He was totally immersed in his role as a medieval knight imagining himself the dashing armour-clad figure, blade flashing, saving the pilgrims from hordes of marauding savages. He was the total living manifestation of the knights from his prized model collection.
As he reached the top of the small hill just outside the village, having made several fearless knightly attacks on some rather startled sheep who were minding their own business grazing on the hillside, he stopped to survey the vista before him. He was the conquering hero and the serfs in the villages below were beholding to him, their Lord and Master. Having conquered everything before him, Luca the Knight morphed into Luca the paleontologist as he made his way slowly through the undergrowth staring at the ground ahead looking for dinosaur tracks and fossils. There, directly in front of him was surely the huge imprint of a plesiosaur’s foot. The round indentation was almost half a metre across and full of water from the recent rainfall. Luca put one boot tentatively into the murky recess and touched the solid bottom nearly 10 centimetres down. Looking at his boots he decided that they were tall enough to keep his feet dry so, in order to Walk in the Footsteps of Dinosaurs, the title of one of his books at home, he jumped in both feet together.
There was a loud cracking noise and Luca’s World suddenly turned dark, wet and very painful. He was half falling, half sliding at increasing speed in complete blackness with his clothes already soaked from the water running past. His brain automatically triggered the scream that emanated from his lips, quickly choked off as his mouth filled with water, mud and vegetation. His conscious thought was, bizarrely, that his mother would be extremely angry with him for getting his clothes so dirty. The fall continued and his speed increased but now he could also feel that he was rolling from side to side in a pendulum type action and his left foot hurt where he’d obviously lost his boot somewhere. With a final lurch Luca was jettisoned from the pipe he’d fallen into and ejected into a large, dank room full of rusting machinery, luckily onto a pile of mostly empty cardboard boxes. He couldn’t of course see any of this as there was absolutely no light. He was sitting in a puddle of cold water, mud and filth in the pitch black. Once his spluttering and coughing had stopped, he cautiously got to his feet which, it surprised him to find, still seemed to be working normally. Putting both his outstretched arms in front of him he gently shuffled forward trying to feel his surroundings. Several tiny paces later his hands felt cold, sharp crumbling metal, he stopped shuffling forward to investigate fully with his hands. Despite probing all around the item with his fingers he couldn’t make any sense of his hands’ sensory input so shuffled forward again but at an angle to his previous path. He felt something hard against his bare left shin and stopped. There was a distinct click from something near his feet.
Frau Schäfer had returned from the shops and, when she saw the empty milk glass on the kitchen d
raining board, realised Luca had not gone to school again. Just wait until she got hold of that boy, she would ground him for the rest of the term and maybe confiscate his model soldiers for a time. Maybe that would teach him a lesson. She went outside to see if she could spot him in the fields adjacent to their home or if a neighbour had seen his departure. Suddenly the ground trembled sufficiently to rattle the window frames and her prized crockery in the display case in the hallway. Almost immediately there followed a deep boom followed by the sound of splintering tree branches falling. A huge plume of dirty grey smoke rose above the tree-line on the adjacent hilltop several hundred metres away. She felt this enormous dread wash over her, with no particular justification for it. She shivered, that was where Luca liked to explore wasn’t it? Her neighbour had run outside at the sound of the explosion and Luca’s mother turned to her, “Have you seen Luca this afternoon?” The neighbour looked at her with understanding dawning, “Was he up there?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know where he is but I don’t think he’s at school.” She ran inside and dialled the school office who confirmed that they had posted Luca as absent at registration. Running outside shouting Luca’s name hysterically she could hear the sirens of the police and fire engines which were already climbing the road out of the village towards the source of the explosion. The blast must have been heard all over the village, and probably beyond, and they could see the smoke plume that was still pouring from the hillside from miles around. Frau Schäfer ran across the field towards the now dwindling smoke cloud screaming out Luca’s name as she went.
CHAPTER TWO
St. Georgen Gusen Mauthausen - April 1945
“It’s over Herr Doctor, we have no more time. The Americans will be here soon, maybe even today, we have to go now.”
SS Standartenführer Ernest Fischer was addressing Dr-Ing. Hans Kammler, head of the Messerschmitt factory complex at St Georgen Gusen. He, Ernest, commanded the regiment of crack SS troops that both guarded the factory and also acted as prison guards to the 10,000 miserable prisoners from the nearby concentration camps who constituted the labour force for Dr-Ing Kammler’s factory. With the Third Reich in tatters and shrinking rapidly as the Allies advanced from every direction, their planned escape route over the mountains and into Italy was becoming more hazardous with every passing hour. They had to get to Genoa to get their new identities and the supporting documentation that they would require to leave Europe for South America. There were several boats scheduled to leave over the coming weeks to the welcoming states of either Argentina or Paraguay and they needed to be on one of them. Many of their compatriots had already made the journey, and many more were due to follow. For with them rested the responsibility of establishing a firm base from which the Third Reich could retrench and rise again. They had transported huge quantities of gold and silver to South America already to fund this new enterprise, much of it transported in specially built cargo submarines. The last one of these that had arrived in Argentina carried many of the scientists and senior Nazi officials along with some necessary raw materials they would require, many ominously packed in lead-lined crates.
The huge, and far from secret, aircraft production facility here at Mauthausen that Dr-Ing Kammler commanded also disguised the small and extremely secret facility that had increasingly demanded the Doctor’s time and attention of late. Here, deep in the hillside and away from the aircraft production lines, Hitler’s final, and most deadly Wunderwaffe or Miracle Weapon was assembled ready for its ultimate test. On Dr-Ing Kammler’s order the huge lift would carry the Arado 234C jet bomber, with its rocket-assisted take off motors, up from the underground hangar to the purpose-built runway on the top of the hill. Here it would join the pair of escort Me262 jet fighters that had made the previous lift journey to the surface and now waited in readiness for departure. With a cruising speed of almost 400 mph the bomber and its escort were at minimal risk of interception from any of the much slower Allied aircraft as the three aircraft formation headed West over Germany and Belgium. A little under two hours later the fighter escort would peel away from the bomber as it crossed the English coast and they would continue West in an attempt to reach Ireland where the pilots would abandon their aircraft and parachute out into the neutral country. The destiny of the lone pilot in the Arado was unlikely to be so fortunate. They had tasked him with delivering the weapon which, they had told him, would totally wipe London from the face of the Earth. Unfortunately there was little possibility of him escaping the blast and thus his would be the ultimate sacrifice for the Fuhrer and Fatherland.
Standartenführer Fischer picked up the telephone handset and pushed a button on the top of the receiver. The Untersturmführer answered it in the crew ready room, “It is time. Instigate Operation Trostlosigkeit” and with that he replaced the receiver, picked it up again and pushed the other button. “Bring the convoy to the entrance, immediately”.
Dr Ing Hans Kammler picked up his briefcase and a separate document case into which he gently placed the small framed photograph of his wife and followed Fischer out of the complex’s administration building. The official Mercedes car was waiting outside as ordered, with their luggage already stowed and two motorcycle sidecar outrider guards ready with engines running. Standartenführer Fischer issued one final instruction to his second in command, Hauptsturmführer Behler. “Arm the devices and evacuate the complex, the Americans will be here soon if the Russians don’t beat them to it. I suggest you head South away from this camp, I do not think the Allies will be especially sympathetic towards us after they liberate the prison camp.” And he joined Kammler in the car which left in a distinct hurry taking its occupants to what they hoped would be a bright new World in South America.
They had set the explosives weeks ago and now merely required Behler to remove the safety pins which he accomplished within minutes as he ran from room to room in the bunker. As he was setting the final booby trap, he heard a rumbling through the ground which could only herald the imminent arrival of American tanks. He could now distinctly hear the distant dull thud of explosions coming from the hillside above and, as he ran through the complex building tunnels towards the exit, the faint crackle of small arms fire. His last duty before leaving was to seal the Wunderwaffe laboratory and production facility from the main complex permanently, for which they had set a series of explosive devices to bring down the tunnels all around it. He had inserted the key into the triggering device mounted on the wall near the exit when a huge shudder followed by a loud explosion almost made him fall. He turned the key and could hear the small charges going off in sequence around the complex of tunnels some distance away. As he ran for the exit a veritable dust storm billowed out behind him into the open air as the charges, which had blatantly exceeded expectations and caused a massive cave-in deep underground.
Despite the clogging dust cloud that had enveloped them when the explosives had gone off, the ground crew were still poring over the three aircraft closing hatches, checking control surfaces and removing pitot tube covers.
“Leave the engine intake covers on until the dust settles!” SS-Sturmbannführer Lehmann shouted at the man about to expose the engines to the abrasive dust threatening to choke them all.
“Push the fighters onto the lift and get the starter units on the lift with them. We need to speed up the departure process, get their engines started as soon as they reach the surface and use the Kettenkrads to pull them clear of the lift so we can get the Arado up as soon as possible.”
There was a flurry of activity around the two Me262 fighters, their pilots already installed and with canopies closed presumably to keep the dust out. They hitched the two half-tracked motorcycles up to the nosewheels of the Messerschmitts. One crewman standing by a large electrical control box on the wall was shouted an instruction from across the hangar to which he responded with a thumbs up and grabbed the large red lever which he turned a quarter turn clockwise. The lift with the two fighter aircraft ground its way sl
owly up from the floor and ascended amidst a loud clattering of chains and shrieking of metal on metal as it lurched towards the ceiling with its massive load. As it approached the point at which it appeared the aircraft tails must strike the ceiling, a further cacophony erupted from the massive mechanism which opened the hatches in the roof. Onwards the lift rose until those below could hear the Kettenkrads start and pull the two Messerschmitts off the lift. Within a couple of minutes the lift started its downward travel, now perceptibly faster working with gravity rather than against it and without a heavy load. Those below heard the shrieking roar of the jet engines starting above which became muffled and subdued as the giant hatches closed again. Amidst further screeching noises the lift protested all the way down to the floor of the hangar where it arrived kicking up a small fog of dust as it settled. The hangar descended into relative quiet again and the small tractor now expertly manoeuvred the Arado onto the lift assisted by teams of men pushing on the undercarriage struts. They shuffled it back and forth until they were sure it was fully contained within the lift’s footprint. As the lift operator once again started to turn the large red handle all the lights suddenly went out. Fifteen seconds passed in eerie silence, each individual man left to his own private thoughts and fears when the emergency lighting flickered on. There was the audible sound of many expelled breaths from the men around the hangar.
“What happened?” Sturmbannführer Lehmann asked the senior engineer who was already opening panels in the power distribution cabinet on the back wall.
“We’ve lost all power from the factory, the explosions must have damaged the cabling. The emergency generator has cut in but will only last a few hours at best before the fuel runs out.”
“Route the power to the lift and let’s get everybody out of here when the aircraft leave.” Lehmann looked at the senior engineer he had commanded who had remained motionless despite the order. Lehmann was unaccustomed to having his orders ignored. The man just stood there, staring blankly at the distribution panel without engaging in the flurry of activity expected of him.
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