by Leo Kessler
‘Why?’
‘They spend more money. The milords were very tight with their money here in Dieppe before the war.’ He looked at her massive naked bulk seriously. ‘The Germans are a very generous people, on the other hand.’
Rosi-Rosi put her hand to the base of her stomach. ‘Well, if they are all like that big bull upstairs, they’re generous all right – not only with their money!’
Jo-Jo opened his mouth to reply, but the woman stopped him with a quick gesture of her plump, beringed hand. ‘The bike,’ she hissed. ‘It’s him!’
They listened tensely to the faint metallic sound of a bicycle being propped up outside, followed a second later by a single tap on the door – the signal. ‘Open up, Jo-Jo, quick!’ Rosi-Rosi commanded and flicked off the light behind the bar.
Rosi-Rosi waited till the man had entered and the door was closed again, before she turned on the light once more.
‘I say!’ the Englishman exclaimed, his blue eyes dropping on to her naked, berouged breasts.
‘Comment?’ Rosi-Rosi asked, not understanding his English. The SOE1 man, a tall, slim captain with quick nervous eyes and a permanent tic in his right cheek, said in his rapid, excellent French. ‘Nothing. It just slipped out, Madame.’
‘That’s what that Boche pig upstairs kept saying last night,’ Rosi-Rosi said sourly.
‘What?’ the SOE Captain looked at her puzzled.
‘Nothing. But what do you want to see us for at this time of night?’
For a moment the Englishman overcame his acute nervousness, the result of six months of undercover living, running the Dieppe network, and smiled. ‘They’re coming,’ he announced proudly.
‘Who’s coming?’ Jo-Jo asked.
‘We are – the British! We are attempting a great landing this morning. Out at the points, and here. You will see,’ he added. ‘It will be something to tell your grandchildren about.’
Rosi-Rosi made an obscene gesture with her upraised middle finger, which gave eloquent testimony to what she thought of history, and cried. ‘Here! Did you say here?’
‘Shh!’ hissed the SOE officer. ‘Yes, when we have taken both batteries we shall land in force on Dieppe Plage. Once they have overcome the Promenade defences, they’ll be coming straight up the Marechal Foch and Verdun. You’ll find yourself right in the middle of a battle, if you stay, Madame.’
‘If I stay, sale con,’ Rosi-Rosi cried furiously. ‘Where do you think I’m going? I’m not going to sacrifice my property, my beautiful cafe, for any damned war.’ Tears of self-pity and anger welled up in her blood-shot eyes. ‘Why didn’t you tell us this when you involved us in your silly damn spy game?’
The SOE Captain looked at her incredulously. ‘But it’s for your country, Madame,’ he protested. ‘We are coming to liberate you from the German yoke.’
‘Stick your liberation up your skinny English arse!’ she sobbed through her tears.
‘But you must go now. I came here specially to warn you. I have other more important tasks to carry out before this night is finished,’ the SOE officer said fervently and tried to lay his hand on Rosi-Rosi’s naked shoulder.
She shook it off angrily. ‘Get your paws off me!’ she screamed. ‘Who told you to touch me? You’ve ruined me, you have, and I’ve got the best knocking shop in Dieppe.’
‘Ssh!’ Jo-Jo hissed urgently. ‘You’ll wake the Boche!’
But it was too late. The Boche was already awake, standing stark naked at the top of the stairs, his usually happy face set in stony disbelief. Schulze had not been able to understand very much of the French but what he had been able to understand had sufficed. He knew he was in the presence of the Resistance.
He towered above them, a great bull of a man, the reason he had awoke and sought her wilting away rapidly before their startled eyes. Sergeant Schulze had never had any dealings with spies before, and he was at a loss. But he knew he should do something.
The British officer made up his mind for him by moving his hand to the shoulder of his shabby jacket. Schulze was a shade quicker. With a great roar, he launched himself into the air. The SOE officer screamed as Schulze’s flying bulk descended upon him. The SOE officer went suddenly stiff as his face twisted at an awkward angle. His neck was broken.
Jo-Jo rushed at Schulze with a knife clasped tightly to his side. Schulze skipped behind a table. Jo-Jo lunged. Schulze brought down his white club of a right hand. Jo-Jo screamed with pain, as Schulze pinned him to the table. ‘Let go … let go, you’re breaking my wrist!’
The cry alarmed a hitherto mesmerized Rosi-Rosi. With a wild cry she sprang on to Schulze’s back, and wrapping her plump arms around his neck, dug her heels into his naked ribs as if she were riding a horse.
‘Get off,’ Schulze yelled thickly, as Jo-Jo freed his hand and lunged again.
He felt the knife slice his ribs. Desperately he spun round, trying to shake Rosi-Rosi’s great bulk off. But she clung to him like an angry limpet. Jo-Jo sucked in a deep breath, his eyes wild. Schulze could see he was coming in for the kill. Frantically he tried to lever Rosi-Rosi’s interlocked fingers apart with his clumsy plastered paws.
‘Having a bit of a lark?’ Matz’s cool voice inquired from above them.
Schulze flung a wild glance at the head of the stairs. Matz was poised there, his arms wrapped around the nubile bodies of the naked girls at either side of him. He was smiling encouragingly.
‘Move, pigshit!’ Shulze gasped fervently. ‘They’re trying to kill me!’
‘Naughty, naughty,’ Matz said and bent down, as if he had all the time in the world.
He gave the girls a quick push to both sides. Unstrapping his wooden leg in one swift movement, he hurled it once round his head like a lasso and let go. It hissed through the air. With a solid, fleshly thwack, it caught Jo-Jo in the face. He went flying back over the bar, blood squirting in a thick red stream from his smashed nose, to slam against the wall.
Hopping down the stairs like a naked kangaroo, Matz grabbed at Rosi-Rosi. She freed one heel and aimed a wild blow at her new assailant but missed. ‘Naughty, naughty,’ Matz commented again.
She screamed shrilly and slackened her grasp on Schulze’s neck. He didn’t hesitate. Swinging her round like a sack of potatoes, he heaved suddenly. Rosi-Rosi lost her grip. With a wild cry for help, she dropped to the floor and went slithering across the room to smash against the wall next to her unconscious lover.
‘Now what do you call this for a piggery, Schulze?’ Matz asked, supporting himself on the table. ‘Can’t leave you alone for a minute and you’re off starting orgies or something!’ He grinned.
‘Button it!’ Schulze snapped, in no mood for humour now. ‘These Frogs are some sort of spies or something.’
Matz’s grin vanished. ‘What do you mean?’
Schulze turned to face a groggy Rosi-Rosi, her hair in complete disorder, her massive breasts dangling loosely to her belly. ‘Come on, you Frog sow, out with it! What’s all this about?’
‘Stick yer tongue up yer ass and give yourself a thrill,’ she cried.
Schulze hauled back his big fist. ‘Forgive me missus,’ he cried through gritted teeth. ‘But you asked for it.’ He smashed his fist directly into her face.
She gave a high scream of agony, spitting out her front teeth. At the top of the stairs the two whores, ashen-faced with shock, screamed in unison.
Schulze concentrated his angry gaze on the bleeding Rosi-Rosi. ‘I’m not asking you again – out with it! What’s your game here?’
Rosi-Rosi opened her bloody mouth and spat out another tooth.
‘Salaud, putain,’ she began to curse him. But as she did so they heard a powerful explosion out to sea which set the glasses quivering violently in their shelves behind the bar and rocked the floor beneath the two SS men’s naked feet.
‘In three devils’ name, what was that,’ yelled Matz, steadying himself on the shaking table.
‘I’ll tell you,’ Schulze cried, as a
blood-red light flooded in through the un-blacked out windows above. ‘It’s the shitting Tommies. They’re here!’
‘The Wotan!’ Matz gasped. ‘They’ll need us!’
‘You’re telling me. Those wet-tails of the First Company are dead ducks without us.’
‘But what can we do – me with my leg and you with your flippers, Schulze?’
The women were forgotten, as Schulze cast around desperately for a way out. ‘Here,’ he cried, ‘pick up that peg-leg of yours.’ Hurriedly he laid his plastered paws across the table, while Matz hopped to his leg and seized it firmly with both hands. ‘Right. Give them a right old bang!’
Matz needed no urging. As the firing grew louder, he brought the booted heel of the wooden leg down across Schulze’s outstretched hands.
‘By the great whore of Buxtehude, Matzi!’ Schulze roared in pain. ‘You rotten little perverted banana-sucker, you, what are you trying to do – shear my shitty flippers off!’
But his anger vanished when he saw the long cracks running down each dirty plaster cast. Hastily he slapped the casts together. The paster fell away easily to reveal two pale, terribly wrinkled hands.
‘Ugh!’ Matz exclaimed. ‘Those flippers of yours look as if you’ve just dug ’em up from the boneyard!’ Schulze groped for his pistol with fingers which felt like thick cold sausages.
‘What you do?’ Rosi-Rosi cried in alarm, her eyes wide with fear, her pudgy hands held in front of her great dugs.
The Attack, August 18/19th, 1942
With a curse Schulze dropped the pistol on the table. ‘I was always soft-hearted,’ he said, beginning to struggle hurriedly into his clothes. ‘Come on, you little shit,’ he ordered Matz, as the boom of artillery out to sea grew louder, ‘strap on that pegleg of yourn at the double. Wotan’s off to the shitty wars again.’
Note
1 Special Operations Executive, a branch of British Intelligence. (Transl.)
BOOK TWO: THE BATTERY
‘War’s hell, but peacetime will shitting well kill you!’ Sergeant Schulze to Corporal Matz, 18th August 1942.
ONE
It was nearly dawn. Out at sea angry red lights blinked on the horizon like enormous blast furnaces. Continuous scarlet flashes split the grey haze. The air shook with the silent detonations of shells. Somewhere out in the Channel the naval battle which had alerted the Wotan was gathering ferocity.
But the gasping, sweat-lathered young SS troopers had no eyes for the sea. Their wide, staring gaze was fired straight ahead: on the crazily heaving shoulders of the man in the next rank in front. For the Vulture was setting a cracking pace. They were now within a kilometre of the Goebbels Battery and the bandy-legged little CO knew it was imperative that Wotan reached the guns before the Tommy barrage descended upon the coastal roads.
‘Tempo-tempo!’ he cried hoarse, as he doubled back down their ranks, slashing at laggards with his riding crop, booting the heavier-set, ashen-faced NCO’s, still sick from the night’s carousing. ‘In three devils’ name, will you men never move!’
‘We’re on time sir,’ von Dodenburg gasped, as the Vulture joined him at the head of the column. ‘We’re making it.’
‘Of course, we’ll make it,’ the Vulture snapped. ‘If I have to beat every single one of them into a run. March or croak is Wotan’s motto.’
Now the dark low silhouette of Belleville began to loom up ahead. Von Dodenburg recalled his former fears about the village and tightened his grip on his machine-pistol slung across his chest. But the village seemed dead, still sunk in its blacked-out, pre-dawn sleep.
‘Don’t be so damn nervous, von Dodenburg,’ said the Vulture irritably. ‘There will be no trouble. As I told you –’
He stopped suddenly, for he had heard the unmistakable chug-chug of a French gazogene1 approaching from the direction of the village.
The Vulture acted at once. ‘At the double, von Dodenburg!’ he cried. ‘You two sergeants follow with the mg! Come on, get the lead out of your breeches!’
The four men swiftly doubled forward ahead of the column. Now the twin blue crosses of the car’s blacked-out lights were visible as it came to meet them. The driver must have spotted them too, for he put his foot down on the accelerator.
The Vulture did not hesitate an instant. ‘Stop him!’ he yelled and pointed his riding crop, his sole weapon, at the twin crosses.
The leading NCO dropped to his knees, his shoulders tensed. The other giant carrying the heavy load of the MG 42 flung it across the NCO’s shoulders. The next moment his comrade pressed the trigger and white tracer hissed low straight down the road. The first burst missed, sailing past the car like white golf balls.
‘Hit him you horned-ox,’ the Vulture cried in exasperation. He brought his cane down across the giant’s back. ‘Or by God, I’ll have the eggs off you with a blunt razor-blade!’
The giant took more careful aim. He squeezed the trigger. The machine-gun chattered at his shoulder. Hot cartridge cases tumbled noisily to the cobbles. The gazogene skidded to a sudden stop, effectively blocking the road.
‘Come on, von Dodenburg,’ the Vulture ordered. ‘Let’s get the bastard out of the way.’
‘Nicht schiessen! … nicht schiessen!’ a voice called from the opaque darkness in near perfect German. ‘I’m a friend … friend!’
The two SS officers stopped in mid-stride, as the hatless figure staggered towards them from the car, blood trickling down the side of his head. The Vulture switched on the little torch attached to his jacket. In its blue beam they caught a glimpse of a grey uniform.’
‘A Milice,2 sir,’ gasped von Dodenburg.
‘Yes, Milice,’ faltered the wounded man as he came level with them. ‘Lieutenant Gautier, sir.’
Von Dodenburg caught a glimpse of a dark, almost Jewish face and wrinkled his nose in disgust at the stink of stale garlic; then he snapped: ‘What is it, man, why are you holding us up like this?’
‘An ambush … an ambush. They’re waiting for you on the Rue Principale.’
Von Dodenburg looked significantly at the Vulture.
The little Colonel ignored him. ‘Who is waiting for us – the Tommies?’
‘No, sir,’ the French officer replied, springing to attention as he recognised the Colonel’s stars. ‘My people, sir. Those traitors of the Maquis. They moved into the village an hour ago, they overwhelmed my people in their sleep. It was just good fortune that I –’
The Vulture waved him to silence with his cane. Behind him the Wotan had halted, the men tensed and nervous in the dark shadows on both sides of the road, yet grateful for a break in that murderous pace. ‘We have no time for manoeuvre, Gautier. We must pass through Belleville and we’ve got only minutes in which to do it.’
Gautier’s dark face lit up. ‘There is no need for manoeuvre. What do those Maquis gangsters know of tactics? They have barricaded themselves in the houses on both sides of the main road – perhaps some two hundred of them. But their rear is wide open. There are none of them in the parallel road.’
The Vulture’s cold-blue eyes lit up. ‘Good, then this is what we will do. Captain Holzmann will take in Number Four Company and flank the village on the left. I will attempt a feint along the main road to draw their fire. You, Major von Dodenburg will take One and Two Companies and push up that parallel road. When we are all in position, you will attack their rear and roll them up. I shall then pass through the village at the double and on to the Battery. Is that clear?’
‘Clear, sir!’ von Dodenburg snapped.
‘Clear, Colonel,’ echoed the swarthy-looking Milice officer. To von Dodenburg, it seemed as if the Frenchman were enjoying the situation.
* * *
‘This way, Major,’ whispered the Milice officer.
There was something about the fellow’s voice which grated on von Dodenburg, but he knew he had no alternative but to follow. With his two companies spread out in a hasty battle formation, he followed their guide into the narrow back stre
et, bordered upon both sides by ancient tightly shuttered houses which stank of age and manure. To von Dodenburg in the lead, it seemed that the steel-shod boots of his men made a devil of a racket. He prayed that the Maquis had concentrated their efforts on the main road. Then if Wotan were caught out here in the open, it would be sheer slaughter.
The French Lieutenant seemed to read his thoughts. As the first sections entered the deep shadows, he whispered: ‘It would be better perhaps, if I went ahead, just in case.’
‘But –’ von Dodenburg began. But the Frenchman did not hear. He was already stealing down the alley silently on his thick crepe soles. Angrily the SS officer slapped the safety catch of his machine-pistol. Nathan Rosenblat, SOE Captain and formerly of Dachau, Concentration Camp, his job done, disappeared into the, darkness. Von Dodenburg hesitated. What was he to do? He shivered suddenly, although it was warm. Just then the first shutters were flung open at the end of the street, an angry, gruff voice yelled ‘en avant … mort aux boches!’ and he knew they had walked into a trap. The thick wedge of a double-barrelled shotgun was thrust out of the window and roared into blue-red life. The lead man of the first section screamed hideously, as he took the full blast in his face.
‘Stand fast!’ von Dodenburg cried desperately, as the shutters were thrust open on both sides of the street and murderous fire erupted from each window. Everything was blood-soaked chaos. Men dropped to the cobbles. ‘Stretcher-bearer … stretcher-bearer … they’ve got me in the guts … Comrades, I’m blinded … someone help me … I’M BLINDED!’ The hysterical cries rose on all sides, as the shouting, sweating men in the windows poured a relentless fire into the SS troopers trapped below.
A great plough horse broke out of a stable. Foam bubbled from its slack lips as it clattered through the carnage, its eyes wild with terror. It struck von Dodenburg standing there in the middle of the bloody alley a glancing blow. He reeled back and fired from the hip. The wild burst caught a grenade-thrower in the chest and nearly sawed him in half. He plummeted from the window and hit the bloody cobbles with a soft thud.
