by Leo Kessler
The Laird lowered his rifle. ‘Bugger this for a tale! This ain’t doing no good at all!’ For a moment he crouched there on his heels, while Curtis at the Spandau poured a stream of fire into the German positions. Then he came to a decision. ‘Snotty,’ he yelled, ‘you’re in charge here for a mo. I’m gonna have an O group1 with me second-in-command.’
Without waiting to see the young sub-lieutenant’s reaction, he grabbed his rifle by the barrel and crouched low, doubled across the rough ground to the pit occupied by Freddy Rory-Brick and his men.
‘Freddy,’ he gasped, diving in beside the hatless Guardsman, ‘sod this for a lark, we’re doing about as much good here as one of each waiting for vinegar.’
‘What?’ Freddy yelled above the roar.
‘Bloody hell, can’t you speak English! I said we’re bloody well wasting our time here. So far we’ve kept ’em in their turrets all right, but now we’re not stopping them firing.’
‘Agweed, sir, but what do you suggest?’
‘Concentrate and have a bash at one of the buggers. All or nothing. If we take the turret, then we’re in business. We can have a go at the others with its gun.’
‘Wisky, sir?’
‘Of course, it’s sodding wisky! It’s wisky crossing the road in the Big Smoke. It’s wisky bending down to pick up a feather – yer can knacker yersen that way. So what? You don’t want to live for ever, do you, Freddy?’ He nudged him affectionately. ‘Eh?’
Freddy smiled. ‘I’m with you, sir.’
‘Good, no time for fancy tactics. We go in from three sides. If we’re lucky, they’ll be too busy with their popguns to notice us. If we’re unlucky, I’m sure we’ll make lovely corpses. Are you on?’
‘On, sir!’
Five minutes later the little band of commandos were ready. The Laird waited tensely until he saw the gun of the turret they were going to storm raise its barrel prior to firing at the unseen ships once again. ‘Get ready!’ he yelled.
The men clasped their weapons even tighter in hands that were wet with sweat.
The Laird raised himself to one knee, his ragged, torn kilt hanging in the dust.
The gun thundered. ‘Now!’ he cried above the deafening noise.
The commandos streamed forward, firing from the hip at an enemy safely ensconced behind his foot-thick concrete defences. They caught the gunners off guard. By the time they had begun to react, the commandos were already within the shelter of the turret-wall.
‘Down!’ cried the Laird above the crackle of surprised, frightened enemy fire, ‘get down! Round the back!’
The men bent double below the level of the enemy firing slits and pelted after him to the rear of the turret. A large metal door stopped them. The Laird grabbed the handle and threw it open. Menzies just behind him knew the drill without having to be ordered. He threw in his last grenade and the Laird slammed the door shut again. There was a thick, muffled crump, and smoke streamed out of the nearest slit. They heard the sound of glass shattering somewhere.
The Laird threw a glance behind him. Freddy was in position, Tommy gun at the ready. ‘Now!’ he yelled and threw the door open again.
Splay-legged, body crouched, Freddy poured a vicious hail of fire into the smoking gloom. The artillerymen, screaming and terrified, faces black with smoke, a few of them suffering from multiple wounds, walked straight into the bullets.
The commandos scrambled frantically over their writhing bodies. The bunker stank of sweat and cheap tobacco – even the acrid smell of cordite couldn’t hide that. For a moment they stood there in the gloom, hesitant, wondering which passage to take.
‘Stwaight ahead,’ Freddy suggested.
‘Right!’ the Laird drew his skean dhu. ‘Come on lads, here we go again!’
A soldier in his undershirt appeared from a door on the right. He had a pistol in his hand but he never managed to fire it. The little knife hissed through the air and caught him directly in the chest. His knees gave way beneath him and he sank to the floor. Menzies kicked him in the face as he ran by.
The Laird threw open the metal door which barred their way. Light streamed out from the caged electric bulbs in the ceiling to reveal the gleaming breech of the gun and the naked sweating backs of the gunners bent over the huge shell they were loading.
The commandos fired, the noise of their rifles making an earsplitting din in the confines of the bunker. The gunners hadn’t a chance. Their naked upper bodies were riddled with bullets as they dropped to the concrete floor all around the breech.
‘Look out, sir!’ screamed Curtis frantically.
Freddy Rory-Brick took the burst in the stomach. At that range it threw him round like a dancer executing a turn. He grabbed wildly for the support of the wall, but his strength failed him. His hands clawed the length of the wall, his nails breaking, trailing a smear of blood behind them.
‘Kamerad! … Bitte, Kamerad!’ called the bespectacled gunner who had shot Freddy from the corner where he had hidden, and dropped his schmeisser.
‘Fuck Kamerad!’ the Laird hissed, beside himself with rage. He picked up the Tommy gun which had fallen from Freddy’s nerveless fingers and fired a mad burst into the terrified gunner.
At last, when the German was a mutilated corpse on the floor, the Laird dropped the tommy gun and turned to Freddy.
The Snotty had propped him up against the wall, while the others cleared the dead Germans from the gun.
‘I’m afwaid,’ Freddy gasped painfully, his face the colour of clay, the end of his nose already pinched and waxen, ‘I’ve … bought a bad one …’
‘Ballocks!’ the Laird snapped angrily. ‘Don’t even talk that kind of codswallop!’ Hastily he bent to one knee and fumbled with the blouse of the Guardsman’s battledress. He ripped open his blood-soaked, silken khaki shirt and saw that the burst had ripped open Freddy’s chest. Through the huge hole he could see splintered white bone among the red mess and the pale grey of his viscera pulsating obscenely. He recoiled, unable to hide the look of horror in his eyes.
‘That bad?’ Freddy inquired weakly but calmly.
‘Of course not, Freddy.’ The Laird ripped open his field dressing and placed it over the gaping wound. It was no use. The yellow lint soaked through almost immediately. The Laird stared down at it helplessly.
‘Give my love to my wife and the boy,’ Freddy said faintly, his eyelashes fluttering.
‘Cor ferk a duck, Freddy, you’ll live to give it to ’em yer-self,’ the Colonel lied.
‘Do you weally think so …’ Major the Hon Frederick Oakley Rory-Brick’s head flopped to one side. His mouth dropped open and he was dead.
It was just then that Curtis, peering through the observation slit, cried excitedly. ‘Tanks, sir! Our tanks – they’re Churchills!’
Note
1 Officers Group, ie conference. (Transl.)
ELEVEN
C Troop of the Calgary Highlanders caught the survivors of the Wotan’s Third and Fourth companies just as they had begun their advance out of Belleville behind the cover of the two Mark IVs which had finally freed them from the trap. One moment the hundred or so shaken youths, urged on by the Vulture’s vitriolic tongue and the kicks of the veteran NCOs, had been in clear sunlight; the next they were sealed in the grey gloom of the smoke screen, confronted by the frightening bulk of the three squat Churchills.
The Canadians were as surprised as the SS. They, too, were experiencing their first taste of battle, but they had three years of training behind them and reacted quicker and better than the Wotan crews.
They immediately took up the hull-down position. The SS tankers reacted the way inexperienced crews always did. Confident that their 75mms could outgun the short six-pounders of the Churchills they swung their turrets round, but forgot they were exposing the whole length of the tanks to the enemy fire.
‘Cretins!’ the Vulture raged, while all around him his men scrambled for cover. ‘Offer them your glacis plate.’1 In his fury at the ine
xpert way the Mark IVs were being handled, he lashed his riding crop against his boot. ‘Great crap on the Christmas Tree – give them the glacis!’
But the eager young tankers rattling into action did not hear him.
‘Then die, you idiots!’ the Vulture cursed and threw his cane at the ground.
The two Mark IVs fired the first shots. Their long, hooded guns squirted scarlet flame. Both shells struck the little armoured car as it scuttled for cover. It slithered to a sudden stop and slumped to one side in flames.
‘My God!’ the Vulture gasped, hardly believing it possible that men could be so stupid; they were using high explosive shells instead of armour-piercing ones needed for tank combat. ‘AP,’2 he screamed, his face scarlet. ‘Use AP!’ he pulled out his pistol and fired a volley of furious shots at the rear of the Mark IVs.
But already it was too late. While the inexperienced gunners madly cranked round their 75s to bring them to bear on the hull-down Churchills, the three tanks fired.
The closest Mark IV reared up like a live thing as the shell caught it in the boogies. The second shell struck it. The whole tank trembled violently. Frantically the young, panic-stricken crew fought to get out before the tank went up in flames.
Again the Canadians were more experienced. They were waiting for the move. Three Besa machine-guns spoke as one, concentrating on the stricken Mark IV. The driver took a full burst in the chest and flopped down in his hatch again. The commander and the gunner managed to get out of the turret, but were killed before they could spring from the deck.
The Vulture grunted. ‘Serves the damned fools right!’ he exclaimed and watched how the second Mark IV reeled from side to side like a ship in a storm, as the Canadians pounded it with shell after shell. In his fear, the driver reversed blindly, and crashed the tank into its burning companion. The gleaming steel scars which the AP fire had gouged in its sides glowed bloodily in the flames. But only for an instant for the flames had spilled on to the other tank. A hand clawed its way out of the turret, a hand already charred black, dripping burning flesh. As it poised there it looked as though the black bones were extended to heaven, pleading for mercy. But there was no mercy for the trapped crew. The tank exploded in a burst of bright, oil-tinged flame.
The Vulture ducked hastily as a severed boogie hurtled just above his head. When he raised his head again, the Mark IV had disappeared with nothing to mark its passing except for a patch of scorched earth.
The Vulture was not concerned with the fate of the inexperienced tankers. His concentration was fixed on the Churchills which had already disappeared again into the smoke screen. He cursed bitterly and rose to his feet, for he knew instinctively where they were heading. Now he had three damned Tommy tanks between him and the Goebbels Battery.
Note
1 The most heavily armoured part of the tank to its front. (Transl.)
2 Armour piercing shells. (Transl.)
TWELVE
Under the cover of the Spitfires and Hurricanes sweeping low over the burning town, machine-gunning the suddenly triumphant Germans, the survivors started to withdraw, falling back slowly to the mile-long, scimitar-shaped beach, the heart of the bloody battle for Dieppe. Out at sea the little boats pressed closer and closer, Oerlikons pumping away at the Focke-Wolfes sneaking in from the land. Behind the little ships, the destroyers swept as near as they dared and in the hull-down position pumped shell after shell into the outskirts of the town where they knew the Germans were.
The beach itself was still hell. Everywhere lay the ripped remnants of shattered tanks and beached, burnt-out landing craft, behind which the survivors, wounded and unwounded, sheltered as best they could, still returning the enemy fire. Behind them the water was full of the debris of battle and men, some of them floating face downwards, still in their life preservers.
By now the tide had begun to ebb. This meant that not only would the survivors have to cross two hundred yards of beach swept constantly by murderous fire, they would also have to wade out a further fifty through the shallows until they reached the boats. HMS Calpe ordered the destroyers to go closer.
The German bombers seized their chance. Breaking through the smoke of battle which lay across the sea off Dieppe, three Dornier bombers fell on the destroyer Berkeley. The slim rakish destroyer was named after Admiral Berkeley, who two hundred and fifty years before had reduced Dieppe to ashes1 with his fleet. Now it was the turn of the ship bearing the long dead Admiral’s name to suffer the same fate.
A Spitfire zipped across the sky, eight machine-guns chattering. One of the pencil-slim, two-engined Dorniers broke its dive, jettisoned its bombs uselessly in the sea, yards away from the destroyer. But the other two pressed home their attack. Their bombs hit the destroyer amidships, shattering the bridge. Wing-Commander Skinner, the official RAF observer, watching the start of the rescue operations through his binoculars, was killed immediately. His friend, the US Army Air Corps observer, Lieutenant Colonel Hillsinger was blown off the bridge on to the forward deck, where he stared in both anger and awe at the bloody stump where once his right foot had been.
Minutes later HMS Berkeley disappeared beneath the waves.
The defenders of the perimeter began to give way, forced back relentlessly by ever-increasing German pressure. The handful of Rangers still alive who had been attached to the commandos, surrendered. But they were still defiant. Excited by their capture of the first Americans they had seen, the Germans asked one tall bareheaded Ranger: ‘How many American soldiers are there in England?’
The Ranger looked down contemptuously at his captors and drawled in his Texan accent: ‘Three million. And they’re all as tall as me. Shit, they have to keep ’em behind barbed wire to stop them swimming the Channel to get at you bastards!’
Another group of French-Canadians, the sole survivors of a company of the Fusiliers Mont Royal, surrendered under the command of their sergeant. The Germans disarmed them and forcing them to strip to their underclothes and boots, made them face a wall with their hands in the air.
But their sergeant, Dubuc, had now regained his second wind after the fighting of the morning. Carefully he tried to work out how many of the German patrol which had captured them had moved on deeper into Dieppe. In the end he estimated they were being guarded by exactly one German.
Dubuc let his head slump to one side, as if he were utterly weary and dejected. From this angle, he could watch the solitary guard, his rifle pointed at the backs of his prisoners, his eyes continually flickering towards the burning front.
The sergeant gave a soft groan and seemed to collapse against the wall. ‘Water,’ he croaked piteously. ‘Please, water!’
The German took a step forward, caught off guard. Dubuc dived forward. As the German stumbled to the ground, Dubuc’s hands went round his neck and strangled him.
Dubuc rose to his feet, breathing very hard. But when he spoke, his voice was calm. ‘Go,’ he commanded in French. ‘Back to the beach. It’s every man for himself now.’
The men disappeared into the mass of smoke-shrouded back streets, trotting through them in their singlets and shorts like a group of runners who had unexpectedly found themselves in the middle of a battle.
Dubuc reached the burning beach alone. He found his Colonel wounded and lying on the sand. After reporting and excusing his unmilitary appearance, he gathered the CO up in his arms and began the long perilous passage to the waiting boats.
The Essex Scottish began to withdraw as a formation. Throwing the last of their smoke grenades over the esplanade wall to cover their retreat, they picked up their wounded and braved the two hundred yards of hell. Like grey ghosts they staggered through that tormented wasteland, taking casualties all the time in the withering German fire, brushing past the dead bodies of their comrades hanging on the wire like bundles of wet rags, dodging gratefully behind the cover of shattered tanks that loomed up suddenly out of the shroud of smoke. Some of them reached the water. They started to wade through the s
hallows, blindly scrambling through the green water, brushing aside the mess of battle-equipment, vomit, bodies, severed limbs – wide staring eyes seeing only one thing – the boats.
Some of them reached them and were dumped in the confused mess of the transports. The quick and the dead thrown together in crazy promiscuity, lay side by side on the open decks of the ships: shivering black-faced men in oil-soaked khaki, eyes dazed by the swiftness of the disaster and their rescue; sailors retching the black fuel oil, with which their lungs were filled; the cruelly wounded, crying out for help to harassed doctors and medics who were now beginning to run out of supplies; the fresh dead being rolled over the side like logs of wood, heads lolling obscenely to make room for more and more wounded. And over the whole terrible scene hung the heavy stench of cordite, fuel oil and blood.
* * *
The Canadian HQ retreated from the Casino, which had covered the withdrawal to the beaches as best it could so far. The senior surviving Canadian officer Brigadier Southam refused to be evacuated. Still in radio contact with HMS Calpe, he was determined to rescue every man if possible. Crouched behind the wall of shingle at the head of the beach he set up a new HQ, harassed all the time by enemy fire, his commands drowned by the roar and snarl of the ferocious dog-fight between the RAF and the Luftwaffe now being waged above the beaches.
By now a thousand men, half of them wounded, had been rescued. But the Germans were closing in on all sides, and the naval commander Captain Hughes-Hallett on HMS Calpe knew that it wouldn’t be long before the Luftwaffe and the heavy guns of the Goebbels Battery started ranging in on his naval force. Nevertheless, he knew from Southam’s radio messages, that the Royal Hamiltons were still fighting at Pourville and that at Blue Beach, a company-strength group of Canadians were still holding out against all the Germans could throw at them, as were odd pockets of infantry all along the embattled shore.
