by Thomas Wood
By the time I had been reassigned and left the escape, it would be too late for Jacques and Julien, Joseph probably far too angry at his failure to have me executed, that he let the murder continue regardless.
My mind was beginning to play dangerous tricks on me, and I put it down to the long hours of laying in wait that had made my thoughts become more and more radicalised. I wasn’t sure if I believed any of them at all, they were just thoughts after all.
I readjusted myself slowly, my chest aching in pain as it found that it was suddenly able to pump blood around it once again. I was frozen but, as with anything, once you are past the initial pain and discomfort of something, it becomes ever so slightly more bearable and gradually, any thoughts of uneasiness slowly drifted to the peripheries of my mind.
The noise of the waves slowly lapping into the shore was therapeutic and began to distract me from where I was. I willed the sounds of splashing paddles to appear in amongst all the noise, but it refused to come. I knew that I wouldn’t hear them coming ashore anyway, they were far too skilled for that, my eyes would be my only identifier of their arrival.
If this mission went awry, I was to sacrifice this team for the sake of the objective, which was something that simply didn’t come naturally to me. I had learnt a lot since I had joined the army, I’d learnt even more since I had been in MI9, but my natural instinct of helping every member of my team was something that refused to be reprogrammed in my mind.
I had made sure that my tank crew were all okay at every possible opportunity, I had tried to help the wounded by pulling myself back into the firing line, and I had even taken a lone soldier under my wing because he had seemed particularly vulnerable. Sacrificing others was something that I could never be programmed to do.
The men that would be coming ashore would be highly trained, it had taken them months to get where they were, and it would be a great travesty if they were to be killed in the name of making sure that one German was neutralised.
I began to rub my face as I considered the possibility that this was a one-way mission for the men that I would soon meet, the beard that I had grown over the last few weeks working wonders to keep the chill from biting at my face too much.
When I looked up, I began to see four spots on the sea, bobbing up and down with the roll and pitch of the tide and I pulled my neck up and above the vegetation of the dune, to try and get a clearer view of the specks.
At first, they looked as if they could have just been a group of gulls resting on the remedial waves but, as they grew larger, it was clear that they were my boys. The relief that filled my whole body when I saw them almost made me get up and wave, welcoming them ashore, but I kept my head down, right up until the moment that they were about to disembark.
I watched as the seated silhouettes raised up slightly in their kayaks, resting their paddles across their bodies, each one of them lifting up a pistol to their heads, scanning the coastline for any sign of enemy movement.
If I made my move now, I would be dead in seconds.
15
Pulling my pistol out of the waistband of my trousers around my back, I laid it on the ground, just ahead of me, where my chin had been resting a few minutes before. Slowly, intentionally, I manoeuvred my body into a push up position, a dull ache groaning through my chest as it got used to being able to pump blood again.
I pushed myself up onto my knees gradually, as I watched the men slowly disembark from their kayaks one by one, the others all covering the coastline with their glaring pistols as he did so. They all knelt in the water for a few seconds, as if they were enjoying the refreshing chill that I imagined it gave them.
Their pistols glided left to right in the darkness, double checking before they made their next move. As one, as if some sort of silent order had been given, the oars were tucked into the kayaks and each man took a grip of their vessel with one hand, pointing their pistol up and into the dunes with the other. As a united body, they began haring up the beach, moving as quickly as possible and hoping the lack of light would be able to conceal their swift movements.
They were coming in just over to my left, maybe a hundred metres or so away, and I let them disappear into the dunes before I made my next move.
Picking up my weapon I slowly got to my feet for the first time in three or four hours, and I quickly realised that in a moment or two the tingling pains of pins and needles would begin to attack my legs. I would simply have to negotiate around that and so, bringing my pistol up so that it was within my line of sight, I began slowly padding my way over to the dune that I had seen them disappear into.
The sand was loose, and my feet slid around as great cliffs turned into landslides as it tumbled down to the ground. The noise that I was generating seemed tremendous and I was convinced that I sounded like a platoon of troops, rather than just the one, and it wouldn’t be long before I was executed by my own soldiers.
Upon reaching the peak of one sand dune, I began to hear a series of rustlings and hisses down the other side of the cliff. Lying on my stomach once again, I pulled myself right up to the precipice and tried to look down. I could make out movement, but I couldn’t quite work out where each of the men were stood or whether they had their pistols drawn or not; I assumed that they had.
I pushed my body away from the dune for a moment, quietly clearing my throat as I prepared to speak for the first time in hours.
“Liber,” I whispered harshly, so that, if it was in fact a German trap they may have mistaken it for a whistle of wind or a rustle of grass.
I waited for some sort of reply, the one that I received however was nothing more than a perfect silence. The rustling and hisses had ceased which meant that they had heard something and were now waiting to see if it was repeated.
“Liber,” I said again, this time slightly more forcefully and with more conviction in my tone.
“Luna,” came the reply, which invoked the desire to suddenly stand up, tuck my pistol away and run down the dune and embrace every one of them. It had been a while since I had felt like I was in the company of a group of British soldiers. I resisted, instead opting to pull my head over the cliff and peer down at them.
They were all resting on one knee, pistols up and in the aim position, pointing in all the directions that seemed it possible for a man to come.
I counted eight of them, each one with a blackened face and woollen hat pulled over their hair, which was good for one bloke as his shockingly blonde hair was almost white, which would have made him more like a lighthouse than a soldier, had the Germans seen it.
I slid my way down the dune coming to rest like a child at the end of a play slide.
“Who comes up with these stupid names?” I said, trying to bring an air of confidence and relaxation to the atmosphere that was so tense I could almost taste it. I got a few chuckles and nods in greeting but no real acknowledgement of the joke that I had tried to make. I knew exactly who had come up with the codewords, Jimmy’s penchant for the ancient Roman gods giving him no headache in coming up with appropriate identifiers for a mission such as this.
“Where’s the best place to put these?” One of them motioned with his head towards the kayaks.
“Here’s a good a place as any, the ground up further is frozen solid, so you’d spend more time digging than you would want to be.”
He nodded, and immediately began digging with an entrenching tool, as did the others as they prepared to submerge their kayaks as much as they could in the short time that we had.
“This is for you,” said the blonde figure, handing me a pistol and a few spare magazines, “it’s American. We figured it would be better than the rubbish the Frenchies were able to give you.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said as I picked up the heavy, solid weight of the pistol, “thanks.” I tucked the French pistol back into my trousers, opting to use the American one as my primary, as the others all went about digging and scraping as they made their kayak graves.
&nb
sp; Once they had finished, we all stopped to listen as one, to make sure that we hadn’t missed the German battalion that had been deployed to find the mysterious men that had emerged from the sea.
There was nothing. It was time to move.
Picking up their satchels stuffed with everything that they might need for the operation, we began to slowly make our way out of the labyrinth of sand dunes, towards the country paths that divvied up the fields, and the one that I had selected to take us back into the belly of the forest.
It took us longer than it normally would do to walk the mile and a half back to the forest, on the account of the heavy kit that the boys had, but also as a result of us being especially cautious that we were not seen or heard by another living creature. I, more than anyone was particularly wary of being found out. Even if the Germans didn’t capture us, but knew that we were in the area, then there was a chance that my SS Standartenführer would be warned that he was a potential target and may be evacuated to somewhere where we wouldn’t be able to get to him.
Why the intelligence service wanted him dead was not known to me and I had no real way of confirming why that was the case, apart from a radio transmission that was likely to have been ignored or even lead to my own capture. It was not my job to question the orders that I had been given, I never had done before, so I wouldn’t be vocalising my doubts now either. The fact was that I had a job to do and once I had done it, then I would be justified in asking some questions later on, if I survived.
Once I had managed to retrieve my own kit, we began to confer with one another about the planning of the operation. I was CO of the Op and as such, it would be my call on most things, from how we attacked, to the day that we went in, but I would take in as many of their concerns and experience as I possibly could in my planning.
“Right then, Sir, what’s the plan?” I had a Scot on my team, something that I was quite pleased with. I had always held them in a very high esteem as a result of my father’s experiences during the Great War. He had served alongside them in the trenches, leading to the claim that they were the “toughest and most courageous bunch of loonies” that he had ever fought with. This guy didn’t seem like a loony just yet, but he came across as headstrong and motivated to get the job done that they were here for, and get out as quickly as possible.
“We’ll make for the airfield tonight. Once there, we will recon the target as best as possible before making back here for first light. I know it’s not ideal to base a plan on what we see in the dark, but we don’t have too much choice. I assume you chaps would rather get home as quickly as possible?” I got a few mutters in the affirmative before I continued.
“In that case, I would suggest that you leave your kit here, anything that is not essential is to be left behind. We’re about two miles from the airfield so we need to move quick if we want to get there, observe and back here before sunrise. Understood?”
“Any questions?” There were none, which I was always grateful for, I always felt that that it would be my biggest stumbling block if someone had thought of something that I hadn’t already thought of, as if it undermined me as a leader somehow.
We all dug out our weapons and ammunition from our bags and left pretty much everything else behind, including explosives and incendiary devices. If we were needing those while on a reconnoitre, then we weren’t good enough soldiers to be doing the raid anyway.
We moved a lot quicker on our journey to the airfield, not caring so much about people hearing twigs snapping in the woods. There were far more nocturnal beasts that would be moving about in a forest than coming up and out of the sea and into the dunes.
Within about half an hour, we could see the first tell-tale signs that we were nearing the airfield. The dogs that occasionally barked were the most obvious sign, yanking and tugging on their leashes to go out on a perimeter check of the airfield or to sniff out the new smells that they could sense out in the forest.
There were a few lights on around the airfield, a lot of men clearly neglecting the importance of a blackout and deeming themselves far too important to have to sit through the night in a darkness. But, then again, maybe there was a man in there who was too important for a blackout. I was sincerely hoping that Standartenführer Schröder was in there somewhere, probably sleeping, but no doubt he would have a sentry or two to keep an eye on him through the night.
As we got closer we noticed that this wasn’t just any old airfield. Most of the airfields that I had seen back in Britain were marked out with a small picket fence or through thick vegetation and trees, but not this place. They had built a wall right the way around the perimeter of the airfield, which was only broken up by a series of guard posts and fences the closer you got to the main entrance of the airfield itself.
We wandered around it, pondering how we were going to manage to get up and over the wall without anyone seeing us, especially with their lack of light discipline and apparent desire to keep everything lit up as if it was daylight. It was then that I caught the sound of a low hum, like the motorbike that had rumbled away in the distance while I was laying outside of the church, except this one seemed to stay miles away. Never getting any closer but not getting further away either.
“What’s that noise?” queried one of the voices, that was either Tommy or Walter, I didn’t really know, in fact I’d hardly paid attention to any of their names to make it easier for me to simply forget about them if and when the time came to sacrifice them.
I realised how cold I had become and began to worry that these men were thinking of me in the same way that I thought of Joseph, an evil man who showed no compassion for others and only cared about himself. I needed to change that perception as a matter of urgency, more for myself than for these men.
“Do you know what,” spoke one of the other voices, “that sounds like a high-voltage cable. Runs just around the inside of the perimeter. As soon as we jump over, we’ll hit it and it’ll fry us.”
“Great,” said the Scotsman, “that’s all we need.”
“How do we get around it?” I asked, directed at the man who seemed to have some sort of special knowledge in life-shortening electrics.
“There’ll be a generator somewhere. We find that then we can get a grenade over to knock it out. Then we’ll be fine.”
“No, we can’t risk noise like that that early on. We need to maintain cover for as long as possible. Can we get over if we went carefully?”
“We could try sir, but I wouldn’t recommend trying to get us all over and our kit. The chances of us just catching it would be very high.”
“Let’s find the generator, then re-evaluate.”
It didn’t take us long to find it, the low humming of the wire slowly growing louder and louder as we got closer to it, eventually becoming so noisy that we could practically speak freely.
“I reckon I could get over here, sir. I can shut down the gennie, which would allow the rest of you to get over freely.”
“Very well. That’s our entry sorted then.”
“Just have to pray that that generator isn’t hooked up to all the electrics for the rest of the camp sir, or they’ll have a team out to fix it in a matter of minutes.”
“That’s a risk we’ll have to take.”
There was going to be a lot of them once we got to the night of our attack. It was a major risk going in in the first place, especially if I didn’t know whether or not the Standartenführer was even in there. But it was my job not to question, it was my job to lead these men into battle, towards their deaths if needs be, and that was exactly what I intended to do.
Just as quickly as we made for the airfield, we retreated again silently, without the Germans even knowing that we had ever been there.
16
“First things first,” I said, speaking confidently now that we were back in the depths of the forest, “we need to acquire some weapons. We can’t risk going noisy with them if all we’ve got is our pistols. We need to stay together until we�
��ve built up a decent arsenal of kit and then we’ll be able to start properly. Agreed?”
We were all in agreement, I knew there would be no reservations in trying to build up as much firepower as we possibly could before attacking in earnest. No one would be able to survive more than five minutes with a handgun against a fully automatic submachine gun, and all the other more comprehensive defences that they would have all around the airfield.
“Unfortunately, we’re not going to be able to plan an awful lot because of the wall. Most of it will be improvised. But I know you gentlemen will be used to that.”
They all muttered in agreement once again, nudging each other jovially as I lavished praise on them and their kind.
“Walter?” I let the Corporal take over the briefing momentarily, allowing him to let us know about his phase of the operation, but also so that he could reiterate in his mind exactly what his responsibilities would be when I gave the go signal.
“I will get a foot up from you lot and attempt to scale the wall, being careful to avoid hitting the high voltage wire that will be just inside the wall itself. From there, I will get to the generator and shut it off. Hopefully, it doesn’t shut down all the electrics in the rest of the airfield, otherwise we’re in for a bumpy ride. Once I have shut it off, Tommy will throw the rope ladder over the wall and I’ll anchor it in place. We’ll scale the wall one by one, then reconvene on the other side and evaluate the situation.”
“Right gents, our targets. Primary is the aircraft that are out on standing points. Secondary are the aircraft in the main hangar on the far side of the airfield. I’ll be going in with Ray here to the officer’s quarters, if possible, to collect as much intelligence as I possibly can. We will then exfil hopefully without a single shot having been fired. Understood?”
