by Thomas Wood
“Yes, Sir,” replied the Scot, who then commenced his small speech. “Charges are to be set at ten minutes. Incendiaries are to be reserved for any fuel or other flammables that you see laying about. If we are still inside the perimeter when the charges go off, we let them have absolutely everything that we possibly can. Throw a stick at them if you have to, just do as much damage as possible.”
We began running through as many different scenarios as we possibly could, including if we couldn’t find any weapons, or if we alerted the Germans to our presence before we even managed to make it inside the perimeter. We were ready for any eventuality, but all of them allowed for me to be inside the airfield for a considerable amount of time, so that I could try and locate my target.
I felt bad not revealing to them the true nature of the operation, but I wondered if they had an inkling or two as to the cover up that I was playing a large part in. They thought this was an espionage and intelligence gathering operation when in actual fact, it was a tactical assassination, something that I was growing increasingly uncomfortable with the closer it got to the time we had set to leave.
“So, sir,” asked Gordon, the Scotsman, just as we began painting our faces in paint and dirt, “how comes you were already here? What’s your story?”
“Oh, I don’t think we really have time for that Gordon,” I chuckled, “but I was sent here for another job, then I was suddenly reassigned. That’s when I met you maniacs. How about you?”
“Well, we’re all volunteers, sir. We joined up before the war began, so you don’t need to worry about our intentions or commitment, sir. We’re here for our country, no other reason.”
“Speak for yourself Gord, I’m here for the medals!” Piped up Arthur Milward, one of the cockier soldiers that I now had under my command.
I was glad that they were all volunteers, not that I had anything against the conscripted lads, but it meant that they were more likely to have already had some sort of experience in war and weren’t likely to cower away at the first machine gun round that they heard heading in their direction. That would help massively when everything went wrong on the other side of that wall.
We chatted politely for another couple of hours, about our upbringings and war experiences so far, and I was glad to discover that I had a real mixture of men sitting around me. I had sons of butchers and dockers and one was even the son of a vicar, which I hoped would bring some sort of divine justification down on our side of the fence later on that night.
We ate our rations together and were soon packing our various bits and pieces away, making sure magazines were full of rounds and that charges hadn’t become damp during the day. I was passed a knife by Walter and I double checked that my own kit was packed correctly as I hurried about burying it in the ferns once again.
The wintry sun did not need too much of an invitation to disappear behind the horizon and within a few moments, the forest was in a near complete darkness which, by the time we had exited its leafy fortress, would have extended to the open air.
We began our trek towards the airfield, making good time so that we could be in and out under the cover of darkness. The French countryside was, as ever, eerily black, with nothing seeming to move a muscle and not a single bird or fox venturing out in to the arctic chill of the night. We were the only thing that moved, the slow swish of boots as they passed through grass the only audible noise over the sound of my thumping heart.
I began running through in my own mind about what I was to do. Ray and I were to locate the officer’s quarters as quickly as we possibly could and burst in there to find my target. The only thing that I could do was hope and pray that he was in there that night, and that he hadn’t taken himself off to a local hotel to seek a greater comfort elsewhere. I would have to hope that he was an eternally professional soldier, not refusing to abandon his post no matter how poor the accommodation was.
Once in there, I would send Ray off into another room, I needed to be able to deal with the officer without anyone seeing and get him to gather up as much intelligence as possible. Log books, maps, personal files and records, anything that would make it look like this was a standard intelligence gathering raid, and not one that had been carefully planned around a high-ranking officer’s arrival there. If they worked that out, then Jimmy’s source would probably be found out and shut down and he wouldn’t be thanking me for that.
I began racking my brains for ways to try and confirm that he was in there, and not away inspecting his defences or some other task that he regularly undertook in the middle of the night, but I could think of none. It was why it would be an utter tragedy if we were forced to go noisy before I had found him, otherwise he would be able to have time to escape or merely get lost in the total confusion that would ensue as bullets began flying.
We navigated our way around the perimeter wall and I couldn’t help but smirk at how the Germans had shot themselves in the foot. Most airfields would have a perimeter fence or something similar, that anyone guarding the premises would be able to see through and able to spot a group of nine enemy soldiers slowly making their way around the edge. But not here.
They had built a wall, famous for not being able to see through, which gave us a pretty much free walk right the way up to it and only having to care about concealing ourselves once we were over the other side of it, by which point, it would probably be too late anyway.
Soon, the silence of the night was replaced by the low hum of the high voltage wire on the other side of the wall, which in turn was superseded by the low growling of the generator that powered the electrocution wire.
“Ready?” I whispered as a few of them pulled on their cloth caps over their hair. We all had them on now, including me. I had taken possession of one of their uniforms, my civilian clothes being buried in the ferns with the rest of my kit. It was the first time in ages that I had been back in battledress khaki and I felt invincible, especially as I looked around at all the other blackened faces with glaringly white eyes staring back at me.
They nodded one by one, checking their pistols had no stoppages and a full magazine. I did the same, fumbling around in my pockets to make sure that the four spare mags that I had filled earlier on were all in there, and that they hadn’t leapt out on my journey here.
“Right then,” I said, turning to each of them one by one, “if there’s no objections, we’ll begin.”
There weren’t any. I nodded at Walter to get this show on the road.
17
I watched as the boys started to get to work amongst themselves. Ray and Tommy cupped their hands together and made two small stirrups for Walter to clamber into then, like he was in an elevator, they slowly raised him up until he was able to grip the top of the wall and throw one of his legs over.
He lay prone on the top of the wall for a moment, as if he was having second thoughts about the whole thing.
“Wish me luck,” he breathed as he rolled onto the other side of the wall. There was no crackling noise as he made contact with the cable, no screaming in agony as his flesh was burnt away, so we could only assume that he made it over to the other side successfully.
Ray was hoisted up in much the same way as Walter, so that he could keep tabs on his progress and let us all know if he had been frazzled by the high voltage wire that he was trying so desperately to avoid. He didn’t say anything, which I took as a good sign and we waited for a couple of minutes while Walter fumbled around with the generator on the other side of the wall.
The humming continued for a few minutes more and my palms began to itch from the sweat as I grew nervous at how long it was taking him to sort the wire out. Eventually, the hum began to die down, as did the generator, before it sparked up again with a renewed vigour and churned out its drones even louder than ever before.
“Okay, the ladder. Go, go,” Ray said, waving his arm to throw the ladder over. It was launched over the top of the wall and it had barely settled before Ray was already clambering down the o
ther side of the bricks. The others followed, leaving me as the last man over and into the airfield.
As I stood on the forest side, all alone, waiting for the signal that it was my turn, I began to feel lonely. Not because I was physically isolated from everyone else by being left in the forest, but because I was the only one that knew what was about to happen on the other side, what our real objective was. It is a lonely job, being in a position of power, there is very rarely someone that you can confide in, not just on a superficial level, but a deep personal level. It is nigh on impossible to talk to a more junior soldier to you about the difficulties of being in charge of something, of the feelings of cowardice that you experience and the doubts of being able to fulfil one’s duty. Leaders have all the same doubts and fears as the common soldier, the common man, but it is so often frowned upon to display those emotions, for fear of destabilising the situation or leaving yourself vulnerable to attack.
I sensed the rope begin to shake, my signal that the ladder was now clear, and it was my turn to embark. I made one final turn from left to right towards the forest, gliding around to make sure that we weren’t going to be followed over the wall by a division of SS soldiers. I saw no movement, heard no noise other than that on the other side of the wall so, tucking the pistol into my trousers for a moment, leapt up and grabbed the bottom of the ladder.
The high voltage cable was a thick, unmistakeable wire that hugged the top of the wall, just on the opposite side, making it incredibly difficult for the unsuspecting man to mount and climb over the wall without having a decent dosage of an electrical current passing through him. I was glad that Walter had managed to do the job but was slightly confused as to why the generator was still going.
I made my way down the ladder, everyone else forming a semi-circle around the bottom of it, facing towards the main base to cover my back as I came in. Walter was laying at the bottom, tugging on the ladder, acting as my ballast as I trundled over. He pulled it into his chest as I stepped clear of it and he began rolling it up and leaving it behind the generator as a potential escape route.
He looked at me smirking, “Generator was connected to the rest of the camp. I switched it off for about five seconds while I pulled the cable from it, then switched it back on. They would have had a power cut for no more than two or three seconds. Hopefully they didn’t notice it.”
I snorted in response to him, both of us simultaneously pulling out our pistols and checking that they were still loaded correctly.
“Right then, what’s everyone seen?” I could see for myself exactly what was where, but it was always good to hear from everyone else, as there’s every chance that they picked up on something that you have missed.
“Guard hut along the perimeter wall to our left. Sounds like that’s where they’re keeping the dogs, but would assume there are some weapons ready for us to borrow, Sir.”
“Counted six aircraft on standing Sir, would guess that they are all fuelled and armed ready to scramble. They’ll go up nicely.” Gordon’s Scottish accent made him come across as a bit of a pyromaniac, just itching to blow anything up that he could possibly lay his hands on, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“Looks like a station commander’s billet over to our right, Sir. Looks like there’s someone in there worth guarding.” I looked in the direction that Ray was pointing, searching in the darkness for any other possible place where the Standartenführer might be hiding.
That looked like the place where I would be if I was in charge of defence, especially as he had two sentries who occasionally seemed to half-heartedly patrol around the paranoid officer’s bedroom.
“Right gents, weapons. Apart from our dog hut over there, where are we going to get some. We do have some time to kill, but the sooner we get them the better.”
In an ideal world, where the darkness went on forever, we could simply wait for a patrol to advance around the perimeter before pouncing on them, but we would have to go to the weapons, instead of expecting them to come to us.
“We’ve got sentries dotted all around. It’ll have to be from them. I can’t see where they’d logically have an armoury.”
“Okay, you four try the dog shed, then move on to the planes on the stand point. Be careful of that searchlight that they’ve got up there,” I said, pointing towards the control tower, a lone guard standing cautiously next to one of the biggest lightbulbs I had ever seen, “don’t get caught in it.”
“The rest of us will head right, Ray and I will enter that building there, everyone else is to make their way to the hangars. We’ll try and pick up some weapons on the way. Remember everyone, stay quiet until the charges go. Then let them have everything.”
They all had their charges and incendiary devices packed in their bags, but their pockets too were full of at least four grenades each, a couple of them surrendering their fifth so that I had some explosive power packed away in my own pockets. As soon as those charges kicked off, I would throw my grenades in the general direction of the first German soldiers I saw, hopefully making them keep their heads down long enough for us to beat a hasty retreat. We were to exfil in any way possible, the easiest would be out the front gate if we could, but the rope ladder was still by the wall ready and waiting for us to try and use it. If all else failed, I would try running at the nearest bit of wall and hope that I had a decent enough spring in my step to be able to pull myself the rest of the way.
Before I could think about leaving the airfield though, I needed to survive till I was at the point of being able to get out and, to do that, I would need to get into that sentry-guarded billet. Ray and I hugged the perimeter wall for as far as we could, living in its shadows for however long was possible. It offered such a refuge, a haven of life, that I felt like staying there forever, abandoning my primary objective and simply reporting that the man wasn’t even there. But I knew I couldn’t do that, there were other men around me, braver men than me and I had to attempt at the very least to match their level of courage and boldness.
The billet seemed to be an isolated building, with no adjoining buildings or walls interrupting it, meaning that we would be able to walk right the way around its perimeter unhindered if we had wanted to. The sentries split up, peeling off one another at the front door and heading round to check the perimeter of the building. Ray and I immediately had the same idea, we would take one sentry each, after they crossed over one another and made back towards the front door.
We didn’t have to wait too much longer before they went through the same half-hearted ritual and, when they did, Ray immediately sped off, quite silently, bouncing around on his tiptoes as he went. I did too, hiding behind a part of the building where the bricks jutted out from the wall slightly.
I waited as I began to make out that my sentry had started whistling. That was good news, hopefully he would keep that up so as to cover my approach as I made for him. I drew out the fighting knife that I had been given by my team and slowly slid it out from its sheath. It was sharp, double edged and, if used properly, more lethal than a machine gun round to the chest.
His footsteps padded along the ground as he approached me, the methodical rhythm seeming to slow the closer he got to me. The man’s long, drawn out shadow came into view, his head bobbing around slightly as he confirmed that it was his own shadow that he was seeing. I pushed my back into the wall further, hoping that the brickwork would suddenly open up and envelope me in its grasp. My skull ached as I forced it into the mortar knowing that, if I was spotted now, I would be dead before I even realised.
He passed me slowly, still whistling an upbeat tune to himself. He was obviously very pleased that he had been given this assignment and not being shipped off to North Africa where a real war was going on, or even to Northern France where so many British soldiers were still in hiding. He was enjoying his cushy little job on the airfield, where the only true test of his character was not falling asleep out of boredom.
He possessed a large frame, a good he
ad and shoulders taller than me and broad wardrobe-like shoulders that a prop forward would have been proud of. The fact that he was bigger and undoubtedly stronger than I was didn’t faze me, neither did the fact that he was wielding a submachine gun capable of firing over five hundred rounds a minute. I had my knife and I knew how to use it and that was all that mattered in this impending fight.
I let him take a few more paces away from me, before I made my move, just to ensure that he hadn’t spotted me and what was about to happen would take him by complete surprise. I would need to move fast, there was more than one factor against me here, not least the fact that my shadow would momentarily engulf his as I charged towards him. If I moved fast enough though, by the time he realised he would already be dead.
I pushed myself from the wall energetically, causing my neck to crack as my head struggled to keep up, my knife firmly in between my thumb and forefinger of my right hand, the rest of my fingers wrapped tightly around the handle to make sure I had the best grip possible. I didn’t want to let this man have a chance at fighting back, my aim was not even to wound this man. If I wounded him, he would be able to call out, maybe even fire a few rounds off at me, alerting everyone else to the fact that something was going on. My aim here was to kill. Brutally and efficiently. I was going for the man’s throat.
The one compensation that I could offer the man as I thundered towards him, was that his death would be quick. He wouldn’t have his throat sliced and then watch his killer stand over him, taunting him as he slowly bled to death. No, he wouldn’t even get the chance to see my face. That was the plan anyway.
I picked up my pace, doing nothing to subdue the anger and aggression that was bubbling up inside of me, I would need every ounce of energy that it was giving to me right now. He wasn’t a man anymore, he was simply a target, an object that stood in my way between failure and success, getting home and getting killed. He needed to die.
