The Heydrich Sanction

by Denis Kilcommons

  ‘Put this on,’ he said to Kevin, giving him the helmet. ‘It might confuse them. Susan, you go with Kevin. Get in the back and stay down.’ He looked to Kevin again. ‘Drive down to the entrance, not too fast, and wait for me. I’ll park this one outside the HQ tent. Seems the best place to blow it. As soon as I jump clear, you start going. I’ll catch you. Okay?’

  They both nodded and Kevin led Susan to the rear of the truck to help her into the back. Willie climbed over the side. His wounds ached and his back hurt and he was suddenly, irrationally, hungry. He got into the cab of the supply wagon and slid open the window at the back so that he could look at his lethal cargo. He placed three grenades on the seat alongside him, placed the submachinegun across his lap and started the engine. He reversed the wagon out of the line in a wide arc. Kevin, in the next lorry, gave him a thumbs up and pulled out of formation and drove down the avenue made by the bonnets of the transports on one side and the tents on the other. Willie drove close behind.

  A trooper with his arm in a sling and a cigarette in the other hand stared as the first lorry went past and his expression changed to one of puzzlement when he saw Willie, who smiled and waved a greeting. Kevin reached the exit from the field and stopped and Willie reversed his wagon towards the entrance of the headquarters tent until the rear of the vehicle pushed beneath the flaps, strained and snapped guy ropes and ripped canvas.

  Willie glanced through the cab’s rear window and glimpsed a busy scene of men with headphones manning radios, maps on tables, a chart board on an easel, a portable kitchen, canvas chairs and a brazier throwing out heat. A captain was staring open-mouthed and there were far more troopers than he had expected. He pulled the pins on the grenades and dropped them through the window amidst the explosives, ammunition and flamethrower fluids, and jumped clear. Kevin was already driving his wagon through the exit.

  He began to run and again felt uncoordinated, all knees and elbows, and noticed a sergeant had come from the medical tent, presumably alerted by the trooper with the cigarette. The sergeant shot at him with a pistol and the trooper freed his arm from the sling and levelled an assault rifle. Willie thought that perhaps his luck had run out but a burst of gunfire put them both down and stitched holes across the canvas behind them.

  Susan was standing in the back the truck holding a submachinegun, keeping her balance surprisingly well until it hit the edge of the road. She fell out of sight but by then Willie was at the back. He threw his own weapon over the tailgate, grabbed the back and heaved himself up. His arms hurt, his body hurt, his lungs hurt but he found the strength from somewhere and toppled into the back, partly across Susan.

  ‘Go,’ he shouted. ‘Go,’ and the explosions began.

  One, two, three and he thought it hadn’t worked; the explosions had not been big enough, but, as the lorry picked up speed along Top Lane, the ground shook and lifted the vehicle and the field behind them erupted.

  He stared back as they drove towards the village. All the tents had gone and the four closest transport wagons were ablaze. The smoke cloud rose impressively. The attackers would wonder what the hell was happening.

  ‘Kevin.’ He dragged himself to his feet as the lorry bounced down the lane. ‘Go past the stores, into the vicarage driveway and try to get close to the cellar steps.” Kevin nodded. ‘Who knows? We might even make it.’

  ‘We’ll make it, Mr Ashford. We’ll make it.’

  ‘What the hell?’

  Lt Col Alex Dunn was in the front bedroom of Colonel Jimmy Humphrey’s house, watching the attack through field glasses, when the explosions shook tiles from the roof.

  What new bloody calamity had happened now?

  He looked at his radio operator, who had been speaking to Battalion HQ. The man flicked switches and said, ‘It’s gone dead, sir.’

  A dread feeling started in the pit of Dunn’s stomach. He dare not believe what he feared might have happened. He ran from the bedroom to a side window on the landing and looked at the site where the HQ had been and saw a crater, blazing trucks and a cloud of smoke climbing high into the grey sky. One wagon had escaped and was driving down Top Lane. Escaped?

  He ran back into the front bedroom, Jimmy and Marjorie Humphrey’s bedroom, the carpets and rugs now dirty from the boots of soldiers. Photographs of the family that had been on a dressing table had been swept carelessly to the floor, a dressing gown lay over the end of the bed; a sign of normality that Lt Col Dunn no longer recognised. This whole operation hadn’t been normal from the start.

  The lorry slowed for the bend, turned in front of the house, and slowed again to make the turn by the still burning Rose Cottage. Lt Col Dunn pushed open the window and shouted across the village green.

  ‘Stop that wagon. Stop it. Stop that wagon.’

  He levelled his handgun to shoot at the gaping back where a tall man with white hair stood, one hand on a roof spar to keep his balance. For a fraction of a second their eyes met and Dunn knew this was the man responsible for his casualties and the pointless resistance to an inevitable conclusion. He damned him for his obstinacy and, as his finger squeezed the trigger, he was hit in the chest by a shell from a Mauser M98 Magnum hunting rifle that had enough power to put down a buffalo. It blew him backwards across the neatly made bed and his dead finger completed its action and fired a bullet into the ceiling.

  Bob Harvey had stared towards the explosion and resultant cloud, like everyone else. The battle paused, both sides taking stock, evaluating, trying to work out what it meant. Then he watched the army lorry come down Top Lane and drive along the side of the village green. He had noted the flash of field glasses from the bedroom window earlier and had been waiting for his chance. When the window opened, he saw the uniform of an officer and pulled the trigger with great satisfaction.

  He then adjusted the gun to aim at the driver of the lorry and saw the unmistakable face of postman Kevin Andrews in an SS helmet behind the wheel.

  A trooper came out from cover to fire after the lorry and Bob adjusted again and snapped off a shot that put the man down. An open-topped military Land Rover came from the drive of Colonel Humphrey’s house. It came straight across the green, an officer in the back firing erratically with a submachinegun at the lorry. Bob, ignoring the smack of renewed rifle fire, zeroed into the vehicle, recognised a captain’s insignia, fired, adjusted again and fired again, hitting both passenger and driver. The Land Rover rolled and the officer’s body was flung doll-like onto the cold grass.

  As they reached Upper Bedford Road, Willie tossed grenades out of the back at the building on the corner to discourage fire. The lorry bounced up the vicarage drive and he was thrown off his feet. Susan lay among the wooden boxes, simply hanging on, and bullets were coming through the canvas and hitting the steel sides. The wagon swerved into a turn and he felt it ploughing through a hedgerow and the thwump as it hit and flattened gravestones. It was much more effective as a battering ram than the Land Rover he had driven.

  He got to his knees and fired the submachinegun out of the back, wildly and without sight of a target, and the lorry shuddered to a halt and he fell over again. Kevin was outside and pulling at the canvas. He lifted the corner near the cab.

  ‘I told you we’d make it, Mr Ashford,’ he said, no longer wearing the helmet.

  ‘You’re a bloody marvel, Kevin.’

  The lorry was broadside at the rear corner of the church, the steps to the cellar entrance feet away. He offered a hand to Susan but the girl seemed to have regained her strength and climbed over the side without help, the submachinegun she had used still in her hands. Kevin put the SS helmet on her head and pushed her towards the steps. Bullets were hitting the lorry from the direction of the vicarage but, surprisingly, none from the wall at the rear of the graveyard. Willie heaved the boxes over the side, suddenly finding strength he didn’t know he had. Kevin took them and dropped them without ceremony towards the cellar door, where the first one broke. Susan crouched on the steps and fired the subma
chinegun beneath the wagon.

  He had the last wooden crate in his arms and said, ‘Don’t drop this one. It’s grenades,’ when he was thwacked in the left shoulder and half fell out of the wagon. Kevin took the crate and gave it to Susan. Willie fell back into the lorry and reached for the weapons they had captured. He passed them out, one at a time, and then heaved himself up with his right arm, the only one that was working.

  ‘You’ve been hit, Mr Ashford.’

  Willie pushed himself over the edge and let gravity do the rest. Kevin caught him and dragged him to the steps and he was aware of the bullets zipping through the grass. Kevin cried out and fell and Susan grabbed him and rolled him over the lip of the steps; he cried out again as he bounced. Willie dragged himself in the same direction and Susan reappeared.

  ‘I’m okay. Get back,’ he said, but she stood high on the steps to reach for him, which was when the burst of submachinegun bullets took her in chest and shoulder. She was flung backwards and Willie hauled himself over the side and into cover, hating like never before.

  ‘Susan? Susan?’ Kevin lay with his back against the church wall, his left leg a mess. Susan had been thrown backwards and had fallen face down the stairs and her skirt and coat had slid up her naked legs. Kevin, despite his pain, crawled down the steps to lay alongside her, pushing her skirts into decency and cradling her face in his big arms. The guns and ammunition that had cost so much, lay all around them. Kevin rocked the dead girl and cried unashamedly with loud sobs. Willie was beyond tears, beyond care.

  He knelt up and swung the submachinegun, which was still round his neck, over the lip of the steps and emptied the magazine. He was in the same position, his forehead pressed against the cold, dead stone, when the defenders finally opened the cellar door and came to their aid. He heard Kevin cursing at them to be gentle with Susan.

  What had he led these people into? Was this the way? Or should they have gone quietly, shuffling off to a mass grave? He knew there had been no alternative. This was not death or glory - that was a concept for idiots – but if they all had to die it was better to go screaming defiance. If Ollerton had been sanctioned without a fight, the same tragedy could be enacted in some other village or town. It could happen anywhere. It still might but at least they had given notice of the possibility to every other ordinary citizen who had turned a blind eye and chosen not to acknowledge the repression, cruelty and inhumanity of the regime under which they lived.

  The tragedy was national and called for new leaders to provoke change. The reality was personal. The reality was the broken body of a young girl called Susan and tears against a cold stone step.

  They were coming up the hill through the trees. Joe heard them before the lorry crashed through the grounds of the vicarage and stopped at the rear corner of the church. The enemy had fired at it and so he had fired at them although his bursts were mainly nuisance value as the attackers were under cover.

  He watched the two men and a girl unload the crates, the tall figure of Willie Ashford unmistakable. He saw them all get hit and guessed the girl’s wounds had been fatal. From this distance, he hadn’t been able to recognise her, but he felt the pain and anger, just the same. He pointed the gun into the trees and waited. The assault rifles of the three men he had killed were lined up against the trunk of the fallen tree behind which he sat; an ammunition belt and holster was strapped around his waist and two Luger pistols and four grenades lay on the ground beside him.

  Joe began to sing to himself. He smiled when he realised what the song was: the old George Gershwin number, now banned on religious grounds, that he and Mary had made their song when they were courting.

  I have got a crush on you, sweetie pie.

  All the day and night time, hear me sigh.

  I never had the least notion

  That I could fall with such emotion

  Could you coo, could you care?

  For a country cottage, we could share.

  The world will pardon my mush

  Coz I have got a crush, my baby, on you.

  They hadn’t known it at the time, but they had gone on to spend most of their married life in the country. Not in a cottage, but the next best thing, and they had enjoyed it. They had had a good life. Twigs snapped and he turned the gun and fired a burst through the trees, cutting winter-brittle branches and causing a man to scream in pain. Another man shouted in a thick accent and he sent another burst in his direction, before traversing to his front.

  The troopers were shouting and arguing and he smiled. They didn’t want this assignment. Attacking a machinegun post was less than healthy. He spread bursts through the trees and another soldier cried out as he was hit. All the time, the song went through his mind, mingled with memories of his wife when they were both young.

  I never had the least notion

  That I could fall with such emotion …

  An NCO was shouting orders and the undergrowth crackled. They were below, to the side and probably behind him, by now. He fired down the slope into the trees and did a sweep to his right, as far as the gun would go. Bullets were coming back at him, from assault rifles and submachineguns, smacking into the tree trunk that was his main cover, and whistling past his head. He pulled the pin on a grenade and threw it to his rear, and followed it with shots from an assault rifle. He took cover behind a tree as the blast rushed past him and brought curses and moans from the men behind him.

  He heard heavy footfalls to his right and went back to the machinegun. He opened up and saw shapes fall and heard more screams among the trees. A grenade landed in front of the tree trunk barricade and he ducked, rolled onto his back and fired into the undergrowth behind him with a rifle. The explosion raised dirt and debris and he felt bullets hit him. He pulled the pins of two grenades and threw one behind him and the other forward. He heaved himself on his side and continued firing the machinegun even though he couldn’t see what at. The explosions brought a second’s reprieve and he pulled the breech bolt back on the gun, pulled the pin of his last grenade and laid it on the feeder belt.

  Joe had been hit twice and the pain was waiting to engulf him but bugger the pain, it wouldn’t last long. He picked up the pistols and lay back against the tree trunk and fired at shapes in the trees and remembered when he and Mary had been young, all the time singing in his mind.

  Could you coo, could you care?

  For a country cottage, we could share.

  The world will pardon my mush …

  Rifle bullets hit him in the chest as the grenade exploded, destroying the mechanism of the machinegun, and the pain stopped.

  Chapter 33

  Near Ollerton

  The Beatles were watching the huge cloud on the horizon from their luxury coach as they travelled towards Manchester along the main highway. They had heard and felt the explosion and had moved to the front and opened windows, despite the cold, and could hear the distant crackle of gunfire. Before they left, Neil had received a suggestion from police that he might want to take an alternative route. When he asked why, the inspector had become vague and said there was a security situation. ‘Activity’ might be taking place.

  Neil had told the boys and warned them a detour would throw their schedule into chaos. He said they should stick to their planned route. They agreed and told him to ignore the police advice. Fuck them, were the actual words of their endorsement.

  They wondered quite what ‘activity’ might mean and then they had heard the explosion and seen the cloud.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’ said John. He was in the front, next to Neil.

  ‘Manoeuvres?’ said Paul.

  ‘In the middle of Cheshire?’ John was less than convinced. ‘Anything on the radio, George?’

  George twiddled the knobs of an expensive transistor. The adverts had said you could tune in to Moscow, as if anybody would want to, but it picked up Radio Luxembourg brilliantly.

  ‘Auntie’s saying nothing,’ George said, meaning the BBC. He tried the waveleng
ths for Luxembourg and Voice of America, although they didn’t usually begin broadcasting until seven in the evening, and, somewhere in between, picked up the signal of the new station, Radio Free Britain, and an excited male voice. He listened briefly and then turned up the volume. ‘Listen to this.’

  ‘… we will bring you more news as we get it, but I repeat, gunfire has been heard from the area.’ A pause, and then four notes from Beethoven, dot-dot-dot-dash, as a station signal. ‘This is Radio Free Britain. Scotland is on the verge of declaring independence after a night of violence and insurrection in which SS troops have been killed. There are reports that SS and State Police have been hung from lampposts in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Scottish military divisions have secured the border with England. There have also been disturbances in Newcastle and Carlisle.

  ‘In England, Scottish SS troops have sealed off the village of Ollerton in Cheshire. They have been ordered by Prime Minister Mosley to destroy the village and kill its inhabitants as a reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. There are believed to be more than 600 men, women and children in the village. But the people have fought back against the heavily armed SS and the battle for Ollerton continues.

  “Radio Free Britain urges military units, police and citizens everywhere, to rise up and help the villagers in their brave fight for survival. These are ordinary men, women and children who are fighting Mosley’s SS stooges. They deserve your help. Their fight is your fight. The latest reports say gunfire is still coming from the village.’ A pause, the station signal of Beethoven’s four notes, and the announcer began again. George turned the sound down.