Assault on Abbeville

by Jack Badelaire

  By then it was nearly noon, and the sun was high in the sky and the air was warm. Although he didn’t like the idea of moving in the middle of the day, Gorski was anxious to reunite with the other Revenants. He hadn’t liked the idea of splitting up the team, but he also couldn’t have justified risking all of them on last night’s mission. One false move, one sound giving them away, and any chance of killing Hauptmann Kohl would have vanished, and all five of them would be captured or killed. And with the Germans, captured just meant a lot of pain and misery before being killed regardless.

  With the summer sun overhead, their clothes finished drying out after an hour on the move, and the two Revenants crossed the southern road out of Abbeville without incident. Shortly afterwards, they saw a pair of troop transports heading north into town, their cargo beds packed with men in field-grey uniforms.

  “More men to hunt for us,” Verhoeven wondered aloud, “or more bodies to help at the railyard and aerodrome?”

  “Probably both.” Gorski replied. “They know we’re in the area, but if that’d been the extent of our mission, we’d be well on our way to the coast by now. Those transports might just be passing through town, moving towards the north-west.”

  “Then let us hope they’ve left by the time we actually do need to go in that direction,” Verhoeven muttered, giving the trucks a final look as they passed out of sight beyond some trees.

  An hour later, the two men were closing in on where Gorski believed Helene and Ethan’s hiding spot to be, when there was a soft noise from a bit of brush to their right, and the muzzle of a rifle appeared.

  “You’ve been gone a long time,” Lambert said.

  “It has been a long day,” Gorski replied, giving the countersign.

  Lambert emerged from his hiding place. “We grew worried when the two townsfolk told us some of those bombs looked like they might have landed in the vicinity of the railyard.”

  Verhoeven grinned. “Oh, wait until you hear the story of our little adventure. Where are the others?”

  Lambert gestured to the north with the muzzle of his rifle. “Follow me. I’ll bring you to the locals, and then fetch Johansen and Dumond from picket duty. We pushed out fairly far, not knowing from which direction you might arrive.”

  Twenty minutes later, the five Revenants were together again, and Helene produced a long baguette and a wheel of waxed cheese for them to eat. Gorski ran a critical eye over the provisions she’d brought to their “picnic spot”, and calculated that, along with the last of the food from Berger’s house and the field rations the team had brought with them, they had two days of food remaining to them if they were disciplined. After that, they would have to either forage for food or go without, and neither proposition sounded wise.

  Gorski forced himself to put such thoughts out of his mind temporarily while he sat and ate with the others, telling them of he and Verhoeven’s exploits last night while the Dutchman volunteered to take sentry duty. As he described what took place, Gorski saw how Lambert watched him intently, absorbing every scrap of information, while asking the occasional question about the terrain or the disposition of the Germans. In contrast, Dumond seemed to simply enjoy the tale as he would any other adventure story, even stifling a laugh when Gorski told of the bomb blasts knocking them over at the edge of the forest. Johansen, as usual, said nothing. The Norwegian just sat with his machine pistol across his knees, methodically tearing off bites from his meal of bread and cheese, washing them down with small sips of wine.

  Finally, his tale complete, the others sat in silence for a long moment before Dumond turned and looked towards Abbeville.

  “What now?” he asked.

  Gorski followed his gaze. A thin haze of smoke was visible in the direction of the railyard. He turned back and looked to Helene and Ethan.

  “I want you to return to town,” Gorski told them. “The basket and blankets will convince the Germans you decided to sleep under the stars, and if you are smart and careful, they will be too busy to worry about your story, if you have to pass through a checkpoint in the first place. If you can, make your way into town without using the roads.”

  “Back to town?” Ethan asked, his tone worried. “But what if the Germans suspect something?”

  “Paquet told them nothing about you, and after last night, his story of the railyard sabotage will seem genuine. The Germans will have their hands full looking for us to the north and west, towards the coast, and will assume that our work here is done.”

  “You want us to return to our original assignment,” Helene said.

  Gorski nodded. “We will probably be able to see Kohl’s flight arrive, but we won’t know for certain that he’s with them. We need someone in town to confirm his arrival.”

  “Do you still think he’ll want to celebrate returning, after the attack last night?” Ethan asked.

  “All the more reason to celebrate,” Dumond answered him. “Kohl will want to make merry with any of his mates who survived the bombing. Nothing drives a soldier to debauchery like a victory over death.”

  “Then it is settled,” Helene said, giving Ethan a steady look that quelled any protest. “We will go back to town, and we will listen for information.”

  “Can you return in two days?” Gorski asked.

  “That may be difficult,” Helene answered. “But, I know the ruined shop you described, I knew the woman who ran it until a German bomb hit it and wounded her. I do not think they will continue tearing it down until the damage from the bombs is repaired, which will take some time. If you can return there in two nights, I will leave food and information in the cellar.”

  Gorski nodded. “Two days it is, then. Good luck.”

  The couple rose to their feet, Helene gathered their blankets and the basket, while Ethan brushed leaves from his trousers. He looked pale with fear.

  “Yes, luck,” the Frenchman said softly. “We will need every bit of it.”

  EIGHTEEN

  The rest of the day was largely uneventful. Before they left, Gorski gave Helene and Ethan all the money Berger had cached, along with the added money he’d promised them the first time they’d met in the barn. It wasn’t all the money the Revenants had brought with them to France, but if they never saw the French couple again, it would help get them through the war, and if they ever needed to escape Abbeville, it would prove useful. Gorski sent Lambert to escort Helene and Ethan to the edge of Abbeville, and when he returned, the Belgian reported seeing the two safely enter the town by means of a little-used path that the Germans weren’t keeping under observation.

  Not wanting to take any chances, Gorski ordered them to break camp and move north, towards where he and Lambert had hidden and observed the aerodrome. Gorski wanted to see how much damage the bombing raid had done, and he wanted to get there before it was dark. The men packed up the few items not already in their rucksacks and moved out, Lambert staying behind for a short while to police their campsite. If Helene and Ethan were later taken into custody and revealed where they’d been hidden, Gorski wanted to make sure they weren’t there when the Germans arrived.

  The Revenants reached the observation spot an hour before sunset. While Dumond, Verhoeven, and Johansen stood sentry duty, Gorski and Lambert returned to where they’d hidden the day before to observe the aerodrome. It appeared the bombing raid had focused primarily on the runway and the fighters that had been parked alongside it, and from what Gorski saw, the mission had been a success. He spotted several wrecked aircraft, and work crews were busy filling in the craters scattered across the length of the runway. With his binoculars, Gorski was able to tell that many of the workers were French civilians, probably pressed into service at gunpoint. He thought back to the charges detonating last night, and he wondered if the Germans would commit any sort of reprisals against the civilian population. He convinced himself that they would not, after Berger and Paquet’s deaths, and the apparent involvement of the British bomber forces. With luck, the Germans would just con
sider this akin to a Commando raid, and leave the citizens alone.

  Of course, if they were successful in carrying out their primary mission, reprisals would be much more likely. The Germans would assume the Revenants acted with more local assistance than the two men already accounted for, and they would turn Abbeville upside down hunting for more resistance members. Once that happened, the desperation of the townsfolk to find someone, anyone to place the blame on would mean that one neighbor would offer up another, even if the suspicions were ultimately baseless. Fear, Gorski knew, made cowards and wretches out of everyone, given enough time to work its poison on the will.

  With Lambert staying behind to observe the aerodrome, Gorski and the others took inventory of their weapons and supplies. Since coming to France, they’d acquired sufficient machine pistols and rifles to arm everyone with either weapon, depending on what was needed for the tasks ahead. There were at least five magazines for each machine pistol, and about fifty rounds apiece for the rifles. In addition, they had five Mills bombs remaining, as well as one German stick-grenade. They still had a dozen of their quarter-kilo charges and plenty of time pencils and other fuses. Finally, each man had their personal sidearms and several spare magazines. So far, they had looted far more weaponry than they’d expended, and that was a good thing.

  Over the last year, the Revenants had spent hundreds of hours training with captured German and Italian weapons, as well as the arms of their own home countries, so that when in the field, they would be proficient in whatever weapons they were able to plunder from their dead enemies. Although it was not a perfect strategy, with only five men who needed to move quickly and quietly, it was far better to take what they needed as their mission continued, rather than bring everything they needed with them.

  Beyond their arsenal, they each had a Verey pistol and a box of flares, a pair of binoculars, a compass, a small flashlight, matches and a cigarette lighter, along with a handful of other odds and ends - penknives, signal mirrors, lengths of string and wire. Not knowing what they might need in the days to come, Gorski wasn’t sure if their equipment was more than sufficient, or sorely lacking. He would have prefered to have more grenades, and even better, a captured MG-34 and several thousand rounds of ammunition, but at that point, he might as well just wish for a fully-armed Panzer IV. They would simply have to make do with what they had, and hope that the right opportunity presented itself.

  Just before sunset, Verhoeven managed to kill a hare unlucky enough to wander within range of the Dutchman’s suppressed .32 automatic. Gorski allowed the men to dig a deep fire pit with their bayonets, and Verhoeven dressed his kill and cut the meat into small pieces, threading them along a length of wire strung over the fire pit. Gorski ground up a handful of Berger’s coffee beans with the butt of his knife and put them into tin cups with a little water, allowing each man a small measure of gritty coffee with their meal, the first hot food they’d eaten in days. Although it was a bit of a risk, the fire was hidden from view, and the thin wisp of smoke was hidden by the evening sky. Regardless, Gorski kept track of the wind, making sure it never blew towards the aerodrome, only half a kilometer away.

  The men heard the drone of bombers overhead around midnight, and although they sat awake, alert for any sign of another attack on the aerodrome, the bombers passed well to the north, heading further inland. Some while later, they heard the bombers returning home, but the sounds were a little different - there were fewer planes, and at least one had suffered damage, the stuttering engine audible even kilometers away. Lambert, with the best eyes in the team, spotted a tiny pinprick of light moving east to west, off to the north.

  “Engine fire,” the Belgian said softly, pointing.

  Gorski brought up his binoculars and looked to where Lambert pointed. After some searching, he found the flickering light moving across the sky. As he watched, the flickering grew in strength, and suddenly, turned into a ball of fire tumbling through the air, plunging towards the coast. The men around him muttered in distress at seeing the deaths of their allies, and although Gorski kept sweeping the skies, he saw no signs of parachutes.

  “What kind of bomber do you think that was?” Dumond asked no one in particular.

  Gorski thought for a moment. “Probably a Wellington. Twin-engined, with a crew of five. Bomber Command prefers them for night raids, I believe.”

  “Five dead men,” Johansen said. “Just like that.”

  “Poor bastards,” Verhoeven muttered. “I’d rather die from a bullet or a grenade than go like that, falling to earth, trapped in a burning plane.”

  No one said anything for a long while, until Johansen pulled the cork on a bottle of wine left by Helene and Ethan. He raised it to his lips and took a long slug, then slapped the cork home and handed the bottle to Verhoeven. One by one, each man took a deep draught of wine, silently toasting the dead men.

  “I don’t want to burn,” Johansen said, breaking the silence. “I have nightmares where I burn. I cannot sleep after them.”

  “It is not a good death,” Gorski said, looking off into the dark. “I have seen it, heard it.” He looked around the camp, the dim glow of the coals revealing each man’s face in flickering colors of yellow and orange.

  “If it comes to it,” he said, “we should kill each other, rather than let fire take us.”

  The other men simply nodded, saying nothing.

  No one slept well that night.

  NINETEEN

  The next morning, Gorski watched through binoculars as the French work parties finished repairing the runway craters. Once the men were done, the Germans used a bulldozer to drive back and forth over the filled craters for over an hour. The tracked vehicle’s weight packed down the loosely-filled earth and made it suitable for landing. Watching the bulldozer, Gorski was reminded of the Hotchkiss tank Verhoeven had seen in town the other night.

  Gorski turned to Dumond, who was sitting watch with him. “What kind of armor does a Hotchkiss tank have?”

  The Frenchman shrugged. “Three, maybe four centimeters in the front hull and turret. Lighter along the sides and rear. Even with our charges, we’d have a difficult time destroying it. Cripple its tracks, maybe. If we were able to sabotage it unawares, we would be able to knock out its engine, perhaps set it on fire. That would require getting close, and unopposed.”

  “Could the Panhard’s main gun penetrate the tank’s armor?” Gorski asked.

  Dumond thought for a moment. “Perhaps. A point-blank hit to the upper hull, maybe. But the tank’s glacis is deeply sloped. Your best bet would be to circle around it and come at the sides or rear. But the tank’s gun would penetrate the Panhard with ease. You would have to make the first shot count.”

  After the bulldozer and its attendants finished their work, a team of German engineers walked the length of the runway, and once they departed, no more work was performed there. The last of the wrecked aircraft were pushed or towed away from the runway by the bulldozer, and men crawled over each of the planes, probably looking to salvage whatever was still functional. Only a couple of the planes had been completely destroyed by the bombing raid - the rest had suffered minor damage from bomb fragments or bits of runway debris. With time, Gorski imagined a few of those would be back in the air again.

  A little before noon, the Revenants heard the sound of aircraft approaching from the south-east. Concealing themselves under nearby foliage, they watched as a dozen Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter planes approached the aerodrome, circled in formation, and landed, one by one. Each plane taxied off the runway to where the damaged and destroyed planes had sat just hours before, although Gorski noted that these pilots parked their aircraft significantly further apart. As the pilots climbed from their cockpits, Gorski saw how they all gathered around one of their number.

  “That must be him, that’s Kohl,” Gorski said to the others.

  “Lambert?” Dumond said. “What do you think?”

  The Belgian rested his Swedish Mauser across his ruck
sack, and adjusted the rear sight. He watched for several seconds.

  “I can try, but I wouldn’t be sure. Not at this range. Not without an optic.”

  Gorski shook his head. “No. Maybe if we had an MG-34, we could put a belt or two into that group, chop them to pieces. Then we’d be sure. But no, we’ll have to do it up close, in order to be certain.”

  “In the town?” Johansen asked. “Or on the road?”

  “The road would make it easier to escape,” Gorski replied. “But there is always the chance the pilots get an escort. Killing a dozen men in a couple of staff cars is one thing. But if they’re escorted by a squad or two of infantry, that’s another thing altogether. And there’s the Panhard or the Hotchkiss to think about. If the Germans are paranoid, they might use one of those as an escort.”

  “If it is the town, getting out will be difficult,” Dumond stated. “We were lucky to get the truck out of town last time, but that was because the Germans were spread thin, with so many searching the railyard. If they catch us at a roadblock, we won’t be able to escape.”

  “We wouldn’t use the truck,” Gorski replied. “When we go in, we go in on foot. We can get into town on foot at night if we are careful.”

  After the attack on the gendarmerie, Lambert and the others had driven the truck a kilometer past Paquet’s barn, then turned off the road and onto a narrow cart-path, before parking and hiding it a hundred meters from the road in a dense stand of trees. They hadn’t gone back to check on the vehicle since leaving it there, considering the idea too much of a risk in case the Germans had found it and put it under surveillance. One section of riflemen and a machine-gun team left to watch the truck would ensure any attempt to recover it would end in disaster.