Commando- The Complete World War II Action Collection Volume II

by Jack Badelaire

  Suddenly, the roar of a machine gun came from the floor above them. Several of the Norwegians cried out in surprise and fright, while Una burst into tears, burying her head in Arna’s shoulder and sobbing in terror. Arna heard the tinkle of bullet casings bouncing on the floorboards overhead, and then the machine gun fired twice more. Each time, the weapon only fired for perhaps a second, but the shots were so fast Arna couldn’t count them. She wondered how close the British must be already, but since none of the men with rifles on the first floor were shooting, or even appeared concerned, Arna figured the Germans up above her had a better view. The blond man with the machine pistol walked to the foot of the stairs and shouted something at the men above. After they answered, the machine gun ceased to fire.

  “He told them to stop wasting ammunition,” the foreman whispered. “The British are still at the other end of the town.”

  “Do you think the Germans will drive them away?” Arna asked.

  The foreman shrugged. “Who knows? I hope so, if only for our sakes.”

  Arna nodded, then turned to watch the Germans’ leader. The blond man stood at a nearby window, looking through a pair of field glasses. Arna noticed he had a waxy-looking scar peeking up and out of his uniform collar along the side of his neck. The man turned and said something to a nearby soldier holding a rifle and smoking a cigarette. The two shared a joke and laughed.

  They do not seem especially worried, Arna thought to herself. I don’t know if that is a good thing, or bad.

  Chapter 17

  South Vaagso

  0930 Hours

  Lynch inserted another magazine into his Thompson, then ducked back as a Mauser bullet tore a large chunk of wood from the corner of the building he was hiding behind. Lynch turned and looked at Nelson, who crouched behind him, his own submachine gun at the ready.

  “Bloody wanker isn’t happy with us, is he?” Nelson asked, grinning. A smear of blood across his face showed where a large wooden splinter had gouged his forehead a minute ago, missing his eyes by an inch.

  “A wee bit cross, so he is,” Lynch agreed. Double-checking the bolt of his Thompson, Lynch took a deep breath, then leaned out from behind cover and fired a long burst towards the second-story window of a building thirty yards away. Remnants of broken window glass exploded into fragments tumbling through the air, and fist-sized chunks of wood were torn away from the window frame. As he fired, Nelson sprinted past, quickly covering the ten yards between their building and another to Lynch’s left. A puff of dirty snow exploded behind Nelson as he ran, but the big Cockney made it to cover uninjured, nearly bowling over Hall, White, and Bowen, who were already on the other side of the street.

  “Missed me, you tosser!” Nelson shouted at the top of his lungs. Lynch noted with a smirk that despite Nelson’s bravado, his squadmate had the prudence to keep from showing himself when insulting the German sniper.

  After the initial success achieved in overrunning the German strongpoint at the southern end of South Vaagso, the Commandos’ momentum had come to an abrupt halt, as many of the German defenders dispersed into nearby buildings, while others moved to the north-west of the town, up into the rocky hillside overlooking South Vaagso, where they were hidden by snow-covered trees and broken ground.

  Almost immediately, the Commandos began to take casualties. Every window, doorway, and alleyway seemed to hide a German marksman with a steady aim and ice water in his veins. As a result, there was a procession of wounded men being carried back towards the beachhead. It appeared that whatever advantage in surprise and numbers the British initially possessed, it was long gone by now, and the tempo of the assault was firmly in the possession of the town’s defenders. The Commandos had to clear each building floor by floor, room by room, against Germans who had clearly seen combat before.

  Lynch felt a finger tap his shoulder and turned to find Lieutenant Price standing behind him with McTeague and the rest of the squad. Each man knelt in the dirty snow, breath fogging in front of their faces, greatcoats sodden and muddy.

  “Persistent chap, isn’t he?” Price asked.

  The second-floor sniper had already wounded a Bren gunner who’d tried to kill him from further back, near the beachhead. Now, the Commandos had worked their way closer to the sniper’s position, but the man was a crack shot with fast reflexes - any man who exposed himself for more than a second was in danger of taking a bullet.

  “Aye, he’s got the Devil’s own luck, to be sure,” Lynch replied. “And there be a few others in the building with him. A fellow with a submachine gun and a couple of riflemen. We think the sniper’s further back in the building, shooting through holes chopped in the walls inside. Can’t even see the muzzle flash now, to spot where he’s hiding.”

  “Well, we’ve got to get across this open ground and link up with the rest of Captain Forrester’s men to the west,” Price told Lynch. “So there’s no way around it, really. If you don’t mind, I’ll cross next.”

  “Lieutenant’s next, boyos!” Lynch hollered. Nelson gave him the thumbs-up, and on a count of three, the two corporals stuck the muzzles of their Thompsons out and cut loose with long bursts of .45 calibre slugs.

  Price dashed across the open ground, but out of the corner of Lynch’s eye, he saw the Commando officer slip on a patch of ice and skid, windmilling his arms and spreading his legs out wide, his body twisting around as he tried to keep from falling. A rifle cracked, and blood sprayed from Price's head. His helmet flew away from the impact, the chin strap broken. The Commando officer was knocked off his feet and sprawled in the snow, his weapon sliding away from him, limbs moving feebly.

  Lynch stared at Price’s body for a long moment. Without thinking, he moved to run and drag him back, but a steel-trap hand clamped down onto Lynch’s shoulder.

  “Ye run out there, ye’ll be lying in the snow next to him,” McTeague growled.

  Lynch nodded. He looked across at Nelson, whose face was a mask of rage. For all their differences in class and upbringing, Nelson was fiercely loyal to Price, and Lynch saw how Nelson was straining with the urge to run out and aid their commanding officer. Trooper Hall, their squad’s medical orderly, waved his arms to catch their attention.

  “I’ll make the run to drag him away!” shouted Hall. “But I need covering fire!”

  McTeague thought for a moment, then turned behind him. “Higgins, go with Herring and take the Bren into this building here, and set it up to cover that window. Be bloody careful ye aren’t seen by that bastard and get shot yerselves. When we open fire from out here, ye pour Hell into that building and nae stop, even if the bloody barrel melts off!”

  The two men nodded and proceeded to move inside the two-story wooden home they’d been using for cover, while Lynch reloaded his Thompson with a fresh magazine. McTeague tapped a Mills Bomb hanging from Lynch’s webbing.

  “When I tell ye, throw two of those at the building, and get them as close as ye can,” McTeague said. “There’s a great bloody pile of snow in front, and if ye blow it up, it’ll give us good cover for an instant or two.”

  Lynch nodded and propped his Thompson against his knee, then unclipped two Mills Bombs from his web gear, pulling the pin from one but keeping it in hand. Just then, Price moved his legs and reached up towards his face.

  “Lads?” Price called out weakly.

  Across from Lynch, Trooper Hall edged to the corner of the building. “Lieutenant, please, stay still!”

  But it was too late. The sniper’s Mauser cracked again, and Price cried out as a bullet struck him in the side, a puff of blood and fabric flying into the air with the bullet’s impact. Price gasped and shuddered, limbs stirring the snow around him.

  Hall let out a curse and started to step out from behind the corner of the building. Lynch watched as Nelson grabbed Hall’s arm, trying to hold him back, but Hall pulled free.

  “That bastard will shoot him to pieces!” Hall shouted at Nelson, then dashed out into the open.

  “Shite!
” McTeague cursed. “Bloody idiot! Cover him, ye fools!”

  Lynch threw the grenade in his hand as hard as he could towards the sniper’s hideout, and then ripped the pin from the second one and threw it a second later, before snatching up his Thompson and opening fire. McTeague stood over him and emptied his own Thompson around the corner of the building, while Nelson and White gave covering fire with their own weapons. Bowen rolled out at the base of the building with his pistol in hand, firing as fast as he could pull the trigger. Inside the building next to him, Lynch heard the roar of the squad’s Bren, as Higgins emptied the weapon’s 30-round magazine in one long, scything burst.

  The two grenades exploded only a moment apart, sending plumes of dirty snow high into the air. Dozens of bullets riddled the building across both stories, tearing holes through the wooden walls and sending splinters everywhere, along with the few bits of glass still clinging to the window frames. Even shingles leapt from the eaves as stray rounds smacked into the roof. As Lynch’s Thompson ran dry, he stared at their target for a moment, amazed at the destruction they’d wrought, and certain no one could have lived through that fusillade.

  Hall made it to Price without being hit, the medic grabbing the lieutenant’s webbing with both hands. Price cried out in pain as Hall began to drag him back behind the building, and they nearly made it before a submachine gun fired a burst from inside the building. One of the bullets punched through the back of Hall’s left calf, and the Commando medic stumbled, falling backwards. Luckily, Nelson and White managed to catch him and hold him upright long enough for Hall to get Price behind the building and into cover.

  “Is the lieutenant alive?” Lynch hollered across to the others.

  Hall lowered Price to the snowy ground, and kneeling slowly with his wounded leg, performed a brief examination before turning towards Lynch, his face drawn with worry.

  “He’s been shot through the eye!” Hall called out. “I need a runner to fetch a litter team, now!”

  “I’ll go,” Bowen said, reloading his pistol and slinging his sniper rifle.

  “Aye, go on with ye, and make haste!” McTeague said, waving him on. “The rest of ye, we need to deal with these bastards.”

  As Hall began to administer aid to Price, Nelson unslung his rucksack, rummaging within before producing a block of demolition explosive. He held it up and showed it to Lynch and McTeague.

  “Oi, what about this?” Nelson asked. “Should knock a hole in that bloody building, eh?”

  “Can ye throw it that far?” McTeague asked. “It cannae be close, it needs to be right against the wall.”

  “For these buggers, I can throw it like it’s fired from a bleedin’ howitzer,” Nelson replied.

  "Do it," McTeague ordered, and while Nelson fitted the block of demolition explosive with a ten-second pull fuse, McTeague informed Higgins and Herring of what was about to happen. Once the demo block was ready, Lynch and McTeague readied their weapons, and McTeague gave Nelson a nod, then thumped his massive fist against the side of the building. As Higgins began firing his Bren in short, sweeping bursts across the front of the enemy’s building, Nelson tugged on the ring of the pull fuse, causing it to pop and begin smoking. Nelson took a half-step out from behind cover and heaved the demo block with all his strength, the explosive flying through the air, trailing a thin wisp of smoke, before hitting the side of the building with a thunk and dropping into the snow.

  Nelson drew himself back into cover an instant before a shot cracked out, missing him. A second later, there was a massive whoomp as the demo block detonated, blowing great clouds of snow and shattered wooden debris everywhere. Immediately, Lynch and McTeague charged out from around the corner of the building, their Thompsons up and at the ready, while Higgins had the Bren firing again, short bursts of three or four shots at a time tearing into the guts of the wrecked home.

  As the two charging Commandos rushed forward, they saw a wounded German stagger out from a gaping hole in the building’s wall, holding his rifle up over his head. Blood from a dozen splinter wounds covered the German’s face and hands, and his uniform was darkened with blood from further injuries. As the German saw the two Commandos approaching, grim-faced and weapons trained, the German’s eyes grew wide and he shook his head.

  “Nein, nein!” the German pleaded.

  “Ja, ja!” Lynch snarled back, pulling the trigger on his Thompson and riddling the German with a half-dozen bullet holes. The German coughed out a spray of blood and pitched backwards into the opening in the wall, eyes staring wide. Lynch looked to McTeague, daring the Scotsman to say something, but all he received from his sergeant was a thin-lipped nod.

  As Nelson and White caught up to them, the four men stepped into the ruins of the house. The air was thick with dust, and gunfire had ripped everything apart, leaving not a single piece of furniture intact. Much of it had been moved and piled into makeshift defensive positions, pushed up against the walls below and around windows in order to provide cover. A quick search of the house revealed three other dead Germans, one of them bearing the rank insignia of a Stabsfeldwebel. Lynch noticed that the senior sergeant’s ammunition pouches were all empty, as was the magazine well of the MP-38 in his left hand, while the right hand still clutched the man’s last fresh magazine. Two bullet holes darkened the Stabsfeldwebel’s upper chest with blood, and the man’s eyes stared lifelessly down at the full magazine in his hand, as if loading his weapon was his last, dying thought.

  “Well, we sorted out this lot,” McTeague said, his voice thick and weary as he turned to leave the ruined building. “Time to see to the lieutenant, and move on to find Captain Forrester.”

  Chapter 18

  South Vaagso

  1000 Hours

  Lynch watched as a pair of Commandos walked past, a wounded comrade suspended between them on a blanket scavenged from a nearby home. Blood had soaked through the blanket, and as the casualty was carried by, Lynch saw a trail of blood droplets in the snow behind them. Lynch wondered if the man would survive long enough to make it aboard a ship and be operated on by a naval surgeon.

  Somehow he doubted it.

  To the north, perhaps only two hundred yards into South Vaagso, the Germans had formed a defensive line anchored on the Ulvesund Hotel. Those pockets of resistance who’d held them up at the southern edge of town had given the rest of the defenders time to fall back and prepare for the advancing Commando teams. Casualties were mounting, as the entrenched German defenders took their toll on the British. Lynch had already heard that several of the men aboard the burned landing craft had perished, and a number of other casualties had occurred already in the assault on the town.

  A few feet away from Lynch, a Bren gunner, set up where a low stone garden wall met the side of a house, paused as his loader changed magazines. Beyond them, a pair of riflemen took turns poking their heads out from around the corner of a building to take potshots at a house further down the block. A nearby lieutenant was issuing orders to his sergeant, while a lance-corporal was loading hand grenades from an opened crate into canvas satchels and handing them off to house-clearing teams. A burly Commando walked by with a Boys anti-tank rifle perched across his shoulders, his knees sodden with melted snow and mud, while his companion kept pace, carrying a pilfered MP-38.

  Overhead, Blenheim long-range fighters tangled with a pair of German Messerschmitts. Lynch watched as one of the bigger, slower Blenheims tried to climb out of the way of a Messerschmitt’s attack run, but the smaller, more nimble German fighter adjusted its aim and opened fire, machine guns raking the Blenheim’s undercarriage from nose to tail. The Blenheim veered away trailing smoke, and a few seconds later, vanished in a ball of fire as it crashed into the mountainside overlooking South Vaagso. Lynch cursed the German pilot, who peeled away to the south, searching for another target.

  To the east, out in the Ulvesund, a pair of destroyers were systematically destroying every ship in the harbour. A few of the armed German trawlers attempted
to engage the much larger British ships, but their resistance was short-lived. Further out, into the Vaagsfjord, Kenya and her other two destroyers fired antiaircraft flak at the German fighters, while their main guns continued to engage the Rugsundo battery, which stubbornly refused to be permanently silenced, no matter how much ordnance the British vessels fired at it.

  The nearby Bren team began firing down the street again. Lynch looked out carefully from behind the corner of the building he was leaning against, watching the tracers disappear through a doorway some two hundred yards distant. Lynch didn't see who they were firing at, but every few seconds, the Bren gunner squeezed off a short burst of three or four rounds, conserving his ammunition and keeping his barrel cool. A lance-corporal was kneeling next to the team, only his head showing above the stone wall, and he was observing the target with a pair of field glasses. Whoever it was they were trying to kill, it was clear they weren’t having much success. A single shot from a Mauser smacked into the garden wall, sending bits of pulverized stone into the air. The lance-corporal turned and said something to the Bren gunner, who adjusted his aim slightly and fired a long burst. The lance-corporal observed the target area for a moment before shaking his head.

  Lynch turned as Bowen trudged up along an alleyway, his rifle unslung and in hand. His face was grim, and for a moment, Lynch feared the worst.

  “The lieutenant?” he asked.

  Bowen looked away for a moment. "We got him to the beach. The M.O. was amazed he was still alive," Bowen said, looking sick. "They said they’d get him on the first landing craft back to the ships."