Commando- The Complete World War II Action Collection Volume I

by Jack Badelaire

  So McTeague lied about his age and joined the army. Within a few years, he found himself a member of the Royal Scots, and by the age of twenty (or twenty-three, as far as the army was concerned) Dougal McTeague received his sergeant’s stripes. The massive Scotsman developed the perfect combination of intimidation tempered by willpower, just what was necessary to watch over the King’s flock. One hard look from Sergeant McTeague would snap even the most incorrigible miscreant back into line. Duty, responsibility, discipline, and respect: all these were his in the army.

  And then the rout across France. Despite all the strength in his body and heart, McTeague couldn’t save his men. Young boys died by the score, cut to pieces by machine guns or ripped apart by mortars, bombs, and shellfire. The German Blitzkrieg was an irresistible force, and McTeague learned that he was no immovable object. The killing rage, the glass-sharp temper that he thought long buried, rose up to the surface and McTeague took to the Boche with bayonet, blade, or even his bare fists whenever he could. But the battlefield of 1940 was not a field of triumph for a brawling highlander, and fists as hard as a bar top were nothing compared to the armour plates of a German tank.

  After the humiliation of Dunkirk, McTeague brooded back home, seething with a killer’s rage. He would get drunk and enter himself into regimental boxing matches, only to be banned shortly thereafter because he was too violent in the ring. When the opportunity came to join the Commandos, McTeague lunged at the chance, a lifeline of purpose thrown to a man drowning in his own violent self-pity. A chance to get back at the Jerries, a chance to lead men in purposeful battle once again, a chance to hammer a blade through German flesh and spit in the face of evil.

  Now, along a road running through the French countryside, Dougal McTeague planned murder. He had no idea how many Germans they would face, and that suited him just fine. If you prepare to kill ten men, you’ll never know what to do when you’re faced with a dozen. But if you simply set your mind to kill as many men as you possibly can, you might stand half a chance to come out alive. McTeague daydreamed of slaughtering the Boche with rifles and machine guns until the ammunition ran out, then resorting to grenades and bayonets, finally dying a glorious Highlander’s death surrounded by a ring of enemy bodies.

  Such an end would suit him just fine, he decided. But he wouldn’t let his boys meet such a fate, and then there were the Frenchies to think about. Even though he knew Bouchard was playing dirty cricket, McTeague sympathized with the man’s rage, and his peasant soldiers simply fought to survive and defend their homeland from a conquering host. The French deserved to live and fight another day, and another after that, until they were a free people once more. For all these reasons, McTeague wouldn’t let himself fight just to kill.

  Today, he would fight to win.

  McTeague lay in a ditch along the side of the road, the Bren light machine gun propped on its bipod in front of him. After Smith died, Harris was able to keep the old girl running, but McTeague had placed Harris and the three other riflemen - Lewis, Hall, and Johnson - on the captured MG-34s. Each Commando partnered with a pair of Frenchmen to serve as loaders and assistants in case the guns needed to move or if there were casualties. Although the riflemen were not dedicated machine gun specialists, all of the Commandos had been cross-trained on a variety of Allied and Axis weapons, and they understood how to correctly lay down fire, what targets had the highest priority, when to fall back to avoid being overrun, and more importantly, when not to fall back. McTeague had to strengthen the mettle of the partisans with British iron, forming an alloy strong enough to stand and fight against trained, veteran German infantry.

  Hopefully, there would be less fighting and more professional slaughter. The four MG-34 machine guns were arrayed in a reverse L-shaped pattern, with two guns facing down the road towards the oncoming Germans, each placed a few yards to either side of the road. Two more MG-34s were arrayed in fifty-yard increments in the woods along the side of the road, ready to rake the left-hand side of each troop transport as it entered the killing field. Given the weapon’s high rate of fire - close to nine hundred rounds a minute - within the first ten seconds of the ambush the Germans would take close to six hundred bullets. As deadly as that sounded, of course, McTeague knew that would hardly be enough. Bullets went high, ricocheted off of truck bodies, or simply passed through the random empty spaces around men and vital equipment. He doubted one bullet in ten would find its mark in something important, but the weight of fire was more important than the impact of the bullets. McTeague needed the Germans to freeze up, to halt and hunker down to escape the withering fire. Because once that happened, then the real killing would begin. Partisans with captured MP-38s and British Commandos carrying Thompsons would rake the transports while advancing forward, and once they were close enough, grenades and close combat would - hopefully - finish off the disordered Boche troops.

  McTeague’s thoughts were interrupted by a sound carried on the breeze, the unmistakable rumble of heavy engines traveling the road together. The forest was too thick and the roads too winding to see the German lorries yet, but the sound grew louder by the moment. He turned to his left and found Monsieur Souliere who, despite the protestations of his wife, insisted on fighting with the partisan ambush team. The old man carried one of the ancient Lebel rifles given up by another partisan, who now carried a captured Mauser. He had been offered one of the German rifles, but Souliere had refused, explaining that he had carried a Lebel in the Great War and felt most comfortable with one in his hands again.

  “I ask ye one more time, sir. Please join the other riflemen along the flank. I intend to shove this ‘ere Bren right down the throat of those Boche, and I’ll no doubt be in the thick of it. This is no place for a venerable fellow such as yourself, sir.”

  Souliere shook his head and adjusted the cartridge belt across his chest. “Non. I was fighting Germans before most of these men had let go of their mother’s apron strings. I am not afraid, I will not run, and I can still see well enough to kill Boche.”

  McTeague nodded. “So be it. I’m nae gonna tell ye how to live or die.”

  Just then, a grey shape came around the bend, some two hundred yards distant. McTeague had been expecting only troop transports, heavy lorries easily immobilized by concentrated machine gun fire through their engine bonnets, but leading the way came an armoured car, one more formidable than their own captured vehicle, topped with a turret armed with a light cannon and a machine gun. Ach, shite. We’ve nothing that can kill that beast while staying safe and sound. They would have to do it the hard way, up close with grenades, Thompsons, and a whole lot of luck. Because if the armoured car wasn’t killed, its firepower could chew their entire ambush to pieces.

  Suddenly there was no more time for worry. Lieutenant Price’s Lanchester began to chatter away, and a heartbeat later, the stretch of road ahead of McTeague exploded with machine gun fire.

  The Scottish sergeant tucked the butt of the Bren into his shoulder, peered through the aperture sight, and poured fire at the armoured car’s tyres in a futile attempt at slowing it down.

  24

  The moment Lieutenant Price cut loose with his Lanchester, Lynch sighted down the length of his Thompson and began squeezing short bursts into the passenger beds of the German lorries only thirty yards away. Each of the MG-34 gunners was raking a transport, first concentrating on the engine, then the crew compartment, and then finally finishing their belts by spraying the embarked troops. Carrying mostly submachine guns and rifles, the assault teams were instructed to focus on the German infantry first and leave the vehicles to the machine gunners.

  At such close range, the effect of so much firepower was immediate and devastating. The 7.92mm spitzer bullets fired by the MG-34s were more than powerful enough to punch through the steel bodies of the German transports, ripping apart engine components, puncturing petrol tanks, shredding tyres, and perforating doors to slaughter the crew within the vehicle cabs. Against the unprotected men rid
ing in the transports, the streams of machine gun fire were utterly murderous. Bullets punched through the backs of men, only to burst from their chests and bellies, often with enough force to kill or maim the man sitting opposite. Steel helmets rang with the sound of copper-jacketed slugs tearing through them, and the whine of ricochets filled the air as bullets struck metal support struts, rifle barrels, and other objects.

  As deadly as the machine gun fire was, the gunners were merely raking the vehicles with the goal of stopping the transports and forcing the Germans to keep their heads down. The assault teams, on the other hand, dedicated their fire to killing as many embarked troops as possible. Every rifleman in the assault teams became an ad hoc sniper, firing on any German who exposed himself, while those with Thompsons or MP-38s delivered precise bursts of fire at any sign of resistance. By the time the machine guns had run through their ammunition belts and the assault teams had emptied their magazines, half the Germans in the convoy were either dead or badly wounded.

  Lynch commanded one of the assault teams, made up of himself and four Frenchmen. Two of the men carried MP-38s, while the remaining two carried Mausers with fixed bayonets. Price was in charge of another assault team, some fifty yards further up the road, near the tail end of the six vehicle convoy. He was leading a team of four other partisans, one of them Bouchard. The partisan leader had at first insisted on leading a team himself, but Price was able to win a compromise and take Bouchard as his second-in-command.

  Lynch heard a whistle-blow from his right, Price’s signal to advance, over the steady thumpthumpthump of the armoured car’s 20mm cannon and chattering machine gun. The armoured car at the head of the column was blazing away with all its weapons, and the machine guns at that end of the road were now silent, their crews no doubt in hiding. Such weapons would be futile against the armoured hull of the car, their obvious muzzle flashes serving as easy targets for the car’s own gunners.

  Behind the armoured car, the German lorries were now all stopped, and two of the five were on fire, their engines having burst into flames after being riddled with armour-piercing and incendiary ammunition. Lynch saw the passenger beds of all five transports carpeted with dead and dying German troops. There were sporadic rifle shots coming from the Germans hunkered down on the other side of the five lorries, but this fire was largely ineffectual.

  Some of the survivors tried to run for the treeline on the other side of the road, but an MG-34 team set up to cover that area cut down most of the fleeing men. The rest were easy pickings for Bowen, who had set himself in a tree on that side of the road for just such a purpose. Bowen had killed men more than five hundred yards away during the retreat to Dunkirk, so shooting Germans at less than half that distance, from an elevated position, was almost no challenge at all. Every crack of his P-1914 Enfield signalled another German helmet punctured by a .303 calibre bullet and leaking blood and brains, or another man left scratching feebly at the grass and dirt around him as his life’s blood slowly drained from his body. Yet, to look at him, Bowen might as well have been sitting on the rifle range in Largs, shooting at bullseyes.

  Back in the treeline along the road, Lynch changed magazines and nodded to his four companions. Walking in a crouch, they advanced out of the treeline, firing in short bursts towards the riddled transports and the occasional glimpse of arms or legs in field-grey as the Panzerschützen attempted to return fire. One of his entourage, carrying an MP-38, crumpled in mid-stride, shot through the heart by a steady-handed German at a range of less than ten yards. Lynch fired a burst and saw a coal-scuttle helmet flip through the air, bits of white and pink scattered around it. The two men carrying Mausers paused, each tugging the ignition cord of a Jerry stick-grenade and flinging them high, over the beds of the lorries and onto the other side. There were shouts and cries, silenced a moment later by a pair of scything explosions. The nearest lorry lurched to the right as all the tyres on its right side blew out, shredded by grenade fragments.

  A moment after the grenades detonated, Lynch dropped to one knee and peered under the axle, looking for survivors. He saw one of the Jerries rolling over and reaching for his Mauser, but the partisan to his left saw the man and raked him across the chest with a burst of slugs. None of the other bodies within his field of view moved.

  Lynch turned to the three remaining partisans and made a sweeping gesture with his hand towards a nearby lorry’s fender. “Alright lads, around we go. Look sharp.”

  The four men might not have understood his words, but they knew what they had to do. They scuttled around the tail end of the lorry, weapons sweeping left and right, looking for survivors. Lynch thought the area was clear, but the crack of a bullet passing a hair’s breadth from his face assured him otherwise. Several Germans had taken refuge in the roadside ditch, and as soon as the assault team rounded the lorry’s tailgate, the Boche opened fire from almost point-blank range. One of the Mauser-carrying partisans flipped backwards with a bullet under his chin, the back of his head exploding outward as if it had been mined with a demolition charge. Another let out a sharp cry as a bullet creased his leg.

  As one, Lynch and the two remaining Frenchmen brought up their weapons and emptied their magazines into the ditch. Lynch cut apart the man who had almost killed him, a burst of slugs tearing the man from groin to chin as he crouched and took aim. One partisan let out a shouted curse in French and burned away a nearly-full magazine into the Germans, over two dozen slugs chopping through guts, hearts, and brains. The last partisan fired only one bullet from his Mauser, but the aimed shot punched through the heart of a gut-shot German who’d been trying to tug the ignition cord of a stick-grenade. In those brief few violent seconds, their position was clear of any living Germans.

  A hundred feet to the right, there was a brief fusillade of fire as Price, Bouchard, and the rest of their team came around another lorry and ran into a mostly-intact squad of Germans. The gunfire was intense, but within a few seconds Lynch saw the superior firepower of the assault team sweep through the Boche ranks. Two partisans were on the ground, one of them dead, but the rest stood unharmed. A few arms and legs twitched in the dirt here and there, but all the Germans were dead or dying. Lynch turned to the remaining members of his party to offer congratulations on a job well done.

  The man next to him exploded.

  20mm cannon shells cut through the air a foot from Lynch’s face, their passage felt more than heard. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of Price’s Frenchmen come apart as if torn limb from limb by giant, unseen hands. The man’s left leg sheared away from his body at the hip, his right arm flipped away, severed at the elbow, and his head simply puffed into a pink mist, the shredded scrap-cloth of a cap fluttering through the air.

  Survival instincts born on the battlefield kicked in, and Lynch flung himself backwards, seeking cover underneath the troop bed of the lorry behind him. The roadbed was awash in the drippings of the dead and dying German soldiers in the lorry above. Lynch found himself squirming around in a muddy pool of blood and urine, the fluid still warm to the touch, feeling drops pattering against the back of his clothes as they leaked through the wooden slats.

  Like an avalanche of blacksmith’s hammers crashing down on the troop transport, the armoured car’s cannon shells tore the vehicle to pieces from the front bumper back. Lying underneath the axle, Lynch could see the body of the lorry rocking and shuddering with each impact, bits of expended shrapnel, pieces of shattered metal, and even more blood raining down all around him. Risking a glance, Lynch poked his head out from under the transport just enough to see the hull of the armoured car. The vehicle was backing up along the side of the road, straddling the ditch. The car’s turret was reversed, pointing back up the column, and the cannon was firing sporadic bursts towards Price and his men, who were seeking cover under or on the other side of the remaining lorries behind Lynch.

  Looking around, Lynch grimaced at the leaking remains of what had once been a human being an arm’s length away, th
e man who had taken the first burst of cannon shells. He couldn’t see the last partisan, and thought he must have been killed as well. Then Lynch noticed the cap on the man’s head, just visible above the lip of the ditch. Lynch realized the man still lived because this close, the partisan was crouched lower than the cannon’s ability to depress.

  Just then, the cap rose up several inches, and Lynch made eye contact with the terrified partisan. The man’s hand came up onto the lip of the ditch, fingers digging into the soil. The partisan was going to make a dash towards where Lynch lay under the lorry.

  Lynch waved his hand at the man, urging him to stay where he was. “No, you bloody fool! Get down! Stay down! They can’t shoot you from there!”

  Despite being untouchable by the car’s weapons, the partisan was terrified, stuck out in the open and feeling too exposed. He scrambled, half standing, and took a single step onto the road before a booming shot cut him in half just below the armpits. The man’s lower torso and legs flopped to the ground at the edge of the roadbed. The upper half of the man fell back into the ditch.

  Lynch turned and peered around the flattened tyres of the lorry. He could see the rolling tyres of the armoured car as it approached his position. The front tyres were flattened, presumably by gunfire, but the eight-wheeled car was able to roll on just fine regardless. He was safe if he remained where he lay, but as the car progressed down the column it would be able to cut apart Price’s assault team if they tried to make a dash for the safety of the treeline. If the car passed the whole column, it would bring the turret around again and chop them all to pieces at the crew’s leisure.