Young Lions Roar

by Andrew Mackay

  “Your father is absolutely right, fräulein,” The SS officer said, making the family jump with surprise. He had walked so silently in his patent leather jackboots that they had not heard him approaching. “There is absolutely nothing to worry about. This is nothing but a routine ID check. Sir?” The Obersturmführer gestured with a bow and an outstretched arm towards the door.

  Roos was the last man to leave.

  As the SS officer reached the door he turned around to face the women and children. “Don’t worry,” he assured the worried faces, “it will all be over soon.” He clicked his heels, bowed graciously and closed the door behind him. He turned to face the stormtrooper guarding the door. “Lock the door,” he ordered curtly.

  The loud staccato burst of continuous machine gun fire made the congregation jump and set off a cacophony of crying, shouting and screaming.

  “What’s happening?” Emily shouted as Harry started wailing in her arms.

  “They’re killing all of the men!” a woman shouted in horror as she looked outside through a stained glass window by the door. There was a burst of machine gun fire and the glass shattered as the woman fell backwards and lay sprawled on the floor with a line of bloody bullet holes stitched across the front of her dress.

  The door burst open and half a dozen stormtroopers entered and fired a full magazine of machine gun bullets at point-blank range into the defenceless crowd, knocking down women and children like dominoes.

  “Take cover behind the pulpit!” Monique ordered as each soldier threw a grenade into the church. The family covered their ears as the bombs exploded, setting off half a dozen fires and filling the church with thick acrid smoke.

  Monique watched with mounting horror as a continuous chain of stormtroopers filed into the church and threw chairs, tables and anything made of wood onto the pile of bodies of the people that the Nazis had already murdered.

  “They’re going to burn down the church!” Monique realised. “Quickly! Head for the vestry! There’s a window that we can escape through to the cemetery and the river. Follow me,” she ordered.

  Monique started to crawl on her hands and knees towards the vestry at the back of the church, and Anne and Emily followed her. The young mother was finding the crawling difficult as she was carrying Harry with one hand and supporting their combined weights with the other hand. Smoke continued to rise towards the roof, and the fires were crackling with greater force and fury as they spread though out the church. Stormtroopers positioned at the door continued to periodically fire bursts of bullets into any areas where they thought any survivors might be hiding. The sound of people crying, shouting, screaming and begging for help and mercy was swiftly becoming overwhelmed by the cracking sound of the wooden rafters and furniture breaking as the fire consumed them.

  Monique crawled through the door to the vestry, stood up and climbed onto a table positioned under the window. She looked away and shielded her face with one hand and smashed the window with her other elbow, sending the shattered glass flying onto the ground outside.

  “You first, Anne,” Monique ordered. “Be careful of the drop; it’s quite a distance, it’s almost three yards.”

  Anne quickly climbed onto the table and nimbly climbed through the window. She lowered herself as far as she could before she fell onto the ground outside, landing on all fours like a cat.

  “I’ll go next and then you climb onto the table and lower Harry to me, Emily. Then you follow, all right?”

  “Yes, mum,” Emily answered.

  Monique climbed through the window, lowered herself and dropped onto the ground outside, where she landed with surprising agility.

  “All right, Emily. Climb onto the table and pass Harry through the window.”

  Emily face appeared at the window and she had already passed Harry through the window, before she recoiled in shock and horror as she realised how far the drop was to the ground outside.

  “Drop Harry, Emily!” Monique ordered. “We’ll catch him!”

  “What?” Emily asked in disbelief. “Drop my baby? Are you crazy?”

  “We can’t reach him, Emily,” Anne explained. “The window is too high off the ground and we’re not tall enough. Drop Harry, Emily. We’ll catch him, I promise.”

  “No!” Emily protested through tear-filled eyes as she hugged Harry tightly to her chest. “You’ll miss catching him and he’ll be killed!”

  A burst of machine gun fire.

  “Save Harry, Mummy!” Emily’s face disappeared from the window as she threw Harry out of the window with her last ounce of strength.

  Monique caught Harry squarely in both of her arms and planted a great big kiss on his sooty forehead through tear-filled eyes.

  Another burst of machine gun fire.

  Monique crumpled in a heap to the ground. Anne spun around to see a Nazi standing less than fifty yards away; she reacted instinctively and ran full pelt for the river that she knew ran parallel alongside the cemetery wall. She cleared the wall with a perfect hurdle jump that would have made her athletics coach proud, took half a dozen steps, and then dived into the swiftly flowing River Ouse.

  Obersturmführer Heinrich Koch smiled with paternal pleasure as he listened to his boys belting out the rousing verses of the popular marching song ‘We march against England.’ “The men more than compensate for their lack of skill with their enthusiasm, Reinhard.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, sir,” Scharführer Reinhard Frank replied, “They’re not that bad: they have no trouble singing the right notes…”

  “They just have trouble singing them in the right order!” Koch completed the joke as the whole car dissolved into fits of laughter.

  Koch jolted forwards in his seat as his driver suddenly slammed on the brakes in an emergency stop.

  “What the hell, Ley?” Koch said in anger as he rubbed his bruised chest.

  “The road is blocked, sir,” Ley explained patiently.

  “What is it this time?” Koch said. He slammed the seat in frustration with his fist as he stood up in the back of the car to see over the head of his driver. “Cows? Sheep?”

  “No, sir,” Ley replied. “Pigs.”

  “Pigs?” Koch shielded his eyes to see more clearly. The convoy was driving west back towards their barracks in Hereward and his vision was obscured by the glare of the setting sun. “Well, I don’t care whether they’re pigs, cows, sheep or a herd of buffalo, Ley - get them the hell out of the way!” Koch ordered angrily.

  Ley beeped the horn three times and then got out of the car. “You there, get your pigs the hell out of the way! Raus! Raus! Schnell! Schnell!” Ley shouted at the farmer and waved his arms towards the pigs to shoo them out of the way.

  “Now, now, temper, temper,” the farmer replied.

  The burst of Schmessier machine gun bullets drilled a line of bloody holes into Ley’s chest, caught Koch in the stomach, and took off the top of Frank’s head, exposing his brains.

  Two MG 42 machine guns opened fire on the two lorries from the side of the road, raking each lorry from front to back methodically once, twice, three times.

  When the screaming had finally stopped and had been replaced by moans, the farmer blew three short sharp blasts on his whistle.

  The MG 42 machine guns immediately stopped firing.

  A figure rapidly ran towards the rear of the last lorry, fired a burst of machine gun rounds into the back, threw in a hand grenade, and took cover. After the hand grenade had exploded, he opened the driver’s door and fired a burst of bullets into the cab. The man then moved onto the front lorry and repeated the procedure.

  “Clear!” the figure shouted.

  The farmer blew a long, loud whistle blast. The MG 42 machine gun crews leaped up from their ambush positions and ran towards the convoy with their weapons in the ready position, prepared to fire at a moment’s notice. The ambush had been executed so efficiently and effectively that the Nazis had not had the opportunity to fire back a single round in reply.


  “Re-org,” the farmer ordered. “Check the enemy dead.”

  “Any survivors?” Alice asked as she approached Leon with her finger on the trigger of her Schmessier.

  “I don’t know: your brother is just checking,” Leon replied. “Sam, remember to take care of the wounded.”

  Two double taps. “Taking care of the wounded right now,” Sam announced. He emerged from the back of the rear lorry with his Luger pistol still smoking in his hand. “Two of them survived the MG 42s, my Schmessier, and a hand grenade. Lucky bastards,” Sam shook his head in awe and wonder. “Miracles will never cease to amaze me.”

  “When I said ‘take care of the wounded’, Sam, two bullets in the brain was not exactly what I had in mind,” Leon said dryly.

  “Christ!” Sam said in exasperation. “How was I to know? What the hell do we need prisoners for? If I wanted to look after Nazis rather than kill them then I would’ve become a nurse!”

  “We need prisoners to interrogate to find out what the hell happened in Frampton, Sam,” Alice explained slowly. “Next time, maybe I should draw you a diagram,” she continued sarcastically. Alice suddenly grabbed her little brother in a headlock and knuckled his head roughly.

  “Ow! That hurts! Get your cotton-picking hands off me, sis!” Sam protested.

  “Hey! We’ve got a live one here!” Alan shouted from the front of the convoy.

  The ambushers ran to the front with their weapons at the ready.

  “Who is it?” Sam asked.

  “An Obersturmführer,” Alan answered. “He’s been shot in the stomach. I don’t think that he’s going to live very long…”

  “You’re bloody right he’s not going to live very long!” Alice interrupted angrily. “Anne said that an SS Obersturmführer was in charge. I bet that this is the bastard who gave the orders!” Alice raised her Schmessier machine gun to her shoulder and squeezed the trigger.

  Leon batted her weapon out of the way just as she opened fire, and the rounds flew harmlessly into the air.

  “What the hell did you do that for?” Alice demanded angrily. “The bastard deserves to die a thousand deaths!”

  “And he will, Alice, he will,” Leon said. “But first of all we need to find out what the hell happened in Frampton - as you explained earlier, do you remember? So calm down.”

  “All right, all right,” Alice agreed grudgingly as she flicked on her safety catch and took her finger off the trigger.

  Leon turned to face the ashen-faced Obersturmführer who was bleeding his life away on the back car seat. “Now listen up, Fritz, and listen well. You’re dying and there’s nothing that can be done to stop that, but we can ease your suffering so that you die quickly and relatively painlessly, or we can increase your suffering so that you die slowly and painfully. Do you understand?”

  Koch nodded his head through gritted teeth.

  “Why Frampton?”

  “Why not?” Koch smiled, revealing blood-soaked teeth.

  “What had the people of Frampton ever done to you, you murdering Nazi bastard?” Alice lunged at him and had to be held back by Leon and his two sons.

  “Alice, please!” Leon urged. “Control yourself!”

  Alice reluctantly relented, and stopped struggling. “All right! I won’t kill him… yet.”

  “Frampton was the nearest village to the hospital,” the Nazi explained. “They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “But the villagers were completely innocent!” Alice exclaimed in exasperation. “And the Police said that the fire was an accident!”

  Koch shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “Whether the fire was an accident or was started on purpose is of no consequence…”

  “What do you mean?” Leon asked.

  “Germans died so British people had to die…”

  “Even if they were completely innocent and had nothing to do with it?”

  Koch gave a crooked smile. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, as the good book says.” He chuckled and coughed up a globule of blood.

  “You’re damn right,” Alice said. A single pistol shot rang out, and Koch slumped forwards in his seat with a surprised expression on his face.

  “So Koch didn’t mention a damn thing to you?” Sturmbannführer Ulrich demanded as he leaned on his desk, resting his weight on both sets of knuckles. Ulrich’s face was scarlet with anger.

  “Koch did say that he was going to teach the British a lesson that they would never forget, but he didn’t give any specific details, sir,” Obersturmführer Monat replied.

  “Did he say who gave him the order to carry out the operation, Monat?”

  Monat shook his head. “No, Sir. Technically, Koch and his platoon were off duty and were actually on weekend leave…”

  “So Koch decided to carry out a one-man vigilante mission.” Ulrich shook his head in disbelief. “Don’t tell me, in revenge for the deaths of our wounded in the Hereward Hospital fire?”

  Monat’s silence answered the question.

  “And Niebergall carried out his revenge attack as payback for the Saint George’s Day Massacre? And now both of them are dead along with all of their men. No doubt they were killed in turn by the Resistance in revenge for their attacks against British civilians, and so it goes on and on ad infinitum. What a bloody waste of lives.” Ulrich shook his head in frustration. “You would have thought that the stupid bastards would have learnt something by now.”

  A pregnant pause. “Permission to speak, sir?” Monat asked awkwardly.

  “Permission granted, Monat,” Ulrich replied. “Feel free to speak frankly.”

  “I… I don’t know quite how to put this, sir…” Monat stumbled.

  “Come on, man. Out with it. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

  Monat coughed and straightened even further to a more rigid position of attention. “There is a general feeling that you’re in over your head and that you don’t have a firm enough grip of the situation and don’t know how to deal with the British or the Resistance,” Monat blurted out. “Sir.” The young German officer clicked his heels together and bowed his head in submission as he waited for the inevitable storm which was about to burst over him.

  Ulrich stared at Monat for a second, before he exploded with a full-throated belly-aching laugh. Monat was caught completely off-guard as his commanding officer rocked backwards and forwards in his chair. Monat looked as if he was about to suffer a heart attack. “My dear Monat, do you think that this comes as a complete surprise to me? Six months ago I was the same rank as you. I was an Obersturmführer in command of a platoon of thirty men and now I’m a Sturmbannführer in command of a brigade - a brigade, Monat, of approximately three thousand men. Of course I’m in over my head!” Ulrich wiped away tears of laughter from his eyes with one hand as he continued, “No one is more aware of that than yours truly. Talk about stating the bloody obvious! I know more than anyone that I was promoted to fill dead man’s shoes and that it is purely as result of luck and being in the right place at the right time that I am here where I am today, the youngest Sturmbannführer in the entire SS.”

  Monat was rendered speechless by such a frank response. “I… I don’t know what to say, sir.”

  Ulrich waved his hand dismissively. “It’s all right, Monat, you don’t have to say anything. I know that many people consider me to be too soft to deal with the situation because I happen to think that the right way to win the loyalty of the British is not necessarily by executing innocent hostages or by reducing entire villages to nothing but rubble and ashes.”

  “And what is the right way, sir?” Monat was genuinely intrigued.

  “By winning their hearts and minds and by convincing them that National Socialism is a superior method of government to democracy.”

  “Oh…”

  Ulrich waved his hand in the air dismissively. “Anyway, it’s all academic now. My command of the brigade was only ever going to be temporary.” Ulrich chuckled. “You can’t have a tw
enty-three-year-old running an entire brigade permanently!”

  “I… I don’t understand, sir…”

  “Berlin is sending someone over to take the situation in hand, Monat.” Ulrich glanced down at the name written on his notepad. “Brigadeführer Fritz Herold.”

  Ulrich enjoyed watching the colour drain from Monat’s face.

  “Brigadeführer Herold, sir?”

  “Yes, Monat.” Ulrich smiled wickedly. “The Butcher of Birmingham himself.”

  Monat gulped.

  “He will make Brigadeführer Schuster seem like the Virgin Mary in comparison. God save us all.” Ulrich took a gulp of whiskey.

  “Amen to that.”

  “I am known as a brutal dog,” Brigadeführer Fritz Herold announced to the assembled SS officers of his new Brigade. “That is why the Führer chose me to take command of all SS forces in Hereward.” Herold gazed across the sea of faces who were hanging on his every word. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear, gentlemen: our mission is to suck from Britain all the good that we can get hold of without consideration of the feelings or the property of the British. We will accomplish this mission with or without the cooperation of Prime Minister Joyce’s Government of National Unity,” Herold said scornfully. “Personally, I have little time for traitors who sell out their country. I have far more respect for Churchill up in Scotland. He hasn’t sold out his country for pieces of silver. If Joyce doesn’t cooperate he will simply be replaced with someone who does, such as a Petain-like figure in France or a Quisling-type character in Norway, or the British Government will be done away with completely and we will rule directly such as we already do with Bohemia Moravia. In order to achieve this mission I expect from you the utmost severity towards the British population: the Führer has ordered the complete and utter annihilation of all British men, women and children who oppose us, without pity or mercy. Only in this way can we achieve security in Britain and protect our Western flank against an American attack in the future.”

  There was a murmur of agreement from the assembled SS officers.

  “I have organised this demonstration for the benefit of our British subjects so that they understand that we are deadly serious in our determination to destroy all of our enemies.” Herold turned to an SS officer standing by his side. “Proceed, Hauptsturmführer.”