by Tom Clancy
And so Antoine ordered the siege to continue.
Meanwhile, word had come that Captain Wauthier had received an airdrop the night before. Now the strength of his SAS unit had grown to thirty men, and he had mortars and British Piats (which were like bazookas). With this added firepower, Dominique and Singlaub reasoned that it ought to be possible to break the siege at Egletons in a few hours… and rake in the Germans heavy machine guns and antitank guns, which were badly needed.
A runner was dispatched to Wauthier with the request.
And then, at 0900, the Nazis in the Egletons garrison got their help, in the form of three Luftwaffe Heinkel-111 medium bombers. The Heinhels swooped down low for bomb runs, one after the other, while Hubert's Maquis and the Jeds dived for cover.
The first plane dropped a stick of 100-kilo bombs that blasted the row of houses facing the school. The concussion shook everything nearby, and the red-flickering tailgun swept up afterward.
When the second I Ieinkel lined up on FTP positions, several brave — or recklessly foolish — Communists raced into the center of the road and fired rifles and Sten guns at the plane, braving machine-gun fire from both the school and the Heinkel's nose gunner. Two bombs dropped out of the plane into somebody's garden. They exploded moments later.
A time delay! Singlaub realized. So the low-flying bombers could escape the blast. If properly coordinated, he quickly reasoned, Bren guns, which fired the same.303 round as a Spitfire fighter, might throw off the bombardicrs' aim and take the pressure off the Maquis front-line positions.
Dominique grabbed four Bren gunners from the FTP units, while Singlaub rounded up four from Hubert and set them up in the sunken road. Singlaub gave instructions and Dominique translated. The Heinkels were now making single bomb passes that took them directly overhead. As a bomber approached, he and Dominique would estimate its speed and altitude and hold up fingers to indicate how many plane-length leads the gunners should allow when they fired — one finger equaled one lead, two fingers equaled two, and so on. A clenched fist meant no lead.
A Heinkel was now coming in below 200 feet, lined up directly above the sunken road. The Bren gunners crouched at the ready. Singlaub could clearly see the pilots in their leather helmets. He took a breath and stepped out, with one finger raised. "Fire!"
But then the pilot saw them, and at the last minute banked right. So the rounds that hit only raked his left wingtip.
Better luck next time, Singlaub hoped.
The next Heinkel drove in from Dominique's direction, and Dominique was standing there, clearly visible, his fist beating against the sky. "No lead!" Singlaub yelled. The Brens coughed and rattled as one, with accurate, coordinated fire, hosing the green-painted bomber with a Spitfire's firepower at point-blank range. Shards of glass scattered from the nose, holes appeared in the belly and right engine nacelle, and you could see oil streaming along the base of the wing.
The pilot banked hard left, aborting the bomb run, and limped away on one engine. His right engine was out and throwing clouds of smoke. He slowly lost altitude as he staggered north over the Correze valley. Singlaub later learned that the Heinkel had crashed and burned a few kilometers away.
The Maquis screamed and howled, wild with the ecstasy of the kill. And Singlaub was no less thrilled. "My heart thudded in my throat and temples," he recalled later. "My breath was ragged. I was caught up in the rage of battle."
At 130 °Captain Wauthier and his SAS platoon sprinted into town under a rain of bullets. The Heinkels had been replaced by three Focke-Wulf 190 fighter-bombers, which were strafing anything that moved, and punctuating that with fragmentation bombs. The superbly trained SAS troops seemed indifferent to all this, and looked very glamorous in their red berets.
Soon SAS NCOs had taken charge and were preparing mortar positions. The plan was to lay down a mortar barrage on the school courtyard. It was hoped this would drive the German troops indoors and allow the Maquis to push their Bren gun positions forward and dig them in. Singlaub decided to act as forward observer and direct the mortar fire.
In the meantime, Dominique would try to track down the elusive Antoine and do what he could to convince him to allow his forces to join the attack, or at least to lend troops for ambushes north of town.
Singlaub returned to his early-morning observation position in the attic of the house near the school. This time, FTP troops he passed on the way included Bren gunners who'd fought the Heinkels with him that morning; they greeted him with welcoming smiles. He was no longer persona non grata among the Communists.
He made his way carefully up the stairs of the now-much-damaged house. The roughly planked attic floor was littered with slate fragments and splintered wood from the 37mm shell. Entrance and exit holes in the steeply raked roof indicated the shell's path. He crouched low, slithered across the floor, and took up a position he hoped would be invisible.
Moments later, the first SAS mortar round arced into the courtyard, driving German soldiers out of shallow foxholes in a hedgerow into the cover of the school. Singlaub shouted down to a young FTP sergeant, who was acting as his relay, "Correct fire twenty meters right, and then forward." The next round dropped on a timber barricade near the school's administration wing. Another covey of enemy troops raced into the school. Singlaub was beginning to feel good. Now they were getting even for the heavy air attacks they'd faced that morning. A few rounds later, the mortar rounds had nicely bracketed all of the German outside positions, and it was time to drop a few rounds onto the school itself. Since several machine gunners had set up positions in the school attic, Singlaub directed fire onto the roof (like the local houses, slate-and-timber), with the aim of driving the Germans down to lower floors. For this job, Wauthier added phosphorus to the high-explosive rounds. Soon, fires were burning merrily in the attic.
Things were going so well that Singlaub forgot where he was — and that the Germans would be looking hard for the forward observer — or that he was silhouetted against the 37mm exit hole as he crouched beside the circular entrance hole. His carelessness did not go unnoticed. In a flash, steel-jacketed machine gun rounds were clattering against the slate, spraying the entrance hole, and madly ricocheting about the attic.
He was hit.
The next thing he knew, he was sprawled on his back. "My skull [was] ringing like a gong," he said. "It was as if someone had thrown a bucketful of rocks in my face. I felt the blood, warm and salty, on my right check, then saw thick, dark drops raining on the floor. My hand went to my ear and came away sticky red. There was blood all over my para-smock now. The pain began after the initial shock, hot and persistent. 1 got control of my breathing and took stock. My head moved all right on my neck, and there was no spurting arterial blood. So I must have been superficially gouged by slate and bullet fragments."
The side of his face wasn't pretty, but he was not seriously hurt. What came upon him then was a tightly focused rage.
When the machine gun turned its attention to the house's lower floors, Singlaub took one last glance at the school, and there he noticed for the first time the barrel of the 37mm gun swiveling beneath camouflage netting in the hedgerow seventy meters away. The crew was wearing camouflage gear and had leaves threaded onto their helmets, but from his angle, they were clearly exposed.
This was too good a chance to pass up.
Almost without thinking, he dashed down the stairs and out into the back garden. When they saw the bloodied side of his head, the FTP soldiers rushed forward to give Singlaub aid, but in fact the injury looked far worse than it was. And besides, at that moment he was practically unstoppable. Without offering more than a mumbled explanation in his uncertain French, he grabbed their Bren gun and a spare thirty-round magazine, and without looking back, made his way to the edge of the garden, then raced thirty meters down the street to the cover of a bomb-blasted plane tree, which, at sixty meters from the hedgerow, was in easy range of the gun's position.
By the time he reached the tr
ee, most of the bleeding had stopped — not that that mattered much in his current frame of mind. He worked his way quickly around the trunk, leveled the Bren, and sighted on the hedgerow and the Germans. Four long bursts, and the magazine was empty. In went the fresh one. The soldiers around the gun jerked into activity, intending to turn the gun toward this mad attacker, but they were toppling over satisfyingly before they could reach it. A German soldier trained his rifle toward the plane tree but then was flung backward, his arms flying.
The second magazine exhausted, Singlaub raced back to the shelter of the garden. As he ran, he was aware of someone shooting at him, but he wasn't hit.
Back in the garden, he gave up his Bren gun to the awed, wide-eyed FTP troops. He'd been possessed by a god; they weren't used to that. One of them took a cloth, dipped it in a bucket, and reverently washed his wound. Then the young American lieutenant sat down with his back against the fieldstone wall, lifted his face to the sun and billowing afternoon clouds, and let his pounding heart grow quiet.
The attack was going well: Most of the Germans in the courtyard had been driven back into the school buildings. Wauthier's SAS Bren teams had moved forward along the school's left flanks to a commanding position over the courtyard, and though Dominique had had no success locating Antoine, his company commanders had agreed to work under Wauthier. That night, Wauthier radioed a request to London for an air strike the next afternoon. The plan was to again pin down any Germans in foxholes with mortars and Piats, or better, to drive them again back into the school. Then, just before the air strike was scheduled, the French would pull back a couple of streets, and British Mosquito bombers would dive-bomb the school.
The catch: Maquis operations were not exactly top Allied priority just then. Hubert had yet to receive his promised arms drop, for instance. And besides, there were more pressing preoccupations, such as the invasion of southern France earlier that morning by Allied armies under General Alexander Patch. All the Maquis units in south and central France were expected to support the invasion, which meant all of them were requesting more of everything.
During the night, the Germans in the school tried to push back into positions in the courtyard. And by morning the Focke-Wulfs came back, with a full array of strafing, fragmentation bombs, incendiaries, and high-explosives.
That afternoon, the time approached for the planned Mosquito attack. Mortar shells again ripped into the courtyard. SAS troops moved close in and fired their Piats. It all went swimmingly. The Germans pulled back into the school. But no Mosquitoes. The only planes in the air were Focke-Wulfs and Heinkels. There was nothing to do but keep down and wait.
During the night, Coriolan brought heartening news: First, the Maquis had breached the defenses of the German garrison in Ussel, and the garrison had then surrendered. Second, the more powerful garrisons at Tulle and Brive, besieged by Patrick's forces and Hubert's remaining companies, had agreed to surrender — but with a condition. They'd been promised that an American officer would accept their surrender.
That meant Singlaub, who set out in a gazogene farm truck to take care of that chore. At Tulle and Brive, Singlaub produced an ornate document, which he had signed, promising the German commanders full protection of Supreme Allied Headquarters, and the German companies laid down their arms. It was a good haul — rifles, machine guns, cases of grenades, and a 75mm field gun. The weapons from Tulle went directly to Hubert's men, and were most welcome.
As soon as the ceremony was over, Hubert and Singlaub climbed into the gazogene truck for the return journey to Egletons.
There optimism remained low, despite the surrender of three German garrisons. The Luftwaffe was strafing everything that moved (Singlaub and Hubert had to hike the final few kilometers into town), and Luftwaffe bombs had turned much of Egletons into rubble, most notably the barn they had been using as a PC. Even so, Tony Dennau, their radioman, had stayed at his post in a corner of the building, sending messages to London even as the barn took direct hits. In the walls and ceiling all around him were numerous shrapnel scars. "Il est formidable, " Wauthier beamed, indicating the radioman, when Singlaub and Hubert entered what was left of-the barn.
Dominique was at Antoine's command post down the street. And so, surprisingly, was Antoine, a tough little guy with a commanding, intelligent voice. When Singlaub arrived, Antoine and his staff were all atwitter with rumors that the troops of the Tulle garrison had not surrendered, but had broken free and were on the way to break the siege at Egletons, threatening the Free French forces' rear.
Though Singlaub carefully explained that he had been present when the entire Tulle garrison had surrendered, that information did not satisfy Antoine, who was in the process of sending teams from his already tightly strained companies out along the road to Tulle to establish ambush positions.
Meanwhile, Coriolan had arrived with news that the German relief column was finally moving out of Clermont-Ferrand-2,000 heavily armed men in 150 trucks, defended by a pair of armored cars with automatic weapons.
Tulle, it should be noted, was west of Egletons, while Clermont-Ferrand was cast. Diluting the strength of the forces in Egletons chasing phantom Germans could make the situation in Egletons perilous. Even more important, a terrific opportunity was presenting itself to ambush the relief column on the road between Ussel and Egletons. Antoinc's troops were essential to add strength to that effort and to maintain pressure on the Egletons garrison. But Antoine would have none of that. It was an article of faith that Germans from Tulle were on the way to attack his rear. He would stop them.
By nightfall, the town was quiet. Dominique and Wauthier had left to set up ambushes on the highway. The civilians were abandoning the town, and carrying with them the Maquis wounded. Remaining behind, for the moment, were Singlaub and Dennau, and the remnants of Hubert's and Antoine's troops. But as soon as all the civilians had been reported out of danger, Singlaub ordered the FTP and AS forces to fall back into the forest. Though he knew Dominique and Wauthier would damage the German relief column, there was no way they were strong enough to stop them with the forces at their disposal.
Singlaub and Dennau grabbed their codebooks, their radio, a few emergency rations, their bundles of one-hundred-franc notes, and some spare Sten gun magazines and marched with the Maquis through the still-burning streets of Egletons. Soon they were passing through upland pastures and then forest trails. As they hiked through the darkness, they could just hear the distant rumble of land mines and the rattle of heavy machine guns — Dominique and Wauthier ruining the Germans' evening.
The, next day, Singlaub linked up with Dominique and Wauthier in a ruined church. The ambushes, as expected, had not stopped the Germans, but had delayed them. And they had knocked out an armored car and six trucks, and killed at least twenty-five enemy soldiers.
The relief column arrived in Egletons at dawn, loaded up the entire garrison onto the trucks, and rumbled off to Tulle, where they hoped to do the same thing. But of course they were a day late for that. Then they turned back toward Clermont-Ferrand.
That afternoon, eight camouflaged Mosquitoes showed up (the war's most beautiful warplanes), and elegantly swooped and dived, dropping bombs that flattened the school buildings. But the horses were out of the barn. The Ecole Professionelle had been emptied of Germans.
They were disappointingly late, but by then, the capture of the Correze garrisons, the siege of Egletons, the sabotage, the surrender of thousands of troops along with the seizure of their weapons, and the aggressive ambushes on the highways, had put the fire out of the Germans in Correze. The area was effectively liberated — not that there was a letup during the next weeks.
Route 89 was kept open, in the expectation that the German First Army Group still garrisoned in southwest France would continue to use it as an avenue of escape. Dominique and Singlaub trained Antoine's and Hubert's troops in the use of the captured weapons, while sending out demolition teams to destroy the bridges on the side roads. Hubert's ambushes
along the highway continued.
Hubert, meanwhile, came up with a scheme to use a fleet of trucks and scout cars he had captured to create a mobile attack force that would harass the retreating German columns to the north, between Correze and the Loire, and keep them too occupied to pose a danger to Patton on the other side of the river. The Free French command authorized this plan, even though Hubert had not yet received the arms shipment he had long ago requested (thousands of tons of munitions, officially destined for the Maquis, sat in warehouses in England, a typical wartime foulup; Maquis demands during the uprising were so many and so pressing that the distribution system cracked under the strain). Hubert had to strip some of his ambush teams of weapons in order to equip his mobile force. Dominique and Singlaub helped by getting hold of a fast 1939 front-wheel-drive Citroen and setting off on a series of lightning reconnaissance missions for him. The Germans staggered their convoys to protect them against Allied air attacks, but they staggered them at predictable intervals. The Jeds simply waited for an interval and then cruised blithely between them. The results were gratifying. Hubert's force made life hell for the Germans for weeks.
Antoine's FTP, meanwhile, pulled out of the war to devote themselves to the political fight that would break out after the German surrender. The Communists took over the town of Tulle, with its arms factory, and got the factory running again (they had to force the technicians and engineers to work for them). The commissars above Antoine wanted weapons for the revolution they hoped to ignite after the war. That was more important than further participation in the liberation of France.
On September 26, with Paris and most of France liberated, Team James returned to England for further assignments. For Jack Singlaub, that was to mean a mission to Southeast Asia — a story for another time.