How I Won the War

by Patrick Ryan

  It happened, unfortunately, that Major Arkdust was sleeping directly under the path of the cable and, as it streaked like an aerial snake across his ceiling he got the idea that Twelve Platoon was deliberately attempting his assassination by rocket fire. This misconception was reinforced as the whizzbang came finally to rest and an Italian flag, which had somehow got caught in the end of the cable, fell to the floor and draped his camp bed like a catafalque. He appeared rapidly at my launching site and although I did my best to explain to him the true course of events, it was difficult to do justice to Twelve Platoon’s defence standing to attention on a mud flat, stark naked, and plastered from head to foot with used engine oil.

  After such a series of riverside misfortunes, the prospect of the assault on the Rhine filled me with elation. The Division had landed at Marseilles and en route northwards to join 21st Army Group stayed at the beginning of March with American First Army. Twelve Platoon was encamped on the banks of the Echler, a tributary of the Rhine, twenty miles up from its junction with the great river. We were allocated four American rubber boats for river-crossing exercises. Compared with the overgrown inner tubes we had in Italy, they were inflatable palaces. They blew themselves up from gas bottles, had built-in spray sheets and were covered in little pockets containing chocolate, chewing gum, signal flares, bandages, and best wishes to our brave boys over there from the management and staff of the Rochford (N.Y.) Rubber Goods Company.

  “Get a band up front there playing Water Music,” said Corporal Globe, “and a couple of Wogs with ostrich feather fans, and Antony could take Cleopatra twice round the pier in that gondola.”

  I devised an embarkation drill specially suited to our latex luxury liners and spent a day practising it on a sandbank. Knowing that battles are won in the hearts of the soldiers I took my usual steps to ensure that everyone under my command was firmly in the picture.

  “We will shortly be embarking, men,” I said, after breaking ranks to relax the tension, “on the decisive battle of the whole war—the Assault on the Rhine. The Musketeers will, as ever, be in the forefront of the battle. I am determined, as I know you all are, to obtain pride of place in the assault for Twelve Platoon. It is my intention when the Musketeers attack the Rhine that Twelve Platoon shall be their spear-head. But we will not win this place of honour merely because I happen to be the senior platoon commander in the Regiment. We will win it only on merit … only if we can show Colonel Plaster that we are the outstanding exponents of watermanship under his command. And we can achieve that reputation only by hard work and intensive training. From now until we are called to battle, I propose to practice watermanship each day and to hold an embarkation and landing exercise on the Echler each night. Then, when the trumpets sound the last Great Call to Arms, Twelve Platoon will be first into the water, first across the Rhine and first on the road to Berlin!”

  “And last,” said Private Drogue, jocularly concealing his enthusiasm, “on the bleeding leave roster.”

  “How wide, sir,” asked Corporal Dooley, “did you say the Rhine is likely to be?”

  “Rather more than a quarter of a mile wide.”

  “Khee-rist!” said Private Spool.

  “Then it’ll be slow running?” asked Corporal Hink.

  “I’m afraid not. The river is heavily swollen by the winter rains.” I never believed in softening the facts to my men. “There will be a strong current and we will need all the watermanship at our command.”

  “Blimey!” said Private Clapper.

  “And which bank is the higher,” asked Corporal Globe, “theirs or ours?”

  “Theirs. They hold the commanding slopes and we must pay particular attention in our training to the use of cover after landing.”

  “Cut my throat!” said Private Gripweed.

  “What will the going be like?” asked Sergeant Transom. “Better than Italy?”

  “No. It may well be worse. Much of the east bank is precipitous. At the likely crossing places there may well be mud flats to negotiate.”

  “Quarter of a mile across,” said Private Drogue. “Jerry up on top, pouring of bleeding rain, and up to your crutch in mud…. Rah, rah, rah! chaps. Tally-ho! and good hunting!”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said. “Obstacles are made to be overcome. Where there’s a will there’s a way. Now we’ll just go through the details of tonight’s exercise …”

  At midnight we were down on the sandbank with our boats. The sections crouched back under cover of the bracken as Sergeant Transom and I crawled forward with the guide tapes. The river swung in a curve before us, swollen with winter rain, racing fast with white water breaking against the far bank.

  “Right!” I commanded quietly. “Inflating parties forward.”

  Out of the darkness came the boat-carriers and unrolled their parcels along the tapes. Compressed air hissed softly and the rubber creaked as the craft grew like monster slugs and slipped silently into the water.

  “Secure boats!”

  A stake was driven into the sand and the painters from all four boats were tied to it. The ropes stretched out taut and straining as the current pulled greedily at the airy craft.

  “Prepare to embark!”

  The sections came crawling forward from the undergrowth and crouched in correct boat-mounting order on the cross-tape before the stake, N.C.O.’s in front, paddle men at their stations.

  “Embark! Follow me!”

  I ran forward through the shallows, leapt into my command craft and took my place at the prow. As I turned to watch my troops embarking the boat suddenly shot out into mid-stream…. The line had come away from the stake before anyone could join me … I was alone on board and gaining speed every second as the current sucked me away into fast water….

  “Halt!” I cried. “Exercise Seaboots temporarily suspended….”

  I sensed the shadow of an overhanging tree coming up behind me … my feathery skiff swirled into a rapid, leapt for a moment bodily out of the water…. Leaves and twigs brushed past my face … my feet tangled, I lost my balance … a branch thumped me blindingly on the back of the head and I fell face down and out cold in the indiarubber scuppers.

  When I came round the first flicker of dawn was touching the darkness. The water slapped and gurgled under my ear, and as I pulled myself up I felt a lump like a bony goitre on the overhang of my skull. My craft was skimming along on a vast expanse of roaring water. I could see no banks on either side and thought at first that I had been swept out to sea. Huge tangled shapes appeared above me in the sky, and I realized I was passing under the skeleton of a blown bridge. The light grew steadily stronger and I picked up the shape of cliffs away in the distance both to the port and starboard … I was on the Rhine and my pneumatic cockleshell was speeding on the flood at a whipping ten knots.

  I looked at my watch. It was 04.30 hours. I had been going for about four hours. Allowing for the twenty miles of the Echler, I would have been racing for about two hours down the Rhine.

  There were no paddles in the boat—in my special drill they were issued against signature to the crew members. I searched the craft, but although I unearthed plenty of chewing gum, field-dressings, candy, and a sexy letter from Myra Kegover of the Rochford Rubber Goods Company inviting the finder to call her up for a good time when on leave, I found nothing to paddle with. I was helpless in the swift current, unable to divert the boat to the home bank or to prevent it grounding on the enemy side. Buildings sprung up on the German flank, and with daylight now up I deemed it wise to lie flat in the bottom of the boat again and make an appreciation of my situation.

  There were three courses open to me. One, if the boat came up on the east bank I would have to find a hiding place and lie low till the Allies advanced. Two, if it finished on the west bank, I could make my way by night to the American lines. Three, if, as seemed likely from the pace I was going, the Rhine kept me driving straight down the middle and out to sea, I would have to pin my faith in the Royal Navy. As lo
ng as I lay flat in the bottom of the craft, the Boche would think it a piece of untenanted flotsam and I calculated that there was sufficient chewing gum and candy aboard to keep me alive for a week.

  I was working out my likely time of arrival in the North Sea when the dinghy found a fourth alternative. It stopped in the middle of the river. I could feel obstructions pushing at both rubber sides and I peeked gingerly over the gunwales. To my right rose the concrete pier of a bridge, on my left lay the weed-tangled mass of a tree swept down the river and trapped against the stonework. Up above, the bridge towered from bank to bank, intact and unblown. I was completely hidden from view between the branches of the tree and the face of the pier. I clambered out on to the trunk and pulled up the painter to make the boat secure. It was only half as long as it had been the night before. The end was frayed and tasselled, just like the ropes gnawed by the water rats of the Montone. I made a mental note to report that there was evidence of the same species on the Echler and a faster biting breed at that.

  There was a maintenance ladder built into the western side of the pier leading up to the span. The tree screened it for much of the way and then it disappeared inside the curving line of the girderwork. If I got up there I could work my way along the underside of the bridge to the west bank. Carefully I climbed up the metal rungs … higher and higher above the rushing water … and had just reached the safety of the under-girders when there was a clink of metal behind and above me.

  “Hände hoch! Kommen Sie hier.”

  A German soldier had me covered from a bay built out from the side of the bridge. If he fired from his twelve-feet range I was a goner. If I put my hands up then and there I would fall sixty feet on to the pier, the tree, or into the Rhine. There was no way out. I scrambled up the last few rungs on to the bridgeway and raised my hands above my head. Fortunately I had anticipated the possibility of capture and had already planned a line of escape.

  “Nicht schiessen,” I said. “Ich bin Skorzeny-kommando.”

  During the battle of the Ardennes, Otto Skorzeny, the Boche supercommando and rescuer of Mussolini, had infiltrated groups of Yankee-speaking Germans in American uniform behind the Allied lines. The odd one was still being picked up here and there, trying to get back to his own lines.

  “Skorzeny?” exclaimed the sentry. “Komm’ mit.”

  He kept me covered from behind, and I had no chance yet to bolt for it. We walked across the bridge and he motioned me into a reinforced signal hut at the end. An officer, a precise, middle-aged man with a tiny waxed Kaiser moustache, was at a desk leafing through a magazine. The sentry fired off a fusillade of German, gesticulating at me as Exhibit No. 1. The captain put on a pair of slab-sided library glasses and studied me carefully.

  “Skorzeny? Hein? Sitzen Sie.”

  I sat down. He dismissed the sentry and I heard the door lock behind him. He opened a drawer of his desk and produced a mouth organ. Placing it to his lips, he fixed his eyes on mine and burst suddenly forth into the commanding bars of “God Save the King.”

  Automatically I rose from my chair and snapped to attention. As an officer holding His Majesty’s Commission, I had no alternative. The organist changed the tune abruptly to “Colonel Bogey” then put down his instrument and chuckled derisively.

  “Just a little trick,” he said, “I have invented to trap the English. Sit down again, if you please. You are not one of Skorzeny’s men. You are a British engineer commando officer sent in advance of your troops to prevent the demolition of this bridge?”

  I folded my arms defiantly. I was an experienced prisoner by now, having been captured successively by the Arabs, Poles, British, and Germans.

  “I will tell you nothing but my name, rank, and number. I am number 131313, Lieutenant Ernest Goodbody.”

  “They send you single-handed in your rubber boat by night to sabotage the demolition wires. An officer sent on such an important mission will be like Skorzeny, in direct contact with the very highest level command. Perhaps even briefed by Eisenhower himself … yes?”

  “I am number 131313, Lieutenant Ernest Goodbody.”

  He leaned back in his chair, took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes wearily.

  “You are a brave officer. It was a most dangerous venture. Your higher command must be desperate to obtain a bridge over the Rhine …” He paused, leaned conspiratorially across the desk and emphasized his words with a finger wagging in my face. “To obtain a bridge across the Rhine … undamaged and intact.”

  “I am number 131313, Lieutenant Ernest Goodbody.”

  As I drew back to save my nose from his fingernail, my eye was caught by a familiar cover on the magazine he had been reading. It was the International Corn-Chandlers Trade Review and Quarterly Gazette. There was a rubber stamp impression on the cover—“Gradheim and Koch, Silberplatz, Brunswick.” My mind rushed immediately back to dear old Kettering and my office at Cawberry and Company. Many’s the letter I had written to Gradheim and Koch, one of our main continental corn-chandling contacts.

  “Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “Not you! At Gradheim and Koch’s?”

  He picked up the magazine and smiled ruefully. I thought for a moment he was going to kiss the rubber stamp.

  “Yes,” he said. “Heinrich Odlebog, Warehouse Manager, Gradheim and Koch, Brunswick.”

  “Ernest Goodbody,” I said. “Chief Accountant, Cawberry and Company, Kettering, Northampton.”

  “Cawberry and Company!” He beamed so broadly that the tiny spikes of his moustache pricked into his cheeks. “Of Kettering! And you, so brave a man, like me, a corn-chandler.”

  For that moment, in the little signal hut, the war stopped. Corn-chandling, like love, knows no barriers. The language of lentils is international. Wars may come, wars may go, but the chicken food keeps cropping.

  Odlebog stretched out a hand in the secret grip of the World Fraternity of Corn-Chandlers. I was about to reciprocate with the English knuckle twist when my patriotism flowed back. I nodded politely but refused his hand.

  “No,” he said, “perhaps you are right…. But to hear again of Cawberry and Company. So many happy memories … taking me back to Brunswick … ah! to be back in the warehouse on Silberplatz.”

  He sniffed in fragrant memory of the clean, dry, corn-store smell. The points of his moustache dropped now in melancholy and he rubbed his eyes wearily once more. He was a very tired man…. An idea began to blossom at the back of my mind … my greatest victory might be yet to come … as a successful corn-chandler he would undoubtedly be a realist and therefore aware that Germany had already lost the war. And then there was his strange, repeated emphasis of the Allied need for an intact bridge…. Could I smell a deal? Left, someone said, can speak to Left; then corn-chandler can certainly speak to corn-chandler.

  “As you say,” I opened, “we want a bridge over the Rhine. We shall get one in the end even though we may have to build it ourselves. The small delay will make no difference. Germany has already lost the war. The longer you make us wait on the Rhine the deeper into Germany come the Russians from the East. Who do you wish to occupy your country, the Allies or the Russians?”

  “Gruss Gott!” He shivered at the Soviet prospect. “The Russkies! Wild animals!”

  “Then why destroy the bridges? Why destroy yourselves?” It was time to strike home. “Why not save your country from the Russians and make your own fortune? We need a bridge. You have this bridge…. How much do you want for it?”

  All the weariness left him. This was what he had been angling for. He leaned across the table, alert and wary. This was business, not war.

  “Twenty-five thousand pounds. To be deposited in Switzerland.”

  “Twenty-five thousand? That’s ridiculous. Eisenhower would never pay it.”

  I would never be able to look Mr. Cawberry in the face again if I closed for the first offer from Gradheim and Koch.

  “It’s a fine bridge,” said Odlebog. “Excellent strategic situation. Twenty-four thous
and … as one corn-chandler to another.”

  “We would build one for less. Seventeen thousand. It’s a bit farther south than we’d like.”

  “Seventeen thousand? And I am risking my life! They’re shooting people already for not blowing bridges fast enough. Twenty-three thousand, take it or leave it.”

  “All right, then … in view of the personal danger, eighteen thousand. But not a penny more could we get past the accountants.”

  “Eighteen thousand? … Never! … You are joking? … Eighteen thousand may be a fair price for a road bridge. But this is a railway bridge. Very strong bridge. Take trains, tanks, anything. For such a bridge … I will be a fool … twenty-two thousand and five hundred.”

  “We’d sooner have a plain road bridge, actually. For a quick deal … my final offer … Nineteen thousand.”

  We went on bargaining for a cutthroat half an hour and I finally closed for twenty-one thousand two hundred and fifty pounds and a Safe Conduct to Switzerland. Not only had I upheld the reputation of Cawberry and Company, but I had also saved the Government three thousand seven hundred and fifty pounds. I don’t suppose anyone else throughout the war made so direct a saving of public expenditure by just thirty minutes’ work. Odlebog drew up a contract in duplicate which I signed for and on behalf of General D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Forces in Europe. He insisted on a sealing deposit and all I could muster without overdrawing my account was fifty pounds. I wrote him a personal cheque for that amount. It was laid down in the contract that when Odlebog was given the note of hand of an officer of general rank agreeing to his terms, he would hand over the plan of the demolition charges.

  “I will tell the sentry who captured you that you are indeed a Skorzeny man and that now you are going back into the Allied territory. He will escort you down into the town and to the limit of our defences. After that, you will be on your own.”

  “I’ll be back before dark,” I said. “I’ll make straight for the nearest American general.”