* * *
The straight-line distance by sea from Dunkirk to IJmuiden is about 120 nautical miles or 135 statute miles, and even in the fairly choppy conditions of the North Sea that day, the skipper of the MTB was able to hold the vessel steady at a little over 30 knots. So just under four hours after Dawson had made his slightly unsteady way down the rope ladder on the mole at Dunkirk, Captain Michaels gestured towards the low-lying coastline on the starboard side of the slowing torpedo boat.
‘That’s where we’re going,’ he said. ‘That’s IJmuiden.’
It looked anything but peaceful. Even from a couple of miles out, the sound of anti-aircraft guns firing formed an almost constant background noise, and in the skies over the port German bombers, protected by the lithe grey shapes of Fokker and Messerschmitt fighters, were mounting almost continuous raids on the harbour while being constantly harried by RAF fighters, which were greatly outnumbered by the Luftwaffe aircraft.
‘Some welcome,’ Lieutenant Barber said, staring at the lethal aerial ballet unfolding in front of them.
The Royal Navy lieutenant had been standing on the bridge of the MTB studying the harbour and the activity there through a powerful pair of binoculars; after a couple of minutes he walked down the stairs to talk to Captain Michaels.
‘The good news,’ he began, ‘is that the Nazi bombers aren’t making too sharp a job of it. The ack-ack fire is throwing them off their aim, and the RAF guys are doing their bit as well to disrupt the attacks. But Sod’s Law says that if we do go into the harbour, the next bomb that one of those Dorniers drops will land right on our bloody heads.’
‘So what are you suggesting?’ Michaels asked.
‘I’m not really suggesting anything,’ the lieutenant said. ‘I’m just pointing out the reality of the situation. If you want us to take you into the harbour, then that’s what we’ll do, because those are the orders we’ve been given. We’ll do that and just hope for the best.’
Michaels didn’t reply for a moment, perhaps reading the subtext of what the Royal Navy officer had said.
‘So is there any alternative?’ he asked.
‘Well, we’re supposed to land the three of you at IJmuiden. You haven’t got much in the way of equipment apart from your personal weapons, which appear to be German personal weapons in the case of the lance corporal here, so I was just wondering if a safer option might be to put you ashore at one of the beaches along the coast here.’ He pointed at the almost uninterrupted sandy beaches that ran both north and south from the harbour entrance. They looked calm and peaceful in the early evening light. ‘The harbour is pretty confined once we get inside, and there are a lot of ships there already, so it might take a while for us to find an unoccupied jetty, and we’d be sitting ducks the whole time. But if we drop you off on the beach you’d probably keep well clear of the air attacks and you could make your way on foot from there to wherever it is you’re supposed to be going.’
Michaels looked at the coastline that the lieutenant was indicating, then back at the harbour entrance, now about a mile away, where the thump of another bomb exploding was clearly audible.
‘That works for me,’ he said. ‘What do you think, David?’
‘That’s probably the best option. Dawson?’
Dawson nodded. He was more than prepared to swap the very real possibility of getting killed by a bomb within the next half an hour for a walk in the countryside to reach their objective. It seemed to him to be a no-brainer.
‘Fine with me,’ he said.
The Royal Navy lieutenant looked slightly surprised that the two army officers would even ask a mere lance corporal for his opinion about anything, then he shrugged and turned away. He gave a short whistle to attract the attention of the sub lieutenant who was at the helm of the torpedo boat, and then pointed straight at the beach over to the east.
Almost immediately, the MTB heeled over to starboard and the bow lifted as the engine power was increased.
‘Just a thought,’ Barber said, ‘but you don’t suppose that beach is mined, do you?’
‘Definitely not,’ Michaels said confidently. ‘There’d be no point in the Dutch doing it, because the only people likely to be landing there would be Allied troops. Once the Jerries occupy Holland – which they will – it’ll be a different matter, obviously. But right now it’ll be completely safe. I’d stake my life on it. In fact, come to think of it, that’s what we will be doing.’
Barber smiled briefly, then returned his attention to the beach in front of the MTB.
Dawson didn’t say anything, just mulled over what Michaels had said. In his experience, officers weren’t always right, though in this case he didn’t disagree with what the captain said. Mining a beach where friendly forces would be likely to land made no sense at all, so he guessed that they would have no trouble in getting ashore. How easy it would be to reach their objective after that was another question entirely.
Then he sat down to unlace his boots and take off his socks. He been in the army long enough to know that keeping your boots – and especially your socks – dry was essential. Walking in damp footwear caused all sorts of problems.
Barber glanced at what he was doing and then nodded.
‘Good idea,’ he said, sat down and did the same thing himself.
Dawson put his socks inside his boots, tied the laces together and then hung them around his neck.
‘Just need something to dry them with,’ he muttered. He walked down the staircase into the saloon and began opening drawers and cupboards. In one of them he found a somewhat grubby but completely dry hand towel and took it out. ‘That’ll do,’ he said, climbing back up to the deck and showing it to Barber. Michaels had also removed his boots and socks.
‘Trousers off before we go over the side,’ Michaels instructed.
About 70 yards from the beach, the sub lieutenant at the helm eased back on the throttles and immediately the motion of the torpedo boat changed, the bow no longer slamming into the waves but cutting through them. Suddenly, the ride was smooth and almost peaceful, if they ignored the sounds of exploding bombs and almost continuous artillery fire just up the coast.
‘You’ll have to get your feet wet,’ the lieutenant said, stepping down from the bridge again. ‘We can’t beach this boat because we might not be able to get it off the sand again, so we’ll go in nice and slowly until we feel the hull touch the bottom, and then you’ll have to go over the side. According to our charts, the beach slopes quite gently, so you should only be in about 3 or 4 feet of water at the most.’
The beach to the south of the harbour entrance looked pretty much like any other beach to Dawson’s eyes, not that he had spent a huge amount of time on beaches anywhere. He had taken a couple of holidays as a child with his parents, both to the Norfolk coast, and as far as he remembered the flat countryside and gently sloping beaches of East Anglia had looked very much like the stretch of sand the torpedo boat was now slowly approaching.
Waves were breaking on the beach, which didn’t extend that far inland before being replaced by a line of trees and bushes that formed a kind of dark green backdrop behind the yellow sand. What he didn’t see was any indication of danger – no obvious military presence or fortifications concealed in the undergrowth. If he could somehow tune out the sounds of repeated explosions, he could almost forget that he was involved in a Europe-wide war.
With the throttles barely open, the MTB inched ever closer to the beach, and then a sudden shudder seemed to run through the boat as the forward part of the hull made contact with the sand. The sub lieutenant reduced the throttle setting even further, just letting the propeller turn enough to keep the boat in position.
‘That’s as far as we go,’ the lieutenant called out. ‘Time for a paddle. Good luck.’
‘Could you hang on to this while I get in the water?’ Barber asked Michaels, unbuckling his leather belt and holstered Webley revolver and handing it to the captain. ‘Probably better if it doesn’t
get wet.’
Then he stripped off his trousers, handed those to Michaels as well as his boots, and lowered himself feet first over the side of the boat. As the lieutenant had suggested, the water wasn’t deep, and Barber touched bottom when the breaking waves were only just over his knees.
‘Not quite 2 feet,’ he said, reaching up to take his belt, trousers and boots back from Michaels. He started wading towards the shore, unsnapping the cover of the holster and taking out his revolver, just in case the bank of trees and shrubs held some hidden menace. His action was probably superfluous, because one of the ratings from the MTB was manning the heavy machine gun and moving the barrel from left to right as he continuously surveyed the coastline.
Dawson went next, waiting until he was in the water before Michaels handed him his trousers, boots and the Mauser and Schmeisser, and the captain followed behind him. The water was cold; not icy, but certainly chilly enough to take your breath away if you were completely immersed in it. Dawson strode quickly towards the beach, his eyes scanning left and right for any signs of possible danger.
But the threat didn’t come from the beach or from the trees beyond, but from the skies.
Chapter 6
13 May 1940
Holland
The moment Michaels stepped out of the waves and onto the sand, he turned back and waved towards the torpedo boat. With a rumbling growl from its powerful engines, the boat backed away from the beach, continuing to go astern until it was about 50 yards clear, when the helmsman spun the wheel and pushed the throttles forward. The bow of the MTB lifted out of the water onto the plane as its speed started to increase and the boat turned towards the south-west.
One after the other, the three men walked up the beach and into the undergrowth, getting out of sight before they got dressed again. By the time Dawson reached the treeline, Barber had already dried his feet and legs and was pulling on his trousers. He handed the towel to Dawson and began lacing his boots.
Then the sudden roar of an aircraft engine grabbed the attention of all three men. And just seconds later, the heavy thumping of its wing-mounted heavy machine guns added to the din.
Dawson stared out to sea through a gap between two trees. He was no expert on the military aircraft of any nation, but he guessed it was probably a Messerschmitt because it looked very similar to the German fighter that had attacked the MTB as it travelled up the North Sea about an hour or so earlier. But exactly what type of aircraft it was didn’t really matter, and the only good thing was that this time he and his companions were obviously not the target.
The fighter was diving down towards the motor torpedo boat, which was still only a couple of hundred yards offshore. But the Royal Navy crew had obviously seen it coming, and the vessel had started manoeuvring violently to present as difficult a target as possible to the attacking aircraft. And although the MTB had been heading away from the harbour when the aircraft began its attacking run, the helmsman almost immediately swung the vessel round to head north, towards the aircraft, which meant the heavy machine gun on the foredeck could engage it.
Moments later, it was clear that the fighter pilot had bitten off rather more than he could chew, when the anti-aircraft batteries on a British destroyer that was loitering just to the south of the harbour entrance also sprang into action, sending salvoes of high-explosive shells towards the Messerschmitt.
Taking fire from two directions, the pilot obviously decided that the opposition was too strong, and he pulled his aircraft into a tight platform turn – a turn that kept the aircraft at the same level – away from the MTB and towards the coast, keeping low. Both the destroyer and the MTB continued firing towards it as the pilot made his escape.
‘Down!’ Dawson said urgently as he suddenly saw the danger.
Michaels looked at him blankly, then realized what was going to happen and dropped to the ground.
Seconds later, a salvo of high-explosive shells from the destroyer slammed into the trees only a matter of a few tens of feet from where the three men had taken cover. Just moments after that, another half-dozen or so shells crashed into the woodland, but at least 50 yards further away.
The three men stayed on the ground until the firing from the two vessels had ceased, and they could no longer hear the engine of the German fighter plane.
‘That was close,’ Barber said, getting to his feet.
‘At least they weren’t firing at us,’ Dawson pointed out. ‘We just happened to be downrange. But it’s still embarrassing to be shot at by your own side.’
They quickly finished dressing, and in minutes all three men were ready to go.
‘At least we know which direction we should be heading,’ Barber said, gesturing to the north and the unmistakable sound of the continuing aerial bombardment of the port of IJmuiden. ‘But I suppose the trick will be finding and linking up with the rest of the KFRE party.’
‘How many men are there in the group, sir?’ Dawson asked.
‘There are regular soldiers with us as well, but they’re not directly involved in the demolition operation. That’s our baby. So we’re supposed to be linking up with A Group of the KFRE, and that’s one officer and nineteen other ranks,’ Michaels replied. ‘The second group is B Group, as you might have guessed, and they’re also a demolition party but they’ve got another job to do first. I can’t really tell you what that is.’
‘I probably don’t need to know, do I?’
‘No, not really. Now, as I said before, A Group were scheduled to leave Dover this morning at about eleven on a destroyer, which steams a lot slower than a motor torpedo boat, but even so they should already have arrived here unless they met any major problems along the way. They had stores to unload from the ship, and then they were ordered to get themselves over to Amsterdam to recce the targets.’
‘Hang on a moment,’ Barber said, looking through a gap in the trees towards the harbour entrance. ‘They were supposed to be on board the Whitshead, and that looks like the ship just leaving the harbour now. And it also looks as if it’s taken quite a battering.’
Michaels and Dawson turned to stare at the lean grey shape that had just cleared the harbour entrance and was turning south, its anti-aircraft guns pounding away at a Dornier that had just dropped a stick of bombs in a ragged line a short distance behind it. The bombs had missed and, as far as Dawson could see, so had the ship’s ack-ack batteries. Michaels had a pair of binoculars in a leather case around his neck, and he quickly took them out to inspect the vessel.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘That is the Whitshead, and I can see holes from machine-gun bullets and a lot of other damage on the superstructure. And there’s what looks like bomb damage on the port side aft.’
He passed the binoculars to Lieutenant Barber so that he could check the destroyer for himself.
Dawson obviously had no artificial optical aids about his person, but he had very good eyesight and to him the signs of damage, of the ship having been in a fairly brutal firefight, were quite unmistakable.
‘So if that’s the destroyer they were travelling on,’ he suggested, ‘and it’s only leaving now, maybe your KFRE lads are still in the harbour. We might be able to join up with them there instead of tramping round Amsterdam looking for them. We ought to get going.’
‘Just what I was about to propose,’ Barber said, and Michaels nodded agreement.
The beach where the MTB had dropped them was just over a mile, maybe about two thousand yards or so, from the southern part of IJmuiden harbour, and Dawson reckoned it should be no more than about a thirty-minute walk to get there, German fighters and bombers permitting.
After checking to make sure they had everything, which didn’t take long because none of the three had a kitbag or anything of that sort, they set off through the woodland area, heading not directly towards the harbour entrance, but in more of a north-easterly direction. Michaels had said that would take them into the western side of IJmuiden town itself, which might avoid them ge
tting too close to the harbour, where bombs were still falling, until they could recce the situation.
Dawson had given the Mauser rifle to Barber, but kept the Schmeisser for himself; they moved in single file, Barber leading, Dawson a few paces behind him, and with Michaels bringing up the rear as he was only armed with his .38 Webley revolver. Normally, Dawson would have expected to be in front of the other two, because they were officers and he wasn’t, but because he was arguably the most valuable of the three men, to the operation, by virtue of his specialist knowledge of explosives, Michaels had insisted that Barber should lead the way.
It was obvious that people quite commonly used the stretch of woodland bordering the beach because there were well-established tracks running through it, presumably created by people visiting the coast for recreational purposes; finding their way out was really only a matter of following one of the tracks that seemed to be heading in more or less the right direction. They saw no one – no British, no Dutch and, most importantly, no Germans – and about twenty minutes after they’d set off they were making their way cautiously through the almost deserted streets of the southern part of the town of IJmuiden.
Once within the built-up area, which had clearly suffered extensive damage in the bombing despite probably not being the Germans’ primary target, Michaels consulted a map he pulled from one of the pockets of his battledress tunic, and ordered a slight change of direction.
‘We need to go more north from here,’ he said, ‘because that’s where the harbour is.’
A few minutes later, they stopped on the southern side of the harbour itself where, perhaps only temporarily, the anti-aircraft guns had fallen silent and there appeared to be no aircraft, German or British, in the skies.
Because of Holland’s peculiar geography, the harbour looked nothing like Dawson had been expecting. With most of the country actually below sea level, much of the huge harbour – it was at least half a mile wide from south to north, and by his estimation over 2 miles from where they were standing to the western end of the harbour and the open sea – was occupied by dams and detached moles. These contained linked sets of locks, locks that would allow ships and barges to safely access the Noordzeekanaal that lay east of the town and the country’s other waterways. And the moles themselves were massive, most of them big enough to accommodate large buildings.
Operation XD Page 4