Dawson was watching the first tank as the oil caught fire. There was a gentle whooshing sound, and then the oil in the bund surrounding the burning blanket ignited. The flames spread quickly across the surface of the viscous liquid, and a pall of thick, black smoke began forming above the bund.
As the second lake of heavy fuel oil caught fire, Rochester strode quickly over to where Michaels was watching the steady and inevitable destruction of the Petroleum Haven oil depot, and pointed outside the boundary fence.
‘I haven’t heard anything from either of the other two groups,’ he said, raising his voice over the roar of the pools of burning hydrocarbons that more or less surrounded them, ‘but from the looks of those two plumes of smoke, I think they’ve probably got the message and started their own demolitions.’
Michaels looked at where Rochester was pointing and nodded. Black smoke was rising from two clearly separate locations in the city, in more or less the right directions from where they were standing.
‘Good,’ he replied. ‘I think we’ve done enough damage here. There are a few of the heavy fuel oil tanks where the ignition hasn’t properly taken hold, but Dawson has assured me that it’s only been taking about ten or twelve minutes for the oil to catch fire. More importantly, with the heat being generated here in this depot by the burning fuel, there’s almost no chance that anyone could put out the fires. Not now. So even if the Jerries pitched up here right this minute, there’d be nothing that they could do to save any of the oil.’
About ten minutes later, Michaels stood just outside the boundary fence of the depot, looked back at the devastation he and his men had caused, and nodded his satisfaction. By any standards, it was a job well done. Every one of the fifty-odd tanks at the Petroleum Haven depot was ablaze, including the last of the heavy oil tanks. Above the site, a huge cloud of black smoke, fitfully illuminated by gouts of flame, was rising steadily into the air, and the heat was intense and growing.
All they had to do now was get themselves out of Amsterdam and find some way of crossing the English Channel back to Dover. And although there were a number of uncertainties about how exactly they could achieve that, the first step was perfectly obvious: they had to get back to the harbour at IJmuiden.
The administration building at Petroleum Haven was only a few yards away and was still standing, albeit somewhat singed around the edges. Michaels guessed that most of the workers would by now have left the plant: he had certainly seen probably a couple of dozen workers leaving as he’d been supervising the demolitions. But hopefully, the telephones would still be working.
‘I need to tell the commander what’s happened,’ he said to Rochester. ‘Get everything packed up and everyone ready to move out while I try and raise him on the phone. Make sure the launches are available.’
But that part of their escape plan lasted only until Michaels re-emerged from the building.
‘We have to forget the canals,’ he said. ‘The commander thinks there’s a good chance that they might have been mined.’
‘By the Dutch?’ Rochester asked. ‘Or have the Jerries somehow managed to sneak into the city?’
‘No idea. It may just be another rumour without a shred of truth in it, but it would be foolish to take a chance. It’s a real pity, because if we could have used the launches we could have followed the Noordzeekanaal all the way from here to IJmuiden. But that’s no longer an option, so we’ll have to find a train to take us back to the coast or commandeer a couple of trucks and drive there. Something like that.’
Since they’d arrived in Amsterdam, all the members of the British party had seen numbers of Dutch military vehicles either patrolling the streets or parked in groups, their drivers presumably waiting for further orders. And to Michaels, “borrowing” one or two trucks seemed like an infinitely easier task than making their way back to the railway station and trying to organize a train and carriages to take them the 20 or so miles west to the harbour at IJmuiden.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said, turning to Rochester. ‘Gordon, get everyone ready to leave. I’ll take Dawson and four of the other men and find a truck somewhere.’
With all the men waiting near the main gate of the oil depot, picking four of them took no time at all. The only criterion Michaels applied was that they all had to be able to drive a lorry.
‘Leave everything here but your rifles and spare ammunition,’ he instructed. ‘Dawson, bring your MP40.’
The small party walked briskly down the street towards the nearest Dutch military outpost, an ack-ack battery located about 300 yards away, and where both Dawson and Michaels had seen a number of trucks parked on their return from their check of the other two oil depots.
‘Those are DAF Trado trucks,’ Michaels said, as they approached the battery. ‘It’s a very successful design, and it’s pretty much become the standard vehicle for the entire Dutch army, but especially for artillery units and ack-ack batteries.’
The trucks were an unusual design, the front end looking like a typical British delivery van, while at the rear they were fitted with four wheels instead of two. When the British party got closer, they could see that in fact they didn’t have four wheels but eight, each rear axle being fitted with a pair of wheels at each end, presumably for extra traction. The back of every vehicle was open and fitted with a long bench seat down each side to take the maximum number of troops. The cab was also open on both sides, without doors, but there was a kind of fabric curtain that covered the lower part of the opening and which would provide some protection from the elements.
‘Right,’ Michael reminded them, ‘the story is that a group of German paratroopers have been sighted on the road between Amsterdam and Haarlem, and we’re an advance party of British troops ordered to round them up. To do that, we need a couple of trucks, ideally three tonners or thereabouts. I’ll do the talking, but if any of you are questioned, that’s what we’re doing. Bearing in mind the fact that we saw those German transport aircraft over the city earlier this evening, there’s a good chance that there actually are German paratroopers on the ground somewhere in that area, so it’s probably not even a lie.’
The battery consisted of three anti-aircraft guns positioned at the points of an equilateral triangle, and off to one side a small house that had presumably been requisitioned by the Dutch military to house the troops, judging by the Dutch flag flying from its chimney and what was presumably the name of the unit painted on the wall beside the door. More importantly, from their point of view, there were half a dozen of the Trado trucks parked in a line a few yards away from the house. Michaels walked over to the door of the building and knocked.
In a few moments, the door was opened by a junior officer, possibly the Dutch equivalent of a subaltern, judging by his rank badges, who looked inquiringly at the armed British soldiers standing on the street outside.
‘Your senior officer, and quickly,’ Michaels snapped.
Whether or not the Dutch officer understood what he’d heard wasn’t clear, but he turned and vanished inside the building, leaving the door wide open. Less than a minute later, another and clearly much more senior officer stepped outside and faced Michaels.
‘You are English?’ the Dutch officer enquired. His English sounded fluent but heavily accented.
‘Yes. We’ve been sent here to assist in the defence of Amsterdam.’ That was a blatant lie, no matter how you looked at it. ‘German paratroopers have landed outside the city,’ Michaels went on, ‘and we have been tasked with capturing them. To do that, we need transport. Specifically, two of those lorries over there,’ he finished, pointing at the parked trucks.
‘I have received no orders about you and your men,’ the Dutch officer responded, staring past Michaels at the thick clouds of smoke rising above the tank farm. ‘And what has happened over there?’
Michaels looked behind him as well.
‘We think it was sabotage, and my men are already on the scene investigating the cause of the fires. Now, the
officer in charge of our group is Commander Slater-Jones, and he is working with the full knowledge and authority of both the British consul and The Hague. If you wish, you can telephone the commander to confirm what I have just told you, but time is very short and with every minute that passes the German troops will be more difficult for us to find and capture.’
The Dutch officer still looked unconvinced, and Michaels decided on a slight change of tack.
‘As I just told you, I have my orders,’ he said, ‘and we’re in a hurry. If I’m unable to complete my tasking there will be repercussions. If you are not prepared to provide transport for us, then I will need to tell my superiors exactly why I was unable to complete my mission. Can I please have your name and rank?’
Slightly taken aback, the Dutch officer shook his head.
‘I have not refused your request,’ he said, somewhat bitterly. ‘But the most I can provide will be one vehicle, because I cannot spare two drivers.’
‘We only need the vehicles, and we do need two of them,’ Michaels said firmly, and gestured at Dawson and the five soldiers beside him. ‘All of these men are qualified drivers. I must have two trucks because I first have to collect the rest of my party and there are too many of them for just one lorry.’
For a few moments, the Dutch officer did not respond. Then he shook his head again.
‘You will bring the vehicles back here?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ Michaels replied, obviously without the slightest intention of doing so. ‘The operation will probably only take three or four hours at the most.’
‘I cannot spare them for that length of time. We have movements to organize here and I will need every vehicle I have. I can let you have two lorries, but only for a maximum of two hours. That is the best and only offer I can make.’
Michaels wasn’t in the least bit bothered by the time constraint, for obvious reasons, but he frowned in displeasure before he accepted.
‘We will do our best to get them back here within two hours,’ he agreed.
‘Very well. See that you do, otherwise I will have to alert my own superiors about the matter.’ The Dutchman turned back towards the commandeered house and issued what Michaels presumed were a series of orders in Dutch, then switched back to English. ‘Two of my men will start the vehicles and make sure there is sufficient fuel in the tanks.’
And with that he stepped back inside the building and vanished from sight.
Five minutes later, Dawson took the wheel of one of the two lorries and drove slowly away from the anti-aircraft battery, the second vehicle following about 50 yards behind him, the two vehicles separating a few hundred yards later. Dawson pulled up outside the main gate of the fiercely burning remains of the Petroleum Haven oil depot and waited while the KFRE soldiers piled their kit into the back of the truck. Captain Rochester climbed up into the cab and sat beside him.
‘We got two trucks, sir,’ Dawson said, ‘and Captain Michaels has taken the other one straight to the Shell depot to pick up the men there.’
Two sharp raps on the back of the cab told Dawson that everyone was now on board, so he moved the gear lever into first and lifted his booted foot off the clutch. With a lurch, the truck moved off down the road, slowly gathering speed.
‘Did Captain Michaels tell you to drive straight to IJmuiden, or are we going to meet up here somewhere and then do the journey in convoy?’ Rochester asked.
‘In convoy, sir. His truck will take longer to get out of Amsterdam because he’s got to pick up the men from the other two oil depots, so he told me to drive out of the city and stop when we got onto the main road to IJmuiden.’
‘And do you know where that is?’
‘More or less, sir. Captain Michaels told me where to turn, and where to stop. Apart from that, I do know the general direction we should be heading.’
‘That’s not the most encouraging statement I’ve ever heard, Dawson,’ Rochester said. ‘So I hope you know what we’re doing.’
Chapter 12
15 May 1940
Noord-Holland
It was a few minutes past midnight.
The billowing clouds of black smoke, tinged red by the leaping flames from the burning kerosene tanks, gave the Petroleum Haven depot the appearance of something like a vision of hell. The only good thing was that they were heading away from it, not driving towards it. As Dawson steered the lorry down the road that led away from the tank farm, the vehicle was rocked by an explosion as yet another of the kerosene tanks detonated, flying into the air before crashing back to the ground and into the pool of burning fuel inside the bund that surrounded it.
‘Job done, I reckon, sir,’ Dawson said, glancing at the image of the conflagration in the truck’s single rear-view mirror, mounted on an arm on the side of the windscreen surround.
‘I can’t argue with that,’ Rochester agreed. ‘The Jerries won’t find any fuel oil they can use there, that’s for sure.’
The Petroleum Haven tank farm was located on the southern side of the Noordzeekanaal, where the waterway turned south-east towards Amsterdam city centre. From the same location, the canal ran in an almost straight line west towards the coast and the harbour at IJmuiden, and along its southern bank were numerous inlets surrounded by the industrial buildings that characterized this part of the city. Which meant that although Dawson needed to head north-west towards IJmuiden, he was actually forced to drive south-west just to get around these obstacles.
A little over a mile from the tank farm the road split, the left-hand fork heading south towards the centre of Amsterdam. Dawson knew this, because he and Michaels had been driven down that particular road earlier that afternoon when they had been summoned to the consulate. But the right-hand lane swung west, and without hesitation that was the way he went.
‘Is this the right road?’ Rochester asked.
Dawson glanced at the officer and shrugged his ample shoulders.
‘As I said before, sir, I don’t really know, but the other fork was definitely heading the wrong way, and this does seem to be taking us in more or less the right direction. I’m also pretty sure it’s the road Captain Michaels told me to follow. There are no helpful road signs to confirm that, so we’ll just have to see where it leads.’
He drove on for another three or four hundred yards, then pulled over to the side of the road and braked the lorry to a stop.
‘Captain Michaels ordered me not to drive more than a couple of miles from the oil depot, and then to wait for him to catch us up,’ he explained. ‘Hopefully he’ll be somewhere behind us on this same road.’
Rochester nodded, but didn’t respond.
Both men stared through the windscreen at the flat landscape in front of them. To their right, the dim moonlight faintly illuminated a wide expanse of water, one of the blind-ended inlets from the Noordzeekanaal that was surrounded by dark and silent warehouses and other industrial buildings. In front of the lorry, the road ran straight for about half a mile, as far as they could tell, with a number of buildings, anonymous black shapes in the darkness, dotted along both sides of it.
‘I’d be a lot happier if we had a map,’ Dawson said, ‘or at least a compass, but the harbour on the coast isn’t that far away, and we can probably find our way there just using the moon.’ He pointed to his left, where the first quarter of the celestial body was clearly visible against the night sky. ‘It’s not the best navigational aid in the world, but it’s always roughly south of us, so if we can keep that on our left-hand side we must be heading more or less west.’
‘There were a lot of qualifiers in that sentence, Dawson,’ Rochester said, ‘but you’re right about the moon, though it will only ever give you an approximate direction to steer. I think that Captain Michaels does have a map. Perhaps that’s why he told you to wait for him to catch up.’
A few minutes later, Dawson saw a pair of headlamps in the mirror; the vehicle approaching quite quickly.
‘Something’s coming up behind us,
’ he said. ‘I can’t tell what it is yet.’
Rochester moved over to the passenger side of the cab and leaned out so that he could look back down the road the way they had come.
‘I don’t think it’s a lorry,’ he said, moments later. ‘It’s too small and it’s travelling too quickly.’
Dawson picked up the MP40 from the bench seat beside him, removed the magazine to check that it was fully charged, then snapped it back into place. He already knew the sub-machine gun was ready for use, but he had always been taught to check, double-check, and then check again. Especially where weapons were concerned, because in combat your life really did depend on them.
‘Just in case this turns out to be a carload of trouble,’ he explained, in response to Rochester’s quizzical expression.
It was, but at the same time it wasn’t.
The approaching vehicle was a kind of armoured car, and the front of it looked almost as if someone had taken a regular civilian car and just bolted some armour plating over the existing bodywork. But that similarity ended where the original windscreen would have been, because behind that there were four wheels rather than the normal two, and on the top of the car was a steerable turret fitted with what looked to Dawson like a heavy machine gun. That was clearly the car’s principal weapon, but sticking through an armoured slot below the turret was the barrel of another machine gun, pointing forward. It had no windows, for obvious reasons, apart from a small pane of armoured glass where the driver had to be sitting, the protective steel flap raised to allow him to see where he was going.
‘That’s a pretty weird looking beast,’ Dawson remarked as the armoured car slowed up beside them, coming to a complete stop while the crew inside presumably inspected the lorry.
A hatch on the top of the turret opened and the head and shoulders of an officer wearing Dutch army uniform appeared. He stared at the parked lorry.
Operation XD Page 12