Chapter 23
25 May 1940
France
But Rochester was wrong about that.
Even before he and David Barber had arrived at the British headquarters in Rouen, Michaels and Dawson were already on the road just a mile or so to the west and heading towards the first of the refineries they could see on the north bank of the Seine.
The proprietor of the pension where they’d spent the night had produced a breakfast of bread, butter and preserves; only a very limited choice but an ample quantity of everything, and a metal pot of thick black coffee. They had a cup each out of politeness, but surprisingly Dawson had found the hot, bitter liquid went quite well with the bread and butter.
‘I think I might be acquiring a taste for this stuff,’ he said to Michaels. ‘Back at home, I only usually drink tea. And beer, obviously.’
‘French coffee is a bit odd,’ Michaels admitted. ‘But it does seem to wake you up in the morning, which I suppose is the point. Right, let’s get going.’
They each made themselves a couple of sandwiches with what was left, so they’d have something to eat if they couldn’t find any food on the road, then carried their kitbags down to the staff car parked outside. Dawson replaced the rotor arm, snapped the distributor cap back into place and reconnected the plug leads. The Morris tilly started easily, and a minute or so later they drove away.
The River Seine is not one of those waterways that runs straight and true for miles. Quite the reverse, in fact. East of Le Havre, where it drains into the southern part of the English Channel, it follows a serpentine path, with huge loops to both the north and the south. Which was why, as they drove out of Canteleu that morning, they had to head south to get close to the north bank of the river, rather than the westerly direction Dawson had expected.
‘The river carves out a series of wide bends here,’ Michaels said, ‘and we have to follow the riverbank fairly closely, because I don’t know where all of the tank farms are located. So it’s going to take us quite a while to look at every one of them.’
The good news was that it was a fine day, sunny with clear skies, and spotting each of the tank farms wasn’t going to be difficult: places that big were difficult to hide.
While Dawson picked his way along a road that had been built close to the north bank of the river, Michaels divided his attention between the map in front of him and a sheaf of paper on which he would note the relevant details of each site they inspected. Obviously they couldn’t gain access to the tank farms to decide where and how to place their explosives – that would have to be done when the KFRE men were actually on site – so it was really a matter of counting the tanks, estimating their sizes and, if possible, what type of oil or fuel they contained. This could only be done if the tanks had been labelled with letters big enough to be read from a distance.
Dawson pulled the Morris to a stop just off the road and on a slight rise from which they had a clear view of the first tank farm along the bank. Beside him, Michaels drew a very rough sketch of the site and then, with Dawson using the captain’s binoculars and effectively acting as his spotter, he drew a series of circles to indicate the tanks and their locations within the farm, and added a figure beside each one that was his estimate of its probable capacity, based on his experience in Holland and the tank farms there.
‘Can you see any markings on the tanks?’ Michaels asked.
Dawson stared intently through the binoculars, looked carefully at several of the tanks, but shook his head.
‘They are marked, but from this distance I can’t make out any of the letters. The only thing I can see clearly is the name of the place. That’s written on a board beside the entrance.’
Michaels noted down that name and then, with nothing more they could do at that location, Dawson started the staff car again and they drove on.
That set the pattern for the rest of the day. They would drive along the north bank of the Seine, following its tortuous path as it got nearer the sea. When they spotted each refinery or tank farm, Michaels would note its approximate location on his map, and then Dawson would find a suitable vantage point from which they could observe it. They would look at it, Michaels would use a fresh sheet of paper to draw a plan based on what they could see, adding appropriate notes and any additional details that seemed relevant, and then they would move on.
They never stopped too close to any of the sites, because although they were on an official mission, sanctioned by the British government, they didn’t want to attract the attention of some French patriot who might assume – and in fact assume quite correctly – that they were on a kind of spying mission, and scramble the local gendarmes or French military personnel to arrest them. If that happened, they could probably talk their way out of it, but that could take some time; Michaels wanted to finish the surveillance operation that day if possible, and they had a lot of ground to cover, so time was short.
There were also roadblocks to be negotiated – not that many of them, as they were travelling on minor roads beside the river for most of the day – and these, too, took precious minutes and much gesticulating and explanations to get through.
They stopped to eat their sandwiches at about midday, relaxing on a grassy bank a few yards off the road, the engine of the Morris tilly beside them making soothing ticking sounds as it cooled down.
‘How many of these places d’you reckon there are, sir?’ Dawson asked, his words muffled slightly by a mouthful of jam sandwich.
‘Frankly, I don’t know. We’ve checked fifteen or sixteen so far, I think, but I can see another couple in front of us, so my guess is there are at least twenty, maybe more.
That proved to be a significant underestimate; by the end of the afternoon, when the sun was sinking steadily towards the western horizon and casting long shadows in front of them, Michaels put the last sheet of paper, he’d covered with information, into his kitbag on the rear seat and leaned back somewhat wearily.
‘Twenty-nine,’ he said. ‘I never thought there would be that many of them. It seemed never-ending.’
‘Well, at least you’ve done it now, sir,’ Dawson said, accelerating along the road that led towards Le Havre.
Minutes later, the road deviated from the northern bank of the Seine and ran in a wide loop to the north, and then cut south-west to run beside the Canal du Havre à Tancarville, and on into the centre of the city,
‘Where to, sir?’
‘We’ll have to find the British headquarters here and report in, so when you see a group of soldiers, just stop and ask them the way. Then we can arrange for the information we’ve got to be transmitted back to Gravesend so that the lads will know what they’re up against when they get over here.’
Just as in Rouen, there was a significant military presence in the city, and it only took two stops to ask for directions before Dawson knew exactly where he was going. A few minutes later he parked the Morris staff car outside the headquarters building, and both men walked inside.
Almost the first person they saw, walking down the long hallway towards them, was Gordon Rochester.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Michaels asked, his surprise obvious.
‘More or less the same as you – getting ready to blow up all the tank farms between here and Rouen,’ Rochester replied, equally surprised. ‘The balloon went up the day you left. We got new orders around midnight, and were sent – the whole lot of us, virtually – to Le Havre. The lads are here in the local transit camp, waiting for orders, and David Barber and I have been trying to get some sense out of the French high command.’
‘And have you?’
‘Not so’s you’d notice, no. The trouble is, they still seem to think the Jerries are going to be stopped in France long before they get anywhere near Rouen, so there’s no danger to any of the local infrastructure. The Frog general who’s in charge here actually laughed when I said the German advance could be here in a matter of days, maybe hours. They’re all strutting about
with their chests covered in medals, filling in forms and passing paper around and drinking bloody awful coffee. It’s as if they really don’t know that there’s a war on.’
‘I’ve only just got here, obviously, so what’s the current view from our side?’
‘I’ve been told that we’re planning a mass evacuation of our troops from here and Cherbourg, and probably from other ports like Dunkirk as well, because if we stay here with our backs to the English Channel, we’ll be massacred when the Germans arrive. And that could be any day now.’
‘So what about the demolitions, then? Have you got permission to position the men and make preparations?’ Michaels asked.
‘No. Not yet, and that doesn’t look very likely to change.’
Rochester explained what had happened when he and Barber had met with the French captain, Laurent.
‘Individual negotiations with the director of every tank farm?’ Michaels said incredulously. ‘He must be mad. There are twenty-nine of the bloody things. It could take months.’
‘Maybe he is mad,’ Rochester conceded. ‘He’s definitely trying to delay things as much as he can. But I think the main problem is that Laurent believes he’s got everything under control and he thinks we’re just here trying to interfere. It also doesn’t help that we’re British.’
Then something struck him, and he looked keenly at Michaels.
‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘How do you know how many tank farms there are along the Seine? I assumed you were going to start your surveillance from Le Havre and head east towards Rouen, and that you hadn’t done it yet.’
‘No, we went in the opposite direction because it made better sense. We started first thing this morning.’
‘So you’ve completed your survey? That’s brilliant news. I did manage to get some intelligence out of the people at headquarters in Rouen, but what we really need, to formulate our plans, is input from the ground, from someone who’s actually seen the tank farms.’
‘That we have right here,’ Michaels said, gesturing with the sheets of paper he was holding in his left hand.
* * *
They found an unoccupied office and compared notes, and both officers were delighted when they realized that the notes Michaels had made did largely fill in the gaps in the intelligence briefing Rochester had been given.
‘I think we’ve got enough here to brief the men and get some of them moving out of Le Havre, so they can take up their positions quickly,’ Rochester said.
‘So what’s your plan?’
‘The best way to fire the tank farms is to start at Rouen and work west towards Le Havre, leaving a trail of fire behind us. I want to send about half the men to Rouen as soon as possible, and with the explosives, so that they’re in position and ready to start as soon as we get the order.’
‘Or more likely fire them on our own initiative,’ Michaels said.
‘That has to be our last resort, because Laurent is acting with the full authority of the French general officer commanding, and his instructions were very clear. We can guard the tank farms, once we’ve done the negotiations with their directors, but certainly not damage them in any way. It’s Amsterdam all over again,’ Rochester finished bitterly.
‘What about transport?’ Michaels asked.
‘At least that’s all sorted out. We’ve managed to borrow enough trucks to transport all the men and the stores, and I’ve got hold of a staff car as well.’
‘We’ve got one of those as well,’ Dawson said.
* * *
Michaels and Rochester, with Dawson acting as their driver, piled into the Morris and drove to the nearby transit camp.
‘Pretty bloody depressing place, this,’ Michaels said, looking through the windscreen at the rows of huts and tents that had been erected there.
Within a few minutes, the two officers had assembled all the KFRE men in an open area normally used for sport and recreation, not that there was much enthusiasm for either activity in the camp, and explained the situation and what their next moves were going to be. Then Rochester selected the men he wanted to travel to Rouen, and they all set to with enthusiasm, loading the boxes containing explosives and detonators onto lorries that were parked nearby. Once they’d checked all their own weapons – rifles and a good number of .38 revolvers – the men selected for the Rouen end of the operation climbed into the backs of the vehicles, under the command of Lieutenant Barber. Minutes after that, the truck engines were started and the small convoy of lorries lumbered out of the transit camp and immediately turned east, towards Rouen.
Michaels still had to report to the British headquarters to confirm that he and Dawson had completed their tasking, and Rochester had a number of administrative tasks to attend to as well, so it was later in the afternoon before the two officers, with Dawson again behind the wheel, also headed east towards Rouen in Michaels’ staff car.
The car was obviously faster than the lorries, though they didn’t expect to overtake the convoy, or even catch up with it.
‘Just remind me again,’ Michaels asked. ‘Where’s the rendezvous point?’
Rochester, sitting beside him in the back seat, took out a small map of Rouen and unfolded it.
‘That’s not a military map,’ Michaels said. ‘Where did you get it?’
‘I bought it at a shop in Rouen this morning. I tried to get a map or town plan from the French military, but they either hadn’t got one or, more likely, had dozens of boxes of the things but wouldn’t hand one over because I’m British. I bought two, in fact, and David Barber has the other one.’
Rochester pointed at a location near the centre of the city, near one of the bridges that spanned the Seine.
‘That’s the RV there,’ he said. ‘It should be easy to find and it’s quite central. From there, we can easily reach the most easterly of the tank farms and refineries.’
They’d told Dawson to keep his speed up, and on the straighter and more direct route between the two cities this was easy enough to do. But there were still roadblocks, more than they’d met on the roads near the river, and passing through these obstructions inevitably slowed them down.
Approaching one barricade close to Rouen, Dawson hit the brakes firmly and hauled the speed right down as a shot rang out.
‘Are they shooting at us?’ Michaels asked.
‘Not at us so much as over our heads,’ Dawson replied. ‘I think it was just a warning shot, maybe because we were travelling a bit quick, like.’
It was obvious that the French sentry on the roadblock was irritated, not only because Dawson had been driving quickly, but also because the occupants of the car were members of the British armed forces, and therefore intruders in his homeland. He kept the car parked at the barricade for as long as he possibly could, until a lengthy queue had formed behind it, before he grudgingly allowed Dawson to drive on.
‘Ever get the feeling that you’re not welcome, Gordon?’ Michaels asked as he sat back in his seat.
‘Pretty much every day I’m in France,’ Rochester replied. ‘Sometimes I think we should all just bugger off and leave the French to fight Hitler on their own.’
Rouen, when they reached the city, was cloaked in the darkness of late evening, with heavy storm clouds mustering overhead. It was also in a state of chaos, and they quickly found out why.
Sometime that morning, in fact while Rochester and Barber had still been in the city and Michaels and Dawson had been starting their surveillance of the tank farms, a group of German motorized patrols had broken through the French lines – the lines that the French general had told Rochester several times were utterly impregnable – and had opened fire at everything and everyone within range. They’d caused as much damage as they could, and had then retreated to their own front line. That incident had taken place only about 20 miles from Rouen.
Most of the civilian population, the country people who lived in the area where the breach had occurred, had panicked, abandoning their homes and taking to the roads.
They’d fled west, away from the German advance, and then started flooding into Rouen, clogging the streets and causing further panic there with the news that they brought with them. Residents of the city then joined the exodus, which just added to the problem.
The storm broke at about eleven o’clock that evening, a massively heavy rainfall turning many of the streets into shallow streams, the deluge accompanied by the impressive sound and light show of the electrical storm that had stalled almost directly overhead. The rain was so heavy that it brought virtually all the traffic to a standstill, gridlocking the centre of the city.
The staff car got caught up in it as they neared the RV, but Rochester’s town plan allowed him to suggest shortcuts and side streets that Dawson could use to avoid most of the roads where the traffic was jammed solid. When they arrived at the rendezvous point, an open area beside the approach road to the bridge that he and Michaels had used to cross the river the previous evening, it was nearly midnight.
When he stopped the car, all three of them peered through the windscreen, looking for the lorries which had set off from Le Havre much earlier, but there was no sign of them.
‘There is another bridge a bit like this one about a mile down to the south-east,’ Rochester said. ‘I wonder if they ended up there by mistake.’
‘We should give them a few more minutes,’ Michaels said. ‘They may have got snarled up in this blasted traffic jam.’
They sat in silence inside the car, looking at the open parking area and the wide masonry bridge across the river that was clearly visible beyond, even through the driving rain. Despite the rain, and the late hour, there was still plenty of activity in the area, and after they had been sitting and waiting for about ten minutes, they felt rather than heard a deep rumbling noise.
‘What the hell is that?’ Rochester asked.
‘It sounds to me like a vehicle of some sort,’ Dawson said, ‘but I’m buggered if I know what.’
Operation XD Page 23