In the distance, an owl hooted softly. Davall frowned at the reluctance in McAllister's voice and understood, but he was beyond caring about anything, but revenge. “That won’t be easy. Greg, I’ll come with you, but he’s well protected.”
“Or so he thinks,” Davall said, hearing the noise of a fox moving through the undergrowth. The old thrill was gone, replaced now by a cold murderous desire…and an understanding of what it would take to get at his enemy and kill him. “Guess who he’s taken into his bed.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
South of Colchester, England
Alex DeRiemer watched Monty addressing a group of officers and stood back, as he reassured a pair of them and issued final orders to the others, remaining calm all the time. He didn’t understand how Monty could be so calm. After nearly a week of heavy preparation, the counter-attack was about to begin. Hundreds of tanks, thousands of guns, tens of thousands of soldiers…all emplaced and prepared for the greatest offensive the British Army had ever launched. Few of the lads had really expected to be fighting a war in their backyards, but they had responded splendidly. Montgomery was confident of victory. DeRiemer hoped he was right. The Germans might well have other surprises up their sleeves.
He rubbed the bruises on his arm. No one had expected Kim Philby, of all people, to be a German spy. If his experience had been like the other spies who had been rounded up and interrogated, Philby had believed he was spying for the Russians, something that bothered Churchill greatly. The Communists had a wide appeal that the Nazis lacked, and they might well have subverted others…and, if the Germans had understood that, they might have subverted hundreds who didn’t really know who they served.
MI5 had put together an entire series of teams working on the question of just how much Philby had told the Germans, but a person in his position could have told them almost anything from the files. Hollis, at least, had had the dignity to commit suicide once he’d figured out the truth. The others, most of whom had come from Cambridge, didn’t wanted to believe the truth. Churchill had cracked a joke about how Oxford boys were more loyal to the country, but the truth was that they no longer knew who to trust. The only advantage they had was that the Germans might not know that the remainder of the spy ring had been broken.
DeRiemer had urged Churchill, as strongly as he dared, to leave Skorzeny’s death a mystery. Churchill had turned it down; the chance to gloat on the BBC about how Skorzeny had been killed by an old man was too good to pass up, particularly with the reputation the Germans had created for their champion. He had done most of the things they said he had, but in the end, he’d taken it a step too far. Even DeRiemer hadn’t known that Churchill was armed. The Government of Britain would survive.
Monty strode over and clapped a hand on DeRiemer’s back. “Welcome back, hero. How’s the Prime Minister?”, needling DeRiemer just a little. Churchill’s praise of DeRiemer’s actions under fire had spread far and wide. DeRiemer didn’t want to admit that he barely remembered what had happened. As far as he was concerned, he had flunked his first trial under fire.
Churchill hadn’t accepted more than a quick check-up by the doctor. The Prime Minister had shrugged off Skorzeny’s death before returning to his office and cheerfully informing the nation – and the Germans – that the rumours of his death were gravely exaggerated.
“The Prime Minister is fine,” DeRiemer answered Monty, keeping a web of complex emotions off his face. “He wants a final progress report before the attack is launched. Do the Germans know that you’re coming?”
“I’d be surprised if they didn’t know,” Monty said grimly. “I’d like to hope that we obtained perfect surprise, but under the circumstances, I would be astonished if they didn’t have any idea that we were coming. We’ve been probing the German lines with infantry and commando forces of our own for the past week, but the Germans haven’t been probing us with anything like as much vigour, something that worried us and actually had us standing to attention in the face of a possible attack.”
DeRiemer lifted an eyebrow. “You expected an attack?”
“Any attacker needs to know the positions of the enemy and the lay of the land,” Monty said. “The German probing attacks before their massive assault against the Colchester Line were intended to scout out our locations and identify formations in their positions, but they reduced their operations for a few days before the operation began, in hopes of catching us off guard. If they were doing the same here…”
He shrugged and continued, “Be that as it may, we have all four forces in position and prepared for the offensive. Once I blow the whistle, everything we have will advance against the enemy, under cover of thousands of guns and as many aircraft as we can scrape together. One of the stay-behind units managed to put a German airfield out of action, hampering their attempts to resupply themselves from the air, so the Germans will have to send aircraft in from the continent. That gives us an advantage.
“At the same time, commando teams we have inserted behind enemy lines and the forces trapped in Colchester and the smaller towns will make their own attacks,” he concluded. “The Germans will have to respond to multiple threats at once, each one potentially lethal on its own, not unlike they did to us the night they landed. We’ll break their force, break them, and then race to Felixstowe.”
“I hope you’re right,” DeRiemer said slowly. “How long until the offensive?”
Monty checked his watch. “Two hours. Do you want to join me in the command vehicle?”
DeRiemer considered it. Truthfully, he would have preferred to return to London, but Churchill had wanted a personal report – had even seriously considered coming north himself to join Monty. It had taken the combined efforts of several people to talk him out of that, but DeRiemer still worried about it; Churchill, he was starting to suspect, didn’t want to live on past the end of the war. He’d been removed from office once, only to have to watch as the next government betrayed the country he had fought so hard to protect; he didn’t want to do that again. The world was changing and Churchill, the bulldog Prime Minister, was slowly growing out of place.
“I’ll remain with you for the moment,” DeRiemer said. He owed Churchill that much. “What happens if the assault fails?”
Monty looked disgustingly confident and said dryly, “It will be back to the drawing board. Don’t worry about it too much, Alex. This assault has everything going for it. If it fails, it will be through lack of determination on our part, and the men have all the determination that they could need. The German atrocities have ensured that for us.”
***
All along the line, British, American and Commonwealth soldiers waited impatiently. Huddled in bunkers, they nervously checked their weapons and wrote letters to loved ones. As they prepared for the big push, thousands of the men prayed that their faith in Monty was justified.
Some were filled with foreboding as they worried over their first combat action. Others relished the thought of finally going into battle and taking the offensive. These eager beavers had never experienced battle either. The combat vets took care of the details and didn't think about the big picture or the future. It would come when it came, and not a moment before.
For the survivors of the Home Guard units, this was their chance for revenge. They had been born and bred in the occupied areas of the country, and the news about the German atrocities had shocked them deeply. Some of them were the only survivors of their towns and villages, others knew that their relatives and friends were in the hands of the Germans, and felt a cold determination to return and free their loved ones. After weeks of combat, the Home Guard was impossible to distinguish from a regular army unit, and their preparations mirrored the rest of the line as they readied themselves to face the heartbreaking scenes they were sure to face in the very near future. One way or another, they were going home.
Monty sat alone in his command vehicle. He had no one to turn to for reassurance. The loneliness of command gripped him firm
ly and refused to let go. He’d maintained a brave face in front of DeRiemer, but it hit him now that if he failed, the Germans might just have a chance to strike back and still win the Battle of Britain. He maintained a confident appearance…and he knew, now, that he wasn’t confident at all. He had issued all of the orders, made his plans and trusted in his subordinates to carry them out, but what if they failed?
Ten miles to the north, the German soldiers checked their own weapons and supplies, knowing that they were desperately short of both. They trusted Rommel, had more faith in him than they had in the Fuhrer, but they knew just how short the supplies actually were. They weren't beaten, not yet, but the exhortations from Radio Berlin to stand and fight were more demoralising than looking up and seeing a wave of British tanks advancing towards their position.
Two miles to the south, the gunners prepared their weapons and checked their targeting coordinates. They had been ordered to plaster the German lines before the assault began and intended to hammer them into dust, but they had to be careful; in places, British and German forces were so close together that fratricide was almost bound to occur.
All along the line, they waited…
***
Colonel Harry Jackson braced himself as the guns fired in unison, a shattering roar that seemed to erupt from right behind him, sending shells arcing up, and down onto the German line. The blinding flashes and deafening explosions in the distance watered his eyes and rang in his ears as the shells detonated, hammering the Germans.
He winced as the first shells crashed down around his headquarters The Germans were shelling them in an attempt to break up their attack before it could be launched. The weight of German shells seemed lighter, somehow, than it had been before; the noise, too, somehow seemed less deafening. Jackson wondered in a moment of dark humour if the Germans had intended to deafen them all. The first taste of shellfire had been terrifyingly loud, but he’d grown used to it.
The first line of tanks rumbled forwards, their commanders watching carefully for any Germans trying to block their path, and Jackson waved to his men. They trusted him now and so they streamed out of the trenches, heading north as fast as they could move behind the tanks. It wasn’t quite certain where they would meet the Germans; their trenches were surrounding Colchester itself and spreading out in a barrier, but no one really controlled the no-man’s land between the two sides. The noise of the tanks was drowned out completely by the shells, still crashing down on the Germans, and Jackson hoped that that would give them the advantage of surprise.
His men kept their heads down as they advanced, following the tanks as they picked up speed, trying to punch into the German lines before the Germans knew that they were there. The streak of a German antitank rocket, coming from a position that might once have been a small hamlet before both sides had fought over it, knocked out one tank, but the remainder kept going and the infantry assaulted the German position, carefully avoiding the machine gun fire from the remains of a house.
“Two prisoners, sir,” Sergeant Wilt reported after taking the ambush position. Jackson nodded. “They’re both infantrymen. The others fought and died.”
“Send the prisoners back to the rear, alive,” Jackson ordered tightly. They didn’t have the manpower to guard them indefinitely, and the two men had to be protected as POWs. He wouldn’t have put it past some of the soldiers to kill them in revenge. “The remainder of us will continue to advance.”
The landscape was torn and cratered. The area had once been a small town, but the Germans had assaulted it during their massive offensive. The Royal Irish Guards who had guarded this town had been added to the lists of heroes of the war. As the tanks spread out, Jackson’s men assaulted the position, knowing that it was a linchpin of the German defences surrounding Colchester. The Germans wanted to keep the forces in Colchester trapped…and now, with the Germans being attacked from the south…
Jackson looked up as the sounds of shooting and explosions from the north redoubled. At a guess, the thousands of infantrymen who had been trapped in Colchester and were turning the city into an impregnable fortress had launched their offensive, stabbing a knife into the German back. The enemy would be wise to order their forces to fall back before they were burned between two fires, but they didn’t seem aware of their danger; they fought and held the remains of the town as tenaciously as Jackson himself had held a similar town.
Inch by bloody inch, the town was cleared of the Germans, leaving nothing behind. The armoured divisions moved on towards the German lines, but the main roads had been blocked and mined. He saw a tank skid to a halt as a mine detonated under its treads, ruining the track. The other tanks headed off the road, around the tank, and continued to advance. He keyed his radio and called in the result, expecting engineers to come forward while the infantry cleared the area of German forces and continued the advance on Colchester.
They advanced, slowly, towards Colchester. He could see the city in the distance, a place he had never visited before and knew almost nothing about save only for the fact that the Germans had surrounded it and the British defenders had refused to allow them to take the city. The fighting was still being waged in the distance, but for the moment, Jackson and his men were caught in a peaceful lull which faded as a German aircraft raced overhead, launching a series of rockets at an advancing British unit. Jackson picked himself off the ground and barked, ordering the men to advance again. They were on the verge of hitting the lines around Colchester and hammering the Germans right where it hurt. The fighting raged on as they encountered a German defence line, one very well dug in and prepared…and then it just broke.
Jackson blinked in confusion. “What the hell?”
Sergeant Wilt understood and said as a long flagpole was extended with a tattered and singed British flag hanging from the staff. “They just got hit from the rear. That’s a British officer.”
The man facing them as the soldiers approached, warily was definitely wearing a British uniform…and was surrounded by other British soldiers, who were securing the handful of German prisoners. The Germans looked battered and scared. Just for a moment, Jackson saw how young most of them were and almost felt sorry for them. Their crimes, however, demanded nothing but the most serious punishment. He watched dispassionately as they were marched away.
“Major Massingbird,” the newcomer said. Rather than saluting, he held out a hand. Jackson gripped it in surprise. “Colchester Home Guard. Welcome to Colchester.”
Jackson laughed out loud.
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to be here.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Near Colchester, England
Despite himself, Oberst Frank-Michael Baeck was beginning to understand how the British must have felt back during the early days of the invasion. They hadn’t known just what was going on, they hadn’t realised where the real threat lay…and because of that, they hadn’t been able to shove the Germans back into the sea before it was far too late.
Now, there were four major assaults going on, two from the south and two from the west, backed up by a massive aerial offensive and an insurgency campaign behind the lines. The Germans had thought that their rear was fairly secure but the British were showing them just how inadequate their imagination was and it wouldn’t be long before Colchester’s besiegers were completely annihilated or captured.
And Rommel was standing there, thinking. Baeck wanted to scream at him, in the desperate hope that Rommel’s genius could get them back out of their hole and back to a position of mastery. The British insurgents hadn’t managed to cut all of the telephone lines to the HQ, either the ones they’d commandeered or the new ones they’d laid to improve their secure communications, and reports kept coming in but Rommel did nothing.
“Field Marshal,” Baeck said finally. “What are your orders?”
Rommel's eyes were elsewhere. Perhaps he was contemplating the complete collapse of his career along with the lodgement. The forces out along
the defence line were hopelessly small for the task of blocking every British attack. “They promised that we would have all the resupply...”
His head snapped up suddenly. “I want you to order a general retreat from the Colchester Line and the other outer defence lines,” he ordered. “We’ll fall back on Ipswich and use the defences there to buy time.”
Baeck didn’t want to say it, but there was no choice. Falling back on Ipswich would allow the Wehrmacht to create a smaller defensive line that could be more easily defended once they concentrated their forces.
More reports came in. British aircraft had broken through the Luftwaffe’s perimeter and had strafed a company of German soldiers on the ground. “We cannot leave our forces strung out to be destroyed piecemeal. Order Das Reich to move forward and cover the withdrawal back to Ipswich. That British assault force is likely to be the most important to foil.”
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