by Jack Higgins
A half mile outside Studley Constable Shafto waved the column to a halt and gave his orders. ‘No time for any nonsense now. We’ve got to hit them and hit them hard before they know what’s happening. Captain Mallory, you take three jeeps and fifteen men, cross the fields to the east of the village using those farm tracks marked on the map. Circle round till you come out on the Studley Grange road north of the watermill. Sergeant Hustler, the moment we reach the edge of the village, you dismount and take a dozen men on foot and make your way up this sunken track through Hawks Wood to the church. The remaining men stay with me. We’ll plug the road by the Grey woman’s house.’
‘So we’ve got them completely bottled up, Colonel,’ Mallory said.
‘Bottled up hell. When everyone’s in position and I give the signal on field telephone, we go in and finish this thing fast.’
There was silence. It was Sergeant Hustler who finally broke it. ‘Begging the Colonel’s pardon, but wouldn’t some sort of reconnaissance be in order?’ He tried to smile. ‘I mean, from what we hear, these Kraut paratroopers ain’t exactly Chesterfields.’
‘Hustler,’ Shafto said coldly. ‘You ever query an order of mine again and I’ll have you down to private so fast you won’t know your own first name.’ A muscle twitched in his right cheek as his glance took in the assembled NCOs one by one. ‘Hasn’t anybody got any guts here?’
‘Of course, sir,’ Mallory answered. ‘We’re right behind you, Colonel.’
‘Well you’d better be,’ Shafto said, ‘because I’m going in there now on my own with a white flag.’
‘You mean you’re going to invite them to surrender, sir?’
‘Surrender, my backside, Captain. While I do some talking, the rest of you will be getting into position and you’ve got exactly ten minutes from the moment I enter that dump so let’s get to it.’
Devlin was hungry. He heated a little soup, fried an egg and made a sandwich of it with two thick slices of bread, Molly’s own baking. He was eating it in the chair by the fire when a cold draught on his left cheek told him that the door had opened. When he looked up, she was standing there.
‘So there you are?’ he said cheerfully. ‘I was having a bit before coming looking for you.’ He held up the sandwich. ‘Did you know these things were invented by a belted earl, no less?’
‘You bastard!’ she said. ‘You dirty swine! You used me.’
She flung herself on him, hands clawing at his face. He grabbed her wrists and fought to control her. ‘What is it?’ he demanded. Yet in his heart, he knew.
‘I know all about it. Carter isn’t his name—it’s Steiner and he and his men are bloody Germans come for Mr Churchill. And what’s your name? Not Devlin, I’ll be bound.’
He pushed her away from him, went and got the Bushmills and a glass. ‘No, Molly, it isn’t’ He shook his head. ‘You weren’t meant to be any part of this, my love. You just happened.’
‘You bloody traitor!’
He said in a kind of exasperation. ‘Molly, I’m Irish, that means I’m as different from you as a German is from a Frenchman. I’m a foreigner. We’re not the same just because we both speak English with different accents. When will you learn, you people?’
There was uncertainty in her eyes now, but still she persisted. ‘Traitor!’
His face was bleak then, the eyes very blue, the chin tilted. ‘No traitor, Molly. I am a soldier of the Irish Republican Army. I serve a cause as dear to me as yours.’
She needed to hurt him then, to wound and had the weapon to do it. ‘Well, much good may it do you and your friend Steiner. He’s finished or soon will be. You next.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Pamela Vereker was with me up at the church when he and his men took her brother and George Wilde up there. We overheard enough to send her flying off to Meltham to get those Yankee Rangers.’
He grabbed her by the arms. ‘How long ago?’
‘You go to hell!’
‘Tell me, damn you!’ he shook her roughly.
‘I’d say they must be there by now. If the wind was in the right direction you could probably hear the shooting, so there isn’t a bloody thing you can do about it except run while you have the chance.’
He released her and said wryly. ‘Sure and it would be the sensible thing to do, but I was never one for that.’
He pulled on his cap and goggles, his trenchcoat, and belted it around his waist. He crossed to the fireplace and felt under a pile of old newspapers behind the log basket. There were two hand grenades there which Ritter Neumann had given him. He primed them and placed them carefully inside the front flap of his trench-coat. He put the Mauser into his right pocket and lengthened the sling on his Sten, suspending it around his neck almost to waist level so that he could fire it one-handed if necessary.
Molly said, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Into the valley of death, Molly, my love, rode the six hundred and all that sort of good old British rubbish.’ He poured himself a glass of Bushmills and saw the look of amazement on her face. ‘Did you think I’d run for the hills and leave Steiner in the lurch?’ He shook his head. ‘God, girl, and I thought you knew something about me.’
‘You can’t go up there.’ There was panic in her voice now. ‘Liam, you won’t stand a chance.’ She caught hold of him by the arm.
‘Oh, but I must, my pet.’ He kissed her on the mouth and pushed her firmly to one side. He turned at the door. ‘For what it’s worth, I wrote you a letter. Not much, I’m afraid, but if you’re interested, it’s on the mantelpiece.’
The door banged, she stood there rigid, frozen. Somewhere in another world the engine roared into life and moved away.
She found the letter and opened it feverishly. It said: Molly, my own true love. As a great man once said, I have suffered a sea-change and nothing can ever be the same again. I came to Norfolk to do a job, not to fall in love for the first and last time in my life with an ugly little peasant girl that should have known better. By now you’ll know the worst of me, but try not to think it. To leave you is punishment enough. Let it end there. As they say in Ireland, we knew the two days. Liam.
The words blurred, there were tears in her eyes. She stuffed the letter into her pocket and stumbled outside. Her horse was at the hitching ring. She untied him quickly, scrambled up on his back and urged him into a gallop, beating her clenched fist against his neck. At the end of the dyke she took him straight across the road, jumped the hedge and galloped for the village, taking the shortest route across the fields.
Otto Brandt sat on the parapet of the bridge and lit a cigarette as if he didn’t have a care in the world. ‘So what do we do, run for it?’
‘Where to?’ Ritter looked at his watch. ‘Twenty to five. It should be dark by six-thirty at the latest. If we can hang on until then, we could fade away in twos and threes and make for Hobs End across country. Maybe some of us could catch that boat.’
‘The Colonel could have other ideas,’ Sergeant Altmann said.
Brandt nodded. ‘Exactly, only he isn’t here, so for the moment it seems to me we’d better get ready to do a little fighting.’
‘Which raises an important point,’ Ritter said. ‘We fight only as German soldiers. That was made clear from the beginning. It seems to me that the time has come to drop the pretence.’
He took off his red beret and jump jacket, revealing his Fliegerbluse. From his hip pocket he produced a Luftwaffe sidecap or Schiff and adjusted it to the correct angle.
‘All right,’ he said to Brandt and Altmann. ‘The same for everybody, so you’d better get moving.’
Joanna Grey had witnessed the entire scene from her bedroom window and the sight of Ritter’s uniform brought a chill to her heart. She watched Altmann go in to the Post Office. A moment later Mr Turner emerged. He crossed the bridge and started up the hill to the church.
Ritter was in an extraordinary dilemma. Ordinarily in such circumstances he would have orde
red an immediate withdrawal, but as he had said to Brandt, where to? Including himself, he had twelve men to guard the prisoners and hold the village. An impossible situation. But so was the Albert Canal and Eban Emael, that’s what Steiner would have said. It occurred to him and not for the first time, how much he had come to depend on Steiner over the years.
He tried to raise him again on the field telephone. ‘Come in Eagle One,’ he said in English. ‘This is Eagle Two.’
There was no reply. He handed the phone back to Private Hagl who lay in the shelter of the bridge wall, the barrel of his Bren protruding through a drainage hole giving him a fair field of fire. A supply of magazines was neatly stacked beside him. He, too, had divested himself of the red beret and jump jacket and wore Schiff and Fliegerbluse while still retaining his camouflaged trousers.
‘No luck, Herr Oberleutnant?’ he said and then stiffened. ‘I think that’s a jeep I hear now.’
‘Yes, but from the wrong direction entirely,’ Ritter told him grimly.
He vaulted over the wall beside Hagl, turned and saw a jeep come round the corner by Joanna Grey’s cottage. A white handkerchief fluttered at the end of the radio aerial. There was one occupant only, the man at the wheel. Ritter stepped from behind the wall and waited, hands on hips.
Shafto hadn’t bothered swopping to a tin hat and still wore his sidecap. He took a cigar from one of his shirt pockets, and put it between his teeth purely for effect. He took his time over lighting it, then got out of the jeep and came forward. He stopped a yard or two away from Ritter and stood, legs apart, looking him over.
Ritter noted the collar tabs and saluted formally. ‘Colonel.’
Shafto returned the salute. His glance took in the two Iron Crosses, the Winter War ribbon, the wound badge in silver, the combat badge for distinguished service in ground battles, the paratroopers qualification badge, and knew that in this fresh-faced young man he was looking on a hardened veteran.
‘So, no more pretence, Herr Oberleutnant? Where’s Steiner? Tell him Colonel Robert E. Shafto, in command Twenty-first Specialist Raiding Force, would like to speak with him.’
‘I am in charge here, Herr Oberst. You must deal with me.’
Shafto’s eyes took in the barrel of the Bren poking through the drainage hole in the bridge parapet, swivelled to the Post Office, the first floor of the Studley Arms where two bedroom windows stood open. Ritter said politely, ‘Is there anything else, Colonel, or have you seen enough?’
‘What happened to Steiner? Has he run out on you or something?’ Ritter made no reply and Shafto went on, ‘Okay, son, I know how many men you have under your command and if I have to bring my boys in here you won’t last ten minutes. Why not be practical and throw in the towel?’
‘So sorry,’ Ritter said, ‘but the fact is I left in such a hurry that I forgot to put one in my overnight bag.’
Shafto tapped ash from his cigar. ‘Ten minutes, that’s all I’ll give you, then we come in.’
‘And I’ll give you two, Colonel,’ Ritter said. ‘To get to hell out of here before my men open fire.’
There was the metallic click of weapons being cocked. Shafto looked up at the windows and said grimly, ‘Okay, sonny, you asked for it.’
He dropped the cigar, stamped it very deliberately into the ground, walked back to the jeep and got behind the wheel. As he drove away he reached for the mike on the field radio. This is Sugar One. Twenty seconds and counting. Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen …’
He was passing Joanna Grey’s cottage at twelve, disappeared round the bend in the road on ten.
She watched him go from the bedroom window, turned and went into the study. She opened the secret door to the cubbyhole loft, closed it behind her and locked it. She went upstairs, sat down at the radio, took the Luger from the drawer and laid it down on the table where she could reach it quickly. Strange, but now that it had come to this she wasn’t in the least afraid. She reached for a bottle of Scotch and as she poured a large one, firing started outside.
The lead jeep in Shafto’s section roared round the corner into the straight. There were four men inside and the two in the rear were standing up working a Browning machine-gun. As they passed the garden of the cottage next to Joanna Grey’s, Dinter and Berg stood up together, Dinter supporting the barrel of a Bren gun across his shoulder while Berg did the firing. He loosed one long continuous burst that knocked the two men at the Browning off their feet. The jeep bounced over the verge and rolled over, coming to rest upside down in the stream.
The next jeep in line swerved away wildly, the driver taking it round in a circle over the grass bank that almost had it into the stream with the other. Berg swung the barrel of the Bren, continuing to fire in short bursts, driving one of the jeep’s machine-gun crew over the side of the vehicle and smashing its windscreen before it scrambled round the corner to safety.
In the rubble of Stalingrad, Dinter and Berg had learned that the essence of success in such situations was to make your hit, then get out fast. They exited immediately through a wrought-iron gate in the wall and worked their way back to the Post Office, using the cover of the back garden hedges at the rear of the cottages.
Shafto, who had witnessed the entire debacle from a rise in the woods further down the road, ground his teeth with rage. It had suddenly become all too obvious that Ritter had let him see exactly what he had wanted him to see. ‘Why, that little bastard was setting me up,’ he said softly.
The jeep which had just been shot-up pulled in at the side of the road in front of number three. Its driver had a bad cut on the face. A sergeant named Thomas was putting a field dressing on it. Shafto shouted down, ‘For Christ’s sake, Sergeant, what are you playing at? There’s a machine-gun behind the wall of the garden of the second cottage along. Go forward with three men on foot now and take care of it.’
Krukowski, who waited behind him with the field telephone, winced. Five minutes ago we were thirteen. Now it’s nine. What in the hell does he think he’s playing at?
There was heavy firing from the other side of the village. Shafto raised his fieldglasses, but could see little except for a piece of the road curving beyond the bridge and the roof of the mill standing up beyond the end houses. He snapped a finger and Krukowski passed him the phone. ‘Mallory, do you read me?’
Mallory answered instantly. ‘Affirmative, Colonel.’
‘What in the hell goes on up there? I expected you with bells on by now.’
‘They’ve got a strong point set up in the mill on the first floor. Commands one hell of a field of fire. They knocked out the lead jeep. It’s blocking the road now. I’ve already lost four men.’
‘Then lose some more,’ Shafto yelled into the phone. ‘Get in there, Mallory. Burn them out. Whatever it takes.’
The firing was very heavy now as Shafto tried the other section. ‘You there, Hustler?’
‘Colonel, this is Hustler.’ His voice sounded rather faint.
‘I expected to see you up on the hill at that church by now.’
‘It’s been tough going, Colonel. We started across the fields like you said and got tangled up in a bog. Just approaching the south end of Hawks Wood now.’
‘Well, get the lead out, for Christ’s sake!’
He handed the phone back to Krukowski. ‘Christ Jesus!’ he said bitterly. ‘You can’t rely on anybody: when it comes right down to it, anything I need doing right, I’ve got to see to myself.’
He slid down the bank into the ditch as Sergeant Thomas and the three men he’d taken with him returned. ‘Nothing to report, Colonel.’
‘What do you mean, nothing to report?’
‘No one there, sir, just these.’ Thomas held out a handful of .303 cartridge cases.
Shafto struck his hand violently, spilling them to the ground. ‘Okay, I want both jeeps out in front, two men to each Browning. I want that bridge plastered. I want you to lay down such a field of fire that even a blade of grass won’t be able to stand up.�
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‘But Colonel,’ Thomas began.
‘And you take four men and work your way on foot back of the cottages. Hit that Post Office by the bridge from the rear. Krukowski stays with me.’ He slammed his hand hard down on the bonnet of the jeep. ‘Now move it!’
Otto Brandt had Corporal Walther, Meyer and Riedel with him in the mill. From a defence point of view it was perfect: the ancient stone walls were about three feet thick and downstairs the oak doors were bolted and barred. The windows of the first floor commanded an excellent field of fire and Brandt had a Bren gun set up there.
Down below a jeep burned steadily, blocking the road. One man was still inside, two more sprawled in the ditch. Brandt had disposed of the jeep personally, making no sign at first, letting Mallory and his men come roaring in, only lobbing down a couple of grenades from the loft door at the last moment. The effect had been catastrophic. From behind the hedges further up the road the Americans poured in a considerable amount of fire to little effect because of those massive stone walls.
‘I don’t know who’s in charge down there, but he doesn’t know his business,’ Walther observed as he reloaded his Ml.
‘Well, what would you have done?’ Brandt asked him, squinting along the barrel of the Bren as he loosed off a quick burst.
‘There’s the stream, isn’t there? No windows on that side. They should be moving in from the rear…’
Brandt held up his hand. ‘Everyone stop firing.’
‘Why?’ Walther demanded.
‘Because they have, or hadn’t you noticed?’
There was a deathly silence and Brandt said softly, ‘I’m not sure I really believe this, but get ready.’
A moment later, with a rousing battlecry, Mallory and eight or nine men emerged from shelter and ran for the next ditch, firing from the hip. In spite of the fact that they were getting covering fire from the Brownings of the two remaining jeeps on the other side of the hedge, it was an incredible act of folly.