Wisch, unattached but no big drinker or womaniser at the best of times, had decided to accompany his commander back to base, intending to seek solace in study, which he worked at during quiet moments when he wasn’t enjoying the camaraderie of the unit itself. In this fashion that evening, Schmidt, Wisch and a half-dozen of their fellow crewmen clustered about the warmth of that drum fire, quietly swapping stories and enjoying the extended period of inaction.
“Take our ‘wonderful’ Mark Threes, for example…” Schmidt continued pompously, intentionally refusing to use the Wehrmacht’s new designation of P-3 and throwing a hand back toward the dark shapes of the tanks from where they sat on their collection of deck chairs and ammunition crates. “Certainly the new, roomy turrets are an improvement over the early model ‘-Ones and ‘’-Twos…” he observed, “…but when are our esteemed leaders in the RWM going to start thinking things through properly?
“On paper our little gun there is the match of any enemy tank to be found on the battlefield, but what the boffins back in their workshops fail to mention is that, in the case of taking on Tommi Matildas at least, one has to get a lot closer than we’d like! All well and good for us — the ‘-Threes at least have enough sloped armour to give us some protection — but the poor bastards in the ‘Mark-Twos’ have more than likely been shot full of holes by enemy two-pounders by the time they get close enough to make a dent! It’s a simple equation…either give us more armour or give us a better gun…” he snorted in mildly drunken derision. “Better still, give us both and we’ll really make a mess of the enemy! We can only hope these new panzers we keep hearing rumours of have some battle experience behind them that includes a better armament!”
“We should count ourselves lucky we’re not stuck in P-1s, going around annoying the Tommis with our ‘doorknockers’,” one of the young gunners observed from the other side of the fire with some mirth, raising a few laughs and nods from the others. ‘Doorknocker’ was a nickname the Wehrmacht general soldiery had coined for the automatic gun arming the current P-1 light tank. While moderately effective in Poland, the P-1 tankers had discovered rather unpleasantly in their first engagements with the tanks of the British Expeditionary Force in France that the frontal armour of the Matilda II tank was utterly impervious to the so-called ‘armour-piercing’ shells of their 30mm cannon. The nickname was thus coined: the only purpose the ‘doorknocker’ seemed to serve in the eyes of the gun crews was to ‘knock on the door’ by shattering or bouncing off the enemies’ armour and alerting them to their presence.
“No worse than being one of those Frenchie Somuas!” A driver added, nodding. “Bloody things are riveted together or something ridiculous like that! I saw one near Sedan get hit on a ‘seam’ and the whole damned tank split wide open!”
“Yes, I saw that too…” another agreed beside him “…what a mess it was! Hit by a ‘Thirty Six’…” He referred to the lethal Flak-36 88mm anti-aircraft gun that was far more effective against tanks than against aircraft and had already developed a reputation of being able to deal with anything to be met with on the modern battlefield at incredible range.
“You’d split wide open too if you were hit by an Eight-Point-Eight!” The gunner observed in return, laughing as he pushed the man’s forage cap down over his eyes.
“A powder puff would split him wide open!” Another chimed in.
“Or a navy boy, no doubt!” Wisch added with good-natured cruelty, drawing the expected rude response from the good friend who’d become the butt of the joke.
All were still laughing loudly — even the slighted tank driver — as a motorcycle drew to a halt on the track beside their little encampment. The dispatch rider aboard dismounted from his Zundapp and jogged toward them, instantly picking out Schmidt as the ranking officer present by the way the tanker rose to meet him.
“Obersturmführer Schmidt, I presume?” The rider ventured hurriedly, coming to attention and saluting.
“That’s me, unteroffizier…” Schmidt nodded, all light-heartedness leaving him as he returned the salute and noted the other man’s serious expression. “What can I do for you?”
“Orders for you, sir…!” The rider began, handing over his authorisation papers for Schmidt to examine. “Local HQ requires the presence of an armoured vehicle immediately — if you could follow me, sir!”
“Any idea what it’s about, man?”
“Just that you’re required to mobilise one panzer and rendezvous with other units by the vehicle park outside the main gates. The officer in command will be able to fill you in further — a Captain Stahl is in charge.”
“Well, gentlemen; I guess that ruins our Saturday night…” Schmidt cast his eyes about the men with him, all now also on their feet. No complete single crew was present, but he could draw the appropriate crewmembers from those around him to operate one of the panzers. They wouldn’t work quite as efficiently as a practised and cohesive team might, but they weren’t expecting to go into battle in any case. “Milo, Hans and Karl with me: Karl… get ‘Three-Two-One’ warmed up…”
Richard Kransky hid behind of a clump of bushes by a low stone wall and watched as a small convoy rumbled past along the track toward the farmhouse at high speed. Among the supplies and equipment he carried on his back and about his person, he possessed both a scoped rifle (at that point slung on his back) and a cocked and loaded machine pistol in one hand. Neither of them could be of any use against armoured vehicles, and even if he did have enough ammunition to take on the squads that had arrived in a pair of canvas-covered trucks — which he didn’t — that wasn’t part of his mission requirement and would also be a very good way to get himself killed into the bargain.
Kransky had seen a lot of things in his thirty-seven years, many of them unpleasant. As a young man growing up in the urban sprawl of Trenton, New Jersey he’d been an idealistic soul. A cadetship with a small time newspaper had paved the way for a career in journalism; his own ability and sharp mind had taken that career further — to the point where he was free-lancing for several major US papers by the time he was twenty-eight. But somewhere along the line his career had gone astray. Even he couldn’t remember exactly where, but if there’d been a defining moment, it would’ve been sometime during the Japanese ‘annexation’ of Manchukuo in 1932.
He’d originally travelled there for some reason he could no longer remember — a story of some kind that had soon been lost and forgotten. Whatever that reason, he’d been on the spot as the Japanese invaded, pushing what little resistance there was before them. He could remember the atrocities clearly in his mind — sometimes he still woke up with the images of the dead and the tortured fading in his dreams. The rest of the time he mostly woke up trying to forget the faces of those he himself had killed in the years since…it was a lot to forget: far too much to do so successfully.
Kransky had spent three years in Manchukuo (known at the time as Manchuria) and hadn’t written a single article since. However during that three years he’d learned a lot that he’d put to use many times during the following years: Richard Kransky had learned how to kill. He’d also learned how to organise and lead armed groups and how to fight guerrilla war against a numerically and technologically superior enemy.
Since then he’d become involved in a number of conflicts around the world; from fighting the Japanese in Manchuria to Spain during the Civil War, against Franco’s Nationalists and the Condor Legion. From Spain he’d then returned to Asia once more, this time facing the Japanese in China as they’d invaded into the south from Manchukuo in 1937. By the time he’d left Asia and returned to Europe just prior to the outbreak of war in Poland, the Japanese High Command in China were offering a bounty equivalent to £1,000 Sterling for Kransky’s head: a veritable fortune for any potential Chinese informant (and indeed, no small amount in the UK either).
Experience in Spain had left the man with as little respect for the methods and interests of Hitler’s Germany as he’d shown for Japan’s col
onial aspirations, and Kransky thus found himself operating in France in the middle of 1940. There were already the beginnings of a Resistance Movement, and in Kransky’s opinion the British had displayed amazing foresight in setting up a quite serviceable spy network that hadn’t taken long to locate and tap into.
Of the more dangerous of those talents he’d acquired in the years since his experiences in Manchukuo, by far the most developed and lethal was that of his immense capability as a sniper. To his surprise as much as anyone’s, he’d discovered that his skills as a marksman were excellent to the point of being quite deadly. With a good rifle and a set of optical sights, Kransky could hit a man in the chest at a thousand metres in good conditions. Aided by a large pair of naval binoculars he’d souvenired from the body of an Japanese naval officer, he’d also developed the uncanny ability to determine exactly who was the most important target in any given situation. This hadn’t been particularly difficult with regard to the Japanese military, as their officers continued the outmoded and rather suicidal practice of swaggering about the battlefield and behind the lines sporting pistol and ceremonial sword.
It proved more difficult against enemies that had learned the hard lessons of such behaviour during the Great War. German officers would carry sometimes a machine pistol as would an NCO or, for that matter, many lower ranks in such corps as artillery or tanks, and of late had even started carrying rifles just like anyone else. At ranges of 500 metres or more it was impossible to pick out rank insignia, and Kransky would instead rely on observation of the interaction between groups of men. It usually wouldn’t take him long to pick out the ranking officer in that fashion and deal with them accordingly.
Kransky watched as the vehicles split up some distance from the farmhouse, the tank the armoured car quickly moving away from the trucks and circling to cover the far sides of the house as searchlights mounted atop the nearer trucks blasted the building with brilliant white light, making it impossible for anyone to effect an escape. From his vantage point a hundred metres away, it was clear that the Germans were deadly serious. Kransky had noted the insignia on the tank and trucks as they’d passed in the darkness: the illumination from their slitted headlights had been enough to clearly identify it as a convoy of SS armour and grenadiers.
He was a tall man — close to 187 centimetres when standing fully erect — and the wall he hid behind was barely enough to provide him adequate cover, but he made the best use of it he could as wayward searchlight beams swept past and over him. The farmhouse had been the rendezvous point for channelling him out of France and back to England for debriefing. There was every possibility the British would offer him more ‘work’ on his arrival, and in truth he was thinking of signing up formally if they could place him somewhere his talents might be useful. He wasn’t a man accustomed to working under formal authority, or for liking the concept, but he also recognised the seriousness of what was going on in Europe and that it was going to take more than just localised resistance to defeat the Wehrmacht.
Kransky scratched thoughtfully at his chin as he watched the SS troops pour out of the trucks, his short, scruffy beard as unruly and unmanaged as his dirty mop of blond hair. He scratched somewhere else, just below the rumpled collar of his khaki battledress tunic. With a thin, wry smile he considered it amazing the nearby Germans couldn’t smell him hiding there: he hadn’t had a decent bath for at least a week and his clothes could do with a good wash into the bargain. He’d hoped to accomplish both tasks that night, but it now appeared he’d have to wait a bit longer.
It was unfortunate to say the least that his avenue of escape was now apparently being cut off, but there were alternatives and he was mightily glad he hadn’t been ten minutes earlier or he might well have been captured with them. He’d been unhappy with the location of the safehouse in the first place: it was far too close to a Luftwaffe airfield for comfort and by definition that meant it was far too close to the Wehrmacht in general — a concern that it appeared had now been realised.
Kransky watched for a good twenty minutes as the Schutzstaffeln troopers milled about, stomping their feet against the ground to fight off the chill of night that was settling in. The American didn’t feel it himself — several layers of clothing above and below the waist added to years conditioned to living off the land in harsh circumstances meant it had to be very cold before he’d feel any effects. He could hear occasional shouts from inside the house — almost certainly in German although the words were indistinct at that distance. After a while there were a few screams too — a female voice this time — and added to that rose the unmistakeable wail of a crying baby, making him cringe visibly and scowl in obvious displeasure at his own relative impotence: there was nothing he could do to intervene against so many troops save for getting himself killed.
Deciding that further observation could do no more than increase his feelings of displeasure and uselessness, and that he had another hike of at least thirty kilometres to reach the next safehouse, Kransky turned to sneak off through the bushes and beyond. It was at that moment the first of the shots rang out from within the house, instantly regaining the entirety of his attention. He instinctively hefted the heavy little machine pistol in his hands, as if to reassure himself. He’d picked the weapon up a few weeks before following the battle of Arras, where Matildas of the BEF had given Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division a bloody nose. The German tanker he’d taken it from hadn’t needed it anymore.
It was a remarkable weapon unlike any he’d before seen. No more than thirty centimetres long overall, it nevertheless held the power of a full-sized submachine gun twice its length. A stubby handgrip and guard fitted ahead of its curved, 30-round magazine was no luxury — the weapon’s rate of fire was savagely high, making the grip a necessity for keeping the thing under control when on full automatic. It was certainly a perfect defensive weapon for someone such as himself where operating alone and cutting down on unnecessary size and weight were as vital for long term survival as marksmanship.
Known to the Wehrmacht as an MP2K (the ‘-K’ meaning ‘Kurz’ or ‘Short’), it had been derived from the full-sized MP2 that was coming into widespread use throughout the Wehrmacht and was arming NCOs, non-combat troops and Military Police everywhere. His encounter with the dead panzer crewman had been the first time he’d come across this smaller, more compact version, and Kransky could imagine how handy it’d be in an environment such as a armoured vehicle where space was at a premium.
Another high-pitched female scream pierced the night and roused him from his momentary reflection, cut painfully short by a second pair of shots that had all come from the same type of pistol by Kransky’s experienced reckoning. A second or two later, a general shout of alarm rose from the troops outside as a small figure darted from the open doorway and bolted across the open space between the farmhouse and a large wooden barn, a few dozen metres to the left. It was a young boy from what Kransky could see, who managed to get past two or three soldiers out of sheer surprise before he was finally caught and held captive near the centre of the open floodlit area.
Without a second thought, the American suddenly shifted position and dragged the rifle from his back, slinging the tiny machine pistol in its place. Using the stone wall as a rest, he lifted the semi-automatic sniper rifle and sighted carefully through the 4-power Zeiss scope mounted above the weapon’s receiver. With the help of its magnification he could clearly see what was happening. The boy, no more than five or so, was struggling and kicking for all he was worth and Kransky could now hear his cries of childlike rage and terror. It was all to no avail: a pair of SS troopers held him securely by both arms.
As he watched it occurred to him that there was something strange about the scene he couldn’t quite pin down. As he swept the rifle to either side and took in more of what was going on, the reason came to him in a flash: the troops standing there seemed exceptionally ill at ease about something. Expressions were strained and grim with some troopers clustered together
and speaking in what were even at that distance obviously hushed tones. The two holding the boy seemed more than usually unhappy about the task, as if what they were doing were positively distasteful. To see that level of unease with the Waffen-SS in relation to the harsh treatment of the local population was unusual indeed.
Another figure stepped from the farmhouse, moving toward the men holding the boy, and he followed the newcomer’s progress through the scope. The tall, blond-haired man was an SS officer — old enough to possibly be a captain or major from what Kransky could see although rank insignia wasn’t clear. The most telling part of the scene, one that chilled him to the bone and brought feelings of rage welling up from deep within him, was the sight of the man buckling his belt as he left the house. The image left no doubt in Kransky’s mind as to the reasons behind the woman’s screams of a few moments ago.
A senior NCO followed close behind the officer, pistol in hand and presumably the source of the gunfire so far. Kransky realised in that moment why the troops seemed upset by the situation: regardless of enemy propaganda, most soldiers in any given army — even the Waffen-SS — weren’t generally predisposed toward atrocities. Certainly there were isolated incidents that occurred in the heat of battle, but this wasn’t such a situation and concepts such as cold-blooded murder and rape were obviously as abhorrent to these soldiers as they were to most normal human beings anywhere.
Kransky was also suddenly very concerned for the fate of the boy the troopers now held. Even if they were unhappy about the situation, he knew that troops conditioned to obeying orders wouldn’t prevent the officer in charge from murdering everyone at that farm if he so desired — and if those in the house were already dead there was little likelihood the boy would be allowed to live. As the pair drew near to the child, Kransky made a serious life decision in an instant: a decision that went against every basic rule as a sniper or guerrilla fighter…he decided he had to get involved.
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