by Gee, Colin
1501 hrs, Tuesday 28th August 1945, Headquarters of SHAEF, Trianon Palace Hotel, Versailles, France.
Eisenhower heard the footsteps and looked up, his face carrying a pained expression.
“So, what do the council say?”
Bedell-Smith deferred to Bradley, as he had just finished a heated conversation with Donitz.
‘Or as heated as a conversation through an interpreter can be,’ though Smith wryly.
“He said he wasn’t surprised to find infiltrators, Sir.”
Bradley eased his collar a little, reliving the confrontation in his mind.
“He says that they have identified a number of these infiltrators, and more will be found soon.”
Eisenhower lit up a cigarette, knowing his man hadn’t hit the headline yet.
Bradley was quite clearly furious.
“Donitz says that we have to accept some issues, or withdraw the German forces completely, as he cannot offer any guarantees.”
Eisenhower nodded sagely.
‘Figures.’
He shrugged, his mind quickly reworking the problem and coming to the same conclusion it had some time beforehand.
“Well, we simply can’t take them out of the line, now that they have established in the Ruhr can we?”
He wasn’t asking so much as confirming his thoughts.
“What we can do, sure as hell, is make sure we don’t get that sort of repeat in the air. Make sure that sort of co-op mission is avoided in future. Let German look after German, then if there is a rogue, it’s them that’ll suffer.”
That made sense and Bedell-Smith noted it roughly on his pad, although he added, “Apparently, the German leader came good though Sir. It’s only a few rotten apples, that’s what the feedback says.”
Ike stubbed out his cigarette, his bladder suddenly announcing its needs.
“Maybe so, Walt, but if we can avoid cross-national groupings until they have their issues sorted then I will be happy.”
‘Happier, more like.’
“Now, reports from the ground are good. Recce will firm that up for us.”
Bradley was quite happy that a large amount of stuff painted with a red star was no longer his concern.
“So, before I pee myself, I am confirming the ‘Go’ order for Operation Casino. Let’s see if we can stop them dead for McCreery.”
Operation Casino, a near-copy of ‘Gabriel’, was an intelligence-led strategic bomber attack like that near Limburg, but on a larger scale. The full might of the RAF Bomber Command being called upon to deliver one devastating rolling attack.
There was one small problem.
The intelligence was mainly provided by a Leutnant Huber, formerly of the 21st Panzer Division, captured in Normandy by the 43rd Wessex Division, and subsequently trained and equipped by British Military Intelligence to remain behind the lines and supply information on Soviet movements during the uneasy peace.
The new war changed his status from persuaded agent to committed ally.
His Intelligence trainer and main liaison officer, posing as a Colonel in the Pay Corps, had been wounded early in the new war and the hospital he was in captured by the advancing Red Army.
He had been visited in Kirchgellersen by a senior officer of the GRU, who went away with more knowledge than she had arrived with. That knowledge now meant that Leutnant Huber spent every day in pain, responding to the whims of those who held lordship over his wife and life.
Operation Gabriel had been a huge success.
Operation Casino was to be the greatest disaster of the Allied air war.
Nazarbayeva had visited the enemy prisoner in the medical facility at Kirchgellersen and initiated the interrogation of the Military Intelligence Officer, the combination of her soft female voice and a Pentothal injection inducing indiscretion in a man already affected by anaesthetic.
All in all, the Englishman had betrayed twelve agents in place, nine of whom were now working for the GRU, the other three having made a more dramatic and terminal choice.
In the absence of Tatiana, the operation had been proposed by Lieutenant General Kochetov, using his former enemy’s assets to the maximum, Kochetov combined with Zhukov and Bagramyan, designing a trap from which the RAF could not escape unscathed.
‘Maximum effort’ had been called for, and Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris had moved heaven and earth to get the maximum amount of high-explosive into the air.
Aircraft long removed from the Allied inventory were back in action, crewed by anyone qualified to sit in an aircraft. Experienced men who had seen all the air war had to offer through to beardless youths on their first mission, all were called on.
The Allied effort was concentrated on a corridor in Northern Germany, a strip of forest running parallel with the River Elbe, particularly focussing on the stretch from Bleckede, through Amt Neuhaus and onto Dömitz.
In an area roughly thirty kilometres long by three kilometres wide lay vast quantities of Soviet materiel and manpower.
Recon flights had been harried, but successfully brought back images showing tracks and camouflaged vehicles spread liberally throughout the forest.
Agents reported seeing fuel storage facilities spring up under the trees, and tanks in their scores feed greedily from them.
More reports spoke of artillery pieces, wheel to wheel in places, lined up as if on parade under the protective canopy of the large green forest.
And soldiers.
Thousands and thousands of soldiers.
The maximum effort of Operation Casino totalled eight hundred and eighty-nine machines put into the air, forming a huge line of multi-engine aircraft all the way from England to the mouth of the Elbe.
The cloud was patchy, and sufficient moonlight broke through for the bomber force to see the Elbe. They used it as a navigational marker to fly by until they were approaching Amt Neuhaus and its environs.
Soviet maskirova had worked, the subterfuge of dummy vehicles and temporary wooden structures doing all that had been hoped for and more.
There were no fuel facilities.
There were no tanks.
No soldiers, leastways not how they had been described in the agent’s reports.
Underneath the bombers lay their target rich bombing area, an area that was virtually empty of troops and vehicles.
However, there were guns lined up wheel to wheel, and thousands of them, although they were not the artillery spoken of in the spy’s reports. There was flak, division after division of it, thousands of anti-aircraft guns brought in to form the sides and end of a funnel down which the RAF and its allies intended to fly.
Mosquito NF30’s swept ahead of the main body, knocking down five Soviet aircraft, a token attempt to get night-fighters into the attack.
The lead Pathfinders marked Blecklede and Besitz, the next group Hitzacker and Vielank, others marked key locations in between as the main force grew closer.
Soviet fire discipline was superb, and the only shells that rose into the night sky came from positions not involved in the secrecy and planning.
The lead bombers adjusted their turn at Lauenburg, bomb doors open, the plan being that they should drop on the line between Bleckede and Besitz, with subsequent waves advancing the bomb line to the south-east.
The Soviet plan was simple.
Shoot them down.
The Soviet AA Divisions reflected the full arsenal available, from the lighter 20mm and 40mm weapons, disposed to protect the others from ground attack sorties, through the 85mm AA guns, finishing with the lethal German 88mm, 105mm, and 128mm weapons, all plentifully supplied, and all directed by German radar sets ‘liberated’ in the Patriotic War.
Eight hundred and eighty-nine aircraft in a bomber stream stretching back to England entered the funnel and started to drop their bombs.
Arranged down the sides of the funnel were the AA guns, radar and searchlights, waiting their chance to strike back.
It had been a relatively easy call to
predict the bombing run that the RAF et al would adopt. None the less, more Soviet assets had been put in place to cover two other options.
There were no chances taken.
The command was given, the guns thundered, and night became day.
Aircraft after aircraft was clawed from the sky, more than one exploding viciously as its load detonated.
Messages back to England were garbled and misunderstood, prolonging the agony.
Messages from England to the raid commander went unheeded, the man and his aircraft now on the ground and burning.
The bombers kept coming, dropping their bombs and turning away, as directed by operational orders, a route that took them over concentrations of Soviet AA guns.
Another group was bombing now, advancing the destruction, but paying the price in men and machines.
The night sky was permanently illuminated by exploding shells and burning aircraft.
Here and there a group of parachutes floated down, a crew, whole or in part, escaping death.
Searchlights had joined in, searching the target rich skies for enemy bombers, transforming the skies into a spider’s web into which flies, driven by desperation and courage, continued to fly, even as their comrades died all around them.
Some experienced pilots dived, taking their charges down low to escape the big flak guns. So many of them perished as the 20mm and 40mm weapons joined the killing.
The worrying messages went unheeded, the bomber force’s chain of command smashed as deputy and deputies were hacked from the sky.
The vast quantities of shrapnel in the air started to descend, and more than one AA gunner was killed or wounded by their own sides’ metal.
More bombers arrived, the bravery of the crews incredible in the face of such fire. Courage was a common commodity that night.
A Wing-Commander made an appraisal and got an informative message off to Bomber Command, telling them of the increasing disaster.
Their reply, seeking more information, was not acknowledged, the Wing-Commander’s aircraft already in a fiery dive.
It was Harris himself who acted, aborting the raid with immediate effect and calling his boys home.
Eight hundred and eighty-nine had gone out, and ashen-faced WAAF’s started to accumulate details from radio messages and reports from air bases.
At RAF High Wycombe, the headquarters of Bomber Command, a stark picture was emerging.
A staff officer had organised a written display and running total that was being kept up to date in the main room. Harris and his senior officers watched in horror as the numbers altered minute by minute.
On the left were those aircraft returned to base, down on the ground, and their crews safely in debriefing or drinking away the horrors of the night.
In the middle was the number of aircraft about which no information was available. That number went down when one was added to the ‘returned to base list’ or, more tragically, to the third ‘destroyed’ list.
Harris sat watching, white as a sheet.
‘351, 358, 180.’
Activity increased, flustered men and women reporting to the tellers, who in turn reported back to the marker, the middle-aged WAAF Company Commander, a Flight-Lieutenant equivalent, whose eyes were watery with understanding of the human tragedy behind the numbers.
‘385,324,180.’
The tea had gone cold long ago but Harris sipped it as he watched.
‘394,304,191.’
On the left and right walls, squadron status boards were mounted, from where up to date information was sent across to the numbers tellers.
Harris watched one WAAF replace her telephone receiver and sink to her knees in floods of tears, her board bereft of a single mark.
115 Squadron RAF had nothing left, bar its shocked and appalled ground crew, waiting in vain on a dark runway.
Other boards were similarly bare, bare of all but hope, as the WAAF’s at each waited. Their silent prayers entreated higher powers for some to be spared. Most prayers went unheeded that night.
The lost figure topped two hundred and skipped to two hundred and nine within a minute.
Harris stood, his shocked entourage rising sluggishly to follow. Indicating that they should remain, the Commander of Bomber Command removed himself to his office, in order to start the painful process of informing the Allied leadership that his command had been devastated and would be out of the mainstream of combat for some time to come.
After the phone calls, Harris wrote out his letter of resignation and passed it into the mail room on his way back to see the latest numbers.
With only a few aircraft still in the sky, the board made awful reading.
Two hundred and forty-nine confirmed losses, each loss marking the death, injury or capture of a crew.
Down and safe were five hundred and ten.
One hundred and thirty bombers were yet to be accounted for.
A quick look at the squadron boards revealed five virgin white and blank, the tellers either waiting anxiously for news or devastated, having had the very worst sort.
A wave of calls flooded into the centre, as more bombers made safety, either in England or airfields through France and the Low Countries.
Air-sea rescue launches were hard at work in the North Sea and Channel, Royal Naval MTB’s and the like pressed into service to help.
An incredible headache overtook Harris, and he sought out his private quarters for some rest, before beginning the piecing together the events of the night.
The true cost of Operation ‘Casino’ was not fully appreciated for some time.
All in all, five hundred and ninety-one bombers returned home, some untouched, some badly knocked about.
Two hundred and sixty-nine aircraft had been confirmed as lost, some over Germany or crashed in friendly territory. Some fell apart just short of their home runways, and more ditched in the North Sea, consigned to a watery end.
A Short Stirling, recently returned to operations from mothballs, savaged by flak and flying blindly, eventually succumbed to its wounds and crashed outside the German village of Marbeck. Unfortunately for the Allies, it landed on top of the 14th Nebelwerfer Regiment, part of the deploying German Republican forces. Casualties were extreme, both in men and materiel.
Another RAF bomber, a Lancaster III, badly damaged and abandoned by her crew, finally came to earth in Groningen, destroying an orphanage, and causing over two hundred civilian deaths.
Such events were not confined to the Allied side of the lines, as a brand-new Avro Lincoln I came to ground in a field on the northern bank of the Hemmelsdorfer See, destroying itself, and spreading its remaining load of fuel all over the headquarters of the Soviet 22nd Army, sending the entire Soviet Army’s hierarchy into a fiery Valhalla.
There were twenty-nine bombers still missing, and it was some days before several aircraft were reported as landing safely as far away as Sweden, Switzerland and Finland, where they were interned.
Eight Squadrons had been totally wiped out
After the war, RAF investigations were unable to progress all the remaining twenty-one missing and many of the unresolved losses were only put to bed by accidental discovery or the intensive work of historians, decades later.
To date, six aircraft remain unaccounted for.
Soviet losses totalled five night-fighters, sixty-seven AA guns of varying types and five hundred and sixty-three casualties.
The reactions in Nordhausen and Versailles could not have been more different.
Elation and celebration.
Shock and horror.
0409 hrs, Wednesday 29th August 1945, Soviet medical facility, Former Concentration Camp [Nordhausen sub-camp], Rottleberode, Germany.
Nazarbayeva awoke and stretched contentedly, her eyes taking in the dimly illuminated room and all it had to offer.
The small vase on the drawer unit, placed there earlier by a giggling Nurse Lubova, in response to a woman to woman request, its simple woodland flower
s offering up the promise of rich colours even in the low light.
The top secret folder lay to one side, a single fallen petal casting its modest shadow on the label. Inside were details on the progress of her misinformation programme, and how it was to bear fruit in the skies over Northern Germany that very night.
A neatly hung uniform, that of a full Colonel of the GRU, proudly topped by the Gold Star, sharing the recently arrived clothes stand with that of a much-decorated Starshina of the Red Army.
The armchair where they had sat together, and talked of the loss of their son.
At the window, the silhouette of her husband, naked, toned, still damp with the sweat of their exertions.
“Yuri.”
Her husband turned and smiled.
“Ah, my wife awakes. How you can just drop off to sleep like that amazes me, my sweet.”
The sheet was in her hands and she raised it to her face, only her eyes exposed and full of mischief, her voice that of a new bride on her first night.
“Your exertions exhausted me, my husband. You are so powerful and needy.”
He smiled again, deciding whether or not to play the game. The mischievous soldier-husband nearly won, but the needy lover-husband proved too strong.
“Needy, my sweet?”
He took hold of the sheet and pulled it gently down, liberating her face, then her shoulders, before travelling all the way and settling on the floor at the foot of the bed.
“How can I look at such beauty and not need, not want, not desire?”
His silhouette altered in such a way that Tatiana merely beckoned him forward and onto the bed, opening her legs and entwining him as he slipped inside her and they started making love for the third time.
1005 hrs, Wednesday 29th August 1945, Headquarters of RAF Bomber Command, RAF High Wycombe, UK.
Harris replaced the red receiver, breathing a sigh of relief.
His resignation was not accepted and he would be left in charge of the recovery and re-assembly of Bomber Command.