He turned and, followed by Conolly and the remainder of his team, crawled back past the spot where Colette and Barbut lay. The two were engaged in a brisk exchange of words with the men at the searchlight. Colette, playing on the enemy’s uncertainty about whether the party was armed or not, was asking for guarantees that if they did come out into the open, they would not be harmed. Douglas noted with satisfaction that the enemy were taking no chances; no one had yet shown himself against the skyline, preferring to remain behind the searchlight in relative security.
After a fast crawl of fifty yards or so Douglas and his men found themselves just below a patch of scrub. Signalling the others to remain where they were, the SAS officer eased his way through the wiry tangle until he could peer through the last few twigs across the open ground. He saw at once that the searchlight was sited well to the right of the village, its beam playing in a short arc over the rise behind which Colette and Barbut lay. Words were still flying back and forth between the two sides, but judging by the increasingly high-pitched shouts from the vicinity of the searchlight the opposition was growing impatient. With the glare of the light in his eyes, Douglas could make out no further detail.
He slid back through the scrub to where Conolly and the others were waiting.
‘Come up through the scrub to the edge of the rise,’ he said quietly. ‘Liam, I’m going to knock out that light. As soon as I open fire, send up a flare. When we’ve got some light on the scene, give ’em all you’ve got — grenades, the lot. It’ll give Stan and the others a fighting chance of getting across that open strip to take ’em from the flank. Got it?’
‘Got it, boss.’ Conolly followed Douglas back into the scrub, reaching into a pocket of his overall for a small cylinder. It was a type of flare specially developed for the commando forces. Operated without the need for a bulky pistol, it needed only to be pointed in the right direction and then ignited by twisting and pulling a cap at its base.
Douglas waited until his men were in place, then slowly pushed the barrel of his MP-40 ahead of him through the last fringe of scrub. Snuggling down behind the weapon, he drew a careful bead on the searchlight. A tap on the leg from Conolly told him that the others were ready for action. Expelling a breath, he pressed the trigger of the machine-pistol.
The harsh chatter of the weapon sounded in his ears as he loosed off a full magazine at the searchlight. At the same time, there was a crack beside him as Conolly detonated the flare. Several things happened within a split second of one another; the searchlight went out with a tinkle of glass, the flare sputtered into life overhead, and three grenades hurled by Lambert, Sansom and Willings curved across the open ground. They exploded close by the searchlight, throwing out whining splinters and raising a cloud of dust.
Douglas slammed home another magazine, then rolled over again and snapped off a rapid burst at the figures he could see moving in the light of the flare. One of them dropped. To the right of the now defunct searchlight a machine-gun barked into life, causing the SAS men to duck as its bullets pounded a stream of dust and stone particles from the crest of the rise. Lambert hurled a second grenade but it fell short, its smoke momentarily obscuring the enemy weapon.
‘Save your grenades!’ Douglas ordered. ‘Keep their heads down with your MP-40s. Liam, get another flare ready!’
The Irishman had already done so. Before the first flare fizzled out a second had taken its place, keeping the enemy position illuminated as it swung down on a handkerchief-sized parachute.
The enemy gun stopped firing for a few moments, and inexplicably a small group of the men near it chose that moment to change position in an attempt to get closer to Douglas’s party. They ran into the concentrated fire of five MP-40s and were bowled over before they had gone twenty yards. The machine-gun resumed its vicious hammering, forcing the SAS men to duck for cover once more.
‘I wonder how many of them there are?’ Douglas said. Conolly ventured his opinion.
‘Not more than twenty, I should say. Fewer than that, now. We’ve knocked out at least half a dozen. It’s that bloody MG that’s the problem. Could keep us pinned down for ages.’
Conolly sent up another flare, his third and last. Sansom said that he had two, but that was all. They had to do something to extricate themselves, and quickly. Suddenly, a voice yelled something from over on their left, near the village.
They looked. A figure came running from the shelter of one of the houses, zigzagging and firing in short bursts from the hip as it went. Douglas saw the helmeted heads of the machine-gun crew come into brief sight over their parapet of sandbags as they strove to shift the weapon round to meet this new threat.
‘Cover him!’ Douglas shouted. The bullets from his MP-40 spattered the enemy’s sandbags. Beside him the others resumed firing too in a deafening cacophony that was echoed from the village, where more guns were blazing in support of the lone runner.
The machine-gun spat at him but he continued to come on, still firing. Then his MP-40 fell silent. He tossed the useless weapon to one side, then his arm curved back. Douglas clearly saw the grenade as it arced through the flare’s dwindling light to explode with a flash and a crack directly above the machine-gun. There was a shrill scream and a man reeled over the sandbags, clutching at his face before tumbling to lie motionless.
The flare went out, but not before its light had revealed the lone runner sink to his knees, his hands outstretched to greet the earth.
‘Flare, Sansom!’ Douglas screamed, but the trooper was already igniting one. Its light revealed several figures, running away from behind the machine-gun towards the village. There were seven or eight of them, and they were chopped down mercilessly by the SAS men who had thrown themselves under cover among the small huddle of houses.
The echoes of the shooting died away. Douglas jumped from his position in the scrub, MP-40 levelled in case of more trouble, and ran towards the man who had been hit by the MG. He had fallen sideways and now lay curled up, his breath coming in short gasps. He groaned as Douglas knelt beside him and gently turned him over.
It was Cowley. The front of his overalls was soaked in blood, and Douglas knew at once that there was nothing that could be done for him. In the light of the dying flare his eyes flickered open and fastened on Douglas; they were already glazing over. The SAS officer bent low to catch the whisper that came from Cowley’s lips.
‘I … I did all right, sir, didn’t I?’
Douglas touched the side of his face. ‘You did fine, son. Just fine.’
A brief smile flickered across the dying man’s face and his head sank into the dust. The breathing stopped. A bitter feeling of rage and helplessness welled up inside Douglas. He felt like pounding the earth with his fists.
Someone was standing alongside him. Dimly, through the blazing fury that pounded inside his head, he heard Stan Brough’s voice.
‘Bravest bloody thing I ever saw, sir. There wasn’t a thing I could do to stop him.’
Douglas stood up, getting control of himself again. There was no time for emotion; soon, all hell was likely to break out in this corner of France. Brough, however, was right. Cowley’s action was in every way deserving of a posthumous Victoria Cross; Douglas made up his mind that if he survived this mission, he would put in a recommendation to that effect as soon as he got back to England.
He retrieved Cowley’s identity disk and slipped it into a pocket. Colette and Barbut, shaken but unhurt, had emerged from their place below the rise and were standing off to one side, as though uncertain about what to do next. Douglas told them to go off and locate their Resistance contact, but to be back in five minutes.
Conolly came running up. He and the others had been checking the enemy dead.
‘There are a dozen, not counting the machine-gun crew,’ he reported. ‘Fewer than we thought. Some may have got away, but it’s doubtful. This has blown our plans somewhat, hasn’t it?’
‘You can say that again,’ Douglas said grimly. The noise of
the brief and bloody battle must have been heard for miles around. He looked down at Cowley’s body. ‘We’ve got to get him under cover,’ he said. ‘Liam, get a couple of men and take him down into the patch of scrub. Empty his pockets first. Bury him as best you can. The enemy may not yet know who we are, and even though they’ll probably discover the body eventually, they may not do so for another few days. The longer we can keep them guessing, the better.’
A few minutes later Colette and Barbut came back, having made a hurried tour of the village. Its inhabitants were cowering indoors; they had been told that if they ventured outside, they would be shot. As far as the priest — their Resistance contact — was concerned, there was bad news.
‘The Germans have taken him away,’ Colette said breathlessly. ‘Somebody betrayed him. But it seems that the Germans don’t know the whole of the story. There’s a rumour that they were tipped off about a landing here, all right, but apparently they were expecting a boatload of French commandos from Corsica. There have been several infiltrations along the coastline recently by small groups of saboteurs. I’m sorry, but I knew nothing of this. Someone, some senior officer with the Fighting French on Corsica must have decided to take the initiative and forgotten to inform SOE.’
‘Well, he’s got us into a hell of a mess,’ Douglas snapped. ‘The question is, where do we go from here? We’ve got to hole up somewhere while we sort this muddle out.’
Colette consulted briefly with Barbut, then turned back to the SAS officer. ‘The only real cover within reach of here is about six miles to the east along the coast at a place called Carry-le-Rouet,’ she told him. ‘The hillsides are heavily wooded there, with deep inlets running into them from the coast. If we head towards Port-de-Bouc we can pick up the railway line and follow that for most of the way; it will keep us clear of the main road.’
She spoke again with Barbut, who shook his head and said something in a low voice. Then, surprisingly, Colette embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks. Turning back to Douglas, she said:
‘He says that he will not come with us. He is an old man and slow, and will only hold us up. He will take shelter in the village tonight, and tomorrow will make his way to Arles to contact the Maquis. He says that you must not worry, and that he will contact you again within the next three days.’ She hesitated, then said: ‘Because of the change of plan, he has entrusted me with the code.’
Douglas did not like the revised arrangement, but had little choice in the matter. He reached out and shook Barbut’s hand firmly and, in his halting French, wished the rancher good luck.
From the north, along the road that led past Istres towards Miramas, there came the sound of vehicles moving at high speed. It grew steadily louder. Douglas quickly got his men together and set off southwards at a steady trot, leaving Fos-sur-Mer behind. Fifteen minutes later, as yet unchallenged, they struck the expected railway line near Port-de-Bouc and followed it under an unguarded road bridge. They made a detour across country to avoid a small station and picked up the line once more where it entered the Chaine de l’Estaque hills, the name given to the elevated arm of limestone that cradled the southern edge of the Etang de Berre and ended, some miles further on, at Marseille. The countryside here was arid and devoid of settlement, for which Douglas was thankful. The hue and cry would be well and truly raised by now.
Presently, east of La Couronne, the narrow-gauge railway track curved into the beginning of a wooded area. Thankfully, Douglas and the others turned aside from the railway and headed down a slope, moving deeper into the shelter of the trees. After a few hundred yards Douglas called a halt and they sank down to rest. Douglas put out four sentries; the whole group, including Colette, would take turns at guarding the approaches to their temporary sanctuary. At first light, it was his intention to make a thorough reconnaissance of the area. That was the first rule: always establish a secure operating base and make sure that you knew the lie of the land round about. In that way, you seldom got taken by surprise.
Dawn came reluctantly through a partial overcast, finding the SAS party red-eyed and sleepless. Douglas, taking a final turn on sentry-duty, had ventured back up the slope as far as the railway line to see what lay beyond the wood, which now revealed itself as a mixture of pine and oak.
To his surprise, he saw that, a few hundred yards to the east of the point at which his party had entered the woods, a road coming down from the north-west crossed the railway by way of a stone bridge and then followed the line of the trees as it wound its way towards Marseille. He resolved to explore that section of the line, and the road, a little further at the first opportunity, and a few minutes later mentioned his intention to Colette. She told him that a few miles further on the road detoured in a northward curve to avoid the limestone hills, but that the railway ran through a couple of tunnels before it terminated in the port.
‘Does it, now,’ Douglas mused. ‘Tell me — where is the biggest concentration of enemy troops in this area?’
She looked at him in some amazement, as though his question was naive, then replied, ‘But I thought you knew that already. In Marseille, of course. That’s where the Milice have their principal headquarters, too.’
Douglas nodded. ‘Exactly. So if we can block both the road and the railway line at one go — just before we move out to attack Istres, I mean — how much extra time will that give us before the enemy garrison in Marseille can get on our tail?’ Colette thought for a moment, her brow furrowed. ‘Well, they would have to go in a big circle round the eastern side of the Etang, then approach Istres from the north via Salon-de-Provence. Let’s see — that would be forty or fifty miles, at a guess.’
‘Twice as far as if they were to come this way,’ Douglas mused. A plan was beginning to form in his mind — a daring plan, but one that might just work, if luck was on his side.
‘I need to know a number of things,’ he told her. ‘For instance, how often the trains run up the line from Marseille, and whether any of them go direct to Istres with supplies and so on. I noticed from the sketch-maps that there’s a short spur line running from the main track to the airfield. It could be a way in for us. I think we’ve got to form our own concrete plan of action, and do it now, rather than depend on the Resistance for help. For all we know, the Germans could be mopping them up right now.’
Colette nodded soberly. ‘You’re right. I’m going to have to make a trip to the station in Carry-le-Rouet to find out what’s what.’
‘Can’t have that,’ Douglas said firmly. ‘It would be much too dangerous. There must be some other way.’
‘Well, can you suggest one?’ she asked, looking him in the eye. ‘Of course you can’t, because there’s no alternative. Look, I’ve got my civilian clothing in my bag, and my papers are all in order. They’ve passed inspection before, and there is no reason why they should fail now.’
‘Why don’t you let me go with her, boss?’ It was Conolly who spoke. ‘I speak passable French — enough to fool the average German, at any rate — and I reckon we could cope with most problems between us.’ He grinned at Colette. ‘I’ve a feeling you’re not exactly a Lent lily, as the saying goes.’
Douglas stared at him. ‘You’ve forgotten one thing,’ he pointed out. ‘Unlike Colette, you don’t have any civilian clothing.’
‘Well, I’ll just have to liberate some,’ Conolly said cheerfully. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult.’
‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ Douglas snorted. ‘You aren’t going, and that’s that. Colette has a chance of pulling it off, but you’d be just a liability to her.’
The woman smiled at Conolly. ‘He’s right, Liam,’ she said. ‘Let me do it my own way. I won’t come to any harm, I promise you. However, if Captain Douglas agrees, I’d like you to escort me as far as the edge of the wood that overlooks the village. If I do run into trouble, you can cover my line of escape.’
Conolly looked questioningly at Douglas, who nodded grudgingly. ‘Very well. But I can’t afford to lo
se any more men, so take it easy.’
A few minutes later, Colette, having changed into slacks, a jumper and a pair of brogues, and with a headscarf tied under her chin, accompanied Conolly through the trees towards Carry-le-Rouet, a two-mile walk away, with a promise to Douglas that the pair of them would be back within a few hours. On the way, she found a small stream and paused to wash her face, removing the grime that had accumulated during the hectic hours of the previous night. Feeling more presentable, but still uncomfortably dirty, she and Conolly followed the line of the wood until suddenly it dropped away down the side of a steep inlet in which the sea lapped. A mile or so away, at the landward end of the inlet, lay a pretty fishing village with boats drawn up on the shore.
They followed the trees, which were becoming more sparse now, around the edge of the inlet — known as a calanque, so Colette informed her companion — until they were in a position to look down into the village itself. From their vantage point they could see some people moving near the boats, and a few more close to the houses themselves. They could also see the railway line, threading its way past the far side of the village.
Some distance to the east it disappeared into a tunnel, cut through a limestone hill.
‘This is as far as you go,’ Colette told her companion. ‘Look — I can get down to the shore along that track. See it? It runs behind those rocky outcrops. No one will see me until I am in the village itself. Stay here and keep a good lookout — but if anything should happen to me, don’t try anything heroic. Just get back to the others as fast as you can.’
‘All right,’ said Conolly, ‘but be careful. We’d be a bit lost without you.’
She nodded at him reassuringly, then turned and picked her way down the slope until she reached the track. She alone knew the risks she was running; as soon as she entered Carry-le-Rouet she was bound to be singled out as a stranger, but she was banking on the character of the people in these parts to keep her out of trouble. They liked to mind their own business. Nevertheless, in case she should be challenged she had made up a cover story which was simple enough, and plausible; she was walking from Marseille to Arles in search of work. She had spent the night in the woods and now, finding that she had hurt her foot, she wished to know the times of the trains. She had a few francs for her fare. Also, to add to the degree of plausibility, she had wrapped a few pieces of bread and cheese — saved from the meal at the cottage in the Camargue the day before — in her headscarf.
Attack at Night Page 10