Attack at Night

by Robert Jackson

  Conolly stripped off his overalls, which he handed to Douglas, and put on the French garb. Douglas asked him if he was taking his gun with him, and the Irishman shook his head.

  ‘No, that would be a complete giveaway if I should be stopped and searched. If that happens I’ll just have to act dumb and pretend I’ve lost my papers. I’ll say I’m a foreign worker, or something. There must be plenty of those about in Marseille.’

  Douglas looked dubious. ‘Well, don’t get caught, that’s all,’ he cautioned. ‘Colette says there’s a small lake a few hundred yards east of here; there should be plenty of cover round about. It’ll be light soon, so we’ll hole up there and wait for you. Remember — don’t stick your neck out. Just make a quick reconnaissance of the airfield perimeter, or as much of it as you can see, and pick out any likely weak spots.’

  ‘I know the sort of thing,’ Conolly told him. ‘I’d best be off now. I want to get some way up the road before it’s fully daylight. Wait a bit, though — a workman needs tools.’ He flicked the beam of his hand torch briefly round the kitchen in which they were standing, and spotted a broom and a long-handled shovel in a corner.

  ‘Those will do nicely,’ he grinned. ‘À votre service — Liam Conolly, soldier of fortune and road sweeper extraordinaire.’

  A few minutes later, Conolly was pushing his bicycle out of the village, his broom and shovel over his shoulder. The road on which he was travelling was little more than a track, but he knew from a study of his map that it joined the main road that ran along the western edge of the Etang de Berre a few miles up ahead, before the town of Istres itself. He had no intention of going into the town, for that would be taking too much of a risk; his present route followed the airfield’s southeastern perimeter for some distance, and he calculated that he might be able to see all he wanted from there.

  He decided to keep on walking for a while. He was less likely to run into unexpected trouble that way, for he could easily push his bicycle off the road and get under cover. In the gathering daylight he was able to make out much of his surroundings; the road ran through flat, sandy ground, with the great expanse of the Etang de Berre over on the right.

  After a while he heard the clear note of an aero-engine, somewhere up ahead. He mounted the cycle, resting the broom and shovel across the handlebars, and pedalled on. Now he could make out the shape of hangars and other buildings in the distance, off to the left of the road. He spotted coils of barbed wire, running diagonally across the countryside, and knew that this must be the airfield perimeter.

  He paused, and tried to locate the source of the aero-engine sound. It seemed to come from the far side of the field, and he guessed that the German aircraft were dispersed well away from the road and prying eyes. With this in mind, he could see little point in continuing in his present direction.

  The other way, where the perimeter fence ran across open country, there was little cover except for some sparse bushes and wiry grass that rose knee-high in tufts from the rocky ground. He reasoned, however, that if he stayed close to the barbed wire and kept low, its tight coils would mask him to some extent from the eyes of anyone who happened to be looking this way through binoculars from across the airfield.

  Hiding his cycle among some bushes, he crept close to the fence and set off alongside it at as fast a run as his bent-over posture would allow. The alarming thought suddenly occurred to him that the ground might be mined, but there was no time to worry about that now. He continued to run hard, pausing every hundred yards or so to watch and listen. The sound of engines still reached him, rising and falling, but there was no sign of any aircraft taxying; it must, he thought be, routine testing.

  After half a mile, still keeping close to the fence, he saw something rising above the grass in front of him; two long lines of posts, straddling the barbed wire and stretching away on either side. He knew at once that these were the approach lights, funnelling in towards the end of the airfield’s north-south runway; there was another runway, running from east to west.

  And he saw something else, something that made him crouch low in the grass. A few hundred yards away to his left, several grassy mounds flanked the approach lane. One of them, he could swear, had just moved.

  He left the shelter of the fence and crawled towards the mounds on all fours, taking care to keep his head below the level of the grass. After a few minutes he fancied that he could hear voices, so he raised his head to take a cautious look.

  The mound that had moved was a 37-mm quick-firing Flak gun, mounted on a half-track. Its crew were moving around it, making adjustments to the camouflage netting. A thin spiral of smoke rose from nearby; breakfast was being cooked. Conolly felt his mouth start to water, and fought down a sudden desperate craving for a hot meal. Up to this moment he had not fully realized how hungry he was — how tired, for that matter.

  Conolly quickly saw that the other grassy mounds were tracked anti-aircraft guns, too, all of them cleverly camouflaged. There were six of them, three on either side of the approach lights, making a short flak line. He had no doubt that there were similar emplacements at intervals around the airfield, probably controlled by a central command post. The fact that the guns were mounted on tracked vehicles also meant that they could be rapidly deployed elsewhere on the perimeter to counter a ground assault.

  He backed off through the grass and eased his way back to the perimeter fence, having first made a rough estimate of the number of troops at the Flak site. It looked like four per gun, with a few supporting personnel — say about thirty in all.

  He still needed to see where the aircraft were. He continued his progress along the line of barbed wire, moving more slowly now because of the need to conceal himself from the gun crews. Eventually, with the guns well in the background, he was able to adopt his previous crouching run.

  At last, peering through the barbed wire, he saw the first Dornier — or rather its nose, for the rest of it was hidden in a sandbagged and camouflaged revetment. A slight morning mist was now clearing rapidly, and through it he could see other, similar revetments. Tiny figures, presumably belonging to mechanics, were moving around them. Two or three vehicles that looked like fuel bowsers were in evidence near the hangars. Beyond the latter stood a line of smaller aircraft — the Focke-Wulf fighters brought in for air defence.

  As far as Conolly could see, the bombers in their blast-proof revetments and the fighters beyond formed a rough semi-circle along the western side of the airfield, with the hangars and other airfield buildings in between them. To reach them from any angle would mean crossing a large expanse of bare ground, with no cover at all. Not even the most short-sighted of guards could fail to notice movement on it.

  Thoughtfully, he doubled back along the fence, dropping down to a crawl once more as he approached the Flak emplacement. The germ of an idea was beginning to form in his mind, but there was no time now to develop it beyond that; his priority was to get back to Douglas and tell the officer what he had seen.

  The half-run, half-crawl back along the perimeter fence seemed to take him twice as long as it had done on the outward journey. At last he came to the narrow road and made for the bushes where he had hidden his cycle.

  It was not there. The broom and shovel were still there, but the bicycle was gone.

  With infinite care, crouching down and looking around him, he rolled up his right trouser leg and unsheathed the commando knife that was strapped there. An instant later, he froze as a man stood up in full view from concealment on the far side of the clump of bushes. He too held a knife, a long stiletto blade.

  Conolly recognized him at once. It was the Frenchman Jean-Pierre, the man with whom he had fought shortly after arriving in France.

  Jean-Pierre adopted a half-crouching stance and sidled round the bushes. He was the first to speak.

  ‘You have lost something, English pig? I have been waiting here for you and your friends. Now I am going to kill you and then locate the others.’

  ‘
I’m an Irish pig, actually,’ Conolly said levelly. ‘So, you have changed sides, have you?’

  The Frenchman spat. ‘I have no love for the English. Besides, when the Germans discovered the tracks of your aeroplane they said that they would pay well for information leading to your elimination. They were pleased to accept my services. They could not find you, but I told them that I would find you, and I was right. All night long I have waited here, knowing that you would come to the airfield. My task was only to keep watch on you and inform the Germans that you were here. But then I recognized you. I could have killed you at once, but I decided to wait a while and see what you were up to. Now I will kill you.’

  ‘You are a repulsive pile of excrement,’ Conolly said. ‘Clearly, your mother was raped by a mangy billy-goat.’

  Jean-Pierre gave a snarl of rage and lunged forward like a striking snake. It was exactly the reaction Conolly had hoped for. He side-stepped swiftly and then pirouetted on his toes, swinging his knife in a low and short arc. The tip of the blade ripped across Jean-Pierre’s shirt front and the Frenchman yelled out in pain. He turned to face Conolly again. There was a red mark across his ragged shirt, but Conolly knew that the damage was not serious.

  He continued to throw taunts and insults at the Frenchman, knowing that the man, of limited intelligence, would lose his temper more and more until, with luck, he made a fatal slip.

  Hatred and rage blazed in Jean-Pierre’s piggy eyes. He came at Conolly again, weaving and feinting. He lunged, and the blade of his knife snickered so close past Conolly’s face as he dodged the move that he felt the breeze from it. Careful, Liam, he told himself; this bastard is good, better perhaps than you give him credit for.

  The two of them fought in silence now, thrusting and parrying one another’s blows, their breath coming in short gasps. Try as he might, Conolly could not penetrate the other’s guard. Once he thought he saw an opening, but mistimed his thrust and got a painful slash across the forearm. Only his borrowed baggy jacket saved him from more serious hurt.

  They fought on a circle of trampled grass, specked with drops of blood. It was damp with dew and slippery. All at once Jean-Pierre, throwing caution aside, hurled himself at Conolly in a frenzy, making slashing motions with his knife. Conolly, taken by surprise by this unexpected manoeuvre, side-stepped and curved his body to avoid the Frenchman’s blade. The next instant his feet went from under him and he found himself on his back, sprawling partly among the bushes, his knife flying from his hand.

  With a howl of triumph, Jean-Pierre brandished his knife and threw himself headlong at the prone SAS man. Conolly scrabbled frantically for his knife, and instead his fingers closed around a hard, round object. It was the haft of the shovel he had abandoned previously.

  He thrust it forward and upward like a spear, using all his strength. By sheer good luck, the blade was pointing towards Jean-Pierre. It slammed into the Frenchman’s stomach with a jar that tingled all the way up Conolly’s arm and the man jackknifed, plunging head first into the bushes beside the Irishman. Conolly rolled clear, still grasping the shovel, and swung himself upright, wielding the shovel above his head in the same movement.

  Jean-Pierre clawed at the bushes and tried to get to his knees. Half-rising, he turned to face Conolly. The hand holding the slim stiletto came up and Conolly knew in a split second that the man intended to throw it. He never got the chance.

  Conolly brought the shovel down with all the power he could muster. The blade struck Jean-Pierre edge on in the centre of the face and he fell back poleaxed, spurting blood. Conolly pulled back the dripping shovel and struck again for good measure, the blade taking Jean-Pierre in the throat. More blood spurted like a fountain, then subsided into a thick stream.

  Gasping with the exertion, Conolly looked down at the twitching body. The double blow had split the Frenchman’s skull and almost severed his head from his neck.

  Feeling a little sick, he dragged the streaming corpse under cover of the bushes and added to its concealment with handfuls of grass. His own wound was not serious; although it was still bleeding the flow was stopping gradually as the blood congealed. He paused for a few seconds and looked around him, but as far as he could see no one seemed to have witnessed the struggle; the road to Istres remained deserted, and the German anti-aircraft crews were too far off to have seen anything.

  He searched around, and presently discovered his bicycle where the Frenchman had thrown it, on the far side of the road. He did not intend to linger in these parts any longer. Mounting the rusty machine, he pedalled as fast as he could towards Fos-sur-Mer.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The assembled Luftwaffe crews of Kampfgruppe 100 rose to their feet and sprang stiffly to attention as General von Falkenberg strode into the briefing room, closely followed by their commanding officer, Colonel Karl Preuss, and a small galaxy of staff officers. There was utter silence in the room, except for the rhythmic tramp of the newcomer’s boots as they approached the raised dais at the far end of the room.

  Von Falkenberg sat down in a chair to one side of the dais. Preuss nodded to the staff officers, who also sat down, and then faced the assembled crews, his feet planted at the regulation distance apart, his hands clasped behind his back.

  ‘Be seated, gentlemen,’ he said. The crews obeyed with a scraping of chairs and benches.

  ‘We go tonight,’ Preuss told them, somewhat dramatically. There was a buzz of conversation that was quickly stilled as he raised a hand for silence.

  ‘The enemy convoy is approaching the Strait of Gibraltar somewhat sooner than we anticipated,’ he continued. ‘Our latest intelligence indicates that it is steaming at approximately eight knots and that its leading echelons will be abeam Gibraltar shortly before first light.’

  He surveyed the faces of his crews for a few moments before going on. A few — pitifully few — had been with the Group for as long as himself, almost from its beginning. Many were newcomers, some already openly cynical like himself, but others fired with enthusiasm to die for the Fatherland. Well, he thought grimly, many might be granted that wish before the night was through.

  ‘This operation’, he told them, ‘involves a maximum-range flight of some thirteen hundred nautical miles, there and back.’ He used the term Seemeilen rather than kilometres, which most Luftwaffe units used out of habit. It was a throwback to his days as an airline captain.

  ‘You all know the Dornier’s maximum range with the kind of load we shall be carrying, so I don’t need to remind you that there will be no room for navigational errors. Neither will there be any time for dummy runs in the target area; we will have to get everything right first time. So, to make absolutely certain, we shall close to within five miles before launching our missiles.’

  There was another subdued buzz, this time with a note of apprehension behind it. Once again, Preuss held up his hand.

  ‘We shall have one major factor in our favour. We shall attack at sunrise, just as the main body of the convoy is passing Gibraltar. As we shall be approaching from the east, the sun will be in the eyes of the enemy gunners. We, on the other hand, should be able to see our targets clearly. If the weather forecast holds good we should have a slight tailwind component to assist us on the outward flight. Nevertheless, we shall be airborne for approximately four and a half hours before the target is sighted, most of it in the dark. Everything depends on accurate timing; the last aircraft must be off the ground by 03.00. Now, before I go into more technical details, General von Falkenberg wishes to address you.’

  Once again, the men in the room sprang to attention as von Falkenberg rose from his seat and came to stand on the edge of the dais. He did not invite them to sit down. Instead, he looked down his nose at them and delivered his monologue in what he considered to be clipped and precise tones, as befitted a senior Prussian officer.

  ‘Men,’ he cried, ‘the Führer expects that every man will do his duty!’

  Preuss, who was only half listening, raised a sardon
ic eyebrow and almost allowed a smile to cross his face. He wondered whether von Falkenberg was a student of Napoleon’s wars. After all, Cape Trafalgar was not so very far away from Gibraltar. Was it not the English admiral, Nelson, who had exhorted his men to do their duty before that battle? But perhaps the similarity between von Falkenberg’s words and those of Nelson was merely coincidental. If not, the general had clearly forgotten that the English had emerged victorious from that encounter.

  ‘You have the unique opportunity,’ the general went on, ‘to sweep the British and Americans from the seas! Never before have weapons such as these been placed in the hands of German warriors!’

  From somewhere in the middle of the room there came a deep groan. Von Falkenberg glared, and so did one or two of the earnest newcomers to the Group, but the rest of the assembled crews maintained expressions of blank innocence. The general chose to ignore the interruption. He lowered his voice to what he believed to be a conspiratorial level. After all, one sometimes had to speak to these fellows man to man.

  ‘Soon, perhaps very soon, the Allies will perpetuate their greatest folly of the war. They will attempt to land in France. Needless to say, they will be thrown back into the sea by the defences of our great Atlantic Wall. But we can turn their inevitable defeat into a massacre, a military disaster unparalleled in history.’

  Preuss was wondering if von Falkenberg was aware of the events of a year ago, when the German Sixth Army had lost 100,000 men at Stalingrad. Fortunately, the general’s talents did not extend to reading thoughts. He went on unperturbed, warming to his theme.

  ‘The Führer has given his personal guarantee that, if you, the men of Kampfgruppe 100, succeed in destroying the Gibraltar convoy, he will order the priority production of anti-shipping missiles in their thousands.’