Attack at Night

by Robert Jackson

  It’s a pity he hasn’t taken that step already, Preuss thought. After we use up our stockpile there won’t be any more, unless Hitler gets off his backside.

  ‘So,’ von Falkenberg continued, ‘much depends on your performance tonight. If you succeed, Germany will owe you a great debt of gratitude. But if you should fail … ’

  He left the sentence unfinished and stalked back to his seat in triumph. Wearily, Preuss got up and took his place. For the second time, he told his men to sit down. That, he reflected, was exactly the kind of morale-boosting pep talk they could all do without.

  Half an hour later, with the preliminary briefing over, the crews split up to carry out their individual duties before attempting to snatch a few hours’ sleep. Preuss, in a rage, locked himself in his office and kicked a waste-paper basket across the room; von Falkenberg had just informed him that he would be flying with Preuss’s crew ‘to observe results’.

  Outside, as the afternoon wore on, Istres became the scene of intense activity. The aircraft had already been checked over that morning, and their engines run-up, and now the ground crews worked flat out to ensure that every machine was fully serviceable for the night’s operation. In the underground weapons store, armourers and specialist engineers checked and re-checked the complex systems of the Fritz-z missiles, which would be fuelled and mated with their parent aircraft later in the day.

  The guards around the airfield perimeter were doubled and all gun crews placed on full alert. A few trustworthy French civilians, employed by the Germans as cleaners and handymen on the recommendation of the local Milice, were curtly told to leave the base as quickly as possible and go home.

  One of them, who had quietly spent the last ten minutes listening to the conversation of two German pilots as he swept the corridor outside their quarters, cycled along a towpath that ran beside the bank of a small river north of Istres. The waterway flowed from its parent river, the Rhône, from Arles to the Etang de Berre.

  After a few miles, the cyclist paused to pass the time of day with a man who sat fishing by the bridge that crossed the river between Arles and Salon-de-Provence.

  ‘Good day, monsieur,’ he said. ‘The fishing, is it good?’

  The other shook his head. ‘Not so good. How is it with you?’

  The cyclist looked around carefully, then said: ‘I have news, monsieur. The mission flies at three in the morning, perhaps a little earlier.’

  The fisherman nodded. ‘Thank you. You have made my wait worthwhile. Better go on your way now. But go carefully — the red flowers are hanging outside the hat shop in Arles.’

  ‘Thank you. I shall take heed of your warning.’ The man mounted his cycle and moved off up the road. The fisherman watched him go, then rapidly began to dismantle his tackle. Etienne Barbut had work to do.

  Conolly, meanwhile, had encountered no further trouble on the way back to Fos-sur-Mer. Leaving his bicycle where he had found it, he had made his way down to the shore of the small lake and, after scouting around for some time, had eventually found Douglas — or rather had been found by Douglas, who had stayed in hiding until he was absolutely certain that it was the Irishman who was approaching. Conolly made his report to Douglas, who listened in silence and then quietly confessed that he was worried about their immediate future.

  ‘You can see right across the lake from here,’ he said, ‘as far as the road that runs past this side of the Etang de Berre. Here, take a look through the binoculars.’

  Conolly did so, and spotted three military trucks parked on the far side of the lake. ‘See what I mean?’ Douglas asked. ‘They’ve been there for about an hour. They’re French, I think, rather than German. We counted forty or fifty bodies getting out of them. They moved off in both directions along the lake. My bet is that the Germans are still preoccupied with digging their blokes out of the tunnel that we sabotaged and have called on the Milice for help. They know roughly the area we’re in; I expect they’ve already searched the woods near Carry-le-Rouet.’

  ‘Do you think we ought to make a move, boss?’ Conolly asked him. Douglas shook his head. ‘No, we’ll stay put. There’s only one way to go from here, and that’s towards Istres. We’ll hide in the lake if we have to. Things will be easier after dark. At least we now know the layout of the target, thanks to you. I just wish we knew one or two things more — such as what time the Resistance people are going to launch their attack.’

  Douglas passed a grimy hand over his eyes. He felt desperately tired, but dare not even lapse into a doze. That was a privilege he had accorded to the others, who were taking it in turn to snatch some sleep for a while, oblivious to the chilly and damp conditions among the reeds at the lakeside. Whoever had designed their overalls, he thought, had done a good job. It was quite possible to lie in an inch of water while wearing them and not get wet.

  He handed over Conolly’s overalls. The Irishman gratefully stripped off his smelly French clothing and put on the one-piece garment, checking the assorted weaponry that was tucked away in the various pockets. ‘That’s much better,’ he grinned, reaching out for his MP-40, which Douglas had also kept safely for him. ‘I feel properly dressed, now.’

  There was a sudden movement among the reeds and Stan Brough appeared, looking concerned.

  ‘I’m worried about Colette, sir,’ he said. ‘She’s not well. Will you have a look at her?’

  Douglas nodded and followed the sergeant-major through the sodden reeds to where Colette lay some distance away, her head pillowed on her haversack. Her teeth were chattering and sweat stood out on her forehead. Nevertheless, she managed a weak smile as Douglas crawled up, and raised herself on one elbow. He asked her what was the matter.

  ‘Nothing, really,’ she told him. ‘I seem to have caught a nasty cold, that’s all. My legs are a bit shaky. It’s nothing that a good meal and a hot drink wouldn’t cure.’

  ‘Can you hang on?’ Douglas asked her anxiously.

  She smiled again. ‘Of course I can,’ she said. ‘In any case, if you think I can’t keep up, you know what to do. You’ll just have to leave me behind. Nothing, least of all a silly, sick woman, must be allowed to jeopardize the success of this mission.’

  ‘Maybe some of this will help. I’ve been saving it for an emergency, and I guess this is one.’

  It was Conolly who spoke. He had followed Douglas through the reeds and now, from an overall pocket, he took a hip flask. Unscrewing the cap, he poured a measure of liquid into it and handed it to Colette with the instruction to ‘knock it straight back.’ She did so and immediately gave a cough, her face reddening. It was neat cognac.

  Conolly put the cap back on the hip flask and stowed it away again. ‘There now,’ he said, ‘that’ll keep the collywobbles away. And none of you blighters are getting any,’ he added, looking darkly at Lambert, Barber and Olds, who were watching with more than just a passing interest. ‘It’s Colette’s medicine, and that’s that.’

  The fiery liquor did much to restore Colette’s spirits. ‘I’ll be all right,’ she told Douglas. ‘It’s the waiting that’s getting me down, that’s all. As soon as the action starts, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘It might start sooner than you think, miss.’ Brian Olds, who had been standing look-out, suddenly raised the alarm as his keen senses detected something. Quietly, Douglas asked him what it was.

  ‘I’m not quite sure, sir,’ Olds said in a whisper. He pointed. ‘It’s over there. I’m sure there’s something moving among the reeds, and heading our way. Not a man, though — too fast for that.’

  ‘A dog, would you say?’

  ‘Might be, sir. But if it is, he hasn’t much chance of scenting us, with all this water about. If he finds us it’ll be pure luck. We’re downwind of him, too.’

  ‘Well, you never know,’ Douglas said. ‘Knives out! No shooting, mind, no matter what.’

  They waited in tense silence, flattened against the wet earth, their ears straining to catch any alien sound. After a while they heard
a faint rustling noise. It grew steadily louder, and they turned their eyes expectantly in its direction, their knives at the ready.

  The rustling stopped. A few yards away, immediately in front of Olds, the reeds parted to reveal a savage-looking muzzle and then a sleek black head, with pointed ears turned down slightly at the tips. The animal’s jaws parted, showing white, razor-sharp fangs. A deep growl rumbled in its throat and it slid forward another couple of feet until the whole of its body was in view. It was stocky and powerfully muscled, sleekly black on top and tan underneath.

  ‘Doberman,’ somebody whispered. ‘Nasty bastards.’

  The dog growled again. Olds, who was the nearest to it, made a sudden crooning, soothing sound, then began to talk softly to the animal. The others could not hear what he was saying. Douglas watched the Doberman’s eyes, which were fixed unblinkingly on Olds. Every muscle in the SAS officer’s body was tensed, turning his frame into a coiled spring that was instantly ready to go to Olds’s defence if the dog unexpectedly attacked him.

  Olds continued to talk to the dog in his low, soothing whisper. The tone of his voice had a mysterious trance-like quality about it, as though the trooper was invoking the ancient earth gods of his Anglian forefathers, the deities of oak and ash and thorn through which men, it was said in legend, could speak to dumb animals.

  Still talking, he slowly reached out his hand towards the Doberman. The hound crouched low on its belly and sidled forward, inch by inch, its jaws closed now as it sniffed the air. Its muzzle snuffled around Olds’s outstretched fingers and then, to the wonderment of the others, its tongue came out and licked them wetly.

  Olds caressed its ears, crooning to it all the while. For two minutes he went on stroking it, then slowly withdrew his hand. The Doberman backed off and sat on its haunches, looking at Olds with its head on one side. Olds spoke to it again, more sharply this time, and it turned abruptly and bounded away into the reeds.

  Douglas and the others let go their pent-up breaths in a collective whistle.

  ‘Brian, you’re a bloody marvel,’ Conolly said. ‘If I hadn’t seen that with my own eyes, I would never have believed it.’

  ‘Just a trick I picked up when I was a kid,’ Olds said modestly. Douglas noted that there were beads of sweat on his forehead. ‘Something an old gamekeeper taught me. It sort of hypnotizes them, or something like that. Puts ’em into a trance, like.’

  ‘Well, I hope it forgets where we are when it comes out of it,’ said Barber. ‘Wonder if it works with women,’ he added thoughtfully.

  ‘All right,’ Douglas reminded them, ‘we aren’t out of the wood yet. The Milice are still around somewhere and they can’t be far away, or the dog wouldn’t have been sniffing around here. So let’s keep quiet, and wide awake.’

  They waited. Once, they thought they heard the sound of French voices, but a cautious peek above the reeds showed nothing. Towards the middle of the afternoon a high-winged spotter aircraft, a French type which Douglas could not identify, circled the little lake and then swooped low over the trucks that were still parked on the opposite side, as though dropping a message. Presently, through his binoculars, Douglas saw figures converging on the vehicles which, after a delay of a few more minutes, headed north on the road towards Istres.

  Douglas wondered if the militiamen had been recalled to help reinforce the airfield’s defences before nightfall. It was his bet that the field would be most heavily defended on its northern perimeter, where the Germans probably considered the main threat from the Maquis would lie. That was exactly the situation he wanted.

  He felt dejected, hungry and miserable, although he knew that he must not show it to the others, who almost certainly felt the same way. Fretfully, he looked at the sky and prayed for the onset of darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  They crept through the wet, coarse grass, following the line of the airfield perimeter, stopping every now and then to watch and listen. The flarepath was lit and, on the far side of the field, aircraft were running up their engines. Beyond the barbed wire fence, vehicles moved around the perimeter track at regular intervals, with a minute between each one; it was obvious that the base was being patrolled in strength.

  During one pause, Douglas rolled back the cuff of his overall and peered at the luminous dial of his watch. It was 02.30 and, as more aero-engines added to the throbbing roar that echoed across the airfield, he realized that the German bombers must be getting ready to take off. There was no doubt in his mind now that the enemy had received word of the convoy’s early passage into the Mediterranean, and were making ready to attack it. Time was critical, and there was less of it than he had anticipated.

  Douglas made sure that Colette stayed close to him as they crawled on. She was keeping up valiantly, but he knew that she was under considerable strain and close to the point of exhaustion. For her, the next few minutes would be critical.

  They paused again, and this time Conolly crept up to Douglas and tapped him on the arm, pointing ahead. After a few moments of searching the darkness, Douglas finally picked out the dark humps that were the 37-mm flak guns, mounted on their half tracks. The SAS men and Colette moved forward again with infinite caution until the guns were more clearly visible in the light cast by the airfield lights. Two helmeted heads were just visible behind the breech of the nearest gun, and Douglas guessed that the crews were closed up and ready for action. So much the better: it would make them easier to deal with.

  Douglas put his lips close to Colette’s ear.

  ‘Stay here,’ he whispered. ‘You’re in no fit state to have any part in this. When you hear me yell for you, come up as fast as you can. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she whispered back. ‘Sorry to be such a nuisance.’

  He gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder and, making sure that his MP-40 was slung firmly in place across his back, drew his long commando knife. Around him, the others were doing the same. The roar of the Dorniers’ engines was very loud now, drowning out almost every other sound.

  Douglas had already split his small force into groups of three, each group with the task of capturing a half-track and its all-important anti-aircraft gun. Stealth and surprise were the essence of the plan; the object was to seize the three nearest half-tracks and kill the crews without alerting the crews of the three guns on the opposite side of the approach lights. Three rounds of high-explosive 37-mm from the captured weapons should be enough to finish them off.

  That was the first and all-important step. What followed afterwards would, Douglas was aware, be largely a matter of luck. With the German bombers getting ready to take off there could be no question of waiting until the French Resistance launched their diversionary attacks, even assuming that they were still capable of doing so. Douglas had no way of knowing whether the Germans had managed to send troop reinforcements to the Arles area by road, but he had already made up his mind to expect the worst. It looked as though the success or otherwise of the operation now depended entirely on himself, his remaining eight men, and of course Colette — although he no longer considered her to be in a fit state to take much part.

  The three SAS groups now split up and crawled closer to their objectives. Douglas was leading Olds and Lambert, Brough was accompanied by Barber and Sansom, and Conolly by Mitchell and Willings. As they crawled through the grass, Douglas snatched a glance across the airfield, through the barbed wire, and fancied he saw the navigation lights of an aircraft, moving round the perimeter track towards the takeoff point. Time was fast running out.

  Suddenly, Douglas and the two men with him froze as a figure detached itself from the nearest half-track. There was a pause, then a cough; Douglas realized that the man must be urinating against the vehicle’s tracks, for he was close enough to hear the raindrop-like spatter above the noise of the aeroengines.

  Almost without thinking, he bounded to his feet and was across the intervening space in a few quick strides. His left hand went up round the German soldier’s face,
closing like a vice over the man’s nose and mouth. His head came back and the blade of Douglas’s knife slid in beneath his chin, thrusting upwards into the lower part of the brain. The soldier jerked twice and went limp.

  Douglas lowered the body quietly to the ground and crouched for a moment beside the half-track’s armoured side, together with Olds and Lambert. From this position they could not be seen by the other members of the gun crew, who were at the rear of the vehicle behind the gun itself. The dead soldier had not made a sound, and no one seemed to have noticed anything untoward.

  Still keeping low, the three SAS men crept along the side of the vehicle, close to the tracks. Then, after a pause to take a deep breath, all three launched themselves simultaneously on to the gun platform.

  The fight was brief, one-sided and bloody. Douglas found himself face to face with a German who was leaning against the breech of the gun and struck upwards with all his might, aiming for the spot just below the pale blur of the man’s features. The soldier gave a choking gasp and Douglas kicked him hard in the stomach, freeing the blade and at the same time sending the man tumbling off the gun platform.

  Douglas swung round to lend assistance to Olds and Lambert, but it was not necessary. Their respective Germans, taken completely by surprise, were quickly despatched and dumped unceremoniously over the side.

  From a nearby half-track, the one being attacked by Brough’s team, came a short, high cry of pain and terror, then silence.

  Douglas turned to Olds and said: ‘Brian, get into the cab, quickly. Start up when I give the word. Lambert, give me a hand on the gun. There’s already a clip loaded; the ammo racks are there, beside you. Stand by to reload when needed.’

  Douglas slid into the gunner’s seat on the left-hand side of the breech and lowered the gun’s long barrel, using a handle to traverse the platform until the gun was sighted on the halftrack that stood directly opposite, on the other side of the approach lights. Someone must at last have realized that something was badly wrong; a voice, high and anxious, called through the darkness.