Attack at Night

by Robert Jackson

  ‘Was ist los da druben? Hab’ Ich einen Schreigehört?’

  ‘Nein! Es fehlt nichts. Alles in Ordnung!’

  Douglas recognized the voice that gave the reply. It belonged to Conolly, a sure indication that there were now four fewer live Germans in half-track number three. If he had any lingering doubt, it was dispelled when, a few moments later, he saw the dark outlines of the guns on the two neighbouring half-tracks also swivel round to point at the vehicles opposite.

  He worked the lever that slipped a shell into the gun’s breech. Afterwards, the weapon would fire automatically as long as he held his finger on the trigger. He sighted carefully, aiming for the spot just below the gun platform on the other half-track, feeling for it mentally, for the other vehicle was nothing more than a dark shape.

  He squeezed the trigger, loosing off a single round. The gun discharged its shell with a resounding crack and the barrel recoiled. A dull red spot appeared instantaneously on the side of the target. The next instant, the half-track exploded with a crash and a sheet of vivid flame as Douglas’s shell penetrated its ammunition locker. Douglas and Lambert threw themselves down, shielding their heads, as white-hot fragments of metal spattered the countryside, A terrific shock-wave blasted out, jarring every bone in their bodies and almost lifting their own half-track from the ground.

  His head reeling, Douglas resumed his position behind the gun and began to traverse the barrel towards the second enemy half-track, but Stan Brough’s crew got in the first shot. Their shell exploded on the gun itself and was closely followed by another which exploded in the cab, wrecking it completely. In the flash of the shells the figures of the German gunners could be seen tumbling from the gun platform.

  As Conolly’s gun finished off the third German half-track, Douglas yelled to Olds to start the engine. A second or two later, he was startled to hear Colette’s voice close at hand. She sounded a little plaintive.

  ‘I thought you might have forgotten about me,’ she shouted, looking up. ‘Can I hitch a ride?’

  ‘Get into the cab,’ Douglas shouted back, ‘and for God’s sake keep your head down! This is likely to be rough.’

  He leaned forward around the edge of the gun platform and called out to Olds, who had succeeded in starting the engine and who was now awaiting further orders.

  ‘Get going, Brian! You know what to do.’

  Olds reached out and helped Colette, who was having some difficulty, to climb into the cab. Then he found the right gear and sent the half-track lurching round in a semi-circle until it was pointing directly at the perimeter fence.

  ‘Righto, miss,’ he said to Colette. ‘Let’s see how fast this thing will go. But be sure to brace yourself when we hit the fence, mind.’

  The vehicle’s tracks churned up the soggy ground as Olds accelerated. The other two half-tracks were following in line astern. Douglas and Lambert, clinging desperately to the swaying gun platform, also braced themselves as the barbed-wire fence came at them.

  The half-track ripped through it with a screech. Thick strands of barbed wire parted with a vicious twang and Douglas ducked as one of them whip-lashed against the gun, narrowly missing his head. Then they were through and heading out across the airfield, racing parallel with the main runway.

  Suddenly, a series of flashes rippled across the far side of the field, beyond the buildings. Lines of tracer flashed through the darkness in both directions as a brisk gun battle flared up between the Maquis, attacking at last, and the German troops responsible for defending the perimeter.

  Conolly, seated behind the gun in the third half-track, suddenly spotted a vehicle racing across the aerodrome to intercept them. By this time, there was enough light flickering across the base to identify it as a light armoured car, Type KFZ 222. He knew that it was armed with a quick-firing 20-mm cannon and a 7.92-mm machine gun, that it was much faster than the half-tracks, and that it could do considerable damage.

  The KFZ opened fire first, streaks of fire spitting from its gun muzzle. The burst of 20-mm ripped over the top of the middle half-track, several feet too high. Forcing himself to keep cool, Conolly took careful aim and loosed off a whole clip of 37-mm at the armoured car, seeing the flashes as his shells peppered it. It veered away and swayed crazily across the airfield with smoke pouring from it, then stopped abruptly and burst into flames.

  Douglas, who had been temporarily distracted by the brief gun battle between Conolly’s half-track and the armoured car, had his attention drawn to what was happening up ahead by Lambert.

  ‘Look, sir! There’s an aircraft taking off!’

  Lambert was right. At the far end of the runway, clearly visible between the lights of the flarepath, a Dornier was starting to accelerate. Douglas leaned over the edge of the gun platform again and instructed Olds to drive straight up the runway towards the bomber. Olds obeyed at once, the half-track swinging on to the tarmac and taking one of the flarepath lights with it. Olds jammed his foot down on the accelerator. Behind the cab, Douglas nestled down behind the gun and lined up the long barrel on the rapidly approaching Dornier, whose tail had now come up from the runway.

  In the Dornier’s cockpit, Karl Preuss, piloting the first KG 100 aircraft to take off, watched in wide-eyed horror as Douglas’s half-track raced towards him. His right hand held the throttles wide open at maximum boost and his left held the control column firmly, keeping it pushed slightly forward. In the Dornier’s nose, Sergeant Rainer Becher’s quiet, unemotional voice read off the airspeed for Preuss’s benefit. General von Falkenberg was sitting behind Preuss, looking ahead over the pilot’s shoulder. Suddenly, he too spotted the half-track and let out a yell.

  ‘I know!’ Preuss shouted. ‘Here goes!’

  Using both hands, he hauled back the stick and literally wrenched the Dornier off the ground just as the airspeed indicator’s needle reached the take-off speed mark. The bomber teetered into the air, its engines — bearing the heavy load of the missiles, as well as the weight of the aircraft and its fuel — fighting the pull of gravity and the drag of the airframe to achieve safe flying speed.

  The half-track’s gun flashed and a shell struck the runway somewhere underneath the slow-flying aircraft. It wobbled dangerously and Preuss heard several metallic clangs from somewhere astern. He pushed the nose down slightly to restore the forward speed, then pulled back the control column again. The Dornier seemed to falter for a moment, then its propellers bit into the air and it began to climb steadily into the darkness.

  Shaken, Preuss circled the airfield, looking down. Gun battles were in progress at several points on the perimeter, but what was more alarming was the sight of one aircraft after another bursting into flames on the ground. As he watched, a Dornier’s missiles blew up in a great orange bubble of light, the explosion sending a visible shock wave rippling across the airfield.

  ‘There must be something we can do,’ Preuss whispered to himself, although the words were carried to the rest of the crew over the intercom.

  ‘There is nothing!’ Von Falkenberg’s voice was harsh. ‘Set course for the target immediately. That is an order!’

  Reluctantly, Preuss turned away from the blazing airfield and headed out over the coast into the Mediterranean.

  *

  Callum Douglas swore violently as he saw his shell burst on the runway underneath the Dornier. Moments later, having had no time in which to elevate his gun barrel to the angle necessary for a second shot, he ducked as the aircraft’s dark bulk swept low overhead in a thunder of sound.

  There was no time to bother about the one that got away. Looking ahead, he saw more Dorniers, a long line of them, taxying towards the take-off point around the perimeter track. One of them was already lining up on the runway and Olds, without being told, headed straight for it. This time there was no mistake: Douglas fired a full clip of shells into the Dornier’s dark fuselage and left it in flames, crumpled on a shattered undercarriage. A lake of burning fuel spread out around it and reached its mis
sile warheads. They erupted in a thunderclap of flame and sound that sent fragments of the aircraft hundreds of feet into the air.

  Olds swung the half-track clear of the runway and drove at top speed parallel to the perimeter track. Douglas threw a glance to the rear and saw that the other two vehicles were following, their guns in action as Brough and Conolly raked the line of aircraft in their turn.

  One or two of the German air gunners, quicker off the mark than the others, had clambered into their turrets and were returning the fire. Lambert slammed another ammunition clip home in Douglas’s gun and he opened fire again, concentrating on the Dorniers that were shooting back. At this range, the effect of the 37-mm shells was devastating. They tore through the thin skins of the bombers, exploding in their fuselages and fuel tanks. Crew members who survived jumped down from the burning carcases and ran for their lives between spreading rivers of blazing petrol.

  Douglas went on firing as fast as Lambert could reload. He saw some of his shells explode in the cockpit of a moving Dornier and the aircraft veered sharply out of line, its crew dead, its wingtip slicing through the tail of an aircraft in front. It went weaving across the airfield and Olds had to swerve sharply in order to avoid it as it passed in front of the halftrack. The Dornier crashed into the side of a hangar. A spout of flame shot from one of its engines and quickly spread along the wing. In its light, Douglas could see figures running from the hangar. Some of them carried guns and loosed off a few ineffectual shots at the speeding half-tracks.

  Suddenly there were no more aircraft to shoot at. Douglas looked back again, the other two half-tracks were still chasing him, their guns blasting a few last rounds into what had, in the space of about forty-five seconds, become a long line of blazing wreckage. Everywhere, missile warheads and the highly volatile fuel in their propellant tanks were detonating, scattering fiery debris far and wide.

  Douglas shouted to Olds to keep going, straight towards the airfield’s western perimeter fence. He could feel the heat from his overworked 37-mm gun wafting back into his face. Lambert slammed another clip of ammunition into place, saying that there were still several clips remaining.

  Fire came at them from several points on the perimeter, and bullets clanged against the half-track’s armoured sides. Douglas abandoned the 37-mm for the simple reason that he could see no clearly defined target, and instead loosed off a few bursts from his MP-4O in the direction of the enemy fire.

  The half-track slammed through the barbed wire on the western side of the airfield, running the gauntlet of more enemy fire as it did so, and headed out into the open country beyond, still followed by the other two. Douglas was relieved that Brough and Conolly had come through all right, and wondered how the Maquisards were faring in their attacks on the northern and eastern fringes of the airfield.

  A great pall of smoke, reddened by the flames that fed it, boiled upwards over Istres. As he clung to the sides of the swaying gun platform, Douglas could hear the klaxons of enemy fire tenders, screeching through the night as they converged on the conflagration. It would be hours before the Germans brought the blaze under control.

  As soon as they were well clear of the airfield, lost in the darkness and with no sight or sound of pursuit, Douglas told Olds to halt for a few moments. He jumped down as the other two half-tracks drew up alongside and peered into the cab.

  ‘Well done, Brian,’ he said. ‘How’s Colette?’

  It was the woman who answered, and Douglas noted that her voice was weak and shaky. ‘I’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘I’m glad that’s over, though. What next?’

  Douglas wasn’t quite sure, but had no intention of admitting it. When planning the attack on the information supplied by Conolly he had worked out a rough escape route, but he had no idea what opposition they were likely to meet. His plans, at this point, did not extend much further than trying to get across the Rhône into the Camargue, where they could with luck lose themselves, and make their way to the south coast. He had no means of knowing whether the Royal Navy’s launch would be there to take them off — no inkling, even, whether the Navy had been informed of the revised plan.

  He quickly established that everyone in the other two halftracks had come to no harm, and then outlined his intentions to Brough and Conolly.

  ‘If we keep going on our present heading,’ he told them, ‘we should hit the road junction I pointed out on the map earlier. The branch of the ‘T’ leads down to Port-St-Louis, just on this side of the Rhône. The road will quite probably be patrolled, especially at the junction and also at the place where it passes under a canal. We may have to fight our way through, so be alert. The junction is about two miles up front, and we won’t rush up to it. Keep a hundred yards spacing, in case we run into trouble. Mount up.’

  The half-tracks forged on, coping well with the soggy, low-lying ground. If the crossroads ahead were defended, Douglas was banking on the defenders expecting only an attack by the Maquis; he was taking a gamble that they had not been alerted to look out for three German half-tracks which had just shot up Istres. However, they would certainly know that something had happened; quite apart from the racket caused by the gunfire and explosions, the bonfire on Istres was lighting up the eastern horizon.

  Suddenly, without warning, Douglas’s eyes were seared by a brilliant light as three powerful flares burst high overhead, throwing the landscape into stark relief. Douglas closed his eyes and then opened them again, cautiously. What he saw made his stomach turn over.

  The flares revealed the crossroads, less than two hundred yards ahead. And seated squatly in the middle of the junction, its gun pointed directly at him, was one of the biggest armoured fighting vehicles he had ever seen. Beside him, Lambert let out a gasp.

  ‘What the blazes is that?’ he asked. Douglas made no immediate reply, but clambered round the edge of the gun platform so that he could speak to Olds in the cab without shouting.

  ‘Keep going ahead,’ he told the driver, ‘but slowly. We might just bluff this one through.’

  Returning to his original position, he searched his mind for details of the enemy vehicle. ‘It’s a self-propelled tank destroyer,’ he told Lambert quickly. ‘A Porsche Ferdinand, by the look of things. Sixty-eight tons, and packing an 88-mm gun along with a 7.92-mm machine-gun. It’s got about eight inches of armour at the front, and our 37-mm shells would just bounce off it.’

  He was uncomfortably conscious that the half-tracks, from the Ferdinand’s vantage point, would be starkly silhouetted against the false dawn of burning Istres. Above, dangling on their parachutes, the flares were still burning fiercely. By their light, on either side of the tank destroyer, he could see a number of helmeted heads which, presumably, belonged to German soldiers crouching in foxholes. They were now within fifty yards of the enemy positions. Suddenly, from somewhere near the end of the German line, a voice yelled: ‘Los damit!’

  Douglas knew enough of German military commands to realize that this was the order to open fire. Before he could react, a light machine-gun chattered and glowing tracers streaked around his ears, bouncing off the armoured gun shield and ricocheting away into the night like deadly fireflies.

  ‘Nein!’ Another voice shouted. ‘Feuer einstellen!’

  The machine-gunner was being told to cease firing. Douglas mentally blessed the trigger-happy German soldier who, with luck, had just prevented them from driving into a trap.

  ‘Olds!’ he shouted, ‘full speed, and steer left!’

  Olds complied immediately, and the half-track slewed around in a shower of mud. At that instant, an orange streak of flame spat from the muzzle of the Ferdinand’s 88-mm gun. The shell, a solid armour-piercing round rather than a high-explosive one, struck the turning half-track beneath the gun mounting, blasting away one of its centre wheels and slamming it, a twisted mass of red-hot metal, into the chassis. If the shell had struck a split second earlier, before Olds had started his turn, it would have passed through the engine and most probably kill
ed the two in the cab.

  As it was, both Douglas and Lambert were stunned and shaken by the fierce impact. Both fell to their knees on the gun platform, which was now buckled upwards and twisted on its right-hand side. A metallic echo resounded in the air, piercing the brain with its shrillness.

  With an effort Douglas pulled himself together, dropping from the platform on the opposite side of the half-track to that facing the tank destroyer. He was followed by Lambert, who was bleeding from a gash where his forehead had made violent contact with the gun breech. The two of them hurried round to the cab, wrenched open the door on the driver’s side and hurriedly dragged out the two dazed occupants.

  ‘What happened?’ Colette asked faintly, shaking her head to clear it.

  ‘We took a shell from the tank destroyer — that’s the thing on the crossroads,’ Douglas told her. ‘The only thing we can do for the moment is stay on this side of the half-track and hope its armour is strong enough to stand any more shells.’

  But the crew of the Ferdinand, having immobilized Douglas’s half-track, were no longer interested in it. Douglas heard the tank destroyer’s twin Maybach engines roar, the sound accompanied by a harsh screeching as it swivelled rapidly on its tracks and sighted on Brough’s half-track, which had also veered off to the left.

  Both Brough and Conolly, whose half-track was keeping formation with the sergeant-major’s, had now opened fire on the tank destroyer, but Douglas’s prediction was right; their 37-mm shells exploded harmlessly on the Ferdinand’s heavy armour plating. The only advantage they had was speed, and they tried to use it as best they could, zigzagging while still maintaining a brisk rate of fire.

  But the German gunner in the Ferdinand was good. Crouching helplessly beside his own useless half-track, Douglas heard the tank destroyer’s 88-mm bark again and saw the glowing red tail of a tracer round converge on the front of Brough’s vehicle. It entered the cab, killing Sansom instantly. The half-track careered wildly out of control and, in the light of more flares sent up by the enemy, Douglas saw Brough and Barber jump clear and throw themselves flat. The abandoned half-track plunged on across country, steadily curving round until it headed back towards Istres, bearing its dead driver.