Airborne

by Robert Radcliffe

  But this apple cart needs upsetting. And I’m about to kick it over.

  ‘Yes, sir. There’s another thing. A question.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Why did you request me here?’

  ‘I didn’t. Rawlings got transferred, I merely told the commandant I needed a replacement. A few days later you showed up.’

  ‘Yes, but why me? When they’re so desperately short-handed at XIB?’

  ‘I have no idea. Evidently you have friends in high places.’

  I consider this, think of Theo, and Inge Brandt, sup more beer, then plough on. ‘But you didn’t. Don’t, I mean. Need a replacement, that is.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We’re overstaffed. More doctors than required for the patient workload, that is. You don’t need me.’

  His eyes narrow. ‘What exactly are you getting at?’

  ‘I’d like your permission to escape.’

  His mouth opens, then closes, and before I know it he’s dragging me outside.

  ‘Listen to me, Garland. There is absolutely no question of it. Nor are you ever to mention that word again, do you understand?’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because we have given our parole! And the instant anyone breaks it, all this’ – he gestures angrily around – ‘disappears in a flash. No more perks, no more schnapps or fresh bread, no more favours from the commandant or smuggled treats from the guards, and certainly no trips to the village for a beer.’

  ‘With respect, sir, are we not forgetting our obligation as British officers?’

  ‘Our obligation is to the patients!’

  That old chestnut, and I’m ready for it. ‘But I don’t have any patients. None that can’t be handled by someone else.’ And this is my point. The point that’s been befuddling my brain since I arrived at Stalag 357. That from the minute I departed the wreckage of the Schoonoord Hotel aboard a lorry of wounded men, I have been able to say, hand on heart, that they needed me, and continued to need me, from Oosterbeek to Apeldoorn, then from Apeldoorn and the hospital train to Fallingbostel, and finally to the nightmare of Stalag XIB. Now they don’t need me. Nobody does, not even Theo, comfortably tucked up in his hospital bed in Bergen. I am surplus to requirements, and as such fully entitled – some might say duty-bound – to make a break for freedom.

  ‘Listen, Garland, old chap’ – McKenzie tries cajolery – ‘I admire your spirit, really I do. What they say about you Red Devil parachute bods is clearly true, gung-ho fearless action types and all that. But now is not the time for gung-ho, now is the time for cool heads and patience. This war will be over soon: everyone knows it, even Jerry. So bide your time, keep your head down and your mind on the job, and we’ll all be home before we know it. Can you do that?’

  *

  I try. For a few days anyway, keeping my head down and my mind on the job, as he urges. But soon know it’s hopeless. Paras don’t think like that, even useless neophyte ones like me. It’s to do with the training, and the mind-set, the esprit de corps and the reputation. Earning a red beret takes guts and determination, and when you finally put it on you sign up to something for ever. ‘Old Paras never die,’ the saying goes, ‘they go to hell and regroup.’ Waho Mohammed.

  I make my preparations. They’re not complicated – no tunnels, wire-cutters or elaborate disguises are required. Once a week we walk down to the village for a beer; I’ll simply slip away while we’re there. End of plan. Thereafter things become hazier, but according to my silk escape map (which I still have, along with miniature compass) we’re barely fifty miles from the North Sea port of Hamburg. By lying low during the day and travelling cross-country by night I should easily make it in three nights, the aim then being to stow away aboard a cargo ship bound for Sweden.

  The longer the delay the greater the risk, so I give myself a week to prepare. As the days pass the tension rises, and a heady mix of exhilaration and terror grips me. At night I lie awake trying to cover the eventualities, which seem to multiply: food, shelter, a torch, avoiding detection, the freezing weather at night – and also recalling everything that’s happened since I arrived in Holland, and the people like Sykes, Warrack, Redman and others who have escaped, and poor Cliff Poutney lying dead by the tracks. During the day I maintain my normal routine and duties, feign nonchalance and hope to God nobody catches on, although in my heightened state of paranoia I’m convinced McKenzie and the others sense what’s afoot.

  There’s only one person I feel it necessary to confide in.

  ‘How are you feeling today, Jenkins?’

  ‘All right, thanks, Doc. OK if I come in?’

  ‘Of course. I could do with the company.’

  He pops in most days, ten minutes, an hour, to sit and talk, pace the floor in agitation, or just stare into space, teddy bear in pocket. I encourage these visits, chat if he wants, keep quiet otherwise, but make no demands, ask no probing questions, and certainly don’t suggest he ‘confront issues’. He’s severely traumatized, I have no doubt of that, mentally exhausted too and a nervous wreck. My role, if I have one, is simply to be there. For as long as he needs. Which is why he must agree to me leaving.

  ‘Really?’ he says, when I explain, then goes silent, nodding and fidgeting and licking his lips. The teddy comes out; he fingers it, cheek twitching. I scarcely dare breathe.

  Then he looks up. ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

  And that’s that. My only patient wants me to stay, so the escape is cancelled. Part of me, if I’m completely honest, is greatly relieved.

  ‘Well, of course, Jenkins, if that’s—’

  ‘But you absolutely should.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t, but you absolutely should. I’d go too, but don’t have the nerve. Anyway I’d only foul things up.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Totally, no question, we’re Paras, aren’t we? Anyway, must dash!’ And he hurries for the door. But then he stops, and turns, face twitching. ‘Are you going like that?’ He nods at my battledress.

  ‘Well, yes, it’s all I’ve got, apart from my jumping smock.’

  ‘You’ll stand out like a dog’s balls.’

  Thursday comes, Friday, and then the big day finally dawns, clear and cold. By now I’ve assembled a few supplies. Three days’ rations including dried fruit and chocolate, a water canteen, flashlight, schnapps for emergencies, tobacco for my pipe and a blanket which I’ll conceal beneath my smock for the walk into town. I take better care than usual washing and shaving, polish my boots and clean up my gaiters, dust down my beret. I stand before the mirror and straighten my tie. I came into this war wearing this uniform, I tell myself, so I’m bloody well walking out in it too. Then a knock comes, and my eyes widen with alarm in the mirror. ‘What is it?’

  It’s Jenkins, bearing a bundle. ‘Got you these.’

  ‘Hello, Private. Good heavens…’

  He opens the bundle; it’s an overcoat, hat and scarf.

  ‘My God, but where—’

  ‘Don’t ask.’ His head’s twitching and the clothes tremble in his arms, but there’s a lopsided grin on his face. ‘The greatcoat’s modified French army, so with the hat and scarf you’ll look like a civvy, as long as no one looks at your feet.’

  I slip the coat on. It’s blue, and a little tight but wonderfully warm. ‘Well, goodness, Jenkins, this is marvellous.’

  ‘Stop you freezing to death at night.’

  ‘Yes it will. How can I ever thank you?’

  ‘By getting home.’

  ‘Yes, well, I’ll do my best.’

  ‘I mean it.’ He produces an envelope. ‘Give this to my mum. Please. And explain – things. You know…’

  ‘All right.’ I pocket the letter. ‘But you’re going to get home too, Jenkins.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘You must. We’re going to get you fixed up.’

  He’s nodding, but doesn’t meet my eye.

  ‘Sta
y as positive as you can, like we talked about, and just take each day as it comes, yes?’

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Good man.’

  We shake hands, take our leave, and I can only hope for the best. I then pass the morning attending to the Saturday sick parade, which, although routine, at least keeps my mind occupied with its bellyaches, sore throats and haemorrhoids. As the hours pass I sense a change coming over me, a sort of quiet resignation, and talking to the patients I begin thinking of home and parents and friends, and I find myself talking to the patients more, asking them about their homes and families, and asking whether they’ve written to them recently, because they’re sure to appreciate it.

  At noon I finish, tidy up and head off for the medics’ hut for lunch. Halfway there I’m unsurprised to see Major McKenzie coming my way.

  ‘Nice overcoat,’ he says, falling into step. ‘Do you have a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’ He knows, I immediately guess, yet I detect no hostility. Nor do I feel any. We stop, and talk, rationally and without rancour.

  ‘How was sick parade?’

  ‘No problems.’

  ‘Good. Listen, I’ve just come from the commandant’s office.’ He unfolds a note. ‘Bergen Hospital. The clinical director there, a Dr Brandt. You know her?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘She’s been arrested.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Commandant didn’t say, nor I suspect does he know. The notification came from the medical services directorate.’

  ‘Inge. Christ. Does it mention her husband?’

  ‘No. But it seems someone’s watching out for you. Apparently you have a patient at Bergen Hospital, a Private Trickey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s been transferred out.’

  ‘Transferred where?’

  ‘His previous POW camp. Stalag XIB.’

  ‘But he’s critically ill! And that place… It’s a disgrace – it has nothing. He’ll die.’

  ‘Sorry, Garland, I’m just passing the message.’ He waits, tapping the note on his palm. ‘So, what do you want to do?’

  ‘I… I beg your pardon?’

  He smiles. ‘I know what you’ve got planned. And how you plan to do it. That’s your business – you know my views, but I’ll not interfere. Or I can get you transferred back to Stalag XIB. To be with your patient. It’s entirely up to you.’

  I gaze round the muddy compound, at the dreary wooden huts, the guards in their towers and the barbed-wire fences. Overhead thickening November clouds have ushered away the morning’s clear blue. Seagulls pick over the camp rubbish dump; one of them cries, mournfully, like a summons to the sea. I draw my new overcoat tighter, and feel something in one pocket. I reach in and touch a teddy bear.

  ‘So what do you want to do, Daniel?’

  CHAPTER 17

  Erwin Rommel left Italy for Africa shortly after X Troop blew up the Tragino Aqueduct. Busy with his new mission, Operation Colossus was of no interest to him, although he did hear of it and expressed surprise at how easily the British seized the target: ‘No armed guard?’ he queried of his Italian host. The reply was a shrug.

  A sign of things to come, for as von Brauchitsch had intimated, Mussolini was indeed making a hash of things in Africa. With grand visions of expanding the new Roman Empire across the entire continent, he deployed huge armies there, including fourteen divisions into Libya. Their job was to kick the British out of neighbouring Egypt, and so seize control of its key ports and vital Suez Canal. ‘Once this is achieved,’ Mussolini told his generals, ‘all of Africa will soon follow.’ But his Egyptian campaign was a disaster. Despite overwhelming numbers, Italy’s forces were ill equipped, poorly led and unwieldy. Setting off eastwards from the Libyan port of Tobruk, they advanced to the Egyptian border, crossed sixty miles into it, halted and dug in. So the British attacked and drove them out again. Worse was to follow. With a force barely a fifth their size, the Tommies then set off in pursuit, driving the Italians back along the coast into Libya, taking Tobruk, Derna and Benghazi on the way, until finally halting at El Agheila, where the entire Italian 10th Army surrendered. Rommel read the reports in disbelief. The figures were staggering, with ten Italian divisions lost and over 130,000 prisoners captured, together with hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces. British losses by comparison were fractional. Worst of all, they were now poised to advance on Tripoli itself, and thus take control of the entire southern Mediterranean. It was this catastrophe, first and foremost, that Rommel was ordered to stop.

  But it was a delicate business, for Italian national pride was at stake. Vain and arrogant as ever, Mussolini initially refused all offers of German help, until Hitler made him see sense. Even then strict conditions were attached. The campaign must continue under Italian auspices; all German forces were to be under Italian control; and the German commander, whoever he was, must take orders from an Italian general, whom he would defer to at all times. Hitler assured Il Duce the matter would be sensitively handled. He knew what Mussolini wanted was a tactful underling who would keep a low profile and do as ordered. What he got, however, was a voracious predator with no time for niceties. The Desert Fox had arrived in Africa.

  Right from the start Rommel took the initiative. Studying the situation before even setting foot there, he saw the British were strung out for hundreds of miles right across Egypt and Libya, and immediately recognized vulnerability. Telephoning the Luftwaffe he requested they bomb the British supply line at Benghazi.

  ‘We can’t do that!’ came the reply. ‘The Italians haven’t authorized it.’

  Rommel telephoned his Italian superior, General Gariboldi. ‘Under no circumstances!’ Gariboldi scolded. ‘Italians own property in Benghazi, they don’t want it bombed!’

  Rommel telephoned Berlin, and the following night the bombings began. Next he flew to Tripoli to plan his offensive. The British front line was 250 miles east, so that’s where he wanted his forces. Again Gariboldi baulked; he wanted no advance at all, but a tight defensive ring round Tripoli itself. Rommel telephoned Berlin again. ‘Do what you have to,’ came the reply. He sent his forces forward; they were still dangerously small, just two Italian divisions and one German one: ‘Not my beloved 7th Panzer,’ he wrote to his wife, ‘their destiny now lies in Russia. But these are eager boys, Lu, I will forge them into an Afrika Korps to be proud of.’ The attacks started, catching out the British, who fell back a full 200 miles to Mersa el Brega, then another 150 miles to Benghazi, then still further, Rommel in hot pursuit, following the same tactics he’d learned in the First War in Italy, and perfected in the charge across France: drive hard, move fast, don’t stop, lead from the front. Gariboldi was aghast, Hitler thrilled, German High Command anxious. Within two months Rommel had pushed the British back to within a hundred miles of the Egyptian border. ‘Next objective Suez!’ he wrote to Lucie. Just one obstacle remained before this. And even he knew it would not be an easy one. Its name was Tobruk.

  *

  John Frost sat in his office at Hardwick Hall totting up numbers. His foot rested on an upturned waste-basket, a walking stick leaned against the wall, an opened bottle of aspirin stood on his desk. Three days earlier he’d finally reported to Ringway to do his jump training. He’d been putting it off: the battalion needs me here, he kept telling himself, the paperwork’s not finished, I can’t spare the time, not until the recruitment process is complete. Then suddenly it was complete, virtually three full companies signed up, plus an HQ company in support. 2nd Battalion was done, he realized, up to full strength. Then checking the list he saw that every man on it had completed the parachute course except one, and if that one didn’t do it soon, they’d deploy without him, which was ironic since he’d recruited them in the first place. So he’d gone to Ringway, spent two days in the hangar looking at blackboards and jumping from tables and rickety scaffolding and a wired contraption called the windmill. On the third day he’d donned his parachute for real and climbed i
nto that infernal balloon, and hung on for grim death while the beastly thing jerked and swayed upwards like a kite on a string. Then he’d jumped out and it had scared him half to death, but the canopy snapped open, the descent was smooth and his landing was textbook: neat, tidy and barely a bruise. The instructor grinned. ‘One more like that, sir, and you’re done with balloons!’ So he’d gone straight up again, laughing and cocky and leaping through the hole like a professional. But he started swinging in the descent this time, and landed hard, cracking his head and tearing a ligament in his foot. Now the medics said no jumping for a fortnight at least, so while everyone else was off on leave, celebrating, socializing and sewing parachute wings on their uniforms, he was stuck in the office shuffling papers and hobbling around on a stick.

  Everything had happened so very fast. Within a couple of weeks of filling in the form for special air operations, he’d been summoned to London for a series of interviews, which resulted in his appointment as adjutant to the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Parachute Brigade. This sounded impressive, except that neither existed. ‘It’s a big push by Churchill,’ his new boss, Brigadier ‘Windy’ Gale explained. ‘He wants a division-sized force, along the German model, and he wants it now. General Browning will lead the division; we’ll be its first parachute brigade.’

  Three battalions were needed to form the new brigade. Gale already had one: the 11 Special Air Service, formerly 2 Commando, which he renamed 1st Battalion. Frost’s job, he soon learned, was to form 2nd Battalion: that is find, interview and sign up five hundred men, from scratch. Another captain, Stephen Terrell, was to form 3rd Battalion, also from scratch. Time, Gale told them, was of the essence. Barracks had been allocated near Chesterfield in Derbyshire, and a massive recruitment drive was under way, with enrolment officers visiting every army unit in the realm to drum up volunteers.

  Frost and Terrell moved into the new barracks and waited for them to arrive. Soon a trickle appeared, wandering up from Chesterfield Station each day like pilgrims to Mecca. But almost immediately the two adjutants noticed a problem, in that many recruits were completely unsuitable. Slackers, miscreants, troublemakers and outright criminals: an age-old military tradition was being played out, they realized, with commanders seizing the opportunity to get rid of their worst troops instead of sending their best. Gale soon put a stop to the practice, but much time was lost. Slowly the situation improved, but then Frost noticed Terrell was getting better recruits than he. Hurrying down the road in puzzlement he found a corporal hiding in the bushes, with orders to send everyone to Terrell first, before sending the rejects on to Frost. Not to be outdone, Frost duly posted his own tout further down the road, Terrell followed suit, and soon both were virtually camping at the station.