by Leo Kessler
In typical panzer grenadier form, the troopers covered by the firing carrier, advanced and swept by the dead bodies of the two SAS men, leaving behind the sobbing boy and the dead Major who had saved the day for the man who was soon to be called the ‘Victor of El Alamein’.
* * *
Doubling all-out with the last of their strength, the Wotan troopers ran onto the quay behind the carrier. Tracer was still coming at them from the confused mass of sheds. But most of it was wild and the troopers were too eager to get away from the Alexandria death-trap to worry about it.
Von Dodenburg halted. There were ships everywhere, many of them with their lights blazing. Some of them were merchantmen, but most grey warships. Even if Schulze had pulled off the impossible task of seizing a ship single-handed, how could he hope to get it out of Britain’s chief naval base in the Mediterranean, with so many enemy ships present?
‘Which way, sir?’ Matz yelled.
‘If I only knew,’ von Dodenburg groaned. Behind them there came the sound of machine-gun fire from one of the sheds. Sergeant Doerr cursed and flung his last stick grenade. There was a thick crump and the firing died away. But it was followed by the sound of running feet.
‘This way,’ von Dodenburg ordered. Obviously the whole harbour was beginning to wake up to their presence. In minutes the naval base would be roused. He swung the carrier’s wheel and clattered down the quay to the right, with the men doubling desperately after it, slugs hitting the concrete or whining off the corrugated iron sheds.
Von Dodenburg felt himself covercome by despair.
Ship after ship flashed by, with their alarmed crews turning on the lights and yelling in anger and surprise at the sight of Germans in their midst. ‘Come on; Schulze for Chrissake, come on,’ he called to himself frantically like a frightened child after a nightmare, wishing morning and the light to come again.
The howl of a ship’s siren drowned even the growing volume of small-arms fire. ‘Oh, shit. What now?’ Matz cried above the racket.
‘Where’s it coming from?’ von Dodenburg demanded.
‘Over there,’ Matz answered, pointing hastily at a Royal Navy torpedo boat.
Von Dodenburg cocked his head to one side, while the panting exhausted troopers clustered behind the carrier for protection…‘Can you make it out, Matz?’
Matz’s face set in a look of absolute astonishment. ‘It’s morse…somebody using the hooter for a morse signal.’
‘Yes.’ Von Dodenburg’s eyes glowed with sudden hope. ‘Listen to it! W…O…T… It’s Schulze. Come on!’
The ship was signalling WOTAN.
They doubled towards it, its mighty engines already throbbing, its deck shuddering, like a lean whippet anxious to be let off the leash.
* * *
Schulze watched them come. He pressed his Schmeisser into the pale, but defiant captain’s back. ‘All right, skipper, get your beautiful sailor boys ready to cast off,’ he ordered.
‘You swine, you can’t –’ His protest ended with a yelp of pain, as Schulze poked the muzzle hard into his back.
‘I can do anything, Captain,’ Schulze said cheerfully, as the Wotan men started to spring across the gap between the trembling boat and the quay. ‘I’m the admiral of this particular fleet.’
The young officer spoke into the mike. ‘Cast off,’ he said, forcing out each word through gritted teeth.
Just as the deckmen flung off the last hawser and the boat began to move out at an ever increasing speed, von Dodenburg took a mighty leap forward and landed on the deck in a heap. ‘Good for you, sir!’ Schulze exclaimed in delight and shoved the captain’s tense back. ‘All right, Nelson, full speed ahead!’
* * *
They had almost reached the boom when an echoing voice from the shore demanded: ‘What the devil do you think you are playing at, sir?’
‘This is it!’ von Dodenburg standing at Schulze’s side in the heaving bridge tensed.
‘I said, sir, what are you doing?’ the impersonal voice over the loud-hailer repeated. ‘Heave to – or we will fire.’
‘All right, Nelson,’ Schulze said with more cheerfulness than he felt, as the great shore batteries of 12-inch guns started to swing round in their direction. ‘Here’s where you win the Iron Cross – Third Class. Hit the gas!’
This time the young skipper needed no urging. He and his crew would go down with the Jerries too if they were hit now. All their lives were in his hands. He opened the throttle full blast. The two Germans caught themselves just in time. The long sharp prow rose right out of the water. At thirty knots an hour, with the boat hitting each wave as if it were a solid brick wall, it shot out into the sea just as the inferno broke loose.
Balls of fire were flung across the chasm of water. Tracer shells spat and ricocheted, dragging a blazing white light behind them over the sea. It was a vast impressive picture of frustrated fury, immense, volcanic and spectacular, like the anger of the gods.
But it was too late. They had gone…
ENVOI
ENVOI
‘Oh, bloody! Bloody! Bloody!
All bloody fleas, no bloody beer
No bloody booze since we’ve been here
Oh bloody! Bloody! Bloody…’
The crazy Australian General prisoner, tied to one of the escape transport’s stanchions, was singing with a mad grin on his brown face.
Von Dodenburg, standing next to the ‘Prof’ at the railing, tried to ignore the dreadful noise and focused his binoculars on the far end of the beach, which was swamped with troops. The Afrikakorps was fleeing Africa, or at least some of it was: the generals, Rommel in the lead, specialists and the survivors of Assault Battalion Wotan. Von Dodenburg swept his glasses around the beach and thought he would never forget this tragedy; the sight would be etched on his memory forever.
Everywhere lines of weary men were staggering to the boats, ignoring the shell bursts of the Allied armies which were in the hills beyond, with the foremost ranks shoulder-deep in the water, pleading piteously to be taken aboard.
British planes came zooming in at mast-height, machine-guns chattering. Men sank beneath the waves everywhere and the transports’ anti-aircraft guns thudded in a vain attempt to fight the Spitfires off. At the stanchion the Australian General began his crazy dirge once more:
‘Oh, bloody! Bloody! Bloody!
Air raids all day and bloody night
They give us a bloody fright.
Oh bloody…Bloody…’
The squadron of Spitfires roared in for one more sortie and then they were off to refuel before coming back to wreak more havoc, soaring high into the brilliant sky. The ‘Prof’ replaced his new stainless steel false teeth which he kept in his helmet in moments of danger. ‘It’s about time we went, Major, don’t you think?’ he said.
‘Time indeed,’ von Dodenburg agreed, focusing his glasses on the cautious figures who were coming down from the hills now. He was right. They were Tommies. Against the yellow clouds of dust, they were sharply silhouetted in their pudding-basin helmets as they advanced on the Germans. Von Dodenburg’s heart ached as he saw the men in the familiar peaked-caps of the Afrikakorps being shepherded into disconsolate groups to be led off to the Tommies’ prison cages. The Desert Fox’s great dream of the conquest of Africa was over. He took the ‘Prof’s’ arm. He wanted to see no more. ‘Come on, Prof, let’s get below. We’ll be sailing in a minute. I’ve had enough of North Africa.’
At the stanchion, the tied prisoner sang:
‘Best bloody place is a bloody bed
With blanket over bloody head.
And then they think you’re bloody dead.
Oh bloody! Bloody! Bloody! ...’
* * *
At the gangplank, Schulze, again elevated to the temporary rank of full colonel with the aid of the epaulettes hastily fixed to his shoulders, looked down at the lighter full of Afrikakorps staff officers, rummaging around in their kit wondering what they should take with them for
the trip to Italy. Once the great men had been accustomed to settling the lives and fates of thousands of men with a snap decision; now they could not make their minds up which one of their bulging cases to take with them on board.
‘Colonel’ Schulze gazed down at them in contempt, while Matz stared at the rich pickings with rapacious, greedy little eyes. ‘Meine Herren!’ Schulze drawled at last in his best Prussian Guardee’s voice, ‘would you please get your digits out! We sail in exactly five minutes – or we get sunk one minute later. One case per officer, please. Now make it snappy!’
The threat worked. In one minute flat the staff officers were clambering up the rope ladder and hurrying below with their single cases, leaving an evilly grinning Matz to collect their leavings.
‘Well?’ Schulze demanded when Matz had swung himself up on board again, the loot clutched to his skinny chest.
‘Four chests of cigars, two bottles of wine and a bottle of Algerian brandy – and two dirty books.’
‘Excellent, excellent, my boy,’ Schulze boomed in his officer’s voice. ‘I’m beginning to like retreats – you eat and drink better and meet a more interesting type of individual, what.’
‘Up yours!’ Matz said by way of an answer.
Five minutes later as they lounged in one of the lifeboats, ‘rented’ from an obliging deck officer for one case of cigars, the transport finally started to pull out from the Algerian bay, its siren shrieking.
Schulze looked reflectively at the African coast. A gleam came and went in his bright-blue eyes. It might have been one of rage, or of relief. It would have been hard for the observer to discover.
Schulze raised one large buttock and gave one of his lazy, musical farts, celebrated in sergeants’ messes throughout Occupied Europe. He lifted his mug of cognac in toast as the coast faded into the smoke of battle, and called with heart-felt relief: ‘AUF WIEDERSEHEN AFRIKA…’
Also by Leo Kessler and available as an ebook in The Dogs of War Series
No. 1 Forced March
No. 2 The Devil’s Shield
No. 3 SS Panzer Battalion
No. 4 Claws of Steel
No. 5 Blood Mountain
No. 6 Death’s Head
No. 7 Blood and Ice
COPYRIGHT
First published in 1977
Reprinted in 2006
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MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 8893 6
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