by Peter Haden
‘Well done youngster,’ the driver shouted, ‘and congratulations. How did it feel?’
‘It was wonderful, very wonderful!’ Jan shouted, almost screaming with adrenalin.
‘Well hop in,’ came the rather prosaic answer, ‘and make sure nothing can tangle with anything else.’
Sergeant Hathaway, who had jumped last, had them seated on the grass in a semi-circle. ‘Karol, nice jump,’ he told him. Most had the same comment, although Marie, the one Jan though might be French, was told that her exit was a bit untidy. ‘Legs together straight away,’ he told her, ‘so you can be stable as quickly as possible. But otherwise a good effort.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘We’ll take a late lunch,’ he told them, ‘because I want to put in one more jump this morning. The wind’s just a little bit stronger, so we’ll get the second one in before it rises out of the envelope.’
This time round Jan was the third to jump, and found himself drifting toward the side of the field. But apart from a scramble to gather in on the ground in a rising breeze all went well. ‘Get a good night’s sleep,’ Sergeant Hathaway told them before they were dismissed. ‘No expense spared – I have laid on a private aeroplane for you tomorrow morning. Same routine as today – two jumps, and you’ll have much more time to enjoy the view on the way down.’
Next morning he briefed them inside the hangar. ‘We will fly out of Ringwood in a Mark IV Armstrong Whitworth Whitley twin-engined medium bomber,’ he told them. ‘This is good news – when the aircraft was originally introduced into service its nickname was the flying coffin. But the pilot told me that this aircraft has Rolls-Royce Merlin engines and is barely a year old. Like yesterday,’ he went on, ‘you will be on a static line. But this morning we will jump from about three thousand feet into the same DZ.
‘Two major differences, though. First, you will exit the aircraft through a hole cut in the fuselage floor. Remember this, and remember it well. When the time comes, make sure you are well forward, cleanly into the hole. If you don’t, your pack will catch behind you and the resulting forward pivot will smack your face into the edge opposite. Almost certainly, you will break your nose.’ He looked at Marie. ‘If you don’t want to finish up looking like a retired boxer, Miss, you must make a clean exit.’ Most of them nodded their understanding – they had all taken the point. ‘Second,’ he went on, ‘your chute will deploy more quickly than it did from the balloon jump. This is due to the slipstream created by the aircraft as it flies forward. So, make sure you are in a stable position immediately after leaving the aircraft.’ He paused. ‘Packs on and good luck.’
They were driven out to the aircraft. Once seated inside, the Whitley taxied round the peri-track and paused at the beginning of the runway. The engine noise rose almost to a scream and they were off. But the smell inside the fuselage was awful – apparently, the bomber had been sprayed with some sort of chemically treated lacquer. Jan hoped that he would jump before the ignominy of being airsick. As the aircraft approached the drop zone, Sergeant Hathaway attached the static lines, then moved back along the fuselage double-checking each connection. Overhead, two red lights came on. The Whitley turned in a gently bank – Jan guessed that they were circling the DZ, and the lights changed to green. There was barely any time to register the view to earth. As quickly as they could, they jumped. Jan was about halfway along the stick. And they were all out, canopies open.
Jan picked out the DZ. But unlike yesterday, when some sounds had drifted up from below, the world underneath was silent. Despite the thrill of the jump, these were the most peaceful moments that Jan had ever experienced. After what seemed an eternity, he made another good landing more or less mid-field.
They made another jump that afternoon. Finally, Sergeant Hathaway gathered them in the hangar. ‘Well, congratulations to all of you,’ he began. ‘Just a few words, as you will be leaving here in the morning. First of all, well done. My job was to get you through these few days without anyone being injured. You have had only the most basic of training, but if you have to jump again, there is a reasonable chance that you can reach the ground in one piece. But only if you remember everything we have taught you. I would like to have added a night drop, but we just don’t have the time or the resources, so if you are up for one of those, listen carefully to the extra briefing before the flight. Second, there is a little tradition that we follow here at Ringwood. Get yourselves fed and watered, then be outside your accommodation at seven o’clock this evening. Transport will be waiting.’
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Marie.
‘Miss,’ said Sergeant Hathaway, ‘we will be driven to a very nice country pub. Where I, and you, will celebrate what you have all achieved. And best of all,’ he grinned at them proudly, ‘although we shall never tell him, the bill will be picked up by His Majesty and we will all get ever so slightly pissed.’
The last word was not within his vocabulary. To the amusement of the others, Jan had to ask what it meant.
Chapter 17
Two large stuffed exercise mats about four inches thick lay side by side on the lawn in front of the house. Staff Sergeant Hardcastle had already taken them for a gruelling five mile run, after which they had been given time for a quick shower and breakfast. Now, at half past nine in the morning, they were beginning the first instruction period of the day – close-quarter unarmed combat.
Having spent the entire previous day on trains, they had arrived at a station somewhere in the Scottish Highlands late in the evening. A canvas covered lorry collected them from the station, and after a drive of about three quarters of an hour, they debussed outside a large country manse. At least, they agreed, as they were shown to their rooms before being offered a late snack of sandwiches and cocoa by a lady housekeeper, it was better than the Nissen huts at Ringwood.
The following morning, they watched as their instructor called forward a young woman called Giselle, the only other female member of their group. She was handed a knife – this one made of wood, blunt, and with the pointed end ground off so that it would harm neither the instructor nor his pupil. Under orders to attack, Giselle gave it her best shot: she moved bravely towards her opponent and with surprising speed tried to stab him in the chest. Her reward was a quick arm-lock movement smoothly converted into an over the shoulder throw and Giselle was thumped onto the canvas mats, flat on her back. At least she had the good sense to roll away, not giving the enemy a chance to drop a knee into her chest or stomach. She was allowed to stand, and Hardcastle repeated the move in slow motion, without actually throwing her, so that they could all see what he had done.
‘Give the knife to Karol,’ he told her, ‘and we’ll go through it again. Then I will attack, and one of you will defend.’
George Hardcastle watched as the young Pole faced him. But all too slowly an instinctive feeling made the hairs rise on the back of his neck. The lad was seemingly a left-hander, but he was not holding the knife by the handle in his fist, blade pointing down, as beginners usually did when attempting a stabbing movement. Rather, the knife was held low, with the blade horizontal and moving from side to side. ‘Watch the eyes,’ he would tell his pupils. ‘They will always be your first warning.’ But it was much more difficult when there was a knife swinging low in front of you. And this one, even if only a practice blade, was poised to strike either in his crotch or stomach. Somewhere along the line, Karol had been taught how to fight with a knife.
Clearly, the Pole had not been concerned when called upon to take his turn. He was just concentrating intensely on the exercise in hand. Suddenly Jan lunged, the blunt tip aimed at his opponent’s lower stomach. Hardcastle read the intention to gut him, so that for real he would spill his entrails and bleed out. He started to go for a standard grip, twist and elbow break, although he would not have followed through to shatter the joint.
But the Pole didn’t press home his attack. Instead, he pulled back from t
he feint and stepped sharply to his left. Hardcastle, committed already to defence, could do nothing as Jan’s right fist caught him in the solar plexus. Not wishing to cause embarrassment, he pulled the punch, but even so it was enough to knock the wind from his opponent, who realised only too well that he had been let off lightly. With a half-skip further to the left, Jan pushed the sole of his right foot firmly against the outside of Hardcastle’s right knee. At the same time, he flicked the knife from his left hand to the right, where it could have been used to finish his opponent in any number of ways. The staff sergeant realised that had this been for real he would have been on the ground, totally winded and with a leg probably crippled for life. With a knife strike on the way down, it would have been game over.
Jan retreated to the edge of the mat, arms down, hands by his sides, offering no threat. Staff Sergeant Hardcastle was still on his feet but breathing deeply, recovering. ‘All right, youngster,’ he said quietly, ‘where and what have you been taught and who was your instructor?’
‘First, my father,’ said Jan evenly. ‘He was sniper behind lines when we fought Russia. I don’t know where he was trained, but he could fight and he taught me. Especially after some boys taunted my sister and I used my fists. Father said there were better ways of winning and he passed on everything he knew. Shooting also,’ he added.
‘Much later,’ Jan went on, ‘I went to work in Germany. My master was older than me, but he had been Stosstruppen, special forces, in the last war. His name was Herr Raschdorf. His father died of a stroke. Herr Günther wanted to keep fit, so we used to spar and wrestle at least twice a week. He showed me what I have just used against you.’ He stopped speaking, already somewhat embarrassed and tongue-tied.
Hardcastle put his arms around Jan’s shoulders and turned to face the others. ‘We can all learn important lessons from this,’ he told them. ‘And at some time in the future, they might just save your life. ‘What did I do wrong?’ he asked the group. It was a rhetorical question, he was not expecting a reply.
He took his arm from Jan. ‘First,’ he went on, ticking off one thumb with the other, ‘I under-estimated my opponent. It was a classic, stupid, schoolboy mistake. Karol here is probably the youngest of you all and I just assumed he would not be trained. In fact, he’s young, strong, fast and very good. Next,’ he ticked off an index finger, ‘he fooled me completely. Only a trained knife fighter holds a weapon the way he did. I was too slow to pick up on this. Then I saw the knife in his left hand and assumed that he was not right-handed. Wrong! I followed the knife, expecting the attack to come from that direction. He pulled back from the feint and landed a punch from his dominant side. Had he used full force, I would have been on the ground. On the way down I could have lost all use of my right leg. And finally, for real, he could have finished me with the knife – because of my mistakes, he won fair and square.
‘For now,’ he told them, ‘I’m going to leave Karol out of this part of the programme, because the rest of you are still on the basics. But he and I will train separately in our own time: I think I have more to offer and I’m interested to know if there is anything I can learn from him.’
It was, thought Jan, a very honest and fair assessment.
That evening they exercised in private. After an hour’s workout, during which Staff Sergeant Hardcastle honed some of Jan’s skills and taught a few new ones, Jan reckoned that honours were about even. The next morning Hardcastle announced a new method of instruction. He and Jan would demonstrate each move, with Jan acting as the attacking student, after which Jan would also act as defender to his fellow students. That way, the instructor told them, they could double the amount of one-on-one instruction and practice time.
‘You throw me too hard,’ Marie told him with a mischievous grin the first time they faced up, ‘and I’ll kick you in the balls.’ Jan smiled wickedly. She was a good looking young woman, probably a year or two older than him, with an athletic figure and an impish face, framed by straight dark brown hair cut to just below her chin.
‘And I’ll buy you a gin and tonic for every time you succeed,’ he replied, still grinning. But for the duration of the course, Marie bought her own drinks.
The training continued. There was range work with a variety of weapons, from handguns to machine pistols, light machine guns and even a light mortar. The three other men on the course all had some military experience but Jan was more than their equal. Eventually, they could strip and reassemble everything, even wearing a blindfold. The two girls, however, had the edge in first aid and radio operator skills, although they all mastered Morse code and attempted to transmit without trailing a “fist”.
The same sergeant instructor, a rather schoolmaster-ish looking individual with round glasses, also taught map reading, although the other three men had some experience already. ‘Remember,’ he told them ‘when you give a grid reference, the top line figures come first and the ones up the side – second.’ He demonstrated. ‘You give the two figure number of the vertical grid line to the left of your position first, taken from either the top or the bottom of your map. Then on a scale of one to ten you estimate how far into the square you think you are. In this case it’s six-five,’ he pointed to the row of figures along the top of the map, ‘then as we are nearly up to the next vertical grid line, it’s six-five-eight. Now go to the line below your position, take the number from the vertical scale on the left or right side of your map, and like before, estimate how far you are towards the next line above. In this case not far, so the second three numbers are four-seven-three. Therefore the full reference is Grid 658473. Got that?’
There was a general murmur that they had. ‘Good,’ he went on, but sooner or later one of you might forget and do it the wrong way round. So, to make sure that you won’t, remember to ask yourself where the toilet is.’ He smiled at their puzzled expression. ‘It’s along the passage,’ his hand swept slowly along the top line of figures on the map, ‘and then up the stairs.’ His hand moved up the vertical numbers. ‘Along the passage and up the stairs,’ he repeated for emphasis, ‘say it to yourself every time you take a grid reference and you’ll never make a mistake. Better still, you won’t ask some poor pilot to make a drop when the prepared DZ is miles away.’
For the next two days, they put everything into practice – contours, inter-visibility, the lot – including running all afternoon, following their map from point-to-point.
It was back to Staff Sergeant Hardcastle for the explosives module. They covered the use of both dynamite and TNT, and all the various means of initiation, from fuse cord to electrical ignition, when a precise timing of the explosion was required – ‘for instance when you are blowing up a locomotive,’ added Hardcastle. Jan noticed that he said “when”, and not “if”. ‘Everyone loves blowing things up,’ he told them before they were due to set off and destroy a short length of railway line set on sleepers well away from the house. ‘You will be using electrical detonation,’ he said, ‘but remember, when it’s a fuse, walk, don’t run. Embarrassing if you fall over on the way out. Although I bet the first time you do it for real, you will ignore my advice and at least trot away, only to lie on the ground for ages till the device cooks off.’
Field craft was another major subject. How to check for a tail and how, where and when to lose one. They covered message passing – dead letter boxes and person-to-person. But finally, just before Christmas, the course was finished and they were pronounced trained. ‘You will now go to a house in the south of England,’ they were told, ‘until your first assignment.’
They spent another tortuous day on trains. But late that evening they were driven to a country house in a county called “Hampshire”. Someone in civilian clothes introduced himself as James Stanton-Harris, the chief administrator of the establishment. ‘Those of you with homes to go to in this country will be given leave for Christmas,’ they were told. ‘Otherwise, let me know, and we’ll sort something
out.’ The three British men all had family to visit for the festive season, as did Giselle, who let slip that her mother was French but married to an Englishman. Marie and Jan were the two “orphans”. ‘This place pretty much closes down,’ Stanton-Harris told them, ‘from just before Christmas Eve till the day after Boxing Day.’ He looked at Marie. ‘If we make sure that the kitchen is well stocked with food and drink, would you be able to look after yourselves?’
Marie affirmed that they could. ‘I’m a Frenchwoman,’ she said with a cheeky smile. ‘Unlike you English, I know how to cook!’
Stanton-Harris laughed at the leg-pull. ‘Even so,’ he said, ‘there is no question of you two being left alone on Christmas day. You will please join us for Christmas lunch. For security reasons, it will have to take place here but my wife, Marjorie, will organise everything. We’ll arrive at about ten and lunch will be at three.’
Jan and Marie enjoyed a walk early on Christmas morning to the local Catholic church. When they returned from Mass, Stanton-Harris’s Humber staff car was in the drive. They entered via the back door. Marjorie Stanton-Harris was in the kitchen, about to put a huge goose into the oven. She was a tall, rather imposing lady who introduced herself with the typical hearty courtesy of an upper-class Englishwoman.