Right and Glory

by Right

  Dawson shifted his gaze from the fort, which looked deceptively quiet and peaceful, to cover the surrounding countryside, which now seemed completely empty since all the personnel who’d previously been working outside had now vanished inside the fort. He glanced up at the sky as a sudden brief shadow obscured part of the new moon. But there appeared to be no clouds in the sky.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ he muttered.

  ‘What is it?’ Sykes lowered the binoculars and glanced at his companion.

  ‘I thought I saw something. An aircraft, maybe. Something crossed in front of the moon.’

  Sykes listened carefully for a few seconds, then shook his head. ‘You must be mistaken. I can’t hear any engine noise.’

  ‘I definitely saw something,’ Dawson said stubbornly. ‘Maybe it wasn’t an aircraft. Perhaps it was somebody in a parachute?’

  Sykes shook his head again. ‘Same argument, Dawson. A parachutist has to have an aeroplane to jump out of. If there was an aircraft there we’d hear it. We heard those aircraft earlier, remember?’

  ‘So what’s that, then?’

  Dawson pointed into the sky over to the south-east of the fort, where the unmistakable shape of an aircraft had just appeared, maybe a mile away, a darker grey against the grey sky. It was low down, apparently moving slowly, but clearly visible.

  ‘Bloody hell, Dawson, you’re right. Maybe the engine’s failed and the pilot’s trying for a forced landing.’ Sykes raised the binoculars again and searched the sky for the aircraft, trying to get a better look at it.

  ‘I think it’s trying to land on top of the fort,’ Dawson said. ‘There’s another one right behind it.’

  At that moment, one of the anti-aircraft machine-guns protecting the fort opened up, a sudden assault on the night, and seconds later the other three anti-aircraft weapons also began firing. Streams of tracer rounds arced into the sky, a lethal fireworks display, seeking out the silent grey shapes that were now closing in on the fort.

  ‘Bloody gliders,’ Sykes muttered. ‘Bloody great gliders. They have to be. The fucking Jerries are landing troops by glider to try to capture Eben Emael. Christ, that’s clever.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The Belgians use sound-location arrays designed to pinpoint aircraft by the noise of their engines. No engines means no detection by the Belgian defenders. This is a real surprise attack. And Germany’s full of glider pilots, so they’d have had no trouble finding men to fly them.’

  Beside the major, Dawson brought his Lee-Enfield up to the aim and looked over the sights towards the fort, now alive with machine-gun fire from the four anti-aircraft emplacements. He estimated they were about half a mile from the fort, well outside the effective range of the .303 rifle, which was accurate to roughly 550 yards and, even if the range had been shorter, in the weak moonlight he’d have found it difficult to acquire a target. But if those were German soldiers landing on the grass-covered roof of the Eben Emael fort in front of them – and there wasn’t much doubt about that – Dawson wanted to be ready for whatever lay ahead.

  Sykes was still scanning the scene through his binoculars.

  ‘There are troops pouring out of that first glider,’ he said, ‘and there’s a second one just about to land. They’re wearing combat smocks. I think they’re Jerry paratroopers.’ He shifted his view slightly. ‘Yes, they’re definitely German gliders. Now I can see tiny swastikas painted on their tail fins. It’s no wonder the fort gun crews only opened fire at the last minute. They might have spotted the gliders approaching but couldn’t see their markings until they were almost on the ground.’

  ‘I can see more of them approaching,’ Dawson said. ‘At least three or four other gliders.’

  Then the sound of machine-gun fire from the fort diminished abruptly. Sykes swung his binoculars to look at the anti-aircraft positions.

  ‘Looks like at least one of the machine-guns has jammed,’ he said. ‘Not that they were doing a lot of good anyway.’

  ‘But we’ve seen the defences that place has got,’ Dawson said. ‘What the hell can a few dozen German soldiers hope to do against that fort?’

  Sykes didn’t reply for a few seconds, concentrating on the view through his binoculars. Then he lowered them slowly and glanced over at Dawson. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think Adolf would have sent his troops here unless there was a reasonable chance of them succeeding in taking the fort. Despite the defences Eben Emael has got, because the Jerries are here, that means they must have a plan.’

  Sykes turned his attention back to the view through his binoculars, then grunted, pulled the cord over his head and passed them to Dawson. ‘More your field than mine,’ he said. ‘The only thing that makes sense is that they’re intending to use explosive charges to destroy the cupolas and casemates, otherwise there’s no point in them landing on the top. See if you can work out what they’re doing.’

  Dawson nodded his thanks, focused the binoculars and concentrated on the shadowy figures he could see running about on the vast grassed area on top of the fort.

  ‘A group of them have just run over to one of the casemates,’ he said. ‘I think that’s the one Verbois called Maastricht Two. At least two of them are carrying something between them.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘I don’t know. They’re holding a pole, maybe a length of steel, and suspended from that is a round object, but I’ve no idea what it is.’

  He concentrated, trying to keep the binoculars as still as possible so that he could watch what was happening on the distant fort. Even at that distance, the ground faintly illuminated by the white glow of the new moon, he could see the figures fairly clearly.

  Several of them clambered up onto the top of the casemate and headed for the conical steel observation dome at one end of it. The two soldiers carrying the bar and the round object were in the lead. There, they placed the device on top of the dome, did something to the top of it and almost immediately scrambled into cover.

  ‘They’ve put a charge of some sort on the top of the dome,’ Dawson said, keeping up a commentary for Sykes, still lying beside him. ‘But that steel’s about a foot thick. It’ll be a hell of a bang, but it’ll just bounce off.’

  About ten seconds later, the sound of a massive explosion ripped through the air. Dawson involuntarily flinched and closed his eyes. When he refocused the binoculars, he could see that a hole had been blown right through the top of the steel observation dome.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he muttered. ‘They’ve blown it. What the hell are they using?’

  ‘What?’

  Quickly Dawson explained to Sykes what he’d seen.

  ‘You told me that explosives couldn’t break through that thickness of steel,’ the major pointed out.

  ‘I know, but I’ve just seen the bloody Jerries do exactly that. They must have worked out some new technique or developed a new explosive – something like that.’

  ‘This is important, Dawson. If the Germans have developed a new type of demolition charge, we need to know about it. It could affect everything we do – the thickness of warship armour, the design of tanks, how we build pill-boxes and bunkers, absolutely everything.’

  Another explosion rocked the night. Dawson snapped the binoculars back to his eyes. Smoke was rising from the Maastricht Two casemate. Grey-clad figures were clambering over it, lobbing objects through the hole in the observation dome and through the gun ports.

  ‘It looks like they’re throwing grenades inside now,’ he said. ‘I don’t see any return fire. Those first charges must have taken out most of the defenders.’ He kept the binoculars to his eyes as he addressed Major Sykes. ‘When you say it’s “important”, sir, what exactly do you mean?’

  ‘I mean we – or rather you – need to find out how the Germans did it. And that means getting over there and onto the roof of that fort to take a good look at the damage.’

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ Dawson muttered quietly. ‘I had a feeling
you had something like that in mind.’

  Chapter 4

  10 May 1940

  Eben Emael, Belgium

  ‘Now it looks like they’re hitting the Maastricht One casemate,’ Dawson said.

  Seconds later, another huge explosion echoed from the roof of the fort as the Maastricht One observation dome was destroyed in a similar fashion to that on the other casemate. The breaching of the dome was followed by a rapid series of smaller explosions as the German troops lobbed hand grenades through the holes they’d blown in the structure. All this was clearly visible to Dawson as he stared through the binoculars, but he still had no idea how the Germans had managed to blast holes through the massive thickness of armoured steel fitted on the fort.

  ‘It isn’t that I’m not keen to investigate the way the Germans blew up that observation dome, sir, but there are now about a dozen of those bloody great gliders on the roof of that fort and at least seventy Jerries running around, armed to the teeth and shooting anything that moves.’

  ‘I had noticed, Dawson,’ Sykes said, taking back the binoculars to observe events at Eben Emael once more, ‘and I’m working on it. We can’t do anything yet, obviously. Either the Belgians will blow the Germans off the roof, or the Jerries will take out all the other casemates and cupolas and that’ll be that. If I was a betting man, I’d put my money on the Germans. They seem to know exactly what they’re doing.’

  Sykes lowered the binoculars and looked across at Dawson. ‘We’ll wait for a while, until it’s clear which side is winning, and then make our move. If the Belgians come out on top, it’ll be easy. If it’s the Germans, we’ll need to think of something. Whatever it is, we’ll go over there together, Dawson. I’m not in the habit of giving orders that I’m not prepared to follow myself.’

  What they were looking at was now a full-scale battle. Smoke and fumes covered the top of Fort Eben Emael, and the noise of detonating grenades was almost constant, along with the distinctive sound of Schmeisser machine-pistols, the firing frequency mimicking the rate of a human heartbeat. Overlying that were the infrequent thumps as one of the fort’s seventy-five-millimetre cannon fired at some distant target – they had to be distant because the heavy weapons were almost useless at close range.

  What the Belgian defenders needed to engage the German troops were heavy machine-guns, which the fort had, but most of them were on the lower level, intended to engage enemy forces approaching the fort from the land surrounding the structure. The two casemates on top of Fort Eben Emael, named Mi-Nord and Mi-Sud, fitted with heavy machine-guns, were the only protection the structure had against enemy troops actually on the roof. The architects of the fort had clearly assumed that the chances of this happening were extremely slight. They’d obviously never even considered the possibility of a glider-borne attack. And in any case, those machine-guns were silent.

  ‘What’s happening now, sir?’ Dawson asked, as they heard another massive explosion blast out from the roof of the fort.

  ‘Nothing good,’ Sykes replied. ‘Looks like Cupola Nord is getting the same treatment as the Maastricht casemates.’ He shifted his field of focus slightly. ‘I should have placed that bet,’ he added. ‘The crew of two of the anti-aircraft machine-guns have just surrendered to the Germans.’

  Suddenly a sheet of flame erupted from a position close to the Mi-Nord casemate, and another explosion sounded.

  ‘They’re using flame-throwers against the machine-gun casemates,’ Sykes said, ‘and some kind of explosive charge. It looks like they’ve blown open the infantry exit door of Cupola Nord, because German troops seem to be entering the fort itself now, from the roof. What I don’t understand is why the Belgians aren’t firing at the Germans. They should be sitting targets for those heavy machine-guns.’

  The roof area of Fort Eban Emael was now sheathed in smoke from the multiple explosions and bits of vegetation set on fire by the flame-throwers, but the noise of weapons firing and the detonation of explosive charges was now noticeably less. More ominously, many of the sounds of shots and the crack of grenades firing were muffled, which meant they were coming from inside Fort Eben Emael.

  ‘I think it’s pretty much all over now,’ Sykes muttered. ‘As far as I can see, the Germans have destroyed – or at least silenced – all the heavy weapons at the fort, and now they’re obviously inside the building.’ He glanced at his watch and smiled grimly. ‘Any idea how long that attack took?’

  ‘I didn’t notice what time it started,’ Dawson said.

  ‘I did,’ Sykes replied. ‘The effective destruction of the impregnable fortress of Eben Emael took about sixty or seventy German soldiers just over twenty minutes. I hope to Christ that’s not an indication of what’s going to happen during the rest of this war, because if it is, the fucking Germans will be strutting around Piccadilly Circus in their jackboots by the end of the summer.’

  ‘And you still want us to go over there to take a look at the damage?’ Dawson asked.

  Sykes nodded. ‘Yes. It’s vitally important. You could argue that Eben Emael fell through simple incompetence, and that’s probably true. But if the defences were as impregnable as everybody told us yesterday, the Germans would still be wandering about on the roof of the place, trying to get inside. We have to find out how they breached the defences, and what this new kind of explosive they’ve developed really is.’

  Dawson nodded, somewhat reluctantly. ‘That makes sense, sir,’ he conceded, ‘though I don’t know how much information I’ll get from just looking at the hole the charge blew in a lump of steel.’

  ‘Can’t you work something out from seeing the dimensions of the hole, or looking at the debris?’

  ‘That would tell me something, yes, but I already know it must be some kind of a shaped charge. Nothing else could have done that damage.’

  ‘A shaped charge is what?’ Sykes enquired.

  ‘A stick of dynamite just blasts out in all directions when it’s fired, but a shaped charge focuses the detonation in a particular direction. It has to be a type of plastic explosive to do it, something like gelignite, which you can mould into a shape to attack a particular target in a certain direction – that’s why it’s called a “shaped charge”. To bring down a steel bridge, for example, you’d shape the charges so that they cut horizontally through the supporting legs,’ Dawson finished.

  ‘Could a shaped charge have penetrated the thickness of steel over the cupolas and observation posts over there?’ Sykes asked.

  ‘Not in my opinion, no, because the metal is just too thick. Although the shaped charge focuses the blast, a lot of the explosive force will still bounce off the target, especially if the material it’s trying to destroy is tough. And a foot of tempered steel is about as tough a target as you can find. However they did it, it definitely wasn’t just a big shaped charge.’

  ‘So,’ Sykes said after a moment, ‘just getting a look at the damage isn’t going to be a hell of a lot of help. We need to get hold of one of the charges themselves.’

  Dawson stared at him. He’d hoped to talk the major out of what was obviously a recipe for suicide, and somehow he’d just made the situation a hell of a lot worse.

  ‘Frankly, sir,’ he said quietly, ‘it’s going to be fucking difficult – at best – to get onto the roof of Eben Emael without getting our arses shot off. Finding one of those bloody charges and stealing it from the Jerries seems to pretty much guarantee we’ll be carried away from here in a couple of wooden boxes.’

  ‘Not necessarily, Dawson,’ Sykes murmured, studying the fort through the binoculars. ‘Think it through. Once the Germans have secured the building, their main task is going to be getting all the Belgian troops out of it and making sure they’ve permanently disabled all the fort’s weapons. They’ll probably leave a small garrison there to guard the fort, but I doubt they’ll be mounting a guard over any of the explosive charges they haven’t used. And now they’re obviously inside the building, there might not even be any German sold
iers left up on the roof.’

  ‘They might have used all the charges in the attack, sir.’

  ‘True, but if they’re competent – and from what we’ve just seen they are bloody competent – they’d have had numerous extra weapons, in case some of them didn’t detonate or got lost or damaged when they landed on the roof. Would you recognize one of the devices you saw those two German soldiers carrying, if you saw another one, I mean?’

  ‘Probably, yes. It was quite a distinctive shape.’

  ‘Good.’ Sykes sounded pleased. ‘Then that’s what we’ll do. We have to sort this out now, before daylight. We’ll start working our way closer to the fort and see if we can spot one of those special charges. If we do, we’ll nip in, get it and then head out of here.’

  As a plan, Dawson thought, that definitely left something to be desired.

  Chapter 5

  10 May 1940

  Eben Emael, Belgium

  Getting close to the fort wasn’t the difficult bit. The German soldiers were fully focused on the structure as they tried to complete the destruction of all the heavy weapons mounted on the roof, and the Belgian soldiers inside it were literally fighting for their lives. And the noise of the battle had done what the aborted sequences of blank rounds fired from Cupola Sud had completely failed to do – it had finally attracted the attention of some of the off-duty troops stationed in the nearby villages, including Wonck. These men were now walking – individually or in small groups – down the roads towards the stricken fortress.

  In the darkness, German, Belgian and British uniforms didn’t look that dissimilar, and Sykes and Masters had no difficulty in blending in with the troops on foot. They walked down from the hillock and started following a group of about half a dozen Belgian troops along the road, keeping far enough behind them that their presence wouldn’t be obvious, and well ahead of another three soldiers heading the same way.