Right and Glory

by Right

  The German soldier smiled, and lifted his right leg to repeat the kick.

  Then Dawson shot him.

  The Browning pistol bucked twice in his hands as he squeezed the trigger. At that range – he was only about fifteen feet from his target – both rounds hit home, smashing into the right-hand side of the German’s chest. The soldier lurched sideways, the Schmeisser falling from his grasp, and he tumbled lifelessly to the ground.

  Dawson didn’t wait to see the results of his attack. Somehow, he had to stop the motorcycle rider. He turned and sprinted out of the ruined house, aiming the pistol as best he could. But even as he lined up the sights, he knew he was too late. The target was too far out of range. The rider was already gunning the engine, dust flying from the back wheel as he accelerated away.

  He fired a couple of rounds at the fleeing vehicle, but neither hit the rider. Dawson ran straight over to the staff car, reached inside and grabbed the Lee-Enfield. The target was too far away for accurate shooting with a pistol, but he was well within range of a rifle shot. He leant against the side of the vehicle, steadying his breathing and aiming down the street.

  The German soldier had traded evasive action for speed, simply getting away from the scene as fast as he could, riding the motorcycle combination straight down the middle of the street. Perhaps his partner hadn’t spotted the rifle in the staff car, or at least hadn’t mentioned it.

  Dawson concentrated hard, aiming for the middle of the German’s back, then pulled the trigger, the rifle kicking against his shoulder.

  The sound of the motorcycle engine abruptly died away as the German soldier slumped forward over the handlebars, losing his grip on the throttle, and then toppled sideways off the machine. The motorcycle combination veered over to the left, slowed down enormously and then began moving at little more than walking speed. Finally it ran into the wall of one of the houses which lined that side of the road and stopped, the engine stalled.

  Dawson stared down the street for a few seconds, to make sure his shot had killed, or at least mortally wounded, the German soldier. The man lay motionless near the centre of the road, showing no signs of life. Dawson guessed his single bullet had done its deadly work. If he’d only wounded the man, the German would probably have been able to hold on to the handlebars of the motorcycle. His sudden tumble off the machine suggested he’d died instantly.

  A soft call from inside the ruined house made up Dawson’s mind for him. He turned and ran back to where he’d left Sykes.

  The major still lay on the stained and torn mattress, both his hands pressed against the wound on his thigh, but he was fully conscious.

  ‘You OK, sir?’ Dawson asked, glancing first at the German soldier he’d shot and then down at the injured British officer.

  ‘Not really, Dawson, no, if I’m honest. I never thought that bastard would kick me. I was just trying to attract his attention so you’d have a clear shot at him. Now my leg feels as if it’s on fire.’

  ‘I’m sorry. He moved so quickly that –’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. What’s done is done. He won’t be kicking anyone else. Did you get the rider as well?’

  Dawson nodded. ‘Yes. And now we’ve got two male bodies to put in the staff car.’

  From somewhere, Sykes conjured up a smile. ‘Good. That’s better than disturbing the Belgian corpses. I’d rather burn the Boche any day of the week. Forget the laws of war.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There are rules about the disposal of bodies, Dawson. You’re not supposed to just set fire to them.’

  ‘Doesn’t bother me,’ Dawson said. ‘I’ll sort that out right now.’ He bent over the body of the soldier lying near Sykes. Swiftly, he pulled off the man’s helmet, the goggles still wrapped around it, removed the leather belt that held his shin-length coat closed and pulled off the outer garment.

  Dawson picked up the limp body, hoisted it onto his shoulder and strode away, back to the staff car. He dumped the dead soldier in the passenger seat, then started the engine and got behind the wheel himself. For the burnt-out car to convince anybody, it had to have crashed, so he drove the vehicle forwards, the front wheels bouncing over rubble, and smashed the nose of the car into the low wall at the end of the street. It wasn’t an ideal scenario, because even a halfway competent driver would surely have realized he was driving down a dead-end, but it was the best he could do in the circumstances. He just hoped the German soldiers who would eventually find the wreckage wouldn’t wonder too much about how the crash had happened.

  Then he ran off down the road to where the body of the second enemy soldier still lay face-down and motionless in the middle of the street.

  Dawson checked the man was dead, dragged him across to the motorcycle combination and lay the body across the top of the sidecar. He pulled the vehicle away from the wall of the house where it had stopped and turned it round, then sat astride the motorcycle and tried to kick the engine into life. But he’d never ridden a motorcycle before, though he’d seen them often enough, and his first attempts failed because it was still in gear.

  Eventually, Dawson guessed what was happening and fiddled about with the gear lever mounted on the petrol tank, and then got the engine started. The vehicle lurched and hopped as he wrestled with the unfamiliar controls, but he managed to get the combination moving and rode it back down the road to where the staff car was parked.

  He lifted the body of the second soldier off the sidecar and again stripped off the helmet, goggles and coat before placing the corpse behind the wheel of the staff car. Now he had two male bodies to use in their deception plan. They were even wearing military uniforms – the wrong uniforms, granted, but after the fire he doubted if anyone would be able to tell the difference. He put his own British helmet on the floor of the vehicle just in front of the driver as a final touch.

  Dawson opened the boot of the staff car and removed the two sections of the demolition charge. One at a time, he carried them over to the motorcycle combination and placed them on the floor of the sidecar, but still left enough room for Sykes to sit in the vehicle. Getting away from the area using the German combination seemed the obvious thing to do now.

  He looked down at their personal gear still stowed in the boot of the car, then he shook his head. There was simply no room in the sidecar to take that as well, so he closed the boot and walked back into the ruins.

  Dawson bent down beside the major. ‘We need to get moving, sir,’ he said. ‘Can you stand up?’

  ‘Give me a hand.’

  Grimacing with the pain, Sykes struggled to his feet, Dawson almost lifting him bodily. The major leant back against the remains of the wall, white and sweating with the effort.

  ‘Just hold on there for a second,’ Dawson said, and picked up the motorcycle coat he’d removed from the dead soldier. The inside was soaked with blood in one patch, but that couldn’t be helped, and at least there was little sign of blood on the outside. Sykes eased forwards from the wall and, with the corporal’s help, slid his arms into the sleeves. The coat was far too big for him, but that didn’t matter – the important thing was that it covered both his tattered British uniform and the wound on his leg.

  ‘What now?’ Sykes asked, as the two men made their way slowly out of the ruins and back to the street.

  ‘A change of plan, sir,’ Dawson said. ‘We’ve just joined the Wehrmacht’s motorcycle corps, or whatever they call it. That should get us away from here without the bloody Germans shooting at us again.’

  Sykes nodded. ‘It should let us reach one of the road-blocks, yes, but getting through it might prove to be a bit more difficult.’

  ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. First, we need to get away from here, before some other Germans pitch up and start nosing around.’

  Dawson helped Sykes get into the sidecar, and handed him one of the helmets he’d taken off the German soldiers. Then he manually swung the combination around so that it – and more importantly the heavy ma
chine-gun mounted on the sidecar – faced down the street, and the direction from which any enemy troops were likely to appear.

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he said, then strode back into the ruined house.

  Sykes nodded, then cracked the top off one of the phials of morphine. The drug would help dull the agony of his mutilated thigh.

  On one side of the house a wooden wardrobe lay on its back, one of the doors blown off and the sides shattered, presumably having fallen from the upper floor of the house, which simply no longer existed. Inside it, Dawson found an assortment of clothes, both male and female. He picked out a couple of pairs of trousers and two jackets, the biggest he could see, and carried them back to the sidecar. He passed the garments to Sykes, who placed them over the demolition charge lying under his legs.

  ‘Good idea, Dawson. We might need to become civilians pretty soon. In the meantime they’ll help hide this device.’

  The corporal nodded and walked back into the ruined building, emerging with the German soldier’s Schmeisser MP 38 machine-pistol slung around his neck. He strode over to the staff car and removed all the spare magazines the soldier had been carrying, then went through his pouches to recover every round of ammunition the man had on him. He repeated the process with the other soldier.

  Finally, he opened the boot of the staff car and took out the box of compo rations they’d been living on when no other food was available. The box was too big to fit in the sidecar, so he just put the few bits that were left down by Sykes’s feet and replaced the box in the boot of the car.

  Then Dawson pulled the can of petrol out of the boot and poured the contents over the two bodies in the seats, and over the rear of the vehicle. He took out his bayonet, bent down at the back of the staff car and drove the tip of the weapon straight into the side of the fuel tank. That started a small drip, so he repeated the operation half a dozen times more, until there was a reasonable flow.

  Dawson found a tattered newspaper just inside the building, screwed it into a ball and walked back to the car, lit the paper and tossed it under the rear of the vehicle. At first nothing happened, then the spilt petrol caught with a ‘whump’ sound, and in an instant the rear of the car was engulfed in flames.

  He checked to make sure that the two bodies inside it were also burning, then ran across to the motorcycle combination and pulled on the other long coat, also bloodstained. He tried to put on the German helmet, but it was too small for his head, so he tore out the lining and tried again. That was better, but it was still tight around his temples. He started the engine and looked back at the flames licking around the car.

  ‘Hopefully burning out the staff car will muddy the waters a bit. It’ll take the Jerries a while to get close enough to the car to investigate it.’

  Sykes turned round in his seat to stare at the conflagration, and nodded in satisfaction. ‘That’s a pretty good job, Dawson,’ he muttered. ‘Now get us out of here.’

  Chapter 19

  10 May 1940

  Liège, Belgium

  Eddie Dawson was getting the hang of the BMW motorcycle. It had a large horizontally-opposed engine of a type he’d never seen before, but he’d quickly mastered the controls. The machine seemed tough and well-built, and the heavy machine-gun mounted on the front of the sidecar was a bonus. Major Sykes had inspected it and told him it was a Mauser MG 34, a powerful weapon with a high rate of fire. That meant they might be able to shoot their way out of trouble, though both men hoped they wouldn’t need to. Sykes had checked the weapon, which had a full fifty-round drum magazine attached, and had declared himself happy with the way it operated.

  As they’d driven through the largely empty streets of the western part of Liège, they’d seen only a few more refugees – they assumed most of them were sticking to the main roads that led out of the city – but they’d spotted numerous German patrols and a handful of vehicles, including several other motorcycle combinations. None of the enemy troops had taken the slightest notice of them – the German vehicle Dawson was driving and their ‘borrowed’ uniforms allowed them to blend in seamlessly.

  But they still had to get out of Liège. Dawson pulled the motorcycle to a halt in another side-road, a short distance from a T-junction where a stream of refugees was moving slowly past. Then he walked to the end of the road, looked out to the west and then strode back to where Sykes sat in the sidecar, waiting.

  As Dawson reached the combination, both men looked up as a squadron of German aircraft flew over the city. They’d seen several aircraft above the city during the day, some heading east but most of them flying west. The sound of distant explosions as the bombers dropped their loads had become almost constant, like thunder heard a long way off. But these aircraft were lower than most of the others they’d seen. Dawson and Sykes watched until the last aircraft vanished from sight behind a building.

  ‘So what did you see?’ Sykes asked.

  ‘There’s a road-block about a hundred yards away,’ Dawson said. ‘Four soldiers armed with rifles, but there are no vehicles there. If we can find a way past them, we should be able to get clear.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you speak German, do you?’ Sykes asked hopefully.

  Dawson shook his head. ‘Only a couple of words,’ he admitted. ‘We definitely won’t be able to talk our way through that road-block. Is it worth pulling on those civvy clothes and trying to blend in with the refugees? Trying to slip through that way?’

  ‘Not an option for me, I’m afraid, Dawson,’ Sykes said. ‘I can barely stand upright, and I certainly can’t walk. We need to find a cart or something like that for me to ride on. It would probably mean taking one off some Belgians, and I really don’t want to do that. We’re also running out of time. With every minute that passes, the Germans will be tightening their grip on Liège, so the longer we wait, the less chance we’ll have of getting out of here.’

  ‘Right, then,’ Dawson said, and climbed back onto the motorcycle. ‘I’m going to be as noisy and conspicuous as I can. Lights on, horn sounding, scattering the refugees out of our way. That way we might just convince the soldiers at the road-block that we’re on an important mission and hopefully they’ll just move the barrier and let us through.’

  ‘Hope’s a wonderful thing,’ Sykes said. He leant forward in his seat and again checked the magazine of the machine-gun, ensuring it was ready to fire. ‘I think we’re more likely to have to shoot our way through.’

  Dawson nodded but didn’t reply, just started the engine of the motorcycle. He pulled the goggles down over his eyes, which had the effect of hiding more of his face, conveying a more anonymous image.

  Beside him, Sykes did the same, then nodded his readiness.

  Dawson switched on the bike’s headlamp, engaged first gear, released the clutch and started accelerating towards the junction in front of them, towards the slowly moving line of refugees. When he got to about twenty yards away, he thumbed the horn button repeatedly, and waved his left arm at the civilians walking across in front of them.

  Men and women slowed down, opening up a narrow gap in the seemingly unending stream of humanity clogging the road.

  Dawson dropped the speed as he approached the junction, weaving his way around and through the mass of slow-moving people, then accelerated again as he swung the motorcycle into the main road and turned towards the road-block that they could both see clearly. They were now heading in the same direction as the refugees, so getting through the crowds of people was slightly easier. But he was still having to weave and dodge around people, despite his almost constant use of the bike’s horn.

  Ahead of them, Dawson could see two of the German soldiers looking in their direction, probably wondering what a Wehrmacht motorcycle team was doing, travelling so quickly towards them.

  The road-block was a simple structure, just a wooden barrier that blocked about half of the width of the road, forcing the refugees to pass through the remaining gap, which allowed the German soldiers to check their
documentation before letting them proceed.

  Dawson kept sounding the bike’s horn. Both he and Sykes waved to try to get the Belgian refugees out of their way, and to convey to the watching sentries they were in a hurry and needed to be allowed through the road-block as quickly as possible.

  ‘I don’t think this is going to work,’ Dawson shouted, over the roaring of the engine of the motorcycle and the thumping of the tyres on the cobbled road surface. ‘They’re just watching us, not shifting the barrier.’

  ‘Keep on going,’ Sykes replied. ‘We’re committed now.’

  They reached about twenty yards from the road-block before any of the soldiers guarding it reacted. One of the German troops stepped forward and made a repeated downward motion with his left arm, apparently indicating that they should slow down, while two other soldiers positioned themselves at either end of the barrier.

  Dawson knew they had only one chance, so he sounded the horn yet again, and waved his left arm violently from side to side, a universal gesture meaning ‘get out of the way’. He kept the speed up, kept the motorcycle travelling as quickly as he could.

  ‘It’s now or never,’ he said. ‘If they don’t shift the barrier right now, you’ll have to use that machine-gun and shoot them all down before one of them can use his rifle against us.’

  Sykes nodded grimly and seized the pistol grip of the MG 34 with his right hand.

  ‘In fact, fire a few rounds over their heads,’ Dawson said, as the German soldiers still showed no sign of moving the barrier.

  Sykes glanced at the big corporal, then ahead at the road-block.

  ‘We’ve got nothing to lose now,’ the major said, and depressed the pistol grip of the machine-gun to raise the muzzle of the weapon. He squeezed the trigger for just a moment, sending a burst of about half a dozen bullets screaming high over the heads of the German sentries.

  The results were immediate. Some of the Belgian refugees screamed and shouted in terror, and scattered. The soldier in front of them ran off to the side of the road, while the two men manning the wooden barrier dragged it a short distance across the road. That didn’t completely clear their path, but it opened up a big enough gap for Dawson to steer the motorcycle combination around the barrier.