Right and Glory

by Right

  ‘So now what?’

  Sykes looked up at him from his prone position beside the tree. ‘I can cover the field from here, just in case anyone else decides to come down and take a look at what’s left of that Panzer. You’d better see if that Fiat’s still driveable. If it isn’t, I don’t know what we’re going to do for transport.’

  ‘It should be OK, I think. Just a few bent panels, with a bit of luck.’ Dawson slung the Mauser over his shoulder and walked away, back into the wood.

  The Fiat looked a mess. The entire left side of the car was scratched and battered, with massive dents in every panel. But both tyres were still inflated, the steering wheel turned the front wheels, and the back wheels seemed to be straight. Dawson had to lever the remnants of both the front and rear wings away from their respective wheels, but as far as he could see, that was all he needed to do. The driver’s door lay beside it, where Dawson had kicked it off.

  And there wasn’t time to hang about. He knew they were probably only minutes ahead of the German advance, and what they needed to do was get somewhere else – almost anywhere else, in fact – as quickly as possible.

  Once he was sure that the car would start and run, Dawson went back to where Sykes was lying and helped the major hobble over to the Fiat and get inside.

  ‘Which way?’ Dawson asked, once he’d started the engine and got the car moving. ‘Back up to the road?’

  ‘No. Too much chance of running into a bunch of Jerries. Follow the edge of the wood over to the west. I thought I saw a gate at that end of the field when we were driving down it with that Panzer chasing us. Though I might have been mistaken. My mind was on other things at the time.’

  Dawson turned the Fiat and nosed it out of the trees, and then turned left, as Sykes had instructed. The little car bounced along the edge of the field, following the curved line that marked the edge of the wood.

  Suddenly, a rattle of firing burst out from somewhere behind them. Sykes swung round to look behind, raising his Mauser.

  ‘I don’t see anything,’ he muttered.

  Then another series of bangs, much louder, rang out. Dawson guessed what was happening.

  ‘That’s the Panzer,’ he said. ‘That’ll be the ammunition cooking off. First the machine-gun stuff, and then the rounds for the cannon.’

  A few seconds later, Sykes spotted what he was looking for. ‘There,’ he said, pointing ahead.

  In the far corner of the field was a five-barred gate, wide open and hanging drunkenly from a wooden post.

  ‘Maybe it leads to a lane or a track,’ Sykes said. ‘Let’s face it, if there’s a gateway, logic suggests that has to be something the other side of it.’

  And there was. Dawson drove the Fiat through the opening and found himself on a fairly wide but unmade track, meandering in a south-westerly direction. They had no idea where it went or what was at the end of it, but it was taking them more or less the right way, so they followed it.

  They saw nothing and nobody – military or civilian – until they’d joined a much better road heading almost due south, and entered the village of Rocroi. There, a road-block manned by a joint force of gendarmes and French army reservists stopped them.

  Sykes identified himself and Dawson, and explained the situation to the senior NCO there, with almost the same lack of comprehension as he’d met with the officer near the Belgian border. He must be mistaken, the NCO kept insisting. The Ardennes Forest was an impassable barrier to armoured vehicles, and certainly no tank would ever be able to get through it.

  ‘Well, you tried, sir,’ Dawson said, as he started the little Fiat again and steered it down the road out of the village. ‘It’s their problem if they don’t believe you.’

  ‘I know, Dawson, but it’s really frustrating. How’s your foot, by the way?’

  ‘Bloody sore and getting stiff, but I can manage for the moment. Did that Frog tell you where to go?’

  ‘I’m sure he would have liked to,’ Sykes replied. ‘Anyway, we’re heading for Reims, because, according to him, there are some British troops stationed there. I didn’t know that, and I’ve no idea where he got his information from, but Reims is probably as good a destination as anywhere else. At least it’s away from the border area.’

  ‘How far away is it?’

  ‘About sixty miles or so. You reckon this thing will hold together that long?’

  ‘This beautiful car, sir, will hold together as long as we want it to.’ Dawson patted the dashboard affectionately, then glanced round at the bullet-riddled interior, and the bits of twisted metal that had originally been the two front wings.

  Just over two hours later, Dawson braked the Fiat to a stop at another road-block, but this one was manned by men wearing an entirely different colour uniform than those they’d got used to seeing over the previous few days.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ the NCO at the barricade said to the soldier standing beside him, looking with disdain at the Topolino as it drew to a stop in front of them. ‘It’s a couple of lost fucking Belgies, and they’re driving the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever seen on the road.’

  ‘You watch your mouth, Sarg,’ Dawson said, levering his massive frame out of the driver’s seat and standing in front of him. ‘This piece of shit, as you put it, has saved our bacon more times than I can count over the last couple of days.’

  ‘You’re British army?’ the NCO asked.

  ‘Of course I bloody am. Now stop standing there with your fucking mouth open catching flies and take us to your CO. My mate wants a word with him.’

  ‘No, you watch your mouth, Corp. And your mate,’ the sergeant sneered. ‘Who is he, then? Another bloody lost corporal?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Sykes said, clambering out of the other side of the Fiat, his major’s pips barely visible on his tattered uniform, but his voice and manner marked him unmistakably as an officer.

  The sergeant looked at him for a moment, then saluted briskly, his manner changing instantly. ‘Sorry, sir. Didn’t see you in there.’ He switched his attention to the soldier standing next to him. ‘Lift that bloody barrier, then. Get a move on.’

  A few minutes later, Sykes – with Dawson assisting him – walked into a large tent that seemed to be full of British army officers, all concentrating on a large map pinned up at one end, and listening to a major delivering a briefing and using a pointer to indicate positions and places.

  ‘We’ll probably soon be given orders to head west, to reinforce the BEF in Belgium, because the French are quite sure the Germans won’t be able to break through here,’ he was saying, resting the end of his pointer on a large patch of green on the topographical map. ‘They believe the Ardennes Forest is too formidable a natural barrier to allow significant enemy troop movements, and the terrain is certainly impenetrable to armour. So we probably won’t be seeing any Panzers around here that we can kill.’

  There was a polite laugh at this remark, which ceased abruptly when Sykes spoke.

  ‘The French are wrong, and so are you,’ he said quietly.

  Every officer in the tent turned to look at him. A small, slight figure, wearing a filthy uniform and no cap, unshaven and haggard, one leg of his trousers black with dried blood, supported by a vast corporal with a face that could have been carved out of granite, his uniform in a similar state and a Schmeisser machine-pistol slung across his chest. In his other hand he held a large, grey-painted circular object.

  ‘What? And just who the hell are you two?’ the major demanded.

  ‘Sykes. I’m a major in the Royal Scots Greys. And I say again – the French are wrong.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I know because we’ve just crossed the border from Belgium and gone right through the Ardennes Forest. We saw plenty of German troops up there, plus one Panzer Four and a couple of Panzer Threes. In fact, we destroyed one of them and pretty much wrecked another, or rather Corporal Dawson here did.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Do
I look like I care what you believe? I’m telling you what we saw and what happened. If you’re too stupid to take note of it, that’s your problem.’

  ‘Just a minute.’ The senior officer in the tent stepped forward. ‘Just calm down, both of you.’ He turned to Sykes. ‘I’m Lieutenant-Colonel Watling. You say you crossed the border into France from Belgium. What were you doing up there? As far as I know, your regiment hasn’t been sent into Belgium.’

  ‘We were sent to Eben Emael,’ Sykes said, ‘just the two of us, to assess the strength of the Belgian static defences.’

  ‘We heard that the fort surrendered, after the Germans attacked it,’ Watling said.

  ‘I know. We watched the Germans do it.’ Sykes outlined what had happened since the German gliders landed on the roof of Fort Eben Emael. ‘And that’s really why we’re here now. We managed to obtain one of the German demolition charges, the ones they used to destroy the cupolas on the fort.’

  ‘Obtain? How?’

  ‘We nicked it, sir,’ Dawson said shortly.

  ‘I see. And you have this device with you?’

  ‘Exactly, sir. Or, at least, we’ve got the lower section – that’s the bit Dawson’s holding now – and we think that’s the most important bit. He used the other part of the weapon – the explosive charge – to blow up a Panzer Three just this side of the French border.’

  Watling looked appraisingly at Dawson, and nodded. ‘So you need to get that piece of equipment back to Britain, where some of our boffins can take a look at it?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right, we can have it sent back to our lines, I suppose. This is a reserve armoured unit under the command of General Hobart, so we’ve mainly got tanks and armoured cars, but we’ve a few trucks and cars as well.’ Watling looked closely at Sykes, who was swaying slightly despite Dawson’s supporting hand. ‘Or maybe an ambulance might be more appropriate in this case. I presume you’d both like to accompany the weapon back to Britain?’

  Sykes nodded. ‘It might help if Dawson and I could explain exactly what we saw the Germans do with it. And after all we’ve been through to get it this far, I’m not prepared to let the weapon out of my sight.’

  ‘I can understand that. Very well, I’ll organize an ambulance – or some kind of vehicle, at any rate – to take you two back to Blighty. In the meantime, get yourselves cleaned up, find something to eat, and then get some rest.’

  ‘Thank you. One final thing, sir,’ Sykes said. ‘I haven’t been able to contact either my unit or Dawson’s since we left Eben Emael. Could you signal my CO and let him know we’re both OK and let him know what happened to us?’

  * * *

  Three hours later, washed, shaved and wearing clean uniforms, Sykes and Dawson emerged from their respective mess tents having sampled slightly different versions of the same tinned beef stew and headed over to where a truck waited, a driver already in the cab, smoking.

  Sykes was walking slightly better, but still with a pronounced limp.

  ‘You OK, sir?’ Dawson asked.

  ‘I’m better, certainly. Are you ready?’

  Dawson glanced into the back of the vehicle, making sure that the demolition charge was there, then nodded. ‘You ride in the cab, sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay in the back, with the charge.’

  Dawson lifted the Mauser and Schmeisser machine-pistol into the truck – he’d refused to surrender either weapon – then gave Sykes a hand to climb into the cab. He was on his way to the rear of the vehicle when a young lance-corporal ran over to him.

  ‘Major Sykes?’ he asked. ‘You know where he is, Corp?’

  Dawson nodded and pointed up at the cab, where Sykes was leaning out of the window.

  ‘I’m Sykes. What is it?’

  ‘Signal for you, sir.’ The lance-corporal passed up a piece of paper and Sykes read the message quickly, then read it again, more slowly.

  ‘Good news and bad news, Dawson. We’ve been authorized to accompany the German device as far as Calais, and I’m to take it across the Channel. But for some reason your peculiar talents are in demand again, and you’re to stay here in France. There’s another job someone would like you to do. You’ll be briefed when we get to Calais. Sorry about this.’

  ‘It’s OK, sir,’ Dawson said. ‘It’s not your fault. I’ll go and get in the back.’

  The big corporal turned away and trudged to the rear of the lorry, heaved himself up into the loading area and then tapped twice on the back of the cab to show that he was on board and ready to leave.

  The driver engaged first gear and pulled away.

  Dawson crossed to the rear of the truck, sat down and peered out of the back as the British army camp started to recede into the distance. He reached down, unlaced his boots, and sighed with pleasure as he pulled them off his tired and aching feet. Then he looked out of the back of the truck as it gathered speed, and shook his head.

  ‘Fucking army,’ he muttered. ‘I hate the fucking army.’ He lay down on the bouncing steel floor on a pile of sacking, pulled a rough blanket over himself and almost instantly fell asleep.

  Author’s Note

  This is of course a novel, but it has been built upon a basis of fact. Fort Eben Emael was the strongest and most powerful defensive fortification in Belgium, possibly in Europe, and was popularly believed to be invincible. At the very least, that fort, and the numerous other armoured structures in the area, were expected to be able to hold up a German invasion for several days, long enough to allow for French and British reinforcements to be sent to the Dyle Line, the Belgian fall-back position.

  There are a variety of estimates for the time it took the German troops to effectively neutralize the fort, ranging from about fifteen minutes to around half an hour, but certainly within sixty minutes of the first of the German gliders landing on the roof of the structure, Fort Eben Emael was a spent force. Some of the guns continued firing for a while, but from that point onwards surrender was inevitable.

  Interestingly, the plan was conceived and organized by Adolf Hitler personally, and was a triumph, perhaps the single most successful German operation of the entire conflict. The attack was carried out as I’ve described it in the novel, the German troops landing in camouflaged gliders, to avoid the sound of aircraft engines being detected by the Belgian defenders, and with tiny swastikas painted on them so that the aircraft couldn’t be identified visually until they were almost on the ground.

  It could be argued that the fort fell due to simple incompetence on the part of the Belgian defenders, and this is a difficult argument to refute. All the events I described in the novel relating to this attack are as accurately portrayed as is possible so long after the event, and show clearly that mistake after mistake was made, leaving the fort woefully unprepared to meet the attack that the Belgian troops actually knew was coming.

  Perhaps the most unbelievable error was that the two heavy machine-gun positions on the roof of the fort – Mi-Sud and Mi-Nord – were unmanned and didn’t fire a single shot during the attack. If they had been ready for action, these weapons could have riddled the gliders with bullets the moment they landed, and killed or incapacitated every German attacker. That was what the two posts had been constructed to do, and it’s still something of a mystery why this didn’t happen. But whatever the reason, the mistake in not having every position manned when the German gliders landed led directly to the capture of the fort.

  One of the more bizarre aspects of the fall of Eben Emael was that the Germans had no need of spies or secret agents to ascertain details of the interior layout or the construction methods used, because the structure was actually erected by a German building firm – perhaps not the best idea the Belgian government had in the tense years leading up to the Second World War.

  I’ve slightly altered the timescale of the German advance, for dramatic reasons.

  A note on terminology: the name ‘Schmeisser’ was used by British troops throughout the war to refer to the German MP 38 a
nd MP 40 sub-machine-guns, but this was actually a misnomer. Hugo Schmeisser produced ground-breaking designs, including the first successful such weapon, known as the Bergmann MP 18, back in 1918, but had nothing to do with the design of either the MP 38 or the MP 40. The German army funded the development of the MP 36 by Berthold Geipel of the Erma-Werke company. This weapon was in part based on the VRM 1930 designed by F. J. Vollmer of the Erma-Werke company. Vollmer himself then redesigned the MP 36 to produce the prototype MP 38, which was adopted by the German army. The MP 40 was a mass-produced variant of the MP 38 which utilized stamped steel components rather than machined parts wherever possible. Both the MP 38 and the MP 40 were manufactured by Erma-Werke.

  Max Adams

  Monpazier, France

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2011 by Pan Macmillan

  This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by

  Canelo Digital Publishing Limited

  57 Shepherds Lane

  Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU

  United Kingdom

  Copyright © James Barrington writing as Max Adams, 2011

  The moral right of James Barrington writing as Max Adams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN #############

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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