For King and Country

by David Monnery

  But it didn’t look likely. He had double-checked all the possibilities of escape and come up empty – their only hope was the others. He wondered if Corrigan and Imrie had come to the same conclusion in San Severino, and had nursed that hope through their last night. If so, it had been in vain. No one had come for them.

  And he didn’t suppose they’d come for him and McLaglan. With so many Germans about it seemed pretty certain that a rescue force would lose more men than they could possibly rescue, and that didn’t seem the sort of bargain a responsible commanding officer would find appealing.

  He hoped it would be a firing squad – there was something so degrading about being hanged.

  Rafferty felt tears in his ears, and brushed them away angrily. Better to cry now, an inner voice told him, because you won’t want to give them the satisfaction tomorrow. Which sounded like something out of Hollywood. In the films the heroes always went to their deaths with such dignity, but then the writers presumably weren’t writing from experience.

  But I can try, he told himself.

  McLaglan stirred, opened an eye and groaned. ‘Christ, did I fall asleep?’ he said, pushing himself into a sitting position and gingerly feeling his split lip. ‘I can’t believe it. I’ve got about ten hours left on earth and I sleep through them. Why didn’t you wake me up?’

  ‘I thought you’d be happier asleep.’

  McLaglan grimaced. ‘I think I was.’ He pulled his back up against the wall, and searched through his pockets for a cigarette.

  ‘They took them,’ Rafferty told him.

  ‘Christ. You know, I’m hoping there really is a God, just so those bastards roast in hell.’

  Eight and a half hours later four of the unit’s six jeeps were waiting in the trees about a mile north of Fraize, and Farnham was busy sorting out their order of attack. McCaigh and Lynton would take the lead, with Brian Shearer driving Farnham himself in the second, Eric Lennon and John Downey in the third, Sean Mayles and Brendan Armstrong bringing up the rear. Looking round the faces, he saw seven men in the process of coming to terms with one more throw of the war’s dice. Grim or joking, they all looked anxious, as well they might. There were somewhere between eighty and a hundred Germans in the town below, not to mention several hundred innocent locals, any of whom might make the SAS’s job that much more difficult by wandering into the line of fire.

  It was a quarter to nine. Farnham covered his mouth with the S-phone mike and spoke to Albert Lowe and Jimmy Simpson, who were sitting just inside the edge of a wood about three-quarters of a mile to the south-east, with a view which took in at least two-thirds of the town square below. ‘Any developments?’ Farnham asked rhetorically. If the German positions had changed Lowe would already have told him.

  ‘None,’ came the predictable reply.

  ‘The mortar’s ready?’

  ‘Yes, boss.’

  This with a faintly reproachful tone. Farnham realized he was as nervous as his men. ‘Three minutes,’ he confirmed, and turned to point the S-phone’s antenna in the opposite direction.

  ‘Ready to go?’ he asked Hill and Chadwick, who were waiting with the other two jeeps about half a mile above the town.

  ‘Ready as we’ll ever be, boss,’ Hill told him.

  Farnham smiled and looked at his watch again. Two minutes to go.

  In the cobbled square below, Yves watched and waited. There were about three hundred townspeople gathered in the centre of the square, a road’s width separating them from the three German troop carriers. The troops were still sitting aboard the two parked on the eastern side, while a machine-gun had been mounted on the empty rear of the one to the south. Not surprisingly, this disposition had made the north-facing crowd somewhat nervous, and people kept turning their heads in search of reassurance, as if they believed the Germans would be unable to open fire while anyone was looking.

  The swastika flag which some zealot had raised above the entrance to the small town hall was so large that it hung across the doors like a curtain. A line of ornate lampposts stood in front of the building, and four of these now supported nooses. Ordinary-looking office chairs were waiting underneath them, and beside these stood the four townspeople who’d been given the honour of yanking them away. All four looked pale and distraught, and none of them was making eye contact with those in front of them.

  The mood of the crowd was harder to judge. There was a sort of numbed resignation in many of the faces, but Yves could also detect strong undercurrents of anger and, more disturbingly, excitement. Many of the young people seemed more curious than outraged, which seemed no more excusable for being easy to understand.

  There was movement behind the flag. Yves took out his pocket watch and checked it, just as the four prisoners were brought out through the doors. The Germans seemed to be running early for once, which didn’t bode well. He took a last glance around at the machine-gun, and sought out Henri’s beret in the crowd to his left. Where were the SAS?

  The captured men were being led across to their chairs, the two English soldiers expressing their defiance, and masking their fear, with an almost jaunty stride. The two French boys looked as scared as they were.

  Yves thought he heard a faint whistle, and there was a dull ‘whumpf’ from somewhere behind him. Like everyone else in the square, he turned to see a cloud of smoke rising above the building behind the machine-gun. There was another ‘whumpf’, and more smoke. It was at least a quarter of a mile away, beyond the railway station, and Yves found himself wondering if Farnham had made an error of judgement.

  But a squad of soldiers – a dozen at least – was already leaving the square to investigate when heads were turned in another direction by the sound of approaching vehicles. These were descending the road which entered the square from the north-east, their guns already firing on some unseen enemy. As the Germans in that corner of the square were being organized to face this new threat Yves gripped the two grenades in his pocket a little more tightly, and tried not to look too obviously at the entrance to his right.

  A quarter of a mile away the four jeeps were still gathering speed as they rolled downhill, their engines silent. The road was empty of people, and only a couple of surprised-looking cats and dogs watched the vehicles with their grim-faced foreigners rattling down towards the still-invisible square. The nine men could hear the racket Hill and Chadwick were making with the other two jeeps, and could see the smoke effects which Lowe and Simpson had conjured up beyond the town, but they had no idea how the Germans in the square below were reacting.

  The last bend was only fifty yards in front of them, and the drivers all applied a little pressure to their brakes – a dramatic entrance was all very well, but arriving upside down would verge on showing off. In the lead jeep McCaigh swept into the bend and suddenly there was the square in front of him, the troop carriers almost directly ahead, the edge of the French crowd visible to his right. A couple of faces turned his way, then twenty more, and a German officer on foot by the carrier was pointing straight at him, shouting as he fumbled at the holster on his belt. Behind the officer a squad of troops was milling in the roadway, apparently waiting for the rest of their unit to get off the first troop carrier.

  As McCaigh aimed the jeep straight at them, Lynton opened up with the twin Vickers, scything down the officer and several of his men. To their right the more quick-witted of the townspeople were already halfway to the ground, and it took only a split second for the example to spread. Up ahead, McCaigh saw the two Germans on the lorry-mounted machine-gun swinging the barrel in their direction, and shouted as much to Lynton, who was still concentrating all his fire on the men around the troop carriers. McCaigh swerved the jeep to the left almost within scratching distance of the carrier, hoping that the machine-gunner would hold fire for fear of killing his own comrades, and was rewarded by a fatal moment of hesitation on the Germans’ part.

  Two dark objects arced towards the machine-gun position from the centre of the square, one landin
g beneath the cab, the other right in the truck. The two explosions seemed to ripple together, and as the two men on the lorry’s open back were thrown skywards the vehicle’s petrol tank went up, shattering every window in the building behind.

  The third SAS jeep followed the first, but the second and fourth swung sharply right along the northern side of the square, where Rafferty and McLaglan, hands tied behind their backs, had sunk into a watchful crouch beside the chairs arranged for their executions. The two French boys had followed the example of their intended audience and thrown themselves to the ground.

  In front of the town hall a motley crew of uniformed French police and SS officers, leather-coated Milice and Gestapo men was now staring aghast at the jeeps bearing down on them. Farnham’s finger tightened on the Browning’s trigger, and three men collapsed on the cobbles. Another two were caught in the doorway by a burst from Armstrong in the jeep behind, a leather-clad arm reached out to grab the drooping swastika, and with a tearing noise that seemed to echo round the square the giant flag came billowing down.

  Shearer skidded the jeep to a halt in front of Rafferty and McLaglan, and as he leapt out to cut their hands free with his commando knife Farnham swung the Browning in search of new targets. Bullets suddenly pinged off the reinforced-glass screen in front of Shearer’s empty seat. The Germans were recovering from their surprise, and both the troop carrier survivors of Lynton’s onslaught and the squad which had been on its way to investigate Hill and Chadwick’s fake attack were now firing on them. Farnham opened up on the latter just as two grenades landed among them, and felt the jeep rock as Rafferty, Shearer and McLaglan leapt aboard. He looked back to check that Mayles and Armstrong had picked up the two French boys, and saw one of them cut down by a burst from across the square. The other hesitated at the side of the jeep, and Armstrong pulled him aboard roughly.

  The two jeeps jerked into motion. In the first Rafferty had seized control of the other twin Vickers and was pouring fire at the German soldiers around the troop carriers. In front of him Farnham was still trying to sweep their escape road clear of the enemy.

  By this time the other two jeeps had almost completed their swing round three sides of the square. Yves and Henri had been picked up by McCaigh and Lynton, and this jeep was now offering covering fire as the one behind them slowed to collect the other two Maquisards. As Farnham waved them on a burst of German fire knocked Lynton back in his seat, but McCaigh didn’t hesitate, accelerating the jeep away as Henri opened up with the rear Vickers. All four jeeps were now converging on the north-eastern exit to the square, and as the fourth slowed to avoid hitting the third a last fusillade from the German troop carriers blew a small but bloody chunk from the side of Armstrong’s head. He slumped back into the arms of the disbelieving French boy as the jeep roared on up the hill.

  The previous summer Yves’ Maquis group had searched the higher reaches of the mountains for a fall-back sanctuary – somewhere to go to ground should their camp above Le Chipal ever be betrayed or overrun. They had found a suitable spot in a remote stretch of forest several miles south of the meadow used for supply drops, and it was to this which the SAS unit now retreated.

  Yves and the other Maquisards had been dropped off in the forest a couple of miles west of Fraize, intent on returning to their usual home, but Farnham doubted whether they’d be safe there for long. He wasn’t at all sure the SAS unit was safe in the back-up camp, four thousand feet up and sheltered by two thousand square miles of forest. Two many people had seen the column of jeeps during its daylight journey, and it only needed one of them to point the Germans in the right direction.

  Farnham knew his men were fully aware of the dangers. The adrenalin rush of the Fraize rescue had subsided, but these men had become too professional to allow any slide into complacency, and their resolution would only have been bolstered by the fate which had befallen their two comrades. Lynton and Armstrong were in a bad way, the latter especially so, and both needed proper medical attention.

  To get it they would need to be taken west. Around noon that day, with the wind blowing from that direction, Farnham had heard the rumble of big guns in the far distance, and briefly entertained the hope that the Americans would soon be with them. His superiors at Moor Park had swiftly disabused him of this notion. Patton’s advance had apparently stalled some forty miles short of the Vosges, and there was no immediate resumption on the cards. Fortunately, it was lack of petrol rather than German resistance which was holding the Americans up, so it seemed unlikely that the SAS unit would have much trouble traversing the forty miles which separated them from the Allied front line.

  Farnham contacted Hoyland, and the two men agreed that the two groups should rendezvous and make their break for the west in two nights’ time. The delay wouldn’t help Armstrong and Lynton, but it might give the Germans time to tire of the search, and there were the other men to consider.

  He was re-dressing Lynton’s wound late that afternoon when more sounds of distant gunfire filtered through the trees. The vagaries of the wind made such things hard to judge in these mountains, but his best guess put the fire-fight about five miles to the north-west, uncomfortably close to the Maquis camp. The sound was fairly continuous for about twenty minutes, and thereafter became increasingly sporadic, but it didn’t subside completely until some time after darkness had fallen. Attempts to reach the Maquis camp on the radio met with no response.

  Farnham slept badly that night, waking at dawn with a dry taste in his mouth and a sinking feeling in his heart. Hill, who had just come off guard duty, reported that a huge cloud of smoke was smudging the north-western sky, and Farnham went to see it for himself. There was no doubting the direction this time, and he found himself fearing the worst.

  The morning brought no good news. The radio offered only silence, and Armstrong died soon after ten o’clock. Lynton, though, looked like he would pull through.

  And then, in mid-afternoon, Yves, Henri and another twenty or so Maquisards walked into the camp. Several were wounded, and those that weren’t seemed more than simply exhausted. There was hopelessness in their eyes, even despair.

  ‘They attacked our camp,’ Yves told Farnham. ‘And they burned Le Chipal – the whole village.’ He looked at Farnham, his eyes full of pity. ‘She is dead, my friend. I am sorry.’

  Farnham closed his eyes and felt a sudden emptying, as if someone was pouring away the contents of his soul.

  Yves put both hands on the Englishman’s shoulders and gently enfolded him in an embrace. He had decided during the long walk through the forest that he wouldn’t tell Farnham how Madeleine had died. Sometimes the truth was worse than one’s direst imaginings.

  6

  Germany, May 1945

  McCaigh put the binoculars down on the window-sill, rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. It was three in the afternoon on 9 May, which meant the war had been over for fifteen hours, at least insofar as north-western Europe was concerned. The Russians were still fighting in Prague, and stubborn bands of Germans were still holding out, for reasons best known to themselves, in scattered enclaves across the continent, but the Americans’ proverbial fat lady was busting a gut to sing. It was over.

  Looking out across the north German port city of Lübeck, McCaigh reckoned that peace could hardly have come a moment too soon. Driving into the city a week earlier, the men of the 11th Armoured Division had found ample evidence of previous visits by the RAF and USAF – a third of the buildings levelled and a harbour littered with half-submerged ships. Now, staring out from the third-floor window of a relatively unscathed block of flats, McCaigh thought the German city’s skyline looked like a row of broken teeth.

  In the street below people were moving, but mostly with that listlessness which the SAS men had come to identify with a defeated nation. This near-universal torpor was doubtless part and parcel of the hangover which followed defeat, but it also had a simple physical cause – the people of Lübeck were hungry. And as more and more bo
ats inched into the crowded harbour, packed with people in flight from those areas to the east which were now under Russian control, the food situation continued to deteriorate and the hordes of hungry children who dogged the steps of the occupiers seemed to proliferate.

  It was easy to feel pity for the children, but the adults were a different matter. A couple of weeks earlier McCaigh and Rafferty had been part of a unit which entered the concentration camp at Neuengamme, and the sight which had greeted their eyes would be with them to their dying day. Lines of bodies stretching away into the distance, laid out like a trophy collection; bodies of men and women and children who had simply been allowed to wither away. The intention had no doubt been to bury them, and some had indeed been tipped into large open pits, but either time or energy had run short, and those responsible had headed for the nearest horizon, pausing only to burn or bury their uniforms.

  McCaigh sighed at the memory. Neuengamme, where he’d seen the evil which justified his war. Neuengamme, where he’d met Rachel.

  ‘It looks like him,’ Rafferty said, passing him the binoculars.

  McCaigh trained them on the man walking past on the opposite pavement. His jacket collar was turned up, a workman’s cap pulled down over his forehead, but what McCaigh could see of the face was consistent with their photograph of Kuntz. He certainly looked furtive enough, but then who didn’t.

  The man stopped by the front door of one of the old houses, and paused to glance up and down down the street before turning a key and disappearing inside.

  ‘It’s number thirty-three,’ McCaigh murmured. Their informant had known the street, but had been unable to remember the number.

  Rafferty was on the radio, telling the two MPs who were stationed at the other end of the street to cover the alley which ran behind the houses opposite. Once he’d signed off, the two SAS men made their way down the stairs, running the now-familiar gauntlet of stares – resentful on the part of the adults, hopeful on the part of the children. The street outside was almost empty, and they strode across it, feeling the chill of the wind whipping in from the Baltic as they took the Webleys from their holsters. Rafferty banged on the door with his fist.