by Seb Spence
2.
Wednesday, 21st May, 1941, 09.30hrs: By Loch Lubnaig
The first indication Grace had had that something was about to happen was when Drechsler shouted through to his men that they were approaching another checkpoint and were going to force their way through it.
“Hahn, get the women under cover,” he called out in German. “Those of you by the tailboard, open the canopy flaps and prepare to suppress fire from the rear!”
Speaking in English, Hahn immediately told her and Vivian Adair to duck down behind the crate. As she knelt on the deck, Grace was aware of the lorry accelerating and, shortly after, felt the impact as they rammed through the barrier. This was followed by the deafening discharge of the machine pistols and the clatter of cartridge cases raining down on the floor of the lorry. Then suddenly the noise stopped. Hahn told them they could get up but warned them to be prepared to dive for cover if the lorry came under attack again.
Grace could tell the lorry was going much faster now, for they were being pitched about as it took the bends in the road at speed, sometimes breaking violently if the bend was too sharp. The rear canopy flaps had been completely opened, and she could now see out of the back. At first, there were woods to right and left of the road, but soon the trees on the nearside thinned out until they were only three or four rows deep and she could see beyond them an expanse of water. It became clear that they were driving along the side of a loch – the eastern side, she guessed, assuming they were heading north. As they drove on, the thin copse of trees continued to separate them from the shore of the loch, but on the other side of the road there was now a wooded hill that rose steeply away. At some points, the hill was supplanted by vertical rock face, and from this Grace realised that the road was having to squeeze between the waterline and the slopes of the narrow valley that contained the loch.
She looked surreptitiously at her watch: about ten minutes had elapsed since they had crashed through the barrier. She wondered why no one was pursuing them. This thought had barely passed through her mind, when suddenly one of the Brandenburgers by the tailboard shouted out in German: “They’re coming up behind us!” Straightaway, she and Vivian were ordered to take cover again. Just before getting down behind the crate, Grace caught a glimpse of a lorry coming round a bend a few hundred yards back down the road.
Up front, Vaughan turned round and peered through the rear window of the cab, while Drechsler watched the pursuing lorry in the nearside mirror. Lukasz swore in frustration and brought a fist down on the steering wheel. “This old crate is useless. The gears are shot.”
“It’s all I could get at short notice,” Vaughan responded testily, without taking his eyes off their pursuers. “I didn’t expect we’d be racing it.” He recognised the lorry behind as a Bedford QL three-tonner and realised it must be pretty new because the model had only came into service a few months previously. He estimated it would catch up with them within a couple of minutes. “It’s gaining on us fairly quickly. The driver probably knows this road, Lukasz – he knows the bends and how to take them.”
There was a hatch in the cab roof of the Bedford. Drechsler had just noticed this, when the hatch door was flung open and the Tommy sitting next to the driver pulled the top half of his body through it and lifted up a submachine gun. Immediately, Drechsler shouted through to the back: “Hahn, quick! Rifle-grenade. Let them have it as soon as they’re in range, and you’d better not miss!”
He had hardly finished saying this when he was thrown violently against the cab door as they screeched around a bend to the right, for at this point the road looped round a narrow inlet in the loch. The Bedford was temporarily lost from view. Hahn made his way to the rear of their lorry, loaded a rifle-grenade into a K98 carbine and took up position at the tailboard.
They were just negotiating the hairpin turn at the head of the inlet and were about to start back along its north side, when their pursuers appeared round the bend behind them and began to speed down the south side. The two lorries were now moving in opposite directions along nearly parallel paths. Hahn looked across the inlet and gauged the distance to his target. He noted that a staff car was following close behind it. Although they were both in range, he realised he could not get a clear shot at either vehicle because of the intervening trees, for the road was still separated from the loch by a thin copse of firs and pines. The lorry was his first priority, and he resigned himself to waiting until it had started to come up behind them.
The Tommy in the hatch of the Bedford’s cab was less concerned about trees blocking his line of fire: as he passed down the opposite side of the inlet, he let off several bursts from his submachine gun. Hahn saw the bullets kick up a few sprays of dust and chippings at the side of the road behind them and guessed that most of the rounds must have been stopped by the trees. As far as he could tell, their lorry was undamaged.
They rounded another bend just as the Bedford reached the head of the inlet, and the vehicle once more disappeared from view. Beyond this, there was a long, straight stretch, and as they hurtled along this section, Hahn lined up the K98’s sights on the bend they had just cleared; as soon as their pursuers appeared round it, he squeezed the trigger.
The rifle-grenade slammed into the engine of the Bedford and exploded immediately, causing the front of the vehicle to erupt into flames. After rolling on for a few dozen yards, it veered into the rock face that ran along the east side of the road at that point and then slewed round, coming to a halt across the carriageway. There was a second explosion as one of its petrol tanks, ruptured by the impact, ignited. Hahn watched as the men in the back of the Bedford began to jump out, some with their uniforms ablaze. “Better them than us,” he thought.
Vaughan had observed the whole episode through the window in the back of the cab. Now that it was over, he turned round and focussed his attention on the road ahead. “Well, that should keep them at bay for a while – it looks to me as if it’s blocked the roadway.”
“It’s bought us a few minutes, that’s all,” Drechsler commented. “It won’t take them long to get past it, assuming they know what they’re doing.”
“Never underestimate the incompetence of the enemy, Hauptmann.”
Lukasz was concentrating on driving and did not take part in this exchange. Happening to glance down at the instrument panel, he noted that there seemed to be something wrong with the petrol gauge, so he leant forward and tapped it. The needle was slowly but noticeably swinging round towards ‘Empty’. “I think we have a problem,” he said anxiously, “we’re losing fuel. When they shot at us just now, they may have hit the petrol tank.”
Drechsler immediately swung open the cab door at his side and, supporting himself with one hand on the doorframe and one on the door itself, he hung out and looked down at the nearside fuel tank, which was slung below the chassis, just behind the cab. Petrol was flowing out from a hole in the side. He pulled himself back in again. “The tank is holed near the bottom.”
Alarmed, Vaughan looked at Lukasz. “Do you think we’ve got enough to make it?”
“It’s anybody’s guess,” he replied.
3.
09.44 – 09.51 hrs: Loch Lubnaig and locality
General Cunningham’s driver had to brake hard to avoid colliding with the stricken Bedford. The staff car skidded to a halt a short distance from the burning wreck, and then the driver, fearful of further explosions, reversed back ten yards. Minton got out immediately and ran over to help the men who were jumping down from the rear of the lorry. Fortunately, most were only in a state of shock, though some had been injured in the impact with the rock face, and a few had suffered burns. Minton shepherded them away from the blazing truck and did what he could to assist those who had been hurt the worst.
Cunningham, too, had got out of the car. He stood by it, surveying the scene on the roadway before him. The Bedford, now burning fiercely, was lying right across the road. With a sheer rock face on one side and trees and a ditch on the other
, there was no way for a vehicle to get round it; it would have to be moved. As he considered how best to achieve this, he heard behind him the other lorries from the Callander checkpoint approaching in the distance. Less than a minute later, the first of them drew up alongside the staff car.
Immediately, Cunningham went over to the driver. “Use your lorry to push the wreck out of the way. We have to clear a path by it for the other vehicles.”
The man at the wheel thumped his fist on the rear of the cab and shouted to the men in the back to get out. Once they had jumped down, he moved his lorry forward and began to ram repeatedly the rear offside corner of the Bedford, each time nudging it round by a foot or so. After the first few attempts, he noticed that the paint on the engine housing of his lorry was beginning to blister in the heat, and he could see in his external mirror that the canvas canopy near his cab was starting to smoke.
At this point, Major Simmons appeared. He had been travelling in one of the radio trucks, which was half way down the convoy, and had run up the line of stationary vehicles to find out why they had stopped.
“What’s happened?” he asked Cunningham.
“We’ve lost a lorry – the Germans fired a rifle-grenade into it. We’re trying to make a path round the wreck. Once the way is clear, Colonel Minton and I will go on ahead in the car and try to establish visual contact with Cobalt’s vehicle. You bring the rest of the convoy on after us as fast as you can.”
Simmons looked over to where Minton was tending to the injured men. “Were there many casualties?” he asked.
“Inevitably, but don’t waste time dealing with them. Leave a few men to look after those that can’t be moved and press on after us with the convoy.”
The Bedford had by now been pushed far enough around to allow vehicles to edge past. The driver who had accomplished this drove his lorry on a safe distance beyond the wreck and then pulled over onto the verge to allow the men he had been transporting to climb back in.
“Minton, come on!” Cunningham yelled, getting into the staff car. Leaving the dazed survivors from the Bedford to the care of their comrades, Minton ran over to the car and got in. “Proceed as fast as you can,” Cunningham instructed the driver, “but once we are within sight of the Germans, keep out of range.”
Gingerly, the driver negotiated the wreck and then set off at speed. Shortly, they reached the end of the loch and a few minutes after that were racing through a small village where cottages lined the right-hand side of the road. To the left at this point was an impressive view across a river to a tree-covered hill, but no one in the car paid much attention: they were all preoccupied with the road ahead.
About a mile beyond the village, they entered a long, straight stretch of road that sloped down gently through a heavily wooded area. At the end of this section, the road curved round to the east. As they emerged from this bend onto the next straight stretch, they were just in time to glimpse Vaughan’s lorry in the distance: it was turning left off the main road.
Cunningham looked at the map he had spread out across his knees. “I think we’ve got them now, Minton,” he exclaimed after a while. “They’ve boxed themselves into a corner – that road doesn’t lead anywhere, it just services a few farms. It passes through a glen and then stops at the head of a loch – Loch Carran. I think they’ve decided to head for the hills.”
Just as they neared the turn-off, they saw, coming around a bend further down the main road, a line of army vehicles heading towards them from the opposite direction: three lorries, a radio truck and, at the front, a ‘Dingo’ armoured scout car.
“It’s the detachment coming down from Lochearnhead,” Cunningham observed. “Pity they hadn’t been a few minutes sooner. We’ll tell them to follow us into the glen. They’ll need to leave someone at the junction to redirect our own convoy to turn off as well. When the lorries from Callander arrive on the scene, that will give us close on three hundred men – enough to track Cobalt and her associates over the hills, I think.”
4.
09.51 – 09.59 hrs: Loch Carran and surrounding area
As they turned into the road to Loch Carran, Hauptmann Drechsler caught a glimpse of the staff car coming round the bend in the distance. “They’re right behind us,” he announced.
“Confound it!” Vaughan responded. “I was hoping they wouldn’t spot us turning off the main road. You’d better give it all you’ve got, Lukasz.”
However, the winding, single-track road to the loch was not made for speed. For most of its length it was lined with densely planted fir and pine trees or ran between dry-stone dykes on either side. There was no room for error: if a driver misjudged a bend while going at speed, he would almost certainly hit a tree or smash into a four-foot high wall of massive stones.
As the lorry careered down this twisting corridor, Vaughan watched the petrol gauge anxiously – it was now right on ‘Empty’. He realised their fuel could run out at any moment. And what then?
But providence remained on their side a little while longer. They passed through the conifer woodland that girded the eastern end of the loch and emerged onto the two-hundred yard wide alluvial strip that separated the trees from the water’s edge. At the speed they were travelling at, it had taken less than five minutes to cover the three miles to the loch, which ran on due west for a further two miles. A line of hills extended down each side of the loch, and there was another conifer forest at the far end.
Near the point where the road emerged from the woods, a narrow bridle path diverged from it and headed along the north side of the loch. Beyond this junction, the road itself curved to the left and then continued for a few hundred yards around the end of the loch before heading down its southern shore.
Lukasz followed the tarmacked road round to where an old hump-back bridge with stone parapets on either side took it over a small river that joined the loch near its southeast corner. The metalled surface stopped just beyond the bridge, and after this point the road became an unmade track.
Just as they approached the bridge, the lorry’s engine began to splutter, and seconds later it cut out. They rolled to a halt a few yards short of the crossing.
“Damn! That’s bad luck!” Vaughan cursed, and then, pulling the Colt out of the map case, he addressed Drechsler. “Get everyone out; we’re going to have to go on by foot from now.”
Immediately, Drechsler turned to the window at the back of the cab and shouted in German the order to debus. He then got out himself and, followed by Vaughan, went round to the back of the lorry, where the Brandenburgers had begun to jump down.
“We need a head start of at least 20 minutes,” Vaughan said, looking along the road they had just come down and expecting to see army vehicles appear at any moment. “Can you and your men hold off our pursuers that long?”
“Of course. That promontory over there looks like a good position,” he said pointing to a low headland that jutted out into the water a couple of hundred yards down the loch. “There will be a good field of fire from that point and no cover for the enemy as they approach us.”
Vaughan looked round to where Drechsler had indicated and scrutinized the terrain down the south side of the loch. A narrow ribbon of flat, grassy ground ten to fifteen yards wide separated the loch from the steep sides of the rocky, gorse-covered hill that extended along the south side of the loch for the first half mile. The stony track that the road became beyond the bridge ran down the middle of this strip of ground and was raised slightly to form a causeway, presumably, Vaughan surmised, because the land there was prone to flooding. For the first two hundred yards or so, the causeway curved gently round to the right, skirting a little bay with a shingly beach, before reaching the promontory that Drechsler had pointed out. The track then looped round the tip and disappeared from sight behind the headland. As Drechsler had said, it appeared that men advancing down the road towards the promontory would have no cover and nowhere to run, having the loch on one side and a steep, unscalable hill on the other
. It was an ideal spot for an ambush – a killing ground. The promontory itself sloped up gradually from its extremity to a height of about 150 ft at the point where it joined the hill, the summit of which was at least twice this height. The headland was covered in bushes and stunted trees, together with many large boulders, scoured from the ground by the glacier that had originally carved out the glen.
“I’d advise you to take one of my men with you for protection,” Drechsler continued. “I suggest you take Feldwebel Hahn.”
“Certainly, if you can spare him.” Vaughan began to unscrew the silencer on the Colt and smiled at Drechsler. “I think we can make as much noise as we want to from now on, don’t you?”
The two women were the last to jump down from the lorry. Vivian Adair had the briefcase clutched under her left arm and appeared intent, like an athlete about to set off on a race. In contrast, Grace had a nervous feeling in her stomach and fought hard to conceal the dread she felt as she looked round at the Brandenburgers, laden down with their equipment and weaponry. Drechsler was now issuing a series of orders to his men and pointing down the loch side. As far as she could understand, he was telling them to take up positions at some location overlooking the shore. He then turned to Hahn and said something that she could not make out. Immediately, Hahn and one of the other men hurried round to the front of the lorry, where Lukasz was waiting.
Suddenly, she was aware that Vaughan was speaking to her: “Grace, Vivian, we’re going to have to walk from here. Hauptmann Drechsler and his men will hold our pursuers at bay for as long as possible to buy us some time. Come, we have to move fast.” As he said this, Drechsler and the remaining Brandenburgers set off across the bridge at a run.