The problem, as far as Watson and Dawson were concerned, was the time it would take them to clear the entire track. They were taking about twenty to thirty minutes to locate, lift and make safe each buried mine, and if the pattern they’d seen so far had been repeated throughout the Warndt Forest, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mines buried there. Without help, they were looking at weeks or months of work, and the chances of the Germans not counter-attacking against the French invasion within a few days were probably fairly slim.
‘I think we’re just pissing in the wind here,’ Watson said, accepting a light from Tommy Blake and cupping the cigarette in his hand. ‘If the French were mounting a really serious invasion, they’d just take a detour and go around this bloody forest, and forget about clearing the mines. Or else they’d bring in every French soldier qualified in mine-clearance and set them to work.’
‘Yeah,’ Dawson agreed. ‘You’re right. We’re just wasting our bloody time.’
Watson took a long draw of his cigarette and leant back against the side of the lorry. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘I suppose we should be grateful we’re here.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, no bugger’s shooting at us, are they?’
‘No, not yet,’ Dawson agreed, ‘but I think that’s only temporary. Once Adolf and his Nazi thugs have shafted the bloody Poles, which probably won’t take them all that long, they’ll come down here to give the French a bloody nose.’
‘No bloody doubt about that,’ Watson said, draining the last dregs of his tea. ‘Right, let’s get back to it.’
* * *
They found a further three mines quite quickly, laid out in the same pattern as before, and lifted all three of them. But the next section of the track appeared clear, or at least Dawson couldn’t find any contacts where he’d expected to encounter them. That bothered him, so he checked the mine detector was still working properly – which it was – then scanned the whole area again, with the same result.
The two sappers moved on cautiously, and Dawson got his next hit some fifty yards further on, but on the extreme left side of the track, which wasn’t where he’d expected it.
‘It looks like they’ve changed the pattern, Dave,’ he said, as Watson prepared to dig out the buried mine, ‘so just be extra careful with this one.’
‘I’m always careful, mate,’ Watson muttered.
Dawson walked back about fifty yards down the cleared lane and crouched down to watch his partner extract the weapon.
Watson followed the same routine as previously, digging down vertically about a foot clear of the buried mine, then carefully removing the soil until he was able to see the weapon itself. Dawson’s warning was ringing in his ears, and the change in the pattern of the minefield bothered him as well, so he took extra care as he started removing the soil from around the trigger assembly.
He was glad he did. As he brushed away the last of the earth, he noticed something different about it, and immediately stopped working on it.
‘What is it?’ Dawson called from behind him, seeing his friend freeze and then sit back on his haunches.
‘This bloody trigger’s different,’ Watson called over his shoulder. ‘It’s a Y-shaped bastard, not like the three-pronged ones we’ve seen up to now. Hang on a minute – I’m still checking it out.’
For about a minute Watson just looked at the half-buried mine, trying to work out what the difference was. Then he saw it, and cursed under his breath. Attached to the right-hand arm of the Y-shaped assembly was a thin strand of wire, a wire that ran under the ground and away from the mine, towards the centre of the track.
‘You’d better come and take a look at this, Eddie,’ Watson called out, moving slightly backwards from the mine. ‘And bring the bloody pliers, will you?’
The two sappers peered at the weapon Watson had partially uncovered.
‘What do you think?’ Dawson asked.
‘That’s not an electrical cable,’ Watson said. ‘It’s not thick enough, so I don’t think it’s hitched to an electric detonator. It looks more like a single-strand wire, like a bloody tripwire, something like that.’
Dawson nodded slowly. ‘That could make sense,’ he said. ‘If the Germans laid these mines right across the track, they could have linked them together. If they did, then anybody stepping on one of them would detonate the rest.’
‘Could be,’ Watson agreed. ‘The sneaky bastards. But if you’re right, and this wire does link them, then this bugger would have to be triggered by sideways pressure, not by someone stepping on it.’
‘Yeah, I see what you mean. So there must be one or two of the pressure-activated mines here as well. Hang on, let me run the detector over the rest of the track.’
Watson stood back and watched as Dawson scanned the soil to the right of the exposed mine. By the time he’d reached the opposite side of the track, there were three more red crosses lying on the ground.
Dawson switched off the mine detector and placed it on the ground. The red crosses indicated two mines lying fairly close together near the centre of the track, and another one at the right-hand edge.
‘I’ll bet you the middle two are pressure-activated,’ Watson said, ‘and detonating either of those would trigger this bastard here or the one on the other side of the track.’
‘Makes sense. Do you want me to lift those?’
‘No, I’ll do it. Just let me sort out this bugger first.’
Watson took the pliers and carefully cut through the wire close to the Y-shaped trigger, then continued removing the mine from the ground.
Once he’d got it out, he took a bolt from his pocket and slipped it through the hole in the trigger assembly to make the weapon safe. Then he cleaned off the earth from the body of the mine and stared at the inscribed number.
‘This one’s different, Dave,’ he said. ‘It looks like the number is “Z Z 35”. All the others we lifted were “Z 35”, so this is a variant.’
Then he walked over to the two red crosses near the centre of the track and quickly dug down beside the first one. In a few minutes he’d uncovered another mine of the type they were familiar with, one fitted with the three-pronged trigger. As they’d expected, the wire from the first mine was wrapped around the steel cylinder that projected from the body of the weapon.
‘Just as we thought, Eddie,’ Watson said, as he cut the wire and lifted out the mine. ‘Tread on this bastard and as it jumps out of the ground it pulls the wire and that fires the second weapon.’
‘Yeah. Twice as nasty, twice as deadly. Let’s shift these next two and then go back to the truck and grab something to eat.’
‘Good idea. Give me ten minutes.’
* * *
The other four soldiers were waiting for them, a fire already going beside the Morris truck. On the flames was a small dixie, and inside it Tommy Blake was stirring yet another anonymous stew.
‘What the hell flavour is that, Tommy?’ Dawson asked as he lowered the equipment he was carrying to the ground.
‘Buggered if I know,’ Blake replied. ‘Could be anything – warthog, buffalo, whale, python, rat, anything at all. All I do know is that it was some kind of dead animal that the army’s catering people could buy really cheap and turn into a barely edible meal for the British fighting man.’
Dawson and Watson sat down and waited for the stew to get hot enough to eat.
‘Something that might interest you,’ Blake said, and pointed his spoon across the clearing towards the group of French soldiers. ‘I was having a chat with those lads earlier on. One of them claims he saw an officer doing something out here late last night, near the area you two had cleared.’
‘Did he, by Christ?’ Dawson muttered.
‘That’s what he said. The French have stationed sentries here round the clock, and his post was in the woods through there, over to the west. His orders were to move around, do a regular patrol, so he was walking up here towards the edge of the clearing, then going back to
his original post. He said he saw an officer bending down somewhere over here, but the light was too poor for him to see what he was doing. He watched him for a few minutes, then went back to his route. The next time he walked up this way, the man had gone.’
‘And he didn’t challenge him?’ Watson demanded. ‘Why not?’
‘Why should he?’ Blake replied. ‘He could see it was a French officer because of the uniform. The French military’s different to ours. A lot of the officers are real toffs, but most of the regular soldiers are peasants from the countryside, completely the other end of the scale. For any French soldier to challenge a French officer, he’d have to be absolutely bloody certain he was doing something completely out of order.’
‘Christ, I thought it was bad enough in the British army,’ Dawson said. ‘He couldn’t identify the officer?’
Blake shook his head. ‘No bloody chance. I did ask him,’ he added.
‘We’re no worse off than we were before,’ Watson said. ‘I still think it was that bastard St Véran who planted the mine, and what that Frog soldier saw pretty much confirms it. But there’s still nothing we can do about it.’
‘Not unless he walks in front of the barrel of my Lee-Enfield one night,’ Dawson muttered darkly.
Chapter 18
12 September 1939
Dawson and Watson moved deeper into the forest, steadily working their way down the track, finding and lifting the mines that had been buried there. By mid-afternoon they’d covered a total distance of about 150 yards from the Morris truck, which was still parked in the clearing.
The layout of the minefield varied, and there were some stretches with no mines at all. Sometimes they were finding the open zig-zag pattern they’d first encountered, at other times the lines of mines planted across the track and linked by wires, but they were able to lift each one and make it safe. They were making very slow progress, but they had no other choice. For obvious reasons, clearing a minefield wasn’t something that could be hurried, and there were only the two of them to do the work.
They’d just had a brew-up and were walking back down the track when they heard the sound of a vehicle behind them and turned back to see what was happening.
A lorry had just driven into the clearing, and, as they watched, an officer climbed out of it and walked across to the French soldiers waiting nearby. As soon as he stepped onto the ground Dawson realized it was Capitaine de St Véran.
‘It’s that French bastard again,’ Watson observed, standing and watching what was happening.
‘What’s going on?’ Dawson asked. ‘What’s he doing back here?’
For a few seconds they just stood and looked back. The French soldiers formed up into a short line and climbed into the back of the lorry, apparently preparing to vacate the site.
Watson shrugged. ‘It looks like they’re pulling out,’ he suggested.
‘No great loss. They didn’t do anything while they were here, as far as I could see. Anyway, let’s get on. We’ve still got plenty to do.’
‘OK,’ Watson agreed, and the two sappers turned away and walked on down the track.
Behind them, the French lorry turned round once all the soldiers had climbed aboard and then drove away from the clearing, heading back the way it had come, towards the road that led out of the forest.
* * *
Just over an hour later, Dawson suddenly stopped what he was doing and just stood there, listening. Beside him, Watson pulled off the mine-detector headphones.
‘What is it?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ Dawson replied. ‘I thought I heard something.’ Then the noise came again. ‘Listen. That sounds to me like vehicle engines. Not just a single truck, more like several of them.’
‘Maybe the Frogs are moving their forces around,’ Watson suggested. ‘St Véran ordered those troops out of the forest. They’re probably just repositioning.’
‘Perhaps. Just as long as it’s not the bloody Germans arriving.’
‘We’d have been told if that was happening,’ Watson said.
Then they heard the noise of vehicles again, but louder and closer, though they still seemed to be somewhere outside the forest.
‘I dunno, Dave. Maybe we should get back to the truck.’
As they looked back up the track, they saw two of the British soldiers trotting towards them, their Lee-Enfields slung over their shoulders.
‘That’s Tommy Blake and one of the other lads,’ Watson said. ‘Maybe they know what’s going on.’
But before they could do anything, the air was suddenly filled with the crack of rifle shots, then the deeper, louder sound of sustained and very distinctive machine-gun fire – almost the same timing as a heartbeat, and quite unlike the ripping sound of a British Sten gun. Bullets tore through the forest.
‘Oh, fuck,’ Watson said. ‘That’s a bloody Schmeisser. Grab the stuff and get out of sight!’
The two sappers snatched up the mine detector and the bag of mines they’d lifted and ran a few paces back up the cleared track. Then they picked an area where the undergrowth was far too thick for mines to have been laid, and both dived off into it, burrowing deep beneath the bushes.
‘It’s the fucking Jerries,’ Dawson muttered. ‘They must be counter-attacking.’
‘What the hell do we do now? Our rifles are up there in the truck. Shall we run back and get them?’
‘Hang on. Where’s Tommy and the other lad? They had their rifles with them.’
Dawson eased forwards to the edge of the track.
As he did so, a sustained burst of firing rang out from somewhere close by, followed by about half a dozen rifle shots, then more machine-gun fire. He dropped back into cover.
‘Hell, they were close,’ he muttered. But he moved forwards again. He had to know where Blake and the other soldier were, and what was happening on the track.
As he peered out cautiously from the undergrowth, more shots rang out, followed by a howl of pain. One glance was enough to show him all he needed to know.
Dawson pulled back to where Watson was waiting.
‘We’ve got to move,’ he hissed. ‘Tommy’s wounded and I think the other lad is dead. Tommy’s just ducked into cover further up the track. We’ve got to help him.’
They started jogging through the trees, heading towards the spot where Dawson had seen Tommy Blake take cover. But they’d barely started moving before they heard more firing. A couple of Schmeissers opened up – a lethal melody and its hideous counterpoint – perhaps 100 yards away. And then came the crack of rifle shots.
‘That was somewhere near the lorry,’ Dawson said, and peered around a tree trunk to look up the track. ‘Jesus.’
About 200 yards away, he glimpsed two British soldiers lying prone beside the vehicle, rifles at their shoulders, firing at an unseen enemy. Then his view was torn apart by an explosion that rocked the Morris and obscured everything.
When he could see clearly again, one of the two figures lay unmoving, his Lee-Enfield silent. The other man – the distance was too great for him to make out which one it was – was writhing in agony, and Dawson could hear a thin, high-pitched scream.
‘Oh, Christ,’ he muttered, not taking his eyes from the scene in front of him. ‘That was a fucking grenade.’
Suddenly, a gang of grey-uniformed figures appeared around the vehicle, weapons aimed at the men lying on the ground, and a handful of shots rang out. Instantly, the screaming stopped.
Beside him, Watson tensed as if to stand up, but Dawson grabbed him by the arm and ducked back into cover. ‘Stay down,’ he hissed. ‘There’s nothing we can do to help those poor bastards now. We haven’t even got a pistol between us. If we stand up, the Jerries’ll see us, and then we’ll be dead as well.’
They’d just witnessed the brutal killing of two of the two soldiers who’d driven into the forest with them, and there’d been absolutely nothing they could have done to prevent it.
‘What the fuck do we do now,
Eddie?’ Watson whispered. ‘Stand up and wave a white flag?’
‘No way. We’ve just seen them shoot those two lads, and the one over there on the track. They’d probably gun us down as soon as we showed ourselves. We stay out of sight, keep our heads down and hope those bastards haven’t seen us and don’t know we’re here. Then we find Tommy.’
Dawson slid the mine detector under a bush and picked up the bag of mines. ‘Let’s go,’ he muttered.
‘Why don’t you dump the mines, Eddie? They’re no good to us.’
Dawson shook his head. ‘No. These are weapons – of a sort, anyway – and right now they’re pretty much all we have.’
‘Yeah,’ Watson sounded doubtful. ‘They go off with a hell of a bang, that’s for sure, but I don’t know how you’d trigger them, unless you plan to bury them and hope you can talk the Jerries into stepping on them.’
Dawson shook his head. ‘No. There’s a much simpler method than that. These mines have a delayed-action fuse. We saw it in action when that second one went off. We just remove the safety bolt, press the trigger and throw it like a big grenade. Then duck.’
Watson stared at him as if he was mad. Then he voiced what his face had already conveyed. ‘You’re bloody mad, mate. Ducking wouldn’t work, would it? When you throw it, it could be in any position at all when the first charge goes off. It could even fire it straight back at us, and then we’d be totally fucked. And even if it didn’t, we’d have no clue which way the cylinder would be facing when the main charge fired. We could get shredded by the shrapnel.’
‘Look,’ Dawson said, ‘I agree it wouldn’t be easy. They’d be our weapons of last resort, so I say we take them with us.’
Watson was silent for a few moments, then he nodded. ‘OK, they are all we’ve got, so we might as well take them. But I hope to hell we don’t have to use them, because that just sounds to me like a really messy way to commit suicide.’
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