Chapter 24
13 September 1939
‘Fuck, oh, fuck,’ Watson muttered, taking cover behind a large tree trunk and swinging up his machine-pistol, though the weapon would be useless at that range.
Next to him, Dawson dropped to the ground and lay prone, his legs apart, and wrapped the sling of the Mauser around his left arm to steady the rifle as he took aim. The members of the German patrol had separated, and were pointing their weapons at the copse of trees. As far as Dawson could see, only one of the soldiers was carrying a Schmeisser, which meant that the other five had rifles, and that was bad news. The only advantage he and Watson had was that they were in the copse, which meant they had some sort of cover. The patrol, on the other hand, was caught out in the open field, so they were vulnerable.
Another volley of shots crashed out, bullets tearing through the undergrowth and smashing into the trunks of the trees around them, as Dawson picked his target and gently squeezed the trigger.
The Mauser kicked against his shoulder, and the crack of the weapon firing echoed around the copse. Eighty yards away, one of the German soldiers tumbled backwards and lay still.
‘That’s one down,’ Dawson muttered, working the bolt to chamber another cartridge and moving the rifle slightly to seek out a new target. Whatever happened, he knew they had to even the odds, because there was no way he and Watson would survive a close-quarter fire-fight against four or five German soldiers. He had to take down as many of the patrol as he could, while they were still out there in the field. And there was another reason why he didn’t want to let the enemy soldiers get too close.
He picked a second target and squeezed the trigger. But this time he saw his bullet throw up a spray of soil just to the left of the crouching man. He cursed, worked the bolt again and brought the rifle back to the aim, concentrating on the sight picture. The German was also aiming his rifle with care, and Dawson wondered fleetingly if either he or Watson could be clearly seen from the field.
Well, he thought, he’d soon find out. He took a breath, released about half of it and then stopped breathing, just as the instructors at Catterick had taught him. Then he squeezed the trigger gently. Even at that range, the sudden scarlet bloom of the German’s face as the 7.92-millimetre bullet from the Mauser K98k ploughed through his forehead was absolutely obvious, and Dawson shuddered involuntarily as the man slumped to the ground, killed instantly.
He swallowed, worked the bolt and scanned the field for the next enemy soldier. As he did so, another burst of automatic weapons fire raked the trees and undergrowth close to him. For a few seconds Dawson ducked down flat, burying his face in the grass, praying that the Germans were just laying down suppressing fire – trying to make them keep their heads down – rather than actually aiming at them.
The bullets howled and whined above his head, shredding undergrowth and slamming into the unyielding trees, the hammering sound of the Schmeisser ripping the air apart.
Then a brief moment of silence. Dawson lifted his head again, to aim the Mauser, but his targets were on their feet and moving, running and weaving in different directions. The German NCO in charge of the patrol had obviously realized that his men were sitting targets out in the open and had ordered them to scatter.
Dawson tracked one man as he ran to the left and fired the rifle, but his shot clearly missed as the German soldier continued running, snapping off wild shots towards the copse from his weapon as he did so.
Then, from his right-hand side, he heard a short burst of automatic fire, then another. Watson had waited until his targets were closer – a lot closer – before he’d opened up with his machine-pistol. The Schmeisser, which fired the nine-millimetre Parabellum round that was also used in several types of semi-automatic pistol, was too inaccurate at long distances. If he’d fired the weapon before, he’d just have been wasting ammunition.
‘Got one,’ Watson shouted, satisfaction mingled with fear in his voice.
‘But there are still three of them left,’ Dawson yelled back. ‘Where the fuck are they?’
‘They’re trying to out-flank us. And when they’re close enough, they’ll use their grenades.’
That was Dawson’s worry as well. The two sappers were effectively holding the high ground – they were hidden in the copse of trees, and their attackers were out in the open and vulnerable – so for the moment they held the advantage, but only until the Germans could get close enough to throw their grenades. Grenades are a great force-multiplier.
‘You cover to the right, Dave. I’ll go left,’ Dawson instructed.
He checked all round. The sound of gunfire was still loud in his ears, and coming from both sides as the German soldiers tried to out-flank them. Bullets were thudding into the trees around them, but he had to move. He could see none of the enemy soldiers in front of him, which meant they had to be moving around on both sides of the copse. They had to do something before they managed to get close enough to throw their stick grenades.
The German Stielhandgranate Model 24 grenade – known to British troops as the ‘potato masher’ – was a much more deadly weapon than the familiar Mills bomb, entirely because of the wooden handle attached to it. The Mills bomb could only be thrown perhaps fifteen or twenty yards, but the stick acted as a lever on the German weapon, allowing it to be lobbed for more than twice that distance.
The two sappers knew that once the German troops closed to about forty yards, the grenades would start coming. And then they’d die, because there was nowhere to hide from a grenade. They had to keep the enemy soldiers at bay.
Dawson rolled sideways, then pushed himself up onto his knees and looked through the undergrowth over to his left. He saw nothing, then raised himself slightly higher.
A grey shape moved across his field of vision, a bare thirty or forty yards away, firing a Schmeisser towards the copse. Dawson didn’t hesitate. He stepped to one side, keeping the man in sight, then brought the Mauser up to his shoulder and aimed the weapon. As he looked over the sights, the soldier stopped, lowered his machine-pistol and reached towards his belt. He had to be reaching for a grenade.
Dawson steadied his hands, rested the rifle on the branch of a tree and took careful aim. As the German swung his arm back to throw the stick grenade, he squeezed the trigger. Against a stationary target at such short range, the outcome wasn’t in doubt.
The enemy soldier tumbled backwards, the grenade falling from his dead hand, and two or three seconds later the explosive charge detonated right under the man’s body, momentarily lifting the corpse upwards. But Dawson didn’t even notice. By then he was already looking for his next target.
Close behind him, he heard another burst of machine-gun fire as Dave Watson fired his Schmeisser.
Dawson crept forward towards the edge of the copse, keeping behind the tree trunks as much as he could. Somewhere in front of him he could hear the hammering sound of another Schmeisser firing, the bullets ripping through the undergrowth close to him. Then, as he neared the edge of the stand of trees, the firing abruptly stopped.
Maybe Watson had got him, Dawson wondered, and then an instant later realized how badly mistaken he was, as he saw the sight he’d been dreading the most. A grenade came sailing through the air, the wooden handle cartwheeling wildly, almost directly towards him.
‘Grenade!’ Dawson yelled, and immediately stood up. He dropped the Mauser, ran a few paces to the nearest tree and dodged behind it, getting the thickness of the trunk between himself and the weapon. Then he closed his eyes and covered his ears with his hands, forcing his palms tight against the side of his head.
The stick grenade had, he knew, about a five-second fuse from the moment the thrower unscrewed the metal base cap and pulled on the porcelain ball and cord held in the hollow wooden handle. That dragged a roughened steel rod through the igniter, causing it to flare and start the delayed-action fuse burning – an unusual but actually very reliable method of triggering the grenade.
Dawson al
so knew that the Model 24 was an offensive grenade, relying upon the blast wave from the exploding warhead – a high-explosive charge inside a thin steel canister – to do the damage, rather than a defensive fragmentation type. He knew the tree trunk would protect him from the limited amount of shrapnel that the weapon would throw out, and he just hoped his hearing wouldn’t be too badly damaged by the blast wave.
An instant later the grenade exploded, perhaps twenty feet away from him, a colossal explosion that seemed to tear the very air to shreds and blast it in all directions. His head felt as if it was going to burst but, as far as he could tell, nothing hit him.
Dawson dropped his hands from his ears and peered cautiously around the tree trunk. A renewed burst of firing from outside the copse – sounding strangely muffled to him – told him that the remaining two Germans were still out there and still shooting at them.
He grabbed the Mauser and pulled back the bolt. The rifle had a five-round magazine, and Dawson knew he’d fired four or maybe five shots. A cartridge span out of the breach and tumbled to the ground beside him, and when he looked down he could see that the magazine was empty.
An empty rifle was no use to anyone, so he felt in one of the pouches on his battledress and pulled out a clip of shells. Like the Lee-Enfield .303, the Mauser Karabiner 98k was loaded from five-round clips, from which the cartridges were stripped into the magazine from above, with the bolt pulled back. Dawson pressed down on the gleaming brass case of the top shell with his thumb and pushed all of them down into the magazine. He slid the bolt forward to chamber the first cartridge, then replaced the stripper clip in his pouch, along with the ejected round.
Only then did he turn round to look for Watson. ‘Dave!’ he yelled. ‘You OK?’
Watson didn’t reply, but a burst of firing close by showed he was still alive, and still fighting.
Dawson nodded in relief and headed over towards the edge of the copse from which the grenade had been thrown, the Mauser held ready in his capable hands and the Schmeisser slung over his shoulder. He stopped while he was still largely concealed in the undergrowth and looked out, searching for any sign of the soldier who’d thrown the stick grenade. But the enemy soldier appeared to be nowhere in sight. Dawson pushed on, getting closer to the edge of the field, his head turning from side to side as he sought his quarry.
Then he reached the side of the copse, scanning in all directions, but still saw no sign of the German soldier. He stepped back behind a tree, intending to move further over to the left, to search in that direction, when a rifle cracked. Dawson’s sudden movement saved his life. The bullet sang past his chest and thudded into a tree somewhere behind him.
Only then did he spot the enemy soldier. He was lying prone in the field, about forty yards away, and already frantically working the bolt of his Mauser to chamber another round. Dawson swung up his own rifle, sighted quickly and squeezed the trigger.
But his shot missed, and, as Dawson pulled back behind a tree, the German fired again, the bullet hitting the trunk so close to Dawson that he was showered with wood splinters.
He made an instant decision. They could trade shots, or he could finish it quickly. He dropped the Mauser, swung the Schmeisser around his body, pulled the skeleton stock into his shoulder, seized the pistol grip and sighted down the barrel.
As the German soldier moved the rifle to point at him again, Dawson squeezed the trigger of the machine-pistol. The first bullets struck the ground a few feet in front of his target, but the muzzle was already lifting as he corrected his aim. He released the trigger, then squeezed it again, pulling the weapon back to the aim each time as the recoil lifted it. When the bolt of the MP 40 slammed open as the last round in the magazine fired, the German lay dead, two bullets from Dawson’s bursts of fire having ploughed through his skull.
Dawson was suddenly aware of the silence. From the moment they’d first seen – and in their turn been seen by – the German patrol, bullets had been flying all round the copse, fired by both sides. Now, though, he couldn’t hear anything. He slipped a new magazine into the Schmeisser and cocked the weapon. Then he picked up the Mauser carbine and headed back into the copse.
Chapter 25
13 September 1939
Just under an hour later, Dawson and Watson were on the move again. The sixth member of the German patrol had fallen victim to Watson’s MP 40 at almost the same moment as Dawson had used his machine-pistol on the soldier on the opposite side of the copse, which accounted for the last member of the six-man patrol.
And now the two men were much better equipped. They’d stripped the bodies of all the ammunition they had been carrying, and Watson had appropriated another Mauser K98k carbine, so each man was now armed with both a rifle and a machine-pistol, plus several stick grenades. And when Dawson had examined the body of the NCO in charge of the patrol, as well as his Schmeisser the man had also been carrying a Walther P-38 semi-automatic pistol in a belt holster, with a couple of spare magazines. Dawson took the lot, and slipped the holster onto his own belt. The Walther fired the same nine-millimetre Parabellum rounds as the Schmeisser.
They’d also dumped their eighteen-inch Lee-Enfield bayonets, which wouldn’t fit on the German rifles, and had each taken a Mauser bayonet and scabbard from the corpses. And Dawson had picked up a trench knife – a short-bladed single-edged weapon that was fitted into a boot scabbard and issued to Wehrmacht infantry soldiers.
But it wasn’t just weapons and ammunition that they’d taken. All of the German soldiers had been carrying metal water canteens – a much better bet than the fragile glass jars Dawson and Watson had taken from the farmhouse – and even a few bars of chocolate. They took two canteens each, topped them up from the jars, and all the chocolate that wasn’t covered in blood. And Dawson finally decided to abandon the mines. They were heavy and unwieldy and, realistically, if the two men couldn’t fight their way out of trouble with the weapons and ammunition they now had, a bag of German mines probably wouldn’t make any difference.
‘I know it’ll take a few minutes,’ Dawson said, ‘but I think we should try and hide the bodies. If we just leave them out on the field, the first German patrol that comes along here is going to spot them straight away. If we can conceal them in the undergrowth, that might buy us a little time.’
Together, they dragged all the bodies into the copse and dumped them in one of the most overgrown sections. They knew the smell of decomposition would soon attract scavengers, but the stand of trees was fairly remote, and hopefully nobody would find the dead bodies for a while.
Then they set off, and now they had three other things they hadn’t had before – a military map of the area, a pair of binoculars and a compass, all of which Dawson had removed from the sergeant’s body.
‘This map’s going to be bloody useful,’ he said, as they started walking, once again keeping close to a substantial hedge that ran more or less north-south. ‘I still don’t know exactly where we are, but as soon as we see some kind of distinctive geographical feature I’ll be able to work it out. And once we know that, we’ll be able to pick the best possible route to get across the border.’
Watson seemed somewhat subdued, and responded only with a grunt.
‘You OK, Dave?’ Dawson asked.
‘Yeah, I guess so. It’s just so bloody different to what I expected. I mean, back at Catterick on the range we were just shooting at a cardboard target shaped like a man. Then bayonet practice was against bags filled with straw. But between us we’ve just killed six men, and then there were the others in the forest earlier.’
‘This is war, Dave,’ Dawson said simply.
‘I know that, mate. I also know that all those Germans were doing their best to kill us, and if we hadn’t been fucking lucky and pretty good shots, it’d be our bodies lying rotting in a field somewhere. But it’s not easy, Eddie. It’s not easy at all.’
Dawson nodded. What Watson had said pretty much coincided with his own feelings. In the thick
of the action, adrenaline took over, and he had acted the way he’d been trained to do, not seeing the enemy soldiers as living, breathing human beings, but simply as targets to be engaged with whatever weapons he had available.
But when he’d walked out into the field to recover the weapons and ammunition and other equipment they needed, he’d been appalled at the injuries he’d seen. He’d stared at the gaping holes torn in the bodies of the German soldiers by the bullets they’d fired, and in two cases the sight of their skulls almost literally blown apart, and it had taken all his resolve not to throw up.
No, Watson was right. It wasn’t easy, and war was hell on earth. But they had no option, and Dawson was sure that Watson realized that. It was kill or be killed, an old and perhaps trite expression, but in their circumstances nonetheless absolutely true. They were deep in enemy territory, where the hand of every man would be raised against them, where any German soldier would be perfectly entitled to shoot them on sight. The only way they were going to get out and back to the safety of their own lines was to stay out of sight as much as they could and, if they were spotted, to fight back with as much skill and ferocity as they could manage. Any other course of action would end in their deaths, and both men knew it.
‘I know, Dave, I know,’ Dawson said, trudging along beside the hedge and constantly checking all around them, ‘we’ve no option, mate, no fucking option at all.’
* * *
By the end of the afternoon, it was clear to both men that Dawson’s plan to cut across to the west and somehow work their way over the border back into France wasn’t going to happen – or, at least, it wasn’t going to be as easy as they’d hoped.
Within a couple of hours of leaving the copse, Dawson had identified three geographical features that had suggested their location, and then a village named Kerlingen which they’d studied through the binoculars and which had confirmed exactly where they were. They’d covered rather more distance than he’d expected, almost ten miles in a straight line from the Warndt Forest, and were now lying up in a wood on a low hill, overlooking another village called Rammelfangen.
To Do or Die Page 15