‘If we move, they’ll see us,’ Dawson whispered, ‘and if they see us, they’ll shoot.’
‘Bugger,’ Watson muttered.
The two German soldiers held a muted conversation, then one of them moved slightly to one side and brought his rifle up to his shoulder to aim it into the field, while the other stepped forward, heading directly towards the mound behind which the two sappers had taken refuge.
And right then Dawson realized they were fresh out of options. They couldn’t use their bayonets or the trench knife, because the enemy soldiers had separated – they might be able to kill one of them that way, but certainly not the other. They’d have to use their guns, and use them now, while they still had the element of surprise. And then they’d have to run for it.
Dawson watched the approaching German soldier as he strode closer to the mound of earth they were using for cover. When the man reached a point about ten yards away, Dawson tensed and rested his finger on the trigger of the Schmeisser – the machine-pistol was the obvious weapon to use at such close quarters.
But then the German stopped. He stood on one spot for a few seconds, scanning the ground in front of him and all around. Then he shrugged, turned away and walked back to the road to rejoin his companion.
Again, the two Germans exchanged a few sentences, and this time both men heard a couple of the words clearly.
‘He just said something about Geräusche,’ Watson said quietly – he’d done a basic German course the previous year. ‘That means “noises”, and then he used the word Schlachtrösser, which means “horses”. Maybe he thinks that noise was made by some of the horses they’ve been using to pull the carts.’
‘Christ, I hope so. I don’t want to kill anyone else unless it’s unavoidable.’
For another few seconds, the two German soldiers chatted together on the road, then both lit cigarettes and walked away, side by side, heading west and away from the two sappers.
Dawson and Watson waited a couple of minutes after the two enemy soldiers had vanished from sight, then both stood up slowly and carefully.
‘Right,’ Dawson said quietly. ‘Let’s get the hell away from here before they come back, or start wondering where the sentry is.’
‘I’m right behind you.’
Dawson made a very quick check of his compass, the illuminated pointer and cardinal markers dimly visible, then led the way through the field to the north. Just as they reached the far side of it, both men stopped. They’d heard a sudden noise from directly in front of them, on the opposite side of another hedge, a deep snort, like a man with a really bad cold.
‘Fuck me, not again,’ Watson muttered, as he seized the pistol grip of his Schmeisser MP 40.
‘Wait,’ Dawson whispered and crept over to one side, where he could see a narrow gap in the undergrowth. Holding his machine-pistol ready, he looked through the space he’d found. For a few seconds he just stared at the sight beyond. Then he stood up and turned back to Watson, a grin on his face.
‘That German was right,’ he said. ‘This field’s full of horses.’
‘Thank God for that. Let’s move.’
The two men squeezed through the gap and started walking. There were about twenty horses in the field, big friendly shapes, tethered in lines. Some were standing and eating, others lying down, and all looked inquisitively at the two men as they made their way past them.
‘Shame we can’t borrow a couple of them and ride off into the sunset. Or perhaps the sunrise, in this case,’ Watson said.
‘Yeah, I was just thinking about that. But there are no saddles or bridles and – I don’t know about you – but I don’t know how to ride a bloody horse. We’re much better off on foot.’
* * *
About an hour later, they came to a stop again, this time because they were standing on the southern bank of a river. Dawson pulled out the map and used his small torch to study it for a few moments.
‘Right,’ he said, ‘this section of the river looks fairly straight and it’s lying north-east to south-west, so I think we must be somewhere here.’ He pointed at a position on the map close to a town named Rehlingen. ‘This river branches off the Saar just to the north-east of here, and runs all the way down to the border near another town named Niedaltdorf.’
Knowing where they were helped, but what they had to do was get across the river, which was wide and looked deep.
‘Is there a bridge somewhere?’ Watson asked hopefully.
‘Yeah, several of the bastards, but I think our best bet would be to head north-east and cross it here.’ He again pointed at the map.
‘That’ll take us pretty close to Rehlingen, and that looks to me like a main road as well,’ Watson said, peering at the map. ‘Sure that’s a good idea?’
‘I’d prefer to cross the river somewhere else, but we already know that the area closer to the border is well guarded, so going in that direction might be a worse option. I’m just hoping that the bridge near Rehlingen won’t be guarded.’
Dawson replaced the map in his pocket and the two men started walking along the bank of the river, keeping a sharp lookout, as they had been ever since the Warndt Forest. The ground was sloping gently upwards, but the going was fairly easy, and the moonlight was sufficient for them to see.
Ten minutes later, Dawson held up his hand and stopped. ‘There’s the bridge,’ he whispered, pointing ahead of them.
In the monochrome moonlight, they could see a structure of stone and steel that spanned the river about 200 yards ahead, a coat-hanger-shaped bridge that obviously carried a road from one bank to the other. They could also see an army truck – it looked like about a three-tonner – parked at the nearer end of it, and dimly visible were the shapes of several soldiers standing near the vehicle.
‘Bugger,’ Watson whispered. ‘What do you reckon? Has the truck broken down, or is that a checkpoint?’
Dawson didn’t reply, just ducked into cover and stared at the scene through his binoculars. After a few moments he lowered them and glanced at his companion.
‘It looks to me like a road-block,’ he said. ‘I can see what looks like a wooden barrier across the road beside the truck. And that,’ he added, ‘just might be good news for us.’
Watson looked quizzically at his companion. ‘Explain that,’ he said.
‘Those troops will probably have been ordered to stop and check the papers of any pedestrians or drivers who want to cross over that bridge. It’s just about midnight now, so they’re probably also quite tired if they’ve been there for several hours, so maybe their concentration will be starting to go.’
‘So what?’
‘So all their attention will be focused on checking people crossing over the bridge, and they probably won’t be quite as alert as they should be, so hopefully they won’t notice us crossing under the bridge.’
Watson looked from Dawson to the bridge, and then back again.
‘Oh, shit,’ he muttered.
Chapter 28
14 September 1939
Watson took the binoculars from Dawson and stared through them for a couple of minutes. Underneath the roadway that spanned the river was a lattice of steel girders that supported the structure. Crossing that way looked difficult, dangerous and possibly even less likely of success than simply trying to swim across. He lowered the binoculars and glanced back at his companion.
‘Fancy yourself as a monkey, then, do you? I don’t like to remind you, but we’re both carrying two weapons. We’ve got webbing belts stuffed full of ammunition and a few grenades, plus all the rest of the gear we’ve picked up along the way. Laden down like this, I don’t think we’re really in a position to swing along under that fucking bridge like a couple of chimpanzees. I’d rather take my chances, shoot the sentries and then run over it. Aren’t there any other bridges we can use?’
Dawson pulled out the map again, checked that they were completely invisible to the German soldiers manning the bridge and turned on his torch for a
few seconds. Then he switched it off again.
‘There’s nothing else marked until you get really close to the border, back the way we’ve come,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ve got a lot of options, mate.’
‘Bugger,’ Watson muttered. ‘What about swimming across?’
The two sappers glanced to their left, at the wide river that glinted in the moonlight. As they’d thought before, it looked deep, and seemed to be quite fast-flowing. It would probably be a challenge even in daylight for a powerful swimmer wearing nothing but a costume.
‘With what we’re carrying,’ Dawson said, ‘I think we’d drown before we got ten feet from the bank. And there’s another reason – I can’t actually swim.’
‘I could try and teach you, really quickly,’ Watson suggested with a grin.
Dawson shook his head. ‘No, I think we’ve either got to use the bridge, or go even further east and look for another way over. And that would take us too close to Rehlingen for my liking.’
‘Bugger,’ Watson said again. ‘So how do we do it?’
Dawson stared down the riverbank towards the bridge for a moment or two. Trees, bushes and undergrowth lining the south bank of the river would offer reasonable cover as they approached the structure.
‘I think we can get pretty close without any chance of them seeing us,’ he said, ‘just by following the bank of the river through those trees. Then we’ll have to wait for a vehicle – any vehicle – to approach the checkpoint, because while they’re looking at that and checking the driver’s papers and stuff, they won’t be looking over the side of the bridge. That’ll be our best chance.’
Watson shook his head. ‘Bloody risky, but we don’t have any other choices,’ he said.
The two sappers checked that none of the weapons and equipment they were carrying would rattle or make any other noise, and set off, working their way as quietly as they could through the sheltering undergrowth. For the first 100 yards or so, there was no problem in staying completely hidden from the view of any of the enemy soldiers on the bridge, but the closer they got to the structure, the more sparse the vegetation became, and the more difficult it was to remain under cover.
They stopped about fifty yards from their objective and studied the ground ahead of them, which didn’t look that promising. Once they got to the bridge they’d be completely out of sight of the soldiers manning the checkpoint, because there was a pathway that ran underneath it, along the riverbank. If they could reach that point, they’d be able to climb up onto the framework of steel girders and make their way across the river undetected. They hoped. The trick was getting to the bridge itself.
The heavy undergrowth had largely petered out, to be replaced by clumps of low bushes that would hide them, certainly, but which would provide very little cover while they were actually moving.
And that presented them with something of a dilemma. If they moved slowly between the bushes, they’d be exposed for quite a long period each time they changed position, but moving faster meant they would be more likely to be seen by the German soldiers, because the human eye is very well adapted to detect movement.
‘Bit of a bugger, this,’ Watson muttered.
Then, from some distance off to their right, they saw a sudden loom of light. It looked as if a vehicle of some sort was heading towards the bridge, along the road that led past Rehlingen and on to Saarlouis.
Dawson glanced up at the soldiers manning the checkpoint. They’d hitched up their weapons and were obviously getting ready to stop whoever was driving down the road.
‘This could be the best chance we’ll get,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll all be staring towards the headlights, and that’ll bugger up their night vision. We’ll wait until the truck or whatever it is gets a bit closer, and then we’ll make a run for it.’
The two men crouched down, watching the headlights – the illumination from which was actually little more than two thin slits of light, because the headlamps had obviously been fitted with blackout screens – move closer. The vehicle slowed perceptibly as it approached the bridge, the driver clearly having seen the armed men and the road-block in front of him.
On the bridge, the German soldiers fanned out, moving around behind the barrier and preparing their weapons so that each of them would have a clear field of fire towards the incoming vehicle if the driver failed to stop. But clearly that wasn’t going to happen, because the truck was already almost at a standstill. Dawson could now see that the vehicle was a small six-wheeled military truck, with a low, sloping bonnet, an open cab behind it and a passenger or cargo area behind that. There were at least two people sitting in the cab, but there appeared to be nobody in the rear section, so possibly it was taking supplies from Rehlingen to the German lines close to the border, or maybe heading over that way to pick up some troops.
Dawson frankly didn’t care why the truck was on the bridge – he was just grateful that it was, because the vehicle’s arrival gave them the opportunity they so desperately needed.
‘Get ready, Dave,’ he said and started moving around one side of the bush where they’d taken refuge. ‘OK, let’s go.’
The two men walked – not ran – to the next piece of cover and ducked down again. No shouts of alarm greeted them, no challenges of any sort.
‘And again,’ Dawson said shortly and immediately started moving.
They were now less than twenty yards from the bridge, but as they stepped out from behind the scrubby bush, there was nothing else in front of them, between them and their objective, apart from grass. Nothing that offered any cover at all. They just had to hope that the soldiers were concentrating all their attention on the truck, and that nobody was peering over the edge of the bridge into the fields surrounding it.
But one of the German soldiers obviously was looking their way, or perhaps he’d caught sight of them in his peripheral vision, because as the two sappers dived for cover under the bridge, there was a sudden shout of alarm from above them. The shout was followed instantly by a burst of fire from a Schmeisser machine-pistol, the bullets raking the ground behind them.
‘That’s fucking torn it,’ Watson said, unslinging his Schmeisser and swiftly checking it.
‘Another good idea down the pan,’ Dawson agreed. He pulled a stick grenade from his belt and unscrewed the metal cap from the end. ‘Wait here,’ he said, heading for the far side of the bridge. ‘With any luck, they’ll be looking for us on that side, where they saw us running, not over here. I’ll lob a grenade up there. Once it goes off, you do the same from that side.’
He ran to the far side of the bridge, took a couple of paces out from under its protection, and glanced up. He saw nobody looking down, so he held the weapon in his right hand, pulled down the ceramic ball to arm the grenade with his left, and then lobbed it as hard as he could upwards and backwards, trying to deliver the weapon as close as possible to the spot where they’d seen the sentries standing.
He heard shouts of alarm from above, as at least one of the German soldiers saw the stick grenade spinning towards them. Then there was a colossal blast that seemed to shake the very bridge itself. A moment of silence, and then a man started screaming.
Dawson knew they had to take advantage of the situation. This was no time for sentiment or mercy – they had to finish the job before any of the German soldiers still alive could recover their wits. Despite the damage the grenade had obviously inflicted, he and Watson were still heavily outnumbered. They had to kill or incapacitate the rest of the enemy soldiers, and as quickly as they could.
Dawson took another grenade from his belt, removed the end cap and stepped over to the side of the bridge again. But as he prepared to throw the weapon, a rifle cracked above him and a bullet buried itself in the ground a mere foot or two away from him.
Then another blast echoed from above him, as Watson’s grenade detonated somewhere on the other side of the bridge. Dawson took advantage of the timing. He stepped out into the open again, pulled the ceramic
ball of the second grenade and threw it up and backwards, then stepped back under the bridge just as the third blast tore through the air. The screaming stopped in that instant.
‘You OK, Dave?’ he shouted.
Watson was standing close to the far side of the bridge, his machine-pistol in his hands. ‘Yeah. Now we go and finish this, right?’ he asked.
Dawson nodded. ‘No other option, mate. And quick as we can before a Jerry patrol comes looking for trouble. You go this side. I’ll take the other.’
Watson nodded, peered upwards at the balustrade of the bridge above them, then stepped forward, turning left to run towards the road that led to Rehlingen, to find a place where he could climb up onto the road itself and get onto the bridge.
On the other side, Dawson mirrored his actions, and seconds later both sappers were striding down the road towards the carnage on the bridge, their machine-pistols held ready, their fingers resting on the triggers, ready for instant action.
Most of the German soldiers had been caught out in the open when the first grenade exploded, and it looked as if the only men who had survived that blast had been those who had been standing on the opposite side of the bridge, to the left of the six-wheeled truck. That had shielded them from most of the effects of the detonation, but when Watson’s grenade had exploded behind them, the situation had been reversed, and they’d been cut down as well.
Looking around, Dawson realized the effects had been simply devastating in the relatively confined space of the road bridge. Four German soldiers lay close to the right-hand side of the bridge parapet, and he guessed that three of them had most likely been killed by the detonation of his first grenade, and the fourth had probably been the soldier who’d fired his Mauser over the side of the bridge at him. On the left-hand side, two other unmoving bodies lay sprawled across the road surface.
The six-wheeled truck had stopped at the drop-down barrier, more or less in the centre of the road, and the two shapes slumped in the cab suggested that they hadn’t survived the blasts either.
To Do or Die Page 17