Then he heard the first few rounds fired by the Germans smash into the back of the vehicle, and dropped down into his seat. There was nothing he could do now – it all depended on getting away. If the truck stopped or Watson crashed it, they were done for.
Dawson glanced behind and saw that the truck was creating quite a trail of dust from the poor road surface. ‘Weave about a bit more,’ he instructed. ‘Try and kick up a bit more dust. Make us a more difficult target.’
The vehicle lurched across the road as Watson swung the wheel to the left, then back again to the right.
But Dawson could still hear the thuds as bullets smashed into the back cargo area of the truck. The steel was stopping them – or at least, none of the bullets had come through into the cab – but the tyres were vulnerable to a stray round. But with six wheels, unless the Germans managed to shoot out two tyres on the same side, or hit one of the front tyres, the truck would keep going.
The distance between the vehicle and the German soldiers increased with every second. Beyond about 700 yards, he reckoned they should be safe.
Suddenly, the sound of the bullets hitting the back of the truck stopped.
Watson glanced at Dawson. ‘You think we’re out of range?’
‘Not yet. Let me take a look.’
Gingerly, Dawson stood up in the cab of the truck and looked back the way they’d come, but the dust cloud made it almost impossible to see. ‘Stop weaving, Dave,’ he said. ‘I can’t see a fucking thing.’
‘Maybe that’s why they stopped firing,’ Watson suggested. ‘If they couldn’t see us any more, they’d just be wasting ammunition.’
As Watson straightened up and started driving down the centre of the road, the dust being thrown up by the vehicle diminished considerably, and Dawson could finally see back as far as the village.
‘It wasn’t the dust, Dave,’ he said, slumping back into his seat.
‘What was it, then?’
‘They’ve turned their vehicle round, and they’re following us. That fucking truck is full of SS troopers and it’s only about a quarter of a mile behind us.’
Chapter 31
14 September 1939
Watson glanced in the small side mirror, mounted on a steel rod on the front wing, and shook his head. ‘I suppose our luck had to run out some time,’ he said, raising his voice over the roar of the truck’s engine and rattling of the suspension over the uneven surface of the road. ‘What the hell do we do now? Can we outrun them?’
‘Bloody unlikely,’ Dawson replied, again lifting himself out of his seat to look behind at the pursuing vehicle. ‘Not on these roads. This truck might be a little bit faster on flat tarmac, but I doubt if we’ll be able to drive quickly enough to lose them on this kind of cart-track. That doesn’t stop you trying to go quicker, though,’ he added, as Watson swung the truck round a bend in the road.
Dawson glanced back again, then ducked down into the cab of the truck, moments before a shot ricocheted off the road surface somewhere beside them, and then another hit the back of the vehicle. They heard three more shots, but had no idea where the bullets went.
‘One of the Jerries is leaning out of the passenger door, firing his Mauser,’ Dawson said, ‘but we’re bouncing around and so are they, so it’d be a miracle if they did any damage.’
‘Why don’t you shoot back?’ Watson suggested. ‘They’re a bigger target. You might make them drop back a bit.’
Dawson nodded agreement, picked up one of the Mauser K98k rifles and turned round in his seat.
‘I’ll climb into the back,’ he shouted. ‘Give me sixty seconds. Then try and keep the truck as straight as you can for about half a minute and I’ll fire off a few rounds.’
Dawson stared at the lorry for a few moments, checking that the German soldier wasn’t still hanging out of the pursuing vehicle aiming his rifle at them, then clambered into the rear cargo and passenger area of the truck. Holding on firmly to the seats that lined both sides, and bracing his body against the violent and unpredictable motion of the vehicle, he moved unsteadily to the back.
Whatever he did and however carefully he aimed the Mauser, he knew his chances of even hitting the lorry lay somewhere between nil and slim, but Watson was right – if he could frighten the driver and make him back off, even a little, maybe a hundred yards or so, that would give them a bit of breathing space.
There was blanket lying on the floor in the back of the truck, and Dawson scooped it up. A sandbag would have been better, but the blanket would do at a pinch. Resting his rifle on the seats, he quickly folded it to form a bulky pad. Then he placed the blanket on top of one of the steel rear doors of the truck, picked up his weapon and rested the barrel of the Mauser on it. Hopefully, the fabric of his makeshift pad would help to cushion the rifle against the movement of the truck and improve his accuracy a little.
He sat down on the seat, pulled the butt of the Mauser back into his shoulder and tried to bring his sights to bear on the following vehicle – an almost impossible task. Every time his finger started to squeeze the trigger, the truck hit a pothole or a lump in the road and threw him off his aim. Dawson knew he was just wasting his time, and if he started shooting he’d just be wasting ammunition.
But he had to do something.
He turned round to look at the road in front of the speeding truck. It ran straight for about another hundred yards, then bent sharply to the left, and about fifty yards beyond the curve was a large stand of trees and undergrowth.
An idea began to form in Dawson’s mind, and he lowered the rifle and staggered across to the driving cab. He grabbed hold of the steel back of the cab and leant over it, towards Watson.
‘There,’ he shouted, ‘just around the bend. When you get to that clump of trees, stop the truck.’
‘Stop it? Are you out of your fucking mind? They’ll be all over us.’
‘No they won’t. Just do it. The moment you’ve stopped, grab a Schmeisser and get ready. As soon as they come around that corner, we open up at them with everything we’ve got. We’ll be stationary, so we’ll be able to make every shot count. OK?’
‘Fucking last-gasp plan if I ever heard one,’ Watson grumbled.
It sounded slightly desperate to Dawson as well, and it was his idea. But it was about the only option they had, as far as he could see.
He leant further over into the cab and grabbed a couple of the stick grenades as well. If his estimate of the distances involved was right, when the German army lorry came round the bend, he’d be able to lob the grenades with some chance of reaching the vehicle. And with Watson firing a machine-pistol to make the soldiers keep their heads down, Dawson reckoned they could do so serious damage to their pursuers, with any luck.
He looked behind. The German lorry was a little further away now, maybe 500 yards or so back: Watson had been driving noticeably faster and had slightly increased their lead. Then Dawson looked ahead. The bend was now only about twenty yards away, and he could see Watson was already altering his grip on the steering wheel, preparing to turn the truck to the left.
Dawson transferred the Mauser to his left hand, took a firm grip on one of the seats with his right and braced himself for the change in direction. He leant sideways as the truck started to swing around the curve and transferred his gaze to the road behind them. The Germans were still lumbering after them, but moments later they were lost to sight behind the shrubs and trees on the inside of the curve.
‘Now, Dave, now!’ Dawson yelled. ‘Hit the brakes.’
Watson complied, knocking the truck out of gear and slamming his foot on the brake pedal. The truck bounced and shuddered as the wheels locked, slewing slightly sideways across the road. Dawson stepped to the rear of the cargo area – the steel doors at the end should, he hoped, provide both partial concealment and some protection for him – placed the Mauser on the seat beside him and picked up the first grenade. He unscrewed the cap on the base of the wooden handle and took the ceramic ball in his
left hand, ready to pull it so that the moment the German lorry appeared he could arm the weapon and immediately throw it.
‘Get ready, Dave,’ he said. ‘We should see it any second.’
Watson had climbed out of the driving seat, leaving the engine running, and had moved round to the side of the vehicle. He had one Schmeisser in his hands and another leaning against one of the rear wheels, ready for immediate use should the first weapon jam.
The two men waited, tense with anticipation.
‘So where is it?’ Watson asked. ‘We should have seen it by now.’
‘I don’t know. It was only about five hundred yards behind us.’
Dawson stared back down the track, but he could neither see the German lorry nor hear the sound of its engine. Where the hell was it? Had it broken down in the last few seconds? Had the driver lost control and crashed into the ditch beside the road?
Neither seemed likely in the circumstances. There was still no sign of the lorry.
Dawson looked round, seeking inspiration. And then, suddenly, he made an intuitive leap.
‘Oh, fuck, oh fuck,’ he muttered. ‘Back in the truck, Dave. Get us out of here!’ he yelled. ‘I know what these bastards have done. Get us moving, right now!’
Watson didn’t argue, just grabbed his spare machine-pistol, ran back to the still-open driver’s door and jumped back behind the wheel. He slammed the gearbox into first and dropped the clutch, sending the truck lurching down the road.
At the same moment, Dawson took aim with his Mauser and fired, but not at something behind the vehicle. Instead, his target was off to one side, beyond the clump of trees they’d used to stage their impromptu ambush.
‘What is it?’ Watson shouted, over the noise of the truck’s engine, as Dawson fired a second, and then a third, round.
‘That bastard of a German SS officer,’ Dawson shouted back, searching for a new target. ‘He obviously saw we didn’t appear on the other side of that patch of cover, and must have guessed what we were doing. Then he sent his troops overland to cut the corner and attack us from the side.’
Dawson stopped and fired again, then ducked as three shots echoed from beyond the trees to the side of the track, two bullets slamming into the truck.
He put down the Mauser, grabbed one of the Schmeissers and pulled the trigger half a dozen times until the magazine was empty, spraying the bullets into the area on the inside of the bend, where the SS troops had cut across the corner.
‘That should make those Jerries keep their bloody heads down,’ he muttered, clipping a fresh magazine into place and firing another couple of short bursts.
Watson had got the vehicle up to speed and was weaving from one side of the road to the other, chucking up a cloud of dust as he did so. The truck had already covered a couple of hundred yards from the place where they’d stopped. Another bend was ahead, and another stand of trees, and the two men knew they’d be invisible to their pursuers once they got round it.
They’d now moved well out of the effective range of the Schmeisser, so Dawson picked up his Mauser and fired twice more, emptying the magazine. Then he picked up another rifle and fired five shots, rapidly, from that, not aiming at specific targets, just into the area where he’d spotted the grey-green shapes of SS soldiers.
More shots rang out, and three more smashed into the side of the truck. As he returned fire, Dawson wondered just how much more punishment the vehicle could take.
Then they rounded the bend. Watson concentrated on putting as much distance as possible between them and the Germans.
Dawson picked up the end cap for the stick grenade from the floor and replaced it on the end of the wooden handle – the last thing he wanted was some jolt of the truck trapping the ceramic ball under a seat or something and then arming the weapon – then he climbed back into the cab and sat down beside Watson.
‘So that Jerry officer must have guessed we’d stopped to ambush him?’ Watson suggested.
‘Exactly.’ Dawson nodded. ‘Whoever he is, he’s one bloody clever bastard.’
‘Fucking lucky you guessed when you did, then.’
Dawson picked up the map and glanced at it. ‘Yeah, but we’re not out of the woods yet. Those Jerries will be back in their lorry by now and steaming along behind us, desperate to try and catch us up. And that’s not all: somewhere right in front of us there’s another main road that we’ve got to cross.’
‘How far away do you reckon that is?’
‘I don’t know, mate. I don’t know my arse from my elbow now. Let me try and work it out. Hope it’s not too close, because if they’ve got guards on the road, they’d have heard all the shooting and will be expecting us.’
The truck swept round another bend and there, just over 200 yards in front of them, was the road itself. Even at that distance, both men could clearly see the steel barrier across the road, the two motorcycle combination outfits and the four German soldiers looking straight at them.
Chapter 32
14 September 1939
‘Bugger. What the hell now?’ Watson asked.
‘Keep going,’ Dawson said, reaching down and picking up two stick grenades, ‘but drop your speed down. Make it look as it we’re just a couple of German soldiers on some routine mission.’
‘You’re going to try and fight our way through?’
‘We’ve got no bloody option, just for a change. We’ve got a truck-load of angry Jerry soldiers hot on our heels and a German road-block right in front of us. We can’t talk our way through, because we’re wearing British uniforms and neither of us can speak enough German to convince anyone.’
‘We could surrender, I suppose,’ Watson suggested, easing his foot off the accelerator pedal.
‘After the trail of carnage we’ve left behind? They’d shoot us out of hand. No, mate, I’m sorry, but it’s do or die. Either we fight our way through this or we die right here, right now.’
Watson glanced at his companion, then back towards the road-block, now perhaps only 100 yards away. ‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘Give me one of those Schmeissers and make sure the fucking thing’s fully loaded.’
Dawson picked one up, snapped a fresh magazine into place and handed it to Watson. Then he checked another machine-pistol for himself and slung it ready for instant use. Finally, he removed the safety caps from the two grenades and laid them gently on the seat beside him.
‘Ready?’ Watson asked.
Dawson nodded. ‘I’m ready. Start slowing down when you get close to the road-block, just as if you were going to stop, but don’t lose too much speed because we’ll need enough momentum to smash through that barrier. Hopefully the soldiers will see our German helmets and recognize them before they spot the colour of our uniforms, so that might put them slightly off-guard.’
‘The grenades?’ Watson asked.
‘I’ll wait until we get to about thirty yards away, then throw them. The moment I do, you floor the accelerator pedal and crash through that barrier. And when you get to the junction, just take any bloody road you can see on the other side and get us out of here.’
Watson’s right hand strayed nervously to the pistol-grip of the Schmeisser, to check it was within easy reach. He put both hands back on the steering wheel and looked straight ahead.
The soldiers manning the road-block were all armed with machine-pistols. Dawson also noticed that the four men had moved apart slightly, to give each of them a clear field of fire, and each soldier was holding his machine-pistol at the ready, pointing at the approaching truck, which was clearly the subject of their interest. One of them took a couple of steps forward and raised his left arm in the universal signal meaning ‘stop’.
Dawson held the first grenade in his right hand, below the level of the dashboard of the truck and well out of sight, clutching the ceramic ball in his other hand.
Watson dropped the gearbox down into first as the truck reached about forty yards from the barrier.
As he did so, Dawson pulled t
he cord on the stick grenade, priming the weapon. But he didn’t immediately throw it.
Watson glanced at him in alarm as he held the live grenade in his right hand.
Dawson counted one, two, and only then did he stand up in his cab and throw the weapon as hard as he could towards the four German soldiers.
‘Now, Dave. Hard as you can through the barrier,’ Dawson shouted.
One of the Germans squeezed the trigger of his Schmeisser, but his burst of fire was poorly aimed because he ran for cover at the same time. The other three men scattered, shouting in alarm and diving towards the only place that offered them even the possibility of safety – the motorcycles and sidecars parked just behind them.
As the truck started accelerating, the grenade exploded with a deafening blast, still in the air and close to where the four soldiers had been standing. Screams of pain filled the air. Dawson had already primed the second weapon and immediately threw that towards them as well. Then he grabbed his machine-pistol and aimed the weapon at the area where the Germans had dived for cover.
Watson wrenched the gear lever into second and again stamped his foot onto the accelerator. The truck swept past the two motorcycles, and as it did so Dawson fired three bursts, but at the motorcycles themselves, not the soldiers. Petrol poured from ruptured fuel tanks and two of the tyres blew under the impact of the bullets. Seconds later there was a dull ‘whump’ as the spilt fuel was ignited by some spark, turning the machines into a blazing inferno.
Then the front of the truck hit the steel barrier, a single red and white painted pole, the base mounted on a concrete plinth, the other end resting in a Y-shaped steel fork on the opposite side of the narrow road.
The truck probably weighed over two tons and at the moment of impact was travelling a little over twenty miles an hour. The barrier stood no chance at all. The pole was smashed to one side, the free end torn out of the steel fork, and the base twisted completely clear of the mount on the plinth. Both the truck’s headlamps shattered, but otherwise there was no real damage, the heavy steel bumper taking the brunt of the impact.
To Do or Die Page 20