As he said the last word, Dawson rammed upwards with all of his strength. The tip of the trench knife ripped St Véran’s heart apart, and he slumped down dead.
Dawson dragged his body to the side of the road and tossed the corpse into the ditch that ran alongside it.
‘Good riddance, you bastard,’ he muttered, and walked away.
The front of his uniform was soaked in blood from the appalling injury he’d inflicted on the French officer, but that wouldn’t be a problem. Dawson walked back to where he’d left the kitbag and opened it up. He pulled out a new clean battledress, stripped off the old clothes and dressed in the new uniform. He carefully folded the old battledress so that the bloodstains were on the inside, tucked it into the kitbag and walked slowly back to the British army camp. He re-entered it using the same route as before.
There were a couple of fires burning there, soldiers sitting round them smoking and drinking tea. Dawson walked over to the biggest one.
‘You look smart, Eddie,’ one of the men said. ‘New uniform?’
‘You bet. The old one was just rags, really. Mind if I get rid of it here?’
‘Help yourself.’
Dawson nodded his thanks, opened up the kitbag, pulled out his old battledress and tossed it onto the flames. He sat down next to the fire, accepted a mug of tea and watched as his old uniform – and all the evidence of his encounter with the French officer – was burnt away to ashes.
‘Thanks, lads,’ he said and stood up and walked back to the tent he was sharing with Dave Watson.
‘It’s done?’ Watson asked, propping himself up on one elbow.
‘It’s done,’ Dawson nodded. ‘I used the trench knife I took off one of the Jerry soldiers at Celine’s farmhouse and I left it there. When someone finds the body, they’ll most probably start looking for a renegade German soldier.’
‘Well, they certainly won’t come looking for you. You’ve been here with me all evening. Nobody saw you leave or come back, I hope?’
Dawson shook his head. ‘No. I climbed the fence at the bottom of the field.’
‘So that’s it, is it?’
‘For St Véran it is, Dave, but I’m not quite finished yet. That’s one score settled, but I’ve still got that bastard of an SS officer to take care of.’
‘You might never see him again.’
‘Don’t worry, Dave. I don’t know how, but somehow, somewhere, I’m going to find him. I made Celine a promise and I’m bloody well going to keep it. I don’t like unfinished business.’
Acknowledgements
I’d like to acknowledge the unswerving encouragement of my agent, Luigi Bonomi, who has always fought my corner with tenacity and enthusiasm. Profound thanks are also due to my editor at Macmillan, Jeremy Trevathan, who has, from the start, been whole-hearted in his support of this book, and for his incisive and inspired editing. On a more practical note, I must offer my thanks to Ronald Fairfax, author of Corky’s War (Mutiny Press, ISBN 978-0-9559705-0-4) for his invaluable assistance in the vital field of research. As always, any errors of fact are mine and mine alone.
Author’s Note
I’ve tried to base this story as far as possible on the real events that occurred during the first few days following the start of the Second World War and described as accurately as I could the tools and techniques used by the soldiers involved in that conflict.
The Saar Offensive
It’s not generally known, but French forces entered German territory in the Saarland region within about a week of the declaration of war. The ostensible reason for this invasion, which covered a very wide front but was extremely shallow, and which met no German resistance, was to assist the Polish forces by trying to divert Hitler’s attention away from that country.
It didn’t work. The idea was that this probing advance would be followed by an all-out assault by about forty divisions, including one armoured division, three mechanized divisions, seventy-eight artillery regiments and forty tank battalions. But on 12 September 1939 the Anglo-French Supreme War Council met for the first time at Abbeville in France and decided – for whatever reason – that all offensive actions would stop immediately.
Maurice Gamelin, the head of the French army, ordered his troops to advance no closer than one kilometre from the German positions along the Siegfried Line, but didn’t tell his Polish counterpart. Instead, Gamelin informed Marshal Edward Rydz-Śmigły that half of his divisions had contacted the enemy, and that the French advance had forced the withdrawal of at least six divisions of Wehrmacht troops from Poland, all of which was blatantly untrue.
The next day General Louis Faury, the commander of the French Military Mission to Poland, told the Polish chief of staff that the planned major offensive had been postponed from 17 September to 20 September. Simultaneously, orders were issued for the French divisions to retreat to their barracks along the Maginot Line. The major offensive never took place.
The ‘Bouncing Betty’
The ‘Bouncing Betty’, or S-mine, was manufactured from 1935 onwards and became a vital component of the Third Reich’s defensive strategy. Until production ended with Germany’s defeat in 1945, nearly two million S-mines had been made. They were responsible for inflicting heavy casualties and slowing, and in some cases even repelling, advances into German-held territory throughout the war. The design was lethal, successful and later very much imitated by the arms manufacturers of other nations. It was undoubtedly one of the most definitive weapons of the Second World War.
The first troops to encounter the S-mine were the French soldiers who entered the Saar region in September 1939, and the weapon contributed materially to their withdrawal. The French nicknamed the mine ‘the silent soldier’, but the American term ‘Bouncing Betty’ became more widely used later in the conflict.
Lee-Enfield .303 rifle (SMLE)
Within the military, the minimum permitted score for competence with this weapon was fifteen hits on a target at 200 yards in one minute, but combat troops routinely averaged between twenty and thirty hits. The standard of British Army marksmanship and rate of fire using the SMLE at the Battle of Mons in 1914 was so high that the German soldiers believed they were being machine-gunned.
The all-time record with a bolt-action rifle was set in 1914 by Sergeant Instructor Snoxall, who hit a twelve-inch bull at 300 yards’ range thirty-eight times in one minute with his SMLE.
British and German army transport
By 1939, the British army was completely mechanized. The British Government had, ironically, sold the last of its horses to Germany and, despite its tanks and artillery, about ninety per cent of the Wehrmacht’s transport was still horse-drawn.
Mine-clearance
One of the principal tools used for mine-clearance operations was the bayonet. The long sharp blade allowed a sapper to probe the ground in front of him by sliding it in diagonally, which meant he could detect the body of a mine without touching the trigger assembly positioned just below the surface.
Mine detectors used during the Second World War were notoriously unreliable and prone to spontaneous failure, but they did work and would be used by sappers when they were available.
Max Adams
Monpazier, France
First published in the United Kingdom in 2010 by Pan Macmillan
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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United Kingdom
Copyright © James Barrington writing as Max Adams, 2010
The moral right of James Barrington writing as Max Adams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without p
ermission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781911591092
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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