by Alan Evans
“No!”
Ward and Madden exchanged glances. They had been late getting ashore and racing against time ever since. If the commandos from Campbeltown kept to their timetable, and the explosions suggested so, then they would soon pull back across Roy’s bridge. Then every minute Roy held on waiting for Madden was another minute his men would be exposed to that murderous fire. But Joe must know all that…Ward nodded, then Madden in reluctant agreement. They slipped out of the room and along the side of the landing to the top of the stairs. Beare was down on one knee in the cover of the opposite doorway, Thompson pointing up at the landing above.
The searchlight still swept the street, spilt in at the empty frames of the downstairs windows and over the wreckage in the entrance hall. It lit Joe Krueger and the woman he held at his side. Her hair hung tangled about her face and she stared wide-eyed up at Ward and Madden, anonymous shapes in the dim light above her. For a moment Ward did not recognise this woman as the girl he knew. Then he did.
Peter Madden whispered, “My God! It’s the same girl!”
Joe Krueger said, “There are cells down there. We found her in one of them and the keys hanging on a board. Nobody else.” He finished with an edge of doubt, “She claims she’s a British agent.”
“She is!” Ward ran down the stairs, Madden at his heels.
Catherine Guillard peered up at him. “John?” She was not surprised to see him. She had been afraid but now was free and felt a great surge of relief. Surprise might come later; she could not feel it now.
He held her by the shoulders. “Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head and sagged against him. “Just questions.” Then she pushed away and lifted a hand to brush the hair from her face. “Dönitz is not here. He never was here.”
There was a stunned silence. Madden broke it, refusing to believe her. “How do you know? You were in a cell. We found his coat upstairs!”
Catherine shook her head. “Engel told me. He is the Abwehr officer who arrested me. He said it was his idea to pretend the admiral would stay here tonight. A friend of mine watched and thought he saw Dönitz come here but it was only one of Engel’s clerks, probably wearing the coat you saw. It was all a trick to draw the Resistance into a trap…and I believed it. I told London that Dönitz would be here tonight…”
Madden argued, “This man could have been lying.”
Ward did not want to believe Catherine either, but: “How many men were there in here, Peter?”
They all compared notes, then Madden said, “I make it thirteen: eight down here and five upstairs. Then there’s the one still holding out up there. Maybe more than one, but I don’t think so.”
“Not many for an admiral’s guard.” Ward frowned. “And no flag-lieutenant, no naval personnel at all.”
Joe Krueger muttered, “That doesn’t add up to Dönitz being here.”
Catherine said, “He is at the Château Beauregard, where he usually stays when he comes to St. Nazaire: It is five kilometres from here.”
He could as well have been on the moon.
Quartermain’s months of watching and waiting, Phoebe, the dangerous work of all of them here and the men killed, all for nothing.
Madden took a deep breath. “Well.” He looked at Ward, “We might as well get the next bus back.”
Another thumping explosion shook the house, more glass shattered and fell, dust swirled around them in the hall. Madden said, “That could be the northern winding-house.”
Ward explained to Catherine, “Taking Dönitz was just one part of the raid. The main target is the Normandie dock.”
Madden took off his steel helmet, ran his fingers through his hair and replaced the helmet, settled it on his head with the strap under his chin. He called up the stairs, “Did you hear all that, Sergeant Beare?”
Beare growled bitterly from the darkness above, “Enough, sir.”
“Come on down. We’re going home.”
As Beare slipped across the landing to the stairs he called, “Next time, Fritz.”
He got no answer.
*
Engel heard the voices below, the girl’s among them, but only faintly and he did not understand a word.
He sat in a room five paces from the head of the stairs. His back was against the wall and through the open door he could see the cupboard he had dragged out across the landing as a barrier against grenades. It stopped most of the steel splinters and the others ripped on down the corridor past the door. There had not been a grenade for some minutes, boots had receded softly down the stairs and the voices had ceased.
The Schmeisser lay across his thighs while he tied a handkerchief around the gash in his left forearm. It was bleeding badly and he felt sick. Those Tommies had overrun the house like a battalion, though he would swear they were out-numbered by at least two to one.
He thought they might be waiting for him to go down so he would sit here for a while and stay alive. There was always tomorrow. He wished he had a drink and then remembered the flask Pianka had given him, worked it out of the pocket of his tunic and took a long swallow of the cognac. That was better. He hoped Pianka was all right. The man was a very old soldier and could surely take care of himself—but tonight things were unpredictable and he might take chances to come looking for the man he had saved once before, in Russia.
He said softly, “Sit tight, Pianka, you old bastard. I need you.”
He was lucky to be alive. Would they come up after him? They? Only briefly-glimpsed, quick-moving shadows except when he switched on the light in the hall and saw the tight little group of them coming in fast. Then that bloody grenade blew up, the light went off and one of them down there sprayed the landing. He thought he was dead, then, but got away with only the gash in his arm. The second time, when he lit the upstairs landing, he glimpsed a dark uniform with the gold rings of a naval officer on the cuff, and a broad back that dropped to the floor so the burst from the Schmeisser missed, but a very big man, tall as himself.
He knew he had to watch the stairs but no one came. The gunfire kept on and on all around the dockyard, deafening, maddening, while the searchlights lit the house through the shattered windows and ripped blackout curtains, then swung away to leave it in darkness. The house itself was silent as the grave.
He liked that Guillard girl, in spite of everything.
He wondered about her, if she was safe.
Oh, mother, I feel bad.
He fainted away.
*
Patrick stood on French soil again after nearly two years but did not pause to savour the moment. He had seen some wild parties in Montparnasse but never anything like this. Brilliant light laid the dockside bare for an instant, showed the solid cubes of winding-house and pump-house, the gun on it silent now, wrecked; Roy’s men had done that. Cranes towered, each like a huge gallows with its outstretched jib. Railway lines ran along the quay—Then sudden darkness as the searchlights swept away, blackness he could feel like a sack pulled over his head. Patrick tripped and fell, elbows saving his face, but painfully. He swore and scrambled up again. It was a quarter mile along this bloody dock. He ran.
Firing came from ahead and to his left and then the Thompsons of Lieutenant Denison and the others in Patrick’s protection squad were racketing in front of him, grenades bursting. One man in each protection squad carried grenades and a pistol. The firing ceased. He was almost up with them and could see Denison’s burly figure now and another crane looming, firing again from the other side of the crane, Denison taking it on with his Thompson and the other two hurling grenades. Patrick was up to the crane, steadying, getting a good grip on the Thompson. The grenades burst, the firing ceased and they ran on. Soft thudding of rubber-soled boots, panting breathing, pale flashes of white webbing. Ships in the dock. Two of them. Tankers? Passing the second of them now. Another black cube standing out of the night to the left and the glint of water ahead—the northern winding-house and the water of the Penhouet basin on the other side
of the north gate of the Normandie dock. They were there.
Get down in place in the screen to cover the demolition men, behind this stack of timber! Its resinous smell mingles with the cordite reek of the Thompson trained out over the top of it. Eyes searching: anybody without a blue light, anybody banging about in ammunition boots instead of rubber soles, let them have it. Gulping air after the run but hearing above this panting the boots of the demolition parties coming up, covering the quarter mile at the double under the packs of explosive, up to ninety pounds a man.
Whip-crack of slugs overhead, spit of fire out in the darkness. Give it a burst. Move to a new position. Another burst. Move. Change the magazine. A jerking shadow in the middle distance, crossing from one patch of dark solidity to another and seen against far-off light. Cover it, lead it, squeeze. The jerking shadow falls. Move. Fire. Move. Howling ricochet off the timber and pain, wiping at the blood on one cheek and splinters of wood coming away. Move. Fire.
Gun jammed—blast! Watch the front, hands can deal with the jam and the gun’s invisible in this darkness anyway. Cock it. Magazine off. Thumb out the jammed round—magazine in.
Hell of an explosion away down at the southern end of the dock. Smalley’s party has blown the winding-house there. A while ago Corran Purdon and his four corporals smashed in the door of the winding-house at this end and disappeared inside. They would be setting their charges now. The others are working on the gate. Chant and his party were to deal with the pump-house—
Christ! There it went! A booming roar and the ground lifting.
A closer blast from the gate nearby but a much smaller charge. Were they trying to blow their way into the inside of the gate to set charges there?
Oerlikons opening up from the other side of the Penhouet basin and shells bursting all around. Small-arms fire from the tankers in the dock. Shadows of the gate demolition party running to the side of the dock and taking on the leading tanker with their pistols. Another two with Thompsons scurrying back towards the second tanker. Time to get out, follow them, belting at the double along the dockside and down the tanker’s gangway. Aim the Thompson along the deck and fire the magazine off, all twenty-odd rounds of it. Back up the gangway, nobody firing aboard the tankers now, change the magazine and drop into the covering position again, breathing wide-mouthed.
Fire. Move. Fire.
Deafened as they blow the gate. The demolition party moves back from there. Teeth-jarring concussion as Corran Purdon fires the charges on the winding-house. It lifts clear of the ground and falls back in a pile of rubble.
All done. Both winding-houses, the pump-house and the gate; whacking great holes in that, the water roaring through.
Can’t see how many blokes are left. Can’t see anything most of the time! But there aren’t near as many as came up.
Pulling back along the side of the dock, heading towards Campbeltown, Roy’s bridge and then the re-embarkation area by the Old Mole. Try, to scrounge a lift from cousin Jack.
*
They slipped out of the wreck of the Abwehr office one by one in a spaced file, Madden leading and Ward behind him. The searchlight still swept across the buildings so they moved in short dashes, dropping down close to the wall when the beam came seeking. Broken glass and rubble crunched under their feet when they moved.
Madden held out a spread hand, signalling a halt, then went on alone towards Roy’s bridge to shout the password and clear the way for the rest of them. Ward waited, down on one knee by the wall, and glanced back at the crouched men behind him. Catherine Guillard was somewhere among them. Pinpricks of blue light still marked the commandos. He looked ahead. The swing bridge was only fifty yards away and under fire, from ships in the basin and guns mounted on the U-boat pens on the other side. Stray bullets pecked at the wall above the waiting group and bursting shells showered them with dust and debris.
Madden returned and shouted so all of them could hear, “Close up and follow me!” The huddled figures rose. Ward trailed Madden and heard him call the password, “Weymouth!” They trotted past a man behind a Bren, firing bursts of tracer at one of the minesweepers in the basin. The Bren magazines were all loaded with three rounds of tracer in every five.
Madden halted near the edge of the quay and in the cover of a wall. “Roy’s lost half his men but he’s still holding! Only Roderick’s group to come through now! Go under the bridge!”
They saw the point of that. When they crossed the bridge before it had been under sporadic fire, but now it was swept continuously by machine-guns. Crossing underneath it they would have at least some cover. Its underside was a lattice-work of steel girders, its seating in a well cut out of the quayside below them. Beare went first, then Lockwood. Ward lowered himself down the six foot drop into the well, seized Catherine Guillard around the waist as she followed and set her on her feet. He pointed to Lockwood working his way along between the girders under the bridge and shouted above the din, “Follow him!”
She nodded and swung out over the black water to edge her way across using hands and feet. Ward went after her, keeping close, ready to hold out a steadying hand. The firing from the basin clanged and howled off the bridge above and from the meagre shelter of the girders around them. Beare hauled them in on the far side and shoved them towards the cover of a warehouse wall.
Madden, last across the bridge, came to them and softly called the roll. “Nicholl, Lockwood…”
Answers came out of the darkness, all but one and Beare said, “Spencer was hit on the bridge, sir. Machine-gun. Just after Mr. Ward came over.”
Ward thought it could easily have been Catherine or himself. Spencer was a quiet young man. He had been with Madden on the raid to bring back Peyraud.
Peter Madden said, “Roderick’s group are coming through now and Roy will be pulling back. Colonel Newman is regrouping on the quay by the Old Mole and Roy says the whole area is alive with Jerries—so look out!
He led on and they worked through between the warehouses, threading the narrow canyons. Twice they ran into parties of the enemy and fired savagely at point-blank range. Ward kept ahead of Catherine, Joe Krueger behind her. He emptied his pistol into dark silhouettes that screamed or groaned, fell or ran, then changed its magazine and emptied it again.
They came to the assembly area where the survivors of CHARIOT, less than a hundred and a third of them wounded, held a loose perimeter. They had the cover of a few railway trucks where the silver criss-crossing lines made a big triangle a hundred yards to the north-east of the Old Mole. Madden shouted the password and led his party forward.
Patrick, crouched behind a truck, saw Ward’s tall figure stride by. Back in Falmouth cousin Jack had joked, “Don’t be so bloody rude or I’ll leave you to walk home.” Now, by the look of things, they would all be walking.
Ward stared out at the Old Mole and the Loire. The river was on fire where petrol floated and flamed and on it drifted the blazing wrecks of Fairmiles. The gun on the mole still fired at some target down river and the searchlight at the end swept the estuary. The enemy held the mole so no one would re-embark from it. Besides—He turned to Catherine and told her, “There are no boats to take us back.”
But there was no time to dwell on that. Madden’s little group was sent to plug a hole in the defence around the perimeter. There were many gaps and not enough men to fill them. This was no safe haven—the Germans were closing in on all sides except from the river. It was more of a shoal, the enemy swirling into and out of it like the tide, defenders mingling with attackers and all in the dark.
On the river side there was the glare from the burning petrol. In its light Ward saw Colonel Newman standing in the dubious cover of a railway truck with his second-in-command and adjutant. Madden went to report to Newman, stood rigidly at attention and saluted as if on parade.
Ward lay behind the wheel of a truck with Joe Krueger, Catherine between them. She looked at the river—close to the shore it was not on fire. She had decided that when the s
oldiers had to surrender then she would go that way. She was a poor swimmer so the chance of escape was slender but the alternative was Grünwald.
Ward knew these men would not surrender. He changed the magazine of the Colt again and as he did so looked across towards the little group around Colonel Newman. A German stick grenade wobbled across the red-lit sky and fell close to Newman’s feet but when the smoke and dust blew away he still stood.
Peter Madden came to crouch by Ward: “We’re breaking out into the country and going home through Spain and Gibraltar.”
He allowed this to sink in, then went on, “They’re organising parties and I said there were enough of us for a party on our own. We’re going out across the Southern Entrance. The nearest bridge is only a couple of hundred yards from here across the dockyard but it’s all open ground, so to get to it we’re going back through the warehouses to Roy’s bridge. The ships in the basin have hauled over to the U-boat pens so it should be possible to get along the quay to the outer bridge over the Southern Entrance. That way it’s about six or seven hundred yards.”
Ward, watching his front, squeezed off a shot at a moving figure and saw it go down into the darkness. He asked, “When?” Because the firing around them was growing even heavier, and besides—
“Very soon.” And Madden spoke the thought in Ward’s mind, “It’s getting too hot here and ammunition is running low. How much have we got?”
Ward said, “I’ve one more magazine and five left in this one; fifteen rounds altogether.”
Joe Krueger said, “About the same.”
Madden scowled. “Sergeant Beare?”
“Just checked, sir. Grenades all gone and about thirty rounds a man remaining.”
Joe said quietly, “So we go soon or throw rocks.”
*
They started a few minutes later, at just after three in the morning, the break-out parties tagging one behind the other, with Roy and Newman in the lead. Ward was at the tail with Madden’s party, Catherine in its midst. They wound again through the dark clefts between the warehouses, checking briefly when the head of the column ran into the enemy and bombed or shot its way through, then hurrying on. At the tail they heard the clamour of that fighting and had their own minor actions when they were fired on from alley-ways alongside. That took more of their dwindling ammunition but no one was hit.