by Alan Evans
They could see on the other side of the Old Entrance the rubble of the pump-house and southern winding-house and they caught glimpses of the traffic on the river, for the most part launches on patrol. German troops, armed sailors and marines picked their way edgily through the litter of the shattered dock. But always Campbeltown drew the eyes of Ward and Krueger. As time went by men climbed aboard her, soldiers and sailors, officers among them.
Joe said disgustedly, “Fritz is looting her!”
Ward left him on watch and crawled back to the nest in the sacks by the head of the ladder. Lockwood was on watch there and he had fashioned a peephole through the sacks so he could lie inside their cover and still see through the open trap at the head of the ladder to the floor and the entrance of the warehouse. The commandos not on watch were sleeping, huddled down in the gloom.
Ward sat down by Catherine’s side. They talked little and it was not about her capture or his rescue of her, but of the few hours they had spent together in London and on the Hampshire coast. That was something to look back to. They did not talk of the future.
The morning crept on. There were bursts of firing now and again, but most of it distant. Ward stood another hour-long watch at the window. Catherine went with him and at the end of it they returned to the refuge among the sacks. Once Madden came from prowling the loft and said, “The ladder we came in by is the only way out, so we’re done for if we’re found. Still, nobody seems interested in this place. We might get away with it.”
They had all cleaned their weapons. Ward had five rounds of ammunition left in the Colt while the others had between five and ten rounds. He knew in his heart that Madden was only trying to keep up their spirits with talk of escape. The Germans would be bound to search this place before nightfall.
It was close to noon when he crawled over the sacks to the window to relieve Madden. Joe Krueger was already there, staring out at Campbeltown and Catherine went with Ward again so the four of them lay side by side but well back from the window. A breeze came in off the river, tainted with smoke, and cold. Catherine shivered and Ward pressed her hand.
The scene below had changed little except that Campbeltown now swarmed with men. Joe said, “There’s more aboard her now than she brought here, I reckon three or four hundred.”
Madden started to move back but stopped as Joe went on: “Huh-uh! This could mean trouble!” He pointed left to the bridge Roy had held for so long under murderous fire. On the far side a group of soldiers were halted. The officer commanding them was bareheaded but he topped them all. He stood stiffly erect, looking down at a man in a slouch hat with a long leather coat hung over his shoulders like a cape. Another man, tall and blond, and a young woman in a fur coat, walked on quickly towards Campbeltown.
Catherine said softly, “The tall officer is Hauptmann Engel. He is the one who held out to the end in the Abwehr building. He is talking to Grünwald.”
Ward felt her tremble and knew this time it was not from cold. He asked, “Grünwald?”
Catherine said, “He is Gestapo. He came for me but Engel arrested me first. If Grünwald had taken me I would have gone to Gestapo headquarters for—interrogation. I would have been better dead.”
Ward watched them. They were good targets and with a Thompson—but there was no ammunition to spare for vengeance. They would need it all at the end and that would be soon. He thought that Hauptmann Engel was hunting them and would seek them out. He was sure of it.
Catherine said, ‘.’Those two men hate each other.”
*
Engel said, “What brings you down here when you could be in your warm office with your files? Did somebody tell you the fighting was over?”
Grünwald had halted because Engel stepped in his path. He saw his wife Ilse and Horstmann hurrying on without him. He was impatient to follow but he smiled at Engel, sure of himself now. “My sense of duty calls me here, the same sense of duty that will make me write a report on the way you took my prisoner from me by force.”
Engel smiled back at him. “It will be quite a report. You’ve been a lying swine all your life and you won’t change now.”
Grünwald’s smile became a grimace. “You will regret that!”
“No, I won’t. My only regret is that the Tommies didn’t catch up with you, but no Tommy could run that fast.”
Grünwald looked past Engel to the soldiers grinning behind him. He edged around Engel and started off along the quay.
Engel rasped, “You’re going to the ship?”
Grünwald turned his head but did not stop. “So? There may be valuable information on her.” He walked after his wife and Horstmann.
One of the soldiers muttered wistfully, “I heard there could be food and cigarettes aboard.”
“So did he,” Engel said shortly. Then he snapped at them, “But you lot are here to hunt Tommies, so keep your eyes open!”
He watched Grünwald hurrying, almost running down to the old destroyer. Then his eyes moved on to the other destroyers now anchored out in the channel about 400 metres away, Jaguar and the other boats of Schmidt’s Fifth Flotilla. A Schnellboot was slipping into the Old Entrance on the tide and tying up to the steps opposite him. She was about thirty-five metres long, low and narrow, with an open bridge over the little wheelhouse. A 20mm Oerlikon was mounted forward, another aft. He could see Rudi Moller, her captain and his friend on her bridge, but he would have recognised Rudi’s boat anyway from the death’s-head painted black on the superstructure. Engel rasped, “Come on!” He limped towards the bridge at the head of his men.
*
Joe Krueger said softly, “Well, I’ll be God-damned! It’s Dirty Bill!”
Peter Madden, helmet removed for his time on watch, ran his fingers through curly hair matted with sweat. “Who?”
“The E-boat. We’ve met her before.”
“Ah!” Madden was uninterested. The time for decision was almost on them; that was a German search party approaching on the other side of the Old Entrance. He turned his head, saw Beare watching him, and beckoned. He asked Krueger absently, “Why d’you call ’em E-boats, anyway? What does the ‘E’ stand for?”
Joe shook his head. “I don’t know and I’ve never met anybody who did. Jerry calls ’em S-boats, Schnellboot, schnell meaning quick. They’re that, all right; cruise at thirty knots and can hit forty.”
Ward did not take his eyes off the boat. Back in Falmouth Quartermain had said the E-boat went to sea and returned by the Old Entrance. And so she had…Here was a slim chance—if he could take it. And this was an old enemy.
As the boat was made fast the rumble of her engines died away and her engineroom staff came up from below, the coxswain and the wireless operator from the wheelhouse under the bridge. Her captain climbed the steps to stand on the quay. He and all his crew stared across at Campbeltown.
Joe muttered, “More of them to loot the old girl.”
Catherine asked, “Does it matter? She’s done her job.”
Ward said, “She’s not finished yet—”
The tall man, Engel, limped across the bridge, his soldiers behind him. He looked at their warehouse but turned to head towards the E-boat.
Beare had come up and Madden whispered, “Tell Lock-wood and Driscoll—”
But Ward shoved back from the window and took command: “Quick! Everybody! Never mind the look-out here!” He scrambled back into the refuge among the sacks, the others following. They were all there, huddled down, Driscoll with his eye to the hole through which he could see the warehouse below.
Ward said rapidly, “A search party is coming this way and they’ll be in here any minute—but there’s an E-boat outside and I propose to take her. Mr. Krueger here can make her go. Right?” He glanced at Joe, who nodded. Ward went on, “We ambush the search party but not when the first one comes in at the door; we wait till we can get a few of them. Then across to the boat.”
He paused and looked at Madden. “All right, Peter?”
“Sure.” But Madden avoided his eyes.
Ward knew why: Peter was too aware of the odds. They might ambush some of the soldiers but the rest would be waiting outside and the E-boat carried a crew of twenty or more—and machine-guns. Ward said, “If we surrender, then we’ll be prisoners of war, but Catherine won’t. She’ll be treated as a spy. So I’m not surrendering, I’m giving this a try. The chances are poor, and any man who wishes can stay behind and give himself up afterwards. No disgrace. I only ask for his ammunition. In my eyes you’re all heroes and nothing can change that. So, who’s coming?”
Eyes stared distantly out of drawn faces shadowed black by dirt and stubble. Ward glared as madly as any. He looked around the little circle and saw every man with a lifted hand.
*
Engel walked past the warehouse and halted by Rudi Moller. “What brings you here, old friend? That drink I promised you?”
Rudi glanced around, “Franz!” Then his eyes widened as he took in Engel’s ripped and dirty uniform, the blood on his sleeve and hands. “You’ve been in a fight.”
“One of those nights. Where were you?”
“At sea, with Jaguar and the flotilla, hunting down the Tommies’ launches. I usually slip into the basin this way—it gets us ashore quicker. But there’ll be no going ashore for us today. We’ve topped up with diesel and we’re waiting for orders here where we can see signals from Jaguar out there in the channel; our wireless has broken down.”
“Tanked-up? What range does that give you?”
Rudi shrugged. “Around eleven hundred kilometres at cruising speed.”
Engel said ironically, “You’re going to chase them all the way to England?”
Rudi shook his head. “No more hunting. But after what happened last night I’m going to be ready for anything.”
“Did any get away?”
“A few, in the first hour.”
“And afterwards, after the demolitions?”
“None.” That was said with flat certainty and Engel thought that his instinct had been right: his quarry was still here in St. Nazaire. Moller went on: “But I tell you one thing—there’s something bloody funny about her.” He nodded at Campbeltown.
Engel could see Grünwald on her deck now with Ilse and Horstmann. He asked. “What d’ye mean, funny?”
Rudi Moller jammed hands in his trouser pockets and scowled. “They’re not mugs. They’d know they couldn’t smash through the gate with an old destroyer like that.”
Engel said, “The engineers aboard her now say the Tommies packed her front end with concrete to give her more punch.”
Rudi shot a quick glance at him. “What about an explosive charge?”
“None. Just the concrete.”
Moller shook his head, not satisfied, then: “She’s one of the old American flush-deck destroyers that the Yanks sold to the British. One just like her gave me a hell of a scare a few weeks ago and this one scares me now.”
Engel said, “I have work to do but remember to come for that drink.” Moller nodded but did not answer and Engel turned away, left him staring across at Campbeltown.
*
Ward looked round at the faces shadowed in the half light that filtered down to them where they lay at the bottom of the nest of sacks. “Thank you.” Then he gave his orders: “I’ll lead, then Captain Madden, Lockwood, Driscoll, Sergeant Beare.” All the Thompson guns.
Catherine whispered, “You said the ship was not finished. What did you mean?”
Ward checked that the Colt was loose in the holster. “Two explosives experts, Lieutenant Tibbits and Captain Pritchard, packed a four-ton charge in her bow.” Campbeltown was a chariot of fire; CHARIOT was no haphazard choice of name for this operation.
Catherine’s eyes widened. “Four tons!”
Ward nodded, “Twenty-four depth charges set in concrete, with small holes left in it to drop delayed-action pencil fuses down to the charges. I don’t know whether Tibbits slapped some cement on the holes afterwards but maybe he did because the way Campbeltown is crowded means Jerry hasn’t found the charges or even suspects they’re there.”
Then Driscoll interrupted him. “Search party!”
He eased aside so Ward could peer through the peephole. The tall officer was framed in the rectangle of the doorway, a submachine-gun in his right hand. Ward could not see his face, silhouetted as he was against the light, yet something about the way the man stood, the turn of his head, stirred memory. But it eluded him, was gone as the man limped forward with a peculiar stiff swinging of one leg. Ward had drawn his pistol and it was cocked, trained on the man below, set safe with Ward’s thumb on the catch. Not yet. They would have to ambush the search party from up there then fight their way out. The man looked up, eyes searching the darkness of the roof and Ward pressed his face down into the sacks so the white of it would not give him away. Not yet. Count to ten, give him time to come on to pointblank range. One…two…
Engel was some yards ahead of his men who were still outside on the quay. He stood in an alley between crates stacked high above his head and peered up into the gloom above the crates, the lifted barrel of the Schmeisser following the line his eyes took as they searched. Had there been a flicker of movement then? Nothing now. If he found the girl, would she betray her friends? He knew she would not. So she would go to Grünwald.
Engel wondered if he really wanted to find her—
The blast sucked the air from his lungs and hurled him down the alley. He was unconscious before the flash lit the inside of the warehouse brighter than noonday, and knew nothing of the stacks of crates blown inwards like leaves on the wind to fall on and around him.
In the loft they were well away from the front of the building and sheltered by the bags of cotton waste, so that, although great sections of the roof tore off and spun away, and they were all rolled along the floor, none of them lost consciousness. They screwed up their eyes against the searing flash and winced at the thunderclap that deafened them—all in a split second—then lay, alive and aware but numbed by shock, deafened, blind, and uncomprehending.
Ward, alone among them all, understood what had happened. Campbeltown had blown up.
Like Boston, Campbeltown never let you down when it really mattered.
Now it was up to them. He climbed to his feet and stooped to reach out a groping left hand, realised he still gripped the Colt in his right, found Catherine and pulled her up to him. Her lips moved but his ears still sang and he shook his head, shrugging. A breeze was sucked in through the shattered roof and the dust cleared enough for him to see Madden, Beare and the others getting up from where they were scattered along the floor. He waved at them with the pistol, gesturing towards the ladder.
Joe and Peter went with him across the now sagging boards while Beare herded the others ahead of him.
The ladder was still there and secure. The concrete floor from the foot of it to the door was littered with rubble but swept clear of the crates, now piled high in the rear half of the warehouse. Ward dropped down the ladder and stood at its foot as the others descended. One by one he urged them on their way, Catherine included, with a shove towards the door. Last down the ladder was Lockwood and Ward was about to follow him to the door when he saw movement from the corner of his eye. He turned and saw the piled crates shifting, settling, looked into a narrow valley in the mountains of them and saw Hauptmann Engel, wedged and helpless. This was his enemy. This was the man whose Dönitz masquerade had out-witted them. This was the man from the house along the quay, the man who had laughed. And this was the man who had captured Catherine.
Ward lifted his pistol, aimed it carefully.
They peered at each other in the gloom, scant yards between them, closer than they had been on that day of high summer in 1940, and recognition came to both of them. It stayed Ward’s hand, long enough for the white heat to go from his anger. He was no more able to kill this man now than he had been in 1940. He lowered the Colt and turned away. Catherine Guillard wa
s at the door, peering back into the dust-hung dimness of the warehouse and he ran to her.
Engel watched him go. With the shifting of the crates he had become blearily conscious, just in time to see Ward at the foot of the ladder and turning. Then Engel had stared again into the muzzle of this Englishman’s gun, even as he had stared two years before. But today there was a difference, for today he too was armed. Ward could not see it, in the gloom and behind a screening box, but he still held his Schmeisser and it would only have needed a twitch of his wrist and a squeeze of his forefinger—
But the Schmeisser had sagged under its own weight and his weariness with killing, and he watched, only half conscious and deaf as the Englishman turned away and went quickly to the door. Engel did not hear the rumble of the crates as they shifted again but he saw them as they toppled in an avalanche and buried him.
Ward grabbed Catherine’s arm and they ran across the quay with Madden and the others, stumbling through the rubble. Campbeltown no longer rested on the dock gate. The gate had been blown to fragments, so had the fore-part of Campbeltown and her after-end had been washed inside the dock and lay there on the bottom. No one aboard her had survived, nor had anyone caught in the open within hundreds of yards of her. The soldiers on the quay and the crew of the E-boat had gone but there were butcher’s-shop traces of them.
Ward led his party down the slippery steps on the side of the Old Entrance wall and aboard the E-boat. He saw she had lost some paint where the blast had hurled her against the quay, despite the fenders slung between her side and the wall. But the German ensign still flew over her.