by Thomas Wood
The concrete walls around me began to shake and shout, as the bellowing engines grew closer and the anti-aircraft guns suddenly began to open up in response. The German pom-pom guns sounded very different to the British ones, and it was something that I had struggled to get used to ever since being in France. They were louder, deeper, as if they were more mature and were far more serious in attempting to shoot something down.
It was likely to be the case, as I had always thought that our own pom-poms were nothing more than an attempt to reassure the people who were subjected to the bombing. I had never heard a first-hand account of a result. It had always come from a friend of a friend.
A sudden urgency rushed to my mind, my hands instantly perspiring, and the drum beat of my heart resounding just in time to hear the first few bombs landing a mile or two away. I began counting the seconds between each rapid burst of ack-ack fire, like I did as a child to work out how far away the thunder was.
It was a nothing exercise, I knew that, but it made me feel calmer somehow, and allowed the pulsating blood to settle slightly and clear my mind.
I wiped the sweat from my brow, in turn pressing my hands down the sides of my boiler suit, to rid myself of the perspiration and grease that was building up all around me. I exhaled sharply as I forced myself to get to work.
I had already wasted five minutes. The others would have been able to set at least one charge up by now.
I felt sick as I began to pull my tools from my pockets. I was confident that this was the best thing to do, and if I was to end up killing someone as a result of my sabotage then it was far better than an entire village being slowly wiped out.
But there was still something that was making my hands quake. Something in the back of my mind.
I tossed the Clam around in my palms for a few moments, letting its weight drag my arms down momentarily before I remembered that this wasn’t a child’s toy. It was sent to us for a purpose, one that I was doing nothing to help fulfil.
Filled with visions of Georges crying over the corpse of his mother, I knelt down behind the boring machine, finding the motor and allowing the Clam’s magnets to snap itself to the metal. It was in a good position, in the hope that it would take out as many of the internal components as was possible from such a small blast.
I set the fuse, allowing the acid to begin burning through a thin piece of metal, that would hopefully set the whole charge off after sixty minutes. The second that I had set that charge off and ticking, it was as if a bolt of electricity had been pumped into my limbs. My fingers began to work quicker than they ever had done before, my mind in overdrive and darting everywhere to keep watch while I worked.
I moved from one machine to the next, ticking them off mentally one by one as I approved of my own handiwork.
Kneeling down behind the final machine, I slipped the Clam into place and allowed the fuse to start doing its thing. I pulled the last thing that was in my little bag, in a similar routine to the other machines.
The explosive in my hand was tense but malleable, like a piece of clay that had been refrigerated. It was an odd green colour, like the pigment had been washed out, but a faint hint of it remained. I wished that the same could have been said for the stench that it gave off, but the sweet, nutty smell that wafted its way to my nostrils had already taken the claim for the pounding skull ache that I now possessed.
The advice was to make sure the Explosive 808 was in contact with your skin for as short a time as possible and, until now, it had never stayed in physical contact with my skin for anything longer than ten seconds.
As I worked on the last machine, my hands began to itch terribly, and I could not work out if it was the paranoia or a genuine complaint that was causing them to do so.
My whole body flinched as a bomb detonated somewhere outside the walls of the factory, followed by a whole series more, and I watched as the window panes that ran along the top perimeter of the workshop flexed, and thought about shattering into tiny pieces.
They didn’t and, as the first wave of bombers roared overhead, I knew that I had to get a move on. The second would not be all that far behind.
I moulded the plastic explosive in a ‘U’ shape position, directly underneath the clam, so that it was almost touching it. The plastic explosive was powerful, but not quite powerful enough to cripple the workshop.
The 808 was there just as a backup. We needed to be certain that none of the machines were operable, and so, just to make sure, we were using the plastic explosive as a fail-safe. Those Clams would be detonating, one way or another.
I pushed two time-pencil fuses into the plastic carefully. I knew that no amount of force would make the 808 detonate, but I was always as careful as I could be. There was no point in taking risks.
I stepped back from my handiwork and inspected the plastic explosive, the two white tips of the pencils proudly sticking out just enough so that I could pull the starting pin, which would start the process of the pencil slowly stretching a piece of thin metal. Once that snapped, the whole charge would go up, taking the Clam, and the machine, with it.
But I was hoping that the plastic would not be needed, placing my faith in the fuses that were inserted into the Clams.
I checked my watch. I had been in there twenty minutes. Fifteen minutes or so since the first fuse had begun to get to work.
I suddenly got very itchy feet.
The timers on the clams were set to sixty minutes. The L-Delay pencils were set to two hours. But none of them were well-known for their reliability to keep to their schedules.
Some of them had been known to go off half an hour before they were supposed to. Which gave me fifteen minutes to get well clear.
I knelt back behind the machine and gathered up a few of the bits and pieces that I had not used. The L-Delays were hard to come by and useful, and so I wanted to make sure that I still had all the spares on my possession before I left the workshop.
Suddenly, above all the noise of the continuing air raid, I heard something. It was a noise like nothing I had heard for quite some time, and I had become so wrapped up in prepping the machines for demolition, that I had almost forgotten what it sounded like.
There was a human cough, followed by some rather laboured and struggling breathing.
I froze. My mind raced.
I made sure that my entire body was hidden behind the machine, my eyes glaring at the whacking great explosive charge that I had set on it not two minutes ago.
I knew it couldn’t have been one of the others. That hadn’t been part of the plan. The first and only person to go into the workshops was the saboteur of each room.
I was fairly confident too that it wouldn’t have been one of the other workers. They had been paid to stay out of our way and now it seemed like the entire RAF was bearing down on Besançon, I couldn’t imagine any one of them wanting to stay above ground any longer than they needed to.
I peered between the machine, trying to see in the poor light what the source of the sound had been.
Whoever it was, he seemed totally oblivious to the air raid that was raging all around him, as my body grimaced and flinched as another volley of ack-ack could be felt from a matter of yards away.
He continued to stand in the doorway, his shoulders back and chest puffed out, quite like he would have been had he been out on parade. But the rest of him told me that he could not have been further away from a parade; his tunic was half tucked in and half out, a button here or there clearly not together and his rifle precariously sliding off his shoulder.
He swayed softly as he began rummaging through the pockets of the few boiler suits that were hung up by the door.
He was stealing from them.
He saw something he liked the look of, let out a low whistle before stashing it away in his inside pocket.
Briskly, he spun around, and I caught my chin on the side of the machine as I flopped to the floor to keep myself concealed.
He began muttering t
o himself, concentrated and focused, before the sound of his boots disturbing the puddles began to vibrate through the workshop. He was getting closer, still muttering something that I could not quite work out.
His feet stopped. So did the muttering. I risked looking around the side of the machine. He was no more than ten yards away from me now. And what I could see made me almost lose control of every emotion in my body.
He had seen the Clams. He had seen the 808. The daft beggar was inspecting them all, one by one.
It simply had to be the most unfortunate night of my life.
26
I couldn’t help but kick myself, for what I was not sure, as I did not think I had done all that much wrong. But what I did know was that the German was still taking his time to inspect the charge on the machine, and that if I gave him much more time, then he would not hesitate to tell all his chums outside what was going on.
In short, I knew that I had to act.
I held my breath as I heard the figure shuffling about, his boots grinding on the concrete floor as he began to turn around and walk in a different direction. His footsteps were calm and controlled, not the rapid and sharp ones that I had been expecting.
Nor were they running for the door at the far end of the workshop. They were advancing further into the room. He hadn’t believed what he had seen. He was going to need to check all the other machines first.
My skull felt as though it was about to explode as he stopped just on the other side of the machine that I was crouched behind. My knees creaked and threatened to seize up right when I needed them.
He was so close that I could almost feel the warmth of his breath as he muttered, the sound of his nail against the cold steel scraping through my head.
My word, he wanted to be absolutely certain.
I felt his legs straighten, as he exhaled slowly, as if he knew that this day had only been around the corner. As he took one step back, his boot landing in another puddle, I could imagine him, just a yard or two away, accepting defeat.
I couldn’t though. I had to do something. Finally, the figure gave me my chance.
He turned on the concrete, sliding more than anything through the puddle as he rotated on his heel.
I sprung up, my knees moaning in agony but nonetheless compliant. I lunged at the figure, as fast as I could. But it wasn’t quite quick enough.
The figure had just enough time to turn, his unkempt shirt tails and belt flashing me as he did so.
I got a good look at him for half a second or so and immediately felt quite stupid. But it was all too late.
I should have known by the way that he was dressed. I should have been able to see by the way that he held himself, or perhaps the biggest giveaway, the way that he had swayed.
I was now face to face with Diehl.
If only I had known, then there might have been a chance of getting to him before he saw the charges and try to pass the whole affair off as being in hiding from the bombs. If I had just managed to get to him earlier, then I might have simply been able to engage him in some chat and a cigarette, and he wouldn’t have been any the wiser.
But I had hidden myself, restricting my vision and clouding my judgement. I had made an error, and now it was too late to rectify it.
My fist carved through the air bullishly as it connected with Diehl’s face. A shooting pain erupted over my knuckle, and I felt my thumb give way under the pressure. Ignoring my own pain, I focused on Diehl’s, as his face seemed to crumple like an accordion, but somehow, he managed to stay standing.
Diehl seemed to wait for a moment or two before doing anything, as if he had been betrayed by his own mother and couldn’t quite believe it. I knew that he was slow, but the time between being struck and the eventual stagger backwards was quite something.
His feet splashed in the puddles noisily, as my silent footwork advanced towards him, closing the gap.
It wasn’t enough to prevent him from being able to catch his falling rifle though and, levelling it towards me, there was a horrifying moment where I was able to look into the black tunnel of the barrel and make a peace with myself.
I flinched as I felt, rather than saw, a round eject from his rifle, the air popping as it punched through the air just above my head.
The gunshot had echoed so fantastically off the walls that I was almost completely deaf immediately after, but somehow, I still managed to make out the round pinging off one of the smaller profiling machines left at the side of the workshop.
All my muscles suddenly relaxed, as if relieved that they were not required to absorb a rifle round.
My blood suddenly began to surge, and I felt all the veins in my arms suddenly bulge as I turned my knuckles white by balling them into tight fists. A bruise had already developed on my right hand, of that I was quite sure, the purples and blues already so radiant that I could see them out of the corner of my eye.
I couldn’t focus on anything else however, apart from the man in front of me who was struggling ineptly with the bolt of his rifle. It was as if a child was operating it, the weakness of his fingers and the apparent lack of dexterity making it near enough impossible for him to both grip the bolt and pull it back towards him.
It was the kind of situation that I almost found laughable and, briefly, the thought of helping him out almost crossed my mind.
But I knew that he simply could not get another round off. If he did then he risked alerting the entire German presence at the factory to the situation but, perhaps selfishly, he risked sending the entire workshop up in one giant fireball, myself included.
It was not the kind of dignified, heroic end that I had planned for myself, instead wanting to go as a valiant king in battle, in front of his men, rather than at the hands of an inebriated, immoral enemy who could barely tie his own shoelaces.
In an ideal world I would have had time to reach for my weapon, to find a piece of steel that I could use to hit him with or attempt another punch. But I didn’t have time for any of them, and there was no guarantee that I would still be able to bring him to the floor with those either.
Instead, I did all that I thought I could do. I stepped forward aggressively, springing from the floor and collided into him with an almighty thump. We were able to lock eyes while we both collapsed to the ground, in a momentary freefall in which neither of us could really do anything to the other. We just waited.
His head cracked back into the concrete floor; the sickening snap just as painful for me as it was for him. Neither of us could breathe for a second or two, but both of us knew that the fight had to continue.
My forearm had come to rest on his throat, so immediately I began to apply all the pressure that I could onto it, his eyes bulging the further down I was able to press. My aim was to force my forearm all the way into the ground, and I used my entire bodyweight to press down, my face only an inch away from his as I snarled.
It wasn’t out of a laborious output that I growled, but it was something that I had been taught to do.
“Do anything to get the upper hand. Bark if you have to. If it makes it sound like you’re hell-bent on killing the man, do it.”
I continued to curl my lips and let out an aggressive moan, but it seemed to have the opposite effect on Diehl. His legs suddenly grew in strength as he bucked and kicked, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
It was only then that I realised he was making one final, overwhelming, last stand to stay alive. The stars would be twinkling in his eyes now, the headache threatening to burst out of his skull.
This was when he was at his most dangerous. I pressed down further, forcing my body closer to the ground.
There was a sudden fire in my face, and I had no option but to let up on some of the pressure that I had applied to Diehl’s neck. But I couldn’t recoil in the way that I had wanted to, especially after Diehl sank his teeth further into my cheek.
At first, I felt the skin simply pierce, but within seconds blood was pouring out
of the wound and into Diehl’s mouth, as he spat the warm mixture back out onto me as he tried to stop himself from drowning.
I transferred all my power and effort away from my forearm, yanking my head backwards in a move I knew would only serve to spite me. I left a good chunk of my cheek in Diehl’s mouth, as the flesh ripped as easily as a sheet of the steel in the very same workshop.
I let out a howl, not too dissimilar from my murderous growl, but noticeably without the killer instinct that I thought I had possessed.
The stars had obviously affected Diehl more than I had realised, as he waved his hands about flamboyantly, temporarily blinded, before he tried to grip hold of my face and simultaneously drag me in closer to him.
The pain quickly took hold in my face but, although I could feel it nicely, it was barely registering in my thoughts. It was the last thing that I was going to worry about.
I had become so focused on Diehl’s face, blood dripping from his canines like a wolf, that I could have had an entire garrison of German troops in the same room, all pointing their weapons in my direction, and I would have been none the wiser.
I wasn’t even entirely sure if the air raid was still continuing, everything in my world seemed so silent.
Diehl’s left hand was gripped onto the top of my boiler suit, and he was trying to drag me in towards him, his right arm flailed out to the side and motionless. I reasoned that perhaps it was broken or dislocated in some way.
I pulled backwards from him, raising my fist high above my head and bringing it down on his face once again like a whack-a-mole. Blood spurted out from every possible orifice and there was now so much all over his face that I could not distinguish between which was mine and what was his.
I repeated my motions, as teeth started to disappear from inside Diehl’s mouth.
At least he won’t be biting me again, any time soon.
It was only as I raised my fist for the third time that I realised that I had made a grave error in my judgement. Diehl’s right arm hadn’t been dislocated or broken. It hadn’t even been motionless as I had thought.