Willie dropped the empty rifle and picked up another and continued to return fire. Kevin heaved his friend onto his feet, dipped and took him over his shoulder and ran for the lane. Willie stayed where he was, determined not to lose the weapons they had captured, when all hell broke lose in the Farmer’s Arms.
Shotguns and submachine guns fired, a grenade exploded and Willie heard the whoosh of a petrol bomb, then another. They had planned to carry out similar ambushes at the two pubs and it sounded as if landlord George Woodrow and his team at the Farmer’s were having a rough time of it. The noise diverted the attention of the soldier in the back garden.
Kevin had run back a second time and grabbed two of the sacks and Willie picked up the rifles and the remaining sacks and they ran. From the church tower, Willie could hear the distinctive crack of his Mauser hunting rifle.
The Colonel said, ‘They’re in trouble,’ meaning the group at The Farmer’s.
‘We have to get back, Jimmy. We have too much to lose.’
For a moment, he thought his old friend was going to head to the fire-fight at the Farmer’s but he nodded and they went down the lane, Barry carrying one of the sacks but being supported by Kevin. Trees and an overgrown privet hedge provided cover where the lane joined the main road to Morton Marsh. Willie peered round the hedge towards the Farmer’s Arms.
An open Land Rover was parked in the road 10 yards away. It was pointing towards the Farmer’s Arms. A corporal was behind the driving wheel and a trooper manned a machinegun that had been fitted on a pivot on top of the bonnet. A wireless operator sat in the back and a Captain was standing in the road alongside the vehicle talking on the radio. Soldiers had taken cover in gardens opposite the pub but the firing continued inside the building. Ten yards across the road in the other direction, was the corner of the churchyard wall where three men with shotguns were waiting in hiding to help carry armaments and cover their retreat.
Willie ducked back.
‘There’s a Land Rover round the corner. Looks like the Company command car. A Captain, radio operator and two others in the front. The rest of the troopers are down the road. Jimmy, you and me will take the Land Rover.’ He didn’t ask if he was up for it. He knew he was. The Colonel might be overweight and in his 60s but he had a cold presence that was more than military. The playful buffoon had gone. He was vengeful; he was cold steel. Kevin was tying a strip of cloth around Barry’s thigh above the wound to slow the bleeding. Willie said, ‘When we move, you take this lot over the wall. Right?’
They nodded. The Colonel checked the submachinegun that hung around his neck and Willie swapped the assault rifle for a Heckler and Koch machine pistol. Kevin and Barry gathered all the weapons and sacks and checked their loads for weight and balance.
‘Jimmy, try not to shoot the Land Rover. Maybe we can drive it.’
‘Affirmative.’
Willie peered around the corner again and the only difference was that the Captain was no longer talking on the radio but was staring down the road. Willie waved his arm and they moved.
The Captain was the first to turn at the noise being made by Kevin and Barry as they clanked and hobbled towards the churchyard, by which time Willie and the Colonel were only five yards away and opening fire. At such a short distance, the effect was devastating. The Captain was flung up the road and the other three men crumpled where they were. Willie pulled the driver out. His torso fell sideways but his legs were trapped. Willie cursed and put his gun down to pull the man free. He tried to ignore the shouts from down the road and the first shot that came in his direction. Then the Colonel opened up with the machinegun on the jeep, spraying the gardens where the troopers were in cover.
Willie got the man out and climbed into the driving seat. Of course, the bloody seat was too close to the steering wheel for his long legs and his knees were up to his chin. The engine was running and the dashboard was smeared with blood and unidentifiable human tissue and clotted matter. He made the gearbox screech as he put the Land Rover into reverse
He heard someone running behind him and his gun was in the back with two dead bodies and he felt coldly vulnerable and thought what a bloody mess, but when he glanced round he saw it was Jamie Smithson, one of the lads who had gone to the Farmer’s with George Woodrow. He was wild-eyed and terrified but he carried weapons and cartridge belts that he threw into the vehicle and flung himself after them, landing on the bodies of the SS soldiers. Willie reversed, his mind working out a plan of action, making it up as he went along. There was no access into the church grounds; the wall was solid and parishioners entered through a lych gate. Their only way to take the Land Rover with them was if he drove it into the drive of the vicarage.
‘Hold on,’ he said, and turned the wheel and the rear end mounted the far pavement. He put it into first gear, completed the turn and drove along the road. The church was on their right, the village green on their left. He was aware of men moving through the gravestones back to sanctuary, carrying the sacks, while the green looked like a battle zone, with smoke billowing from Ogilvy’s stores, Rose Cottage and the Black Bull.
Further down the road, towards Upper Bedford, he saw another Land Rover and troopers on foot. Smoke billowed from houses behind them. The Colonel opened fire and the troopers scattered. The driver of the opposing Land Rover made the mistake of turning broadside, probably in an attempt to escape, and ruined his gunner’s arc of fire. Willie slowed as he reached the driveway to the vicarage and the Colonel got the range and trajectory right. Bullets pounded into the other vehicle and its occupants, something ignited and the Land Rover’s petrol tank exploded.
They turned into the drive of the vicarage and Willie drove across flowerbeds and through a gorse hedge. They battered down three gravestones and then he reached the path at the front of the church. He braked and tried to reverse towards the church porch but the wheels became jammed against a broken stone marker. He climbed out and reached for the weapons inside the vehicle and noticed for the first time that his body hurt.
The church door opened and Richard Marshall, his wife Alison and others came out to help. Among them was Eliza. She had refused to escape back to the house to safety. They grabbed weapons and wrestled ammunition belts from the dead soldiers. They got back inside the church.
‘You’re hurt,’ she said.
‘No. I’m all right.’
‘You are. You’re hurt.’
He looked down and saw the blood and the holes in his clothes. He had thought the blood had come from the dashboard but it had come from him. He could still move his left arm.
‘Flesh wounds,’ he said.
‘He’s too damn thin to be a target,’ said the Colonel.
Bob Harvey, the headmaster, had a selective view of the action from the top of the crenellated clock tower. He had volunteered to be the sniper and use the Mauser. As a student, he had been a member of the National Rifle Association and his college shooting team. ‘I’m more likely to hit something than anybody else,’ he had said. ‘Not that I want to. But …’
‘Needs must, old boy,’ Willie had said, and explained that he wanted Bob to concentrate on officers and NCOs. He now lay at the top of the tower with Jack Barrett, a 17-year-old from Knutsford Grammar School, who had won the school target prize as a cadet, and who was his support team. ‘If Bob becomes incapacitated, you take over,’ Willie had told him.
Incapacitated. Bob had never heard death referred to quite so politely.
The rifle was a beautiful piece of engineering, had telescopic sights and carried five rounds. He had no doubt that he could hit a target as big as a man on the other side of the village green with such a weapon; he just questioned his ability to dispense permanent incapacitation when it came to it.
He and Jack had taken up their positions ten minutes before nine, wrapped up against the cold and with sleeping bags to lie on to keep out the chill. Jack had been excited and frightened, Bob had been mainly frightened: of the role he had to play and of
what might happen to Sally and the rest of the people, down below in the church. They were all caught up in madness that could have only one ending.
They had only been there a few minutes when Sally’s head appeared through the hatch.
‘What …?’ he said.
‘Tea,’ she said, holding up a thermos flask. She also had a camera bag around her neck. ‘Brian’s,’ she said. ‘I thought I might get some pictures.’ Before he could protest further, she said, ‘To show the folks what life is like in a typical English village.’ She pushed the camera bag onto the roof and reached down out of sight. Now she produced a flag that she proceeded to unfold. It had a red cross on a white background: the flag of St George, the national flag of England. ‘I also found this. What do you think?’
‘I think you’re mad.’
Jack reached for the flag.
‘Shall I put it up, Mr Harvey?’
‘Do you know how?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then do it.’
The youth bundled it in his arms and, staying low, carried it to the flagpole in the corner of the tower. Sally unfastened the bag and took out the camera Brian Ogilvy had bought himself for Christmas and took a photograph as the boy sat; the flag draped across him, and attached it to the pole. He raised it and Bob shook his head. She now fitted a telephoto lens. ‘Jack,’ she said. ‘Can you use this?’ She held out a cine camera.
Jack nodded. ‘I’ve used one at school.’
Sally crawled forward and peeped between the stone teeth of the top of the tower. Jack followed her with the cine camera.
Seeing her so close and so vibrant made Bob regret what they were doing. What were these gestures suppose to mean? Perhaps they should all have simply done as they were told. Perhaps no one would have been hurt.
His doubts remained until he watched the vicar walk to his death, the burning of Rose Cottage and the executions on the green. All the time, Sally took photographs and Jack filmed. He finished one film and fitted another.
Bob removed his gloves and sighted on his first target, the soldier with the flamethrower, when he saw Kevin Andrews on the roof of the houses near the Black Bull. He waited. If he started the conflict, he might put Kevin in danger. And then it all began to happen.
The explosion at the store took him by surprise. It was violent and loud and the devastation was complete. The wooden fronted store ceased to exist. Flames, dust clouds and black smoke hung over where it had been. Then Kevin threw the petrol bomb into the armoured car with spectacular results. The driver jumped out with flames on his tunic and rolled in the grass but no one else emerged as the back of the open vehicle blazed.
Good God, he thought. It’s started.
Jack was kneeling up to watch, his mouth open. Sally still taking pictures.
‘Get down,’ he said.
He lined the rifle, sighted his target and fired. The lieutenant who had shot Mrs Allardyce was flung backwards, but the crack of the rifle was lost in the outbreak of gunfire from the Black Bull. Now, the flamethrower.
Bob Harvey’s mind turned itself off. He was hitting targets, not human beings. As the troopers crossed the village green or infiltrated houses, he hit two more lieutenants, two sergeants and a corporal. By the time Willie drove back in the Land Rover, his eyrie had been spotted and was attracting gunshots. Trees obstructed his line of fire to the west along the road to the Farmer’s Arms, so he crawled to the East side of the tower. An officer was directing soldiers round a burning Land Rover. He shot him and lay back on the sleeping bag, his shoulders against the ancient stone.
Jack Barrett sat nearby. He hadn’t said a word since the first shot. Sally lay in the other corner, still holding the camera.
St George’s church paralleled the road. The clock tower was at the Upper Bedford end. The main entrance was at the base of the tower and faced the road. On the first floor was a Sunday school room and access to galleries that ran down both sides of the body of the church. Steps to the cellar and the boiler room were at the back of the church. The altar was at the Morton Marsh end, where there was also a door into the sacristy and two ground level windows. They had pushed back the altar against the West wall, stacked pews upon it and punched holes through the stained-glass windows.
Dr Frank Beevers had removed his drugs and equipment from his home and had prepared a surgery in the Lady Chapel. The Ogilvy’s store had been emptied of all medical supplies. The Nativity scene had been relocated against a wall and George Wilson had placed the old and battered Ollerton Shield against the crib before leaving on his fatal mission. Women and children and a few men knelt or huddled together and prayed, others cried. A middle-aged couple who had arrived at the church after the clearances started, reported murder and rape, stories that had grown in the telling to cause further distress.
Willie sat on a chair in his vest while Eliza cleaned and dressed his wounds. He had scorch marks across his ribs and had lost a chunk of soft flesh from his upper arm. It hurt and he felt a little dizzy but everything still worked.
The doctor and Bella Brown, the district nurse, were operating on an unconscious Barry Wilson. Maureen Wilson, who had lost her husband, was holding the hand of her son.
Marjorie Humphrey was burying her fears in work and, as usual, was efficiently organising and occasionally comforting other women. Richard Marshall was distributing weapons and directing defenders, his wife Alison was carrying water in a bucket to the makeshift operating theatre, the Colonel was on the gallery that overlooked the village green and Willie still worried about him. His attitude had become clinical, scarcely reacting to his friends, but at least he had shaken off the debilitating depression he had displayed earlier.
Reports were delivered and Willie dispensed advice that was taken as orders. Whether he liked it or not, he was Officer Commanding St George’s Parish Church with 14 assault rifles, eight submachine guns, five machine pistols, 15 pistols, eight grenades, three service revolvers, 15 shotguns, 92 men and not enough ammunition.
The ambush in the Farmer’s Arms had been a bloodbath. The five men, led by landlord George Woodrow, had been discovered before they were ready. The survivor, Jamie Smithson, said two of them were shot before they could fire. The SS troopers were befuddled with drink that made them belligerent but wild and they shot some of their own men. One of them threw a grenade and one of the attackers managed to light his petrol bomb. Jamie was 19 years old and in shock and didn’t make total sense, which was not surprising considering what he had experienced. He had escaped through the back and had fired his shotgun at two soldiers in the garden.
Willie pulled his shirt and jumper back on and climbed the stairs to the galleries. Troopers were in position on the far side of the churchyard wall and in the houses and behind the cars around the green.
‘They’re going into the vicarage,’ shouted Richard Marshall, from the Sunday School room, and Willie ran down the gallery and joined him. Dave and Val Halford, the couple who were members of an archery club, were ready with their longbows. They looked nervous. Through an open window, Willie could see troopers in the shrubbery around the vicarage; others dashed into the house. One or two were coming out again. They had smelled the gas.
‘Ready?’ said Willie, and the couple nodded.
Richard flicked a cigarette lighter and lit the cloths that were wound round the ends of the arrows. The cloths, soaked in petrol, burned. Dave and Val raised their bows, pulled the strings taught and fired. One arrow fell short into the shrubbery but the other crashed through a window. The blast was a fireball that rushed out of the building, fragmenting glass and blasting doors off their hinges. They felt the force even in the church. Willie pulled away the archers before they could fully take in the mayhem they had caused. Men in the building had been blown to bits, many outside had been engulfed in flame and were screaming.
He took Dave and Val Halford onto the gallery facing the green. The helmets and weapons of men beyond the churchyard wall and by the lych gate were v
isible as troopers found cover on the pavement beyond the hallowed ground. Parked on the road next to the green was the flatbed truck of Arnold Brown, the builder. The couple fitted more arrows to their strings and Willie took out a box of matches.
‘Everybody get down,’ he shouted into the church, and lit the cloths at the end of the arrows. The couple stretched their arms, aimed past the elm tree of Agincourt legend, and fired at the truck. One arrow hit the loaded flatbed, the other skidded beneath and set ablaze the petrol that had been poured there.
The urge was to remain standing and watch the result but Willie pushed the couple down as the truck ignited and the petrol cans on the back exploded, bursting the paper sacks that lined the edge of the flatbed and sending a barrage of nails, nuts, bolts and screws across the road at the troopers taking cover on the wrong side of the wall. Some of the shrapnel hit the church but by then it had lost its power. Willie returned to the window and sneaked a look but the enemy was not shooting back. Injured men were crying out, some were staggering down the road holding wounds, others crawling; three who had been behind the wagon, were burning like bundles of rags on the grass.
Two men had been flung by the blast through the lych gate and into the churchyard. As they tried to rise to their feet, two single shots put them down again. Willie looked to his right and saw the Colonel at another window, lowering a rifle. Someone else began to fire with a submachinegun from a window above the altar.
‘Hold your fire,’ Willie shouted. ‘No one fire. Save the ammunition.’
Good God, he thought, surveying the smoke and dereliction of the village green. The Ogilvy’s store and Rose Cottage still burned and the fire in the Black Bull had spread to the neighbouring houses. Smoke billowed from other areas of the village where the troopers had set fires and which, unattended, were spreading. Bodies lay in grotesque positions of death and the lights had finally been blown out on the Christmas tree in the middle of the green.
The Heydrich Sanction Page 21