by Suninfo
Ashby had said that if anything went wrong he should try and make it to the Dutch border and clearly something had gone terribly wrong.
Cowper did not believe in having second thoughts. Without any hesitation, he started up and drove off. Enschede was just eighty kilometres up the road. He planned to abandon the vehicle just this side of the border and he reckoned that with any luck he should be able to reach the Zwinjnenberg Hotel on Molenstraat and make contact with the Dutch Underground by nightfall.
Iron rungs set in the vertical shaft which rose to street level provided easy hand and foot holds and with careful positioning, it was possible to get three men on the ladder at the same time.
Using his feet to thrust his back against the wall, Ashby wedged himself in the chimney so that both his hands were free to unlock and raise the manhole cover.
It was heavier than he’d expected and although he tried to place the cover quietly to one side, it made a loud scraping noise on the cobblestones. Two men from the standing patrol who were stationed in the Gruetgasse alley turned and stared in his direction.
Ashby climbed out and sauntered towards them holding the Schmeisser loosely in his right hand. ‘Want to swap jobs?’ he said. The Germans eyed him suspiciously. ‘I tell you, it stinks to high heaven down there.’
The taller of the two men said, ‘What have you been doing?’
Ottaway was out of the shaft now and Quilter was just appearing in view and he could see from the expression on their faces that he’d only a few seconds of grace left. ‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ Ashby said casually, ‘we certainly weren’t having a bloody picnic.’
They were still smiling faintly when he flipped the change lever over and fired two quick bursts. At ten metres he could scarcely miss even though he was still only holding the Schmeisser with one hand.
And now it was simply a race against time and leaping over the dying SS, Ashby, with Ottaway and Quilter hard on his heels, made a frantic dash for the side entrance to the Rathaus. Frick was slow to leave the manhole and by the time he began to follow them up the alleyway towards the Prinzipalmarkt, two more of the standing patrol rounded the corner from the Syndikatplatz and were behind him. There was a brief respite because they were unable to identify friend from foe, and this numbness lasted until the moment when Ashby, finding that the side door was 183
locked, first emptied a magazine into it and then kicked it in, and after that they were no longer in doubt.
The first engagement was brief, wild and bloody. In the initial exchange of fire, Frick had both legs shattered while Quilter, turning swiftly, killed one man and forced the other to dodge back into the Syndikatplatz where the angle of the building protected him. Stack, who until this moment had been sheltering just below the lip of the manhole, now emerged and committed himself to a headlong dash, hoping that Quilter, crouched in the open doorway of the Rathaus, would be able to cover him.
Stack came fast with his legs pumping beneath him and his head thrown back, and he stayed well to the left so that Quilter should have a clear field of fire, and the noise inside that narrow passageway was deafening and he could see tiny moles of dust rising from the brickwork, and Frick was screaming after him, and then Quilter suddenly stopped firing because most of his face had been shot away, and in that instant Stack realised that there was a sniper on the roof directly opposite the entrance and then he knew that he never could, never would cross that open space that lay between him and the objective, and fear gripped hold because he was cut off and, apart from the dying Frick, he was alone in an open-ended alleyway.
And now they were firing into Gruetgasse from the Prinzipalmarkt and he was forced to give ground, moving sideways like a crab with his back to the wall, and firing burst after burst first in one and then in the opposite direction because he had that damned sentry in the Syndikatplatz to contend with. The stick grenade came arching high into the air and, striking the face of the building behind Stack on its downward path, was deflected at the tangent and Frick, unable to move, watched it land and roll towards him, and he closed his eyes and then there was this brilliant flash of orange light which in the end gutted him like a fish.
And now the open manhole was but a few paces away and Stack, firing from the hip, launched himself at it and made it before the sentry in the Syndikatplatz reappeared. There was no time to drag the cover across and he went down the iron rungs one-handed, bruising and skinning his shins and elbows, and then he turned round and scrambled into the feeder moving as fast as he could because he had to reach the first bend in the pipe before they dropped a grenade down the shaft. And then he heard it splash into the water behind him and he lay down in the sewage because there was no other way to avoid the fragmentation pieces, and when the blast came it almost ruptured his eardrums. Covered 184
in filth, vomit spewing from his mouth, he made the first bend before the second grenade arrived.
The mêlée on the ground floor was over in a few seconds. Moving towards the staircase, Ashby glanced to his left and saw that two sentries had been posted in the main entrance and he killed them both. Then, sheltered by the interior wall, he crouched down and continued to fire into the Prinzipalmarkt while Ottaway, working in tandem, slipped past him and began to climb up to the floor above. Based on the information which Gerhardt had supplied, they assumed that they had already accounted for half the force deployed inside the building. But they were wrong for, apart from Kastner and two NCOs waiting in ambush on the landing above, there, remained the enlisted men who were guarding the passageways which led to the adjoining Stadtweinhaus.
Ottaway, his back pressed against the wall, maintained a steady rate of fire as he moved upwards. He had little hope of hitting anything but it did ensure that no one in his right mind would risk exposing himself to get a clear shot. One man did attempt to roll a stick grenade towards him but it lodged against the banisters and, because it had been released too soon, Ottaway had time to pick it up and lob it back.
Kastner survived because the grenade landed between the NCOs and they absorbed most of the blast but one fragment of the outer casing, missing this human shield, virtually severed the calf of his right leg, and staggering forward half crazy with pain, he almost toppled over the banisters. His legs slowly gave way beneath him but as he sank down on to his haunches, he somehow managed to empty the Walther and, although incapable of producing an aimed shot, one round hit Ottaway in the jaw and felled him.
Ashby fired one last burst into the street, changed magazines for the second time and then started to move up to the first landing. He saw Ottaway fall and looking up, noticed Kastner slumped against the banisters and instinctively opened up. Four bullets hit Kastner in the stomach, chest, shoulder and neck and hurled him back against the far wall.
Ottaway raised himself up and started to crawl on hands and knees. The front of his blouse was covered in blood from the shattered jaw and the stairs seemed to sway as he experienced difficulty in focusing on them, and then a hand grabbed hold of his belt and Ashby was carrying him like a suitcase in his left hand and the stair carpet passed in a confusing blur, and the Schmeisser was chattering in Ashby’s right hand, and his last recollection before he blacked out was of the floor rising up to meet him.
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As he entered the vestibule on the second floor, Ashby noticed that one of the oaken doors which opened into the Hall of Peace was still ajar, and releasing Ottaway, he ran forward, hit it with his shoulder and burst into the room. The Schmeisser in his hands described an inquisitive arc of ninety degrees but remained silent because the prize was no longer there for the taking and instead he saw that some thoughtful person had emptied all the ashtrays, made a neat pile of the scratch paper which had been placed on the table in front of each delegate and had collected the carafes of water together and stacked them on a tray. And as Ashby stood there, bewildered and frozen in apathy, the old man who’d been hiding under one of the tables thought it safe to come out and in so doing, died i
n a hail of fire which his sudden and unexpected movement in the otherwise deserted hall had invited.
The sky was beginning to cloud over and a chill breeze had sprung up and, although he was wearing a coat, the Bürgermeister was shivering with cold. Frustrated because he had been unable to contact Himmler and the situation in the town was such that he was reluctant to leave the safety of the airfield, Bormann had turned on the Bürgermeister who’d taken the brunt of his abuse and had been thoroughly humiliated in front of the assembled Luftwaffe and SS officers. He was an old man, gentle in his ways, and never in all his years in office had he been treated so shamefully. It seemed inconceivable that any man of intelligence could blame him for what had happened, but then perhaps he’d expected too much from this boorish lout, Bormann. Without any regret, he watched the Junkers 52/3M climb into the air and turn away from Münster. As he slowly walked back to his chauffeur-driven Wanderer, the SS escort broke ranks and piled into their waiting trucks.
The time was 1624 hours.
Ottaway opened his eyes and for a few moments the haze cleared and he found himself looking at the body of an old man who was nearly bald, and he tried to call put but he could not open his mouth and when he touched it gently with an exploring hand, he found that someone had tied a crude sling over his head to hold his jaw in place. And then before he slipped back into unconsciousness, he heard the sound of heavy firing and he wondered how much longer it would last.
They were trapped and Ashby knew it. From his vantage point on the second floor he could keep them at bay as long as the ammunition held out but it was only a question of time before 186
they finished him one way or the other. To swallow the cyanide pill would be the easy way out but there was Ottaway to consider, and somehow now that he was faced with making the decision, he found the idea of suicide repellent and he knew that he couldn’t do it. He felt guilty because, contrary to his own orders, Ashby was still wearing British army identity discs around his neck, and that was almost a tacit admission that he’d never intended to take his own life. Later, he would be surprised to learn that he was not alone in this, for Quilter, Stack, Frick, Scholl and Ottaway had also retained their tags. Hearing movement on the landing below, he lobbed over his last grenade.
Stack was running blind through the sewers and the distorted sound of raised voices came at him from every direction. They were like ferrets after a rabbit and he knew that the end was not far away. He stood there in the middle of the channel with the water tugging at his thighs and the sweat running off his face and his chest heaving, and for the first time since childhood he felt the need to pray.
‘Hail Mary, sweet mother of Jesus,’ he whispered, ‘help me now.’
A dull clanging noise close at hand startled him and glancing to the right, he saw a glimmer of light entering the sewer, and then he heard them climbing down the shaft and filling his lungs with air, he sank beneath the water. He stayed under until the blood pounded in his ears and his lungs felt as if they were going to burst, and then he rose slowly to the surface and, had he managed to control the tickle in his throat, he might have got away with it because the patrol had gone past him, but instead, he broke into a fit of coughing as he struggled towards the vertical shaft and they came hurrying back.
He could see the sky above and he began to claw his way up to the street but his muscles were slow to respond, and although the sound of gunfire was deafening, he did not associate it with the crippling pain which was now shooting through his right leg.
And then Stack found that he could no longer bear to put any weight on it and he had to drag himself up hand over hand because most of the heel had been blown off, but somehow he made it and he lay face down while he struggled to regain his breath. And then, when he looked up there was this man smiling wolfishly at him, and the man had a rifle in his hands and still smiling he placed the muzzle against Stack’s ear and squeezed the trigger. The noise made by this single shot was almost lost in the open space of the Dom Platz.
It was definitely Wollweber’s day for glory. As soon as news of 187
the battle in the Rathaus reached him and learning that Kastner was dead, he broke off his interrogation of Frau Lammers and leaving the Aegidii Barracks, he rushed straight to the Prinzipalmarkt and assumed command. He arrived to find a stalemate, for although the intruders were trapped on the upper floors, three separate attempts to dislodge them had all ended in failure.
The Haupsturmführer had ordered the fire brigade to produce an engine and there was some talk of using the extending ladder to get to the sloping roof where, after removing a number of tiles, it was proposed to break in through the ceiling. The Stadt authorities were, however, anxious to preserve an historic building from further damage and naturally were not in favour of the idea. It was Wollweber who first thought of negotiating a peaceful surrender and he sent for a loud-hailer. While they waited for the tannoy to arrive, the firing gradually died away and an unnatural silence descended on the council chambers.
The amplified voice which came booming up from below startled Ashby and, because the sound was distorted, he failed to understand a word and he waited to see if the message would be repeated.
Wollweber tried again. ‘You are completely surrounded; if you surrender now you will be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention.’ He had no idea why he had used that particular phrase but it came rolling off his tongue and it did the trick.
Ashby said, ‘We are British Commandos and I have a wounded man up here who is in need of urgent medical attention.’
‘The sooner you surrender the sooner he’ll be taken to a hospital.’
In his present mood, Wollweber was ready to promise anything if he could be sure of taking them alive. He waited expectantly to see what would happen next and after what seemed an age, a tall fair-haired man appeared at the top of the stairs and began to limp towards them with his hands held high above his head.
Something like a collective sigh went up from the waiting storm-troopers and then the Englishman was among them and a rifle butt scythed through the air and smashed into his skull.
Wollweber was very annoyed about that and said so forcibly.
As he sarcastically pointed out to the Haupsturmführer, it wasn’t easy to question a prisoner while he was unconscious.
Kaltenbrunner had every reason to be satisfied with the way the affair had been settled, but there were still one or two loose ends which required his personal attention. This latest plot against the Reich had been conceived and executed by bungling 188
amateurs, but in the present political climate, it was perhaps wiser to conceal the true nature of the incident. Goebbels would need some guidance, of course, but he was confident that the Minister of Propaganda and Enlightenment could produce an acceptable story which could be fed to the news agencies. It would also be prudent to arrest Osler without further delay, and the Foreign Ministry would have to politely inform Baron Pierre Damon that his presence in Germany was no longer acceptable.
With Kastner dead and the Münster—Case Black file quietly buried in the archives, there was no reason why anyone should connect him with the conspiracy. Wollweber would have to be rewarded in some way, but of course a medal was out of the question because the attendant publicity would be undesirable in the circumstances. On the whole, Kaltenbrunner thought it was probably safer to promote him and leave it at that.
The last chance of a negotiated peace had gone for ever and, in a way, they had that quixotic fool Lieutenant-Colonel Hasso Jurgens to thank for that. If he had not chosen to involve himself in the July Bomb Plot the finger of suspicion would never have been pointed at Gerhardt and Kastner’s energies could have been directed elsewhere, in which case there was a chance, just a chance, that Lammers and his friends might have succeeded.
The light in his office was beginning to fail in the gathering dusk and he switched on the table lamp. The time was 1815
hours and the charade was almost over.
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br /> If Wollweber had had all the glory, then Cowper had had all the luck in the world. He’d ditched the truck, the grenades and his Schmeisser in a wood some three kilometres from the border before stealing a bicycle which had been left carelessly unsecured outside a Gasthof, and then, as calm as you please he’d simply ridden it into Enschede. He passed the customs and police post waving cheerfully to the sentry on duty and thirty minutes later he located the Zwinjnenberg Hotel. The Dutch Underground weren’t exactly pleased to see him but after an intensive grilling, they accepted him for what he was—an Allied soldier on the run, and because he was hot they rapidly passed him on down the line.
On the night of Friday, 20th October, in a dismal low-lying area between Arnhem and Nijmegen known as the Island, Miles Cowper, in common with one hundred and forty officers and men of the 1st Airborne Division who’d been sheltered by the Dutch Underground following their defeat at Arnhem, was ferried across the Waal in a rescue operation nicknamed Pegasus I. On arrival at the first reception station he was given hot coffee and 189
doughnuts in a field kitchen set up by the 101st United States Airborne Division.
As Stack had once observed, if Cowper happened to fall into a dungheap, he’d still come up smelling like a rose.
His hands were handcuffed behind his back and he sat on a low stool in a bare room, and there was a bandage around his head and a pigeon’s egg above his right eye, and his lips were puffy and swollen and two teeth were already missing and Ashby knew that he might well lose some more before the night was out. The light was shining straight into his eyes and he couldn’t see Wollweber, but he was there all right.
Wollweber said, ‘I’ll ask you just once more. I want the names and addresses …’
Ashby raised his head. ‘I can give you my number, rank and name,’ he said, ‘and that’s all.’
The length of rubber hose whistled through the air and struck him on the kneecap and the top of his head almost lifted off.