by Suninfo
‘Perhaps it’s just as well. I can’t help thinking we’d be much safer if we stayed put and let the war come to us.’
‘You surprise me, I thought you’d be eager to run into our people.’
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Ashby stopped in his tracks and looked up into the sky. ‘Listen,’
he said, ‘can you hear them?’
Ottaway squinted into the sun. ‘I can’t see them,’ he said,
‘they must be some way off but you can bet on it—they’re ours.’
Ashby said, ‘Let’s hope they know we’re on the same side.’
Before D-Day they’d busted trains, at Falaise it had been the turn of the Tigers, Panthers and SP guns but now with the Luftwaffe on its knees, it was open season for the hunters and provided the target was beyond the bombline laid down by 2nd Tactical Air Force, anything that moved was fair game. From above they saw three orderly columns moving on parallel roads and there was nothing to suggest that the target was other than a formed body of troops on the march. It was one of the fattest, most tempting strikes they’d come across and the squadron leader was in no doubt whatsoever, and he decided to take them from left to right so that the pattern of their attack would resemble a flattened letter S. He spoke tersely and his orders were simple and easily understood, and they came out of the sun losing height rapidly until all nine RAF Typhoon fighters were at tree-top level, and then one after the other they went down the column with machine-guns blazing, and eight made the pass before they discovered their error.
And when Ottaway crawled out of the ditch they were already climbing high into the sky, anxious to leave the scene of their hollow victory and the eighty-five men they had so wantonly killed.
And still dazed, he looked round for Ashby and found him lying on his back in the middle of the road, and when he drew close he noticed that Ashby’s lips were drawn back over his teeth in a ghastly caricature of a smile as if at the moment of death, he’d appreciated the final ironic twist.
And afterwards, Ottaway remembered searching through his pockets until he found a dog-end and he was still sitting there beside Ashby when the German commandant and the senior British officer arrived.
The Englishman said, ‘Now come on, you can’t sit there all day, we need your help to bury these men.’
Ottaway looked up. ‘Is that a fact,’ he said. ‘And after we’ve buried these men, Brigadier, what happens then?’
The German commandant said, ‘I have my orders, the march will continue.’
Ottaway stood up, dropped the cigarette-end on to the road and trod on it. ‘We’re not going anywhere,’ he said quietly. ‘We’re staying here until they find us.’
‘I don’t think you quite understand the position, Major. As long as I’m in command …’
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‘There’s a village a mile or two back down the road and we’re going to relieve them of every white sheet they have …’
‘Must I remind you that you are a prisoner …’
‘And then we’re going to lay those sheets out on the ground so that if the planes do return they won’t make the same mistake again …’
The Brigadier said, ‘Now look here, old chap, Colonel Thadden has his orders and you can’t expect him to …’
‘And then we’re going to send out recce patrols with orders to find and link up with the nearest Allied unit …’
‘I am not prepared to put up with your insubordinate manner, Herr …’
‘Major Ottaway. And you’ll just have to get used to my insubordinate manner because you’re finished. Do you understand that, Herr Oberstleutnant Thadden?’ His voice rose to a shout and he grabbed the German by the lapels of his tunic. ‘If, through your stupidity, we lose just one more man, I promise you I’ll make it my business to see that you hang for it.’ He pushed Thadden back. ‘Now just do as I ask,’ he said in a quieter tone of voice.
Less than eight hours later they passed into the hands of the 30th Infantry Division, 9th United States Army advancing on Madgeburg.
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August 1972
‘Go, and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me, where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot.’
JOHN DONNE (1571–1631)
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Epilogue
TRUSCOTT RETIRED FROM the army in 1953 in the rank of Brigadier and emigrated to South Africa where he now lives in a spacious house on the outskirts of Durban. He confesses that he enjoys writing and receiving letters and because of this characteristic, he has stayed in close touch with friends and acquaintances with whom he has served over the years. Without his help it would have been almost impossible to trace many of the people who were involved in this story, and I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for all the advice and assistance he so freely gave to me.
Cowper, too, stayed on in the army after the war and at one stage seemed destined for a brilliant career. The London Gazette shows that he was awarded a second bar to his Military Cross for, I quote: ‘consistently displaying qualities of the highest leadership and bravery in the face of the enemy’. However, much of the citation deals with the hazardous nature of his escape through Holland, and it remains a curious fact that he was the only member of Force 272 to be decorated. He spent a year at the Staff College, Camberley in 1949 and after a tour of duty as GSO2
(Ops) in HQ BAOR, he served in Korea as a company commander from 1952 to 1953. He was promoted to Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel at the age of thirty-seven and returned to Camberley as an instructor. Three years later while commanding his battalion in 201
Aden, he was awarded the OBE in the Birthday Honours List and subsequently in 1960 he was made a temporary Brigadier and given a Territorial Army Brigade. Barely twelve months later, having married well, he retired from the army at the age of forty-three.
He now runs a property development company which, for tax purposes, is registered in Liechtenstein and spends most of his time abroad in an expensive villa overlooking the sea at Cannes.
His wife is the majority shareholder in the business, and they have two girls both of whom are at boarding school in England.
Life appears to have been very good to him and he has few problems. He also has very few friends.
Dryland was unable to persuade Truscott that the interests of the army would be better served if he were given an immediate posting to South East Asia Command, in consequence he was still serving in England when Frank Cole returned from the war in May 1945 and found his wife huge with child. There was a rather messy divorce case but after the dust had settled, he and Laura Cole were married. One suspects that Dryland drifted into it and that Laura was the real driving force behind the match.
Needless to say, he failed to enter the Diplomatic Service and he was also turned down for a regular commission. After an uncertain start in civilian life, he eventually found a niche in public relations, and was for some years a consultant with Hobkirk, Brewer and Bates until he left them in 1955 when he came into a little money. He and Laura decided to settle in Cyprus and they opened a supper club overlooking the harbour in Kyrenia. They could scarcely have chosen a more inopportune moment for such a venture and the EOKA terrorist campaign all but ruined them and they were extremely lucky to get anything at all for their business. They moved to Kenya where Dryland got a job managing the Reef Hotel at Malindi. One would like to record that he made a success of it, but it seems he started drinking heavily and in 1963, at the age of forty-five, he died of a coronary.
Katherine Ashby did not remarry. She inherited the farm at Market Weighton on the death of her parents and manages to run it successfully without a man about the house. She is still a handsome woman and looks far too young to be a grandmother.
Jeffrey did not follow his father into the army but showed a bent towards the law and is now in partnership with two other solicitors whose offices are in Bowlalley Lane and the oddly na
med Land of Green Ginger in Hull. Elizabeth studied medicine at Guy’s, married one year after qualifying and moved to New Zealand in 1969 with her husband and two children. Katherine tells me rather wistfully that they will be coming home again in 1975 for six months’ leave.
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Of the Germans, Ernst Kaltenbrunner was tried for war crimes at Nuremberg, found guilty and hanged on 16th October, 1946.
Detective Emil Maurice survived the Battle of Berlin only to be drowned in the Spree River one night in November 1948 in what, as the police described it, were mysterious circumstances. Ursula Koch, the Gestapo agent who worked with Wollweber, also died violently on the night of 22nd/23rd January, 1951, but in this instance, there was no mystery surrounding her death. She had been living alone in a one-room flat in the basement of a bombed-out tenement in Dortmund and had eked out a precarious living as a part-time cleaner. Police records show that between 1945
and 1950 she was convicted for drunken and disorderly behaviour on no less than fifteen separate occasions and on the night of 22nd January she had been drinking heavily in the Gasthof Struber. Although there were no witnesses to the accident, it appears that after leaving the Gasthof she must have staggered out into the main road which was badly lit, and was then knocked down and killed by a hit-and-run driver.
Christabel Gerhardt spent an eventful ten days sheltering in the Anhalter Terminus where she says the conditions were frightful. She admits however, that she was well treated by the Russian soldiers of the 8th Guards Army and she personally was not molested. She remained in the city until October and then managed to make her way to the west. The story of her efforts to find the children is a saga in itself but suffice to say she was reunited with her family on 25th November, 1945. It is somewhat ironic to record that her house in Langestrasse was requisitioned by the British Army and when eventually she returned to Iserlohn, she found that it was occupied by the family of a Major attached to the Allied Control Commission. She made strenuous and repeated efforts to get the requisition order rescinded but to no avail, and it was not until the spring of 1956 that she finally took repossession.
Perhaps not unnaturally, she is still somewhat anti-British. On Saturday, 9th April, 1949, she married a widower by the name of August Sachs who has since made a fortune in ceramics. On meeting her for the time, one is immediately aware of her immaculate appearance and careful grooming but although she is extremely polite, it was impossible for me to get close to her. I felt that, beneath the surface charm, there was a very hard, self-centred woman, and it soon became clear that she was reluctant to talk about her first husband. I was left with the distinct impression that her memories of Gerhardt are tinged with hatred.
Wollweber is still alive but is now almost senile. He was dragged before the de-nazification courts in 1953 and received a nominal prison sentence of two years of which he served eighteen months.
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He feels extremely bitter about this and blames Ottaway for not appearing in his defence, which is pretty rich when you consider his past conduct. On his release he moved to Thalkirchdorf in Bavaria, and you can find him at any time of the day or night in the Post Gasthof where he loves to watch his friends playing Skat. Occasionally, when he is half drunk, he is quite lucid and likes to boast of the old days, much to the embarrassment of the locals.
Baron Pierre Damon retired from the bank in 1964 at the age of sixty and now lives quietly in his house in Geneva. He is very touchy whenever the subject of his role in Operation Leopard is raised and it is quite apparent that he finds the whole affair exceedingly distasteful and resents the fact that Ashby made him look a fool. His one great passion is the Credit and Merchant Bank and he will talk for hours on that subject if you are foolish enough to listen to him.
Every story should have a happy ending and it is only fitting that Ottaway should supply it. He arrived back in England on 5th May, 1945, and immediately got in touch with Anne Bradley because, as he said later, he’d thought of no one else during his months of captivity. Between VE and VJ Day he first courted her, then married her and finally made her pregnant. They now have four children, all of them girls, two of whom, having married in their teens, have succeeded in making grandparents out of Jack and Anne. Ottaway did not return to teaching after the war but instead became a career diplomat, although to judge from his postings which have included South Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Guatemala, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, I’m inclined to think he is with the CIA. He is now serving with the United States Embassy in Paris and we often met during the summer of 1972. Both he and Anne look absurdly young for their age and it is quite obvious that they are devoted to each other, which in this day and age is really something.
There remains the mystery of why the Russians saw fit to transmit that fatal message to the ‘Choro’ Group knowing that it was bound to be intercepted and decoded, and Ottaway has an intriguing theory which is certainly in keeping with the known facts. Throughout the war, the Soviet High Command was informed of any change in the order of battle on the Eastern Front within twenty-four hours of the decision being made in Rastenburg. If Bormann was the spy at Rastenburg, then in the autumn of 1944, it was certainly in the interests of the Russians to ensure that he remained alive and well.
CLIVE EGLETON
June 1973
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