The Invasion of 1950 (46 page)

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The ground was moving at a terrifying speed, but Flying Officer Bentley ignored it, trusting to his skills to keep the Tempest aircraft from crashing into the ground. The Tempest was a new and largely untried aircraft, with only five built for the RAF so far, but it had lived up to most of its promises. It had been designed after realising that the Germans had practically invented the doctrine of close-support for their soldiers and had developed tactics that allowed a single aircraft to make a major contribution to the fighting. The Tempest was fast, powerful, and armed with weapons that could reduce an entire armoured unit to flaming debris, assuming that it could find its target.

Bentley focused his mind as he flashed over a small settlement, converted into a fortress by the Home Guard, and headed towards the German lines. The pre-mission briefing hadn’t been particularly detailed, but one thing was clear; the Germans had launched a two-pronged attack into the British defence lines and were on the verge of breaking through.  If they succeeded, it would be much harder to evict them. So Monty was concentrating everything he had on destroying their spearheads before they got too far into the defence lines and broke out into the rear. Bentley saw the clouds of smoke and checked his weapons. He was getting closer to the Germans, and when he saw them, he would attack at once.

A low-level attack carried its own risks, although he hoped that his angle of approach, from the south, would convince nervous Home Guardsmen not to fire on his aircraft. The hope wasn't realised as several bursts of anti-aircraft fire narrowly missed him, but he was over their position within moments and heading right for the German lines. If the smoke was any indicator, the Germans were right ahead…

There
! The grey shapes of German panzers were very clear, bombarding a British position as they moved forward at terrifying speed. Bentley didn’t hesitate. He selected his rockets and launched a major assault, firing off all of his rockets in a single massive salvo. They were hardly precision weapons, targeted perfectly, but it didn’t matter; there were enough of them to ensure that at least some German tanks would be killed. He smiled as he saw the explosions and felt the plane being buffered by the blasts as the effects rose into the sky; he’d definitely hit at least four panzers and damaged a couple more. It was a shame that the Germans hadn’t strung them out in a nice line, but it hardly mattered; he’d given them a bloody nose all right.

His lips pulled back into a sneer as he triggered his cannon. The Germans would bring supplies forward to reload their advancing forces and he was behind their lines. The supply convoys had to be near him. The Germans wouldn’t have sent them near to any major habitation – they  tried to avoid them – so where were they?

He dared to rise a little higher in the sky and spotted a line of German trucks heading towards one of the advancing spearheads. He rolled the aircraft into a dive and triggered the cannon, strafing them until the entire line of trucks had been wrecked.

Altering course, he climbed into the air and flew back towards the British lines. He would reload…and then he'd be back. There would be hundreds of other targets for his aircraft.

The German front line was all-too-clear to him as he rose higher. He could see the smoke and fires caused by the fighting and the massive shellfire from both sides, but the Germans were definitely making progress. A cold knot of fear appeared in his heart as he looked down on the battlefield; he was too high up to see any of the fighters, but somehow, he knew it wasn't going well.

Colchester was falling to the Germans.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Felixstowe, England

Gregory Davall threw caution to the winds and strode over to the window, peering out around the blackout curtain and star
ing away to the south. The noise of combat was growing louder, like distant thunder or fireworks, and he could see flashes and flares in the darkness. The British lines were some miles away, and he couldn’t hope to make out individual details, but he was sure that their captive was right; the German offensive had begun.

Their captive was laughing. “Shut up,” Davall snapped as he pushed the curtain back into place. That explained the surprisingly low levels of German guards, although it didn’t explain, or why this particular German had decided to take the night off. “Why aren’t you out there fighting with your friends?”

Blood was trickling down from where Davall’s hand had split their captive’s lip. “I’m a logistics officer,” their captive said with some dignity, perhaps in response to the unspoken accusation of being a coward. “I organised the attack’s logistics and now they don’t need me anymore, so I came out here with her for a peaceful night.”

Davall glanced in the direction of the fighting. It was eerie; they could hear the noise, but the ground wasn't shaking. The only sign that there was anything wrong was the racket; outside, he suspected that people would be staring into the distance, looking for signs of what was going on. The Germans had their curfew in effect, but even so, the townspeople would be alerted, wondering what was happening in the distance. Would someone try something stupid while the Germans were distracted?

He ground his teeth in rage. He’d waited too long too long to obtain the information he'd wanted. He hadn’t been able to send a warning and so he’d risked revealing Janine’s real role for nothing. He took a tighter grip on his pistol, seriously considering simply shooting the SS man in the head, but refrained. His disappearance would be noted. If Davall shot him, but left Janine alive, a smart SS man might wonder
why
Janine had been left alive, and come to the right conclusion.

“Guard him,” he said, checking his watch. The Germans wouldn’t be coming for their officer for a few more hours, but there wasn't much darkness left. They needed to get into the forest, change their clothes, and then return to their homes, all before the sun rose. “Remain here and gag him.”

He wanted to be sick as he looked at the German’s hand. He hadn’t wanted to torture the German, and indeed, their field training had said very little about how to torture someone effectively, but there had been no choice…and it had all been for nothing. It wouldn’t be easy to convince the German to hide the fact that they had tortured him…he shook his head at the absurdity of the thought. The German would have to be left alive, but at the risk of revealing that there were at least three insurgents operating within the German-held territory. Perhaps he could be convinced to remain silent…no, that was impossible.

The interior of the cottage was more luxurious than he had expected, someone’s dream idea of a countryside cottage, rather than anything real. It was easy to find the bedroom and he closed the door behind him, hoping that the German’s imagination would fill out all kinds of scenarios for what he could be doing with a nude and vulnerable Janine, rather than the truth. His men had left her in a comfortable position, or at least as comfortable as one could be when tied hand and foot, but her eyes were deeply worried. She knew that she was at risk too.

“Janine,” he whispered, keeping his voice very low. He could have removed the gag, but it was important that they made as little noise as possible. “We got here too late; the attack’s already begun.”

He saw her eyes go wide with fear and bitter understanding.

“We can take you out of here and hide you in the forest, or we can leave you in place,” he said, softly. “Do you want us to take you out of here?”

She shook her head, rubbing it uncomfortably against the bed. Davall leaned closer. “You want us to leave you here?”

She nodded. Davall understood. If she were lucky, she would be taken for nothing more than an innocent bystander in the events that had overtaken the SS man who had paid for her favours. She was likely to suffer for his shame, even if she was taken to be an innocent; a man would sometimes take his shame and humiliation out on the nearest vulnerable woman. He kissed her once on the forehead, winked at the surprise on her face, and then slipped back into the main room. Deininger was glaring at him over his gag, his eyes dark with murderous intentions. It would look very bad when he was caught. Davall briefly considered trying to dress him up in women’s clothes, something that would earn him a hot reception from his comrades, but there was no time.

“We’re going to be going now,” he said, placing his lips as close to the SS man’s ears as he could. The man flinched away from his lips. “If you feel inclined to have hundreds of people hurt or killed because of this, we will find you again and kill you. Bye, bye…”

They slipped out of the cottage and into the darkness. The SS man would probably manage to free himself, given enough time, but Davall guessed that they had at least an hour before the SS man called for help, assuming that he actually did call for help. It would look rather bad on his record and he had a hunch that the remainder of the SS wouldn’t be happy with their comrade, particularly since he hadn’t remained on duty, but had gone off with a prostitute. Maybe he had had permission to go on leave on the eve of the offensive – there was no way to know – but it hardly mattered. The man would look bad and hopefully none of his report would be believed.

We can’t rely on that
, Davall thought, as they reached the hidden shack in the wood. They had rigged it up carefully with diabolical ingenuity, in order to prevent the Germans from breaking in and finding the supplies; anyone who tried to enter without taking the right steps would be blown to smithereens by the explosives they’d placed underneath the shack. He watched as McAllister carefully deactivated the explosives, before they slipped into the shack, changed rapidly back into their normal clothes, and closed the shack up again.

The rumbles of thunder from the distance were only growing louder, rising and falling; he guessed he was hearing the sound of the guns, and then the noise of the explosions as the shells crashed to the ground. He took a chance and scrambled up an old tree he knew from his childhood, climbing high enough to gain a better view; the entire horizon looked to be on fire. The flashes of light, each one marking the impact of a shell, were everywhere and the sky was glowing with the light of flares, casting an eerie light over the entire scene. It was almost obscenely pretty, in a way; he could have watched it for hours. That wasn't an option, he knew, and allowed himself to slip back down the tree, walking back to his men.

“We have to split up and get back to our homes,” he said, shortly. They performed quick inspections of each other to ensure that they weren't carrying anything too revealing before they split up and wandered down separate paths, heading back to the town. He ducked, quickly, as the noise of German aircraft roared overhead. He looked up and saw a massive line of them, blotting out the sky as they flew towards the south.

The streets of Felixstowe were deserted when he slipped out of the forest; he didn’t even see any German patrols. It made him wonder if the Germans had pulled out suddenly and sent all their SS men to the front, but that didn’t seem likely. He saw some windows, the ones facing south, half-uncovered, the occupants looking into the distance and wondering if the morning would bring relief or increased torment. The growl of German vehicles rose up suddenly, and he took refuge in someone’s front garden, watching fearfully as the line of German vehicles drove past, heading to the front. The Germans had been building up a massive supply depot some distance from town. He’d thought about attacking it, but with what looked like an entire regiment committed to its defence, he had rapidly dismissed the thought as suicide.

Bastards
, he thought, as the first glimmerings of dawn appeared in the distance. He redoubled his pace, slipping from house to house, until he reached his home and slipped around to enter it from the rear. Kate had left the back-door unlocked and he slipped inside, realising that the combat was still audible, even growing louder. He undressed rapidly and slipped upstairs to bed, only to discover that Kate was still awake, staring at nothing.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said by way of explanation. She wore the nightdress her mother had given her on their wedding night, very different from Janine’s easy sexuality, but Davall remembered her without it on many different nights. They had moved from being lovers to being married…and along the line, their passion had grown stronger. “That noise…”

“There’s a war on,” Davall said, as he climbed into bed beside her. It was warm, very warm, but it was easy, somehow, to cuddle up to her. “I think the Germans are launching an assault on our lines.”

Kate’s eyes went very wide. “And what you were doing…?”

“You don’t want to know,” Davall said, and kissed her. She responded to his kiss and they grew in passion as she leaned back, inviting him to straddle her and lift up her gown. A moment later and he was inside her, pushing against her and pushing them both forward…there was a perfect moment of blissful forgetfulness, and then the world came crawling back into his mind. The German assault might fail, and if that happened, the fighting would come back into Felixstowe, and if that happened…