Operation XD Read online

  Operation XD

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Author’s Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Operation XD

  James Barrington

  To Sally, for everything and for always

  Foreword

  The events depicted in this novel are based on fact, and actually took place in very much the manner described, although Eddie Dawson is a purely fictional character and was obviously not involved in the real XD Operations. For dramatic reasons, I have altered some of the details, and most importantly the names and dates. The real events in the Netherlands occurred about three days earlier than those stated in this novel, and I have also compressed the later actions in France into a much shorter timeline.

  Chapter 1

  12 May 1940

  Northern France

  Nobody has ever claimed that the back of a British army lorry is a comfortable place to sleep. Or even to travel in. Especially when the lorry in question is bouncing over a rutted and largely unmade road because the driver is in a hurry.

  But Eddie Dawson, lying on a pile of old sacking that smelled quite strongly of lubricating oil and covered in a thin and scratchy army blanket that he’d found when he climbed up into the vehicle, was so knackered that within a few minutes of setting off he was already in the kind of fugue state that exists between wakefulness and sleep.

  The only good thing about that particular journey, from the outskirts of the Ardennes Forest in France to the English Channel, was that at that precise moment it was nowhere near the fighting. And he had seen and been involved in more combat over the previous few weeks than he had expected to face for the entire war, unless it ended up lasting for years. The Germans had invaded Belgium and the Netherlands two days earlier to face the combined armies of the Allies – French, Belgian and British troops – but what nobody had anticipated was that the Germans would then successfully advance into France through the Ardennes region. That upland area was widely believed, at least by the French, to be impenetrable to armoured vehicles, and especially to tanks, because of the forests along the border. Events had already proved the French to be completely wrong, as Dawson had witnessed first-hand: he had faced everything from Wehrmacht troops intent on ending his personal war in the most violent manner imaginable, to main battle tanks trying to do the same thing, only with much bigger guns.

  But the German advance into France was still largely tied down near the country’s northern border. The chances of the lorry being stopped by enemy troops were almost nil, and there weren’t even many Allied troops in the area: they were all in positions further to the east and north. As the lorry bounced and rattled its way west towards Calais, the countryside around the vehicle was almost eerily quiet, the only indication of the ongoing conflict was the dull rumble of artillery fire from tens of miles behind, a sound more like a distant thunderstorm than anything else.

  Or at least it was quiet for the first half an hour or so. By that time, Dawson had dropped off, so that when the driver of the Austin staff car, coming up fast from behind the truck, started sounding his horn in long, repetitive blares, he somehow managed to weave the sounds into a dream that had him standing on the deck of a Royal Navy vessel making the journey back across the Channel to Dover from France, and sounding its siren in greeting or warning as it approached the safe harbour.

  That happy, if wholly inaccurate, image lasted a bare few seconds, and ended abruptly when the driver of the lorry rammed his size-ten hobnailed army boot violently onto the brake pedal as the staff car swept past and slewed to a stop in front of him. The heavy braking slid Dawson bodily across the floor of the truck and slammed him head first into the steel partition behind the driver’s cab. That woke him up immediately, and angrily, and he staggered to his feet muttering threats and curses.

  He realized at once that the vehicle was stationary, and briefly wondered if the truck had been involved in an accident, but he quickly dismissed that notion because he definitely hadn’t heard the sound of an impact or felt anything like that. He guessed it was just a piece of really bad driving, nothing more. But in that case, why hadn’t the truck started moving again?

  Before he could do anything about it, like climb down and pin the driver against the side of the lorry and hammer his head against the steel until he got some answers, a head wearing a British army helmet appeared at the back of the vehicle above the tailgate.

  ‘You Dawson?’ the man demanded.

  ‘Yes. Who wants to know?’

  ‘I do. Now get your arse out of there. There’s been a change of plan.’

  ‘Might have bloody guessed,’ Dawson muttered. ‘Fucking army.’

  He picked up the Mauser rifle and Schmeisser MP40 sub-machine gun that he’d liberated from a couple of German soldiers, now deceased, men that he and Major Sykes had encountered once they’d escaped from the doomed Belgian fortress of Eben-Emael. The stock of Dawson’s British-issued Lee-Enfield had been shattered by a German bullet as they neared the Allied lines. They’d dumped the useless rifle, and had taken the two German weapons and all the ammunition they could carry because they’d had no alternative.

  ‘So what’s going on now?’ Dawson asked, as he followed the soldier – who he could now see was a lance corporal, just like Dawson himself – towards the front of the truck.

  ‘Buggered if I know, Corp,’ the man replied. ‘I was just told to stop this lorry, get you out of it and then deliver you to where I was told you had to go.’

  The reason for the truck’s sudden stop was then immediately apparent: an army staff car, commonly known in the forces as a ‘tilly’, from ‘utility’, had stopped sideways on across the front of the vehicle, virtually blocking the entire width of the road.

  ‘I’m supposed to be going to Calais,’ Dawson said.

  ‘Not any more you’re not,’ the lance corporal replied. ‘My orders are to get you to Amsterdam.’

  ‘In Holland?’

  ‘Unless you know of a different Amsterdam, yes.’

  ‘What the bloody hell am I going there for?’

  ‘Buggered if I know,’ the man repeated. ‘You know the rules, mate. Always obey the last order. Getting you to Amsterdam was the last order I was given, so that’s where we’re going. Or rather, that’s where you’re going. I’m just taking you to Dunkirk, because driving through Belgium to get to Holland ain’t going to work. The country’s full of bleeding Jerries heading for France, our lot trying to stop them, and the Belgies trying to keep out of the way of both of them. I suppose there’ll be a boat or something at Dunkirk to take you the rest of the way up the coast.’

  Dawson shrugged and shook his head. As he walked towards the staff car, the truck driver leaned out of his side window and shout
ed at him.

  ‘So what am I supposed to do?’ he asked.

  The lance corporal turned towards the truck, and Dawson knew immediately what he was going to say.

  ‘Buggered if—’ he began, but Dawson interrupted him.

  ‘Just go back to where you picked me up,’ he suggested. ‘Find the officer or the NCO who’s in charge of transport and tell him what’s happened.’

  The truck driver muttered something under his breath, then with a protesting metallic crunch from the gearbox he shifted the lorry into reverse and began backing down the road, looking for a stretch of road that was wide enough for him to turn the vehicle round.

  Dawson opened the passenger door of the staff car, put his weapons on the floor behind the driver’s seat and then started to climb into the back of the vehicle.

  ‘Oi, that’s for officers only,’ the lance corporal protested. ‘You can ride up here in the front, with me.’

  Dawson just looked at him.

  ‘I haven’t had a decent sleep for about a week,’ he said, his voice low and dangerous. ‘I’d just got my head down in that truck when you started sounding your bloody horn, so I’m going to lie down on the back seat of this tilly and try and get some sleep. If you don’t like it, that’s your hard bloody luck. So just shut up, get this thing started and drive.’

  The lance corporal looked at Dawson – who was at least 6 inches taller than him, built like the proverbial brick shit house, and clearly running on a fairly short fuse if the expression on his face was anything to go by – and just nodded.

  ‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ he murmured as he opened the driver’s side door.

  ‘Right now,’ Dawson said, ‘I don’t care if it matters or not. That’s where I’m going to be, so get used to it.’

  A few seconds later, the driver put the staff car into gear and accelerated hard up the bumpy road, probably trying to make the ride as uncomfortable as he possibly could for his passenger.

  But the broad leather seat in the back of the car felt like a feather bed to Dawson after the unyielding steel floor of the lorry he’d just climbed out of, and within a couple of minutes he was, again, sound asleep.

  Chapter 2

  13 May 1940

  Dunkirk, France

  When Dawson came to, the eastern sky was already lightening with the dawn. As the Austin staff car drew to a somewhat jerky stop, he distinctly heard the unmistakable calls of seabirds from somewhere overhead, and guessed that they had reached the coast, or were close to it.

  He grunted, groaned and stretched. He’d slept for the entire journey, as far as he could remember, but he was a long way from being refreshed: the back seat was far too narrow to comfortably accommodate his bulky frame. His back and the muscles of his legs ached with a vengeance, and he’d somehow managed to crick his neck as well.

  On the other hand, nobody was shooting at him, which made a change, so overall he still reckoned he was ahead.

  ‘We’re here, Corp,’ the driver called out, obviously having heard movement behind him in the car. ‘This is as far as I go.’

  Dawson sat up slowly and then extricated himself from the back of the vehicle, his movements clumsy because of the aches and pains he was suffering, and made worse by the fact that he was rather larger than the designers of the car had perhaps expected any rear-seat passenger to be. He had no kit – all that had been lost in his and Major Sykes’s escape from Belgium – but he was determined to hold on to the Mauser and Schmeisser as long as he could, so he scooped them out of the back of the car as he emerged.

  He straightened up with another groan as something clicked in his spine and looked around. The port wasn’t either as big or as busy as Calais, as far as he could tell, but there were still dozens of service personnel milling around purposefully, and numerous army vehicles of various sorts, either moving about or parked in somewhat straggly rows.

  ‘Now what the bloody hell am I supposed to do?’ he muttered.

  ‘Buggered if I know,’ the lance-corporal replied, entirely predictably, then shifted the staff car into gear and drove out of Dawson’s sight and, as it happened, out of his life.

  Three minutes later, Dawson was standing rigidly to attention while a smartly dressed sergeant with a reddish complexion and a bristly black moustache shouted at his face from a distance of about 6 inches.

  ‘Don’t you bloody try and get smart with me, Corporal. Where’s your bloody rifle? And the rest of your bloody kit?’

  Eddie Dawson stared into the middle distance for a couple of seconds longer, then gave him exactly the same answer as he’d done the first time he’d been asked the question.

  ‘In Belgium, Sarge.’

  ‘That’s what I mean by a smart, bloody, answer. Give me one more and you’ll find yourself on a bloody charge. We’re in France, just in case you hadn’t noticed. In bloody Dunkirk, in fact. So how the bloody hell did you lose your bloody rifle in bloody Belgium?’

  ‘I didn’t lose it. I dumped it because a Jerry bullet blew the stock to pieces. It was no good to anyone after that. In fact,’ Dawson added, recalling exactly what had happened in the Belgian forest, ‘it wasn’t actually me that dumped it. It was the bloke I was with.’

  ‘That doesn’t make it any better, Corporal. You don’t lend your bloody weapon to anyone, ever. You should bloody well know that. And if it gets damaged you bring it back and get a new one.’

  ‘Sod that for a game of soldiers,’ Dawson snapped, starting to lose his patience with the sergeant. ‘We had half the bloody German army chasing after us. No way were we going to bugger about dragging a broken rifle around with us. We had enough to do just getting away from them. That’s why I picked up this Mauser and Schmeisser.’

  ‘Sounds like another bloody tall story to me, Corporal, and you should think yourself lucky—’

  ‘Actually, it isn’t,’ another voice chimed in, and the sergeant spun round to find himself looking at a slim and somewhat dapper officer wearing major’s pips walking towards him, the effect spoiled somewhat by the officer’s obvious limp.

  Like all NCOs – non-commissioned officers – in the British army, the sergeant clearly believed in the old mantra: if it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t, paint it – and snapped off a crisp salute accompanied by a loud ‘Sah.’

  ‘This corporal is with me,’ Major Sykes said, returning the salute in a markedly casual manner and stepping forward to stand near Dawson.

  The sergeant switched his gaze between the hefty corporal with his craggy, hacked-from-the-living-rock features, and the slim and handsome officer from the Royal Scots Greys. Despite their clean uniforms, both men looked as if they’d been through a lot, the officer clearly nursing some kind of leg wound, while the corporal appeared to be just generally battered, with various cuts and bruises visible, and he too, in fact, also had a slight limp.

  ‘Right, sir,’ the sergeant said, and saluted again.

  As he turned and marched briskly away, Dawson turned to Sykes.

  ‘Am I, sir? With you again, I mean? And I thought you were heading for Calais, not Dunkirk.’

  ‘I was, but I got diverted. And you’re not with me, not this time. I just thought you had better things to do than stand there listening to that idiot trying to give you a hard time. The next ship to Dover leaves from here, not from Calais, so I’ll be on that one, with the Jerry demolition charge, so that I can tell the powers that be what we saw at Eben-Emael. The boffins there can take the device to pieces to find out how it works and decide what we can do about it. I’ll probably stay on the other side of the Channel until this leg has healed a bit better, but then I’ll be back. While I’m in Blighty I’ll be reporting on you and what you did. You might even find yourself in line for a gong, bearing in mind that you saved my life more times than I can remember.’

  Sykes paused for a few moments, then shook his head.

  ‘Or you might get an official reprimand or find yourself facing charges of repeated disobedience and
insubordination because of your consistent and stubborn refusal to obey any of my orders.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to leave you there, sir,’ Dawson said. ‘Orders or no orders.’

  ‘I know, and I’m grateful.’

  Sykes extended a hand, and the big corporal shook it.

  ‘Thanks, Eddie. Seriously, you saved my life, but getting that demolition charge back here could mean you’ve saved hundreds of other soldiers from getting killed, and that’s far more important. And my report will reflect that.’

  Dawson looked slightly stunned, not because of what Sykes had described, but because the officer had used his Christian name, the first time in his entire career in the army that that had happened.

  ‘Anyway,’ Sykes continued, ‘take care of yourself with whatever it is that you’re expected to do now.’

  He released Dawson’s hand, clapped him on the shoulder, and then strode away, still favouring his injured leg. The major had only walked about 50 yards when a young lieutenant accosted him. They exchanged salutes, and after a very brief conversation Sykes turned around and pointed back towards Dawson. The lieutenant saluted again, and then began walking briskly towards the corporal.

  ‘This looks like bad news,’ Dawson muttered to himself as the officer approached.

  ‘Lance Corporal Dawson?’ the young officer asked as Dawson gave a somewhat weary salute.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Then he just waited. Dawson had been in the army long enough to know that unnecessary conversation with any member of the officer class had a tendency to lead to additional work or duties. Before joining the Royal Engineers, he had spent five years in the Territorial Army, and he well remembered the advice drummed into him by the training corporal, a wizened and elderly – at least in Dawson’s eyes, which meant the man had probably been in his forties – individual who had seen it all and done most of it. ‘Don’t you never volunteer for nothing’ had been the man’s mantra, which, ignoring the double negative and the literal meaning of the phrase, still seemed to Dawson to be quite a good philosophy. And, like every other squaddie, he had heard all the stories about NCOs who would ask if anyone was interested in music because they needed a piano moving, or interested in food because half a ton of potatoes had just been delivered and needed peeling.