Midnight Raid Read online

  Midnight Raid

  Richard Townsend Bickers

  © Richard Townend Bickers 2014

  Richard Townend Bickers has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 2001, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1985 by Robert Hale Limited

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Extract from My Enemy Came Nigh by Richard Townsend Bickers

  Chapter One

  The Commandos clung to the cliff, wind-driven hail and sleet slashing their faces. A hundred feet below, the growling sea hurled twenty-foot waves against jagged rocks that rose forty feet above the turbulent water. Spray drenched the shivering soldiers, hurled at them by the towering rollers that burst with a roar at the foot of the slippery slope as every third one came, rhythmically, with increased ferocity. Bullets whined over their heads, chipping away slivers of granite that pattered on their steel helmets.

  The firing stopped and Taggart resumed his climb. B Troop, watching for his lead, clambered after him. They had another fifty feet to clamber. The gusting wind threatened to tear them loose. They pressed themselves against the cold wet rock and a more bitter chill thrust through their sodden clothing.

  Fingers, wrists and ankles aching, they paused for the wind to abate; then forced themselves on again.

  More bullets spanged off the cliff, to remind them not to be careless in the last few minutes of the assault. The howling wind at their backs shoved them over the edge and onto the short grass on top. The rain-soaked turf added its share to their misery and their sweaty bodies trembled from the cold and exertion.

  From a flank, Bren gun bullets whipped inches overhead, forcing them to lie prone and wriggle forward on their bellies.

  The Colonel’s whistle blew. He had climbed ahead of them all. The firing stopped. The men waited, laboured breath condensing in white wraiths that the wind instantly tore to shreds.

  The exercise was not over yet. They had to rush the concrete strongpoint fifty yards ahead, across boulder-strewn ground with thunderflashes detonating all around them in the covering smoke screen already coiling acridly overhead.

  There was no automatic fire now. The Colonel wanted only to instill care in his men without killing or wounding. Care was different from caution, with its implication of timidity. With proper care, men could survive the fiercest battle if they had been trained like this in fear-purging, confidence-breeding rehearsals for what was to come.

  As for the inflicting of casualties: the Germans took care of that and No 100 Commando needed every good tough man it could raise. Training accidents, sometimes fatal, took a certain toll: a bullet, a grenade fragment, a fall from a cliff or mountainside. But that was the price that had to be paid for the future survival of the majority and the prize of a fighting spirit and skill that could enable them to assault a redoubt held by a force ten times their size and leave no one alive nor a blade of grass unscorched.

  Two blasts on the whistle launched them into combat. They stormed the pillbox, then both attackers and defenders laid down their weapons and fought hand-to-hand with tension-relieving grunts and oaths. Every man wished he could draw his fighting knife and do to his comrades what he would do to the enemy if this were a real battle.

  When the whistle blew for the last time, not a few had gone down from stunning blows or judo throws and were picking themselves up with bruises, swollen eyes and lumpy jaws. They abseiled down to the beach from which they had started and doubled back in column of threes to the bleak 14th Century castle where they were based.

  Taggart found the breath to say to one of his two section commanders: “Wish I knew whether that was a dry run before the real thing, or just another of the Colonel’s little jollies.”

  Dempster, puffing, pulled a face; one of his actor’s repertoire. “If that was a dry run, I think I’ll apply for a boat section: couldn’t be wetter.”

  *

  In the far north-west of Scotland the Commandos had to change their lifestyle. In so sparsely populated a region there were too few villages, and those too small, for the men to find civilian billets. Instead, they pooled their ration allowances and their commanding officer had cooks attached, with mobile kitchens. The officers lived in the cold, draughty castle, the other ranks under canvas.

  In the anteroom, at the dreary, weary hour between tea and time for a before-dinner drink, Taggart found Abberly alone in front of the log fire. Abberly, formerly in command of B Troop, was now a major and second-in-command to Lieutenant Colonel Beauchamp-Ballantrae. His long face, with its patrician nose broken and drolly off-centre, wore its usual look of friendly scepticism. “Good evening, Rodney.”

  Taggart went to warm his hands at the blaze. “What’s it in aid of, Hugh? That’s the third time we’ve done the same exercise in five days. What are we rehearsing?”

  “Is that the buzz?”

  “You’re not surprised, are you?”

  “Hardly: knowing the troops’ capacity for curiosity and inventiveness. Are they getting chocker?”

  Taggart raised his eyebrows at the naval slang. Abberly had been away for two days. “Been hob-nobbing with the Navy, have you?”

  “Men grumbling? Restless? Browned off?”

  “Only because they’re playing guessing games.”

  “The Colonel will reveal all, after dinner. Troop commanders can put an end to the men’s speculations tomorrow; within limits. What is the favourite theory?”

  “Norway, of course. Runner-up is the Atlantic coast of France. Corporal Fysshe-Smith is running a book.”

  “That goes without saying.”

  “If I were a betting man, I’d back Norway.”

  There was a pause, during which Taggart challenged Abberly with a faint grin.

  Abberly held his eye for a moment, then admitted: “Not a bad runner. But keep it to yourself.”

  “I hoped I was wrong, actually. France would be warmer.”

  “I think you can be sure of a warm welcome, Rodney.”

  *

  When the mess servants had left them to their port, the Colonel, weathered and darkly leonine, thirty-four years old and radiating authority and controlled explosive energy, had no need to ask for his officers’ attention. The atmosphere tonight was quick with expectation.

  He spoke with the casually cheerful air of the secretary of a first-class rugger club informing the members of an agreeable invitation to do an Easter tour of southern France or northern Italy, or some other foreign part where the game was played. “H.Q. are rather keen on us having a crack at Norway in a few weeks’ time.”

  The other troop commanders looked at Taggart. Although not the oldest, the most senior or a regular, he was the most experienced; and the force of his personality was as galvanic as the Colonel’s. He had patrolled in front of the Maginot Line in the bitter winter of 1939-40, fought his way in a series of furious actions from the Belgian frontier to Dunkirk, and taken part in more raids than any officer or man in No 100 Commando: with an M.C. and bar as evidence.

  Taggart did not return the looks. His eyes were on the commanding officer. The Colonel, after a glance around at the others, settled his gaze on Taggart. He knew who would be their spokesman.

  “Since that jaunt to North Africa in February, Colonel, I’ve grown rather f
ond of a warm climate. No alternative to be pulled out of the hat?”

  “Red tape is the trouble, Rodney. As you know, the rest of the Army resents us: every battalion commander and upwards bears a grudge, because they all think we creamed off their best material when the Commandos were formed. What you probably don’t know is that every Army Command in the U.K. includes in its area, for raiding purposes, the enemy coast opposite its own bit of coastline. So, naturally, even if they haven’t got any specific plans for raids themselves, they object to what they look on as our poaching. On top of that, if any seaborne raid is planned, it’s the Navy who have the right of veto: and you don’t need me to tell you about the depth of inter-Service rivalry and jealousy. Anyway, the sailors have only got to say that a disembarkation into assault craft, or a beach landing, is impossible in some patch of water, and the whole scheme goes kaput.”

  “Norway will be a seaborne operation, sir: or,” and Taggart pretended indifference, “are we going to have to paddle our own canoes all the way?”

  There was amusement around the table: Taggart’s joke touched a sensitive area. Commandos were expected to accept tasks which would normally be regarded as impossible; moreover, much experimenting was going on into the use and development of various small craft on their raids.

  “Not quite: not yet, anyway. There’s one saving grace: as Norway is well north of any stretch of coast ‘belonging’ to any Command, it comes under the authority of the C-in-C Home Fleet: and he is only too willing to have a crack at Jerry up there; particularly since Claymore.”

  Operation Claymore was the code name of a Commando raid on the Lofoten Islands, off the north-west of Norway, six months earlier, on 4th March 1941. A force of five hundred, drawn from Nos 3 and 4 Commandos, supplemented by some 50 members of the Free Norwegian Army, based in England, and as many Royal Engineers, had been transported in two landing ships, infantry. Five destroyers and a submarine had escorted them and they had had air cover until they reached the target area. A great deal of effective damage had been done to factories whose products the enemy were using, to electrical equipment and to oil and petrol storage tanks. There had been no military or naval losses.

  “Is it going to be another big show, Colonel?”

  “The whole commando. We’ve recruited volunteers from the Free Norwegians, who are coming to us permanently; and I’m sending some chaps on a course to learn all about explosives and demolitions. So we’ll have our own interpreters and won’t need any Sappers, either. You can tell the troops that we’re rehearsing, not climbing cliffs just for the sake of the exercise.”

  Chapter Two

  Major Redlich looked several times a day at the map of Norway that hung on his office wall. He was conscious that this was a waste of time, but, despite his justifiable pride in being a good soldier and a first-class officer, he could not break the habit.

  He looked so frequently at the map for the same reason that compels people to probe with the tip of the tongue a sore hole where a filling has come out of a tooth, or to prod a stitched wound or lanced boil for evidence that it is actually healing. They think they are testing the place to measure any improvement; but psychologists would tell them that it is a morbid and even masochistic compulsion.

  Redlich derived some comfort from the fact that the small port of Olafsund was not as far north as Spitsbergen, less than 1000 kilometres from the North Pole; or even the Lofoten Islands, which were 160 km inside the Arctic Circle.

  He wished he were lucky enough to be stationed in Oslo, Bergen or Stavanger. Trondheim, 320 km south of the Arctic Circle, would have been more agreeable than where he actually found himself, 250 km up the coast. Trondheim was no big city, but from where he was now it looked alluring, with its 55000 inhabitants and, surely, warmer climate. Although, he admitted, there was not much difference between a winter temperature of 35 degrees below zero and one of 30.

  It would not really have made an essential difference to any facet of his life, except bodily comfort, wherever the Army had sent him. The Norwegians’ faces were set in frozen hostility against their conquerors, from one end of the country to the other, and they took every opportunity for sabotage and the killing of German soldiers.

  Major Redlich took it as a compliment that he had been posted to Olafsund from Kristiansand, on Norway’s southern tip. The transfer had been made immediately after the British raid on the Lofotens, which had rung alarm bells in the minds of the Staff at the occupying forces’ Headquarters in Oslo.

  He had entered Norway on 9th April 1940, with Hitler’s invading Army, Navy and Air Force, and fought the Norwegian Army on the advance north from Oslo. Meanwhile, a British expeditionary force landed, supported by the Royal Navy and the R.A.F. Fierce battles were fought at Narvik, and Hauptmann (as he was then) Redlich was in the thick of it.

  The British evacuated at the end of April. On 10th May, Hitler invaded Belgium and Holland. By the time the German Blitzkrieg had crashed across the French frontier, Redlich’s regiment had been sent from Norway to join General Reinhardt’s triumphant 51st Panzer Korps. He had won his promotion to major on the battlefield; and hoped to remain in France with the occupying garrison. Now, in September 1941, his disappointment at being posted back to Norway that spring was mitigated by the thought that his regiment might well have formed part of the army that had invaded Russia three months previously. Little though he relished the Norwegian winters, he knew how much worse would be those in Russia; and he knew also that that austere and poverty-stricken country offered no fleshpots to a conqueror.

  At 34, he had done well to have won a Knight’s Cross and to be in command of a garrison comprising half a battalion of infantry, with a battery of field artillery and a Flak battery. His life had settled into a pleasant enough pattern. His command was impeccably efficient and always ready for any emergency. He never ceased planning training exercises and sounding practice alarms at all hours of the day or night. He enjoyed the company of most of his brother officers. He fed reasonably well. Finally, the hatred of the native population was buffered by the obsequiousness of the few traitors and collaborators who entertained him in their homes; and one of whose women, the widow of a manager in the hydro-electric plant, who had been killed in a British air raid on German ships and German-usurped installations, provided him with the most necessary of all comforts to a healthy and active man.

  He was contemplating the map of Norway and another which showed the progress of the invasion of Russia, when his adjutant came in with a signal in his hand and the look on his face that portended good news.

  “What is it, Bissinger?”

  Leutnant Bissinger put the signal on Redlich’s desk. “It looks as though we aren’t condemned to total stagnation, sir, after all.”

  A pulse began to throb in Redlich’s temple. Not a posting to Russia, for God’s sake! Officially, there was no God but Adolf Hitler: there were even chapels devoted to him in the Fatherland; but Redlich was a Catholic, and, although he did not eschew the mortally sinful embraces of the widowed Kirsten, he was a believer and, in his introspective moments, afraid of hell. He thought of himself as God-fearing, which meant that he was in fear of His eternal punishment; thus he invoked God’s name as a kind of supplication on occasions such as this.

  He read the message quickly. “It has been learned that an enemy force landed on West Spitsbergen Island on 24th August. Enemy naval ships transported 2000 Russian miners and their families to Archangel and returned to Spitsbergen on 2nd September to evacuate the enemy land force. All units in Norway are to expect further enemy incursions at any time, particularly between the present date and the onset of the winter.”

  Redlich looked up. “I’ve always thought it odd that we did not garrison the Spitzbergen Islands, to protect the coal mines and make use of the Norwegians’ high-power wireless transmitter.”

  “I hope it’s too late to do so now, Major. I would hate to fester there in total inactivity as well as the crippling cold, halfway betwe
en here and Greenland.”

  “No fear of that; we’d never send first-class units to a dump like that; it’s not strategically important enough. Too late now, anyway. But good news, in its way: we are much closer to England… Scotland: let us hope they will have a crack at us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ll have a practice stand-to immediately. I’ll put a call through to Haukeberg and ask the Luftwaffe to send a small formation over to make a dummy air raid. And I’ll have a word with the Navy and see if they can simulate a landing with a couple of minesweepers, to tie in with it.”

  “Very good, Major. Will you want to have a word with the officers first, to tell them about the signal?”

  “No. I’ll wait until after the practice attack alarm. You can tell them now that all officers are to report to me in the conference room at eighteen hundred hours.”

  His C.O. was a hard case, thought Bissinger, going back to his office: no hint to anyone that might anticipate the stand-to; and the de-briefing afterwards would be, as always with Major Redlich, well worth hearing.

  It was hard to imagine him ever having any sentimental moments; yet there must be a gentler streak somewhere in that adamantine character: he could relax in mess, he was amiable enough in their day-to-day association; he laughed easily; and, of course, there was the pretty Kirsten, who could doubtless attest to a highly human susceptibility.

  Bissinger was still groping his way through his administrative duties. By instinct bellicose, he had been an aggressive platoon commander during the invasion of Poland in 1939 and the battle for France in the summer of 1940. Wounded in the left leg and arm, during the last couple of days before Dunkirk was overrun, he had spent many months in hospital. He still limped and his left arm was bent a few degrees at the elbow. This prevented him returning to combat duties and he sometimes had spells of melancholy when he brooded on his prospects of ever being fully fit again. He was dissatisfied with having had no opportunity to add other decorations to his Iron Cross and would gladly have gone on the Russian campaign or be serving under Rommel in North Africa.