Midnight Raid Read online

  “It will be good to get some sea time in. I’m bored with this fjord.”

  “If the British are coming, we shall meet them well before they reach the fjord entrance. They’ll find a hot reception awaiting them.”

  “Won’t we attack, sir?”

  “It depends on the size of the force. I’m as keen to sink enemy ships as anyone, but our real purpose out there will be to report them to Major Redlich, so that he can alert all the defences.”

  “Maybe we can fire our torpedos at something?”

  “I expect so,” Kneipe said indulgently.

  *

  Hauptmann Scherer went reluctantly to inspect his gun crew on Island One. The slightest chop on the water made him feel ill. The fjord was never dead calm, so he was always suffering from nausea and in a bad humour when he ventured there.

  He had been reluctant to site a gun there, in the first place: not only because visiting it would be unpleasant, but also because he believed that all his guns should be in and around the town. But, he told himself, one could not win an argument with Major Redlich. If the enemy attacked in strength, one gun would be ineffectual on the island. If they came in small numbers, in small boats, these would slip past, hugging the shore, and the little garrison wouldn’t even be aware of their presence: so what was the point?

  “To cut off the enemy’s retreat, as much as to stop them coming further up the fjord,” Redlich had said.

  When Scherer went unsteadily ashore that morning, he had an idea in mind which he had not confided to Redlich. He did not like Redlich – he did not much like any of his brother officers – and it would be a pleasure to steal a march on him.

  The lieutenant in command of the gun crew was as keen as Kneipe or the latter’s midshipman, and fairly bristled with excitement at the news that a spy had been caught in Olafsund.

  “Does this mean the enemy is taking a special interest in us, sir?”

  “It means that I am taking a special interest in the enemy.” Scherer sounded more pompous and portentous than ever. “You may expect an attack at any moment. My appreciation of the situation is that the enemy will mount a small-scale raid by stealth. Saboteurs brought here by submarine and transferred to canvas or inflatable boats. They will try to skulk up the fjord, close to the cliffs.”

  “Shall I keep the searchlight sweeping throughout the hours of darkness, Captain?”

  Scherer looked smug. “I think we can do better than that. The searchlight would warn an attacker that we are alert. What I have devised is more subtle. I want you to send a working party to each side of the fjord, to attach one end of a hundred-metre rope firmly at the foot of the cliff, with iron stakes like we use for barbed wire. Fix the other end to a small buoy and anchor it with a length of rope and a heavy weight, so that it is just below the surface at high tide.

  “Tie coils of barbed wire to the rope, so that the barbed wire is under water. At the landward end of the rope, place grenades, tied to the rope with string, so that any violent agitation of the rope will pull out the pins. In that way, if the enemy tries to get past in small boats, they will become entangled in the wire and the grenades will go off: they might kill or wound a few of the enemy, but the real purpose is to let us know he has arrived. Then, you can shine the light on the boats and blow the enemy to bits with gunfire.”

  The lieutenant wriggled with glee. “Brilliant, Captain: but the materials?”

  “I have the rope, the barbed wire and some blocks of concrete with me.” Scherer gestured towards the S boat that had brought him to the island.

  “By God, Captain, we’ve got ’em by the balls if they do come.”

  Scherer smirked. “They’ll get their balls entangled in the barbed wire, won’t they.”

  *

  Hauptmann Weitz, even more misanthropic than Scherer, and tormented by dyspepsia, brooding over Redlich’s acerbity over his failure to observe Leutnant Zimmer’s flanking attacks on the recent exercise, pottered around his infantry positions at all hours of the day and night, harassing his company and platoon commanders.

  He had little freedom of action, under an autocratic Garrison Commander, particularly one who was himself an infantryman. But he did have some leeway over the disposition of his mortars. Redlich was too experienced not to leave himself loopholes in the event of failure. If the enemy came, and won the battle, and Redlich survived, he would be answerable for the defeat. If he had taken every detail of defence upon himself, he would be the only guilty party, the scapegoat. He had therefore given Weitz a free hand over the disposition of the four 80 mm Granatwerfer 34 mortars, which could throw a 7.7lb bomb 2600 yards.

  Weitz dithered neurotically over their siting and changed it almost daily. While Scherer was giving orders on Island One, Weitz was shifting his mortars once again.

  “This will be my final plan,” he told the disgruntled lieutenant in command of the mortar platoon.

  That, I’d like to believe, the lieutenant reflected. Po-faced, he said “Very good, Captain. Where do you want them put?” And I know where I’d like to put them, he thought: right up your scrawny arse, you manic-depressive booby.

  “Leave this one where it is. Here, right in the middle of the town square, is an excellent place: we have an all-round field of fire. Number Two, I want on the north side of the power station; Number Three, on the south side: both as far to the end of the shelf as possible. Number Four, on the waterfront, in front of the fish processing factory. Number Six will stay behind the power station.”

  “I’ll do it straight away, sir.”

  “That will give us the ability to cover any point in the town, the approaches to it and the port.”

  “And if the enemy drops paratroops, we can deal with them too, sir.”

  Weitz gave him a suspicious look. He was never sure when these Berliners were being sarcastic. “Get on with it, Braun.”

  *

  Leutnant Zimmer, the star turn of the large-scale defence exercise, whose flanking attacks had routed Weitz’s other infantry companies, was enjoying himself hugely as commander of the two sangars. It was a word which the British had adopted from the Indian Army, and therefore unknown to Zimmer: who called them Redouten.

  Since his tactical triumph, his boon companion Hofstein had christened him “Son of Klausewitz”. He spared a thought for Hofstein as he supervised the final construction of the two redoubts. It had shaken him almost as badly as it had shaken Hofstein, when he heard of Gro’s arrest. Her execution had angered, sickened, saddened and scared him. He had found her jolly and charming, and if she had been a spy, well, that was all right with him: according to Hofstein she was a good lay, which was the most important thing in a woman.

  Like his friend, he was a dedicated rake. His fear was occasioned by the fact that he had patiently been laying siege to the mayor’s daughter. The mayor was a quisling in good standing, and his daughter was therefore reckoned a respectable friend for a young German officer. Now, however, with Redlich having his own mistress’s house searched, one never knew where suspicion might strike.

  The last thing Zimmer wanted was to incur Major Redlich’s wrath and disfavour. The imprisoning of the mayor would presumably put his family out of favour. Zimmer was therefore faced with having to abandon his pursuit of the daughter. She, anyway, would no doubt now be hostile and bitter towards all Germans.

  Zimmer had a good tough regular sergeant in command of each redoubt in his absence. He was satisfied with the way the redoubts had been build and he had set up fixed lines of fire for the machine-guns, so that they would be effective in the dark. His command post was in the redoubt on the southern side of the fjord, and he could keep in touch with the northern redoubt by field telephone and radio.

  The more he looked at the town from either of the redoubts, the more sure he became of its impregnability; and the more he wondered what ruse the British would employ if they did attack. If the French were traditionally convinced of the perfidy of the British, the Germans, since
Chamberlain’s naif performance at Munich in 1938, were convinced of their gullibility and general stupidity. But Zimmer had been a Rhodes scholar and his three years at Oxford had taught him that the British were the most deceptive people in the world. The very same contemporaries of his who had voted, at a Union debate, not to fight for King and country, had rushed to volunteer for the armed forces when war was declared.

  The British enjoyed deceiving the rest of the world by presenting a façade of amateurism, behind which they were more deadly effective than any professional at any art, craft or profession, or at any sport. He wondered how they would really tackle an assault on Olafsund. It was all very well for the clever and cunning Major Redlich to assert that they had no paratroops capable of attacking it: but Zimmer suspected that that was precisely what they would want a man like Redlich to think. He expected a parachute drop onto the shelf, and paratroopers storming downhill, to be picked up by naval vessels that would come full pelt up the fjord while the land battle was distracting everyone’s attention.

  He regarded his two redoubts as the bastions from which the enemy would be enfiladed and cut to ribbons before they could reach any ships that came to embark them.

  Chapter Nine

  The landing ship and her escort had sailed 20 miles north of the fjord, then turned south to make her landfall at its mouth: a simple expedient to trick the enemy, who expected all attacks to approach from the south-west.

  The S boat on patrol to the south of the fjord was never closer than 10 miles to the convoy.

  Taggart stood between his two assault boats, quietly reminding his men not to move too fast. At his final briefing he had been insistent that falls and injuries were to be avoided, even at the cost of precious time. He could not afford a single casualty. At full strength, B Troop still had a task that would stretch it fully.

  Their faces blackened with burnt cork, which they now used instead of the grease paint of the earlier raids, the men moved with care along the heaving boat deck as the tide ran strongly and a westerly wind tore in from the Atlantic. The shuffle of feet, the clink of metal, the murmur of low, taut voices, the laboured breathing of those who carried heavy weapons or were weakened by sea sickness, heightened the atmosphere of tension and expectancy.

  The two destroyers and the corvette had parted company from Prince Of Denmark at the mouth of the fjord, to stand well out to sea until it was time to make their run to the town and embark the Commandos.

  The blackness was so intense, relieved only by thin starlight, that it was impossible to see either shore except for the summits of the two ranges of hills, which showed faintly against the slightly paler background of the stars.

  The warships had slid away into the night without a sound: no cheerful final good-luck whoop of siren, no parting message flashed by signal lamp. The men on the landing ship knew they were there only from their bow waves and wakes, which showed faintly on the tumbling phosphorescent sea.

  Taggart climbed into the leading boat of his pair and moved forward to the bows. The boats jerked down on their davits and the sea snatched them, the wind struck them, and in an instant they were borne away by engine, tide and wind. When Taggart turned to look astern, Prince Of Denmark was already out of sight.

  On one engine, the boats could make just about three knots in still water. Now, they pounded along in a bustle of whirling foam and spray at a good four knots. Taggart half shut his eyes against the stinging cold spume and clung to the gunwale. There was no room to move; the boat was tightly packed. He saw two of his men leaning over the side, losing the last food they had eaten. The sour stench of it was wafted on the wind and made him hold his nose with his free hand, while he gripped his Tommy gun between his knees.

  Iridescent water swirled around the boat, dark as sable, flecked with phosphorescence. Taggart was as tense as a sprinter on starting blocks waiting for the starter’s pistol. He heard Sergeant Major Duff, at his side, fiddling with the magazine on his Sten gun. He heard Udall, immediately behind him, swear when a heavy sea lopped over the gunwale and threw cold water over the collar of his battledress and down his neck.

  The shoreline emerged slowly as a white streak across the general solid blackness, where the sea was breaking against the sheer sides of the fjord. Devouring excitement suddenly took hold of Taggart.

  Gowland, half way down the boat, no longer felt the bemused ferment of disorientation that had closed in on him in the first few minutes of their rolling, pitching rush away from the mother ship. There was the shore and in a little while their feet would be on firm ground. The assault boats began to turn parallel to the shore and their motion became a trifle less violent. The loom of the first bend in the fjord was visible now. Around it lay Island One.

  In the second boat, Dempster had been fighting off a crushing dread of the unknown and cursing himself for the misplaced pride that had prompted him to volunteer for The Commandos and brought him to this benighted Hades of screeching wind and threatening water. When he saw the slopes of the northern shore shouldering their way up from the surf, his spirits rose and everything that had looked so mysterious and invincible became familiar. That towering bluff ahead belonged to the Scottish coast along which he had made those many practice runs on other dark and daunting nights. The cliff that was still out of sight around a bend was no more to be dreaded than those he had scaled time and time again in rehearsal.

  Udall, at Taggart’s back, amateur boxing champion and cheerful Cockney, had committed himself to Taggart’s care as confidently as a religious man might put himself in the hands of God. Udall was no fatalist: he believed that a man guided his own destiny; and reckoned that the officer who had led him unscathed through fighting patrols and pitched battles in France and on a high-risk Commando raid there, was qualified to see him safely through this one. His main worry was about the radio set he had to carry and his ability to use it efficiently. He was unconcerned about the cliff climb and what lay beyond. To him, his task was clear and simple: to stick close to Taggart and do as he was told. If anyone had asked him what he would like most at that moment, he would not have replied “to get away from here”, but “a fag and a cupper”.

  In the Headquarters boats, Lieutenant Colonel Beauchamp-Ballantrae and Major Abberly were less phlegmatic. The Colonel, irritated and disturbed by the six or eight casualties suffered in the process of clambering into the assault boats, and remembering the farcical misfortunes that had attended 100 Commando’s first raid across the Channel, soon after the evacuation from Dunkirk, wondered what else would go wrong this time. To lose even half a dozen men from accidents at the outset weakened the commando. It was lucky that none of them had been a signaller, but any depletion of his force put the plan in jeopardy. He wished he knew more about the defences of Olafsund. He was counting on the guide who was supposed to meet Taggart to provide the information he so badly needed.

  Abberly, relieved of the responsiblities of commanding a troop, had one regret and one anxiety. The first was that he would be playing only a supporting, not a spearhead, part in the attack. The second was lest the Colonel were killed or wounded and he had to take over. He had spent his adult years risking his own life and limb at a variety of dangerous pastimes and was not afraid of dying on this operation; but he suffered agonies of conscience when men under his command were killed in action. He did not want to carry the burden of remorse and self-recrimination tonight.

  *

  Taggart’s mind was concentrated on the bend, which lay half a mile ahead now. He had a mental picture of the topography of the fjord and town.

  Half a mile beyond Island One, which lay in the middle of the fjord, was the cliff that his troop had to climb. It was tucked away, around a corner, where the cliffs at the foot of the mountain on the northern side of the fjord had been scooped out, in the Ice Age, into a small bay. The cliff on the outside of the bend, where the fjord turned southward, the left hand side as the Commandos went up the waterway, therefore formed one side of this
indentation and hid it from the view of the enemy on Island One. This was why the Commandos dared use rockets to carry their climbing ropes to the cliff top.

  After running south for a mile or so, the fjord bent eastward again, thus forming a Z shape. About 1200 yards beyond the second turn lay Islands Two and Three, some half a mile off the town’s seafront.

  The two assault boats, hugging the northern – left hand – shore, had been keeping no more than 30 yards from it. The water, lashed into turbulence by the tide, by the wind from the sea and by gusts of wind that swept down the mountain, was much rougher here than further out towards the middle of the fjord; and Island One: because the sea struck the rocks and the sheer perpendicular cliff face with such force that it rebounded. The waves that bounced back from this shore, being in opposition to the tide and the wind-blown rollers, created more and bigger waves.

  The sound of the sea breaking on the rocks and cliff boomed like a succession of gun shots. The boats rocked and pitched violently. Men were groaning and being sick.

  Taggart thrust his way through the tightly packed bodies of his heavily laden troops, to the midshipman in command of the boat.

  “Snotty, can you steer a bit further out, please? Some of my chaps are making heavy weather of it. I need them fit to climb that bloody cliff the minute we get our feet ashore. I can’t waste time waiting for the weaker bretheren to settle their guts.”

  The snotty grinned light-heartedly. He was enjoying himself. The rough water, the wind and the proximity of the enemy enlivened him; and it always amused him to see pongoes ill-at-ease on the sea. “Aye, aye, sir.” He told the coxswain to bear away forty-five degrees to starboard.

  “About eighty yards offshore should do it, don’t you think?” Taggart suggested.

  “Don’t worry, sir: I won’t get any closer to the island than we need to.”

  In the darkness ahead, and directly across their original course, lay the booby trap devised by Hauptmann Scherer: under the waves and their frothing crests, bobbed 100 metres of hawser, supporting coils of barbed wire; and ashore, grenades waited for a more violent tug on the strings, which would draw their pins and cause them to detonate.