Scorched Earth (11 page)

Henderson donned his OT uniform and began preparing identity paperwork that would enable his team to ride his stolen German truck to Rouen in the guise of a construction crew.

The plan for PT’s six-strong team was to pick up bicycles stashed at the edge of the woods. Even if the Tigers could only move long distances at fifteen kph, they had no time to waste if they were to have a realistic chance of following them on bicycles.

Henderson gave Marc and PT maps, marked with the most likely routes to Normandy and key locations where sabotage might be an option. He then grew irritated as the two squads dragged out their goodbyes.

‘Move out,’ PT shouted.

‘Good luck,’ Henderson said, as he quickly shook PT’s hand.

Besides PT, Marc, Luc, Edith, Daniel and Michel, more than twenty other Maquis decided to walk to the edge of the woods with them because they had nothing better to do. Henderson worried that this unofficial entourage could attract attention, but he had other things on his mind and knew that nobody would follow them once they’d picked up the bikes.

The tail end of PT’s entourage had just vanished between trees when a flash and shockwave burst over the small forest clearing. As Henderson and everyone else hit the deck the sky was lit with bright white light and there was a sound like a thousand twigs snapping.

‘Take cover,’ Henderson shouted, but nobody heard because the Germans had launched three more artillery shells.

The first attack of the war had involved Hitler’s tanks pushing into the forests of Poland. The Germans had quickly learned that sending tanks or artillery into dense woodland was hopeless. But setting shells to explode a few metres above a forest canopy turned trunks and branches into thousands of deadly, high-velocity splinters.

As Henderson looked about, hot wooden spears whizzed in all directions, smashing into the ground, into trees and into flesh. The 108th clearly knew exactly where the Maquis headquarters was, even though Jean had only moved here that morning.

Jean’s command tent had been levelled and a man’s legs were smashed under a felled trunk less than 3 metres from Henderson’s position.

‘Team B, move out,’ Henderson shouted, as he stood up.

He did a quick three-sixty, seeing every surface covered with charred splinters, from the size of an arm to the size of a pencil stub. Paul’s face came out of the dark and Henderson put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

‘You OK?’

‘Yeah,’ Paul gasped, as he eyed the sky overhead nervously. There was blood spattered on his face, but it was someone else’s.

‘We stick to our plan,’ Henderson ordered. ‘Round the others up and lead them out of the woods to my truck.’

‘How do we know there isn’t a line of tanks between us and the truck?’ Paul asked.

‘We don’t,’ Henderson said bluntly. ‘But I don’t fancy sticking around here much, do you?’

Before Paul could answer, another triple-shell barrage lit the sky. The first blasts had ripped the tops off the trees, enabling this second wave to penetrate deeper and shred more wood. After finding a couple of members of his team and ordering them to move, Henderson ran towards his tent to grab a leather pouch containing his maps.

Jean got in Henderson’s face as he reached under the canvas to pick it up.

‘
You
brought this upon us,’ Jean screamed. ‘I hope you feel
bloody
proud.’

Jean was right, but Henderson felt no guilt. Shitty things happened to decent people. Henderson was a military man and you had to accept that fact if you wanted to wage war.

‘Take your men deep into the woods and stay put,’ Henderson said. ‘The 108th is a mechanised battalion. They’ve got no infantry to chase you into the woods and they can’t stick around long enough to starve you out.’

Jean grunted as Henderson slung a backpack and the leather map-satchel over his shoulders. Before Henderson ran, he realised that there were probably decoded notes and plans in his tent, so he rolled a grenade between the tent flaps and shouted, ‘Fire in the hole.’

Meantime, Paul had found Joel and Sam and relayed Henderson’s order to head for the truck.

As more artillery shells burst over the clearing, Henderson caught the pair up. ‘Where are the others?’ he demanded.

‘Two dead,’ Sam shouted. ‘No sign of anyone else.’

‘Either ignoring orders or they got hit by something,’ Henderson said.

Everyone who could had left the clearing. Henderson looked back at the writhing bodies and desperate moans of those who weren’t able to. It would take forever to reassemble his team in the dark, and the longer they stuck around the more chance there was that one of them would get speared in the next blast.

‘Looks like it’s just the four of us then,’ he shouted. ‘Let’s move out.’

While Henderson’s squad got halved before it even left the forest, PT and the rest of Team A cleared the worst of the blast zone and shed their entourage.

‘They’ll need help,’ Edith pleaded, scrambling over the undergrowth as Daniel looked forlornly back at the screams and smoke rising out of a clearing that was now almost a kilometre behind them.

‘Cower in the woods while others do the fighting and you get what you deserve,’ Luc said. ‘End of story.’

PT and Marc’s responses were more tactful, but Henderson had instilled military discipline in his trainees. They were determined to pursue the 108th, not head back into the woods to administer first aid.

Occasional shell blasts continued as Team A neared the point where the woods turned to farmland. Unlike the Morels’ large farm, this remote area comprised small peasant farms linked by narrow dirt tracks. Most were farmed by a single family and ringed by hedgerows several metres high.

This warren was one reason why the Maquis found it relatively easy getting in and out of the forest without being seen. PT’s team heard German activity a few fields over as they headed towards a barn stashed with bicycles. When they got close they found part of the road churned by metal tracks and a farm gate that had been bulldozed.

PT studied the tracks before whispering, ‘They’re too narrow for a Tiger. It’s some kind of half-track truck, or motorised artillery.’

The shelling had slowed after the initial barrage, so they all jolted when they saw the muzzle of an artillery gun light up a couple of hundred metres away.

‘We should go after them,’ Edith said, though she was still keen to help the people stuck in the woods. ‘Our job is to wipe the 108th out, isn’t it?’

PT didn’t answer, but stepped cautiously over the twisted iron gate. A couple of disinterested cows looked his way and there were ruts where the tracked vehicle had crossed the field before exiting by demolishing another gate on the far side.

‘Christ!’ Daniel said, loud enough to make PT turn around to shush him.

But PT was equally shocked when he saw the horrifically smashed body of an old man. It seemed he’d come out to investigate the noise and been run over by the tracked vehicle. The body was a real mess, but the worst part was that the tracks through the mud swerved towards him.

‘Looks like he wasn’t armed,’ Marc said. ‘But the driver went straight for him.’

Edith headed towards the little farm cottage. It was unlikely that any Germans would have stuck around, but she unholstered a pistol before moving inside.

It was a typical peasant home, with one internal wall separating the living area from a tiny bedroom. A gas lamp flickered and a small dog hid in the darkest corner. Edith backed out as the artillery piece fired again. She found the rest of her squad moving briskly across the manure-caked pasture.

Luc reached the second smashed gate first and a muzzle flash gave him enough light to see the German set-up at the centre of the next field.

‘Wempe hundred-and-five millimetre,’ Luc said. ‘Motorised artillery gun. It looks like there’s a support truck on the road as well.’

PT looked at Marc and Luc, as Edith, Daniel and Michel caught up.

‘Is that gun doing all the damage in the woods?’ Edith asked.

‘Nah,’ Marc said. ‘There’s got to be at least three of them around.’

‘I think I heard some smaller, eighty-eight-millimetre ones, as well,’ Luc said.

‘It won’t stop them attacking the woods, but I still think we should act on this,’ PT said. ‘The truck will make our journey west a lot easier than pushbikes. We’re already close and the hedges give good cover if we’re careful.’

Marc nodded in agreement. ‘If I run around the front of the mobile gun and crack a few Germans with my sniper rifle, they’ll think we’re coming out of the woods and it’ll draw their fire. The rest of you can flank from the sides. Pick off as many men as you can, but you’ve got to blow the tracks off the Wempe before it can drive away.’

‘Makes sense,’ Luc said.

PT agreed, though as he was supposed to be running the show he was irritated by Marc calling the shots.

Marc was equipped for a long journey, but the gear would slow him down. After stashing his pack close to the hedge he set off with his sniper rifle, throwing knife, pistol and ammunition belt covered with spare clips and grenades.

Another huge shell got launched towards the woods as Marc skimmed past a hedge. He sighted the Wempe and a German major standing on the roof of the truck, studying the woods through binoculars. After 100 metres, Marc found a decent climbing tree. He stepped up into a large fork that gave him a view over the hedges, then leaned against a branch and sighted the major through his scope.

Marc held his breath and squeezed the trigger. It was too dark to see subtle movements, but the crack of his rifle scattered at least half a dozen Germans as the major himself crashed backwards on to the truck’s canvas awning with a bullet through his heart.

As Marc’s second shot hit an observer whose head had popped up from the turret of the Wempe, the area lit up with a succession of grenade blasts. Unfortunately, these blasts illuminated Marc’s position and he was forced to jump out of the tree as bullets whistled past.

While the German troops regrouped, the driver inside the Wempe threw it into reverse and shot backwards. The Wempe was less than one fifth the weight of a Tiger tank. While the heavily armoured Tiger was built to plough into battle, the Wempe was designed to fire giant 105-mm artillery shells from safer positions behind enemy lines.

But although it was no Tiger, the big mobile gun still made a fearsome target for a group armed only with grenades and plastic explosives.

Whatever criticism people made of Luc, he was no coward. He shot out of a hedge on a carefully timed run, aiming to get within a couple of metres of the Wempe and toss a grenade under the side flaps to blow off a track.

But the driver’s rapid reverse sent the tank straight towards him. Luc slipped as he turned around and tucked his right leg in half a second before the metal tracks would have mashed it.

He ended up between the mobile gun’s tracks in pitch darkness, listening to its whirring driveshaft echo through the armoured floor centimetres above his ear. There seemed to be a lot of shooting going on as the tracks on either side of Luc stopped moving.

Fearing that the Wempe might turn and squish him, Luc had no option but to clamber out at the front and jump on to its armoured hull. He was now on the front running board, with the turret being slowly cranked into a firing position. Judging by how low the barrel was being aimed, the crew were hoping to fire through the nearest hedge, at what they assumed was a frontal assault by Maquis coming out of the forest.

Luc’s head was less than a metre and a half from the 105-mm gun’s huge muzzle and if it went off while he was this close his eardrums would rupture. His palm seared on the hot gun barrel as he kicked against a metal rung to launch himself to the top of the turret.

Since he’d turned and slipped, everything Luc did had been for self-preservation. Now he finally had a second to think.

He’d dropped his grenade somewhere along the way, but there was another hooked to his belt and the top of the turret was open, with the bloody face of the guy Marc shot staring at him. As a bullet pinged off the armour somewhere behind, Luc ripped a pin out of a grenade and dunked it past the dead man and into the turret.

Someone shot at Luc from close range as he slid off the turret to the side of the tank. Shouts in German came from inside. Luc didn’t speak the language but suspected it was something like ‘
Oh shit, that’s a grenade!
’.

A fuel can strapped to the mobile gun’s side jammed into his gut. He pushed off, hitting the dirt on his knees as the grenade exploded.

This explosion instantly killed the mobile gun’s four surviving crew members. The much larger secondary blast from the shells stored inside probably would have killed Luc too, but for the fact that the turret hatch was open and most of its energy got directed upwards.

Luc found his feet, but was deafened and completely disorientated. He had no idea if he was staggering towards German machine-gun fire and he felt like church bells were going off in his head as someone grabbed him.

‘Luc,’ Edith said.

At the same moment Marc closed on the scene and shouted something that Luc barely heard.

‘That was amazing!’

As Luc looked around, he realised that while he’d taken out the mobile artillery, the combination of Marc’s sniper shots and everyone else’s grenade blasts had killed most of the Germans or sent them running away.

‘Is Luc OK?’ PT asked.

‘Quite a burn on his hand,’ Edith answered. ‘I’ve got some bandage.’

PT nodded. ‘The other German positions can’t be far off, so we need to move out. I’ll drive the truck. Marc, you speak the best German, so you ride with me up front and deal with checkpoints. The rest in the back. Try and get German uniforms. Grab any weapons you find, and we need fuel.
Especially
fuel.’

‘What about the bicycles?’ Marc asked.

‘We’ll still stop and pick them up,’ PT said. ‘Might need them further down the line, but this truck gives us a real chance to stay on the 108th’s tail.’

Team A had struck gold with the truck. The only damage during the shoot-out was a smashed side window and some bullet holes in the canvas awning. They also found two large cans of diesel, towing ropes and a mechanic’s chest filled with tools and spare parts.