The Nazi Hunters (20 page)

The twin sets of headlamps lanced into the gloom. Behind them in the darkness, figures crouched over their twin-Vickers, expectantly. Twice Franks’ force repeated this manoeuvre, but each time no movement was spotted amongst the trees, nor any response. The Tiger tank unit was proving remarkably elusive; it just seemed to have disappeared.

Eventually, the colonel had to signal the withdrawal. They were needed back at the Moussey DZ. A second airdrop was scheduled that night, this one bringing in three further jeeps, to up their number to the six that the SAS colonel had asked for.

As they withdrew, Franks took note of the position of the Tiger tanks. He would radio it in to SFHQ, requesting a flight of RAF bombers to hit the woodland in which the heavy armour was concealed. They motored back to the Moussey DZ, and the three further jeeps were dropped without too much drama or incident. The SAS colonel now had enough vehicles to make his force truly mobile.

At dusk the following day, the men of Op Loyton removed the screen of cut branches with which they’d camouflaged their jeeps and set off in convoy. Six vehicles manned by twenty-one fighters pulled out of their hidden base, engines grumbling and gears grinding as they nosed down the rough and muddy track. They pushed south towards Moussey, diesel fumes hanging thick and heavy in the cold, damp air.

Colonel Franks was driving the lead vehicle, with Corporal Kubiski serving as his front gunner, Trooper Mason as his fitter and Chris Sykes as his rear gunner and navigator. Lieutenant David Dill commanded the next jeep in line, with Squadron Sergeant Major ‘Chalky’ White behind the front Vickers and Corporal Austin as his rear gunner. Major Peter Power and Captain Druce were at the wheels of two further vehicles, each with their own complement of gunners and wireless operators.

‘All six jeeps set out together at 17.00 hrs and crossed the valley via Moussey and made for the Celles woods,’ Colonel Franks recorded in the war diary. ‘We harboured for the night at V 447841.’

The following morning Colonel Franks split his force into three units. He sent two jeeps under Druce’s command to recce the road leading into Moyenmoutier, a town lying some 19 miles to the west of Moussey. Major Power, with another two jeeps, was sent north, to recce the main supply route that ran through the Celles Valley, while Colonel Franks remained with the final two vehicles.

Major Power’s force was the first to strike. They reached the road that cuts through the Celles Valley, pausing at a major meeting of the ways. It was a prime place for an ambush, as any passing traffic would be forced to slow to negotiate the junction.

They drew into a clearing where they could conceal the jeeps behind thick undergrowth but still bring the Vickers to bear, and killed the engines. They waited, their seven .303-inch rapid-fire machine guns trained on the road, plus a Bren gun for good measure.

Major Power had spent the best part of a hellish month trying to join the Op Loyton party deep in the Vosges. As he hunched over the front-mounted twin Vickers, his eyeline down the gunsights positioned above the flat cylinders of ammo perched atop the machine gun, he sensed that today all his persistence was about to pay off.

Out of sight somewhere an engine whined. A driver was shifting down through the gears as he slowed ahead of the junction. Major Power tensed. The vehicle was approaching from the east, heading towards Raon l’Etape, which was 8 kilometres away. It could only be the enemy, for the locals had been reduced to travelling in horse- and ox-drawn carts during the four long years of occupation.

A slender and stylish bonnet nosed around the far corner, sleek and gleaming in the early morning light. A staff car hove into view, a black cross superimposed over a white one adorning the nearside door – the symbol of the
Wehrmacht
. Major Power’s fingers tightened bone-white on the Vickers’ twin triggers.

Soon now.

He tracked the vehicle’s approach in his gunsights. It slowed to a bare 10 miles an hour to negotiate the junction, making it a sitting target. It was then that the SAS major heard the sound of further vehicles approaching from the same direction. His heart skipped a beat. Unbelievably, a second staff car crawled around the bend. It was clearly travelling in convoy with the first.

Major Power let the lead vehicle crawl past his hidden position. Set well back beneath the trees and in deep shadow, he and his men would be invisible to those on the road. As he menaced the first vehicle with his twin gun barrels, he signalled for others to take the one behind. And then, as if by magic, a third staff car rounded the corner – fat and gleaming, and just asking to take a hit.

What were the chances?
For their first ever jeep-mounted ambush in the Vosges, three vehicles stuffed full of German officers had stumbled into the SAS’s clutches, like lambs to the slaughter.

The growl of a heavier, diesel engine alerted Major Power to the fact that a fourth vehicle was approaching. The ‘tail-end charlie’ of the convoy turned out to be a three-tonne German Army truck – no doubt carrying troops as escort for the officers up front. The SAS major calculated that the first staff car could still be hit in the time it took for the truck to come within range.

He held his fire until the very last moment. All his men knew to open up on his gun, so no words of command needed to be spoken. When the lead vehicle was poised to round the far bend and disappear from view, Major Power let rip. The twin muzzles spat fire, the first rounds taking a mere fifth of a second to cross the 200 yards that lay between his jeep and the lead staff car.

Bullets tore through bodywork and shattered glass. Major Power kept his finger hard on the trigger as all around him the Vickers roared and sparked in anger. Swinging the Vickers around on their swivel mount, he raked the lead vehicle from bonnet to boot with a devastating barrage of fire. By the time he’d emptied his two sixty-round magazines, not a figure could be seen moving in that stricken vehicle.

Within moments, all three staff cars had been brought to a halt. Each had been punched through with ragged, jagged holes, like a proverbial sieve. Major Power reached forward, unclipped the empty ammo drums and slotted on replacements. By the time he’d unleashed half of the second two magazines, the lead staff car was a broken wreck, slumped low on the road on flattened tyres and with flames licking out of its ruptured rear.

Tracer rounds had cut through the fuel tank. At any moment now the vehicle was going to burst into flames. The two staff cars behind it, plus the truck, had fared little better. Only one figure was seen to emerge from any of the vehicles, and he was cut down immediately by the force’s lone Bren gunner. Major Power signalled to his men to cease fire.

By now, approaching 2,000 rounds had been hammered into the four vehicles, many unleashed at close range, and the staff cars and truck had been torn to pieces. In the deafening silence that followed, the grunt of engines further to the convoy’s rear could be heard. The second SAS jeep was set a little higher than the first, and the rear gunner raised the alarm. Behind the stricken vehicles he could make out four more trucks, and there were very likely more to the rear of those.

Major Power figured they’d done their shoot most admirably. But all surprise had been lost now, and it was time to effect the scoot. He lowered his weapon, fired up the jeep’s engine and floored the throttle, leading the other vehicle on a mad dash through the mountains, back towards their lie-up in the forest. As it happened, a twenty-five truck convoy had been following the staff cars; Major Power was wise indeed to have led his jeeps out of there when he had.

Behind them, a pall of oily smoke rose above the Celles Valley road, where four vehicles riddled with fire were burning. En route to their hideout, Major Power met up with Colonel Franks and delivered the good news: three German staff cars destroyed. Captain Druce’s two jeeps also rendezvoused with them safely. Druce had likewise been in action, though his target left something to be desired.

In addition to requisitioning any motorized vehicles, the Germans had seized bicycles from the French, to form cycling patrols. Thus, any cyclist on the roads was likely to be German, just as any motor vehicle was most definitely going to be driven by the enemy. Or so the SAS men had thought. But in Moussey there was one exception.

Possibly because he so rarely used it, which meant the Germans never realized he had it, the mayor of Moussey had managed to keep an automobile . . . of sorts. It was an ancient and diminutive Detroit Electric Brougham, which resembled a horse and carriage with an electric motor taking the place of four horses in harness. Designed in 1907, it was one of the first electric cars ever built, with a rechargeable sealed lead-acid battery giving an 80-mile range at a steady 20 miles per hour.

When mounting ambushes, especially on the tight and enclosed roads of the Vosges, there was precious little time in which to study an oncoming vehicle. Decisions had to be made in a snap of the fingers. Druce had done exactly that on the morning of 23 September, the oncoming vehicle taking the full brunt of eight Vickers machineguns. Within seconds the mayor’s Brougham had ceased to exist, as it was cut to pieces by a barrage of armour-piercing and tracer rounds.

By some incredible miracle, the mayor had managed to roll from the disintegrating wreckage and dive into a roadside ditch. When he realized who it was that had attacked him, he took out his white handkerchief and waved it above the rim of the gully. But by that time Druce had got his force under way, having hit and now run from the scene of the attack.

It was evening at the SAS’s forest hideout when Sykes learnt about the true nature of Druce’s target. He was speaking with Albert Freine, and he pulled in Colonel Franks just as soon as the gamekeeper mentioned what had happened. Albert repeated the story in full gory detail, the demeanour of both Franks and Sykes growing ever more concerned. The Moussey mayor was one of their staunchest allies; heaven forbid that Druce had killed him.

Freine’s discourse – one replete with dire warnings – was broken by a hiss from one of the sentries. A figure had been spotted plodding uphill towards their position. Freine declared that he recognized the man and went down to bring him in. It was a messenger from the mayor who, it seemed, was very much alive.

He had sent two bottles of his finest champagne, together with the following note. ‘
Merci pour la salve tirée en mon honneur ce matin!
’ (Many thanks for the salvo fired in my honour this morning!) As far as the mayor was concerned there were no hard feelings, particularly since he didn’t have a scratch upon him.

The chances of ambushing the mayor’s Brougham were about as high as those of Major Power’s force taking out three German staff cars in the one hit; both were utterly fortuitous moments – at least in the mayor’s case, for he had escaped unscathed and with his good humour so obviously intact.

But Major Power’s devastating hit on the road north of Celles-sur-Plaine had stirred up a hornets’ nest. You didn’t go destroying three staff cars stuffed full of German commanders without some significant ramifications. Practically speaking, that route of attack was now closed to any ‘jeeping’, as the SAS men called it, at least until the heat died down.

But Colonel Franks was itching for some action. He decided to head cross-country, using the forest tracks to skirt around Major Power’s ambush point in an effort to reach Allarmont, which lay at the Celles Valley’s far north-eastern end. That way, he could hit the main supply road for a second time, before melting back into the hills.

He picked his route off the Club Alpin de France map that the SAS men were using. Those maps, produced by the well-known French mountaineering club, had proved the most detailed and accurate that could be found. But the forest tracks they’d chosen were at best borderline navigable. As the two jeeps crawled downhill after a very difficult journey across the high ground, they hit the main road, only to realize that there was no way back again.

‘The track down which we had come was too steep to return,’ Colonel Franks records in the war diary. ‘The village of Allarmont was strongly occupied by the enemy, and my track led out onto the main road only about 3 kms from where Major Power had effected his ambush.’

Colonel Franks now found himself on the main resupply route with two jeeps, unable to return cross-country and sandwiched between a heavily garrisoned village on the one side, and the site of the Major Power’s devastating ambush on the other. Their position was fine to launch an ambush, but first they needed to locate that most vital of ambush priorities: a viable escape route.

Franks picked a track off his map that looked promising. They drove west up the main road, found it and recced it for quarter of a mile. The track seemed in fairly good order and certainly jeep-navigable. Escape route sorted, they returned to the main road and took up ambush positions. But they must have been spotted as they were doing so, for bursts of fire erupted from a house on the opposite side of the road.

Eight Vickers machine guns swung in that direction and unleashed hell. Armour-piercing rounds sliced through the building’s rough-hewn stonework, stitching fist-sized holes in window frames and doors. By the time the jeeps had ceased firing, the enemy guns had fallen silent. But in the quiet that followed, the SAS men could hear German infantry dismounting from vehicles to either side of their position.

They’d had their hit; it was time to run.

They headed for their escape route at high speed. The two jeeps turned onto the track, but the rear wheels of Franks’ vehicle skidded on the wet mud. Knobby tyres found their grip momentarily, before the entire rear end lost traction and swung around completely, slamming into a ditch and flipping the vehicle. Moments later it came to rest lying on its non-existent roof, wheels spinning uselessly in the air.