For King and Country. David Monnery
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a strange joy in the process.
Those on watch had rather less to keep them interested. It soon became apparent that the day shift in the guardhouse below was remarkably similar to the night shift – a total of six guards, two of whom would be crossing and recrossing the bridge at roughly five-minute intervals. During the day a further pair of soldiers could be seen pacing up and down the distant station platform. There was presumably a local German garrison which supplied these guards, but where it was, and how many men it comprised, God only knew. The SAS men hoped it was a long way away.
A troop convoy comprising over twenty lorries passed through the town early in the afternoon, but trains were conspicuous by their absence. The Allied air forces no doubt discouraged the Germans from too much movement during the hours of daylight, but in any case this was a little-used line. If the SAS parties to the north did their jobs then the Germans would need it badly, but by that time, with any luck, it would be out of action.
Soon after dark Morgan called a conference in one of the hides, and all eight men squeezed in. Once the four visitors had made appropriate remarks about the décor and prevailing odours he went through the catalogue of their observations over the past sixteen hours, presented a possible plan of action and, in true SAS spirit, invited comments from all and sundry.
‘Almost sounds too easy, boss,’ McCaigh said.
It was close to one o’clock when the eight men slipped one by one across the road bridge, down the small embankment, and into the deeper shadow of the trees beside the river. The light was better than on the previous two nights, though still a long way short of what the moon could manage from a clear sky. It was probably about perfect, Morgan thought – bright enough for Beckwith to do his demolition work, dark enough to cloak their escape into the hills.
Three hundred yards upstream, the illuminated bridge looked more substantial than it had from their bird’s-eye vantage-point.
They started working their way along the bank, crouching slightly as they walked, more from instinct than any real fear that they would silhouette themselves against the cliffs on the other side of the river. There was no need to worry about noise – the rush of the black water beside them was loud enough to drown out a male voice choir’s rendition of ‘God Save the King’.
Fifty yards or so from the guardhouse Morgan gestured everyone to the ground, and they all lay there waiting for the two-man patrol to reach the designated stage of their regular route. As they set foot on the near side of the bridge Morgan and Farnham rose to their feet and walked swiftly towards the windowless back wall of the railway hut turned guardhouse. Reaching it, they stood still for a moment, listening to the German voices inside. They sounded like they were having a good time.
At Morgan’s signal the two men inched their way round the end of the hut furthest from the bridge, hoping the door was open, as it had been when they broke camp an hour and a half earlier.
It was.
The two men on patrol had almost reached the other end of the bridge. Morgan took one step inside the door and another to his left, allowing Farnham an equal angle of fire. The two men had a fleeting glimpse of bareheaded, greatcoated men sitting round a packing case, cards in hand, before the silent fusillade ripped the scene to pieces, shredding the back and head of the man who was facing away from the door, spurting blood and brains in a welter of collapsing bodies. There was a sound like furniture falling, a moment of utter silence, and then they could hear the river once more.
They pulled two of the bodies out of their greatcoats, grabbed a coal-scuttle helmet each, and waited by the door. Glancing back at the four dead men, Farnham was struck by how young the faces looked. In a few days four homes in Germany would be getting letters from the Wehrmacht, and tears would be rolling down their mothers’ cheeks.
A wave of cold anger ran through him, anger at the bastards who had set the whole bloody mess in motion.
Morgan was looking at his watch. It usually took the guards five minutes to complete their circuit, which meant there was one to go. Straining his ears, he thought he could hear the faint drumming of feet on the bridge, and seconds later he heard their voices. Thirty yards, he guessed. Twenty, fifteen…
The two SAS men exchanged nods, and walked calmly out through the door.
One of the approaching Germans shouted out a question in a cheerful voice, and in reply Morgan’s Sten seemed to lift him off his feet. Farnham’s target died less dramatically, dropping like a stone as the bullets stitched a line from belly button to forehead.
They walked quickly forward, grabbed the bodies by the ankles, and dragged them back across the cinders to the makeshift mass grave in the guardhouse. ‘Call in the others,’ Morgan told Farnham.
They were already on their way, squeezing into the hut one by one.
‘Nice and warm in here,’ Beckwith muttered, feigning not to notice the pile of corpses around the stove. The faces of both Tobin and Imrie, Farnham noticed, were decidedly pale.
‘So far so…’ Morgan started to say, but at that moment all eight heads turned in response to the unmistakable sound of approaching heavy vehicles. In a move worthy of the Marx Brothers all eight men moved towards the doorway, causing a general scrum, and tipping Imrie off his feet and into the lap of a German corpse. He froze for a second, took a deep breath and clambered back up.
Meanwhile Morgan had asserted rank and claimed the view from the door. Two large lorries had drawn up in the station forecourt about a hundred and fifty yards away. Their uniformed drivers had already climbed down and were lighting cigarettes. A man in an officer’s cap was just disappearing into the station building.
‘Maybe he’s just stopped for a shit,’ McCaigh suggested hopefully.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Morgan decided. ‘Trev, Roger – get some coats and helmets on and start pretending to be guards. Robbie,’ he went on, looking out through the doorway, ‘form a line of defence. Two of you behind this hut, the other two behind the engine shed over there. If Jerry starts pouring out of those lorries and heading this way, start shooting.’ He pushed a lock of unruly hair back inside the beret and turned to Beckwith. ‘Come on, Morrie, we’ve got a bridge to blow.’
There was still no movement in the distant forecourt, though this time Morgan thought he could hear laughter from inside one of the lorries. The officer had not returned – if McCaigh had been right about his destination maybe the bastard was constipated.
As Corrigan and Imrie, suitably coated and helmeted, walked along the track towards the bridge, Morgan and Beckwith skirted round the pool of light, reached the bank of river some thirty yards downstream and then worked their way back along the water’s edge. Climbing up into the underslung girder was as easy as it had looked from the OP, and they encountered no difficulties crossing to the other side along the wide, L-shaped beams. The only real problem was a distinct lack of light, but then Beckwith had always claimed he could put together explosive charges in his sleep.
On the bridge above them Corrigan and Imrie had stopped to light cigarettes and were now leaning over the parapet, puffing away as contentedly as their German predecessors had done. Away to their right the lorries were still sitting in the forecourt.
The striking of a match betrayed the position of the missing officer. ‘The bastard’s standing on the platform,’ Imrie suddenly realized.
‘Maybe he’s waiting for a train,’ Corrigan said flippantly.
A few seconds later the two men were staring at each other, suddenly aware of what that might mean.
Thirty yards away, crouched behind a corner of the stone-built engine shed, Farnham was mentally sifting through the same implications. If the lorries were there to meet a train, then the chances of it arriving either just before or just after the bridge blew up were pretty good. But was there any way to take the train down with the bridge? He couldn’t think of one. It was already too late – Beckwith would have the time pencils in place by now. They would have to trust to luck.
The mingled smell of coal, tar and