For King and Country. David Monnery

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СКАЧАТЬ two armed soldiers were halfway across the bridge, and unlike many such sentries Morgan had seen in his military career, they seemed to be actually taking note of the world around them.

      Beyond the bridge the railway completed an S-bend by turning into what was obviously the station and goods area. The single track divided into four, and long lines of goods wagons stood on the three to the left. The roof of a goods shed rose above them. On the other side of the through line, some thirty yards this side of the station itself, there was a small engine shed with a coaling platform and water-tower.

      The wagons in the goods yard might offer some cover for the approach, Morgan thought. He turned his binoculars on the road bridge, which crossed the river another couple of hundred yards beyond the railway. It was unlit and apparently unguarded.

      He smiled to himself. Blowing the bridge didn’t look that difficult – the real trick would be surviving the aftermath. There were thirty miles of fairly open country between them and the scheduled Navy pickup, and the local Germans were likely to be distinctly miffed. ‘Go and fetch the others,’ he told Rafferty. ‘We won’t find a better spot for an OP than this.’

      Daylight found all eight men well concealed in two rectangular trenches. One narrow end of each looked out across the bridge and station area, and it was here that the men took turns keeping watch through the narrow slit between ground and cover. The other ends were for sleeping, cooking on the tiny hexamine stoves, and, in the case of the eastern trench, manufacturing explosive devices. Morrie Beckwith was the resident expert, bringing together the ingredients they had carried with them – lumps of the new plastic explosive, thermite and lubricant – into his own variations on SAS pioneer Jock Lewes’s famous Lewes bomb. Beckwith had an almost dreamy look on his face as he worked, which suggested both intense concentration and 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 СКАЧАТЬ