Night Fighters in France. Shaun Clarke

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СКАЧАТЬ surrounding forest, were using their special tools to split the crates open and get at the jeeps. Once out of the smaller crates, the twin Vickers K guns and the 0.5-inch Browning heavy machine-guns were remounted on the Willys jeeps and the vehicles were then driven into the forest and camouflaged. When the field had been cleared, the wood from the packing crates was buried near the edge of the trees and the upturned soil covered with loose leaves.

      ‘Now let’s get into hiding,’ Greaves told his men, ‘and wait for the others to be dropped tomorrow night.’

      ‘And the next night,’ Lorrimer said in disgust.

      The men melted silently into the edge of the forest flanking the DZ, taking up hidden positions near the field’s four sides. There, they proceeded to make individual lying-up positions, or LUPs, by scraping small hollows out of the earth, covering them with wire, and laying local vegetation on top. Having eaten a supper of cold rations washed down with water, the men bedded down for the night, most of them in their LUPs, others taking turns at guard duty. Placed in the four directions of the compass on each side of the field, the lookouts scanned the forest for any sign of the enemy.

      There were no land movements apparent that night, though many aircraft, both Allied and German, flew overhead to engage in bombing runs or aerial fights far away. While the surrounding forest was quiet, the sounds of distant explosions were heard all night as battle was engaged on several fronts and the Allied advance across France continued. When dawn broke, the mist of the horizon was smudged with clouds of ugly black smoke.

      ‘Poor bastards,’ Jacko murmured, thinking of the unfortunate men who had endured the relentless bombing all night near that murky horizon.

      ‘Poor Kraut bastards,’ Rich said ironically.

      ‘A lot of them are Allied troops,’ Jacko reminded him, ‘being bombed by the Germans. But whatever side they’re on, they’re poor bastards, all of them. I don’t like bombardments.’

      ‘I grant you that, mate. We had enough of them in North Africa and Sicily to last us a lifetime. I’m amazed we’ve still got our hearing as well as our balls.’

      ‘Some would dispute the latter assertion,’ Sergeant Lorrimer whispered as loudly as he dared, raising his head from the LUP beside them. ‘Now shut up, fill your mouths with some cold food, then go and replace those poor frozen sods out on point.’

      ‘Yes, Sarge!’ Jacko and Rich whispered simultaneously.

      For most of the men, the rest of the day was long and boring, with nothing for them to do but either lie in their LUPs or crawl out to replace one of the guards. Aircraft, mostly Allied, flew overhead constantly, Fortresses and Liberators and accompanying Spitfire fighters, intent on keeping up the relentless bombing of German positions further inland.

      Also, throughout the day, German convoys or individual jeeps and trucks could be seen passing by on the nearby road, half obscured by the hedgerows that bounded the fields, heading towards or away from the front indicated by the distant sounds of battle. Luckily, none of them turned off the road to cross the field to the forest and the SAS men remained undetected.

      When darkness fell, the sounds of distant battle were accompanied by spectacular flashes that lit up the horizon and lent a magical glow to the dense clouds. Shortly before midnight, the Halifax reappeared overhead and the white parachutes of the second batch of SAS men billowed in the darkness as they drifted gently to earth. They were followed by another consignment of wooden crates, each one descending beneath four parachutes and landing on their air bags.

      When the aircraft had disappeared again, the new men did exactly as the first batch had done: drove their jeeps into the forest, buried the wooden planking from the crates and covered the disturbed earth with leaves, then scraped out LUPs in areas selected for them by the Originals, who had landed the previous night.

      Another night passed uneventfully, except for distant explosions from the front and eerie flashes which lit up the horizon, revealing swirling clouds of smoke. The smoky dawn heralded a second tedious day, with Allied aircraft rumbling almost constantly overhead and helmeted German troops heading to and from the front on the road beyond the field, at the other side of the hedgerows. Hidden in their LUPs, the men were not seen by the German troops, though some were already so bored that they wished they had been.

      That night the third and last of the SAS groups, headed by Captain Callaghan, was brought in to the DZ by the Halifax. This time, however, one of the jeeps dropped from the aircraft broke free from two of its four parachutes and crashed to the ground, causing the crate to shatter and the waiting soldiers to run for cover. The jeep had embedded itself so deeply in the ground that it had created a large crater. Because the vehicle was badly damaged, it was left buried there, along with all the other debris, and then the hole was filled in with soil and camouflaged with loose foliage.

      This time, instead of melting back into the trees, the new arrivals helped the first two batches of men to fill in their LUPs and hide all trace of their presence in the area. Then the men of C Squadron, now safely on the ground, dispersed to their individual jeeps and the column, totalling twenty vehicles, moved off along a forest track, heading for the open country behind enemy lines.

       3

      Aided by bright moonlight, which illuminated the narrow road through the forest, the column of jeeps had a relatively easy first morning, heading without lights for open country dotted with small farming communities. Some of the villages, as the men knew, were still occupied by the Germans and so had to be approached carefully; others had been freed but were surrounded by the advancing and retreating armies, which meant that the Germans could return unexpectedly; and an increasing number were well out of the danger zone and preparing to give a heart-felt welcome to their Allied liberators.

      Progress was frustratingly slow because one jeep was out ahead on point, its crew having been given the dangerous job of acting as advance scouts, prepared to either engage the enemy or, if possible, return unseen to the main column and report the enemy’s presence to Captains Callaghan and Greaves, who would then jointly decide if they should attack or simply make a detour. The brief, as outlined by Callaghan, was to avoid engaging the enemy whenever possible and instead reconnoitre the area for a suitable base camp from where they could move out to find the Maquis.

      In fact, more than once the men on point in the jeep – Sergeant Lorrimer as driver, Jacko on the twin Vickers K guns and Rich on the Browning heavy machine-gun – noticed the glow of camp-fires and oil lamps in the forest and assumed them to be from German camps. Invariably, closer inspection, usually on foot, revealed this to be true and the men therefore always had to backtrack to meet up with the column behind and inform Callaghan and Greaves of the enemy presence. The column, now split into two, with Callaghan in charge of Group One and Greaves leading Group Two, would then take the nearest side road and make a wide detour around the enemy, to travel on unmolested.

      This was the situation for most of the first six hours, as they travelled through the night and early morning in the depths of the forest. By dawn, however, the trees were thinning out and they were emerging into open countryside with wide, rolling fields dotted with hamlets and crossed by a web of major and minor roads, including German military supply routes (MSRs).

      ‘It looks so peaceful out there,’ Callaghan said.

      ‘Except for that smoke on the horizon,’ Greaves replied. ‘It’s all happening there.’

      Now out in the open, they had to travel much more СКАЧАТЬ