Near Sangatte, Pas-de-Calais
A makeshift railway siding had been set up inside the main gates of the compound, linked to a branch line running back up the low hillside toward Fréthun and its connection to the French rail network, and during the past two months that siding had been a continuous hive of activity. As earthmoving equipment and sheer brute force of manual labour cleared and excavated the hillside running down to the coastline, trains began to roll in with a mind-boggling array and variety of construction materials and equipment.
Less than two kilometres from the beach, the slope had disappeared completely within the perimeter of the construction site, replaced instead by several square kilometres of perfectly level ground that cut halfway down into the hillside and used the removed landfill to bring the lower sections up to the same level. Hundreds of huge, prefabricated slabs of reinforced concrete were brought in by rail and positioned to create a massive gravity retaining wall several metres high that ran 1,500 metres north-north-east along the installation’s western perimeter.
The initial excavation and landfill work had already been well underway by the time Whittaker and the others first arrived, and they’d been put to work laying more railway tracks, erecting camouflage screens and netting. There were now also a pair of huge, circular gunpits standing 500 metres apart, each accompanied by thick, flat-faced blast walls of earth and concrete that stood five metres high and provided protection from enemy fire around the entire 180° frontal arc facing out toward The Channel and the White Cliffs beyond. The pits themselves were several metres deep, lined with thick layers of reinforced concrete, and to the rear of each lay a tunnel/trench system that carried light rail tracks several dozen metres underground to a remote bunker system that formed each pit’s main storage magazine.
Twin sets of railway tracks had been laid on either side of each pit, all of them joined to the one original branch line at the rear of the installation after entering through the main gates. Those tracks had seen heavy use over the last eight weeks, initially to bring in continuous supplies of building materials and prefabricated sections of reinforced concrete on what seemed sometimes to be an endless supply of rail cars. As the construction had continued around them, the gunpits had begun to take shape, and by the end of the sixth week, the type of cargo coming in had begun to change.
Four gigantic cranes mounted on heavy rail cars arrived and were assigned in twos to each of the newly-constructed pits. One positioned one on either side of their designated emplacement on the outer sets of tracks, leaving the inner sets free, and were locked into position by massive hydraulic jacks that ensured they wouldn’t move under even the heaviest of lifting loads. The cranes themselves were so large that it had taken the better part of an entire day to shunt them into position, braces of powerful locomotives moving with agonizing slowness and spewing sulphurous smoke and sparks from their stacks as a protest to the heavy work they were forced to perform. The obvious weight of those cranes spoke volumes as to what they might be capable of lifting, and the prisoners bandied about more than a few theories during work breaks that were exceedingly rare and exceedingly short.
The most logical theory, which grew to become accepted by the majority of those within Whittaker’s officer group, had originally been formed by Dupont, who prior to capture had commanded a French artillery unit. An older man, he’d served in the Great War of 1914-18 as an NCO (also in the artillery) and had crewed a French 320mm railway gun on the Western Front. There was no doubt in his mind that the Germans were setting up a heavy coastal artillery battery there at the compound, although the one thing that concerned him was the immense scale of it alclass="underline" the emplacements they were working on were far larger than anything he had ever encountered in his service career.
His theory was confirmed two days later as the first components of the weapons themselves arrived, also by rail. Almost a thousand Waffen SS personnel arrived with the loads and immediately set about the task of assembly: the Wehrmacht had no intention of trusting the construction of the actual guns themselves to the work of unskilled prisoners of war, after all. Whittaker and the others were instead tasked with the continued completion of the fortifications intended to protect the emplacements themselves, and with the general clean up duties that were part and parcel to such a large and complex construction site.
The gun mounts arrived first: huge cast and welded sections of solid steel pieced together to form a circular central pivot upon which the weapon’s breech, barrel and carriage were to be supported. More of the narrow-gauge light rail tracks were laid at the same time, these sections placed to form a semi-circle around the very perimeter of the rear half of the pit. This allowed shells and propellant charges arriving from the underground magazines to be positioned for reloading behind the gun regardless of its angle or traverse, and removed the requirement to return to one fixed position for reloading, something that would otherwise force any gun crew to lose an acquired target every time they wished to fire another shell.
The gun carriages arrived two days after that, so wide that they slightly overhung their flatcars on either side. Major Alois Dupont and the others could only stare and shake their heads in disbelief as they all stood and watched the carriages being lifted from their wagons by the railway cranes and lowered carefully into position. Neither he nor the other officers in the group with artillery experience had ever seen gun components that large before, and that in itself was a significant and sobering fact for the rest of the POWs there. None of them were kept waiting long.
The gun barrels were finally shipped in midway through the eighth week, and as heavy as any of the previous sections might’ve been, all could now clearly see why such powerful lifting equipment had been required. With their breeches already attached at one end and massive, four-baffle muzzle brakes fitted at the other, each gun tube was over 36m long, and none of the POWs could possibly have speculated on the weight, although the figure must’ve been hundreds of tonnes apiece. Not even Dupont or the other experienced gunners had any reaction other than complete bewilderment and, truth be told, more than a little fear into the bargain: not only were these weapons now clearly larger than anything any of them had ever encountered or even heard of in their lives; they were in fact larger by a substantial margin.
It’d taken a full two days to prepare and complete the installation of the guns, and it wasn’t until the end of that first week of August that the cranes had finally been shunted away leaving the weapons to stand alone in their massive pits. The gun crews — obviously already well-practiced and undoubtedly the best in their field — immediately set about running drills and testing the operations of the guns to ensure everything had been assembled and connected correctly. Twice daily — at dawn and just before dusk — klaxons would sound and the crew would go through their usual, hour-long exercise of preparing the weapons and running them through variations in traverse and elevation accompanied by the deafening whine of powerful electric and hydraulic motors. All the while, small electric locomotives ferried shells and charges back and forth from the magazines, responding to hypothetical scenarios and alerts with similar speed and professionalism.
The fly-past by Richardson’s Mustang two days before had obviously been a reconnaissance mission, and the kommandant of SS Special Heavy Battery 672(E) had no illusions as to the stir those photographs would’ve caused in Whitehall. He’d spent several minutes cursing the laziness and negligence of the entire flak regiment tasked with their protection, and had then spent the rest of the day running several extra, unscheduled firing drills while the entire installation remained at battle stations and orders were issued for several of that unit’s higher officers to be court-martialled.