Oddly enough, for the first time in far too long, he felt free.
He smiled at their faces. “But mark my words, my friends,” he said. “We have not finished with Hitler, nor has he finished with us. This is not peace, but an armistice, to be broken when Herr Hitler decides that it is time to reopen the war.”
Chapter One
Near Felixstowe, England, 1950
“Here they come,” Captain Harry Jackson said, as the first noises could be heard down the road. He glanced once at his radio — noting the lack of a signal from the two men he’d deployed further down the road — and muttered a curse under his breath. The Germans had taken the two men out before they could get off a warning. “Prepare to engage the enemy.”
Jackson had deployed his company around the road, knowing that the enemy couldn’t get their tanks through the forest, but a smart enemy commander might try to slip infantry through the trees to catch Jackson’s unit before it could engage the target on their terms. The road leading down towards Felixstowe was wide enough to allow three tanks uninterrupted passage. Like many other roads in this part of the country, it had been renovated to allow for the swift passage of military vehicles. The Germans would prefer to take it, according to the briefing, in order to allow themselves time to get through the defenders. It was Jackson’s job to hold the road and slow the enemy as much as possible.
The tension rose as the sound of vehicles grew louder. The briefing had been clear. The enemy intended to push the better part of an armoured division through the area, and while Jackson didn’t have the firepower to stop it, he was expected to delay them for as long as possible. He’d deployed his antitank weapons — including, ironically, a direct copy of a German-made weapon — as best as he could, but he wasn’t expecting the position to hold for long. He’d already prepared a series of fall-back positions.
We’re only going to get one free shot, he thought coldly, as he glanced around the company’s hiding places. The weekend warriors of the Home Guard force had certain problems with discipline, but there was no doubting either their local knowledge or even their training. The original Home Guardsmen had been barely capable of resisting an unarmed bandit, but as training and equipment improved, the Home Guard had grown into a respectable fighting force.
He’d transferred from the regular army in order to share his experience with them, but stopping a German armoured division — a Panzer Division — was very different from counterinsurgency operations in India. The Indian insurgents had no tanks and rarely bothered to stand and fight.
He heard a whistle as the dark tank appeared at the end of the road, followed by two more, flanked by a group of motorcycles and patrolling infantry. Jackson bit down a curse as he took in their appearance and deployment; they were likely to trigger his mines before the main body of their force entered the range of his guns. He’d hoped to be able to hit their tanks while they were stalled, but… More tanks appeared, heading along the road at a respectable speed, and he forced himself to revise the plans quickly. If the Germans saw them, they would sweep his people from the road. They hadn’t been able to do much to block the road and prevent the Germans from using it. That hadn’t been in the briefing.
“Open fire as soon as the mines detonate,” he hissed. They’d been able to hide a small set of antitank mines down the road, at just the right location; the Germans would slow down at once and call for infantry to sweep the mines out the way. He’d prepared it — he hoped — so that the Germans would be caught in a trap, but German soldiers were trained to take the initiative as fast as they could; if they decided to gamble, they could still break through his position.
The explosion wasn’t very loud, but the puff of smoke under the tank was unmistakable. His men didn’t hesitate, or wait for orders; they fired as one, throwing a hail of antitank shells towards the enemy tank. Jackson winced as blinding white flashes of light covered the tanks, signalling that they were disabled or destroyed, and then cursed under his breath as a German truck appeared, infantry already spilling from the rear and advancing at the double. A German tank, attempting to get around the disabled tanks, ran into another mine and skidded to a halt, the crew cursing their misfortune as their part came to an end.
More shots rang out through the woods as the German infantry crashed into his men, with shouts and screams echoing out as the Germans attempted to dislodge the British from their position. Jackson lifted his own weapon as a German storm-trooper appeared, holding a grenade in one hand, and had the satisfaction of watching as the German fell to the ground, dead. He lifted his whistle to his lips and blew a single long blast, the signal for retreat. The remains of the company fled the battle, in seeming panic, right towards the next holding position. Jackson half-hoped that the Germans would pursue them directly — there was an infantry company dug in a short distance down the road — but they contented themselves with capturing the remains of the position and hunting for the mines.
“We caught them with their pants down,” Sergeant Henry Wilt said, as they reached the second position and stopped, puffing for breath. It was just in front of a bridge and that presented its own problems; the Germans might try to take the bridge, but at the same time, they would be expecting to meet an ambush there. It was the logical place to set a trap. “How many do you think we got?”
Jackson thought about it, replaying the engagement in his head. “At least four tanks,” he said, thoughtfully. They wouldn’t know how many German infantrymen they’d killed for hours yet. “What about our air support?”
“It’s been denied,” Wilt said. He was a short stocky man, every part of him devoted to muscle and determination, and he was old enough to remember serving in France and Egypt as a young soldier. Jackson privately admired him; Wilt’s impressive skills had kept him from making too many embarrassing mistakes during his first tour of duty with the Home Guard. “It’s something to do with a major air offensive…”
His voice cut off as three aircraft flew low overhead, the noise of their passage echoing over the trees and the small village just beyond the bridge. The population had already been evacuated, removing them from the path of the German advance, and the village had been converted into a strong-point The German aircraft attacked without mercy, targeting buildings with their bombs and scattering flammable oil over the village; the Germans had been known to use it in their own counterinsurgency campaigns in Russia to great success.
“So much for the village,” Wilt said, as the enemy aircraft retreated and the clamour of enemy tanks rose again. Jackson took up his binoculars as the German infantry advanced, heading towards the bridge, covered by their tanks. The antitank guns on the far side of the river opened fire, their shells falling wide of the targets, while the Germans returned fire with their own weapons. “Sir?”
“Destroy the bridge,” Jackson ordered sharply. The Germans had killed half of his company; he couldn’t hope to prevent them from taking the village, but if he could destroy the bridge, it would slow them down enough that the regulars, struggling to establish a defence line, could stop them dead in their tracks. The odds weren’t good; regular armies all around Europe had been trying to stop the Germans, and hadn’t even come close to succeeding. Jackson had been young when the German juggernaut had crashed into Poland, Norway, France, Russia… but even he remembered the dread days when everyone had known that a German invasion was imminent. Adolph hadn’t come to Britain, not then…