Not Flag or Fail (13 page)

While we were having our first taste of the beer, a plump dark haired woman, in her mid forties, entered the room, holding cutlery in a tea towel.

“Gentlemen, may I present the landlord’s wife Mrs Williams.” said the Major.

“Good evening all.” said the woman, speaking with a West Country accent.

“And what have you got for us tonight then Joyce, something memorable I’m sure?”

“I’ve told you before Major, if you want memorable you have to give me notice, not just turn up out of the blue, but I have enough game pie for two of you, or there’s a rabbit stew what’ll be enough for you all. Williams has done well in the garden, so we’ve got some good veg to goes with it and I can do apple pie for desert.”

“Well no favouritism then, we’ll all have the same. We’ll take the stew, I’m sure it will be a feast.”The Major replied raising his glass in her direction.

We finished our drinks and another round was brought in, some time later Mrs Williams served the meal, rabbit stew it might have, but the woman had put it together with obvious skill, it was delicately flavoured and full of meat, The side dishes of vegetables were a superb compliment, cauliflower in a cheese sauce with fresh garden peas and the creamiest mashed potatoes I had ever tasted. The Major had also ordered two bottles of Burgundy brought in to drink with the meal. Sometime later the apple pie, in a rich golden crusted pastry was served, once again the best I’d ever tasted, lightly dusted with cinnamon, the apples, despite being cooked, they somehow still retained the sharpness that comes only from English apples. After we had all finished eating, seven very satisfied diners sat round the table, lit cigarettes and drank a coffee.

It was just after nine pm when, with cheery goodbyes to both of the Williams’ we reluctantly left the ‘George’ and set off on our way again.

The countryside around Windsor eventually gave way to urbanisation as we got closer in towards the centre of London.

I had only been to our nation’s capital twice before, once on a school trip and once on a forty-eight hour pass before we had left for France, so what landmarks we could see meant nothing to me.

Someone more familiar would have realised that we were not heading for the centre of the city but were heading south.

A little after ten thirty the car pulled up in front of a very large pair of wrought iron gates that filled the gap between two equally large, although rather sad looking, stone pillars. The gates were opened almost immediately by two very smart looking military policemen who looked into the car, then stepped back and saluted as our driver engaged the Humber’s gears and pulled in through the gateway and started up the gravel driveway.

The Humber stopped in front of the brick portico of a very large old house.

“Welcome to Croydon gentlemen” said the Major, as he stepped smartly out of the car, the rest of us waited for Rachel Harrison to get out and then followed them out onto the gravel.

The Major skipped smartly up the five steps that led to the entrance, by the time he had arrived at the top, the door which was at least ten foot high had been opened by an MP Corporal. I stood looking at the door and wondered if people had been so much taller years ago?

I was brought back to the present by the Major telling us to get a move on as it was getting late and we all needed to get to bed.

A bloke in navy bellbottom trousers and a dark blue navy jumper came into the entrance hall to meet us; he was introduced to us as CPO Smith, and with no more ado he led us up a now rundown, but obviously once very grand curving staircase to the second floor. We then followed him up a second staircase to the third floor and then a third, to the fourth floor.

The staircases had got progressively more modest as we had risen through the building and now upon the fourth floor we stood, in what I guessed had once been a servants dormitory, it was a long room with six beds spaced out down one side of the room. Two dormer windows with the curtains already closed, faced the back of the house.

“Ok men, there’s a bathroom with a bog down at the bottom there,” he said, pointing to a door at the end of the room. “Breakfast is at oh, six thirty; I’ll wake you at oh, five thirty, so you have plenty of time to make yourselves pretty.

There’s a pile of new underwear there, help yourselves and don’t worry about uniform, we just want you to wear those boiler suits. I put out one for each of you, goodnight and pleasant dreams.” With that he left the room.

I think by now we had all adjusted to the speed of events, so we stripped down to our underwear and Ronny and Fish got into the nearest two beds I went over to the door turned out the light and got into the third.

Thanks I think, partly to the beer and the wine, sleep came very quickly. I dreamt about France, seeing again the planes strafing the columns of refugees, hearing the metallic clack of the Messershmitt’s machine guns, but something wasn’t quite right. The sound had changed; the tone was much deeper and closer too, much closer. I sat bolt upright in bed, the light was on and next to me was CPO Smith. He was using a wooden mallet to bang on a dinner gong that was six inches away from my right ear. I gave him my dirtiest of looks.

“Morning again Mr Hibert, like a lie in do we?”

I looked across to see that the other two beds were empty, I glanced at the large clock on the wall and saw that it was five forty, with a vague recollection that I’d earlier promised the CPO that I would get up; I swung my legs out of bed and stood up. Fishy was standing his hair still wet, dressed in his new underwear, balancing on one foot, feeding one leg into a navy blue boiler suit. Out of the bathroom walked Ronny, with a towel around his middle.

“Morning Alan, we’ve got a hot shower in there. Come on I’m hungry!” I picked up a new vest and a pair of pants from the pile and headed for the shower. The bathroom was a good size, someone had put in a stack of clean dry towels and on a shelf were razors, new blades, several bars of soap and even a bottle of cologne. I quickly shaved, got under the shower, towelled myself off, donned new underwear and left the bathroom.

In our blue boiler suits, smelling sweetly, three new Sergeants went down to breakfast.

CPO Smith had left us a while ago so we found our own way down, guided by the smell of bacon we entered the dining room just before oh six hundred. The Major, the Commander and Lieutenant Baker were already sitting down eating breakfast, CPO Smith was filling a plate from silver dishes laid out in a corner of the room as we walked across and waited our turn.

With our plates filled with eggs and bacon, we sat down with the others at the breakfast table and said our good mornings.

Major Jackson addressed us between mouthfuls of bacon, he told us that this house was the base for their operations and that a lot of the training for their various operations was carried out here. He went on to tell us that they would normally spend up to three months getting people ready, but in our case things would be somewhat faster. We had, he said, already proved our resourcefulness by getting back from France under our own steam so we could be got ready much more quickly. “By how much more?” I asked him.

He swallowed a mouthful of tea and then said,” You leave tonight.”

I looked at the other two, both had stopped mid chew, their mouths were frozen open.

After breakfast and still in shock, Ronny and I said our goodbyes to Fishy who was going off to the coast with Lieutenant Baker to meet the crew of the rescue boat. We accompanied CPO Smith out of the house and down a short drive to the back of the house. We entered a courtyard where we saw a number of outbuildings in various stages of disrepair; we followed the CPO to the largest of the buildings which I guessed had once served as a coach house. This building showed signs of recent maintenance, a lot of the brick work had been repointed and the big double doors showed signs that new timbers of a slightly different size from the original had been added in several places, they were freshly painted in an anonymous shade of grey. On the wall next to the door had been mounted an outside light fitting with a red painted bulb.

CPO Smith took a bunch of keys out of his pocket, selected one and unlocked a wicket gate that was built into the right-hand side door, once unlocked, he pulled it open and we followed him inside. He flicked on a row of switches that turned on the lights then closed the door behind us, slid a bolt across so that the door could not be opened from the outside finally reached up and flicked a switch. “That puts the red light on.” he said.

The inside of the building also showed signs of efforts to restore it, most of the original interior fittings had been cleared and the walls were freshly whitewashed. It was about the size of a small barn and we saw that at one end of the building there was a large table and a substantial looking steel cabinet which was about six foot square and fitted with double doors. We walked down towards it following Smith who took the keys out again and unlocked the cupboard, opening the doors we saw that it contained several shelves, all of which contained a variety of weapons.

He reached in and pulled out a short stubby looking gun that looked like a compressed rifle. “Right then gentlemen have any of you come across one of these before?” he said placing the gun down on the table. Neither of us said we had so he continued. “Ok then I’ll tell you what you’re looking at, this is the Thompson SMG and SMG stands for sub-machine gun,this one, the M1928A1, comes with either a 20 round box magazine or 50 to 100 round drum magazine. But forget about the drum, we are giving you the box magazine.” He paused and lifted a box magazine up in front of us,

“So what should I tell you about this weapon? You will note a short barrel, it was originally designed by Mr Thompson, as a rapid fire, short range weapon, known by some as ‘the trench broom,’ designed to be used in the confined space of a trench. It was the weapon of choice of that well known American businessman and celebrity Al Capone, and finesse gents, is not what it’s about, so help your selves to two magazines each and come with me.”

We each picked up two of the box magazines and followed him across to where he’d stopped, about ten yards from the table. He waited until he had our attention then slid a magazine into the slot “That’s how easy it is to load,” he pushed across a lever, “that’s the safety catch, very simple to operate, very simple to forget to operate it, very simple to shoot your mate.” He took out the magazine, handed me the gun and told us to get the feel of it. We looked at it, felt its weight, took off the safety catch, put it back on and generally got used to the feel of it. We hadn’t noticed where the CPO had gone but when we looked up we saw that he had wheeled two life sized targets into position in the centre, at the far end of the building. Painted black and shaped like the silhouette of German troopers there was something very threatening in their appearance.

CPO Smith picked up one of the guns and slid in the magazine “Gents please forget everything they taught you on your army rifle range, when we use the Thompson, we point and we squeeze.”

The room filled with the clack, clack, of machine gun fire as Smith drew a line of wood chippings across the chest of the freshly painted left hand target.

“It’s that simple gents! Think it and you’ll hit it, mess about trying to aim it and you’ll be lost!” He took out the empty magazine and handed the gun to Ronny, “Your turn son and don’t forget, just think where you want it to go, use the same target as me try for waist level.”

Ronny slid in the magazine, spread his legs slightly and then fired off his burst. It only took a couple of seconds to empty the magazine but this time the chips could be seen to start at the left hand shoulder and curve down finishing at waist level. When the gun stopped Ronny took out the magazine and handed the gun back to the CPO.

“Well done! You can see what you’ve done, the guns recoil caused you to fire higher than you were expecting but you saw what was happening and corrected, end result… target is incapacitated.”

He handed me the gun. “Same target, shoot the balls off him!”

Thinking what had happened to Ronny I had it in my mind to compensate, the end result being that my shots started about knee height, at the end of the run ending in the groin area. I took out the magazine and made to hand the gun back.

“Good effort! Use the right hand target now, waist high please.”

I reloaded the gun with my second magazine and surprised myself with the accuracy of my second burst, an almost straight line across the middle of the target. Ronny did the same at groin height.

“Well done chaps, now let’s have a little look at the Webley Break-Top Revolver.” Holding up a pistol he had taken from the cupboard CPO Smith began his well practised spiel. “Ok so what we have here is the Webbley Mark four service revolver, sometimes known as the Webley self extracting revolver, so called because the act of breaking the revolver open also operates the extractor and saves you the job of removing the spent cartridges, it fires these.” and here he held up a box of 455 Webley ammunition.

“And it is the most powerful top-break revolver produced so far, so what do you need to know? Well it has a range of about three hundred yards but if I had you on the range for a week I doubt you’d hit anything at that distance, however at fifty yards it’s a mean little lady.” He opened the box of Webley cartridges and put six into the pistol,once again he showed us the safety catch and repeated the bit about shooting your mate Handing the gun to Ronny he said “Stand as far away as you can, point and shoot, three in each target please.”

The results were not as dramatic as with the Thompson but even so, with an almost casual ease Ronny took the paint off in three places on each target. He broke the revolver, ejected the spent cartridges and handed it back to the CPO, who reloaded it handed it to me and asked me to do the same. Initially I was surprised by just how heavy the pistol was but having felt the weight for a while I got used to it. I raised it, pointed it at the target and also managed to get three shots into each, although they were not as well grouped as Ronny’s.