The Black Jackals (10 page)

‘Christ. They're in there. Get down.'

The platoon hit the ground as more rounds zinged past them and thudded into the clay. Rifle fire began to open up now. There was a shout as one of the men, Lamb couldn't see whether it was one of his, was hit and died. And then another. Clark. They were pinned down. Sitting targets. There was only one thing to be done.

Lamb scrambled to his feet, the bullets striking the field around him. ‘Come on. Anyone who stays out here is a dead man. Follow me and you've got a chance.' He began to run as quickly as he could. He was an able athlete, but his feet felt like lead. He was aware of other men rising from the ground around him, some of them being hit and falling over. Others, though, were running with him now. They were ten yards from the outlying buildings. Five. More small arms opened up on them from the windows. Other men began to fall.

‘Grenades,' yelled Lamb and drew one from his belt, pulling the pin as he ran forward. Reaching the wall, he stood on his toes and dropped a grenade through the open window before dropping down to crouch, hands over his ears. It exploded inside the house with a brick-shaking thud, followed by screams.

‘Right. Get in there.' Two of the men, Johnson and Bayfield, nipped round the corner of the house and vaulted a five-bar gate into the yard. The machine gun in the tower opened up, and both men fell to the ground. They did not move. Watching the blood seep from their bodies, Lamb cursed to himself and yelled back to Bennett, who was crouching with the others in the cover offered by the lee of the house.

‘This is useless. We don't stand a chance. We'll have to get round the flank without them seeing us. Smart, run and get Parry and Stubbs up here with the mortar. Sarnt Bennett, you stay here with Corporal Mays's section, what's left of them, and Briggs's men too. I'll take Valentine's and the odds and sods. Get Stubbs to lay down his mortar fire over the top of this house. The rest of you keep up a steady covering fire on that bloody bell tower. And use the Bren. I don't think we need worry about tanks here.'

Leaving Bennett with the remaining four men of Briggs's section and Mays's five, along with the mortar team, Lamb began to move off, keeping tight against the wall which ran to the right of the bombed house, conscious all the time that he might be spotted by the machine gunners in the tower. From behind them he heard the reassuring sound of the Bren opening up and the thud of their mortar. Directly behind him came Valentine with his four remaining men, and then the six odds and sods. They moved fast and ran across the gaps between the single-storey village houses. They were out of sight of the church tower now but could still hear the covering fire from behind. There was a small green on the right and ahead of them a crossroads, with the left fork leading down to the church. Lamb approached it and cautiously peered around the corner of a green shuttered house to their left. He ducked his head back in. Two German soldiers had positioned themselves some fifty yards down the road with a heavy machine gun covering the crossroads. Lamb signalled to the men behind him and whispered.

‘There's a machine gun up there. We'll go in through this house and try and flank it.'

He moved to the front door and waited. From the rear came the crump of a mortar round and Bren fire. Lamb put his shoulder to the door and splintered the lintel to open it. They filed quietly inside, guns at the ready, but it was clearly empty. As silently as possible Lamb moved across the room and then through the house until they reached the garden door. He tried it and then found a key in the lock and turned it. The garden, as he had thought, was walled to a height of six feet and they moved into it easily, screened by trees from the surrounding houses. They moved through an outbuilding and found themselves in another yard. They moved cautiously through a stable and into a garden where they were still behind cover of a wall. Lamb realised that they must now be directly opposite the machine gun and motioned to the others to keep silent. They could hear the two Germans chatting quietly. Lamb raised his hand and signalled that they should go forward. They moved quietly and quickly through another iron-roofed shed and rounded the corner into the street before the church. One more short move and they were out of the group of buildings and behind a wall facing the church. They could hear more German voices now. Lamb guessed that they must have made the church their strong-point, perhaps their HQ. He turned and made a sign, holding up four fingers, and waved them forward, then pointed to his pistol and a grenade. Valentine, White, Perkins and Butterworth each took a grenade from their belt and on Lamb's command pulled the pins, holding down the trigger. He did the same, mouthing to them, ‘One, two, three'.

Together they emerged from behind the wall and ran towards the sound of the German voices. There were five of them, as far as he could see, two behind a low wall on the right, two behind a wall and railings on the left and one behind a pillar close to the door of the church. Three were armed with rifles, two with Schmeisser machine pistols. All, he noted, were wearing the black uniform of the SS. In an instant Lamb and his men had thrown the grenades and began to open fire. The five bombs found their targets easily and the Germans screamed as the fragments tore into them. What the grenades did not kill the bullets did. There was a brief hiatus and then all hell broke loose as the machine gun above them in the tower opened up. Bullets ricocheted off the tarmac road and one hit White in the shoulder. He fell with a moan.

Lamb shouted, ‘Get in. Stay close to the tower. They can't hit us there.'

The men moved close to the tower and found that the gun could not reach them.

Lamb realised that beside the church were gates to a park. A château, he guessed. It seemed logical that any commander would make such a place his base, a final citadel. He turned to Valentine. ‘You stay here with your three. I'm taking the others in there.'

‘Do you think that wise, sir?'

Lamb looked at him. ‘What?'

‘I only wondered whether it was wise. They still have a gun in the tower and we don't know where else they are. They're sure to come running after that firing.

Lamb stared at him. ‘When I want your opinion, Corporal, I'll ask for it. Stay here.' He shouted across to the odds and sods behind the wall, ‘You men follow me and be quick on your feet. Valentine, cover the tower.'

While Perkins and Butterworth fired directly past the bell tower, Valentine helped the wounded White into the lee of the church and the others ran across the road. There was no sign of any Germans, but Lamb knew that any there were would come running to the sound of the guns. They moved through the entrance gates and walked along the edge of the drive. After about fifty yards they saw through the trees a modest seventeenth-century château. Lamb reasoned that six men would be more conspicuous than two and motioned to one of the hangers-on, a man from the Norfolks named Hunt, to follow him and to the other four to remain in the woods as back-up. He motioned to his watch and made five fingers. Then the two of them ran across the grass and round the side of the house towards the front.

Inside the small château of Warlus, Adolf Kurtz watched and waited for the British to enter, as he had been doing ever since the firefight had begun. He was biding his time, waiting for them, ready to fight to the last. Kurtz brushed a speck of dirt from his sleeve just as the first British soldier appeared, framed in the doorway, and fired. The bullet hit the man between the eyes and he fell backwards, stone dead. Instants later Kurtz saw another Tommy take cover at the side of the door and realised that his pistol was pointed directly at him.

The doorway did not hide the British officer and, without thinking, Kurtz squeezed the trigger gently and fired the Mauser at Lamb. A click. Nothing happened. He looked at the British officer with disbelief. Lamb stared, wide-eyed. He had thought that his last moment had come, had looked down the barrel of a gun and cheated death. He quickly extended his arm so that the muzzle of his pistol was resting on Kurtz's tunic, just below the silver breast button. Kurtz dropped his gun to his side.

It had taken Lamb all of his self-control not to shoot, but now he realised whom he had captured: a captain in the SS. He managed to speak. ‘I believe you are my prisoner, Herr Captain. Please drop your weapon.'

Kurtz shrugged and dropped the gun to the floor. ‘I am not obliged under the rules of the Geneva Convention to tell you anything, Lieutenant, apart from my name, rank and serial number. Is that not right? And please remember I am your superior officer.'

Lamb smiled. ‘You're no superior of mine, chum.'

‘My name is Adolf Kurtz. Hauptsturmführer, SS.' He smiled to gauge Lamb's reaction and scowled when there was none. ‘My serial number you do not need.'

‘And your unit?'

‘I told you, Lieutenant. I am not obliged . . .'

Lamb cut him short. ‘And I'm not bloody well obliged to take you alive. But I will. We both know that's what I need to know. Your unit. And I think you're going to tell me, Herr Kurtz.'

Kurtz bristled at the lack of military etiquette. ‘I don't think so.'

There were more men in the house now, drawn in by the sound of gunfire: Briggs, Mitchell and two others, with Bennett and Valentine.

Lamb turned to Bennett. ‘Sarnt Bennett. This is Mister Kurtz. We're taking him in. He hasn't told me his unit yet but if you or any of the men should happen to catch anything he might say in passing, as it were, make sure you get it down. Sort of thing a man might say if he were to slip and take a fall. If you know what I mean.'

Bennett nodded. ‘Sir.'

Lamb went on, ‘I presume they've cleared off. This one was waiting to do the job on his own?'

‘Yes, sir, we chased 'em down the street. Shot two and captured one other.'

‘All right. We'll leave number 3 section here on the bridge to wait for our lads. Corporal Briggs's men, and the Bren and a mortar. If the Jerries attack in force, tell them to fall back due north, towards Aubigny.'

He looked again at Kurtz. A captain in the SS. That was a good catch. Heaven knew what information he might have. He would get him to whatever senior command there might be in Arras and see what they made of him. He gazed at Kurtz and wondered what made a man like that.

‘Sarnt, we'll have to keep a close watch on that one.'

‘I'll do it myself, sir. Me and Farrell.'

‘Good. I don't want to lose him. Looks like the attack might have been a success. Let's go and find out how far we've pushed them back, shall we.'

Lamb made his way up the road, trying to preserve some sort of order among his men as they milled through the stragglers and the wounded. They had come far in the last few hours and had skirted Arras, moving to the north west in their attempt to find an officer of some seniority to whom Lamb might deliver his prisoner, but all they had seen were isolated units, at the most of company strength. They entered a small village named Mont St Eloi. British troops were moving in both directions on the road and it was hard to gauge which were moving forward to the front. Still, though, Lamb felt heartened. Clearly the offensive had met with at least some degree of success. He wished now that he could have stayed with the Durhams and shared in part of the victory. That would have felt good after what seemed like weeks of pulling back.

Sergeant Bennett drew level with him. ‘What shall we do with the prisoner, sir?'

‘We'll have to keep him with us until we find a senior officer. They might have a use for him back at HQ.' Lamb spotted a captain of the DLI on the opposite side of the road, at the head of his men, and turned to Bennett. ‘Come on, here's our chance.'

Motioning Kurtz across the road, Lamb approached the captain. ‘Sir, German prisoner. He's SS. An officer. I thought that Brigade might be able to use him.'

The captain stopped and looked at them as his men passed by. ‘Yes, I can see that. 'Fraid I can't really help you, though, old boy. Thing is, I can't really take charge of him. We've just been told to pull back. Awfully sorry. You'll have to hang on to him.'

Lamb stared at him, unable to believe that he was hearing correctly. ‘I'm sorry, sir. Pull back? But we routed them, didn't we? The SS. Their best men. They ran away from us.'

‘Yes, well, be that as it may, Lieutenant. It seems that now they're coming back. Jerry turned his big guns on the new Matildas and shot up the regiment badly. Without that tank support we're lost.' He went on, ‘The DLI are moving back to Vimy Ridge. I should go with them, if I were you, otherwise you'll get caught up with the tanks. The French are meant to be covering our western flank with their tanks. We know from prisoners that we're up against the SS Totenkopf motorized division and a regiment from the 7th Panzer Division. We blocked them for a while but they won't give up. Tanks everywhere. The French are a bit peeved too. Seems that some of our anti-tank boys got their Somuas confused with Jerry Panzers and opened up. Made a bit of a mess.'

‘Any idea as to our losses?'

‘It's not looking good. Latest report was that we'd lost fifty tanks. But I can't believe it. That's two thirds of what went in.'

‘What about the infantry?'

‘Almost as bad. Fifty percent casualties. But we took three hundred prisoners. If we've managed to keep them, that is. Sorry, must go.' And with that the captain was gone.

Bennett looked at Lamb. ‘D'you believe him, sir? Fifty percent casualties and all them tanks. That can't be right. Perhaps he was fifth column.'

Lamb shook his head. ‘No, Sarnt, he was the real thing. And I don't think he was exaggerating. Look at this lot.'

He pointed to the column of infantry advancing down the road towards them: a tattered band of bandaged and wounded men, some hobbling on makeshift crutches, others huddled together in an open farm wagon. For a moment Lamb was sunk in despair. He had seen the fighting spirit of the German army out there, and it frightened him.

A dispatch rider came roaring up the side of the column. Lamb waved him down. ‘Is this right? Are we pulling back?'

The man nodded and raised his goggles. ‘Too true, sir, I'm afraid. I've just seen ten of our tanks blown up. Burnt to a cinder. They've got their heavy artillery down there. 88s. Shells screaming in everywhere. Bloody murder. You'd better scarper, sir, before you're all picked up.' He spotted Kurtz. ‘Don't know where you're going to put him.' The man roared off, and as he did a shell came crashing in over their heads to explode thirty yards to the rear with a deafening crash.

Lamb yelled, ‘Right. We're packing up. Quick as you can.'

But the dispatch rider had been right. Where were they to go? The colonel had advised heading west towards the Somme and what seemed to be a second line of defence, but now it was evident that the Germans were outpacing them.

As they got back on the road, Lamb wondered how it could possibly have happened so quickly. Two hours ago they had been triumphant. Now they were abandoning Arras.

A Durhams officer passed him with a handful of men.

‘Is it true? That you're falling back on Vimy?'

‘Yes. Doesn't seem right, does it? We won the bloody battle and now we're running away.'

‘Where were you?'

‘Near a place called Aubigny. We wouldn't have got out if it hadn't been for some French tanks.'

Lamb grimaced. Aubigny. That was the village he'd told Briggs's section to fall back on. He realised that Kurtz was standing right beside him.

‘You look troubled, Lieutenant.'

‘No, not at all, Captain.'

Kurtz smiled. ‘I know why you are troubled. It is because you know that we will win. We must. We are the superior race.'

‘That's nonsense and you know it. It's all bluster. You're no better a man than I am.'

‘But you are better than a Jew, aren't you? Or a Russian peasant. You are English. Anglo-Saxon. Aryan like me. But you have been perverted by alien blood. That is why we will win. You can still join us.'

Lamb stared at him. ‘What makes you think I'd ever join you after what I've seen in this campaign? Killing women and children.'

Kurtz shrugged. ‘It's war, Captain.'

Lamb said nothing but thought of the civilians he had ordered blown to pieces on the bridge and felt desperately ashamed that he might have something in common with this man. ‘It may be war, Captain, but it's war by no rules that I recognise.'

Kurtz laughed and shook his head. ‘Rules? There are no universal rules in this war, Lieutenant. Didn't you know that? We have made new rules. For the entire world.'

Lamb turned his head. ‘Sarnt Bennett, double the guard on this man.'

It was useless trying to reason. Kurtz was a slave to Nazi doctrine, and Lamb realised that there must be hundreds, thousands of German officers out there who shared the same mindset. And if that was the case, then this was going to be a very long war.

Valentine noticed it first. The noise in the air. ‘Planes, sir. Best take cover.'

The noise was clear now: a steady drone of engines. Lamb and Bennett yelled at the men: ‘Get down. Get in the ditches. Enemy aircraft. Take cover.'

The men ran to the roadside and threw themselves down into the mud-filled drainage ditches at either side, covering their heads with their hands and trying to inch ever further into the grass-covered earth. Kurtz, dragged by Lamb into the nearest culvert, did the same, although he tried to push away Lamb's grasping hand.

Bennett was beside them and placed his hand on the German's shoulder. ‘Now, now, sir. Be a good German officer and don't try and get away. Wouldn't want to have to shoot you, sir, would we?'

Kurtz turned on him. ‘Lieutenant, tell your sergeant not to be so insolent.'

Lamb looked puzzled. ‘Oh, was he being rude? Sarnt Bennett, do be polite to the officer. He is in the SS, after all.'

Bennett looked at him and smiled. ‘Oh yes, sir. Polite, sir. I forgot.' Lamb looked away and Bennett swung his huge fist and smashed it into Kurtz's lower abdomen. The German doubled over with surprise and pain, spluttering. ‘That better, sir? Sorry to have forgotten my manners.'

Kurtz rose to respond but found himself looking straight down the barrel of Bennett's rifle, and as he did so the planes began to come in. They were Stukas, six of them, and their sirens wailed like banshees as they went into their attack dive.

Kurtz looked up and, still holding his stomach, smiled and said nothing.

The lead plane was above them now and they watched as its single bomb whistled down towards the road. The long columns of troops and refugees had split and scattered at the first sound of the planes, and most had found some safety in the ditches, but others had not and were running up the road as fast as they could towards the relative cover of the village. It was too late for them. The first of the bombs smacked into the road and blew ten men to eternity and, as it came out of its dive, the Stuka rattled off its machine guns and did for another two. Then the bombs were falling all about them. Lamb ducked his head far down and prayed for deliverance.

The second and third bombs crashed in dangerously close. The fourth was closer still, and fragments from its casing came spinning through the air towards them. Lamb yelled out to stay low and heard a gurgle from his left. Turning, he saw Farrell staring wildly and then noticed the foot-long piece of bomb protruding from his upper torso. Within seconds the man was dead, but Lamb's attention had been diverted by then from his own man, for a grey form was slipping up and over the lip of the ditch and had begun to run now, away from the road.

Lamb instinctively stood up and yelled: ‘He's getting away. Stop him.' But his words were drowned by the explosion of two more bombs and he was flung to the ground by the force.

Bennett looked up. He was cradling Farrell's body in his hands. ‘He's gone, sir. And the Jerry too. Sorry, sir.'

‘Not your fault, Sarnt.'

He looked through the smoke towards the trees and fancied that he could see Kurtz's field-grey form slipping into them.

* * *

Kurtz could feel the wet warmth on his head, and putting his hand up he found that he had been cut. A piece of shrapnel from that last bomb, he guessed. He felt it again, probing and not minding the pain. It seemed about three inches long but mercifully not too deep. He took out a handkerchief and clasped it to the wound and then sat up to take in his surroundings. He was about two hundred yards from the road and he could see the British still crouching in the cover of the ditches. The Stukas had come in for a second run and their machine guns were strafing the road, bringing havoc and death. The road was a mess, peppered with bomb craters and dead bodies. The wounded moaned and shrieked and the place smelt of death and spent explosive and the sickly sweetness of burnt flesh.

Kurtz moved quickly from his position near the road and ran into open country beyond for as far as he could in a single sprint, making it into a thicket of trees. Pausing to catch his breath, he tried to get his bearings. This was where his rural childhood really paid off. He had grown up in a farm in Bavaria, and the hard life had made him fit and resourceful and had given him a keen sense of orientation. He knew that the British had been taking him towards Arras, but had then diverged and gone north west along the Calais road, he guessed, so now, after going directly west, he must be somewhere around fifteen kilometres north of Warlus and perhaps the same distance west of Arras.

If the British offensive had been as successful as it had seemed then he would be well behind enemy lines. But part of him had a hunch that things had not gone as smoothly for the enemy as had seemed. Those Tommies on the road back there had been mostly wounded and they were pouring back from the direction of the fighting. There was no time to lose. Kurtz moved out through the back of the copse and struck out across the open fields. On his left he began to pass small villages and hamlets. After about five or six kilometres, by his reckoning, he stopped and caught his breath. Lying in the hedgerow alongside a farm track, he could see up ahead a cluster of buildings and the edge of a village. There was no sign of any military presence, but Kurtz was sure that it must be held by the British. Still, his only hope of survival now was to somehow find exactly where he was and navigate his way back to his own lines. And here was as good a place to start as any. He began to run, crouching, along the hedgerow and after a few hundred yards stopped and looked again at the village. He could hear voices now, and to his astonishment they were talking in German. Kurtz stuck his head over the top of the hedge and saw, not fifty yards away, two German soldiers standing in the middle of the road, smoking cigarettes. He moved out of the hedge and shouted to them, ‘Don't shoot. I'm SS.'

Then he saw the death's head markings on their uniforms and not for the first time that day Kurtz couldn't believe his luck. ‘Gradl, Bohrman. Put those cigarettes out.'

They turned together and dropped the cigarettes, half in astonishment. ‘Hauptsturmführer.' They snapped to attention.

Kurtz smiled at them. ‘Boys, you'll never know how good it is to see you. Who's in charge?'

‘Oberschaführer Kuchenlein, sir.'

‘Then let's go and find him.'

Kuchenlein was as amazed as Kurtz on seeing his captain. ‘We thought we'd lost you, sir.'

‘You very nearly did, Kuchenlein. I was taken prisoner. But I escaped, as you can see. No one keeps me captive. Where are the officers? Where's Zech?'

‘Lieutenant Zech rallied the men, sir. He said to follow you, but by then we'd lost you.'

‘Where is he?'

‘He's dead, sir.'

‘Dead? How?'

‘We've had a real rough time of it, sir.'

‘Then you're promoted, Kuchenlein.'

He tousled Kuchenlein's hair and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘You knew I wouldn't abandon my comrades. Now fill me in. What's happened here.'

‘After you went we managed to get away from the village and back to the battalion. Then we had orders to advance again. It seems that General Rommel had managed to destroy a number of their tanks. On his own, sir.'

Kurtz frowned. Rommel. Why was it always the Wehrmacht who saved the day, and the nation's golden boy, General Erwin Rommel?

‘Yes, go on.'

‘So we went back and found that the British had abandoned Warlus and we just carried on. There was no resistance, sir. None at all. Our Stukas had done a good job though. We must have seen hundreds of dead Tommies and burnt-out tanks and lorries. And so we came to this place. It's called Aubigny. Bit of a dump. We managed to storm the town, sir. There were only five Tommies holding it, but they had a barricade on the bridge. Reckon they were helped by the villagers. They shot down some good men, sir. Richter, Bunzl and Lieutenant Zech.'