Alex Scarrow - A thousand suns

‘Good bread,’ he managed to say with a full mouth. ‘Almost like cake, sponge, you know?’

Buller nodded.

‘You want some?’ Koch held the mauled loaf out to him.

‘No, sir, I’m not too hungry.’

Koch patted Buller’s shoulder; he understood.

He checked his watch; the radio signal had been due for a while now. They had received one in the early hours confirming the planes had departed and they would be signalling again when they were half an hour away from the airfield. It had been stressed that Koch and his men should secure the airfield as close as possible to the time of arrival of the planes. Too early and news of the surprise attack might filter to some nearby forces in time for them to respond and take it back before the approaching planes could make their stop for fuel. Timing was going to be everything with this raid.

Koch had sent some of his men out to reconnoitre the airfield at first light. They had come back with good news. It was a small supply strip, mostly occupied by ground crew, there to maintain the occasional Dakotas passing through. A handful of American soldiers guarded the road in, manning a hut and a barricade. These men were just counting the days until they were sent home and certainly not spoiling for a fight. Koch didn’t anticipate losing any of his twenty-seven men taking the airfield. In fact, he could see this being done without even a solitary shot being fired. If they were lucky, and everything went to plan, the planes would land, refuel and be gone in a matter of half an hour. However, if it came to it, he knew his men were ready for a scrap. The orders for this mission, which had come directly from Hitler himself, had demanded he and his men fight to the last protecting those planes while they were on the ground; but it looked like it wasn’t going to come to that.

Koch decided once the planes were in the air again he would order his men to surrender promptly. There would be no need for heroic sacrifices today if things went smoothly.

He wondered what was so important about these planes… a dozen Me-109s and a larger plane he presumed would be a Condor. He’d seen this before, generals appropriating crucial resources to whisk them from some hot spot away to safety. He could imagine, hiding away inside the larger plane, Goring or one of the other stooges that surrounded Hitler. He couldn’t envisage Hitler himself scurrying out from Berlin.

Karl, the radio operator, waved his arm, and the men crowded inside the kitchen stirred and looked anxiously to Koch.

‘Is it the signal?’ Koch asked.

‘Yes, sir. They’re twenty-five minutes away.’

He nodded and placed the crust of the loaf down on the kitchen table. ‘Time to go to work,’ he muttered.

He cast a glance at the French couple tied up and gagged, sitting at the kitchen table. They couldn’t be left here on their own. If either of them were to wriggle free, they’d most likely raise the alarm. They couldn’t be left like this. With some reluctance he had begun to reach for his field knife, when Obergefreiter Scholn gently tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Sir, the two wounded men, Paul and Felix… what are your orders?’

The two men that had been badly cut during the beach landing last night had been attended to, but neither of them were fit enough to fight. They would be more of a hindrance than a help.

He looked across the kitchen at them. One of them, Paul, had lost a lot of blood, and was weak and tired. The other was grimacing from the agony of a broken shinbone; at least he was alert.

‘They can stay here to watch over our friends.’ Koch nodded towards the man holding his leg and wincing. ‘Tell Felix, if either of them look like they’re going to give him some trouble…’ Koch tapped the hilt of his knife. ‘Understand?’

Scholn nodded and turned to pass the orders on while the rest of Koch’s platoon grabbed their weapons and made ready to exit the kitchen and head swiftly towards the cover of the apple orchard nearby.

The orchard was small, perhaps only a couple of acres, but the spring blossoms and sprouting leaves would provide a dense enough cover for them to make their way unseen to the perimeter of the airfield.

Koch kneeled down beside Felix. ‘Did Scholn tell you… they give you any grief — ?’

‘Yes, sir. I don’t think they’ll be any trouble.’

He turned to look at the French farmer and his wife. Their wide eyes were rolling with fear as they silently watched the men getting ready to move out.

‘I’m sorry you couldn’t make it along for this one, Felix. Listen, it’ll all be over in an hour and a half, so let them both go round about ten o’clock. They’ll run into town screaming blue murder, but they’ll be back with American soldiers, and hopefully you’ll both get some treatment then.’

‘Yes, sir, an hour and a half.’

‘I’ll see you both later,’ he said. He nodded towards the farmer. ‘Oh, and thank him for the food.’

Koch watched the last few men slip out of the kitchen one after the other.

The last man darted out quietly into the garden, and Koch followed, slipping on wet paving stones just outside the kitchen door.

It was drizzling. Not rain, just a fine mist of moisture descending from a sky as bland and featureless as a sheet of writing paper. He followed the man in front of him into the orchard, and despite his best efforts, made a lot of noise swishing through the tall, wet grass under the trees. He heard several men stumble on concealed roots and the cracking of disconcertingly noisy twigs; but within a minute they were all lying in a ditch at the edge of the orchard, breathing hard from the exertion and looking out onto the small airstrip.

Koch didn’t need field glasses, the cluster of tents and huts were only a few hundred yards away. A single hangar was the only building. Inside the hangar was a Dakota DC3, and outside, parked facing the tarmac runway, were three more; beside them was a fuel truck. He could only see a few men milling between the tents, puffs of steam from their mouths drifting up to the cold, wet, grey sky. He watched the men move lethargically around the camp. A canteen was still serving breakfast by the look of it; he could see a queue of men standing in line holding mess trays.

Koch turned to smile at one of the men beside him. ‘I can’t see these lads giving us much trouble.’

‘No, sir.’

It struck him, all of a sudden, how peaceful it was here. After the last few days of being trapped within the noisy confines of the U-boat with the ever-present whine of the electric motors or the chug of the diesel engines, listening to the pattering of drizzle on the leaves, and the occasional rustle of feathered wings amongst the branches around them, he was reluctant to disturb the peace and quiet. It would be nice if this morning’s little endeavour could be pulled off without a shot. It really would be a shame to disturb the day’s tranquillity with the brittle crack of gunfire.

Koch whistled softly to attract the attention of Feldwebel Buller and Obergefreiter Scholn. The two men immediately recognised their CO’s calling sound and shuffled across to join him.

‘Okay, Buller, take nine men and head straight for the guard hut. I reckon the lads over there are probably the only ones even close to putting up a fight. Scholn, you take nine and check out the hangar and get the truck and fuel to the side of the airstrip. I’ll take whoever’s left and do the canteen. We’ll rally the prisoners in the hangar. We should do this quietly and quickly; hopefully we can do it with no shots fired. But if any of them look like doing a runner, bring them down. No one is to leave the airfield, you understand?’

Both men nodded.

‘Right… pick your men and wait for my command.’