John Schettler: Three Kings

Sergeant Hobson stood there in the darkness as the light from his Ronson wavered. He had been following the Barbary ape, feeling his way in the dark and expecting to catch it just round the next bend in the labyrinth of Saint Michael’s Cave beneath the Rock. This tunnel led south, down the last of the rocky spine of Gibraltar until it ended somewhere beneath Windmill Hill. It went on for just another few hundred yards, and he could hear the chatter of the Macaque up ahead, but it was very dark. Then he came up short, surprised to reach an impasse in a great boulder that blocked his way.

He knew this rock, as it marked the end of the passage but his Macaque was nowhere to be seen. He held up his lighter, scanning the strange twisted shapes of the rocks. He remembered the old legend that said there was a hidden tunnel that went all the way under the straits to Spanish Morocco, though he knew that was folly. Then he keened up his senses, looking about when he heard the echo of his quarry resounding, hollow and very distant.

“Now where have you gotten to?” he said, hearing only the echo of his own voice. There was no sign of the beast.

The Barbary ape was gone, but Hobson wasn’t about to let the creature off that easily. “If you’ve gone off that way, why it means there may be another passage down here the engineers have yet to find. It that is so…” He thought about it, wondering what he should do. Then his mind settled on the only course he could take. I’d best find someone who can do something about it, he thought. I’d best get to a Lieutenant, or better yet, a Colonel. We need to get Artisan Engineers down here to see where that bloody ape has gone.

What good would that do, he thought? Suppose there is another passage down there, or a whole bloody network of caves and caverns. Might they go all the way to Spanish Morocco as the legend has it? And what if they did? There’s bloody Germans there by now as well. No way out for us any way you look at it… but then an idea came to him, and he raised an eyebrow. He had been one of the very few men on the Rock let in an a little secret, a special cave that had been dug high up on the Rock in a hidden chamber. It was called the “Stay Behind Cave,” and he knew about it because he was in the detail that moved the rock out when the engineers finished the work. Six men had volunteered to enter the chamber, where a year’s worth of supplies, along with a 10,000 gallon cistern of water, had been stored to sustain their lives after they were sealed inside in the event the Rock was ever taken by hostile forces. Two were physicians. Others worked for British intelligence.

Cleverly positioned high up with two small observation slits, the team could observe both the Bay of Algeciras and the Straits of Gibraltar. They had rigged up a stationary bicycle that could be pedaled to generate electricity for a radio set, and the mission was to observe and report on enemy activity. It was to be called “Operation Tracer,” the last trace of British occupation of the Rock, and Sergeant Hobson had little doubt that the men were already there, sealed away for their long voluntary entombment.

What if we could hide some of the lads down here, he thought? How many? There was no way to know until he got hold of the engineers and convinced someone to have a look. But there was one thing he did know. That Barbary ape was gone, without the slightest trace, and he knew enough about those wily creatures to realize they would not go anywhere unless there was a good chance of surviving. No. The little bugger knows something more about this place than we do, he realized.

And I’m bloody well going to find out where he’s gone.

The loss of Gibraltar had been a severe blow to British morale. Even though Liddell was still holding out in St Michael’s cave, there was already fighting for the upper galleries as the Germans sought to gain entry. It would be a long terrible siege. The German mountain troops would have to blast their way in, moving from one narrow passage to the next, around stony corners that led to chambers where the British could set off mines, booby traps, or simply lay in wait with a couple good Vickers machine gun teams. It would be a long and costly assault to pry the last of the British troops from their haunts, and the Germans were in a quandary as to how to proceed. Word from Berlin was adamant-get the job done-so the Oberleutnants and other senior officers gathered to discuss their options.

It was soon determined that, to fight their way in, they could expect to sustain hundreds of casualties, if not thousands. That was a loss that was unacceptable, especially considering that these were elite forces. It would be foolish to expend them in a bitter battle for the caves and tunnels. Could they simply wait the British out, starve them into submission?

“That would be fruitless,” said Kubler in the final staff meeting to decide the issue. “They most likely have enough water and supplies for hold out for months, if not longer. We discussed this withHalder before the attack. A long siege is out of the question. Each week we allow to pass without a swift victory here will bolster the British morale at home. Their Mister Churchill will seize upon it as a rallying point. They have already stopped Goering and his Luftwaffe, or at least that is what I now hear. The squadrons are being re-deployed to the Mediterranean, and the Fuhrer now considers this to be a primary war zone. If we stumble here, or delay, we will not be easily forgiven.”

“You heard what I have proposed,” said ColonelLahousen. He was Chief of the Sabotage Branch of the Abwehr, a man tasked with handling special missions that required unusual tactics. It was he who had put forward the need for the Brandenburgers in this attack, an element that ended up proving very useful in the initial stages of the operation. Now he had another idea that might do the job, not more troops-gasoline. It could be hauled up in Jerry cans and simply poured into the upper galleries where the German mountain troops had already gained entry. Like any liquid, it would find its way through any crevice or crack, and migrate down into the lower galleries. Then all it would take is a match to finish the job.

It was a macabre and horrific plan, and would make for a terrible death to any man trapped inside those passageways. The British had food and water to hold out for months, but a gasoline fire would consume the oxygen itself. Those that weren’t asphyxiated would suffocate if they tried to resist further. Yet in spite of the sinister promise of success, many of the senior German officers were appalled by the plan.

The war would end in merciless nuclear fire. Millions would die before it was over and, on some nights, as many as 100,000 would be consumed in a single horrific holocaust of chaos and flame, entire cities burned away by deliberate fire bombing at places like Tokyo, Dresden and others. Yet now, in late 1940, there was still some semblance of civility and humanity alive in the way the war was being fought. The unconditional, unrestricted mindset of war had not yet set in, and so the German officers decided to give the British one last chance to make an honorable surrender.

They called for a brief cease fire and came forward under a white flag, offering generous terms again, only this time they would tell Liddell what they were going to be forced to do if their offer was not accepted. Kubler refused to attend the conference, so ColonelLahousen was sent to make the final threat.