Colin Gee - Impasse

The words were said as if he was apologising for waking the Soviet marine; his smile was one of sincere regret.

The Matrose nodded and closed the window, happy that the stupid Irishman would not repeat his error.

The Liberator continued on for some miles before the navigator gave another change of course, this time turning northwards and out to sea.

Once clear of land, the smoke generators were turned off, the flight engineer corrected his engine settings, and the B24 resumed its journey to RAF Belfast. There it was met by two members of the SOE Photo interpretation section, specially flown in from the Tempsford base to look at the stills and movie footage shot by the special duty crew as they passed precisely over the IRA base at Glenlara.

Wijers helped the female officer carry her equipment from the car into the lecture room.

Section Officer Megan Jenkins, and one assistant, had been rushed from RAF Tempsford to RAF Belfast, where they joined up with the film produced by the B24 Liberator pass over Glenlara.

The stills were easier to produce quickly, so Megan Jenkins had already examined them and found a great deal of information that would be of use to those present.

She had not waited to view the film footage before she left for Camp 5A so, once everything was set-up and introductions were made, the movie footage from the fly by was shown for the first time.

The others in the room looked at surprisingly good clarity work and were surprised, allowing that surprise to mask their disappointed reaction as to what the film contained.

Not so Jenkins and her assistant, who made notes and, when the short film had ended, compared them.

The assistant, a male Sergeant, removed the film from the projector and took it away to make some copies of still frames that they had selected during the show. A small suitcase contained everything they would need, and Wijers showed the sergeant to a suitable dark place.

The main room had been set up to her requirements, so Jenkins moved across to the table, spread with white paper and set with rulers, protractors and pencils.

She started to draw her map.

The others in the room gathered round, careful not to get between her and the maps and photos.

A special scale ruler flitted from photo to paper, the maths of the photographing height to ground scale tumbling from her brain with the ease of a Cambridge maths professor.

The speed and accuracy with which she worked was seriously impressive and, before their eyes, a scale map of the whole IRA camp started to appear.

The Sergeant reappeared, holding some of the images selected from the movie. In the manner of specialists throughout the services, he enjoyed his moment in the limelight, taking the main map and annotating it with the number of one of the new pictures.

Two in particular were of great note and Jenkins moved between her hand drawn map and the new photographs, comparing and adjusting.

Wijers was the first to voice doubts.

“Officer Jenkins, these two positions here… and here… the new ones… they are not in these photographs.”

Megan smiled, knowing that not everyone could grasp the science of photo interpretation.

“Here, Sir, these are from the movie. When we watched,” she indicated the smug looking Sergeant, “Both of us saw a flash, small, but there for sure. The new pictures prove it. The flashes were caused by reflections… something moving in the light, such as a window, a mirror, a glass, anything like that.”

She moved back to the original photos and selected one that covered the new ‘position’ nearest the water’s edge.

“Here. If you look carefully, that flash would come from this point here. See?”

He didn’t.

“Look here, Sir. Here is a shadow band. The sun is to the south east, so this shadow is on the northern edge of the position. The bushes muddy the waters a little… and I will have to study them a lot closer, but my experience tells me that this position is roughly eleven foot tall from ground level.”

Wijers looked at her and the photograph without comprehension.

“To be honest, Sir, I’m a little annoyed that I didn’t see it first time. Still, got it now.”

The Dutchman still didn’t see it.

Neither did Sam Rossiter, Head of SOE.

Michael Rafferty, top man in Northern Ireland’s Special Branch couldn’t either.

Much to his surprise, the last officer in the room could see it perfectly.

Turning his attention back to the hand drawn plan, he found himself well satisfied.

“Offizier Jenkins, can you put everything down on this map here. Find every position and put it here?”

“Yes, of course, Major. You tell me what you want, I will put it there.

De facto Sturmbannfuhrer and leader of the SOE’s Special Ukrainian force but, for the purposes of Megan Jenkins, Major Shandruk of the US Army, nodded to Rossiter.

“More than enough, Colonel.”

He turned his eyes back to the plan, his mind already assessing how the job would be done and how, at the end of the operation, Glenlara would be nothing but a wasteland.

Charley BlueBear was being flown back to the States to receive his Medal of Honor from the hands of President Truman. As the first Native American to be honoured in the new war, the propaganda value was immense and, as with others before him, BlueBear was to be used to raise the capital with which to grease the wheels of war.

12th GHTR were well-known scroungers of running tanks and are documented as having up to nine T-34’s on their strength at any one time, in addition to their full compliment of IS-II’s.