The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Thirty

Near Manningtree, England

I must be out of my mind, Captain Harry Jackson thought, as he watched the Germans from his position, just outside Manningtree. There wasn’t much to be said for the German occupied town. It contained a handful of buildings, a small marina for the tourists and a pair of railway lines running through the town and down towards the south. Manningtree stood almost at the exact point where someone would walk from Felixstowe to London and, as such, was a vitally important location.

It had been defended by its local Home Guard, which had fought for an hour before the Germans had finally broken through the defences and taken what was left of the town. The population had largely fled, apart from a handful of people who had chosen to remain and make the best of it, but most of the facilities were still intact. That wasn’t something to gladden the minds of the defence planners down south.

Jackson had watched as the refugees were debriefed and understood the situation. The Germans, in their lightning attack on Harwich, had captured quite a bit of rolling stock, all of which was being pressed into service for transporting their troops down to the front line for the attack that everyone expected. The British forces had tried to disable some of it, but the German engineers and mechanics were very good and had clearly managed to bring most of it back into service with the use of British railway drivers to control them.

The Germans took families hostage, or simply handcuffed the driver to the controls, and then forced them to work, secure in the knowledge that any treachery would mean certain death for the traitor. It reflected oddly on the German mind. Having declared British citizens German subjects, they believed that it gave them the right to make them do as they wanted, whatever happened. Jackson had never been to Germany, and suspected that he would never have the chance, but if the Germans were willing to use British citizens like that, what would they do to their own people?

He knew part of the answer already. The Germans had effectively enslaved everyone who didn’t meet their racial criteria. He’d heard from French refugees that the Vichy French had ended up rounding up thousands of Arabs and shipping them to Germany, giving them to the Germans rather than having young Frenchmen rounded up and sent to Germany, whereupon the Germans had made them slaves. He’d watched protest rallies and even small riots in India, where independence was always just around the corner. What would the Germans do to the Indians if they won the war and marched into India? They certainly wouldn’t tolerate Indian politicians trying to tell them what to do, that was for sure; Hitler had once asked, on Radio Berlin, why the British didn’t simply shoot a few thousand Indians to make the rest shut up.

Because we like to think we stand for something better, Jackson thought, as he gazed around the railway line. There were tens of thousands of miles of railway track in Britain, a network that had only been expanded over the last ten years to cope with the prospect of a German invasion, and even the Germans couldn’t hope to guard it all. Jackson had taken part in a drill with the Home Guard, focused on the suggestion that the Germans had landed paratroopers and that the paratroopers had cut railway lines, and the ‘German’ side had won, easily. He’d been able to defend the most vulnerable locations, but there was just too much track to easily patrol; it could be cut at any point and hours could be wasted. The irony didn’t fail to amuse him; if he had known that he was going to be tasked with wrecking a British railway line, he would have insisted on playing the aggressor in the exercise.

“Here,” Wilt muttered. The Sergeant had refused to remain behind when his commanding officer was going into danger, something that Jackson had found touching and worrying in equal measure. Wilt passed him one of the shovels and the two quickly dug a small hole in the railway line, just under one of the tracks, placing the mine underneath and burying it again almost completely. Wilt set the detonator, wrapped the wire around the railway track, and then smiled in the darkness.

“That’s the trap set, sir,” he said, grimly. Jackson moved away from the railway lines and headed back to where the remainder of the platoon were hiding. “They drive something across those lines and they’re going to regret it.”

Jackson nodded once. They’d watched the Germans for over three hours, and the Germans had sent a train through, every hour, at almost precisely the same time. It had impressed him, ruefully; he had wanted to try to locate the spot where two trains would pass each other, but there hadn’t been time. The Germans might have kept this part of the country lightly occupied, but they would certainly have the town itself under very tight control. As soon as the mine detonated, they would come pouring out of the town, ready for blood, and Jackson’s men would be in position to ambush them.

“Sir,” Wilt said. “It’s coming.”

Jackson could hear it long before he saw it. The railway lines were starting to sing, humming to themselves as the train approached. He wondered if the mine would be detonated long before the train actually ran over the detonator. He kept his face perfectly composed as the light of the train appeared in the distance, rounding the corner and picking up speed as it settled in for the long trip toward the front lines. It had some miles to go before it reached the nearest station to the German lines, but it was certainly faster than anything else; he stared at it though his night-vision goggles, confirming that it had over five coaches and several cattle trucks attached to the locomotive. It seemed almost a shame to blow up the locomotive — he had wanted to be a steam engine driver as a boy — but there was little choice. It was serving the Germans.

“Get ready,” he hissed, as the seconds ticked away. The locomotive would detonate the mine within moments. “Prepare to…”

The explosion was deafeningly loud as the mine detonated and the locomotive’s prow disintegrated, sending the remainder heeling over and smashing straight into the ground, the carriages smashing into the suddenly derailed locomotive and folding up like a concertina as their inertia carried them on. He heard metal screeching as it broke and tore under the impact, imagining that he heard the locomotive screaming like a living thing as it died and caught fire, flames licking through the carriages as they fell, smashing into the ground themselves.

A moment passed before a broken peace settled as the wrecked train stopped it’s motion… and then the first German soldier appeared, staggering from the wreckage and utterly stunned. He saw the German clearly through his goggles. His face was broken and torn. Others were emerging and…

“Fire,” he ordered, and the machine guns opened up. He heard the shouts and yells of the Germans below as they died in their hundreds, caught in the bullets and torn apart before they had a moment to defend themselves, some of them ducking for cover and drawing their own weapons. The crack of German rifles echoed out in the darkness, but the Germans were only shooting blind. The machine gunners walked their fire the length of the train, pouring bullets down onto the broken carriages, and the Germans wilted under their fire. Some would survive, Jackson knew, as they didn’t have time to search the train and make sure that all of them were dead, but the German morale would take a beating merely from having been caught so badly with their pants down.

His radio buzzed once, a warning. “We have company inbound,” he barked, hoping that the soldier who had volunteered to watch the main road had been able to escape all right. The Germans maintained rapid reaction units in each of their conquests, hoping to get a shot at British insurgents. They also knew to watch out for cut-off units of the army or the Home Guard, but most units that had wanted to escape had been able to make it to British lines. “Get ready…”

The noise of the German autogyro rose over the burning train as it swooped down, firing its machine guns down towards the woods. The German hadn’t seen them clearly, Jackson deduced. Most of the bullets were going in the wrong direction. Wilt didn’t wait for orders. They’d planned for when the German aircraft arrived, and he fired a long burst of machine gun fire at it. The Germans had armoured the autogyro aircraft as much as they could, but the aircraft couldn’t lift that much weight, and there were too many vulnerable spots, particularly to armour-piercing bullets. Sparks lit up the sky and then the bullets punched through a weak spot and sent the autogyro falling out of the sky. It crashed near the remains of the train, further damaging the German reputation, and Jackson smiled; so far, they’d accomplished their mission without losing a single man.

“They’re coming,” Wilt said, as lights appeared in the distance. Jackson peered towards the German vehicles with his night vision goggles and saw German infantrymen, completely hidden in the darkness, advancing as well. “Sir… we can’t stop that many!”

“I know,” Jackson said. “Joe, you’re up. Everyone else, it’s time to fall back.”

Corporal Joe Boyd nodded and lifted his sniper rifle to his shoulder, sighting through the night-vision scope and snapping off shot after shot towards the advancing Germans, who fell to the ground and returned fire. The heavy machine guns on the armoured fighting vehicles tore massive tracks through the foliage, completely ruining what had once been a popular spot for people to bring their families, but most of their shots were too high. Jackson kept his head down and covered his ears as the noise of the bullets zinging through the air grew louder, praying that the Germans would keep firing long enough to prevent them from sending in their infantry after Jackson and his men. He wasn’t worried about the armoured vehicles but the German infantrymen would probably be able to chase them all the way back to British lines.

The reports of gunfire dwindled suddenly, and he cursed. The German commander had realised that he was wasting ammunition and ordered the infantry into pursuit. The British platoon had established a good escape route, but the Germans certainly had more than a platoon of men, as well as more autogyros, if they were willing to risk them.

The trees gave way to fields and the platoon took a moment to check that the Germans hadn’t thought of moving some of their vehicles around to block them, and then ran up the railway line towards Ipswich. The Germans would probably expect them to head south towards the British lines, but Jackson had already decided that they would follow the railway lines north for a while, before recovering their vehicle and escaping before sunrise.

“Sir, Private Jenkins is wounded,” Wilt said. Jackson took a moment to examine the wound and swore. The young soldier had been shot in the shoulder and he’d lost his weapon somewhere back in the forest. That was a disciplinary offence but he could hardly be faulted under the circumstances.

Jackson’s only concern was more practical. “Can you make it back to the autogyro?”

“I think so, sir,” Jenkins said, his voice oozing pain. Wilt bandaged the wound as best as he could, but Jenkins really needed a proper doctor, and the closest friendly doctor — at least, the closest they knew about — was miles to the south, behind British lines. “I can still walk, it just hurts and…”

Jackson took his pack, ignoring the young man’s gasp of pain, and slung it over his own shoulder. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, wishing that they had something they could give him for the pain. “Just run!”

The noise of pursuit was growing louder as the Germans sent in more vehicles, including more autogyros and ground units, but they stayed in the railway trench. Jackson hoped that they would encounter a second train heading towards the wreck, one that might crash into the wreck and make the devastation worse, but they were out of luck. He glanced at his watch and frowned to himself.

It wouldn’t be long until daybreak and if that happened, they would have to find somewhere to hide — a barn maybe — and hole up for the day. That had its own dangers. The Germans would certainly blame whoever owned the barn for allowing them to stay there and take it out on them, assuming that they chose to honour the British uniforms at all. His platoon had singed the Germans so badly that their commanding officer was probably bent on revenge.

“Nearly there, sir,” Wilt said, keeping one eye on Jenkins. They left the railway tracks and struck out across the country, heading right towards a small copse of trees in the middle of a field, one that he’d seen before, but never imagined a practical use for until the war. The farmer had planted it for some reason that had made sense to him, but the army had found another use for it, one that had amused Jackson when he’d seen it. They ran into the trees, using a path that had been trodden by the farmer’s children, and piled into the autogyro waiting for them.

“Good to see you,” the RAF pilot said. They didn’t even know his name; General Barron had said that he had experience with sneaking small groups of people behind enemy lines and left it at that. The deafening roar of the engines echoed through the autogyro as it rose into the air, leaving the small patch of trees far below, and headed off towards the south-west “Did you have a successful trip?”

“Yes,” Jackson said, peering back towards their target. The darkness obscured everything, but he was sure that he could see flames in the distance. It was possible that the locomotive had caught fire again or something else had happened. Maybe the Germans still thought that they were in the woods and had set fire to it in hopes of catching them. There was no way to know. “Are you sure we can get through the air defences and escape?”

“Hey, the Germans don’t really have any way of telling us apart from one of their aircraft,” the pilot said, as they swooped low over the countryside. “The real danger is being shot at by our own forces, but we can slip through a gap and avoid any danger with ease, as long as I fly the proper course.”

Wilt snorted. “Isn’t there a danger that the Germans could fly the same course?”

“Not unless the Germans knew precisely what course to fly,” the pilot assured him. He yanked the autogyro through a quick change of course and headed west for ten minutes before turning back to the south. “If they just flew over the gap, they would be identified as… well, not being us, and the radar-guided guns will try to engage it. That would be fatal for them unless they were flying a fighter, but as a fighter isn’t an autogyro on the radar screen, the defences will engage it anyway.”

The remainder of the flight lasted nearly thirty minutes before they put down on a field, which was being used as a makeshift airbase. “Good luck, chaps,” the pilot said as a lorry arrived for them. The tired platoon boarded the lorry and waved goodbye. The lorry was uncomfortable and smelled as if it were used to carry farm animals — which was actually possible as a great deal of vehicles had been commandeered by the army — but it was heaven to the exhausted soldiers.

The pilot didn’t understand. “Don’t forget to bloody the German nose when they attack,” he called, and ignored the angry looks from some of the soldiers. The soldiers on the ground didn’t think much of the RAF, regarding them as effeminate fly-boys who couldn’t handle service on the ground and were sometimes accidentally responsible for bombing British trenches instead of German trenches. “They cannot take this airbase or all of England shall fall.”

Jackson laughed as the lorry drove off and carried them back towards General Barron’s headquarters. He’d make his report, inform the General of just how much damage they had wreaked upon the Germans, and then go find somewhere to sleep. The entire platoon needed to get some rest, or they’d be completely wasted by the time they would be required to go patrolling again. The Germans, having touched the British lines, had decided to pull back a little and content themselves with some aggressive patrolling, until they had prepared their attack. Everyone knew that it was coming…

Slowly, Jackson drifted off.