The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Forty-Seven

Felixstowe, England

“You can’t give yourself up,” McAllister said.

Gregory Davall stared around at the small group. They were taking a terrible risk, but all of the Grey Wolves were at the meeting, bar one. Janine had been pushed into taking care of the German they’d wounded — ‘poor little baby,’ she’d remarked acidly when they’d met in the brothel — and couldn’t slip out at night. The strength of the Grey Wolves lay in the fact that they knew each other, trusted each other. The weakness was that if one of them could be made to talk, the remainder of the unit would be rapidly exposed and destroyed. Davall had been put through the ‘resisting interrogation’ course along with the others, but he had been warned that eventually everyone broke under torture or drugs. The Germans had quite a reputation for extracting information from unwilling donors

“She’s my wife,” he said, forcing his voice to remain low. It still gave him a cold sweat to think of how close he’d come to telling the German what he was; someone who knew English better might have picked up on his desperate choice of words and wondered why those words in particular. “They’re going to kill her tomorrow if we don’t save her!”

“We can’t save her,” McAllister said. He leaned forward and placed a hand on Davall’s shoulder. “They’re holding all the hostages in their barracks, and they have the entire place guarded as if they expect the 1st Armoured to hit them at any moment. There’s seven of us, not counting Janine, and there’s no way that we can rescue them before the morning.”

“I could give myself up,” Davall said. “You could all hide and escape, or remain undetected…”

“You would be made to talk,” McAllister repeated. “Greg… I know how much Kate means to you, but you can’t give yourself up, not like this. We knew that this was always a danger…”

Davall glared at him. “How many of us really expected that it would happen?”

“We were told, back when Constable Johnston came around to ensure that we all got the message, that we had been placed on alert,” McAllister retorted. “We knew what would happen — what might happen — and we could have said no. What could they have done to us if we had just kept our heads down and tried to remain unnoticed? We knew how the Germans acted, and we feared that they would take it out on our families, and now… you can’t give yourself up.”

“I will,” Davall said. “Kate means the world to me!”

“You can’t save her anyway,” Rigby said. “You heard the rumours from the cell the Germans broke in Ipswich, two weeks ago. They killed the adult members of the cell and shipped the children over to Germany. If they find out who you are, and they know that you and Kate are married, they will kill her as well anyway. They may even kill James. I don’t know what age they consider the upper limit for sending someone to Germany to become a German. Kate is dead, Greg. I’m sorry, but her fate was sealed when they choose to take her as a hostage.”

Davall wiped tears away from his face. “Are you… do you think that they chose Kate because they already knew about me?”

“If they did, they would have taken you,” Rigby said coldly. “There would be no need for any silly game of Cat and Mouse, no need to let us have a chance to escape; we wouldn’t even have known you were taken until they rounded us all up. You must not surrender.”

Davall found himself looking for another solution. “We could take a German hostage and force a trade,” he said, trying to think of a suitable German. The only important ones would be at the barracks, but while Janine might have access to the German they’d wounded once before, she’d reported that her German was in the doghouse. The SS suspected him of something — Davall wished that they’d had the foresight to take some very compromising photographs — and wouldn’t really care if he died. “Or we could find something else to bargain with…”

“It would be too risky,” McAllister said after a moment’s thought. “How many German officers could we snatch without being caught?” He paused. “And you can’t pretend to give yourself up, either. They’ll expect you to surrender us or simply torture you anyway. I’m sorry, but…”

“We’re going to make them hurt,” Davall hissed, too furious to keep his voice down. McAllister shushed him rapidly. “I want to really hurt them in response for this, whatever it takes, understand?”

“Yes, of course,” Rigby said. “We will make them pay.”

“That’s nice,” Davall said coldly. His voice almost broke through grief. “It’s not going to bring her back, is it?”

“Out of the question,” Rommel said, shortly.

Standartenfuhrer Ludwig Stahl eyed Rommel grimly. The Field Marshal looked tired, very tired, and yet he still burned with inner fire. As one of the Führer’s favourites, he had influence beyond the considerable authority of his rank and position as the supreme commander of German forces in Britain. Stahl needed to handle him carefully, whatever else happened, as Rommel was dangerous. A word from him could have Stahl sent to Russia or simply put in front of a wall and shot.

“The insurgents have managed to hurt us,” Stahl said, shortly. Whatever Brigadefuhrer Franz Deininger’s role in his own captivity — and Stahl still had his own suspicions — they could hardly allow what had happened to him to go unpunished. The British insurgents would learn that the Reich was there to stay. “I have the authority to respond to such actions as I see fit.”

“I was appointed the commanding officer by the Fuhrer himself,” he said shortly. “I have authority here, and I see no reason to disobey our orders and treat the British as if they were Russians. We need cooperation from the people here or our supply lines will be broken…”

“Again,” Stahl said dryly. His gaze fell to the still handcuffed women in the room. They had been tossed in, and left there. Some of the men had been suggesting that they should have some fun with them before they were hung in front of the Town Hall, but Stahl had vetoed that suggestion; there was yet time for the insurgents to give themselves up. “My responsibility is to break the British to our yoke, and that sometimes requires harsh measures.”

He nodded towards the massive map of Felixstowe he’d pinned up on the wall. It was important for any officer to familiarise himself with the area he intended to rule, and until Rommel had arrived, he had been in supreme command of the area. Felixstowe and the surrounding area had been a heady responsibility, but he had hoped to parley it into a much more powerful role in occupied Britain, a goal that was now at risk. The insurgents had been a small threat at first, but as they made more and more raids, they even risked the success of the invasion itself.

“The invasion depends on our having the freedom to move through the country,” he said, knowing that Rommel would understand. “If the insurgents continue their attacks to the point where I am unable to guarantee the security of the supply lines, they may impede us from sending supplies to your lines. I cannot patrol every mile of those lines without stringing my forces out too thin, nor do I have the manpower to ensure that our social control will hold perfectly. We need to make a harsh example.”

“The British are not Russians,” Rommel reiterated. “We have orders to refrain from using Russian-suited methods against them.”

“Yes, they might get the message sooner,” Stahl snapped back. “If we make one brutal example, show them just how far we are prepared to go, they will wilt and abandon their attempts to resist us.”

“We both know what really happened at the battle,” he said. “I know that the British hammered us and might be preparing their own offensive, so we have to react harshly to any threat to our rear. Field Marshal, if we fail to do this, we might have a rebellion in the rear at the worst possible moment.”

Rommel didn’t bother to disguise his irritation. “And, tell me, with what will the British launch a rebellion?” He asked. “I was informed that you had rounded up all of their weapons, or was that a case of optimism over common sense?”

Stahl hesitated.

“I thought that we had rounded up all the weapons as well,” he avowed grimly. Admitting failure galled him. The SS tried hard to develop a reputation for infallibility, and Rommel wasn’t about to allow them to forget such a failure, not now. “The British left arms caches around the countryside, however, and we could not be expected to find them all. The only ones we have located come from interrogating captured insurgents, and they were all well-hidden, well enough that we wouldn’t be able to find them unless we took the countryside apart piece by piece.”

Rommel glowered at him. “Regardless, I forbid you to execute the women…”

Stahl played his trump card. “I understood the possible implications and took the question to Reichsführer-SS Himmler, who in turn took it to the Fuhrer himself,” he said very carefully. Rommel was still capable of having him shot. “The Fuhrer approved the execution of the women unless the insurgents surrender, and as they haven’t surrendered” — he glanced at his watch meaningfully — “they will be killed, as per the responsibilities of the town…”

Rommel exploded. “You seem to be under the delusion that incorporating the British into the Reich somehow makes them perfect citizens,” he almost shouted. “Do you really think that any amount of legalistic nonsense will change them instantly into good and loyal Germans?”

“No,” Stahl said. “I expect that the invasion and the occupation will convince the British that resistance is futile. If I have to make the entire town will suffer to make the point, then I will… to prevent a worse disaster.”

He glanced at his watch again. “And, as they have not surrendered, I intend to proceed,” he said. “Would you like to watch?”

“No,” Rommel snarled and stormed out of the room. He would have guessed that Stahl had refrained from telling him about having sought permission to prevent Rommel from calling the Fuhrer directly — as was his right — before it was too late to halt the executions. Stahl smiled to himself and stood up, carefully buckling on his service pistol and slinging an assault rifle over his shoulder, before heading out to the Town Square. He’d spoken to the British citizens there, the day he’d arrived in Felixstowe; today, he would make another speech to them, and then make an example.

He checked the arrangements quickly. German engineers had rigged up a massive platform and prepared a series of gallows for each of the wives. Machine gunners had taken up positions around the platform, just in case someone tried to rescue them right in the middle of the hanging. As the crowds gathered in front of the platform, encouraged by grim-faced British policemen and blank-faced SS soldiers, Stahl allowed himself a tight smile. It wouldn’t be long before the British insurgents gave up and surrendered themselves… or they would be responsible for an atrocity committed against their fellow townsfolk. As far as Stahl was concerned, it was a win-win situation.

“Bring out the wives,” he ordered and watched as the wives were brought out, one by one, and placed on the gallows. They made a curious mix, from a red-haired mother who spat in his direction as she passed but otherwise seemed calm, to a young girl barely out of her teens who was sobbing uncontrollably. The crowd made a move towards them, only to come face-to-face with machine guns and German soldiers with deadly stares. Stahl watched and hoped that there wouldn’t be a bloodbath; his permission to act as he saw fit only went so far.

He tapped the microphone. “These women have been sentenced to death through random selection in response to an insurgent attack against an SS officer that failed miserably,” he said. “The punishment of the insurgents will fall upon their heads now unless the insurgents take this final opportunity to throw themselves upon the mercy of the Greater German Reich. I say now, to those who choose to try to fight the Reich, stop now before innocents die.”

There was a long pause. No one spoke. “I know that there are insurgents in this crowd,” Stahl said. He’d given orders that the only people to be spared from being brought to see the sight were to be the husbands, who might be expected to react badly to seeing their wives killed. “If they step forward now, the women will be spared and reunited with their husbands, or…”

A handful of people in the crowd were crying, echoing the cries of some of the women, but no one stepped forward. The sullen hostility of the crowd surprised Stahl, scaring and angering him at the same moment, and he wanted them to suffer. He hadn’t understood why some people who had served in Russia spoke of it with awe and terror, until now, until he saw just what happened to an oppressed people. He knew, at that moment, that the insurgents would not give themselves up. His tactic had failed.

“The first woman will die,” he said and nodded to Wulfenbach. The burly soldier kicked one of the buckets away from under the first woman’s feet and she choked to death as the noose tightened around her neck. Wulfenbach was an expert in such matters; the fall hadn’t broken her neck, but sentenced her to a slow choking death instead. There were few worse ways to die. He waited. “The second woman will die.”

The crowd remained silent, staring at him; his rage grew and burst out.

“End it,” he enjoined. “Step forward now and end it!”

There was no movement.

“Do it,” he growled at Wulfenbach and watched as the remaining wives died, one by one, their faces contorted with agony. The crowd just watched in dreadful silence — even the crying had stopped — and he wanted to hurt them as well. Somehow, he was afraid; their eyes were watching him coldly, furiously. Rommel might have been right, in a way; the British were hardly Russians, but something deeper, maybe even closer to the Aryan ideal.

He forced himself to complete his planned speech. “If there is another insurgent attack, more wives and children will die,” he said, knowing that he was stammering as he spoke, revealing his weakness. “Return to your homes and meditate on the futility of resisting the Reich!”

“God save the King,” someone shouted from within the crowd. Before the SS men could react, others took up the shout, echoing it until it was a chant, ringing out over the entire town. Wulfenbach stepped forward, weapon in hand, and the machine guns swivelled on their tripods, but somehow no one opened fire. The chant rang out, time and time again, chilling Stahl to his very soul.

“Disperse and return to your homes,” he ordered, and then he muttered an order to one of the machine gunners, who fired a long burst over their heads. “Return to your homes now!”

The crowd slowly, very slowly, started to disperse. Stahl watched it go, somehow resisting the temptation to wipe the sweat from his brow, and waited until the crowd had left. The bodies of the wives would have to be buried in one of the mass graves in the countryside where all of the dead British soldiers and civilians had been buried. Maybe that would stop them being used as a rallying call for the British. He knew, somehow, that all hell was about to break loose.

“I want you to double the security patrols through the streets,” he said as Wulfenbach escorted him back into the barracks. Had he seen the moment of weakness? Was he going to denounce Stahl to one of the other senior SS officers? “Make sure that they all know to be careful and treat Felixstowe like Moscow.”

“Jawohl,” Wulfenbach said. Moscow was the most dangerous place in the Reich… or had been until most of the civilian population had been marched out, made to dig their own graves, and shot. His voice darkened suddenly. “Do you have any other orders?”

Stahl shook his head. Back in the barracks, he telephoned a report through to Berlin, recounting what had happened, and then he tried to get some sleep. He felt as if he had been up for hours, despite having woken up at seven in the morning, and somehow he felt too tired to continue. His sleep was wracked with nightmares…

And was broken by an urgent report only two hours later. An SS patrol had been cornered, captured, and hung in Felixstowe itself. Someone hadn’t gotten the message. Stahl could only wish that he were surprised.