The Invasion of 1950

Chapter Fifty-Six

Felixstowe, England

The small body of SS men looked nervous as they walked down the road. Their swagger, their normal ‘we’re the masters around here and don’t even think of questioning us’ attitude, their confidence in themselves… all of it was gone. They were armed with weapons that the British civilians didn’t have — hell, most of the British civilians didn’t have any weapons at all — but somehow they looked as if they expected to be kicked at any moment. Their leader, a fish-faced man holding his rifle in a white-knuckled grip, was a known rapist. He’d raped a girl last night, only to be arrested by the police and released instantly. The policemen had all been taken into one of the German detention camps the same night, just in case. The Germans were losing their grip over the country.

Gregory Davall observed the Germans with the hungry gaze of a predator as they marched closer. He’d seen more Germans than he ever wanted to in his life, but this group was the worst; they marched as if they thought someone was going to draw a gun and start shooting at them. The remaining SS security forces had given up trying to control entire sections of the town. They were trying to conserve their forces… and, if what the Grey Wolves had heard was true, half of them had even been sent to the front. If they were all like the sorry specimens approaching them, the British Army would be at Felixstowe within the hour… but somehow he doubted it. They could hear the sound of guns in the distance, but there was no sign of liberation, not yet.

“Now,” he ordered, and Lucy slipped out of the house. Lucy was the wife of one of the Grey Wolves, a blonde girl who could easily have passed for the German bitch who had registered Davall and Katy, so long ago. He watched as Lucy slipped up to the Germans and told them, tearfully, that there was a group of unarmed men in the house plotting insurrection and would they please come take them away before they got her and her family killed? Davall had feared that the Germans would do the smart thing and call for reinforcements before they came crashing in, but instead they ran up to the door, weapons extended, and charged into the house. They ran into the kitchen, and the Grey Wolves surrounded them, weapons pointing directly at their chests.

“You have a choice,” Davall said in perfect German. He’d been practising for his role. “If you surrender now, your lives will be spared, and you will be shipped back to the continent as soon as possible. If you fight, you will die here with the others.”

The German leader, sweating, let go of his weapon. The others followed suit a moment later. Lucy slipped back indoors and looked down at them for a moment before heading up to her bedroom. She wasn’t going to be involved any longer. If the Germans managed to hold onto Felixstowe, she would have to go into hiding, but Davall intended to ensure that the German grip on the town fell apart completely.

“Strip,” he ordered, once the Germans had been searched for hidden surprises. They had been carrying a surprising number of weapons on their uniforms, from ceremonial knifes to smaller knifes and even a few grenades, all of which the Grey Wolves added to their collection. The Germans, stripped down to their underwear, were rapidly handcuffed, gagged, and urged down the steps into the basement where they were chained to the wall. Davall suspected that they might manage to escape eventually — it was a lot harder to gag someone effectively than it was in the American cowboy films — but by then, one way or the other, it would all be settled. “Remain here, and you will not be harmed.”

The German uniforms didn’t fit perfectly, but they could all pass reasonably well, provided that they didn’t have to talk to the enemy for long. Three of the Grey Wolves spoke perfect German, but their accents wouldn’t be perfect. The only way they would succeed in infiltrating the HQ would be through surprise and speed. They checked the weapons, noticing how few rounds each German carried, and marched out of the house. Davall forced his face to remain blank as he caught the eye of some of the townspeople. They didn’t see him, but only the SS man, wearing the hated uniform. He might be killed by one of his own people.

The Germans buzzed around like a hornet’s nest. Davall saw dozens of SS officers running backwards and forwards, some of them seemingly without any clear idea of what they were doing, while still others were heading out on commandeered vehicles. The SS vehicles they’d seen back at the start of the invasion were gone, replaced now by British vehicles, none of which had really been designed for security purposes. They approached the barracks gate expecting to be challenged at any moment, but instead the guards let them in and waved them towards an officer. Davall guessed that the officer wanted a report of what was happening on the streets, but they didn’t dare try to fool him. The officer could quite possibly know all of his men by sight. The Germans might have looked alike in the black uniforms and coal-scuttle helmets to the watching British, as if someone had hewn them out of cold clay, but the Germans could probably tell the difference between them. Davall led his men towards the main entrance to the barracks, just as a crowd of men burst out, heading towards the exit and out onto the streets. There would never be a better opportunity…

Davall lifted his German-made assault rifle and opened fire. The others followed suit. Caught by surprise, the Germans were hacked down quickly and efficiently. The guards at the gate, expecting a British raid from the outside, turned too late. Two of Davall’s men gunned them down before running to the gates and closing them completely. The Germans on the outside would know that something had gone badly wrong, but it would take them time to realise what had happened and by then, Davall hoped to have completed their task and vanished into the side streets.

“Move,” he ordered as he gunned down a German officer. They left bloody foot prints on the pavement, with dead or wounded Germans everywhere, but there was no time to finish off the wounded. The Germans on the inside should know that they were under attack and couldn’t be allowed to regroup, or the attack would fail before it had even begun. He unhooked a fragmentation grenade from his belt and tossed it into the lobby, before following in and shooting down a pair of German clerks who had been sheltered by their desks. The files that had recorded every detail of every person who lived in Felixstowe were caught and slowly burned to ash. Davall laughed aloud as he threw more grenades into the barracks, hearing the screams of Germans who were caught by surprise before they even had a chance to react and escape, let alone counter-attack

Their target would be on the second floor. He led the way up the stairs as quickly as possible. It would be just like the Standartenfuhrer to manage a quick escape and leave his men in the lurch. He had to be found before that happened.

Standartenfuhrer Ludwig Stahl had lost control and knew it. The British offensive had been augmented by an entire series of insurgent attacks, and he’d given up ordering reprisals because he no longer had the men to do it. Rommel’s demands for men had weakened him to the point where he was trying to control a vast area with only a few hundred men. Although he hated to admit it, he had lost his grip over almost all of the countryside. The only place that was reasonably ruled was Ipswich and that, he knew, was because there were thousands of German soldiers in the city. It was all he could do to hold on to the vital targets and keep the roads to the port open… not that it mattered any more The supply ships had been held back as the naval war raged, by the time a winner emerged, Stahl was starting to suspect that it would be too late for the lodgement.

He glared across at the French whore on his bed. She was holding one of her hands to her jaw where he had punched her in a fit of anger. She hadn’t deserved his rage, but the cold knowledge that he was losing control of everything and that his career was in flaming ruins had driven him into a frenzy. What could he do to reverse the trend? He couldn’t think of anything, short of mass slaughter, and he didn’t even have the manpower to do that; the most he could do was kill everyone in the detention camps… and violate Rommel’s orders in the process. The SS would get the blame for the loss of the lodgement, and Himmler would be furious. Stahl had considered trying to find a way back to Germany, but without a major wound, that was impossible. The transport aircraft were reserved for wounded men and officers.

“Damn you,” he said, wondering if there was any way to convince Rommel to return his men. Without them, it wouldn’t be long before he lost control over the vital areas as well, and then the failure would be impossible to reverse. “I need the…”

The shooting broke out, so close to Stahl’s hearing that he almost fainted, and he snatched his personal weapon out of his belt. It sounded as if the British were attacking his barracks… and, oddly enough, it made him smile. Everything had just boiled down to the simple matter of staying alive, rather than trying to control and contain an impossible situation. He laughed and turned to the French whore, hoping to share his new understanding, only to see her flying at him, knife in hand. Sheer surprise kept him motionless for a long chilling moment… and then Janine buried her knife in his throat, sending him falling to the ground and into darkness. He was barely aware of her final kick to his groin before he died.

“Janine,” Davall cried as they broke into the office. Janine was standing over a very familiar SS officer, clothed in an oversized shirt that would have been white except for the blood covering her. She pulled her knife out of the monster’s throat. Davall felt conflicted. He had wanted to break him with his own hands, but he was also relieved that Janine was safe. “Are you all right?”

“I’ve been better,” Janine said, managing a weak smile. Davall’s eyes tracked the bruises on her body and lifted a questioning eyebrow. Her voice hardened into a steely tone. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I see,” Davall said. Whatever Janine had gone though in her final days as a whore, it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about. Davall didn’t want to think about what her captor might have done to her. “We have to get out of here!”

Janine picked up a robe, covered herself more appropriately, and followed Davall and his men into the next room. A handful of blonde typists sat there crying. Davall allowed himself a moment of disgust as he saw how the women trembled while Janine had killed her tormentor. He saw the blonde woman who had taken down their details, long ago, and shot her through the head, leaving the others to remain behind in the burning barracks. The Germans would be trying to organise a counter-attack, but as long as they didn’t know what was happening for certain, there was still a chance to escape.

He caught Janine’s eye and winked at her. One way or another, the Reich’s occupation of Felixstowe would never recover from what they’d done and maybe they would be able to escape completely before it was too late. They ran down the stairs, hearing shooting and explosions from all over the town, and escaped out the back gates as the Germans attacked the front, trying to recapture the barracks.

“Run,” he ordered shortly and caught Janine’s hand. It would be unsafe in the extreme to be caught out in the open in German uniforms; they’d have both sides out for their blood. “Keep running and don’t look back!”

It wasn’t, as Monty acknowledged privately, the most organised assault the British Army had ever mounted, but once they punched through the Colchester Line, the British Army regrouped and pushed on northwards towards the Ipswich Line. The Germans were on the retreat, hounded and harried by the British as they thrust forward to trap and destroy any stragglers. As they broke though the defences, the opposition tailed off. British tanks raced to the north, rumbling through towns and villages with bemused inhabitants holding out flowers and British flags for their liberators, trying to thrust as far north as possible before the Germans could regroup. In the wake of the armour, the infantry advanced, securing vital locations, clearing minefields. Along the way they were meeting up with insurgents and commandos for the final stage of the battle.

In his headquarters, Monty watched as the German lines formed around Ipswich and braced himself for the result of the final confrontation. He had learned his art in the desert, and then through endless exercises with his forces, but now he knew the cost of the coming offensive. If he won the battle, he would win the campaign, but the cost would be horrific. He’d stopped answering Churchill’s calls. Like him, all the Prime Minister could do now was wait.

The radio from Berlin cut in and out, but the gist of the message was clear. No German Field Marshal had ever surrendered before, and Rommel was absolutely forbidden to be the first. Hitler had spoken on Radio Berlin himself, warning the Reich of hard days of struggle ahead and inviting the people of Germany to join him in believing that the legendary Rommel could draw victory from the very jaws of defeat. Baeck watched Rommel, knowing as much as Rommel himself about their position, and saw no way out of the trap.

“No German Field Marshal has ever surrendered,” Rommel said slowly. His eyes looked down at the map, perhaps matching it to his memories of the combat zone and seeing only darkness. He understood what the situation meant. “No German Field Marshal has ever surrendered.”

“No,” Baeck agreed morosely. He was tempted to make a remark about there always being a first time, but there was little point; he needed, the Reich needed, Rommel to be thinking properly. “Is there any way that we can create a victory?”

Rommel shook his head slowly.

“The British are preparing to cut off Ipswich and advance on the port,” he said. “Once that happens, our defeat will become inevitable.”

His lips twitched humourlessly. “There’s little point in continuing the struggle.”

Even though Baeck had known that it was inevitable, he was still shocked to hear Rommel advocating surrender. It wasn’t in his legend. The man who had danced backwards and forwards in North Africa on a shoestring wouldn’t have surrendered.

He groped for words. “Is there truly no hope?”

Rommel nodded.

“Hans, contact the British commander and inform him that I would like to discuss an armistice,” he said. “Johan, inform the Reich that I am surrendering and accept no further calls from Berlin.

Then pass the orders to the defenders on the line and Felixstowe. They are to surrender, hand over their weapons, and comport themselves with the dignity required of German officers and men.”

He pronounced doom in a soft, almost heartbreaking voice. “The Invasion of Britain is at an end.”