Luckily Georges spoke enough English to understand me and translate for the other five around the kitchen table. On the worn surface lay a pile of sand in the shape of a gradual hill, and a small toy house on the summit.
“This is the SS headquarters building, near the village of Chanat-la-Mouteyre.” He said, pointing at the house with a thin garden cane. “We know that on Saturday night, Colonel Hummels will host a party. There will be some local girls attending, and that’s how we get inside.” He looked at one of the two women at the table. “Katie has that under control, right?”
She nodded. “We have three girls who are booked for the night, I can see no problem.”
I could see the reticence in her eyes, the idea that she didn’t completely like the use of the locals, but felt it necessary.
“We’ll wait until the festivities are over, and sneak through the back garden, and into the house.” Georges continued.
“Guards?” I asked.
“There will be at least ten outside, all SS, and perhaps another ten inside. This is a very important party. We suspect there will be over thirty officers in attendance.”
I nodded. To take out thirty SS officers would be a coup indeed. To get out alive would be difficult with so many guards present, and I said as much.
George ran his stick down the sandy hill in front of the house. “We have a group who will make an approach to the front of the house at ten o’clock. They will not attack, but with the white of the snow, they’ll present themselves as a distraction to the outside guards.”
“They’re taking a huge risk.”
Georges nodded. “Patrice knows what he’s doing.”
“So hopefully we’ll get inside while the distraction is under way?”
“Exactly.”
“How do you expect to kill your targets?”
Georges grinned, and nodded to Frank, an older member. Frank left the table and returned with a rucksack. From inside he produced a circular mine, similar to our limpet mines.
“Ten pounds of high explosive, with a timer accurate to five seconds.”
“Wow.” I said. “And the plan?”
This time, Georges’ grin filled his face. “We have twenty of these, and each of us will carry one. All will have been already set for a specific time. We will place them against walls on the ground floor; we will literally blow the house upwards. The Germans in the bedrooms upstairs will be blown to pieces.”
My heart chilled. “And the girls?”
“The local girls will all have watches, they have instructions to make excuses and get themselves downstairs. The others are German whores anyway, and we care nothing for them.”
The smooth-talking Georges was a heartless swine, yet the plan seemed sound. Two hundred pounds of explosive would make a terrible mess. We’d messed around with one pound bombs at Camp X, and they could punch a hole in a railway engine. I shuddered to think of the destruction two hundred pounds would do.
“We have a secret weapon, Eric Volland,” Georges had never asked me my real name, and I hadn’t given it. He pushed a thin tube-like weapon across a clean part of the table.
I recognized it immediately. “The Welrod.” The weapon was basically just a twelve inch tube and a small pistol grip at the non-business end, we’d used it in Canada. It could be loaded with six 32 caliber bullets and when fired was as quiet as snapping your fingers. “How many do you have?”
“Ten.”
The math came easy; sixty silent bullets were a heck of an advantage in a close fight, not so good for distances beyond twenty yards or so.
“We also have snow ponchos,” Georges continued. “They’re SS issue. If the snow keeps up, we’ll be like ghosts.”
Yeah, I thought, ghosts armed to the teeth. “And this is planned for Saturday?”
He nodded. “So we have one favor to ask.”
I knew what was coming, and I was already shaking my head. “You want me to help.”
Georges nodded. “This was already going to be our biggest operation, with your help we could pull it off. You could give us your knowledge, supervise the final week of training.”
I cringed. Thirty German SS officers would indeed be a haul worth boasting about. “I really am trying to get home.”
Georges grinned, then slapped a bankroll of notes on the table. “There’s enough here to wine and dine your way home.”
And they’d sucker-punched me just where I was most vulnerable. My funds were below what I’d considered to be meager. This new injection was just what I needed to get myself across the channel and back home. I could hardly believe my ‘planned’ six weeks away from home had turned into a marathon round-the-world trek.
“You have a deal.” I could hardly believe the words came out of my mouth.
So, by day we hid at various farmhouses, by night we met with the various men and women who would be participating, and went through the operation. I tweaked their plan, and we ran every part of it, positioned every member, worked out fields of fire, things they’d never been taught.
By the time Saturday came round we were ready. We’d run every scenario I could think of. Early in the morning, it began to snow. Little flakes at first, but by afternoon, it had changed into a full scale downpour. When we assembled at the rendezvous crossroads at seven o’clock, the snow had stopped, but seven inches of fresh white stuff made walking difficult. “Will the German party at the house still go-ahead?” I asked as the last stragglers joined us.
“The officers have been there for two days; lots of meetings.” Georges blew hard into his cupped fingers. “They finished their business last night, they’ve been promised a feast and some flesh as a reward.”
I wondered if our side ever trampled their debauchery over their conquered foes, then realized they probably had. You didn’t have an empire a globe wide without acting like animals from time to time. I thought of Alice in Edinburgh, mum, and Frances my poor sister, living under a similar yoke.
Jolted from my introspection by Georges denoting the order of march, I fell into step, trudging along a hedgerow through snowdrifts sometimes coming to mid-thigh. There was little moonlight, but the clouds were low, and even though the night was dark, the new snow meant we were conspicuous. As we neared the perimeter of the woods around the house, Georges ordered us to don our ponchos. With the hoods pulled tight around our faces, we slid into the shadows of the woodland, and approached the house.
I looked at my watch, eight thirty-five. It had taken us an hour and a half to walk just two miles. I patted my pockets, touching magazines for my Welrod, the new wad of French money. My passport was in my sock, safe as could be.
Let’s just say that when the shit hit the fan, I wanted to be well on my way, not lingering to face repercussions.
Approaching the rear of the house, my first sign of a German guard was a puff of cigarette smoke from a garage doorway. He gave the perimeter little regard, then swung his way inside, greeted by cheering comrades. I swung the binoculars from side to side but could see little evidence of further diligence in the so-called elite troop’s primary function.
The walls and bushes of the garden gave us cover as we approached the house, but still we saw no guards at the obvious positions. The large detached garage seemed to be their gathering place.
Then the door opened, and two Germans staggered out into the snow. With rifles slung over their shoulders, they relieved themselves against the wall of the building, then pulling the collars of their greatcoats about their throats, they proceeded to walk around the house. I saw them follow a path of trodden snow, but from my position, there was little deviation from it. As one man staggered, caught by the other, they laughed together, their attention definitely not on us.
“They’re drunk,” I said. I grabbed the nearest Frenchman, a chap called Voghes, and we ran across the white landscape. “Cover me,” I said, knowing he’d understand the basic command, well-practiced throughout the week.
I reached the outer side of the garage without any trouble, and peeked in one of the windows. Two large tables had been positioned in front of a large grey truck. I counted fifteen men playing cards. Beer mugs were in abundance, and a large keg sat on a stand to one side. The air was thick and blue with cigarette smoke, there seemed to be no threat whatsoever coming from this direction.
“Vous dit a Georges.” I said in my best week-old French. “Deux Francais ici, avec Schmeissers.” We’d probably have to deal with the guards at some point, but there seemed little point in doing it now and alerting the house.
“Oui,” he nodded, and sloped off back to our positions. After about three minutes, the guards returned, obviously having done a perimeter sweep of the house. They stamped their feet outside the garage, and returned to their card game. So much for Hitler’s elite troops.
Checking that no one was watching from the garage, I made my way to the main back door of the house. Gretchen went past me, opened the door, and slipped inside. She’d left her white poncho by the door, but her Welrod was ready for use. In minutes the door opened again.
“Is okay,” she said.
The kitchen was in wrapping down mode, the servers washing dishes and clearing the food from the tables. Georges took over, getting word to the workers to finish what they were doing, and make their way to the kitchen.
“There are guards in the main hallways, but they don’t seem disturbed by us.” He hustled another into the kitchen. “They say fourteen or so German guards upstairs, no more than that number.”
One by one we gathered the workers into groups of five or so, and led them outside. There was no way to way to sugar-coat their predicament; they were on their own to make their way home. Yes, we were being heartless, but there was a bigger prize; a couple of dozen German officers and their whores.
At least they had a head start.
Soon the kitchen was clear, and time for the next stage of the plan. We each had a backpack with our bomb inside. We gathered together, opened the pack, and simultaneously set our charges.
“Five minutes,” Georges said. Although he slipped into French, I knew what he was saying; he’d told me often enough, polishing it. “Once we go through those doors, we are on our own, if someone falls, your main priority is to get their explosive into some room in the floor.”
We gathered at the door like mice, waiting on Georges’ last words.
“God be with you.”