Michaels emerged from the administration building about ten minutes later and almost jogged over to where his men were now waiting, having already placed their charges.
‘Do we have a go?’ Captain Rochester asked.
‘We do and we don’t, really,’ Michaels replied. ‘George Wilhoughby, the British consul, told me I could act independently, but I thought at least trying to get some kind of official sanction might be a good idea. So I talked to the new local commandant and he ordered me not to proceed. Then I rang The Hague and talked to the duty officer there. He told me to go ahead, as soon as possible. As a matter of courtesy, I rang the commandant again. He said he didn’t believe me, then apparently got confirmation on another line from The Hague. But he’s still wobbling, so I also talked to the commander, and the plan now is that we do the job and get out of here as fast as we can. I’ve told the Dutch staff here what our real mission is and why it’s vital that we complete it. They’re not happy about it, obviously, but they’ve promised not to interfere, and they’ll all be leaving the depot over the next few minutes.’
Michaels glanced around and saw that most of his team of men were standing close to him.
‘What are you all doing?’ he asked. ‘What are you waiting for? Get those charges placed, right now.’
‘They are placed,’ Rochester said. ‘We were only waiting for you to give the order to fire them.’
‘Heavy oil tanks first?’
‘All the tanks are ready to blow, but the men know the sequence we need.’
‘Good. Fire the charges.’
‘What about the other two sites?’
‘I’ve already sorted them,’ Michaels replied. ‘I used the telephone system that links the oil depots together, and just told the senior man at each of them to get the demo started.’
The first part of the detonation sequence was remarkably unimpressive, just a handful of sharp cracks, because the stopcocks and valves and pipes were fabricated from comparatively thin metal and only small charges had been necessary.
Dawson stood a few yards away from the first of the heavy oil tanks to be attacked, watching it with critical eyes. The charge blew with a muffled crack and a simultaneous cloud of smoke that dissipated quickly. When he could see the tank clearly again, the damage was obvious: a length of feeder pipe had been blown off near the bottom of the tank, and heavy oil was pouring steadily out of the rupture, a shimmering dark mass that started slowly spreading across the base of the bund.
Satisfied with what he saw, Dawson nodded and then strode away, deeper into the tank farm, towards the tanks holding the lighter and more flammable products. When he reached the first of the kerosene tanks, the difference in flow rate was quite obvious, the volatile liquid was pouring out of the ruptured pipe in a steady stream and splashing in all directions. In the bund, Michaels’ men had placed half a dozen woollen blankets, which were already soaking up the inflammable liquid.
Then it was really a matter of timing. The area within the bund was large, but the high flow rate from the ruptured tank meant that it would fill with kerosene fairly quickly. They had to get the liquid alight before the kerosene started leaking over the side walls of each of the bunds, because that would be the only way to contain the fire. And before that happened, they had to pull the sodden blankets out of the kerosene and shift them over to the tanks that contained heavy oil.
‘You know more about this than anyone else here, Dawson,’ Captain Michaels said, walking over to the corporal. ‘So just tell the men what you want them to do, and when you want them to do it.’
Dawson nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off the tank in front of him.
About half a minute later, he gestured to two of the KFRE soldiers who had been positioned nearby.
‘Pull the blankets out now,’ he ordered, ‘but carry them between you and don’t get the kerosene on your clothes, otherwise you might go up with the tank farm.’
Dawson strode across to the second kerosene tank and, assisted by another KFRE soldier, pulled out each of the six blankets from the bund. They held them stretched out between them, so that each man was holding the ends of the blankets, to avoid the fabric touching their uniforms, which would have soaked them in kerosene and turned each of the men into a walking fire hazard.
When they got to the line of heavy oil tanks, they lowered the blankets to the ground, and then Dawson and the soldier carried one of them over to the closest tank and lowered it onto the surface of the oil, which was rising slowly up the inner surface of the bund. The blanket floated, which was just what Dawson had hoped.
Among the other preparations they had made for the demolition were dozens of igniters, simply fashioned from rags wrapped around short lengths of wood and then soaked in petrol. Dawson took one of these, used a match to set the rags alight, then walked over to the edge of the bund and tossed the igniter onto the floating, kerosene-soaked blanket. As soon as the burning rags touched the blanket, the kerosene ignited as well, an oblong sheet of flame in the bund, but for a couple of minutes that was all that happened: the heavy oil on which it was floating did not start to burn.
‘Do the same for all the other heavy oil tanks,’ Dawson instructed, then turned away to see Captain Michaels watching the blanket burning a few yards away.
‘Is this going to work, Dawson?’ he asked.
‘Frankly, sir, I don’t know, because I’ve never done it before. But I know that the technique does work. You start with the lightest and most flammable liquids, and use the heat generated by those to ignite the heavier stuff. All we’ve got here, really, are kerosene and petrol tanks, which will ignite really easily, and the heavy oil tanks, that we’re trying to cook off now. But even if this oil never sparks up, the Germans still won’t get their hands on it if the tanks are empty.’
‘True enough, but burning it is still the best option. What about the kerosene?’
‘There’s no problem about getting that particular fire started,’ Dawson said, gesturing to a Verey pistol slung around his neck on a lanyard. ‘And now’s probably about the right time.’
He walked through the oil depot to the kerosene tank that was furthest away, made sure that nobody was anywhere near it, then aimed the Verey pistol at the side of the tank and pulled the trigger.
The flare shot out of the barrel of the stubby pistol, fire trailing behind it, and slammed into the tank in a cloud of sparks. At the same instant there was a roar like a truck engine running at full power and a column of fire shot into the air from the pool of kerosene that surrounded the tank.
‘Well, that certainly seemed to do the trick,’ Michaels said approvingly as Dawson ejected the empty cartridge from the pistol and reloaded it while the two men walked towards the next tank.
The captain glanced back at the conflagration a few seconds later and noticed something a bit odd about it.
‘That’s funny,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t look as if the kerosene itself is burning. The flames are about 50 feet up in the air, not down at ground level.’
Dawson looked back as well.
‘I think it’s probably the vapour from the fuel that’s burning at the moment,’ he agreed, ‘but I don’t think it matters. It’s well alight and there’s nothing around here that can put it out now. And the chances are that the tank itself will eventually explode, because the flames are burning all round it.’
He was right. The paint on the side of the steel tank was already visibly bubbling and burning off due to the intense heat of the blazing kerosene that entirely surrounded it, and there was little doubt that when the flashpoint was reached the fuel inside the tank would detonate.
When they reached the second tank, Dawson repeated the process, and once again the pool of kerosene ignited with a roar.
‘If there are any German paratroopers on their way into Amsterdam,’ Michaels observed, looking at the flames and smoke rising into the air, ‘this will be a pretty good beacon for them to follow.’
Once all the kerosene tanks were alight, they strode back to the heavy oil tanks to check what was happening with them. The blankets Dawson had decided to use as igniters were still burning well, but the appearance of the oil itself had not changed, or that was the way it appeared at first glance.
Then Captain Michaels noticed some wisps of smoke rising from the fuel oil.
‘Look at that,’ he said, ‘just over there. Something is happening to it.’
‘The oil’s starting to vaporize, sir,’ Dawson confirmed. ‘That’s what I was hoping would happen. As the surface layer warms up because of the igniter, a vapour should start to form, and that’s what will catch light. Once it does that, the whole lot will go up.’
The sound of a sudden and massive explosion assaulted them, the noise almost physically painful as they felt themselves battered by the shockwave. Instinctively, they turned towards the source.
The first kerosene tank that Dawson had ignited minutes earlier appeared for the briefest of instants to be hanging in the air, and then with another sudden crashing thunderous noise it fell back to the ground and tumbled onto its side, the fireball caused by the kerosene leaping ever higher into the sky. Less than a minute later, the second tank detonated in an identical fashion, a sudden spurt of flames and smoke rising above the oil depot.
The remainder of the kerosene tanks cooked off at intervals, the explosions echoing through the oil depot, but it wasn’t until a few minutes later that the first of the heavy oil tanks also ignited. Predictably, this was much less spectacular than the explosions caused by the lighter and more flammable kerosene.
Dawson was watching the first tank as the oil caught fire. There was a gentle whooshing sound, and then the oil in the bund surrounding the burning blanket ignited. The flames spread quickly across the surface of the viscous liquid, and a pall of thick, black smoke began forming above the bund.
As the second lake of heavy fuel oil caught fire, Rochester strode quickly over to where Michaels was watching the steady and inevitable destruction of the Petroleum Haven oil depot, and pointed outside the boundary fence.
‘I haven’t heard anything from either of the other two groups,’ he said, raising his voice over the roar of the pools of burning hydrocarbons that more or less surrounded them, ‘but from the looks of those two plumes of smoke, I think they’ve probably got the message and started their own demolitions.’
Michaels looked at where Rochester was pointing and nodded. Black smoke was rising from two clearly separate locations in the city, in more or less the right directions from where they were standing.
‘Good,’ he replied. ‘I think we’ve done enough damage here. There are a few of the heavy fuel oil tanks where the ignition hasn’t properly taken hold, but Dawson has assured me that it’s only been taking about ten or twelve minutes for the oil to catch fire. More importantly, with the heat being generated here in this depot by the burning fuel, there’s almost no chance that anyone could put out the fires. Not now. So even if the Jerries pitched up here right this minute, there’d be nothing that they could do to save any of the oil.’
About ten minutes later, Michaels stood just outside the boundary fence of the depot, looked back at the devastation he and his men had caused, and nodded his satisfaction. By any standards, it was a job well done. Every one of the fifty-odd tanks at the Petroleum Haven depot was ablaze, including the last of the heavy oil tanks. Above the site, a huge cloud of black smoke, fitfully illuminated by gouts of flame, was rising steadily into the air, and the heat was intense and growing.
All they had to do now was get themselves out of Amsterdam and find some way of crossing the English Channel back to Dover. And although there were a number of uncertainties about how exactly they could achieve that, the first step was perfectly obvious: they had to get back to the harbour at IJmuiden.
The administration building at Petroleum Haven was only a few yards away and was still standing, albeit somewhat singed around the edges. Michaels guessed that most of the workers would by now have left the plant: he had certainly seen probably a couple of dozen workers leaving as he’d been supervising the demolitions. But hopefully, the telephones would still be working.
‘I need to tell the commander what’s happened,’ he said to Rochester. ‘Get everything packed up and everyone ready to move out while I try and raise him on the phone. Make sure the launches are available.’
But that part of their escape plan lasted only until Michaels re-emerged from the building.
‘We have to forget the canals,’ he said. ‘The commander thinks there’s a good chance that they might have been mined.’
‘By the Dutch?’ Rochester asked. ‘Or have the Jerries somehow managed to sneak into the city?’
‘No idea. It may just be another rumour without a shred of truth in it, but it would be foolish to take a chance. It’s a real pity, because if we could have used the launches we could have followed the Noordzeekanaal all the way from here to IJmuiden. But that’s no longer an option, so we’ll have to find a train to take us back to the coast or commandeer a couple of trucks and drive there. Something like that.’
Since they’d arrived in Amsterdam, all the members of the British party had seen numbers of Dutch military vehicles either patrolling the streets or parked in groups, their drivers presumably waiting for further orders. And to Michaels, “borrowing” one or two trucks seemed like an infinitely easier task than making their way back to the railway station and trying to organize a train and carriages to take them the 20 or so miles west to the harbour at IJmuiden.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said, turning to Rochester. ‘Gordon, get everyone ready to leave. I’ll take Dawson and four of the other men and find a truck somewhere.’
With all the men waiting near the main gate of the oil depot, picking four of them took no time at all. The only criterion Michaels applied was that they all had to be able to drive a lorry.
‘Leave everything here but your rifles and spare ammunition,’ he instructed. ‘Dawson, bring your MP40.’
The small party walked briskly down the street towards the nearest Dutch military outpost, an ack-ack battery located about 300 yards away, and where both Dawson and Michaels had seen a number of trucks parked on their return from their check of the other two oil depots.
‘Those are DAF Trado trucks,’ Michaels said, as they approached the battery. ‘It’s a very successful design, and it’s pretty much become the standard vehicle for the entire Dutch army, but especially for artillery units and ack-ack batteries.’
The trucks were an unusual design, the front end looking like a typical British delivery van, while at the rear they were fitted with four wheels instead of two. When the British party got closer, they could see that in fact they didn’t have four wheels but eight, each rear axle being fitted with a pair of wheels at each end, presumably for extra traction. The back of every vehicle was open and fitted with a long bench seat down each side to take the maximum number of troops. The cab was also open on both sides, without doors, but there was a kind of fabric curtain that covered the lower part of the opening and which would provide some protection from the elements.
‘Right,’ Michael reminded them, ‘the story is that a group of German paratroopers have been sighted on the road between Amsterdam and Haarlem, and we’re an advance party of British troops ordered to round them up. To do that, we need a couple of trucks, ideally three tonners or thereabouts. I’ll do the talking, but if any of you are questioned, that’s what we’re doing. Bearing in mind the fact that we saw those German transport aircraft over the city earlier this evening, there’s a good chance that there actually are German paratroopers on the ground somewhere in that area, so it’s probably not even a lie.’
The battery consisted of three anti-aircraft guns positioned at the points of an equilateral triangle, and off to one side a small house that had presumably been requisitioned by the Dutch military to house the troops, judging by the Dutch flag flying from its chimney and what was presumably the name of the unit painted on the wall beside the door. More importantly, from their point of view, there were half a dozen of the Trado trucks parked in a line a few yards away from the house. Michaels walked over to the door of the building and knocked.
In a few moments, the door was opened by a junior officer, possibly the Dutch equivalent of a subaltern, judging by his rank badges, who looked inquiringly at the armed British soldiers standing on the street outside.
‘Your senior officer, and quickly,’ Michaels snapped.
Whether or not the Dutch officer understood what he’d heard wasn’t clear, but he turned and vanished inside the building, leaving the door wide open. Less than a minute later, another and clearly much more senior officer stepped outside and faced Michaels.
‘You are English?’ the Dutch officer enquired. His English sounded fluent but heavily accented.
‘Yes. We’ve been sent here to assist in the defence of Amsterdam.’ That was a blatant lie, no matter how you looked at it. ‘German paratroopers have landed outside the city,’ Michaels went on, ‘and we have been tasked with capturing them. To do that, we need transport. Specifically, two of those lorries over there,’ he finished, pointing at the parked trucks.
‘I have received no orders about you and your men,’ the Dutch officer responded, staring past Michaels at the thick clouds of smoke rising above the tank farm. ‘And what has happened over there?’
Michaels looked behind him as well.
‘We think it was sabotage, and my men are already on the scene investigating the cause of the fires. Now, the officer in charge of our group is Commander Slater-Jones, and he is working with the full knowledge and authority of both the British consul and The Hague. If you wish, you can telephone the commander to confirm what I have just told you, but time is very short and with every minute that passes the German troops will be more difficult for us to find and capture.’
The Dutch officer still looked unconvinced, and Michaels decided on a slight change of tack.
‘As I just told you, I have my orders,’ he said, ‘and we’re in a hurry. If I’m unable to complete my tasking there will be repercussions. If you are not prepared to provide transport for us, then I will need to tell my superiors exactly why I was unable to complete my mission. Can I please have your name and rank?’
Slightly taken aback, the Dutch officer shook his head.
‘I have not refused your request,’ he said, somewhat bitterly. ‘But the most I can provide will be one vehicle, because I cannot spare two drivers.’
‘We only need the vehicles, and we do need two of them,’ Michaels said firmly, and gestured at Dawson and the five soldiers beside him. ‘All of these men are qualified drivers. I must have two trucks because I first have to collect the rest of my party and there are too many of them for just one lorry.’
For a few moments, the Dutch officer did not respond. Then he shook his head again.
‘You will bring the vehicles back here?’ he asked.
‘Of course,’ Michaels replied, obviously without the slightest intention of doing so. ‘The operation will probably only take three or four hours at the most.’
‘I cannot spare them for that length of time. We have movements to organize here and I will need every vehicle I have. I can let you have two lorries, but only for a maximum of two hours. That is the best and only offer I can make.’
Michaels wasn’t in the least bit bothered by the time constraint, for obvious reasons, but he frowned in displeasure before he accepted.
‘We will do our best to get them back here within two hours,’ he agreed.
‘Very well. See that you do, otherwise I will have to alert my own superiors about the matter.’ The Dutchman turned back towards the commandeered house and issued what Michaels presumed were a series of orders in Dutch, then switched back to English. ‘Two of my men will start the vehicles and make sure there is sufficient fuel in the tanks.’
And with that he stepped back inside the building and vanished from sight.
Five minutes later, Dawson took the wheel of one of the two lorries and drove slowly away from the anti-aircraft battery, the second vehicle following about 50 yards behind him, the two vehicles separating a few hundred yards later. Dawson pulled up outside the main gate of the fiercely burning remains of the Petroleum Haven oil depot and waited while the KFRE soldiers piled their kit into the back of the truck. Captain Rochester climbed up into the cab and sat beside him.
‘We got two trucks, sir,’ Dawson said, ‘and Captain Michaels has taken the other one straight to the Shell depot to pick up the men there.’
Two sharp raps on the back of the cab told Dawson that everyone was now on board, so he moved the gear lever into first and lifted his booted foot off the clutch. With a lurch, the truck moved off down the road, slowly gathering speed.
‘Did Captain Michaels tell you to drive straight to IJmuiden, or are we going to meet up here somewhere and then do the journey in convoy?’ Rochester asked.
‘In convoy, sir. His truck will take longer to get out of Amsterdam because he’s got to pick up the men from the other two oil depots, so he told me to drive out of the city and stop when we got onto the main road to IJmuiden.’
‘And do you know where that is?’
‘More or less, sir. Captain Michaels told me where to turn, and where to stop. Apart from that, I do know the general direction we should be heading.’
‘That’s not the most encouraging statement I’ve ever heard, Dawson,’ Rochester said. ‘So I hope you know what we’re doing.’