‘Shoot at it, man,’ Michaels ordered, ducking down beside the thin steel of the bridge of the vessel, an illusory shelter at best.
And because of the manoeuvres performed by the MTB, the aircraft was now within the available firing arcs for the weapon, so Dawson was able to do so, aiming the Lewis machine gun over the starboard side of the torpedo boat at the oncoming fighter.
‘Why isn’t he firing?’ Dawson wondered aloud, waiting for the optimum moment to engage the aircraft. And why wasn’t the rating manning the Oerlikon already shooting at the target? In fact, the gunner was shouting something at Dawson, his words lost in the roar of the MTB’s engines. Maybe his cannon had jammed. Perhaps the light machine gun was all they had left.
But the pilot still didn’t open fire. After a couple of seconds Dawson realized why and immediately released his grip on the weapon. At the same moment, he was finally able to make out what the rating on the foredeck was shouting at him.
‘Don’t shoot! It’s one of ours.’
‘That’s a Spitfire,’ Dawson said, the relief in his voice obvious, ‘and I’m betting he shot down that German aircraft, not us.’
The Spitfire howled past the starboard side of the MTB, the pilot waggling his wings in salute, then pulled the aircraft into a steep climb and vanished above the clouds a few moments later.
‘Thank God for that,’ Michaels said. ‘I really thought that was going to be the end of my personal war when I saw that second aircraft.’
Dawson bent down and picked up the empty magazine he had discarded and replaced it in the rack, before the manoeuvring of the MTB could throw it over the side. He had no idea where the spare ammunition was kept on the boat, so he couldn’t reload it.
The MTB settled onto a steady course to the north, and a minute or so later the lieutenant who had ordered Dawson and the two army officers to put on lifejackets walked down the stairs from the bridge and strode aft to check on the wounded man, who had now fallen silent.
Dawson and Michaels looked on, unable to provide any useful assistance, as the naval officer and the two crewmen applied rudimentary first aid. It was obvious that the man had been hit in the leg, and they could see that a tourniquet had already been applied by one of them above his left knee. A few moments later, the lieutenant returned, nodded to Dawson and spoke to Michaels.
‘It’s not as bad as it looks, luckily,’ he said. ‘One of the bullets from that Messerschmitt hit the Lewis gun, and he’s had his calf torn open by the ricochet. But it’s really only a deep and ragged flesh wound. We’ll be able to get him stabilized pretty quickly, I hope.’
And with that, he continued back up the steps towards the open bridge above the saloon.
‘Your seasickness not bothering you now, then, Dawson?’ Michaels asked.
‘Er, no. I suppose I had other things on my mind when that Jerry attacked.’
‘Well, we’ll never know if any of your bullets hit that German fighter, but my guess is that you’re right. I think the Spitfire was following it in and the RAF pilot was the one who should claim the kill. But it doesn’t matter who shot it down. We got away quite lightly in that encounter. Let’s hope we can avoid any other entanglements with the Luftwaffe until we reach Holland.’
Dawson didn’t know if it was the adrenalin released by the attack, or if he had just got used to the motion of the torpedo boat, but from that point onwards he was completely untroubled by any further bouts of seasickness. That meant he could discuss with Michaels and Barber the mission he had been volunteered to take part in, though the reality was that none of the three men actually knew precisely what they were getting themselves into. They had been told the approximate location of the targets, the various oil installations near Amsterdam, but had no idea about their composition, the numbers and sizes of the tanks, their configuration, or the distances between the various sites. And without that kind of information, trying to come up with any kind of a coherent plan to carry out the demolitions was clearly little more than a waste of time.
Remembering his recent experiences at the Maginot Line in France and at Fort-Eben-Emael in Belgium, where he and Major Sykes had encountered everything from indifference to outright hostility, Dawson voiced one obvious concern.
‘Just one point, sir. Bearing in mind that we’re being sent into Holland to blow up a whole bunch of oil tanks that presumably belong to the Dutch government or some big Dutch companies, do we know if anyone’s actually told the Cloggies that that’s what we’re going to do? And got their permission, like? I know they’re on our side, but I don’t suppose we’d be too impressed if a bunch of Frog sappers appeared in Portsmouth or Devonport and started blowing up our oil tanks.’
‘That, Dawson, is a very good question,’ Michaels said thoughtfully, ‘and I must admit that I have no idea what the answer is. That may be something we have to negotiate on the ground when we get there.’
‘I hope somebody’s already sorted that,’ Barber interjected. ‘If we have to start from scratch and try to convince some Dutch oil company official that completely destroying his business is a really good idea for the war effort, we’re never going to get anything done.’
The straight-line distance by sea from Dunkirk to IJmuiden is about 120 nautical miles or 135 statute miles, and even in the fairly choppy conditions of the North Sea that day, the skipper of the MTB was able to hold the vessel steady at a little over 30 knots. So just under four hours after Dawson had made his slightly unsteady way down the rope ladder on the mole at Dunkirk, Captain Michaels gestured towards the low-lying coastline on the starboard side of the slowing torpedo boat.
‘That’s where we’re going,’ he said. ‘That’s IJmuiden.’
It looked anything but peaceful. Even from a couple of miles out, the sound of anti-aircraft guns firing formed an almost constant background noise, and in the skies over the port German bombers, protected by the lithe grey shapes of Fokker and Messerschmitt fighters, were mounting almost continuous raids on the harbour while being constantly harried by RAF fighters, which were greatly outnumbered by the Luftwaffe aircraft.
‘Some welcome,’ Lieutenant Barber said, staring at the lethal aerial ballet unfolding in front of them.
The Royal Navy lieutenant had been standing on the bridge of the MTB studying the harbour and the activity there through a powerful pair of binoculars; after a couple of minutes he walked down the stairs to talk to Captain Michaels.
‘The good news,’ he began, ‘is that the Nazi bombers aren’t making too sharp a job of it. The ack-ack fire is throwing them off their aim, and the RAF guys are doing their bit as well to disrupt the attacks. But Sod’s Law says that if we do go into the harbour, the next bomb that one of those Dorniers drops will land right on our bloody heads.’
‘So what are you suggesting?’ Michaels asked.
‘I’m not really suggesting anything,’ the lieutenant said. ‘I’m just pointing out the reality of the situation. If you want us to take you into the harbour, then that’s what we’ll do, because those are the orders we’ve been given. We’ll do that and just hope for the best.’
Michaels didn’t reply for a moment, perhaps reading the subtext of what the Royal Navy officer had said.
‘So is there any alternative?’ he asked.
‘Well, we’re supposed to land the three of you at IJmuiden. You haven’t got much in the way of equipment apart from your personal weapons, which appear to be German personal weapons in the case of the lance corporal here, so I was just wondering if a safer option might be to put you ashore at one of the beaches along the coast here.’ He pointed at the almost uninterrupted sandy beaches that ran both north and south from the harbour entrance. They looked calm and peaceful in the early evening light. ‘The harbour is pretty confined once we get inside, and there are a lot of ships there already, so it might take a while for us to find an unoccupied jetty, and we’d be sitting ducks the whole time. But if we drop you off on the beach you’d probably keep well clear of the air attacks and you could make your way on foot from there to wherever it is you’re supposed to be going.’
Michaels looked at the coastline that the lieutenant was indicating, then back at the harbour entrance, now about a mile away, where the thump of another bomb exploding was clearly audible.
‘That works for me,’ he said. ‘What do you think, David?’
‘That’s probably the best option. Dawson?’
Dawson nodded. He was more than prepared to swap the very real possibility of getting killed by a bomb within the next half an hour for a walk in the countryside to reach their objective. It seemed to him to be a no-brainer.
‘Fine with me,’ he said.
The Royal Navy lieutenant looked slightly surprised that the two army officers would even ask a mere lance corporal for his opinion about anything, then he shrugged and turned away. He gave a short whistle to attract the attention of the sub lieutenant who was at the helm of the torpedo boat, and then pointed straight at the beach over to the east.
Almost immediately, the MTB heeled over to starboard and the bow lifted as the engine power was increased.
‘Just a thought,’ Barber said, ‘but you don’t suppose that beach is mined, do you?’
‘Definitely not,’ Michaels said confidently. ‘There’d be no point in the Dutch doing it, because the only people likely to be landing there would be Allied troops. Once the Jerries occupy Holland – which they will – it’ll be a different matter, obviously. But right now it’ll be completely safe. I’d stake my life on it. In fact, come to think of it, that’s what we will be doing.’
Barber smiled briefly, then returned his attention to the beach in front of the MTB.
Dawson didn’t say anything, just mulled over what Michaels had said. In his experience, officers weren’t always right, though in this case he didn’t disagree with what the captain said. Mining a beach where friendly forces would be likely to land made no sense at all, so he guessed that they would have no trouble in getting ashore. How easy it would be to reach their objective after that was another question entirely.
Then he sat down to unlace his boots and take off his socks. He been in the army long enough to know that keeping your boots – and especially your socks – dry was essential. Walking in damp footwear caused all sorts of problems.
Barber glanced at what he was doing and then nodded.
‘Good idea,’ he said, sat down and did the same thing himself.
Dawson put his socks inside his boots, tied the laces together and then hung them around his neck.
‘Just need something to dry them with,’ he muttered. He walked down the staircase into the saloon and began opening drawers and cupboards. In one of them he found a somewhat grubby but completely dry hand towel and took it out. ‘That’ll do,’ he said, climbing back up to the deck and showing it to Barber. Michaels had also removed his boots and socks.
‘Trousers off before we go over the side,’ Michaels instructed.
About 70 yards from the beach, the sub lieutenant at the helm eased back on the throttles and immediately the motion of the torpedo boat changed, the bow no longer slamming into the waves but cutting through them. Suddenly, the ride was smooth and almost peaceful, if they ignored the sounds of exploding bombs and almost continuous artillery fire just up the coast.
‘You’ll have to get your feet wet,’ the lieutenant said, stepping down from the bridge again. ‘We can’t beach this boat because we might not be able to get it off the sand again, so we’ll go in nice and slowly until we feel the hull touch the bottom, and then you’ll have to go over the side. According to our charts, the beach slopes quite gently, so you should only be in about 3 or 4 feet of water at the most.’
The beach to the south of the harbour entrance looked pretty much like any other beach to Dawson’s eyes, not that he had spent a huge amount of time on beaches anywhere. He had taken a couple of holidays as a child with his parents, both to the Norfolk coast, and as far as he remembered the flat countryside and gently sloping beaches of East Anglia had looked very much like the stretch of sand the torpedo boat was now slowly approaching.
Waves were breaking on the beach, which didn’t extend that far inland before being replaced by a line of trees and bushes that formed a kind of dark green backdrop behind the yellow sand. What he didn’t see was any indication of danger – no obvious military presence or fortifications concealed in the undergrowth. If he could somehow tune out the sounds of repeated explosions, he could almost forget that he was involved in a Europe-wide war.
With the throttles barely open, the MTB inched ever closer to the beach, and then a sudden shudder seemed to run through the boat as the forward part of the hull made contact with the sand. The sub lieutenant reduced the throttle setting even further, just letting the propeller turn enough to keep the boat in position.
‘That’s as far as we go,’ the lieutenant called out. ‘Time for a paddle. Good luck.’
‘Could you hang on to this while I get in the water?’ Barber asked Michaels, unbuckling his leather belt and holstered Webley revolver and handing it to the captain. ‘Probably better if it doesn’t get wet.’
Then he stripped off his trousers, handed those to Michaels as well as his boots, and lowered himself feet first over the side of the boat. As the lieutenant had suggested, the water wasn’t deep, and Barber touched bottom when the breaking waves were only just over his knees.
‘Not quite 2 feet,’ he said, reaching up to take his belt, trousers and boots back from Michaels. He started wading towards the shore, unsnapping the cover of the holster and taking out his revolver, just in case the bank of trees and shrubs held some hidden menace. His action was probably superfluous, because one of the ratings from the MTB was manning the heavy machine gun and moving the barrel from left to right as he continuously surveyed the coastline.
Dawson went next, waiting until he was in the water before Michaels handed him his trousers, boots and the Mauser and Schmeisser, and the captain followed behind him. The water was cold; not icy, but certainly chilly enough to take your breath away if you were completely immersed in it. Dawson strode quickly towards the beach, his eyes scanning left and right for any signs of possible danger.
But the threat didn’t come from the beach or from the trees beyond, but from the skies.