Читать книгу Churchill's Hellraisers - Damien Lewis - Страница 13

Chapter 2

Major Roy Farran was already a legend within SAS circles, but even by his own standards this morning’s mission was something of a stretch. During August and September 1944 he’d led a column of jeeps – the SAS’s C Squadron – in a mission codenamed Operation Wallace, breaking out from the bulge of terrain seized in the D-Day landings and pushing two hundred miles behind enemy lines.

His orders were simplicity itself: he and his men were to cause chaos and havoc behind the German front in north-eastern France, to give the impression that Allied forces had broken through and spreading panic through the enemy ranks. Hence today’s daring assault on the German garrison headquarters, situated in the ancient town of Châtillon-sur-Seine, lying 250 kilometres east of Paris, a town graced with Roman-era cobbled streets and buildings.

The plans for the dawn assault had been hatched with Colonel Claude, the leader of the local Maquis – the French resistance – the previous evening, over a sumptuous dinner complemented by several bottles of fine wine. Late into the proceedings and partly inspired by Dutch courage, Farran had proposed they hit Châtillon in an all-out attack, Maquis and SAS united, and while the change of garrison was in full swing.

One hundred and fifty enemy troops were based at the centuries-old Château du Maréchal Marmont, situated on a low hill surrounded by fine parkland. Built in the 1700s by the French General Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont, a native of the town, the chateau had been burned to the ground and rebuilt some seventy years earlier. Farran sensed that now was the time to have another go at wrecking the place, or at least killing its occupants.

Equipped with twenty army trucks, the German garrison housed at the chateau was about to be relieved by a unit of Panzergrenadiers, a mechanised infantry force riding in specialist combat vehicles, including Sonderkraftfahrzeug 251 half-track troop carriers. The previous day Farran and Captain Grant Hibbert – his second-in-command – had carried out a recce. After driving into town in their SAS jeep, Farran had covered Hibbert as he’d vaulted over the chateau’s perimeter wall and checked out the trucks in the courtyard.

The alarm having been raised, the two SAS commanders had high tailed it out of there, but not before the recce had served its purpose. The intelligence they’d been given had proved correct: the column of trucks was laden with equipment for a garrison poised to move. One German unit was about to be replaced by another at the chateau, and amid the confusion of that changeover Farran sensed they could seize the advantage.

Colonel Claude had expressed suitable enthusiasm for Farran’s plan, and toasts had been drunk long into the night. The colonel had pledged to provide five hundred local fighters, to match Farran’s sixty SAS spread across a dozen-odd jeeps. The vehicles’ raw firepower helped compensate for the SAS’s paucity in numbers. Each Willys Jeep boasted two pivot-mounted weapons, often a heavier Browning machine gun matched with the rapid-firing Vickers K, invariably mounted in pairs. As such, they could put down a devastating field of fire.

Farran’s intention was to keep it simple for this morning’s attack. His men would seize the main junction on the outskirts of town, on the road leading south to the city of Dijon. Leaving some jeeps to hold that vital position – through which the German vehicles carrying the incoming garrison would have to pass – Farran would lead a party further into town, armed with mortars and Bren light machine guns. They would sneak up to the chateau on foot, the first round fired by the mortar signalling the all-out assault.

Setting out at 0630 hours from their deep woodland hideout, the column of SAS jeeps nosed through scenery typical of the region – small green fields, thick hedges and red-tiled cottages, set amid gently rolling, wooded hills. Farran kept the convoy’s speed at a steady crawl. The roads were dry and earthy from the long summer months, and he needed to avoid throwing up a tell-tale dust cloud, which might reveal their position to any watching enemy.

The Châtillon road junction was taken without a shot being fired. Farran left Lieutenant ‘Big’ Jim Mackie – his long-standing right-hand man, who commanded his lead ‘scout’ vehicle – in charge of the roadblock, while he led the main force of forty men riding in nine jeeps further into town. Ominously, there was still no sign of Colonel Claude’s Maquis, but Farran put that down to a delayed start due to the previous night’s carousing.

At each road junction he left a jeep and a handful of men, so securing their route of retreat. They reached the main square seemingly without having been detected, cutting telephone lines as they went. Up ahead lay the chateau. It was the obvious place to billet a garrison: grandiose and thick-walled, boasting turrets, spires and parapets, it was a veritable fortress.

Of course, the beautiful grounds and approach would be guarded by enemy sentries, but that was where the mortar would come into its own. Farran intended to strike from a distance and by utter surprise, lobbing in as many rounds as possible to spread chaos among a garrison who would be in the midst of loading up in preparation for the move.

At seven sharp the mortar barrage began. By now Farran’s men were experts in quick-fire shoot-n’-scoot tactics. Within minutes several dozen of the 3-inch shells had pounded into the chateau’s courtyard, their high-explosive charges sending a swathe of razor-sharp shrapnel tearing through the air and ripping into the column of trucks. Hit by utter surprise, this was some awakening for the garrison. Chaos ensued as Farran ordered his Bren-gunners to open fire, raking the chateau’s defenders with savage bursts.

The narrow, twisting streets of the town echoed with the deafening noise of battle – the rattle of the Brens, the rasp of the Vickers, the howl of rounds ricocheting off walls, and behind it all the deeper bass thud of the mortars, as one-by-one the high explosive shells hammered into the chateau’s grounds. Towards his rear, Farran sensed the grunt of powerful diesel engines. Sure enough and bang on cue, the column of thirty vehicles was approaching from the south, bearing the Panzergrenadier relief column.

At this moment, Farran’s sixty-strong force was outnumbered some five-to-one by the enemy, and it was high time that Colonel Claude’s Maquis put in an appearance. But still there was no sign of them. Taking his jeep, Farran raced back towards the crossroads, where he’d left the redoubtable Big Jim Mackie in control. It was vital to stop that Panzergrenadier column from linking up with the forces presently under siege at the chateau.

As Farran neared the junction, he sensed there was little need for worry: typically, Lieutenant Mackie had it all under control. He’d positioned his own jeep to form the core of the roadblock, with a second set to one side. Those manning the guns allowed the enemy column to approach to within twenty yards, before opening up with an utterly devastating broadside. Within seconds, a whirlwind of fire had torn into the leading vehicles, two of which happened to be laden with stores. Moments later fuel and ammunition detonated in a sea of flame, exploding rounds tearing into the vehicles further along the column.

With the telephone lines cut, the Panzergrenadiers had been taken by total surprise. They’d driven into town unawares, presuming the SAS jeeps had to constitute some kind of a friendly checkpoint. It was an easy-enough mistake to have made: who would ever have expected to encounter an enemy roadblock this far behind their own front line?

‘The first five trucks, two of which were loaded with ammunition, were brewed up and caused a great firework display,’ was how the SAS operational report described the ambush. The jeeps hammered in fire, raking the column from either side. ‘Those added to the fire, which the Germans returned, and for some time the fierce engagement continued . . . Fierce street fighting developed . . .’

Farran grabbed a Bren and, balancing it on a convenient wall, he began to hose down the trucks to the rear of the Panzergrenadier column. He watched as a German motorcycle-and-sidecar combination veered across the road and toppled over a bridge, plummeting into the river below. As Farran pumped in bursts of tracer rounds – following the red streak of the bullets to their targets – he saw figures bailing out of vehicles at the rear of the stalled column.

Machine guns opened up from the direction of the besieged convoy and mortars crashed down onto the streets. One of Farran’s men collapsed, felled by a shot to the head. A brave French civilian dashed out and dragged his bloodied form into the shelter of a doorway. A pretty, dark-haired woman wearing a dashing red dress leaned out of an upper floor window, defiantly giving the ‘V’ for Victory sign. To Farran, that woman’s smile and her poise offered the perfect riposte to the bursts of fire now tearing down the streets.

A runner approached from the direction of the chateau. He brought word that a force of Germans had broken out of the grounds and were fighting their way towards Farran’s position. One SAS jeep had been hit, in a situation that was fast-moving and confused. The enemy had even begun to mortar their own side, mistaking the fire from the chateau as being that of the mystery Allied attack force.

Even so, Farran’s men were going to be hard-pressed to defend their positions. He sent a jeep to reinforce those at the chateau, with orders that they should hold firm. His priority was to decimate what was left of the Panzergrenadier column, and to do that they had to stop the two forces uniting. At the same time his chief concern was becoming the absent Maquis. Where on earth was Colonel Claude and the five hundred fighters that he had promised?

As the battle intensified, Farran sensed his SAS squadron was in danger of becoming trapped – sandwiched between the Germans advancing from the chateau, and the Panzergrenadiers now mustering fierce resistance. He and his men had been embroiled in fierce combat for approaching two hours, and the Maquis were nowhere to be seen. Accordingly, he decided it was time for the ‘scoot’ period of the assault to be enacted.

With a gallant wave to the girl in the red frock – Farran was very much a charmer and a ladies’ man – he strode into the centre of the road and fired two flares from a Very pistol. They looped a fiery arc through the sky, scorching a fierce scarlet across the battle-torn town – two red flares being the signal to withdraw.

As Farran and Captain Hibbert led the force in a helter-skelter retreat they finally ran into the vanguard of the Maquis, mustering on the outskirts of town. Two hours late and less than an eighth of the number that Colonel Claude had promised, at least they were here. The Maquis seemed desperate for a slice of that morning’s action, so Farran and Hibbert decided they would lead a second push into Châtillon.

This time their numbers would be swollen to one hundred and twenty fighters, but the element of surprise was entirely gone. Even so, Farran was banking on the enemy mistaking his larger force for the vanguard of General Patton’s 3rd Army, those American troops and armour that had spearhead the thrust east through France. If that happened, the entire enemy force – those at the chateau and the Panzergrenadiers –might break and run.

It was an audacious gamble, but hardly the first by this veteran SAS commander. Already one of the most highly decorated soldiers of the war, Farran would earn a DSO, MC and two bars (three MCs) during the war, among many other decorations. Of Irish descent, he was known to all as Major Patrick McGinty, after an irreverent and somewhat ribald Irish ballad entitled ‘Paddy McGinty’s Goat’.

Like many a former prisoner of war – Farran had escaped German captivity in 1941 – he’d adopted a nom de guerre, knowing that the Germans kept detailed records of all POWs. Major Patrick McGinty had become Farran’s official war name, and indeed his DSO was issued in that name. The ballad about the goat gives something of a sense of Farran’s nature: colourful, distinctly Irish, rebellious, unconventional, contemptuous of mindless bureaucracy and decidedly merciless towards his enemies.

Mr Patrick McGinty, an Irishman of note,

Fell into a fortune and brought himself a goat.

Says he, ‘Sure, of goat’s milk I’m goin’ to have me fill.’

But when he bought the nanny home he found it was a bill.

The goat goes on to woo several of the young beauties in the Irish village of Killaloe, before it got shipped off to France as a mascot for the Irish Guards regiment in the Great War, whereupon it decided to fight, the enemy ranks breaking before its charge:

The Germans retreated, hurriedly they fled.

Holding their noses they tumbled over dead.

‘Ach,’ says the Kaiser, ‘There’s poison gas afloat.’

But it was only the effluvium from Paddy McGinty’s goat.

Just twenty-four years of age by the time of the Châtillon attack, Major McGinty – short, sandy-haired and blue-eyed – had been born into a devout Roman Catholic family in England, but educated in India, where his father had served in the military. He’d been sent to the Bishop Cotton School, in Shimla – a province of India – the oldest boarding school in Asia, renowned for turning out judges, politicians and senior military commanders.

The alumni of the school were known as ‘Old Cottonians’, and its motto was ‘Overcome evil with good’. Arguably, it was one that Farran had applied to the war with single-minded rigour.

In 1941 Farran – then serving in the 3rd King’s Own Hussars, an armoured (cavalry) regiment – had been injured in both legs and an arm, in what became known as the battle of Cemetery Hill, in Crete. Farran was taken captive and held as a POW, but only for as long as it took for him to recover enough to walk on crutches, after which he managed to crawl under the camp’s wire. Linking up with fellow escapees, he’d made a daring bid for freedom in a caique – a traditional wooden fishing boat. After an epic voyage and being marooned at sea, Farran and his fellows had finally made it to British-held Egypt.

He would win his first MC for his heroic actions on Crete and a bar – a second – for this daring escape. ‘Throughout the whole of the operations this officer had shown courage, resource and initiative,’ read the citation for his first award. ‘He has set a very fine example of determination and leadership to the men of his command.’

Farran’s physical courage and his apparent recklessness would lead him back into enemy fire, and in July 1942 he was wounded in the first battle of El Alamein. This time, his injuries were so serious as to require his medical evacuation to Britain. But via a judicious pulling of strings he managed to convince an Army medical board that he was fit to serve in a front-line role.

Not only that, but in February 1943 he’d volunteered for the SAS. Brought into the regiment by a mutual friend, Farran was hugely impressed. He delighted in the no-nonsense, freewheeling and aggressive nature of the unit, and felt he had found his true home. In the regiment’s founders he recognised true kindred spirits.

‘The Stirlings did not leap over red tape; they broke right through it,’ Farran would declare of David and Bill Stirling. ‘Although they made many enemies by slipping round smaller fry, they always got there in the end.’

By September 1943 Farran was in action again, this time in Italy, commanding an SAS patrol on daring sabotage missions on the Adriatic coast. Within weeks he’d won a second bar to his MC. ‘The success of the detachment was due to the courage, tenacity and leadership of Capt. FARRAN,’ read the October 1943 citation, ‘ably backed by his men, whom he has trained himself.’ Arguably, there was no one better to be leading the daring and audacious Châtillon raid.

It was mid-morning by the time the combined SAS and Maquis force advanced back into town. Farran’s main priority was to launch some kind of decoy action, so as to draw the enemy away from Captain Hibbert and his force of Maquis, who were moving into the narrow streets on foot. Gathering the redoubtable Jim Mackie, with his jeep as a supporting gun-platform, he led a foot patrol in a thrust east towards the far side of town, hoping to convince the enemy that they were being hit from all sides, as if by the US 3rd Army’s vanguard.

As Hibbert’s force pushed into the western outskirts of Châtillon, they stumbled upon an armoured car with thirty enemy soldiers in support, forming a bicycle patrol. They opened fire, gunning down four of those in the armoured car as they tried to bail out, and hitting the bicycle patrol from both the front and the rear. Savage street fighting ensued and another SAS soldier was hit. Forced to take cover in a large garden, Hibbert and the Maquis fought for their very lives as fierce bursts of gunfire echoed through the bullet-pocked terrain.

Meanwhile, Farran’s force stole ahead through streets that were eerily quiet, apart from the bursts of fire echoing across from Hibbert’s direction. Crouched low, he led his men past a unit of Germans positioned in the cover of some beech trees. He pushed on, crossing a canal, where his small force flitted along the towpath. Farran spotted another unit of German soldiers standing guard at the hospital, but somehow they failed to notice the SAS men.

Finally, having pushed east across two miles of terrain, they reached the road leading north to the city of Troyes. Taking cover in a narrow side street, Farran chanced a peek around the corner of the nearest building. He almost choked at what he saw. Just a few yards away were a pair of German machine-gun posts, flanking the Troyes road and covering the direction from which Farran and his men had come. Dressed in greatcoats, the machine-gun crews had their backs to the SAS party, seemingly oblivious to their presence.

Farran sank back into cover, wondering how best to proceed. From a nearby house one of his men begged some wine, cheese and bread. As they deliberated on their next move, they wolfed down the food and drink. It was approaching midday and they’d been on the go in fierce combat for six hours or more. Farran felt gripped by a leaden fatigue and he sensed that many of his men were likewise shattered. Still, this was an opportunity too good to miss.

On his word, he and his men leaned around the corner and took careful aim, opening fire on the German machine-gunners, raking their unprotected rear. A soldier on a bicycle was hit, tumbling off his machine, but the enemy were swift to respond. As more bodies fell, all hell let loose. The narrow street in which Farran and his men were hiding became a death trap, as fire from the Germans’ MP40 ‘Schmeisser’ sub-machine guns ricocheted off the walls.

Farran could see only one route of escape: to bolt through the front door of the nearest house and dash out the rear, in the hope they could scramble down to the banks of the canal. With rounds cutting around their heads, he led his men in the mad charge through.

They made it safely to the canal bank, reached a lock, scuttled across and darted further eastwards on the tow path, hoping to extricate themselves from enemy clutches. Farran felt confident that Big Jim Mackie would be following their every move, as so often he and his jeep had got them out of seemingly impossible situations.

As he led his men towards the cover of a ridge top hedgerow, one of the enemy’s machine-gunners must have spotted them. Within moments, a long burst of fire from an MG42 ‘Spandau’ was tearing into the terrain to either side. As Farran dived for the sparse cover of the hedge, a second Spandau joined in the turkey shoot. It was hellish, especially as he hadn’t even realised that he and his men were visible to the enemy.

The Spandau had earned a telling nickname among Allied troops – ‘Hitler’s Buzzsaw’, referring to the incredibly high rate of fire of the weapon and the corresponding noise it made. Capable of putting down 1,200 rounds per minute, it had twice the firepower of the British Bren, if not quite the accuracy. In spite of the terrifying effect of being pinned down by two such machine guns, Farran told himself they had to move. If they stayed where they were they were dead, yet still the veteran SAS commander felt frozen.

By this stage of the war many of those serving with the regiment had begun to view Farran as some kind of a lucky genius – the kind of commander who seemed to lead a charmed life, and who could miraculously command his men on an assault of today’s daring and still somehow pull it off. But in truth, Farran feared that after four long years at war and numerous brushes with death, he was getting ‘windy’.

Pinned beneath that hedge, he felt gripped by – frozen by – fear. He had never felt so scared as he did now, or so incapable of leading his own men to safety. He’d been in similar scrapes before, and he’d always managed to get him and his fellows out alive. He felt paralysed by fearful inaction, and above everything he hoped that his men hadn’t sensed how he was feeling.

Over the years Farran had proved himself blessed with the most vital of attributes for an SAS commander: the instinctive ability to assess the level of danger posed by any battlefield situation, and to deliver an instant and optimum response. His spirited leadership inspired a deep loyalty in his men, not to mention the resistance fighters with whom they often operated.

But right at this moment, Farran had led his followers into what was seemingly a death trap. For every moment they remained pinned down beneath that bullet-blasted hedge, he sensed the enemy closing in for the kill. Finally, he forced himself to move. Keeping to his belly and with bursts of fire kicking up dirt on every side, he led his men in a desperate crawl, sticking to the sparse cover of the deepest furrows that lay beyond the hedgerow. As he steeled himself to press on, he realised that he had never felt so tired or dispirited. In the long years of operations stretching from the North African deserts to the shores of Italy, and from the Greek Islands to the Aegean Sea, he had rarely felt so close to being finished.

If they didn’t get out of the machine-gunner’s line of fire they were done for, but he couldn’t get himself to move any faster. Behind him, Sergeant Roberts, another of his C Squadron veterans, was hit in the leg. Despite the wound, the man seemed to belly-crawl ahead faster than Farran, as he dragged himself along a bloody furrow. They reached a small patch of dead ground, beyond which they would need to move back into the enemy’s line of fire.

Farran tried to go to the aid of his wounded sergeant, but he was so utterly exhausted that he could barely help himself. Momentarily lifting his head from the dirt, he sensed the grunt of a distant engine. He fancied it had the distinctive sound of an SAS jeep. Could it be the cavalry riding to the rescue? Had Big Jim Mackie found where they had gone to ground? If so, Farran would need to dig deep for one last burst of energy, to lead a dash for Mackie’s vehicle.

He and his men might die in the process, but they were surely dead if they remained where they were.