Authors: James Holland
'Which means you have time to find Odin?' asked
Scheidt.
'Yes, I think so,' smiled von Poncets. 'I'm going to
give one of my own companies this particular task. I'm sorry - I thought a
platoon would be more than enough. I was wrong.'
'An under-strength platoon,' added Scheidt. 'There was
a group missing, if you remember.'
'Yes, well, we won't make that mistake again.'
There was a knock on the door. 'Come,' called out the
Major. Zellner entered, freshly shaved and wearing a new uniform. 'Much better,
Hauptmann, much better,' said von Poncets, cheerfully.
Zellner saluted. His right eye was swollen and
blackened and, Scheidt noticed, much of the swagger of the day before had gone.
Zellner began quickly, 'I would like to say, Herr Reichsamtsleiter and Herr
Sturmbann fuhrer, that I apologize unreservedly for failing in my duty
yesterday. I underestimated the strength of the enemy and allowed Odin to slip
through my grasp, a gross dereliction on my part.'
Scheidt raised a hand to silence him. 'All right, Hauptmann. Now tell
me who was there.'
Zellner did so. Yes, he had seen a middle-aged man with spectacles and
a moustache. There were two other Norwegians, a few French mountain troops and
the rest were British. A French officer seemed to be in charge. 'He's weak,
though,' Zellner told them. 'He questioned me and his interrogation was
pathetic. Furthermore, he did it in full view of Odin.'
'You told him nothing?' asked Kurz.
'Of course not. He wouldn't touch me - a fellow officer. He's too concerned
with behaving honourably.'
'You don't believe in honour?' asked Kurz.
'Only my own, that of my regiment and of Germany. There was a British
sergeant there who would have had us killed, I think. The Frenchman - Chevannes
is his name - was horrified.'
'So if they are led by this man, how did they defeat you?' Kurz asked.
Zellner bristled. 'The sergeant is good. His name is Tanner. Chevannes
does not like him, but he's a clever soldier. He also has a sniper rifle with
sights. It was how he ambushed us first. And he has explosives.'
'A good right hook too?' Von Poncets grinned.
Zellner looked down, embarrassed. He regretted having admitted to the
major that he had been knocked out cold by the British sergeant. 'Yes, sir.'
'How old is this man?' asked Kurz.
'Young - in his twenties. My age, probably.'
'So, not in the last war.'
'No, quite definitely not. But he has been decorated -
I saw a ribbon on his tunic. I only saw it
briefly, but it was striped, blue, white and red.'
'The Military Medal,' said Kurz. 'A gallantry award
for men in the ranks.' He turned to von Poncets and Scheidt. 'We've had Poland
in which to hone our battle skills, but the British have had their empire.
Colonial skirmishes.' He grinned.
'It appears to have done them little good,' said von
Poncets. 'Perhaps they were expecting us to attack with spears.' At that even
Zellner managed to smile.
'Is there anything else we should know?' Scheidt asked
the Hauptmann.
'Two of their men were killed and three wounded.
Naturally I made a note of their strength. They are now sixteen strong, not
including Odin.'
'Very good, Zellner, you may rejoin your men,' said
von Poncets.
'Sir?' said Zellner. Von Poncets looked up. 'Sir, I
would like your permission to stay here and help find Odin.'
'Thank you, Hauptmann,' the major replied, 'but that
won't be necessary.'
'Wait,' said Scheidt. 'There is logic in continuing to
use Hauptmann Zellner and his men, Herr Major. His knowledge of the enemy would
be useful, surely.'
Von Poncets drew on his cigar and nodded slowly. 'Very
well. Zellner, you may continue the hunt for Odin.'
Zellner thanked them. 'I vowed I would kill Sergeant
Tanner, and I will,' he explained. 'And I will also bring you Odin. You have my
word.'
'That's enough, Hauptmann,' said von Poncets. 'You've
made your position clear.'
'Hauptmann,' added Scheidt, 'I don't care about your
personal vendettas, but I cannot stress enough the importance of finding Odin -
alive.'
Zellner saluted again and left them.
Zellner walked back towards the village and the troop dressing station
where he had left his men. His interview with the
Reichsamtsleiter
and SD
Sturmbannfuhrer
had gone well, he supposed, but
the shame of losing so many men and of failing in his mission was hard to bear.
Anger and frustration hung over him like a dead weight.
Tanner,
he thought. If it hadn't been
for that Tommy sergeant it would have been so different. He had not realized it
was possible to hate a man so intensely.
At the dressing station, he moved uneasily through the
rows of men. Some were on stretchers, swathed in bloodied bandages, others
sitting or squatting on the ground. The air in the tent was putrid. Men groaned
and cried out. He spotted three men lying side by side, two Tommies and a
Frenchman. He paused beside them, his mind suddenly alert. He peered down at
the British men. There was the shoulder tab, 'Yorks Rangers,' on their
uniforms. It was the same as he had seen on the men on the mountain. How had
they got there? He leant over them. One of the Tommies, wounded in the head and
shoulder, was unconscious. The Frenchman, he could see, was dead; he had the
blue-grey waxy complexion that he had already learnt to recognize as the mask
of death. But the third was awake, his head tilted to one side, staring towards
the tent's entrance. Zellner leant closer to him and the Tommy's eyes widened
in recognition.
'You!' Zellner said, grabbing the young man's collar.
'Where are they? How did you get here?'
The Tommy looked at him, fear in his eyes, muttering
in English.
'Tell me!' shouted Zellner, shaking him. 'Tell me
where they are!' Bitter rage consumed him now. 'Speak!' said Zellner in
English. 'Where is Tanner?' The Englishman mouthed something, words Zellner
could not hear. 'What?' He shook him again. 'What are you saying? Tell me!'
Frothy blood appeared from the Tommy's mouth then his eyes became fixed. A
faint gasp and a last exhalation came from his mouth. Zellner dropped the
lifeless body back on to the stretcher, then raced towards two medics bringing
in another stretcher. 'Where did those men come from?' he demanded. 'Those
three - the Frenchman and the two Tommies? Who brought them here?' But the
medics did not know. No one did.
A hand on his shoulder. Zellner turned and saw a major
surgeon standing in front of him. 'That's enough, Hauptmann,' he said. 'We
don't concern ourselves with how the wounded get here. Our job is to deal with
them as best we can. Now, please, stop making a scene, and let us get on with
our job. We have lives to save.'
Chastened, Zellner scowled and left the tent. He
wondered what else could go wrong. No British Tommy was going to make a fool of
him. Consumed with thoughts of revenge, he stumbled off in search of his men.
Not until the afternoon did Tanner return to the safety of the cave
above the Rostad's farmstead, by which time Anna and her father were safely at
home. He had learnt much, and reported his findings to Lieutenant Chevannes and
the two Norwegian officers. As he had hoped, Tretten was now far quieter than
it had been. Soldiers had been leaving all day and continued to do so. A half
battalion of mountain troops was still in the village, as was a tented field
dressing station, but a number of the wounded had already been loaded on to a
train south. The upturned boats that Anna had mentioned were down by the jetty
- the bank jutted out into the river and there was a shingle beach where they
lay. He also suggested an approach route that would enable them to stay within
the cover of the trees almost to the riverbank. The only open ground was the
last seventy-five yards across the road to the water's edge.
Chevannes dismissed him without a word, so he went to
find Sykes and the others, who were sitting in a corner of the cave. Hepworth
and Kershaw were on guard duty, McAllister and Erwood asleep, while the
corporal, Moran, Bell and Chambers, were playing poker.
Sykes put down his cards when he saw Tanner. 'I've
lost a fortune, Sarge.' He grinned. 'IOUs. Mac's cleaning up.'
'I've got to think of my future, Sarge,' said McAllister.
'I see it as a kind of nest-egg for when the war's over. At this rate I reckon
I'll be able to move to a big house in Harrogate when I get back.'
Tanner lit two German cigarettes from one of the
orange Niderehe packets he had taken from the prisoners the day before, and
passed it to Sykes.
'Cheers, Sarge.'
'It's a bit rough, but it's tobacco, isn't it? Better
than nothing.'
'Too bloody right.' Sykes inhaled deeply, then said,
'Are we going to be all right, then?'
Tanner nodded. 'It's not going to be much fun crossing
the river, but if we hold our nerve .. .'
'Course.' They smoked in silence for a moment, then
Sykes said, 'We've been having a gander at some of that Jerry kit. Here.' He
picked up a rifle and passed it to Tanner.
Tanner gripped it, weighing it in his hands. 'About
the same weight as the SMLE. Eight pounds or so.'
'That's what we thought,' said Sykes.
Tanner lifted it to his shoulder, aimed, then pulled
back the bolt. 'Oi, oi,' he said. 'Don't like this much.' He whistled. 'Bloody
hell, it comes back a long way, doesn't it? How are you supposed to keep your
aim with that
bloody
great thing knocking your cheek every time?'
'You couldn't fire thirty rounds a minute with it,
could you?'
'Not accurately, that's for sure.' He tried a sequence
of five blank shots, then passed it back to Sykes. 'I reckon if you fired
fifteen properly aimed shots a minute you'd be doing well. I'd rather have my
old No.l Enfield any day. What about the shells?'
'Fractionally larger. Almost nothing in it.'
'But enough. We'd better make sure no one mixes this
ammo up.'
'Don't worry, I've warned everyone already. What's the
pistol like?'
Tanner took it out of its holster and passed it to
him. 'See for yourself. I don't really feel that comfortable with pistols, but
useful for clearing a room, I suppose.'
'Close-quarters stuff.'
'Exactly.' Tanner watched as Sykes loaded and unloaded
the magazine, cocked and uncocked the pistol, then examined the safety catch.
Not far away, the others continued to play cards and sleep. All the Rangers
were on the same side of the cave, he noticed, while the French and Norwegians
were on the other. There was, he recognized, a cohesion to his men, even though
the patrol had originally been brought together by combining two different parts
of the platoon. It was strange, he thought, how attached to them he now felt.
After all, his background was so completely different; really, he knew very
little about any of them, or they about him. They had nothing in common as far
as he knew - except shared nationality and the experience of being stuck
together, but clearly that was enough.
He hoped he had made the right decision to cross the
valley, hoped he wasn't wasting these men's lives. They trusted him, he knew,
and trust was so important - but was it justified? Was he leading them to
capture - death? Just a few years ago most of them would have been young boys
scampering around the backstreets of Leeds, playing football, getting into
trouble and bunking off school. Now they were sitting in a damp cave on a
mountain in Norway, deep behind enemy lines on a mission of critical
importance.
Jesus
,
he thought.
How did we all get into this bloody mess?
He looked at Sykes again, still
fiddling with the pistol. He barely even knew his corporal, a man he considered
in many ways a friend.
'I've been meaning to ask,' he said at length, to
Sykes, 'where did you learn how to handle explosives like that? You set that
booby trap like an expert.'