Those Who Dare - [Raiding Forces 01] Read online

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  Those Who Dare

  [Raiding Forces 01]

  Phil Ward

  No copyright 2011 by MadMaxAU eBooks

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  Abbreviations:

  Orders and Awards

  Bt—Baronet

  CB—Companion of the Bath

  CMC—Companion of the Order of St. Michael & St. George

  DFC—Distinguished Flying Cross (Royal Air Force)

  DSC—Distinguished Service Cross (Royal Navy)

  DSO—Distinguished Service Order

  GCB—Grand Cross in the Order of the Bath

  KCVO—Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order

  MC—Military Cross

  MVO—Member of the Royal Victorian Order

  OBE—Order of the Empire

  VC—Victoria Cross

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  SPARTANS

  ~ * ~

  PROLOGUE

  24 May 1940

  Calais, France

  LIEUTENANT JOHN RANDAL, AN AMERICAN VOLUNTEER SERVING IN the British Army, stood on the deck of the S.S. City of Canterbury as the ship pulled into the empty war-ravaged port of Calais and prepared to dock. Surveying the wild scene before him, while keeping one eye cocked on the sky to track the Heinkel 111 bomber that had already made one attack run on the ship, he was wondering what he had gotten himself into.

  The port city was in flames. Tall plumes of smoke rose from all points around the city. To the west, oil tanks were on fire, casting a cloud of black smoke that draped over the town like a shroud. Artillery fire or bombs had damaged nearly every building.

  On the dock a full-scale riot was taking place. A rabble of mutinous French soldiers were in open revolt as they attempted to force their way to the head of the queue, desperate to board the Canterbury for her return trip to the UK and safety. A thin khaki line of determined-looking Royal Marines held back the mob with bayonets fixed on the business end of their Lee-Enfield rifles. “One riot, one Ranger, eh, Lieutenant?” the ship’s first officer observed sardonically, making reference to his passenger’s regiment, the Rangers, as Lieutenant Randal prepared to make his way ashore armed only with a regulation swagger stick.

  “You sailors read a lot of Westerns?”

  “Skipper has a sea chest full of the bloody things.”

  The mayhem grew as the Canterbury slipped into her berth and began lowering the gangplank. Her escort, the destroyer HMS Wessex, began laying down a pattern of depth charges just outside the entrance to the harbor, providing rear security. The speckled, blue-gray Heinkel 111 thundered over again, dropping a string of bombs off the starboard stern quarter of the Canterbury. The tremendous detonations sent white-topped geysers of dirty green seawater seventy-five feet into the air.

  Lieutenant Randal watched the bomber roar past, regretting that he did not have so much as a pistol to shoot back.

  Machine gunners from the Rifle Brigade, stationed on board for just such a contingency, were blazing away at the bomber. The Green Jackets, as members of the Rifle Brigade were often called, propped their Lewis guns on steel drums, the ship’s railings, or any other solid object that might serve as an expedient antiaircraft mount. Tracers crisscrossed the sky while hot brass danced across the steel deck. The Green Jackets did not hit a thing.

  Down on the dock, a column of stretcher bearers carried up wounded soldiers to be loaded aboard for the short trip across the English Channel. Behind them, a tidal wave of panic-stricken civilian refugees and demoralized troops from a mishmash of routed allied units flooded the streets, making for the dock. The fleeing refugees and retreating soldiers were running out of real estate, and they were frantic to find any means to evade the German panzer juggernaut bearing down on Calais.

  A boat was the only hope left, and the Canterbury was the only ship in the harbor. “The natives definitely look restless,” the first officer opined. “Enough of the blighters headed for us to swamp a bloody aircraft carrier.”

  “Run many ‘repelling boarders’ drills?” Lieutenant Randal inquired, flicking his cigarette over the rail, never taking his eyes off the rapidly swelling mob.

  “Negative. How do you suppose those blokes will take it when they find out this ship is under strict sailing orders not to allow anyone on board except the wounded?”

  “Hope the Marines don’t take ten.”

  Intermittent long-range artillery shells started coming in and exploding randomly. When the shelling began, the French stevedores on the dock quickly determined that their services would be put to best use elsewhere, and they decamped, making the business of unloading the ship a challenge. The Heinkel 111 came back around to make another run. Outside the harbor the Wessex exploded, broke in half, and started to sink.

  Meanwhile, the casualties on the stretchers stoically smoked cigarettes, ignoring the pandemonium swirling around them, and tried to avoid looking at the bodies that had been stacked on the dock in a neat row and covered with greenish-gray cargo packing tarps.

  Making his way down the gangplank, Lieutenant Randal glanced back across the Channel. He could actually see the faint white cliffs of Dover.

  The first officer called out, “Good luck, Yank.”

  ~ * ~

  Lieutenant John Randal had been assigned as a replacement officer to the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, a regiment of the line that was in fact a battalion, frequently called the 60th Rifles. The KRRC was the parent unit of his territorial regiment, the Rangers. They were assigned to 30 Brigade, which also contained the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, the Rifle Brigade, and the Third Royal Tank Regiment—and that was the sum total of all he knew about the current military situation in Calais except for what he could see.

  By any measure, the circumstances Lieutenant Randal found himself in on his first day in France could accurately be described, as it was to him by the harried brigade major he reported to, standing at the foot of the gangplank, as a “sticky wicket.” The 30 Brigade officer briefed him right there amid the bedlam on the dock. He did not mince words.

  “Lieutenant Randal, you are to take command of a combined detachment of two twenty-man scout platoons—one each from the Rifle Brigade and the 60th Rifles—plus a five-man signals detachment of Royal Marines. Your mission, in short, is to screen the right flank of the approach to Calais.

  “Here is the situation,” he continued. “The Germans are driving hard on the port city with two divisions, the First and Tenth Panzers, supported by five squadrons of Stuka dive-bombers acting as aerial artillery. The panzers have raced two hundred fifty miles across France in a lightning advance, and they’re closing fast on the roughly four hundred fifty thousand British, French, and Belgian troops who have fallen back on the coastal town of Dunkirk, thirty miles away to the east, in hopes of being evacuated by the Royal Navy. All the Germans have to do now is cut their way through 30 Brigade here at Calais, make a right hook to get at Dunkirk, and it is war over.

  “When Calais falls, the fate of the British Expeditionary Force men not already rescued from Dunkirk will be sealed.

  “Initially, 30 Brigade was ordered to re-embark and return home, then that order was countermanded, and we have now been ordered to dig in and hold here at Calais to prevent the Germans from getting through to Dunkirk. Our task is to buy time for the forces trapped there in order for them to be sealifted back to the UK. We are to be the Spartans to the BEF.

  “Buy us as much time you can out there, Lieutenant. Every minute is precious. I do not care how you go about it. Shoot from behind trees, that sort of thing. You Americans are good at that, what? Anything you do will be a great help.”

  Considering that the Spartans had died to the last ma
n, it was not what Lieutenant Randal considered an auspicious analogy to use in describing his new combat command. But one thing came across loud and clear—the troops at Calais were expendable.

  Given the mad way the British Army had of designating their units with the free use of the words “corps,” “brigade,” and “regiment,” it would have been perfectly understandable for the German commander to have the impression he was going up against a formidable fighting force at Calais. The truth was, give or take a few men, it was defended by approximately three thousand fighting men of a decidedly mixed lot, the Rifle Brigade and the King’s Royal Rifle Corps being two of the finest regiments in the army.

  In the Wehrmacht a panzer corps was exactly what it said it was— thirty thousand men plus—and one of Germany’s toughest, XIX Panzer Korps, was storming in full blitzkrieg straight toward Calais.

  Spartans, hell, thought Lieutenant Randal as he headed off to locate his new command.

  ~ * ~

  Lieutenant John Randal found his men on the outskirts of the bombed-out town. The troops were clearly not thrilled when they learned they were to be assigned an unknown officer of uncertain ability, and a Yank to boot, though in the 60th Rifles it was a tradition to have Americans serving. The men would have much rather been back with their regiments under their old trusted platoon commanders who had unceremoniously been pulled out, along with most of the senior noncommissioned officers, and reassigned elsewhere.

  A quick survey of his command revealed that the men had rifles, a scattering of revolvers, no transport, very little ammunition, and one day’s rations. Mortars had all been discarded because not one unit in 30 Brigade had anything but smoke rounds for them, and no one could think of any good reason to be firing smoke at German tanks.

  Between the two Green Jacket platoons there were a total of six corporals and one baby-blue-eyed King’s Royal Rifle Corps sergeant, Mike “March or Die” Mikkalis, who looked as hard as you might expect of a man who had acquired his moniker during a previous tour in the French Foreign Legion. The signals detail was in the charge of Corporal Mickey Duggan, Royal Marines. All told, there were forty-five men.

  Wasting no time, Lieutenant Randal assembled the troops, and taking note that the mood was ugly, said casually, “Well, men, I guess you’re wondering why I called you here today.”

  Behind him in the distance a mottle-camouflaged Messerschmitt 109 raced low down the road at treetop level, strafing the hardball—red tracers ricocheting off the asphalt—while a salvo of six artillery rounds screamed overhead and slammed into the burning town. The troops cut their eyes at each other in disbelief at the lieutenant’s opening remark, and there were a few faint snickers of laughter—the first any of them had heard since landing in country.

  “Our mission is to screen the right flank of the Calais defense zone.” Lieutenant Randal cut straight to it, all business now. “We will be operating against the Tenth Panzers. To accomplish that mission our only tactical option is to take up positions far enough out that we can trade space for time.”

  The Riflemen and Marines sat in a semicircle staring holes through their new commander. They did not like the sound of the assignment. Every man present was a prewar professional soldier, and they all had an idea of what it meant for them.

  Unfazed by the open hostility, Lieutenant Randal continued, “I spent the last two years chasing Huk bandits in the Philippine jungles. My plan is for us to operate like guerrillas. There was a legendary American general called the Swamp Fox who specialized in irregular tactics. He thought it was a good idea to run away to fight again another day. We’ll call this lash-up Swamp Fox Force. We’re going to hit and run.”

  The men muttered among themselves, but there was a noticeable reduction of tension in their mood. “Maybe the Yank knows his stuff,” Lieutenant Randal overheard one of them comment hopefully.

  “One can only wonder, mate. ‘E don’t look like all that much to me.”

  “‘Ow do you trade space for time?” a troubled cockney voice inquired. “Sounds like one of ‘em standard IQ questions.”

  “Fire and fall back, you idiot,” Sergeant Mikkalis snarled. “Silence in the ranks.”

  “Take charge of Swamp Fox Force, Sergeant,” Lieutenant Randal commanded, paying no attention to the chatter. “Send a party to the dock to appropriate all weapons and ammunition from any troops re-embarking to go back to the UK.”

  “All, sir?”

  “All the ammunition. We won’t need many extra Enfields, but don’t let a single Boys antitank rifle, Bren gun, machine gun, or radio of any kind board the Canterbury. I want all the grenades and any explosives you come across.”

  “Sir!”

  “Send another party into town to appropriate rations. I suspect you can forget about going through proper military channels. Send everyone else out to commandeer motor transport. We’ll need motorcycles for every man who can ride one; seize any lorry or civilian vehicle that looks like it might be useful. Scrounge as much fuel as it’s possible for us to carry with us.”

  “People are not going to like it, sir.”

  “Don’t take no for an answer. There’s no reason to be overly polite—if any foreign military or civilian attempts to interfere, shoot ‘em.”

  “Sir!” barked Sergeant Mikkalis with a gleam in his strange pale eyes. He had no idea if the new officer knew his job or not. He rather doubted it, but like all military men, he dearly loved to be given assignments with the words “appropriate,” “commandeer,” and “seize” in them. As icing on the cake, the men of Swamp Fox Force had been authorized to shoot to kill in the performance of their duties, and Lieutenant Randal had said it as though he meant it.

  The troops perked up. For the first time since arriving in France, they had been given clear, concise orders and a plan they could understand: one that fit the capabilities of the Rifle Brigade, the 60th Rifles, and the Royal Marines down to the ground.

  “Assemble in one hour behind the sand dunes just south of here. I’ll be there making a map reconnaissance.”

  Lieutenant Randal wisely elected not to mention anything about Spartans.

  ~ * ~

  When the men trickled back from Calais, where they had executed their orders with a vengeance, they were in a higher state of morale. The simple act of doing something rather than sitting around waiting for the unknown had had a good effect.

  Lieutenant John Randal assembled the troops, and with two Marines holding the map up for the rest to see, he used his swagger stick as a pointer to give a detailed briefing on the area in which they would operate.

  “Our mission is to buy time. We’re going to accomplish that mission by attacking, inflicting casualties, and then immediately disengaging. Our objective will be to shoot bad guys from concealment, break contact, move out rapidly, find another concealed position, and shoot more. Under no circumstances will we ever stand and fight.

  “We’re going to break Swamp Fox Force down into six teams, each with a designated sniper and led by a corporal. Sergeant Mikkalis, make it happen. Have the automatic rifles and machine guns evenly distributed.”

  “Sir!”

  “I’m planning to go kill some Germans,” Lieutenant Randal concluded, studying the semicircle of Riflemen and Marines coolly. “Any of you men who want to can come with me. Those who don’t are released back to your units.”

  The announcement caught the troops off guard. The British Army was not known for being a democracy, especially in the middle of a battle it was in the process of losing. There was a long, uncomfortable silence, and then three of the men stood up and trudged back toward Calais.

  “‘E’s bloody crazy—Yank’s lost his ruddy marbles,” one departing soldier commented to two others, loud enough for the assembled group to hear. “Calais ain’t the bleedin’ jungle.”

  “Anybody else?” Lieutenant Randal demanded; no one moved. “All right then; saddle up and prepare to move out.”

  As the remaining men shook o
ut their equipment, Sergeant Mike “March or Die” Mikkalis came up to Lieutenant Randal and handed him a Browning P-35 pistol with a lanyard attached and a tan leather pouch containing two spare magazines. “Thought the lieutenant might like a weapon. Took this off a Belgian officer wearing enough gold braid to be an admiral. He ran off before I could get the holster to go with it, sir.”

  Pulling the lanyard over his neck, Lieutenant Randal racked back the slide of the pistol to chamber a 9-mm round, then carefully lowered the hammer and tucked the weapon into his leather belt.

  The former legionnaire carefully took in every detail of how his new officer handled the Browning. Sergeant Mikkalis knew you did not handle a pistol the way the lieutenant did without years of practice. “Brand-new, sir, never been fired, only dropped once,” he said.

  “Thanks, Sergeant. Now, if you’ll pick out an Enfield rifle for me, I’ll feel fully dressed.”