A Mighty Endeavor (59 page)

Having checked his men were digging in properly, he returned to the observation point. The situation didn’t appear to have changed much during his absence, although one of the flares going up showed that the enemy infantry were a lot closer. Now, at last, he could see them. They moved carefully through the huts that lined RC-157. Their dark green uniforms and German-style helmets clearly distinguished them from the
Tirailleurs Tonkinois,
who wore the standard French horizon blue and the Adrian helmet.
Whatever had happened to the
Tonkinois
riflemen, they aren’t retreating along the road.

That was when Roul saw something that filled him with dismay. A pair of tanks supported the Thai infantry. He recognized them immediately; Vickers 6-ton Type B. Armed with a machine gun and a 47mm gun in a two-man turret, they were more than capable of destroying his roadblock. Once he revealed his position, the battle was going to get ugly very quickly. Roul began to suspect he knew what had happened to the
Tirailleurs Tonkinois.

Beside him, private first class Leo Corneille had shouldered his Berthier rifle and taken a sight on the Thai infantry below. He was the platoon sniper; a skill that had gained him the distinction of being a first class private rather than a humdrum ordinary one. His Berthier had a three-power magnification telescopic sight. Roul watched his rifle moving as Corneille scanned for a suitable target.

“Corneille, on the road, beside the third building on the left. He looks like an officer.”

Roul looked again. The man was definitely giving some sort of orders to the other infantrymen. That made him either an officer or a senior NCO. Beside him, Corneille nodded. He settled down into the authorized firing position, There was a flat crack as the Berthier fired, Roul saw the man spotted crumple to the ground. He was hoping somebody would come out and pull the victim to cover; that would provide Corneille with another target. Instead, one of the tanks pulled in front of the victim, screening him from view. By the time the tank moved again, the ground was empty. Reluctantly, Roul was impressed.
Somebody thought that out.

Overhead, the gentle buzz of aircraft engines changed. It seemed no more threatening than it had before, but it grew closer and seemed to pause above the platoon. Roul looked up. A biplane was circling overhead, obviously attracted by the shot that had brought the Thai soldier down. Roul couldn’t recognize the aircraft. It looked a little bit like the French Potez 25, but seemed flimsier somehow. From behind him, tracers arched through the air. His three squad light machine guns fired on the aircraft. It turned and left the scene. Mentally, Roul cheered on his gunners who had driven the enemy aircraft away.

The whine of inbound shells changed the situation completely. Roul recognized them immediately; they were French 75s. For a moment he believed he was getting some timely artillery support, but the hope was quickly dashed. The shells exploded on the front slope of his position. That didn’t worry him too much; he had used the reverse slope to protect his road block for exactly that reason.

“Time to drop back behind the ridge, sir?”

Sergeant Arsene Ambroise had put exactly the right note of respectful urgency into his comment. That was hardly surprising; he was a veteran who had served in the trenches during the Great War. The rounds from the 75s weren’t actually that close to the observation point, but there was little reason to wait around until they were. The four men in the post scrambled back over the ridge and down towards the defensive positions.

Roul cound see that the Sergeants had done their work well. All the men were in position and alerted for the fighting that seemed imminent. A quick glance around him suggested that his unit was as well-positioned and readied as anybody could expect. All that was left was to wait for the Thai infantry and the two tanks to come over the hilltop. He was confident his men could handle the infantry; the tanks had him worried.

The wait seemed to stretch on. Roul knew that the Thai infantry had some six hundred meters to advance before they could assault the hill he occupied. It seemed like they were taking their own sweet time about it. He glanced down at his watch, surprised by how little time had actually passed since the first shots from the 75s. The artillery fire had ceased after those first few rounds. Roul was sorely tempted to go back to the ridgeline and find out what was happening.

A patter of rifle fire erupted from the low ridge off to his right. It was only some ten meters higher than his positions and was about six hundred meters away. That meant the fire was largely ineffective against dug-in infantry but it was more than annoying. The axis of attack against his platoon had changed. Now, he faced an attack from due north as well as from the west. He knew why the attack had been so long in arriving now. The Thais hadn’t charged his position head on; they had outflanked him.

“A nice move.” Sergeant Ambroise seemed quite impressed. “Should we order our squad on the right to return fire, sir?”

Roul thought for a second. The rifle fire seemed ill-directed and largely ineffective. As far as he could tell, not one of the bullets had bitten yet. “No, keep them quiet. No point in giving the enemy targets to aim at. We’ll let the situation mature.”

His orders were to block the road and delay the Thai advance for as long as possible. He was doing just that. That he had only expended one rifle round and a couple of bursts of machine gun fire to do so seemed to him to be a good thing. Nothing, even rifle ammunition, here in Indochina was in copious supply. There was no telling when any ammunition he expended would be replaced. His thoughts on the neglect of the Indochina Army were interrupted by a renewed crash of artillery fire. This time the shots had arrived from his right. For the first time, the fight had become serious.

“Damn, that will be difficult. They’ve brought up infantry guns.” Ambroise recognized the distinctive noise of the short-barrelled Japanese 75mm infantry howitzers; quite different from the flat crack of the earlier guns. “And they’re spreading along the ridge.”

Roul swung his binoculars to the east. Behind his position, almost a kilometer away, were two hills. One was 218 meters high, the other 200. Hills 218 and 200 dominated the area, simply because they were the only really high ground in the area. Given his choice, Roul would have occupied them, but doing so would not have blocked the road. He could see what the Thai commander had in mind now.
He’s spreading along the ridge and will occupy those hills. He won’t be blocking the road, but he doesn’t want to. What he wants is me out of the way. With those hills in his hands, he can sweep the entire platoon into the can.

The infantry guns had got the range. Two of the shells slammed into Roul’s squad on the right hand side of RC-157. What had been a good position to defend against an attack along the road was a bad one to defend against an attack from the north. It was obvious that the Thais knew where his positions were. With a flash of insight, Roul knew why.
The aircraft my men ‘scared’ off had seen where the machine gun fire had come from and reported back. Firing on that aircraft had been a really bad idea.

“Sergeant, order our first squad to drop back. Their position is already compromised and the artillery is ranged in on them. They can achieve nothing where they are. We’ll drop back to the ridge to the south here. We’ll still be blocking the road but we’ll be in dead ground for the guns to the north and west. And we’ll still be covering our line of withdrawal.”

Ambroise gave the orders. Horizon blue figures left their trench and headed backwards towards the huts that lined RC-157. Not all of them; two of the twelve remained behind, their figures still. The enemy artillery got two more before they reached cover. Shells from the infantry guns threw them in the air and left them twisted heaps on the ground.
A third of the squad gone
, Roul thought,
and nothing to show for it.

“It’s the guns that kill, sir.” Ambroise sounded thoughtful. “They’ve got just two of them up on that ridge, but that section is all they need. Ahh, there they go. Clever little buggers, aren’t they?”

The two infantry guns fired a pattern of smoke rounds. White clouds billowed in front of Roul’s new positions. For a hideous moment, Roul had thought they were gas rounds. He almost gave a gas attack alert, but he realized what was happening when the Thai infantry broke from cover. He watched the small groups move forward, leapfrogging from point to point, with each group covering the rest.

Ambroise was watching them carefully.
“Stosstruppen
tactics. I think all the stories we heard about German instructors must be true. Or British veterans.”

“Milk-drinking surrender monkeys?” Roul was openly derisive. “The Siamese are attacking us, not running away.”

A stutter of rifle fire rose from the French positions along RC-157, but the smokescreen made the defensive fire ineffective. It was significant the squad machine gun hadn’t opened fire yet. Machine guns were always a priority target. Gunners never fired unless they had worthwhile targets or fixed lines set up. No machine-gun fire meant the defenders were firing blind.

“The Tommies in the trenches were good, Lieutenant.” Ambroise was patient, as befitted a veteran sergeant with a young officer to train. “In 1914, they knew all the tricks that the Germans claim to have invented for their stosstruppen and a few more besides. And they knew how to put them into practice. Their army lost that edge in the middle of the war, but they had it back by the end. But, those Siamese are German-trained. You can tell by the way they’re moving forward.”

Below them, the French squad machine gun finally opened fire. The two Thai infantry guns shifted fire to the huts occupied by the survivors of the squad. The pressure of the fire from the guns and the rifle fire from the advancing infantry started to push the French force back. With the smoke clearing, Roul could see further east along RC-157. The sight was not encouraging. The attack on his position was just one part of a company-level assault along the road. To make matters worse, He could see they were already in process of seizing Hill 218. That left his little command in a very precarious position.

“And its time for us to leave, Sergeant. We can’t stay here.” Roul knew the truth. In a few minutes, his position would be hopeless; its lines of withdrawal cut off. Then, his men would only have the choices of dying in a brave but futile fight or surrendering. “Order the men to fall back along the pre-planned route.”

Ambroise nodded and passed the orders out. The survivors of the first squad retreated again, leaving their position on RC-157 and falling back to the dirt track. Second squad peeled off and followed them; the third squad acted as a rearguard. Roul sighed and led his command section south as well.

As they trudged along the dirt track, Roul couldn’t understand what had happened. He had expected an infantry attack with bare steel and a desperate fight in the ruins of the huts. Instead, it seemed as if there had been hardly any fighting at all; just a few artillery rounds and a scattered series of rifle shots. Yet, he was retreating away from the position he had been ordered to hold, leaving five of his men behind. Somehow, he felt sick and disappointed in both himself and the morning’s work.

“Why, Sergeant? What did I do wrong.”

Ambroise looked around quickly. Fortunately, there had been nobody in earshot. “Quiet, sir. Don’t want the men to hear you’ve got doubts. Cut right into them that will. Nothing went wrong back there, sir; you did well.”

“But we’re retreating.”

“We got maneuvered out of position. That’s the way professionals do things. It’s amateurs who make gallant charges on heavily-defended positions. We had a good defense there; would have been a tough one to break. So the Siamese didn’t try. They just made it impossible for us to hold on there. And they took their time about it; did it right and didn’t worry about doing it fast. They’ve been taught well.”

Roul felt better. If the veteran sergeant thought he had done well, that took the sting out of a defeat. Yet, for all of that, it remained a defeat.

Besttvood Lodge, Arnold, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom

“I don’t believe the current situation is supportable. I would give it two years at most. That Man does not seem to realize that Britain and Germany are on divergent courses and a confrontation between the two is inevitable. A confrontation that will mean the destruction of one or the other. He is trying to deny the widening gap between the two nations and in doing so he is merely stoking the fires of the future conflict.” Captain Peter Fleming of the Grenadier Guards looked owlishly at Duke of St Albans. “You should hear my young brother on the subject.”

Osbourne de Vere Beauclerk nodded thoughtfully at his two guests. The contents of his wine cellar had only just started to recover after the depredations of Winston Churchill; now they were taking another nasty blow. Peter Fleming himself was abstemious enough, but his companion, Captain Mike Calvert of the Royal Engineers, was sinking whisky as a phenomenal rate.
If he carries on like that,
the Duke thought,
his liver won’t last two years.

“What do you suggest we do about it? Stage a coup ourselves?”

Fleming shook his head. “That won’t work, not now. For good or ill, Halifax is established in power. We must not forget that he gained that power quite legally, even if his use of legality was underhanded. Events now have their own momentum and we must run with that. The situation will come to a head in two years; three at the very outside. We have that long to prepare.”

The Duke decided that being obtuse was probably the best approach at this point. “Prepare for what? Resuming the war?”

“That would be the best possible outcome, if fortune was to favor us. I do not think the Germans will make that mistake twice. To invade this country as an act of war against organized opposition is futile. Germany has neither the resources nor the expertise to do it. If they had tried last year, we would have slaughtered them. Damn it, we still might now. Look at what Wavell and his Desert Rats have achieved over the last few weeks. They knocked Italy out of the war and wrapped up the Italian Empire. We were safe here in our island, but Halifax and his cronies never saw that. No; next time, the Germans will come by stealth and we will not see the invasion for what it is until it is all but complete. We must prepare a resistance movement for after that invasion.”

Great minds think alike. I’ve been trying to do that ever since Nell and her friends spirited Winston out of the country. I just don’t know how to start. Nobody seems to write instruction books on how to do it.
“What is that to do with an old man like me? Hiding in the woods and shooting up patrols is a young man’s game.”
And a sober man’s game.
The Duke cast an anguished glance at Calvert who had killed a bottle of pinch-bottle Haig in five straight pulls.

“One might think of a fake auxiliary police unit smuggling a certain figure out of the country and a Flying Fortress that arrived at Prestwick, took off and was never seen again. Little Brother was enormously impressed by that, Your Grace; he swears he will write it up as a novel one day. He believes there is a market for novels about spies. You’ve got a rare talent for this game; and, with respect, your age makes you all the less likely as a leader.”

“But what do you want me to do?” The Duke put an air of despairing confusion into his voice.

“We’re going to set up the resistance forces.” It was Calvert speaking, his voice steady and level.
Dear God; he’s sober. How?
Listening to him, the Duke had sudden doubts about the authenticity and strength of his whisky supply. Calvert carried on in the same, steady voice. “Colonel Colin Gubbins has been appointed by Winston to organize the force. It will consist of two components. The first being a military arm that will be raised out of, and technically be part of, the Home Guard. We’re calling it the Auxiliary Units, in the hope that anybody coming across the name will confuse it with Butler’s Auxiliary Police. They’ll be supported by a civilian arm, the Special Duty Sections, recruited from the local civilian population. This group will act as the spotters for the Auxiliary Units. In addition, a signals structure will link the isolated bands into a national network that can act in concert. That network will work on behalf of a British government-in-exile and its representatives still in the United Kingdom. We want you to keep an eye open for likely civilian candidates and we want to place the root of the communications system here.”

“So my job will be to recruit members of the civilian resistance?”

“No.” Fleming was sharp and very emphatic. “You will coordinate recruiting but, Your Grace, you must
never
be directly involved in any operations again. Mike and I will be your aides and do the leg work. We are the cut-out between the German occupiers and the head of the resistance movement. That’s you. Your job will be to coordinate recruitment and oversee the organization. At most, to spot likely candidates. We will do the rest.”

Abbey Street, Nottingham, United Kingdom

“Halifax OUT! Halifax OUT! Halifax OUT OUT OUT!”

It is the eternal prerogative of university students to demonstrate. It worked off excess energy. University College Nottingham might not have been a fully-fledged university yet, and it might have to rely on the University of London to award its degrees, but that merely added to the fervor of its students. If they weren’t quite university students, they’d show everybody that they had the spirit and energy to become ones. And so it was that the demonstration poured down Abbey Street; their banners held high and their chant echoing off the buildings. For all its energy, it was a good-mannered demonstration. No windows were broken and the students made sure that passers-by had the room they needed to go about their business. The police recognized that. The handful of constables on duty watched with tolerant smiles. More than a few of them agreed with the students.

It was the crossroads by the White Hart public house that did it. The threat of a major demonstration had caused the National Security Service to bring in large numbers of Auxiliary Police. Their lorries blocked the way down Abbey Street. That forced the demonstrators to turn down Lenton Lane. Unfortunately, the road narrowed sharply as it approached a bridge over a canal. That compressed the crowd and made it more difficult to control. There were factories the other side of the bridge. The Auxiliary Police had been ordered to protect them. They’d blocked the bridge. The demonstrators had nowhere to go. Those at the front tried to stop. Those behind them couldn’t see what the problem was. Their pressure pushed the front ranks forward. Even then, the situation might have been controlled, given skilled handling. The Auxiliary Police had little training in crowd control and too many of them had been sampling the beer served at the White Hart.