Holding onto a rocky outcrop, he craned his neck to see through the swirling snow. He counted heads: four were missing. Among their number were Long and Morton, the two press men.
Telling the guides to climb to a ledge one hundred feet above, Lees doubled back. It wasn’t long before he found the errant four. They were slumped on a rock beside the path, smoking.
‘What the devil are you doing here?’ he demanded. ‘No halt has been called.’
‘Geoffrey’s hurt,’ Morton countered. ‘I gave the order to stop.’
‘I know,’ Lees fired back, ‘but you’ll keep going ’til I order otherwise.’
Morton bristled. ‘I’m an honorary captain, and as such I will not place myself under your command.’
Lees drew himself to his full height. ‘I don’t give a damn who you are or what you write. While you’re with my party you’ll do as you’re told. So make your mind up: d’you want to continue, or go back to Temple?’
Morton glared at Lees, but the other three had already capitulated. Long and his two companions began to struggle onwards. Lees was deadly serious. On a mission such as this, he needed absolute clarity of command. If he and Morton were to pull in opposite directions, one or other party might get lost in the snows or blunder into enemy positions. Muttering darkly, Morton levered himself to his feet, before turning into the storm’s icy blast. Lees felt a flood of relief. As he well knew, time was set against them now.
If they didn’t reach the pass before the snow began to drift they were as good as finished.
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