Death's Head

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Wotan II

  Section One: Wir Fahren Gegen Engel-Land!

  Section 1 One

  Section 1 Two

  Section 1 Three

  Section 1 Four

  Section 1 Five

  Section 1 Six

  Section Two: Operation Barbarossa Top Secret

  Section 2 One

  Section 2 Two

  Section 2 Three

  Section 2 Four

  Section 2 Five

  Section Three: The Drive East

  Section 3 One

  Section 3 Two

  Section 3 Three

  Section 3 Four

  Section 3 Five

  Section 3 Six

  Also by the Same Author

  Copyright

  WOTAN II

  C.W.

  “So we National Socialists take up where we broke off six hundred years ago. We stop the endless German movement towards the south and west of Europe and turn our gaze towards the lands of the East… When we speak of new territory in Europe today we must think principally of Russia and her border vassal states. Destiny itself seems to wish to point out the way to us here… This colossal empire in the East is ripe for dissolution and the end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state!”

  Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.

  SECTION ONE:

  WIR FAHREN GEGEN

  ENGEL-LAND!

  “Our flag waves as we march along.

  It is the emblem of the power of our Reich

  And we can no longer endure

  That the Englishman should laugh at it

  So give me thy hand, thy fair white hand

  Ere we sail away to conquer Eng-el-land!”

  Wotan Marching Song,

  Autumn 1940.

  ONE

  Fertigmachen!

  The Vulture’s thin nasal voice carried across the still water. There was a soft clatter of entrenching tools, gasmask cases, weapons as the men of SS Assault Battalion prepared to disembark.

  “Heaven, arse and twine!” Sergeant Metzger cursed urgently. “Do you want the shit-Tommies to know we’re here!” The engines of the motorboats had been stopped now. There was no sound save the sidling hiss of the wavelets at their bows and the tense breathing of the young troopers waiting for the order to move in the soft, September darkness. Captain von Dodenburg, C.O. of the 1st Company, took a last glance at the steep, white cliffs in front of them – silent, harsh and infinitely men acing. Then he took a deep breath and dropped over the side of the boat, his pistol held high above his head. “After me,” he hissed. One after another his men followed him in. Everywhere along the long line of requisitioned Belgian boats the other companies were doing the same.

  Von Dodenburg stumbled forward, up to his waist in water. The white cliff ahead remained silent. The Tommies hadn’t heard. The Captain quickened his pace. Once they had reached the top of those cliffs, nothing would be able to stop them. Student’s1 paras would follow, consolidate the bridgehead and hold it until the infantry came ashore. Thereafter, he knew, they’d make short work of the ninety kilometres to the enemy’s capital. Thirty-six hours of fighting at the most and the Bolshevik-Jewish pack who ran the country would be fleeing for their precious lives and they’d be stringing up the fat, cigar-smoking prig who called himself prime minister from the nearest lamp post. The handsome, young SS officer felt the gravel crunching and rolling under his jackboots.

  Behind him his men quickened their pace, weapons held high. Obviously they preferred to face the unknown dangers of the land ahead than be sitting ducks in the water. Von Dodenburg stumbled ashore. He was on enemy soil at last! All around him the men of the Wotan2 were coming ashore, stamping their big boots on the pebbles to force out the seawater. Von Dodenburg stared up at the cliffs. As the intelligence men had told them back at Calais, it had a retreating face and not a vertical one as it appeared to have on the Luftwaffe photos.

  Behind him Sergeant Schulze, the battalion’s comedian, said in that unmistakable Hamburg accent of his, “I think I’ll go back now, sir. I even get dizzy when I stand on a box.” “Knock it off, Schulze,” von Dodenburg said without asperity. He knew that at moments like this, Schulze’s remark helped to lower tension.

  He grasped the first tussock on the cliff face. There was a slight shower of chalk rubble but when he put his full weight on it, it held. Almost parallel with him the Vulture was going up the cliff too, monocle jammed firmly in his eye, his one weapon the thin riding switch which he always carried. Together they clambered up swiftly. Towards the top the chalk rubble was very loose. Once von Dodenburg slipped and hung precariously, fifty metres above the stony beach, his heart beating like a trip-hammer; then he regained his foot-hole and a few moments later he was over the top and lying full length in the grass, gasping for breath.

  Nothing moved. A faint breeze rustled the grass, but that was the only sound. The men behind came scrambling over the edge of the cliff and flung themselves down, weapons at the ready. Von Dodenburg rose to his feet and, unslinging his machine pistol, doubled over to where the Vulture squatted with Lieutenant Schwarz, the CO of the II Company.

  “Everything all right, von Dodenburg?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Good.” Under the too large steel helmet the Battalion Commander wore all that von Dodenburg could make out was the great beak of a nose which had helped to give him his nickname. “I’ll set up my command post here. You take the right flank, Schwarz the left. If you do bump into any resistance for God’s sake don’t bog down. Move and move fast.”

  Schwarz’s face contorted into a sneer. “What have the Tommies to stop us with? They ran like the rabbits they are at Dunkirk. They’ll run again here.”

  “We shall see,” the Vulture began. “Now…”

  He stopped abruptly.

  To their front a silver spurt of light rose in the night sky. “Freeze!” the Vulture yelled. For one long moment it bathed them in its icy white light, casting their shadows behind them in monstrous distortion.

  A hoarse voice shouted the alarm in a language they couldn’t understand. Another took up the cry. A red flare rose into the sky and a machine gun began to chatter.

  “Don’t stand there waiting to be slaughtered,” the Vulture cried, springing to his feet. “Attack!”

  “Attack!” von Dodenburg echoed the cry. He fired a wild burst from the hip and rushed forward towards the enemy. A faster machine gun opened somewhere on the right flank. A line of troopers collapsed like marionettes in the hands of a puppet-master gone crazy. A heavy potato-masher grenade sailed through the air. The machine post disappeared in a vicious red ball of flame.

  They hit the enemy’s wire. Von Dodenburg found himself clawing frantically at the barbs. Schulze grabbed him and tugged hard. The wire gave. “Satchel charges!” von Dodenburg yelled. A trooper doubled forward, the heavy parcel of grenades tucked to his chest. Suddenly he screamed, flung up his arms and fell flat on his face. Another man doubled towards him, kicked the dying man round, and, tugging the parcel over his neck, doubled for the wire.

  He dropped the charges and began to run for cover, but a burst caught him before he had gone five metres. He dropped with a strangled scream. Automatically von Dodenburg noted his name; his next-of-kin would receive the Iron Cross.

  The explosion shattered the night into a thousand fiery splinters. The wire disappeared. They were up the next instant, charging through the gap.

  They ran on. Behind them the sounds of the first skirmish began to die away. They’d broken through the first line of defence.

  “Sir.” It was Schulze, running at the head of about a dozen men he had collected from the disorganized 1st Company.


  “Yes?”

  “The stink . . . it’s gas.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Can’t you smell it? It’s every . . .”

  He never completed the word. The next moment the field in front of them exploded in a great roar of red flame. The horizon erupted from end to end. They dropped instantly. In front of them some of the troopers were too slow. One broke away screaming, desperately seeking for some way of putting out the flames. “Over there – water!” Schulze screamed, his hands cupped around his mouth, trying to make himself heard above the roar.

  The trooper followed his directions and flung himself in the shallow pool of water that lay just in front of them. But it was too late. Before their eyes he began to burn away in the wet mud.

  His arm crooked across his face to shield it from the heat, the Vulture yelled, “Back! Everybody back!”

  They needed no urging. The wall of flame was advancing, burning away everything in front of it. They began to run back the way they had come, clawing at each other in their panic, and stumbling over the bodies of the dead Home Guards.

  From somewhere behind the fire screen an enemy mortar opened up. Mortar bombs began to fall in their midst. In his panic a man threw away his rifle. “Stop that!” von Dodenburg cried. “Pick up that weapon!” The man ignored him. Another followed his example, and another. The withdrawal was becoming a rout. He lowered his machine pistol and ran after the rest.

  A man bolted past him, his eyes wild with fear, flames licking up about his body. Schulze grabbed at him but the panic-stricken trooper evaded his grasp. Before anyone could stop him, he had jumped over the edge of the cliff and his bloodcurdling scream followed him to his death on the rocks below.

  He wasn’t alone. More and more men followed him. In vain Schwarz and the Vulture tried to stop the rout but they were swept aside by the stream of fleeing soldiers, as the wall of flames grew ever closer and the enemy mortar bombs rained down upon them. Von Dodenburg ducked as fist-sized pieces of red-hot metal hissed through the air about his head. Below the white foam swirled around the rocks, its colour now turned blood red by the verey flares bursting above them.

  “The boats – the boats are going to leave us behind!” a voice screamed hysterically. Scores of SS men started to clamber down the cliff towards the dim outlines tossing on the waves. Schulze grabbed von Dodenburg by the arm. “Come on, sir,” he yelled. “Let’s get out of this shit!”

  The young officer’s eyes turned towards the wooden sign on the edge of the cliff. ‘SOUTH CLIFF DOVER – SIX MILES!’ “But we’re running away,” he shouted. “We can’t!”

  “We can, sir. Everybody is!”

  Together they lowered themselves over the edge of the cliff. A body sailed over their heads and dropped like a hawk to its death, followed a second later by a great echoing scream that seemed to go on for ever. Frantically they clambered down, while above them the roaring flames teetered on the edge of the cliff.

  Schulze dropped the last six metres or so and von Dodenburg followed suit. His legs felt as if they were being thrust up into his guts. Ignoring the pain, he pulled his Schmeisser and levelled it at the men around him. They were fighting and clawing at each other to get into the water. “Stand fast,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “For God’s sake – stand fast!”

  They brushed past him, their eyes empty with fear, as they scrambled into the water and plunged towards the boats. Beside himself with rage, he lashed out at the nearest man with the butt of his machine pistol. “Get back . . . get back and fight, you rotten bastards,” he screamed. “We’ve got to hold them. We’ve got…”

  His words ended in a groan of pain. He had a momentary glimpse of a blinding light. Then his head was jerked back and his helmet slipped over his eyes. He sank to his knees in the cold water. He fell flat on his face and a blessed blackness overcame him. The long-planned invasion of England had failed even before it had started. What was left of the shattered SS Assault Battalion Wotan streamed back to the boats in panic-stricken defeat. Within minutes the sailors of the Kriegsmarine had the motor boats underway, leaving the burning beach to the dead and dying.

  Notes

  1. General Kurt Student, head of the German paratroops corps and later conqueror of Crete.

  2. SS Assault Battalion Wotan, formed in 1938, saw service in Poland and the invasion of Belgium. In 1940 it was commanded by Major Geier, nicknamed the Vulture (Geier = Vulture in German). See Leo Kessler’s SS Panzer Battalion for further details.

  TWO

  The long, white room stank of ether, sweat and fear. The floor was greasy with blood where the two surgeons were working at a furious rate, the sweat pouring down their faces. Von Dodenburg twitched his head in an effort to shake away the darkness. A skewer of pain dug into the back of his right eye. He repressed a groan of agony. Carefully – very carefully – he turned his head.

  There were wounded men everywhere. They lay in long lines right up to the door, naked save for their boots, their wounds exposed to the critical looks of the civilian nurses who were moving between the lines sorting out those who would need surgery first. Von Dodenburg turned his attention to the surgeons. The one nearest to him was working on the leg of a young blond trooper from his own company, vainly trying to stem the flow of blood which kept spurting out every time he removed his gloved fingers. In the end he gave up. “Hold his leg,” he said to the bespectacled orderly.

  On the table the young soldier groaned. Whether he had heard the surgeon’s words or not, von Dodenburg did not know. But the surgeon did not give him a chance to protest. With two swift slashes he cut even deeper into the mangled limb. Blood swamped his fingers. He dropped the scalpel into the kidney-shaped tray at his side and picked up a small saw. The young soldier murmured something and tried to raise his head. With his free hand the surgeon pushed him back. He began to saw. Within a matter of seconds it was all over and the orderly was left holding the dripping leg in his hand. Von Dodenburg looked away. Suddenly he became aware of another smell than that of ether. Perfume. He opened his eyes, and looked up painfully. A pretty, young woman was staring down at him. The fact that he was completely naked did not seem to worry her. She bent down and he could see the white of her flesh above the tops of her black stockings. Her hand felt his head. It was cool, firm and capable. “Close your right eye please – now your left,” she ordered in accented German.

  “Now turn your head.” She straightened up and watched him curiously.

  He did as she had ordered. His face contorted with pain.

  “It hurts – yes?” she queried, but there was no compassion in her voice, just professional curiosity.

  “Yes,” he said through bloodied lips. “A lot. Back of my head. What hit me – a tank?”

  “I see,” she said, not answering his question. She bent down once more and again he could see the flesh above the stockings.

  Out of her pocket she took a little bottle and a brush and painted the number ‘2’ on his naked chest. “What does it mean, sister?” he asked.

  “It means you will live to fight another day for your Führer. I hope the knowledge pleases you.”

  And with that she moved on to the next man, lying completely motionless on the floor, a yellow bandage over what had once been his genitals. Without a moment’s hesitation she reached down and ripped it off. The man shot up and screamed with pain. At that same moment the male orderly who was following the nurse slid a long needle into von Dodenburg’s arm and he slipped away once more into that long night full of frightening violet flames, horrified screams of fear and pain – and a thin white woman’s hand, clasping a knife, which kept reaching out for his genitals.

  “What an absolute ballsup!” the Vulture rasped, closing the door of von Dodenburg’s hospital room behind him so that the civilian nurses outside in the corridor couldn’t hear. “A complete, utter crock of crap.” He put down the bottle of champagne he had brought with him and tossed his overlar
ge cap onto the bedside table angrily. “Virtually the whole battalion wiped out in ten minutes. You can take it from me, there’ll be no tin1 in this one for any of us.”

  Von Dodenburg stared up at his red-faced commanding officer. With his monocle and baggy, light-grey riding breeches, complete with broad leather inlet, there was no mistaking Major Geier for anything else but what he had once been – a regular Wehrmacht cavalry officer who had transferred to Himmler’s Armed SS because promotion was quicker in the new formation.

  “What were the casualties, sir?” he asked with unusual slowness. Although it was two weeks since he had been admitted to the commandeered Belgian civilian hospital, his head still hurt and any sudden exertion resulted in blinding headaches.

  “They’ve classified it naturally,” the Vulture said sarcastically, stroking his monstrous beak of a nose. “The powers-that-be obviously want to cover up. You’d think even those rear echelon stallions in Intelligence in Berlin would have tumbled to the fact that the Tommies would come up with some primitive weapon like that wall of burning gas. The casualties?” The Vulture gave a quick look at the door to check that it was really closed. “Half the battalion dead or seriously wounded. So we’ve got to start the whole shitty business all over again. It’s heart-breaking.”

  Von Dodenburg nodded his head carefully. He knew that his CO was not concerned with the deaths; his sole concern with his men was for the promotions they could bring. Von Dodenburg thought of all the fine young men who had sailed so confidently from Ostend bellowing that song of triumph, “Wir Fahren gegen Engel-land”. He bit his bottom lip sadly.

  “It’s no use looking like that,” the Vulture said severely.

  “Nothing has been published about our failure fortunately and nothing will be. As far as the world will ever know, there never was a German attempt to invade England.”

  “But what about the British, sir?”

  “That fat drunk Churchill is cunning,” the Vulture said, almost in admiration. “He’s been screaming out for Ami aid ever since we kicked the British out of Europe, and that Jew Roosevelt will only give him it if he thinks Britain is really seriously threatened by the Wehrmacht. So Churchill does not want to publicise the fact that his pathetic excuse for an army has been able to ward off a German invasion. But next time, I promise you things will be different.”