Post by Wing on Nov 1, 2006 12:34:39 GMT -5
Introduction[/u]
Fact:
Shortly after the invasion of Normandy on 25 June of 1944, six British commandos of the Special Air Service parachuted into France with a mission that, if properly carried out, could help the Allies retake Europe. Their orders were to kidnap or kill Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the renowned Desert Fox whose presence in the defense of Hitler’s Fortress Europe threatened Allied plans. Though proven human by his defeat in North Africa, the Allied forces were all too aware of Rommel’s masterful battlefield intuition, what the Germans called fingerspitzenfühl, and the moral he put into his men at the mere sight of him. Such a force, the Allies knew, was dangerous and possibly fatal to their plans. Rommel would have to go.
The commandos landed near La Roche Guyon where the field marshal and his staff had their headquarters and actually engaged German forces, but never carried out their mission due to the fact that the Desert Fox’s car had been strafed earlier by Allied fighters, leaving him with massive head injuries he would never have the chance to fully recover from. They fought their way across much of France to regroup with American forces and headed home, their mission, codenamed Operation Gaff, reduced to a top-secret memory to recall in pauses of the Allied rush across Europe towards Berlin…
___________________________________________________
Prologue
24 June 1944
1207 Hours GMT
Livarot, France
Altitude 3000 Meters
Lieutenant Charles Sheraton, a flying ace of the RAF, eased back on the stick of his Spitfire. The old girl was running well on half a tank of fuel for a fighter who had just received a new engine, and Charles was enjoying the smooth ride compared to his last milk run, which had consisted of limping across the Channel on one engine with oil slowly slicking the cockpit a dark, ominous black that had eventually obscured his vision completely, forcing him to loosen his restraints, slide open the thingypit, and crouch so his head was hanging out into the slipstream in order to see where he was going.
It would, of course, have been a lot better back then if he was stationed at his current location in France, but that last mission had been before D-Day. Now, fully recovered from the minor injuries sustained his crash landing back in England, Charles, accompanied by his wingmen, was leisurely meandering over the German-occupied roads in search of something worth strafing with little to worry about in terms of making it back as their temporary airfield was only a short flight away.
Those were his official orders, of course, to destroy anything—or anyone—using the road that looked remotely like it had anything to do with the enemy. The only thing of interest that had come along in the past four hours had been a small troop transport that had literally dived into a ditch at the sight of him, and all the soldiers had scrambled out and into the forest before the three Spitfires could do anything about it. In addition to the truck, a horse-drawn milk cart and three peasant girls had gone past, and Charles had flown down close to get a good look at them and thus avoided accidentally harming the locals. Terrifying them, on the other hand, couldn’t be helped.
“Oh, Lieutenant Sheraton? Here comes something.” A burst of static heralded his wingman Kevin Hunter’s transmission over the small radio—the connection, unfortunately, was interfered with by the hills on either side of the valley through which the main road wound—and the lieutenant was obliged to scan the ground for what he was referring to.
Rolling his Spitfire slightly, Charles hung upside down for a better look. It was against strict regulations when not engaging the enemy, of course, but no one had to know, and Kevin was a close friend of his from before the war, as was the other wingman, Collin Darten: they weren’t the type to tattle to their CO over anything Charles did. Actually, the flying officers usually referred to their lieutenant by his first name, but that was another disadvantage of the radio. All transmissions could be heard all the way back to base, so personal conversations were not encouraged due to the fact that they simply weren’t private. Still, one perk of being an officer was that Charles could be as casual as he wanted with Hunter and Darten—it was his friends who had to be formal.
A cloud of dust down the road caught the lieutenant’s keen eye, and he flipped upright again to focus on it without the effect of having blood rushing to his head. “Looks like some Jerry’s out for a ride, hmm?” the blond-haired officer remarked, noting the size of the cloud. “Perhaps another truck. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?”
“Yes, sir,” Darten replied, being as sarcastic as possible on the ‘sir’ bit for obvious reasons. His fighter slid neatly into the space at Sheraton’s right wing while Hunter moved towards the left, waiting for an acceleration from their flight leader to signal an approach.
They didn’t have to wait long. Charles was bored of idling around with nothing to do but think up lists of things he could be doing, which had only mildly amused him for a short span of time, and his Spitfire’s engines roared with an almost eager note as the trio of British planes leapt forward as one through the sky, flying low out of the sun to disguise their approach.
The three Spits’ flew over once, their engines alerting the driver of the car that had been traveling at a fairly unhurried pace beforehand. One pass was all either pilot needed: they both had good eyesight and considerable German vehicle recognition experience from previous watches along the French roads.
“It’s a Horch!” Darten said with surprise—one didn’t often see the gleaming black officer’s cars along this road, which had been closely guarded by the Allies of late. Then again, it made sense that anyone with either some nerve or a lack of patience would use the passage in the valley as it connected several German outposts in Vimoutiers directly, but most went around on the safer route to avoid an attack from the air.
“Yes, Collin, difficult to believe as it seems, some Jerry officers enjoy a picnic on a beautiful summer’s day such as this,” Charles replied with exaggerated patience. “Most unfortunately, however, we’re going to have to cut that short. Nothing resembling an enemy in the form of troops or—”
“—or any kind of transport, airborne or grounded, is to be allowed through the valley, I know,” sighed the lieutenant’s left-hand wingman, having heard their orders repeated verbatim several times over the past few hours. “I’ll take this one.”
Smirking slightly behind his oxygen mask at the idea of pulling rank, Charles cut in, “No, actually, you won’t. This one’s all mine.”
Hunter sighed, pulling his Spitfire back up to a reasonable altitude to provide cover fire if need be. “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, not fair.”
“But I do mind, Kevin, so shut up and get flying, please.”
Ignoring his wingman’s further grumbles, the lieutenant dropped lower, opening the throttle slightly so he would hit fast and to deadly effect. Beneath him, the car was doing the same, the driver purposefully swerving all over the road and stomping abruptly on the accelerator to make a trickier target as the car sped towards the next turn in hopes of escaping its quarry. Not that it mattered—if Charles came up behind the car as he was planning and dropped between the trees, which was a tricky but wholly possible maneuver, it was only a matter of time before the constant stream of bullets spanning the road made contact with the car.
It was definitely an official car, this, and with a passenger too—diving even lower so his wingtips brushed the treetops, Charles was able to see someone wearing the peaked Wehrmacht officer’s cap spin around in the back seat and look up at him, gesturing for the driver to go faster without turning back around. It was difficult to make out the man’s face from here, but Sheraton didn’t really need or want to. There was no use dwelling on those you killed, even if they were Germans. Dropping a dangerous few feet down, the Spitfire pilot sent his fighter into the chase, speeding up to maintain his altitude and have enough power to get back into the sky.
His sights loosely centered on the middle of the road, the young lieutenant leaned on the firing button. Simultaneously, twin machine guns opened fire, catapulting a deadly barrage of lethal metal down the dirt road. The Horch lurched and bounced suddenly, but appeared only to have hit a pothole: it continued as before a moment later, keeping just out of range as the driver poured on a last bit of speed.
Rigid in his seat, Charles closed one eye, focusing on the targeting sight before him. His aim had been thrown off a bit by an unexpected buffet of a breeze that sent the sight drifting to the right side of the road while the car was now screeching towards the left, but that was easily corrected. Slowly, careful to mind the trees, the RAF officer eased the stick gradually to the left, directing the line of fire closer and closer to the car. There would be no escape this time—the range was just right now, and the turn was just a few seconds too far. The German officer, whoever he was, was doomed.
And then, very abruptly, a loud clang assaulted Charles’ ears and the Spitfire shuddered slightly, jolting its pilot against the side of his thingypit. The propeller in front of him lurched and suddenly stuck as the engine clanked again, and Charles yanked hard on the stick to send the fighter rocketing into the clouds, needing altitude and speed to work through the bump in the engine’s running. Sheraton, who was normally quite sophisticated and well-mannered, rattled of a string of curses into his radio in a panic as the Spitfire rocked—and suddenly leveled out as if nothing had happened.
For a moment, the pilot was left staring at the control panel before he realized what had happened—the new engine had coughed. That was all. It was common enough when a new engine unused to the stress of a full day’s flight grew hot—in fact, Charles had experienced it before—but he had grown so used to his old engine behaving perfectly that he had forgotten the possibility of a discontent engine.
It was just a little bump, and you panicked, Charles thought in disgust at himself. Swinging the fighter around perhaps a bit harder than was necessary, he dipped down to see the car swerving around the turn and disappearing from sight into the woods. There would be no finding it now—the little back roads and trails through the forest were impossible to see from the air. That was the second one lost today.
“Bloody hell!” the lieutenant snapped, climbing to rejoin his wingmen. Even through the glass of two thingypits, Hunter was looking smug.
“All yours, lieutenant?” he asked innocently.
Sheraton, who usually had the grace to laugh at himself but was too rattled and irritated to do so, snapped, “That’s quite enough, Flying Officer Hunter. Let’s go—we’ve done enough for today.”
Three sets of Spitfire engines roared in unison, propelling the British pilots towards home. Their squadron leader would not be pleased by today’s report whatsoever.
Now safe in the cool shadow of the forest road, the black officer’s car rolled to a stop. The driver, a young, freckled man wearing the insignia of an unteroffizer breathed a sigh of relief and slowly relaxed his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, glancing in the rearview mirror at his passengers. Both were alive, thank God—if either of them had been injured in his car, he would have paid with his head.
Swiveling around in his seat so quickly that he nearly knocked heads with the aerial spotter, Unteroffizer Holke, he said anxiously, “Feldmarschall—Hauptmann—are you all right?”
Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, the renowned Desert Fox of the Afrika Korps, was still peering out the back of the car, listening hard for the sounds of the Spitfire engines. After a moment, he turned back, his brown eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “They’ve headed north,” he reported, adding, “And yes, Unteroffizer, I’m fine, thank you. That was a nice bit of driving you did there.”
The driver managed a shaky smile. “Thank you very much, sir. Sorry about the rough ride.”
Hauptmann Lang, the field marshal’s aide, was brushing himself off. “That was close,” he remarked casually to the rest of the car, but it was clear that this show of pure unbothered boredom was a façade by the way his hands were trembling slightly.
Rommel, who noticed his fear, eyed him noncommittally before nodding to the driver with a congratulatory pat on the shoulder. “Well, they’ve gone, so let’s get going. We can’t sit here all day: there are two more sections I want to inspect in Vimoutiers before we turn back home.”
The unteroffizer driving the car backed it out slowly into the road, hardly daring to believe his luck—not only had they avoided the planes, but the field marshal was actually pleased with his wild escape! The day could only get better. Who knew—maybe he’d make that promotion to feldwebel he’d been waiting for…
____________________________________________________
Author's Note:
Hello to all readers who have taken notice of this story! If you’re reading this by now, you’ve read through the introduction and the prologue (hopefully), so perhaps you could review...? This is my first Fictionpress story, and I’d like some feedback if possible...
Well...I suppose I need to explain myself. However did I get the idea for this story? I suppose it was when I read The Rommel Murder: The Life and Death of the Desert Fox for the first of perhaps four times and noticed a mention of Operation Gaff, a SAS operation intended to kill or kidnap Rommel that failed when his car was strafed the day of the attempt. But it left me curious—suppose he hadn’t been strafed due to an accident, a little pocket of air or a short cough in a Merlin engine that caused the fighter to bump slightly and miss its target, or, as I finally decided upon, unnerved the already-anxious low-flying pilot enough to make them give up the attempt completely? Would the commandos have been able to succeed?
Well...you’ll see. Bwahaha, I’m evil that way, aren’t I?
Just a note: so far, the characters of my creation include Charles Sheraton, Kevin Hunter, and Colin Darten, all of whom I borrowed from my novel-in-process 109 and were nice enough to be a part of this story, and Rommel’s driver. Erwin Rommel, obviously, was a real person, and so were Hauptmann Lang and his aerial spotter Unteroffizer Holke.
Special thanks to Ryan, who was the first to hear Chapter One and listened to perhaps half of it but gave me great criticism on that half, and to David, who couldn’t wait to read it all and was a better critic than Ryan.
Also Printed On:
-FictionPress.net
Fact:
Shortly after the invasion of Normandy on 25 June of 1944, six British commandos of the Special Air Service parachuted into France with a mission that, if properly carried out, could help the Allies retake Europe. Their orders were to kidnap or kill Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the renowned Desert Fox whose presence in the defense of Hitler’s Fortress Europe threatened Allied plans. Though proven human by his defeat in North Africa, the Allied forces were all too aware of Rommel’s masterful battlefield intuition, what the Germans called fingerspitzenfühl, and the moral he put into his men at the mere sight of him. Such a force, the Allies knew, was dangerous and possibly fatal to their plans. Rommel would have to go.
The commandos landed near La Roche Guyon where the field marshal and his staff had their headquarters and actually engaged German forces, but never carried out their mission due to the fact that the Desert Fox’s car had been strafed earlier by Allied fighters, leaving him with massive head injuries he would never have the chance to fully recover from. They fought their way across much of France to regroup with American forces and headed home, their mission, codenamed Operation Gaff, reduced to a top-secret memory to recall in pauses of the Allied rush across Europe towards Berlin…
___________________________________________________
Prologue
24 June 1944
1207 Hours GMT
Livarot, France
Altitude 3000 Meters
Lieutenant Charles Sheraton, a flying ace of the RAF, eased back on the stick of his Spitfire. The old girl was running well on half a tank of fuel for a fighter who had just received a new engine, and Charles was enjoying the smooth ride compared to his last milk run, which had consisted of limping across the Channel on one engine with oil slowly slicking the cockpit a dark, ominous black that had eventually obscured his vision completely, forcing him to loosen his restraints, slide open the thingypit, and crouch so his head was hanging out into the slipstream in order to see where he was going.
It would, of course, have been a lot better back then if he was stationed at his current location in France, but that last mission had been before D-Day. Now, fully recovered from the minor injuries sustained his crash landing back in England, Charles, accompanied by his wingmen, was leisurely meandering over the German-occupied roads in search of something worth strafing with little to worry about in terms of making it back as their temporary airfield was only a short flight away.
Those were his official orders, of course, to destroy anything—or anyone—using the road that looked remotely like it had anything to do with the enemy. The only thing of interest that had come along in the past four hours had been a small troop transport that had literally dived into a ditch at the sight of him, and all the soldiers had scrambled out and into the forest before the three Spitfires could do anything about it. In addition to the truck, a horse-drawn milk cart and three peasant girls had gone past, and Charles had flown down close to get a good look at them and thus avoided accidentally harming the locals. Terrifying them, on the other hand, couldn’t be helped.
“Oh, Lieutenant Sheraton? Here comes something.” A burst of static heralded his wingman Kevin Hunter’s transmission over the small radio—the connection, unfortunately, was interfered with by the hills on either side of the valley through which the main road wound—and the lieutenant was obliged to scan the ground for what he was referring to.
Rolling his Spitfire slightly, Charles hung upside down for a better look. It was against strict regulations when not engaging the enemy, of course, but no one had to know, and Kevin was a close friend of his from before the war, as was the other wingman, Collin Darten: they weren’t the type to tattle to their CO over anything Charles did. Actually, the flying officers usually referred to their lieutenant by his first name, but that was another disadvantage of the radio. All transmissions could be heard all the way back to base, so personal conversations were not encouraged due to the fact that they simply weren’t private. Still, one perk of being an officer was that Charles could be as casual as he wanted with Hunter and Darten—it was his friends who had to be formal.
A cloud of dust down the road caught the lieutenant’s keen eye, and he flipped upright again to focus on it without the effect of having blood rushing to his head. “Looks like some Jerry’s out for a ride, hmm?” the blond-haired officer remarked, noting the size of the cloud. “Perhaps another truck. Let’s take a closer look, shall we?”
“Yes, sir,” Darten replied, being as sarcastic as possible on the ‘sir’ bit for obvious reasons. His fighter slid neatly into the space at Sheraton’s right wing while Hunter moved towards the left, waiting for an acceleration from their flight leader to signal an approach.
They didn’t have to wait long. Charles was bored of idling around with nothing to do but think up lists of things he could be doing, which had only mildly amused him for a short span of time, and his Spitfire’s engines roared with an almost eager note as the trio of British planes leapt forward as one through the sky, flying low out of the sun to disguise their approach.
The three Spits’ flew over once, their engines alerting the driver of the car that had been traveling at a fairly unhurried pace beforehand. One pass was all either pilot needed: they both had good eyesight and considerable German vehicle recognition experience from previous watches along the French roads.
“It’s a Horch!” Darten said with surprise—one didn’t often see the gleaming black officer’s cars along this road, which had been closely guarded by the Allies of late. Then again, it made sense that anyone with either some nerve or a lack of patience would use the passage in the valley as it connected several German outposts in Vimoutiers directly, but most went around on the safer route to avoid an attack from the air.
“Yes, Collin, difficult to believe as it seems, some Jerry officers enjoy a picnic on a beautiful summer’s day such as this,” Charles replied with exaggerated patience. “Most unfortunately, however, we’re going to have to cut that short. Nothing resembling an enemy in the form of troops or—”
“—or any kind of transport, airborne or grounded, is to be allowed through the valley, I know,” sighed the lieutenant’s left-hand wingman, having heard their orders repeated verbatim several times over the past few hours. “I’ll take this one.”
Smirking slightly behind his oxygen mask at the idea of pulling rank, Charles cut in, “No, actually, you won’t. This one’s all mine.”
Hunter sighed, pulling his Spitfire back up to a reasonable altitude to provide cover fire if need be. “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, not fair.”
“But I do mind, Kevin, so shut up and get flying, please.”
Ignoring his wingman’s further grumbles, the lieutenant dropped lower, opening the throttle slightly so he would hit fast and to deadly effect. Beneath him, the car was doing the same, the driver purposefully swerving all over the road and stomping abruptly on the accelerator to make a trickier target as the car sped towards the next turn in hopes of escaping its quarry. Not that it mattered—if Charles came up behind the car as he was planning and dropped between the trees, which was a tricky but wholly possible maneuver, it was only a matter of time before the constant stream of bullets spanning the road made contact with the car.
It was definitely an official car, this, and with a passenger too—diving even lower so his wingtips brushed the treetops, Charles was able to see someone wearing the peaked Wehrmacht officer’s cap spin around in the back seat and look up at him, gesturing for the driver to go faster without turning back around. It was difficult to make out the man’s face from here, but Sheraton didn’t really need or want to. There was no use dwelling on those you killed, even if they were Germans. Dropping a dangerous few feet down, the Spitfire pilot sent his fighter into the chase, speeding up to maintain his altitude and have enough power to get back into the sky.
His sights loosely centered on the middle of the road, the young lieutenant leaned on the firing button. Simultaneously, twin machine guns opened fire, catapulting a deadly barrage of lethal metal down the dirt road. The Horch lurched and bounced suddenly, but appeared only to have hit a pothole: it continued as before a moment later, keeping just out of range as the driver poured on a last bit of speed.
Rigid in his seat, Charles closed one eye, focusing on the targeting sight before him. His aim had been thrown off a bit by an unexpected buffet of a breeze that sent the sight drifting to the right side of the road while the car was now screeching towards the left, but that was easily corrected. Slowly, careful to mind the trees, the RAF officer eased the stick gradually to the left, directing the line of fire closer and closer to the car. There would be no escape this time—the range was just right now, and the turn was just a few seconds too far. The German officer, whoever he was, was doomed.
And then, very abruptly, a loud clang assaulted Charles’ ears and the Spitfire shuddered slightly, jolting its pilot against the side of his thingypit. The propeller in front of him lurched and suddenly stuck as the engine clanked again, and Charles yanked hard on the stick to send the fighter rocketing into the clouds, needing altitude and speed to work through the bump in the engine’s running. Sheraton, who was normally quite sophisticated and well-mannered, rattled of a string of curses into his radio in a panic as the Spitfire rocked—and suddenly leveled out as if nothing had happened.
For a moment, the pilot was left staring at the control panel before he realized what had happened—the new engine had coughed. That was all. It was common enough when a new engine unused to the stress of a full day’s flight grew hot—in fact, Charles had experienced it before—but he had grown so used to his old engine behaving perfectly that he had forgotten the possibility of a discontent engine.
It was just a little bump, and you panicked, Charles thought in disgust at himself. Swinging the fighter around perhaps a bit harder than was necessary, he dipped down to see the car swerving around the turn and disappearing from sight into the woods. There would be no finding it now—the little back roads and trails through the forest were impossible to see from the air. That was the second one lost today.
“Bloody hell!” the lieutenant snapped, climbing to rejoin his wingmen. Even through the glass of two thingypits, Hunter was looking smug.
“All yours, lieutenant?” he asked innocently.
Sheraton, who usually had the grace to laugh at himself but was too rattled and irritated to do so, snapped, “That’s quite enough, Flying Officer Hunter. Let’s go—we’ve done enough for today.”
Three sets of Spitfire engines roared in unison, propelling the British pilots towards home. Their squadron leader would not be pleased by today’s report whatsoever.
Now safe in the cool shadow of the forest road, the black officer’s car rolled to a stop. The driver, a young, freckled man wearing the insignia of an unteroffizer breathed a sigh of relief and slowly relaxed his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, glancing in the rearview mirror at his passengers. Both were alive, thank God—if either of them had been injured in his car, he would have paid with his head.
Swiveling around in his seat so quickly that he nearly knocked heads with the aerial spotter, Unteroffizer Holke, he said anxiously, “Feldmarschall—Hauptmann—are you all right?”
Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, the renowned Desert Fox of the Afrika Korps, was still peering out the back of the car, listening hard for the sounds of the Spitfire engines. After a moment, he turned back, his brown eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “They’ve headed north,” he reported, adding, “And yes, Unteroffizer, I’m fine, thank you. That was a nice bit of driving you did there.”
The driver managed a shaky smile. “Thank you very much, sir. Sorry about the rough ride.”
Hauptmann Lang, the field marshal’s aide, was brushing himself off. “That was close,” he remarked casually to the rest of the car, but it was clear that this show of pure unbothered boredom was a façade by the way his hands were trembling slightly.
Rommel, who noticed his fear, eyed him noncommittally before nodding to the driver with a congratulatory pat on the shoulder. “Well, they’ve gone, so let’s get going. We can’t sit here all day: there are two more sections I want to inspect in Vimoutiers before we turn back home.”
The unteroffizer driving the car backed it out slowly into the road, hardly daring to believe his luck—not only had they avoided the planes, but the field marshal was actually pleased with his wild escape! The day could only get better. Who knew—maybe he’d make that promotion to feldwebel he’d been waiting for…
____________________________________________________
Author's Note:
Hello to all readers who have taken notice of this story! If you’re reading this by now, you’ve read through the introduction and the prologue (hopefully), so perhaps you could review...? This is my first Fictionpress story, and I’d like some feedback if possible...
Well...I suppose I need to explain myself. However did I get the idea for this story? I suppose it was when I read The Rommel Murder: The Life and Death of the Desert Fox for the first of perhaps four times and noticed a mention of Operation Gaff, a SAS operation intended to kill or kidnap Rommel that failed when his car was strafed the day of the attempt. But it left me curious—suppose he hadn’t been strafed due to an accident, a little pocket of air or a short cough in a Merlin engine that caused the fighter to bump slightly and miss its target, or, as I finally decided upon, unnerved the already-anxious low-flying pilot enough to make them give up the attempt completely? Would the commandos have been able to succeed?
Well...you’ll see. Bwahaha, I’m evil that way, aren’t I?
Just a note: so far, the characters of my creation include Charles Sheraton, Kevin Hunter, and Colin Darten, all of whom I borrowed from my novel-in-process 109 and were nice enough to be a part of this story, and Rommel’s driver. Erwin Rommel, obviously, was a real person, and so were Hauptmann Lang and his aerial spotter Unteroffizer Holke.
Special thanks to Ryan, who was the first to hear Chapter One and listened to perhaps half of it but gave me great criticism on that half, and to David, who couldn’t wait to read it all and was a better critic than Ryan.
Also Printed On:
-FictionPress.net
