Ch9 - The Landings
It had been the 23rd June, well after the D-Day Landings in Normandy that Operation Dragoon, formerly Anvil, had been approved, despite Prime Minister Churchill's dislike of the idea of opening up another front in the war, and it was scheduled for the 15th August, close to a month after the approval of the idea.
Here we finally are, one Zoya El-Faouly mused to herself as she ghosted to the top of the town hall of Saint Raphael. The town was a small one, less than ten thousand inhabitants, and yet so incredibly rich in culture and history. Napoleon himself had landed here with his troops from Egypt in 1799 following his successful coup d'etat.
That history would be compounded upon this day, with the arrival of a new army of conquerors, each man hell-bent on removing the yoke of oppression and Hitler's Nazi ideas.
The American 36th Infantry would be landing at the beach that had been designated 'Camel', on the Mediterranean Coastline of Saint Raphael, which Zoe could see in the distance, her own role, alongside her new American comrades, being one of disruption and sabotage, much like her raid of the garrison the day before.
Up North, the Allies were now bearing down upon the city of Paris, the Germans fighting for every inch of land on the heavily populated and urbanised Northern side of l'hexagone as in France was known. The invasions were in full flow, the Italian mainland having come into contest in September of the previous year, while Zoya had been in India and Burma with the King's Liverpool Regiment and the formidable Gurkhas of Nepal.
Sicily had also been taken, a huge win for the Allies, prior to the assault on Italy. Significantly, the Germans had diverted reinforcements destined for Kursk toward Southern Italy, exacerbating a crushing defeat in what had been cited as the single biggest engagement of armour in history, the mighty German panzers going up against the new Russian armour, the likes of the T-34 and T-70.
Her attention, however, was not meant to be on wars in faraway lands, no.
Her priority was the obstruction and destruction of enemy assets here, in Saint Raphael, Camel Beach, Provence.
Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano was little more than a phantom, una fantasma, as her grandmother would have put it, flitting between the shadows in the streets of the picturesque Mediterranean town. Her shoes made little to no noise as she sprinted on the beautiful, red clay tiles of the houses in what had once been a tiny fishing village.
The Mediterranean Sea seemed to sparkle in the sunrise as the sun began peeping above the hills that enclosed the town from the rest of France, the little coastal town seeming like its own little slice of paradise, detached from all other civilisation.
That civilization from which it seemed so aloof would come crashing down upon it in a ferocious wave of war and conflict in mere hours, the American Tankers and warships appearing on the horizon, the smoke from their chimneys casting a foul black stain on the sapphire blue of the sea and sky.
Reyna knew that the shooting had started long ago, the attacks on beaches Alpha and Delta having commenced not long ago, and yet here the Americans were, their numbers ready to overwhelm and crush the Wehrmacht as they attempted to retain their hold on the French Mediterranean coast.
She had covered a few hundred metres when she found the first stretch of train track, undisturbed and defended by a small detachment of the German 19th Army, under the command of Friedrich Wiese.
It was nothing of particular note, merely a countermeasure to the French Resistance's seemingly unending ability to destroy sections of railway, a campaign in which Reyna had given her own efforts these past few weeks, diverting crucial personnel and manpower away from the support of the defence in Italy and the North to a task as menial as the repair of railway lines.
The stretch of track she was now looking at was nothing of particular note, within the boundaries of the city, an old overpass bridge stretching across the rails, a useful point from which the German Maschinengewehrschutze could pick their targets for perhaps twenty metres each side.
However, with visibility typically came vulnerability.
In this case, the Unterfeldwebel, the Sergeant of the Gruppe had elected to post a loose cordon of his infantry to protect the machine gunner.
Reyna scoffed to herself at the Sergeant's decision, sacrificing the lives of his lower ranking soldiers for the safety of himself and his machine gunner.
Pathetic.
And so she began her assault, silenced P38 in hand and ready to remove the first ring of the machine gunner's protective cordon. After all, it wasn't the destruction of the squad itself that she was aiming for, merely the tracks they protected.
She descended the stairs of the house in which she had just now arrived, keeping to the shadows and making sure not to create any noise.
A slight beam of sunlight crept through the opening of the doorway, and Reyna knew that this was her chance, advancing on the loosely organised Wehrmacht soldiers with the dawn sun behind her. She recognised the risk of being spotted as a result of her silhouette marking out her presence, but she was no rookie. Not anymore.
Like a leopard, she stalked in the shadows still, sun behind her as she closed the distance with her target to point blank range, the man turning and noticing her presence a second too late.
One second, so short a passage of time, so insignificant and inconsequential
One second, the difference between the life and death of a man.
Reyna sprinted to the man, dead in the blink of an eye as a result of her deadeye shot, the bullet having gone straight through his eye and into his brain.
He could not hit the ground - the noise would ruin this for her, alerting all those around to the presence of the Catalan woman, negating the element of surprise Reyna currently held.
There was, however, one unfortunate soul who had witnessed the silent kill in all its glory.
The recently killed man had not been alone, of course, for what was the use in posting singular guards?
The second man, however, didn't live long enough to raise the alarm. Reyna needed only to draw the knife hidden away in her boot, flinging it with unerring accuracy into his neck. The man choked on his own blood as he fell, a strangled sound of shock escaping his lips as he crumpled to the floor.
And then it started.
The man hit the floor like a sack of potatoes, drawing the attention of the next pair of guards, not too far away.
One of the pair came across, Kar98k at the hip at the shoulder and finger curled around the trigger as he strode over, eyes widening in shock as he saw the first dead body.
He didn't even spot Reyna before he was dead, a 9mm bullet in between his eyes before he could turn the corner.
The Sergeant was alert now, eyes scanning the area for an obvious target at which he could direct his machine gunner.
Three further infantrymen charged into the alleyway, aware of the danger and ready to neutralise it at the earliest opportunity.
Reyna, however, hadn't been alone.
While the soldiers of the German section were dragged across towards Reyna in the alleyway, a second OSS Agent had been on the move.
The inherent disadvantage in defending a train track was, well…
The train track.
The men drawn towards Reyna might have just been five of ten, but what their movement meant, especially considering the presence of a spy in their midst, was that nobody would care enough to observe what Piper was doing a hundred or so feet away, and so on she went.
The trick to sabotage was not to make a huge blast, no.
This would only result in attention being drawn away from the distraction, and the enemy would be alerted to the disruption. The train might simply be rerouted, or simply make an earlier stop, allowing for the vital supplies, arms and ammunition to be transported by truck, in a convoy that would become significantly less vulnerable than the train itself.
That would not do, not at all.
OSS Agent Piper McLean had far too much experience in the field to make a mistake as pathetic as this.
Sabotage was an art.
A fine, precise method, through which the best outcome was always the least conspicuous.
And so, on she went.
It didn't take much work at all.
A sledgehammer and crowbar were enough to displace a small section of track - no longer than ten inches, and move it to one side. A train at high speed would be derailed, rendering the supplies and men it carried useless, the vehicle being removed from the tracks.
To anyone but a keen observer, there was absolutely nothing the matter with the railway line; a perfect example of efficient German engineering and no more.
The fact of the matter was, however, that no train, especially something travelling at the thundering velocity of a freight train would be able to pass this spot.
A job well done.
In this passage of time, Zoya EL-Faouly had not been idle at all.
The defences of Saint-Raphael were small, yes, the nearest large city being Nice, slightly less than 70 kilometres away, but the Germans did still possess heavy arms in the region.
The town's Port was overlooked by a massive building of great religious significance, Zoya knew; the Basilique Notre-Dame-de-la-Victoire, its beautiful domes and soaring minarets reminding her almost of the architecture of her home. Her mother had been a great student of the arts, and had told Zoya and her sisters stories of the Moors who had once ruled Northern Africa, spreading the word of the Prophets to lands as far away as Spain, . It was distinguished from such influences, though, by the admittedly beautiful golden statue of the archangel for whom this town had been named, Raphael.
Perhaps in her childhood, Zoya would have indignantly held her stance that it wasn't in face Raphael, rather Izrafil as she had been taught by her father.
Now, however, years among the Christians from the King's Liverpool Regiment and then being surrounded by Hindus and Buddhists in Jhansi where she had been based had given her food for thought. Religion, just like gender, race, caste and creed was no more than a title, a way in which a person lived their life, and yet not something that was made for disharmony.
After all, did all religions not preach the same ideals of peace and unity among humans?
She had learned of a particularly impressive quote during her time in the east, "Religions are all strands of the same rug, just in different colours."
She had embraced this, and lived by it ever since.
She fought, yes, but she fought for what she knew to be right, for what she knew to be true. Three dictators thought that equality was a commodity, something to be taken advantage of. They thought that people's differences were something to be suppressed. They raised the children of their countries under the beliefs that Race and Religion, Caste and Creed were things to be shunned.
Zoya had learned that there was more to life than what narrow-minded people said and did, there was more to life than believing in one's own supremacy when peace was so far superior to any such ideals.
That was when the shooting reached her.
It was time to make her getaway; the train and the supplies it contained would be out of the game soon.
The American 7th Army was advancing, and quickly., the landing craft cutting through the waves as they approached the beach, the buildings of the seaside town of Saint Raphael looming in the distance.
A sortie of Supermarine Seafire aircraft roared overhead, a squadron of the Spitfire's aircraft carrier adaptation hurtling through the air at the aircraft's maximum speed of 359 miles per hour, Merlin Engines running with their telltale sound. The greatest sound a stranded infantryman could ever hope to hear, Leonidas Valdez had once been told.
The man himself was in full flight gear, goggles firmly to his eyes and breathing even, as he strode across the flight deck of USS Tulagi.
It was common knowledge, of course, that the Americans were running the major role in Operation Dragoon, and of that many were proud, sitting in their living rooms on the opposite side of the world.
He knew that he would damn well rather be the same, sitting in his Texas home with no more involvement in this blasted war than what he heard on the old transistor radio in his house.
The purpose of his radio was rather different here.
Looking out across the Mediterranean Sea, Valdez couldn't help but whistle at the sight that he saw.
A Mediterranean sunrise from the South of France would be beautiful to most, no matter the circumstance.
It just so happened that an Engineer and Mechanic by trade was looking out at a Mediterranean sunrise, along with no less than eight aircraft carriers, not counting the one on which he was currently stood.
A few short movements took him onto the wing of his Grumman F6F Hellcat, the light of the early morning sun glinting off the silver underbelly of the aircraft in its tricolour camouflage. This particular aircraft had served him well, the Tulagi having provided air support a few short months ago in Normandy, where this aircraft had been the hammer with which he had been involved in the destruction of several key enemy positions over the week the carrier had spent in the English Channel in early June of that year. In fact, VOF-01 had flown close to seventy missions, well over two hundred sorties in that time period.
This time, though, there was an odd feeling settling in the pit of the Texan Aviator's stomach.
Five years of service had seen him rise up to the rank of Petty Officer 3rd Class, and he had paid it back in full. Years in his little workshop in Houston fixing tractors and motorcars served him well with the Corsair and Hellcat, and his flying was no small matter either.
Not once had PO3 Leo Valdez been hit, and it was with that reassurance that he fell into line atop the flight deck, the rising sun reflecting slightly off his right wing.
Today was a good day.
It seemed as though there was a point, getting ever closer.
The day I get home.
The fighters began to take off, the weight of the aircraft causing them to dip slightly as they hurtled over the end of the runway of the Casanova-Class Escort Carrier, the pilots fighting to level their aircraft before making their ascent over the glimmering waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
The journey itself was hardly short, the aircraft taking up the Vic formation, the standard formation for fighter aircraft.
Twelve aircraft had taken to the skies from the deck of the Tulagi, four Vics in total, forming a formidable host, and joining what had quickly become an overwhelming allied force.
There was little resistance, of course, as they hurtled through the sky, the Germans not possessing nearly enough heavy batteries to pose a threat to the faraway aircraft carriers, and the Luftwaffe still some way away, the various squadrons still stationed in France caught up in the ongoing battle for Paris. The weather was brilliant, the sun out and the clouds in the sky very much sparse.
Perfect flying conditions.
Perfection was a rarity in this war.
One tracer round punched through his right wing, causing the Texan to turn his head rapidly towards the source of the damage.
The aircraft lurched once more, this time a burst of tracer fire punching through the tail of the Wildcat, as the rest of the Tulagi's planes swerved through the air to avoid the fireball that Valdez' plane was quickly becoming.
He didn't know whether to eject or not, mind frozen in a blind panic. This wasn't how the first flight of the day was meant to go…
The heat didn't seem to affect him as he plummeted through the air, the craft unable to make use of its impressive glide ratio by virtue of the holes peppered into its wings.
Or was that his body going numb?
Fumbling fingers found the latch of the ejector seat, the canopy bursting open with a resounding snap and filling Leo's ears with the sound of gunfire and engines.
He didn't know if the lack of feeling in his body was from numbness, or if it was from his entire body shutting down through panic, it simply didn't matter.
He didn't remember pulling the cord to open his parachute, but it certainly deployed, the whoosh of silk expanding from the pack on his back being the last thing he heard before he blacked out.
It would be a while before he woke.
Reyna was, by some miracle, not injured by the time she had reached the machine gunner atop the railway overpass, a shot to either kneecap incapacitating the man and allowing the OSS agent to disarm him.
A glance behind her to the street from which she had just emerged showed her exactly how much damage she had caused.
There had once been a section, a Gruppe of ten Germans here once.
Five remained, each unconscious and stripped of all weapons and armour, prisoners of war and useless to the Fuhrer for whom they had chosen to fight.
She needed only glance down the tracks to see her comrade, the girl from Oklahoma who had shown such poise and nous under the pressure of the field which they had endured these past few days on the Mediterranean Coast in Provence.
The American gave her a quick thumbs up, before touching the tips of the fingers of her right hand to the top of her head in a hand signal requesting the Catalan girl to join her, the following hand motion a demand to do so as quickly as possible.
It only took a matter of seconds for Reyna to reach, barely out of breath and wiping the blood from her shoes as she approached, the action leaving stains of ruby red on the battledress Nightshade had given her; much more practical than the French civvies they had been wearing these past few months while undercover.
"Reyna," Piper greeted, inclining her head in recognition of the other OSS Agent, and nodding appreciatively towards the bridge. "Very nicely done, I doubt they even saw me as I approached."
"No, I should hope not," Reyna replied, a slight smirk on her face. "After all, what gentleman turns his attention away from the lady with whom he is currently engaged?"
Piper seemed dumbstruck for a moment before she burst out in laughter, the sound possibly the most genuine expression of joy that the town of Saint Raphael would see for the next few days. "Ah, well played Ramirez, I'll have to get you back, won't I?" she compimented. "Engaged in combat, well said."
"I suppose you shall," the Spaniard replied, now grinning at her own joke.
The two spies were interrupted from their conversation by a brutal screeching of steel and chugging that heralded the arrival of the very thing for which they were waiting for.
At this moment, they were hunters, the lords of the jungle lying in wait for their unwitting prey.
That prey was 250 tons of steel, lugging a cargo of arms, armour and vital supplies for the enemy.
The freight train tore its way down the tracks, sparks flying from the rails due to the friction between wheel and track. The funnel belched thick, black smoke in a furious column which trailed behind the train like a stormcloud, a harbinger of death.
Nobody knew exactly how true that was.
Piper Mclean could only watch as her trap, perhaps the simplest of traps moved closer and closer to its beautiful execution as the train steamed on towards Saint Raphael, the driver not deigning to check the tracks over which he was travelling.
Not that he could, of course; trains were hardly conducive to the driver steering very much, what with the presence of tracks and the like. Piper smirked, a predatory look capable of sending a shiver down the spine of even the most composed of people.
Here it came.
Now, in theory, this would happen in a very theoretically sound manner, just as all the rest of these 'adjustments' to train lines tended to go. The train would derail, the front perhaps toppling, and it would all come to a grinding halt, by which time Piper would be hidden away in the underbrush, watching as the Germans desperately attempted to salvage what they could as they waited for the required heavy gear to remove the mammoth train, some five hundred metres of vital supplies and munitions.
What she hadn't been told this time was that this train was nearly exclusively meant to carry weapons and explosives.
It seemed almost typical as the train approached the sabotaged stretch of rail as the two OSS agents watched on, not even daring to breathe as the steel behemoth thundered along the rails.
The engine didn't tip.
In fact, on it went, seemingly unaffected by the subtle change to the tracks.
None of the first three carriages were affected by Piper's sabotage.
The fourth, however, went completely.
Over it went, dragging the third and second carriages off the rails, and the combined momentum of the three behind it took the engine over too, the mighty machine seeming to be dragged down like a horse rearing and falling.
The sound that accompanied the crash was unlike anything Piper had ever heard.
It was common knowledge that one didn't in good conscience drag their nails down a chalkboard, the sound being too horrible for any sane person to voluntarily bear.
The sound that was emitted by this crash was…
It was something else.
The sound of metal ripping rent the air, brutal screeches and groans that something so big didn't seem to have the capacity to make. It certainly shouldn't have, and yet the two American Agents sat in the undergrowth, witnessing something as grotesque as this happening to what was a true marvel of engineering and logistical organisation. After all, the Germans could never have maintained an area of land as they currently controlled without an exemplary logistical system and efficient administrators running it to boot.
The cacophony of noise went on, seemingly without end as the train fell away from the tracks, the engine appearing to be crushed by the sheer torsion of the crash, and many of the passengers; several hundred guards and those responsible for distributing the arms being carried; were all trapped within the groaning steel.
The situation became yet more tense for the Americans as the structure began to spark, the origins of the sharp smell of burning unknown, and yet it quickly became obvious that the result of their little trap would be slightly more lethal than originally anticipated, one might say.
Piper was rooted to the spot, the leaves in her face not even registering in her mind as she gazed, open mouthed at the carnage she had somehow caused.
Ugly black smoke curled into the air as the engine seemed to ignite completely, the the very paint which coated the metal dripping away in streams down the vehicle's metal body, pooling in dirty puddles on the gravel by the tracks, and staining the wooden sleepers under the rails.
She didn't know when she started moving, but she found herself approaching the gradually increasing blaze, her vision becoming clouded in the haze that was being caused by the heat, the toppled and now burning train seeming to shimmer as the heat distorted her vision.
The first carriage exploded as she approached the train, the wreck still a good 300 metres ahead of her, and yet the noise was loud enough for it to have gone off right next to her.
Mud and steel and all manner of shrapnel were thrown hundreds of metres into the air as a container filled with munitions went off, Piper falling to the floor in a mixture of shock and of the sheer force of the blast.
The next went off moments later, this time accompanied by terrified, haunted screaming.
The Wehrmacht soldiers within, dying because she had done this.
She could hear their screams, even at this distance.
They didn't scream for their Fuhrer, or even their God.
No, they were beyond even God at this stage.
They screamed for their mothers, choked sobbing screams that would render them voiceless.
Not that it would matter much anyway.
Piper felt her legs collapse, and her eyes began to droop shut, her cheeks feeling oh so cold. She didn't know whether it was a result of numbness from overexposure to heat, or if she was merely crying.
Perhaps it was a mixture of the two.
Guilt was a hell of a thing, the sniper they called Nightshade mused to herself as she made her rendezvous with her two comrades, Agent McLean passed out in Ramirez-Arellano's arms, all the hair on her face and arms singed clean off.
She had heard the story from the Catalan, and her heart had gone out to the American girl.
She knew what it was like to be responsible for the deaths of so many in a single incident, her mind flashing with the images of a rope bridge in the densest jungle she would ever see in her life, screaming men in khaki uniforms charging towards her comrades on the opposite side, and a man ordering her to cut it.
Many good men had dies that day, soldiers from England and Nepal and India falling together to the cold steel of a Banzai charge.
Perhaps Piper would one day come to terms with what she had witnessed this day.
Maybe she could even justify it to herself in some deep recess of her mind.
At least it was the lives of the enemy that she had taken this day.
Zoya had not been so lucky.
Her internal strife went unnoticed, and they advanced towards the beaches, the crack of gunfire from above now little more than background noise, their true target being the heavy battery on the southwest side of the town.
That was, of course, until a plane crashed in front of them.
A/N
Sorry this is late, it's been quite the fortnight.
I spent one week on holiday, and the next was caught up in A Level results day stress - before you ask, I did get my firm choice University, hooray for me.
A new character, and more hinting at something I plan on going into one hell of a lot more detail into; the Chindit Campaign, specifically Operation Longcloth, and we'll see Percy's backstory aboard HMS Rodney too, featuring the literal legend that is John 'Jack' Tovey, the First Baron Tovey.
I've also found myself planning out my next fic, which I won't mention because it may well not be my next fic, and I'd hate to disappoint you.
I will say though, if you've seen Dr. Albert Lin's stuff on National Geographic you may get a hint of what I'm thinking of.