Assault on Abbeville Read online

  ASSAULT ON ABBEVILLE

  REVENANTS: BOOK 1

  Jack Badelaire

  Copyright © December 2016 by Jack Badelaire

  Cover Art and Design by Ander Plana

  http://anderpeich.deviantart.com

  Published by Post Modern Pulp Books

  Published in the United States of America

  Disclaimer: This is a work of military adventure pulp fiction. While it takes place against the backdrop of the Second World War, the story and characters depicted here are entirely fictitious, and any reference to or use of historical characters is also fictional.

  ONE

  Off the Coast of England

  July, 1940

  “Object in the water!” the lookout shouted. “Green Twenty! Five hundred yards!”

  A young Royal Navy ensign by the name of Sims raised binoculars to his eyes and looked twenty degrees off the starboard bow. Sims worked the focusing wheel and spotted something floating in the water, a small, dark shape bobbing in the light chop of the Channel.

  “Sir? One of our boys?” the helmsman asked.

  Sims shook his head. They were on rescue duty after another aerial battle between the RAF and the Luftwaffe. However, one glance told Sims the object in the water wasn’t a downed pilot. “Doesn’t look like an aircraft fuselage. Let’s have a closer look though, shall we? Bring us about, ahead two-thirds, and close to within fifty yards.”

  “Aye, sir,” the helmsman replied, one hand turning the wheel while the other eased the throttle forward. The Coastal Motor Boat’s powerful engine growled deep in the craft’s belly, the screw churning up foam as the stern dug into the water and the boat surged ahead.

  “Jones, ready with the Vickers, if you please. Just in case.”

  “Aye, sir!” Jones, the lookout who’d spotted the object, moved to the .303 Vickers machine gun pintle-mounted near the bow of the boat. The machine gun was uncovered and ready for action in case they’d been spied and targeted by an enemy aircraft earlier that morning. Unlocking the Vickers’ mount, Jones racked back the bolt, chambering a round, and he stood with his hands grasping the spade handles, feet wide and braced, as the boat tore across the waves at near to thirty knots.

  In short order the helmsman throttled back and the boat slowed, then finally came to a stop with a brief reversal of the screws. Sims again focused his binoculars on the object sitting just off their starboard bow. From this distance, it was clear he was looking at a half-submerged rowboat. At the its bow a man slumped against the side, one hand floating listlessly in the water. Sims couldn’t see the man’s face, only a mop of dark, curly hair, matted and crusted by dried saltwater. The only evidence of a uniform was the tattered, scorched remnants of a black leather coat. Sims studied the man for a moment, noting the manner in which his hand floated in the water.

  “A Jerry trick, sir?” the helmsman asked him.

  Sims shook his head. “I must say, it’d be awfully contrived. The buggers would be better off simply dropping mines. Besides, if they’d wanted to trick us with a dummy bloke floating in the water, they’d have made him a downed pilot. No, this is something different. Bring us alongside. Carefully, please.”

  “Aye, sir.” The helmsman gave the throttle a deft touch and shifted the wheel, bringing the boat closer to the rowboat.

  Sims stepped out of the pilothouse and unholstered his .38 Enfield revolver. Stepping up the to the gunwale, he watched for signs of life from the half-submerged man in the leather coat, but if the man was alive, he didn’t stir.

  “Jones, grab that boat-hook, will you? Let’s see if we can’t fish this poor fellow out of the brine.” Sims asked.

  The lookout locked the Vickers in its mount and unfastened the boat-hook from its place along the side of the pilothouse. Carefully, Jones maneuvered the hook so it caught on the collar of the man’s leather jacket, and he slowly rolled the man over. Sims saw the man’s face, broad and rugged, the cheeks sunken and covered with an unkempt beard. From the front, the leather coat looked like it was cut in a military fashion, but one Sims did not recognize. The state it was in, however, seemed familiar to the ensign.

  “We’ve pulled enough lads out of scorched birds to know what a fellow looks like when he’s nearly been burned alive,” Sims said to Jones. “That doesn’t look like a pilot’s jacket, though. Too long, for one thing.”

  Just then, the man spasmed and coughed, thrashing weakly in the half-submerged rowboat. Jones lost his hold with the boat-hook for a moment before catching the man again, this time drawing him closer to the hull of the boat. Sims gestured with the barrel of his revolver, and with one hand holding the hook, Jones leaned over the side and caught the man by his collar, pulling upwards.

  “Blast it, sir! He’s a heavy one, he is!” Jones cried.

  Jones hesitated for a moment, then holstered his weapon before leaning over the gunwale and grabbing the man with both hands. With gasps of effort, the two Navy men lifted the man over the side and onto the deck, where he continued to cough and wheeze through sun-parched lips. Finally, the man’s eyes flickered open and focused on Sims, who stood over him, revolver in hand.

  “Wodę, prosze!” the man croaked, his hand feebly touching his lips.

  “What’s he saying, sir?” Jones asked. “He doesn’t seem to be speaking German.”

  Sims shook his head. “He’s not, no. I think he’s asking for water, though. Fetch a canteen.”

  Jones disappeared into the pilot house, and Sims knelt next to the man. Upon closer inspection, it was clear the stranger had been living in destitution for some time, his clothing worn and tattered. At his waist, the man wore a holstered pistol, and not wanting to take any chances, Sims relieved the man of the weapon. A bit of color on the sleeve of the black leather coat caught Sims’ eye and he reached over, gently turning the sleeve so he had a better view of the emblem. It was, he realized, a Polish flag.

  “My god!” Sims exclaimed, as Jones returned and held a canteen of water to the man’s lips. “He’s a Polish soldier!”

  The man’s eyes moved from the canteen to Sims, and he sputtered as he nodded.

  “Tak, jestem Polskim,” he whispered. “Czy jesteś Anglicy?”

  Sims frowned, unable to understand the man, but something behind him caught the Polish soldier’s gaze. The man smiled, then lifted his hand and pointed up. Sims turned and saw the man was pointing at the White Ensign fluttering in the breeze overhead.

  “Anglia, dobrze!” the man managed to say, before his eyes rolled back, and with a sigh, he slipped into unconsciousness.

  “Bloody queer, isn’t this, sir?” Jones asked.

  Sims nodded, standing up. “Get him in a blanket and make him comfortable. I’ve got to get on the wireless, make sure there’s a M.O. waiting at the dock when we arrive.” Sims paused and looked east out over the water, towards mainland Europe.

  “And I suppose they bloody well need to find someone who speaks Polish,” he muttered to himself, before turning and hurrying into the pilot house.

  TWO

  Medway Maritime Hospital, Gillingham, England

  Two Weeks Later

  “Ah, you are awake. Good.”

  Bruno Gorski’s eyes fluttered, and he squinted at the harsh light shining down from the ceiling. He groaned and tried to raise a hand to shield his eyes, but he couldn’t move. Glancing down, he saw his hand was manacled to the side of a hospital bed.

  “What the hell is this?” he growled.

  “My apologies,” a man’s voice came from the other side of the bed, the words spoken in rough, English-accented Polish. Gorski turned to see a slim, bespectacled man of middle years and salt-and-pepper hair sitting in a chair nearby. The man turned and said someth
ing in English to someone outside the room. A British soldier wearing a holstered pistol stepped inside, and after a moment’s argument with the man in the suit, the soldier moved to the other side of the bed and removed Gorski’s manacles.

  “Thank you,” Gorski muttered, rubbing his wrist. “Now, who the hell are you, and what the hell am I doing here?”

  The bespectacled man smiled. “My name is Mr. Wormwood. Please, pardon my Polish, I have not had to use it much since my days at school. I studied at Jagiellonian University, in-”

  “Krakow, yes. I know it well. My father taught there, before the war,” Gorski said.

  Wormwood’s eyes grew wide. “Really? What subject?”

  “He taught mathematics. Now, he is likely dead. Many of the professors were seized by the Germans when Krakow fell.”

  “Ah,” Wormwood replied. “I myself studied art history. Romanesque, to be precise. From ‘21 to ‘25. It is a beautiful city.”

  “Not anymore,” Gorski said. “Now, the swastika flies overhead, and its people suffer.”

  Wormwood said nothing for a moment, then cleared his throat before reaching down and taking several documents from a valise next to his chair.

  “When we found you,” Wormwood began, “you were floating off the coast of England, maybe ten miles or so from here, in a half-submerged rowboat. You were wearing the uniform, the black leather jacket, of an officer in the Polish 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade. That was your unit?”

  Gorski looked at the man and said nothing. Instead, he looked around the room, noting the little details. The window to his right had its curtains half-drawn, and beyond, he saw grass and a paved drive, with some trees beyond, but little else.

  Wormwood watched him for a moment, then consulted a piece of paper in his hand. “Three days ago, you awoke long enough to give a name: Gorski. That is you, correct? Bruno Gorski?”

  Gorski looked at Wormwood with hooded eyes.

  Wormwood shifted in his seat and adjusted his glasses. “The good news is, your unit survived the invasion of France, and evacuated here, to England. Sikorski remains the Prime Minister-in-Exile of Poland, and is currently in London.”

  Gorski narrowed his eyes. “What is the bad news?”

  Wormwood gave him a wry smile and glanced again at the papers in front of him. “On June 18th, men of the the 10th Armored Cavalry - your unit, I believe - were ordered to split up and attempt to slip through the German encirclement. Many were lost in the fighting, either captured, killed, or forced to go into hiding. The majority are now listed by the Polish government as ‘missing and presumed dead’, including one Lieutenant Bruno Gorski.”

  Gorski, stunned, lay back onto his pillow and closed his eyes. He remembered the end of the fighting that day, the breathtaking shock wave of the German shell lifting the armored car into the air and flipping it on its side. The blast had shredded his driver’s legs, and Gorski remembered hearing him screaming and thrashing in the car’s dark interior, hot blood spraying everywhere. He remembered the smell of burning oil and the choking smoke, and the jagged metal of the shattered hatch slicing into his hands as he crawled free, his clothes scorched, flames licking at him, machine gun ammunition exploding and peppering his legs with fragments of hot brass. The pain was so bad, he could only drag himself into a shallow mud puddle and listen to the shrieks of his driver as the man burned to death inside the car a few meters away.

  “Are you all right, Lieutenant?” Wormwood asked.

  “I...I awoke in a ditch, the day after that order was given,” Gorski said. “The Germans had already moved on to the west, and I was behind enemy lines. I spent a month making my way across France, sleeping under rotten logs and in piles of rubble. When I reached the coast, I waited three days, hiding in the reeds and eating some moldy turnips I’d dug out of a root cellar the week before. Finally, when the moon was gone from the night sky, I stole a rowboat and set out for the English coast, using the stars. I was on the water...days. I do not know.”

  “When you were found,” Wormwood answered, “the doctors believed you’d been on the water for at least three days, maybe four. An empty canteen had been found in the bottom of your rowboat, but you were on the verge of death from dehydration and exposure. You had signs of extreme malnutrition, and several injuries, including burns, which had not fully healed. Another few hours on the water, and they believe you would have died.”

  Gorski was silent for a long while, and Wormwood sat patiently by his side. Finally, Gorski looked over to the Englishman. “You have not told me where we are.”

  Wormwood smiled. “This is a naval hospital in Gillingham, England.”

  Gorski looked towards the window again, trying to see anything that would confirm the man’s claim. He knew it was unlikely, but his mind wouldn’t let go of the possibility that this was some kind of German ruse, although what the Germans might gain from a lowly Polish army lieutenant who’d been hiding in the wilderness for a month, he had no idea. Perhaps they suspected he had help from civilians? That he possessed knowledge of Polish or French units hiding in occupied territory?

  “If there are Polish military units here in England, why am I talking to you?” Gorski asked, a note of suspicion in his voice.

  Wormwood smiled. “There is no reason for alarm, lieutenant. You are in England, never fear. When our little chat is over, I can have an orderly fetch a wheelchair, and we can take you outside. A few minutes of taking in the sights should convince you that I’m telling the truth.”

  Gorski merely grunted. “Well then, when can I return to my unit?”

  At this, Wormwood made a face and glanced up at the ceiling for a moment. “What if I told you there was a good reason for your official status, that is, ‘missing, presumed dead’, to remain unchanged for the foreseeable future?”

  Gorski frowned. “I don’t understand. Why would I do this? I want to join my unit. I want to fight against the Germans again. I cannot hide under a falsehood, doing nothing, while my brothers-in-arms go to war again without me!”

  “And if you were given a chance to fight the Germans, to do some real bloody damage, long before your countrymen?” Wormwood leaned forward and gave Gorski a pointed look, eyebrows raised. “Would that be worth such a falsehood?”

  The two men stared at each other for a long moment.

  “Tell me more, Englishman,” Gorski said.

  THREE

  Northern Scotland

  August, 1940

  Gorski peered through the mist of rain and fog shrouding the bleak Scottish countryside, as the Invicta four-door bumped and jostled along the poorly-maintained country road. He sat in the back seat along with Wormwood, whose pipe smoke added a fog of its own to the sedan’s interior. Behind the wheel sat a young man in civilian attire, whom Gorski knew was, in fact, no civilian at all, but a young and broad-shouldered lance corporal named Phillips. When Gorski had met the driver, he’d seen the butt of a revolver under Phillips’ coat, and a Thompson submachine gun lay across the passenger’s side of the front seat.

  Gorski had asked Wormwood about the need for such measures. “There is always the possibility,” Wormwood had replied, “that a regiment of Jerry paratroopers may drop across the road while we’re on our journey. Best to be prepared.”

  Gorski had decided to not comment on how one eager lance corporal and a Thompson would prove to be any kind of defense against several thousand Fallschirmjäger.

  Now, several hours later, the Invicta slowed and made a right-hand turn onto a private way, passing through a gated entrance along a low wall made of ancient, rough-fitted stones. Beyond the gate, the gravel road continued on for close to a kilometer across gently-rolling, open ground before it ended in front of a large, 18th century country house, built of dark stone and roofed in slate tiles. A thin curl of smoke rose from the chimney, and two vehicles occupied a large, open-faced garage next to the house. The first was an elderly two-seater runabout, the second a much more modern and imposing Morris 15-cwt
with a canvas-covered cargo bed. The Morris was painted in a dark brown, and lacked any insignia, but there was no mistaking the rough, utilitarian nature of the vehicle for anything other than military.

  In short order, the Invicta stopped in front of the house’s front entrance, and the three men disembarked. Gorski glanced at the windows looking out onto the drive, and saw a curtain fall back into place from a ground floor window.

  “We’ve been noticed,” Gorski spoke to Wormwood in Polish. He had been learning English over the last month, but did not yet feel in any way conversant in it, only able to recognize common phrases and the names for a variety of objects.

  “You are the last to arrive,” Wormwood replied. “The others got here yesterday.”

  Phillips opened the boot and removed Gorski’s suitcase, along with several grocery parcels. Gorski took his luggage and left Phillips to his groceries, then followed Wormwood up the stairs and through the front door, which was held open by an elderly, if robust, gentleman in the dress of a man who spent most of his time out walking the moors. The man nodded to Wormwood, then examined Gorski with a critical eye before saying something to Wormwood in a dialect of English so extreme, Gorski didn’t understand a single word. Wormwood glanced back at Gorski, but didn’t deign to interpret the comment.

  Inside, the manor house was quite impressive. Although there was little in the way of artwork or finery, the house was clearly very well maintained, its dark wooden interior polished, the stone floor pristine. As Wormwood and Gorski passed through the foyer and further into the house, Gorski noticed a number of things which spoke to the owner’s background. An old musket of 18th century origin was mounted on a wooden plaque along one wall, and a battered shako sat under glass on a pedestal in a wall niche. Along the length of the hallway they passed through, framed photographs of several generations of gentlemen in military attire were on display.