Chapter Forty
Third Bomber Flight Group
It was not commonly known that the Philippines had a quite large and productive film industry before the war had broken out. They specialized in producing extremely low-cost films that could be afforded in areas where the more expensive Hollywood films were unobtainable. A significant proportion of the films produced were either romances or action-adventure stories but nearly all of them featured a thread where a group of men on horseback was riding furiously to the rescue of either besieged settlers, a heroine in dire peril, or some other life or virtue-threatening situation. They may be cavalry, cowboys or some other group but they all rode their horses in madcap charges across the countryside. So popular were such scenes that audiences were known to get quite violent if the films missed out on this essential ingredient.
As a devotee of such films, Lieutenant Amiet van Paassen found the situation in the formation of six G3M2 aircraft very familiar. He had been helped by his Japanese copilot casually remarking that the enemy ships were 320 kilometers away but the G3M2 had a range at least ten times that and the only thing they were short of was time. As a result, the aircraft were moving at their highest officially possible speed, slightly over 400 kilometers per hour. That meant they would arrive at the scene around 1300. It would probably be too late to save the patrol ship and her charge, but they could make the two raiders pay for their victory. An hour behind them, another flight group of six aircraft would soon be closing in once they had finished being armed and fueled.
Van Paassen tried to imagine himself lashing at his aircraft with his reins in order to make it go faster. All he needed now was a miracle that would keep the friendly ships afloat until the torpedo bombers arrived to save the day. On the day that Indonesia had at last become formally independent, a naval victory was just the thing needed to get the country off to the right start. "Is there any way we can get this aircraft to go faster?"
Lieutenant Kenkichi said nothing but pointed at the emergency boost control on the flight engineer's panel. The flight engineer got the message and shifted the levers to the "war emergency setting". Kenchiki still said nothing but pointed at the engineer's log. The ground crew would need to know the engines had been over-boosted when they got back.
Hoyo Maru
The speed with which the first shot followed Captain Tachibana's order suggested that the 10 cm gun had been loaded and the gunner had his finger on the firing mechanism. The shot was well-ranged but off on line, exploding in the sea well ahead of the Rafael. The second hit the bow just above the waterline. Almost immediately the gun crew shifted their aiming point aft, hoping to hit their target dead center. In fact, they overdid it and their third shot hit the stern on the waterline.
Rafael returned fire, straddling her target with every salvo. On board the tanker, the splinter damage from the 15cm guns was already mounting up. However, Rafale was learning a lesson that those unfamiliar with tankers had always found difficult to absorb. Tankers died terribly hard. They were closely subdivided, equipped with elaborate firefighting equipment and their oil-filled tanks made them very resistant to flooding. Hoyo Maru was being hit and hurt but she was absorbing the damage rather than being overwhelmed by it.
Whilst both Enggano and the Rafael were exchanging shots, neither realized that they were about to make a radical change in Japan's history. The sixth shot from Hoyo Maru caused an enormous yellow flame to erupt from the Rafael's stern. The 10cm shell had pierced the side plating aft and severed an oil feed pipe that brought fuel from the aft tanks to the machinery compartments amidships. The shell had then penetrated an internal bulkhead and exploded in the hangar that held the two Arado 196 seaplanes. The two aircraft were wrecked and set on fire. Unfortunately for Rafael, fragments from the exploding shell severed the piping that led from the aviation fuel store to the hangar. The broken pipe sprayed raw aviation fuel onto the burning aircraft.
It was that spray of avgas that had caused the yellow burst of flame that had erupted from the stern. By itself, it was a serious but not disastrous blow. After all, when the ship had been converted from a freighter to an auxiliary cruiser, the possibility that the hangar might burn had been foreseen and elaborate firefighting measures installed. What turned the situation into a disaster was the severed oil pipe. This sprayed the fire with fuel oil and caused the fires to spread throughout the stern of the ship. It was only a minute or two before the burning oil reached the magazine that contained the ammunition for the stern gun. The temperature in that magazine soared from the fires and reached the point where the ammunition became unstable. The resulting explosion blew the aft end of the ship apart. Part of the stern broke off and sank while out-of-control fires spread throughout the stern half of the ship. Rafael, already mortally wounded, listed heavily to starboard as the fires and explosions continued to rack the ship.
Despite their best efforts, the crew could not control the heavy fires and Captain Gumprich was left with only the option of ordering the crew to abandon ship. At that point, all electrical power on the ship failed as a result of the fires spreading to the engine rooms. Because Rafael was a converted merchant ship, she did not have the emergency generators, complex maze of watertight compartments, or the multiple systems back-ups that allowed warships to fight hurt. It probably didn't matter though, the damage from fire and explosion had long since doomed the ship. She was flooding fast, her pumps disabled and the fires out of control. There was another massive explosion as the amidships magazine and the torpedo room exploded. When the smoke cloud cleared, Rafael had foundered. She had sunk at 12:30, seven minutes after the fatal hit with only 76 survivors from her crew of 354 men.
Patrol Ship Enggano
Aboard the Enggano the crew had been comprehensively stunned by what had just happened. Despite feeling the blast of the explosion that had destroyed Rafael, the crew of the 75mm gun were literally dancing around their weapon in pure, undiluted joy. Just over 6,000 meters away, Michel was stunned and silent by the catastrophe. The pyre of flame-laced smoke that marked the grave of Rafael and almost 80 percent of her crew seemed to cast a dark shadow over the Bontang Narrows.
"Resume firing immediately." Baart snapped the order out, but he was aware that his patrol ship was fast running out of 75mm ammunition. The Michel had resumed firing, once again her salvoes straddling the Enggano. Whether the destruction of the Rafael had concentrated the gunner's minds, Enggano's luck had run out or simply the odds had caught up with her, one of the shells tore into the aft superstructure. A 15 cm shell was a heavy hit for a ship that displaced just under 600 tons and had never been built to take part in a major sea battle. The structure aft of the funnel was shattered and the black smoke welling upwards told of a fire within the ruins. In many ways worse was the less obvious damage; one of the radio antennas had been damaged and the starboard lifeboat was wrecked. A minute later, the Enggano was hit again; this time on the stern, causing a second fire to start. Every man not needed to fire the gun or keep the ship moving rushed aft to try and control the fire.
"Sir, we're out of ammunition!" The runner from the gun carried the dire news to the bridge. The gun crew had done well, scoring several hits distributed across the Michel's hull but none had achieved the spectacular results that had destroyed Rafael.
"Have we got practice ammunition?"
"A few rounds, yes, Sir.
"Then shoot those!" Baart hoped that even firing blanks would achieve something. Perhaps that raider will think we can still hurt her, and we'll draw fire from the Hoyo Maru. "When we have finished firing blanks, put up a smoke screen and turn away from the Michel.
Baart looked at the chronometer. It was 12:40. Help is coming but where the hell is it?
Hoyo Maru
After the sinking of Rafael, Hoyo Maru had only been fired on by the two guns on Michel that could not be brought to bear on the Enggano. With the little patrol ship now burning, obviously seriously damaged and, to Captain Tachibana's trained eye, almost certainly firing blanks, the priorities on board the German raider had obviously changed. She was continuing to fire on the Enggano with two guns, but her two centerline weapons had been swung to fire upon Hoyo Maru. The four-gun salvoes immediately began to tell with a hit in the stern superstructure, followed by another into the hull. Fires erupted across the cargo handling deck although the safety interlocks prevented them from spreading down into the cargo. Captain Tachibana knew he was in a real fight now, and one where he was seriously outgunned, He desperately tried to prevent further hits by constantly changing course so that his path consisted of a series of random swerves.
The effect of that was that his gunnery seriously deteriorated. The extremely precise shooting that the tanker had maintained up to this point became progressively less effective as the track maintained by the Sokutekiban became less precise and its predictions more at variance with reality. To make matters worse, smoke from the fires was interfering with the rangefinder for the 10cm gun. In a few minutes though, it really didn't matter anymore. Hoyo Maru fired her last 10cm shells when Michel had closed in to less than 3500 meters. At that point and without return fire to distract the gunners, Michel's fire became rapid and precise. The damage on Hoyo Maru mounted quickly. At 12:58, one pattern of four shots hit the bridge, wiping out most of the senior officers and killing Captain Tachibana.
Without any apparent resistance, the Michel approached to within 300 meters of Hoyo Maru and fired two torpedoes into the crippled and burning ship. Both hit and exploded, blasting large holes in the starboard side of tanks number 1 and 2. This caused the Hoyo Maru to list to about thirty degrees, but the buoyancy of the oil in her other tanks kept her afloat. Nevertheless, the hits had left her dead in the water.
German Auxiliary Cruiser Schiff 28, “Michel”
"Will that bloody ship never sink?" Captain von Ruckteschell was almost pounding the bridge rail in frustration. A few minutes earlier, he had been sent a report that the magazines were virtually empty. An ammunition allowance that should have lasted him for a six-month cruise and multiple prizes had been used up on a small freighter, a patrol ship and a tanker, the last of two of which obstinately refused to sink. He'd fired two of his torpedoes and the damned tanker was still afloat.
The last straw was that the tanker was dead in the water and the smoke from her fires no longer covered her stern. That left the ensign that still flew proudly from her stern clearly visible. The shout from the lookout merely confirmed his worst fears.
"She's Japanese, Sir!"
"Scheisse!" von Ruckteschell suddenly understood what he had done. He was looking at a Japanese naval ensign, not a merchant marine flag. That meant he had just spent the last hour firing on a Japanese warship. Suddenly the whole horror of the situation crashed in on him. Wars had started over smaller incidents than this and the Japanese were not noted for being forgiving where insults to their flag were concerned. It was the culminating disaster of a voyage that seemed to have been cursed right from the start. He had nothing left to fight with; his raiding cruise was over. He had achieved nothing, even the little patrol ship had escaped him. He paced up and down, trying to decide what to do. There were no good options facing him. In fact, there were no bad ones either. The only choices he could make were between terrible options and even worse ones. Everything he believed in, everything he had wanted to achieve had turned into ashes.
There is only one thing to do, to try and contain this disaster. We must kill all the witnesses and then bluff our way out of the situation. First job is to make sure that damned tanker sinks. He gave the orders to maneuver Michel around the bow of the tanker and fire another torpedo into the wreck. To complete his frustration and finally convincing him that the fates really hated him for some reason or another, the torpedo hit the tanker, failed to explode and sank. It was the last straw. Driven mad with anger at the way the mission had disintegrated around him, he ordered his crew to start machine-gunning the lifeboats and rafts. He knew he was committing a war crime by doing so and may have realized all he was doing was making a bad situation worse, but he wasn't thinking anything even close to rationally.
It was only when he saw the tracers arcing over the tanker and realized his gun crews were deliberately firing high rather than murder fellow-seamen trying to abandon ship that he came to his senses. Convinced that the tanker had been lost, Michel started to pull away from the burning ship and left the battle scene. The raider was sailing due norther without any further concern about the Hoyo Maru when the lookouts warned of a formation of aircraft approaching. A minute or two later, the contact was identified as six Imperial Japanese Navy G3M torpedo bombers.
Third Bomber Flight Group
"There they are. Both of our ships are still afloat, that must be the raider heading north." Lieutenant van Paassen was quite unaware that he had referred to the two burning ships below as 'ours'. It was apparent that both were heavily damaged and in deep trouble. The tanker had a severe list and was burning in several places while the patrol ship's superstructure was a shambles and she had fires although less serious ones. Both were trailing oil, in the case of the tanker, a lot of it.
A signal light was flashing from the tanker and Lieutenant Kenkichi's eyes opened wide as he read it. "That changes everything. She is a Navy tanker, torpedoed twice, heavily damaged and her captain is dead. Heavy casualties to the crew. The senior surviving officer says the raider knew she is ours before they fired the torpedoes. This is war! Do you want me to fly the aircraft for the attack on the raider?"
Lieutenant van Paassen shook his head. "No, thank you. I must do this. Just tell me what to do."
The Japanese pilot gave a short, sharp nod. "Hai! Split into two flights of three, fly around until you are in front of the enemy then make your attack runs from the port and starboard bow quarters. Release from no more than 50 meters altitude and at 800 meters range."
The G3Ms split into two three-plane groups as advised and set off after the raider. They overtook the ship quickly and, once well in front of her, turned outwards while dropping down towards sea level. From above, the maneuver looked as if the aircraft had traced out a giant heart in the sky with the G3Ms forming the two lobes at the top and the raider the point at the bottom. By the time the maneuver was completed, the G3Ms were converging on the raider from both beams, 45 degrees off the bow. Carefully coached by the Japanese advisors on each aircraft, they were in process of executing a perfect hammerhead torpedo attack
van Paassen saw the Michel swelling in front of him and knew the thrill of skimming over the sea to attack an enemy ship. He saw the streams of anti-aircraft tracers coming towards him, seeming to float slowly at first but then appearing to accelerate as they streaked past his aircraft. Beside him, Kenkichi was measuring the range to the target and giving minor course and altitude corrections. "Wait, wait, wait, DROP! Now go straight on over him. Use the fixed machine gun in the nose to strafe him as we pass. That's what it’s there for."
German Auxiliary Cruiser Schiff 28, “Michel”
For a moment, von Ruckteschell had hoped that the aircraft would not attack but the swing-in and the hammerhead attack left him in no doubt that the Japanese pilots were after his blood. His forward anti-aircraft guns were ready, and they started firing as the G3Ms approached but their fire was ineffective. The 37mms were slow-firing and none of their shots came close. The 25mm guns were better but with only one twin mount capable of bearing on each formation, the barrage was too light to be effective. None of the torpedo bombers were even hit, let alone shot down. He remembered what the superintendent of the dockyard had said about his anti-aircraft battery, that it was heavier than most ships in the Navy. That didn’t say much for them.
His seaman's eye judged the approaching torpedoes, and he knew that it would take a miracle to save his ship. Swerving to comb the tracks of one set would present his broadside to the other. There was simply nothing else to do; once again there were no good or bad options available, just awful ones and worse ones. "Hard to port!"
Michel swung around to face the trio of torpedoes coming in from port. As she did so, first one group of three G3Ms passed over the ship, spraying it with machinegun fire as they did. Then the other followed, doing the same.
"Oh God, not again!" von Ruckteschell couldn't believe he was being strafed again. Not after everything else that had gone wrong. With despair in his voice, he looked up at the sky. "Why me? Oh, dear God, why me?"
Then he was knocked off his feet as the ship reeled from the first of three torpedo hits.
Patrol Ship Enggano
"Look at them go!" Baart was standing on his bridge, cheering wildly as the six G3Ms carried out their attack. One torpedo scored a direct hit on Michel's bows, blowing it off and leaving the ship already settling quickly. Two more hit the ship's starboard side, one in front of the bridge, one aft. That added a list to the ship's position, a list that was increasing rapidly. He could see men going over the side in a frantic effort to get clear of the sinking ship before they were sucked down. Privately, Baart had always wondered if the stories about the terrible suction from a sinking ship were true, but he had no desire to find out. Nevertheless, he started to take his battered, semi-mobile ship over to the scene to try and pick up survivors.
His first stop was a group of men in a life raft. He brought Enggano alongside and threw a scrambling net down over the side. The first man up stepped onto the deck, faced aft and then looked around. "I'm Tyler Barrow, master of the merchant ship Kanyaka. Strewth, this is a right do mate. Do us a favor would’ya? Pick up them Germans. We were locked up below the waterline and some of them came down to release us after the torpedoes hit. Saved us all they did.”
Baart looked at the sea around him. There were more survivors than there had been from Rafael but not that many more. “Very well, Captain. We will try.”
In the background, Michel was on her beam ends with the water lapping around her bridge. With a terrible groan, she gave up and slipped under.
It was 1900 before the crew of the Hoyo Maru, aided by the survivors of the Kanyaka was able to get under way again. The ship’s list had been partially corrected by pumping water into several of the port tanks. The Chief Engineer had inspected the engine room and established that the machinery was still working. Once the boilers had been relighted, it was just a matter of waiting. During that time, the motor launch had been repaired and sent to collect the other lifeboats and rafts. The men from the Kanyaka had put out the fires on the bridge and carried the body of the captain to his cabin. By the time evening was falling, the heavily damaged tanker had set sail for Balikpapan with Enggano once more proudly leading her.
1941 - Conflict of Interest
Re: 1941 - Conflict of Interest
Chapter Forty-One
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Admiral Toyoda Teijirō looked silently at the German Foreign Minister standing in front of his desk. The meeting of the Japanese cabinet had gone on until late in the night as befitted a profoundly important decision. What had made the meeting vastly more complex was that all the previous divisions within cabinet ranks made no sense when it came to dealing with the present situation. Each member of the Cabinet was feeling his way and trying to make sense of something unprecedented. The previous foreign minister, Matsuoka Yōsuke, had been a fervent supporter of the idea of supporting the Germans by attacking the Soviet Union in the east while it was fighting for survival in the west. He had been unable to grasp how much the action in the Makassar Strait had changed the basic situation and was now in obscure retirement. He would never hold any political power again. Yet, to his eternal credit and to the great admiration of the other participants in the meeting he had accepted his dismissal with honor. When his removal from office had been decided, his resignation speech had included the words, "Entering into the Tripartite Pact was the worst mistake of my life. Even now I still keenly feel it. Even my death won't take away this feeling."
Admiral Toyoda had been appointed in his place. He was still not sure that the Cabinet had come to the right decision the previous night but, the die was cast and now it was time to play the results. "Ambassador, I regret to inform you that relations between our two countries have developed in ways that are not necessarily to the advantage of your government."
Ambassador Eugen Ott stood impassive, but every syllable of the Admiral's opening words rang like the tolling of a bell. My God, they are going to declare war on us. "Admiral, I . . ."
Toyoda held up his hand. "We have looked very carefully at the situation world-wide. Your country's unprovoked assault on a Japanese naval auxiliary that was engaged in trade vital to the survival of our country is only one facet of this picture. There are many others, equally important that have affected our decisions."
The meeting the night before had considered exactly these points. The decision that had to be made was whether Japan should declare war on Germany or merely remain neutral. Toyoda had been one of those who had held that declaring war was the smart move to make. It would place Japan alongside rather than against the Commonwealth countries to the South and ensure Japan's vital supplies of raw materials. It would also place Japan alongside the United States instead of inexorably opposed to it. In years to come, that was a position that could be finessed into one of great advantage. One of the great ironies of the meeting was that the Spirit Warriors, who less than six months earlier had tried to force through the Navy plan to attack the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, had now voted to attack Germany. It seemed to Toyoda that they didn’t care who they went to war with as long as they could attack somebody. It was fortunate that the death of that drunken moron Yamaguchi has deprived them of much of their power. It will return as they find a new champion but before it does, we have a respite.
"In all our considerations one class of interests must come before all others. That is the interests of our country. When we survey the world that surrounds us, one thing is very clear. There is a strong pattern to international affairs. Those nations that sign alliances with Germany are its first victims. We do not intend to be your next victim, Mr. Ambassador.”
“But my government places great value on . . . .”
Once again, Admiral Toyoda held up his hand. “Just as you placed great value on your alliance with the Soviet Union? How many kilometers inside Soviet territory are your troops now, Mr. Ambassador? Four hundred? Five hundred? I must confess to being slightly out of date on the subject due to the massive scale of the attack. And is not a great battle now raging around the city of Kiev? These hardly seem to be the acts of a valued and reliable ally.”
“But . . .” Ott stumbled for words, not knowing quite how to answer the calm, polite and devastatingly accurate statement. Diplomacy was the art of lying for one’s country, but Toyoda wasn’t lying. Diplomatic precedent didn’t cover a situation where one party was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “The attack on your tanker was a mistake, an unfortunate error of identification. My government will pay compensation for the damage, for the loss of life . . . .”
Toyoda watched Ott dropping his eyes to the newspaper on Toyoda’s desk. It was the Washington Post, and the front page had a simple, one-word headline that read “HERO”. Under that start headline was a picture of Captain Tachibana. The Japanese Embassy had shown an unexpected stroke of genius. Instead of the usual stereotypical picture of a Japanese naval officer glaring at the camera with his hand on his sword, they had found one of a young naval officer with his family. Tachibana was in uniform but smiling shyly at the camera while holding the hand of his young daughter. His wife stood proudly beside him, in a full formal kimono and holding their baby son. Idly, Toyoda wondered if it really was Tachibana in the picture, not that it mattered. The story of how, after being attacked by two German cruisers (the term ‘auxiliary’ had mysteriously disappeared) an Indonesian patrol boat crew had sailed to certain death, fighting so the tanker could escape only to have that tanker turn around and support them was inspiring.
The fact they had, between them, won a splendid victory, albeit at great cost, had turned the story from heroic to triumphant. It appealed to Americans on a very visceral level. The idea of one brave man setting out to confront the forces of evil alone, only to find the entire community of good people rallying behind him was quintessentially American. The fact that Captain Tachibana was one of those ‘good people’ and was also ‘Japanese’ had linked the two generic identities and thus given the empire the first good publicity it had had in two decades.
“Compensation? You will compensate a wife for the loss of her husband, their children for the loss of their father? All those two children will know of him is that he died a hero.” In truth, Toyoda felt slightly sick at the way he was using the death of a very brave man yet in doing so, he was making that death serve the interests of his country. That must count for something. Doesn’t it?
“Your torpedo planes sank our cruisers. What of the men, hundreds of them, who died when they sank?” Ott was blustering but he had little left to play with. He was in the grim position of a diplomat trying to represent a country whose machinations and misconduct had finally caught up with it. He now understood how the German ambassador in Washington had felt when the Zimmermann Telegram had been intercepted and shown to the Americans in January 1917. The current situation was every bit as disastrous.
“They were not our torpedo planes. They belonged to the Du . . . to the Indonesian Naval Air Force. And they were flown by their pilots in support of their patrol boat. In any case, your cruisers had fired on a Japanese fleet auxiliary tanker, a clear act of war.”
“It was a mistake, an error of identification.” Ott was desperate. He could see the declaration of war coming and it would be a disaster of unparalleled magnitude. Just throwing the Japanese Navy in on the side of the Commonwealth and the Soviet Union would completely change the balance of power. If every Japanese captain was as gallant as Tachibana, they would be formidable adversaries indeed. Ott was aware of the capabilities of Japan's two latest 64,000-ton battleships armed with 18.1-inch guns and had a vivid picture of one of those monsters methodically pounding Germany's Bismarck and Tirpitz to scrap metal.
“The Hoyo Maru was flying the Japanese naval ensign, 6 meters tall by 11.5 meters long. Are your Captains truly so blind?” Ott could say nothing and looked at the ground beneath his feet. It hadn’t escaped him that he had not been offered a seat. Toyoda waited for a carefully calculated minute and then continued. “Our government spent all last night in committee over this development. There was much support for declaring war on Germany, but cooler heads prevailed. We have reached a conclusion which is being sent by telegram to all the major capitals of the world. Including Berlin and Moscow. In that telegram, the Government of Japan formally repudiates the Tripartite Pact and withdraws from it and all its provisions. We also condemn your government’s attack on the Soviet Union as an act of unprovoked aggression. Please advise your government that the Empire of Japan is neutral in this war and will behave as such. That includes sinking any warship that tries to interfere with our trading activities. Anywhere. Now leave and advise your Foreign Minister that Germany should no longer consider the empire of Japan a friendly power.”
Ott blanched. When Ribbentrop gets that message, he will be furious. It is only one stage short of a full declaration of war and it destroys a decade of diplomacy. Did nobody think that something like this could happen when they sent raiders out to prey upon merchant shipping?
A few minutes later after a stunned yet relieved to be still at peace Ott had left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Admiral Toyoda had another visitor. This time he rose to his feet as his guest entered and ushered him to a seat. “Tovarish Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, welcome to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. You have received a copy of our telegram announcing the dissolution of the Tripartite Pact?”
Molotov nodded curtly. He was well aware that with the departure of Italy the year before, Germany had now lost both of its major international allies. It was a stunning political defeat. Toyoda nodded in acknowledgement of that fact. “I have asked you here to advise you, simply as a matter of courtesy, the situation in China requires us to withdraw many of our army units from our mutual border. Obviously, were you to withdraw some of your own forces as well, this display of mutual good faith and trust would be an example to the world. It would show that we are both responsible members of the international community.”
“It certainly would.” Molotov ran the thought through his mind. The Far Eastern divisions were the best-equipped, best-trained and best-led forces the Soviet Union had. Freeing them up would be an invaluable addition to the Soviet defense. Especially since the huge battle around Kiev was not going well. He also knew that Japan desperately needed the troops stationed along the border to pursue the China Campaign. This unspoken deal would suit both sides very well indeed. “How can we trust you?”
“You can’t.” Toyoda was disarmingly honest. “On another matter though, our intelligence services have arrested a man called Richard Sorge for espionage. We thought he was working for the Germans, but we now are certain he was one of your assets. We will release him, alive and unharmed, into your custody immediately. While your internal affairs are your own business, he might make a useful informal point of contact between our governments. Sometimes such things, a back door if you like, can be of great value when it comes to avoiding misunderstandings.”
Molotov simulated sincerity extremely well. “I know nothing of this man, but the Soviet Union is always willing to extend sanctuary and protection to a refugee with nowhere else to turn. If he wishes to stay in Japan as a Soviet citizen, that would be his decision.”
Inside he was stunned. He knew Sorge was in control of the largest espionage ring in Japan and the knowledge locked in the man’s head on both Germany and Japan was priceless. By giving him back to the Soviet Union, Japan was effectively opening its books to them and giving them an insight into their activities. Molotov realized this was a gesture of good will, one intended to assure the Soviet Union that Japan’s change of position was real and solid.
Toyoda looked at Molotov and knew that the implications of this priceless gift had sunk in. “By the way, the night before Sorge was arrested, he was sleeping with Frau Ott. The wife of the German Ambassador. If she did mention anything interesting during the inevitable pillow talk, could you let us know?”
Room X, Communications Security Establishment, Ontario, Canada
Lt. Col. Arthur Terence Roper-Caldbeck was just settling back with a nice cup of fresh tea when Geraldine Morris burst into his office with a message clutched firmly in her hand. "Colonel, Sir, sorry sir, but this has just come in. German diplomatic code from Tokyo. We cracked it easily enough but the message, Sir, it changes everything."
Roper-Caldbeck took the somewhat crumpled message flimsy and started to read it. "I hope this was worthwhile interrupting my afternoon cup of tea for . . .. My God, you're right. This does change everything. What do you think, Gennie?"
"Sir, if I'm reading that right, the Japanese are telling the Germans that if they call, nobody will be home. Reminds me of the time when an unwanted suitor asked me out and I told him I was washing my eyebrows." She paused for a second. "Sir, I think that may be the most important message we've intercepted here."
"It is. Gennie, please find Lieutenant Brooker and bring him here. Immediately." Roper-Caldbeck thought for a moment. "And, when we have our meeting, I would like you to sit in on it. Watch and learn session. I think you have a talent for this kind of work, and we ought to help you develop it."
Twenty minutes later, Brooker let out a long, low whistle. "The Japanese have kicked over the table, Sir. In a way, I'm surprised they didn't do this before. The Tripartite Pact was causing them nothing, but trouble and they were getting very little out of it. In fact, probably less than nothing. The only Chinese forces that are putting up any major resistance to the Japanese in China are their German-trained divisions. Come to think of it, it was German-trained Thai divisions that chopped up the Japanese attack in Indochina last year."
"It was indeed. And a mightily bloody chopping it was. Big question, should we pass this through to the Americans? We have a major conflict of interest here. On one hand, this facility and its capabilities must remain secret, on the other hand we can score a major coup with the Americans by telling them this has happened. The question is, which serves our interests better?"
Brooker thought carefully. "We depend on the Americans for the equipment and resources that keep us in the war. I think we should tell them, demonstration of confidence of course, but also telling them we aren't precisely helpless and can pay for our place at the table."
"Gennie?"
Morris looked a bit like a deer caught in headlights. She hadn't expected to be asked anything but wasn't naïve enough to think that her opinions would count for much in the balance. "I would say keep quiet, Sir. The Americans have good codebreakers as well and it isn’t as if the German diplomatic code is hard to crack. I bet they already know about this. Lieutenant Brooker makes a very good argument, Sir, and strangely the strength of his argument is a reason why we shouldn’t say anything. For all the reasons he has produced, they will expect us to tell them if we know. If we say nothing, they will assume we don’t know and that adds to the security around this place."
"Thank you, both of you. I'll think this over and give you my decision later this afternoon."
Room 208, Munitions Building, Washington D.C. USA.
Secretary of War Henry Stimson was enjoying the discomfiture of Cordell Hull with very carefully concealed glee. Hull, on the other hand, had an expression closely resembling that of a stunned cod. Watching from the sidelines, Stuyvesant could sympathize with him. In one short telegram, the Japanese had kicked the props out from under his entire foreign policy construct. In fact, opened the trapdoor under the gallows and let him drop would probably be a better simile. Hull had based his entire worldview on the Tripartite Pact being an immutable part of the international geopolitical scene and that has just come crashing down.
"I have just received another statement from the Japanese Government. More precisely, from the Ministry of the Navy." Stimson looked around the room. The feeling of trepidation was tangible. "The truth is that ever since that damned German raider opened fire, the situation has been changing faster than we can respond. The latest communique states that in view of the international need to prevent attacks on trade passing through Indonesian waters, the Navy will be donating four Shimushu class small destroyers to the Indonesian Navy so they can ensure safe passage for merchant ships though their waters."
Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy nodded slowly while pushing out his lower lip. "That makes sense. A lot of sense. Those ships aren’t really destroyers, they're more like fast minesweepers with secondary anti-ship and anti-submarine roles. The Japanese were building a lot of them in anticipation of a major naval war in the Pacific and if that is going away, they really don’t need them. Or at least as many of them. Giving away the oldest is a good way of winning friends and influencing people. Which suggests, by the way, we ought to be doing the same thing. A couple of those destroyer escorts the Navy are building?"
"There was a little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good but when she was bad, she was horrid." Henry Morgenthau quoted the poem thoughtfully. "It fits the Japanese, doesn’t it? They swing from one to the other without any warning. Looks to me like we've just had a swing. I just wish we knew what has caused it. The more important question is, what do we do about it? Judge?"
The use of his familiar nickname seemed to arouse Cordell Hull from his brown study. “We have a massive and complicated conflict of interest, and we can’t move until we resolve it. If the Japanese had intended to leave us completely bewildered, they couldn’t have done a better job. The Japanese have invaded China, an action that is inimical to our interests. Therefore, we were opposed to Japan and allied with China. Japan is, or was, allied with Germany who is are our most dangerous foe. Only Germany is also aligned with China. The Commonwealth is at war with Germany and is fighting them, with some degree of success, in alliance with the Soviet Union. Therefore, we are aligned with the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth. Only, Japan has been greatly affronted by the Germans and has repudiated its alliance with them. So much so it is now supplying armaments to the Du . . . to Indonesia so they can fight the German ships operating in their waters. So, Japan is now aligned with the Commonwealth and other countries in Southeast Asia. That means we are aligned with Japan as well. If any of you can make more sense out of that than I can you can have my position in government and welcome to it.”
“We have to consider the possibility that the time has come to throw China to the wolves.” Stuyvesant had been sketching flow charts on his pad. “Viewed purely from our perspective, if we do that, it knocks the blocking piece out of the puzzle. Once we do that, everything falls into place.”
“I’m sorry, we are talking about a major nation here, the most populous on Earth and one that is being invaded by a ruthless aggressor. This isn’t one of your companies we are talking about here, Philip, it's an entire society. We have a responsibility to them.”
“Why?” Stuyvesant was genuinely interested. He could see all the moral arguments being made and understood that the Japanese actions in China had been unspeakable but there was a much wider picture to be considered and Nazi Germany was the main enemy.
"Well, the China Lobby . . . ." Hull floundered to a standstill. The problem was that the importance of China had been accepted for so long that the justification for it, if one had ever existed, had been long forgotten. “They will raise hell if we leave the Chinese to their fate.”
"A group organized to influence U.S. policy using a narrow focus of activity on behalf of China? Do they have a veto on what we do?" Stuyvesant was asking the questions calmly and politely but each one thrust another steely knife into the carcass of the beast.
"These lobbyists on behalf of China use the most sophisticated public relations methods available. They employ mass mailings, press releases, speaker tours, petition drives to mobilize opinion leaders in the colleges, churches and civic organizations across the country." Hull realized that wasn't a reason why they should have any more influence than any other group of lobbyists. He also realized that the conflict of interest was a simple one once the primary problem was identified. Either upset the China Lobby and harm its interests, thus causing internal political problems inside the USA or face a massively complex international crisis. “They have a remarkable level of political influence and are not afraid to use it. Crossing them could easily cost us dear in the mid-term elections”
"Then, you have an opportunity right now to break that group." Stuyvesant thought for a second. "Tell the Japanese we'll quietly withdraw our opposition to their oil and other trade in recognition of their good international citizenship in Indonesia. And that our forbearance will only continue if Japanese conduct in China is compliant with international law. Look, Mr. Secretary, we're going to be in this war soon enough, we all know it. When we do, our support to the Soviet Union will be funneled through the Eastern Soviet ports. They're a few miles from Japan. If we don’t have an understanding about using those ports now, we'll have to get one in the future when the situation will be much worse. The price is throwing China to the wolves. It is like running a business, Mr. Secretary, timing is everything. If we’re going to make investments, we do it when we can buy low and sell high. So, we do that now when the situation is favorable. It's the price of peace in the Pacific.”
Hull looked as if he was about to be sick. “My God, what is the world coming to? We buy peace at the cost of tens, hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives?”
It was Henry Morgenthau who answered that. “It’s as Philip said, Judge. We buy low and sell high. We’re getting the peaceful Pacific we need buy buying low and we’re getting a good price for the Chinese. For some reason, we don’t know why, the Japanese have switched to being good, for a while anyway. It’s probably better they take China now before they switch back again. Look at Formosa. They acquired that when they were being ‘good’ and they built the country up with railways, schools, new industry, even hospitals. Who says they won’t do that for China? And they will know we are watching them carefully for any sign of unacceptable behavior.”
“Do we know they will?” Hull sounded desperate for reassurance.
“No.” Morgenthau was honest. “But that’s a better chance than anything else we can ask for.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Admiral Toyoda Teijirō looked silently at the German Foreign Minister standing in front of his desk. The meeting of the Japanese cabinet had gone on until late in the night as befitted a profoundly important decision. What had made the meeting vastly more complex was that all the previous divisions within cabinet ranks made no sense when it came to dealing with the present situation. Each member of the Cabinet was feeling his way and trying to make sense of something unprecedented. The previous foreign minister, Matsuoka Yōsuke, had been a fervent supporter of the idea of supporting the Germans by attacking the Soviet Union in the east while it was fighting for survival in the west. He had been unable to grasp how much the action in the Makassar Strait had changed the basic situation and was now in obscure retirement. He would never hold any political power again. Yet, to his eternal credit and to the great admiration of the other participants in the meeting he had accepted his dismissal with honor. When his removal from office had been decided, his resignation speech had included the words, "Entering into the Tripartite Pact was the worst mistake of my life. Even now I still keenly feel it. Even my death won't take away this feeling."
Admiral Toyoda had been appointed in his place. He was still not sure that the Cabinet had come to the right decision the previous night but, the die was cast and now it was time to play the results. "Ambassador, I regret to inform you that relations between our two countries have developed in ways that are not necessarily to the advantage of your government."
Ambassador Eugen Ott stood impassive, but every syllable of the Admiral's opening words rang like the tolling of a bell. My God, they are going to declare war on us. "Admiral, I . . ."
Toyoda held up his hand. "We have looked very carefully at the situation world-wide. Your country's unprovoked assault on a Japanese naval auxiliary that was engaged in trade vital to the survival of our country is only one facet of this picture. There are many others, equally important that have affected our decisions."
The meeting the night before had considered exactly these points. The decision that had to be made was whether Japan should declare war on Germany or merely remain neutral. Toyoda had been one of those who had held that declaring war was the smart move to make. It would place Japan alongside rather than against the Commonwealth countries to the South and ensure Japan's vital supplies of raw materials. It would also place Japan alongside the United States instead of inexorably opposed to it. In years to come, that was a position that could be finessed into one of great advantage. One of the great ironies of the meeting was that the Spirit Warriors, who less than six months earlier had tried to force through the Navy plan to attack the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, had now voted to attack Germany. It seemed to Toyoda that they didn’t care who they went to war with as long as they could attack somebody. It was fortunate that the death of that drunken moron Yamaguchi has deprived them of much of their power. It will return as they find a new champion but before it does, we have a respite.
"In all our considerations one class of interests must come before all others. That is the interests of our country. When we survey the world that surrounds us, one thing is very clear. There is a strong pattern to international affairs. Those nations that sign alliances with Germany are its first victims. We do not intend to be your next victim, Mr. Ambassador.”
“But my government places great value on . . . .”
Once again, Admiral Toyoda held up his hand. “Just as you placed great value on your alliance with the Soviet Union? How many kilometers inside Soviet territory are your troops now, Mr. Ambassador? Four hundred? Five hundred? I must confess to being slightly out of date on the subject due to the massive scale of the attack. And is not a great battle now raging around the city of Kiev? These hardly seem to be the acts of a valued and reliable ally.”
“But . . .” Ott stumbled for words, not knowing quite how to answer the calm, polite and devastatingly accurate statement. Diplomacy was the art of lying for one’s country, but Toyoda wasn’t lying. Diplomatic precedent didn’t cover a situation where one party was telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “The attack on your tanker was a mistake, an unfortunate error of identification. My government will pay compensation for the damage, for the loss of life . . . .”
Toyoda watched Ott dropping his eyes to the newspaper on Toyoda’s desk. It was the Washington Post, and the front page had a simple, one-word headline that read “HERO”. Under that start headline was a picture of Captain Tachibana. The Japanese Embassy had shown an unexpected stroke of genius. Instead of the usual stereotypical picture of a Japanese naval officer glaring at the camera with his hand on his sword, they had found one of a young naval officer with his family. Tachibana was in uniform but smiling shyly at the camera while holding the hand of his young daughter. His wife stood proudly beside him, in a full formal kimono and holding their baby son. Idly, Toyoda wondered if it really was Tachibana in the picture, not that it mattered. The story of how, after being attacked by two German cruisers (the term ‘auxiliary’ had mysteriously disappeared) an Indonesian patrol boat crew had sailed to certain death, fighting so the tanker could escape only to have that tanker turn around and support them was inspiring.
The fact they had, between them, won a splendid victory, albeit at great cost, had turned the story from heroic to triumphant. It appealed to Americans on a very visceral level. The idea of one brave man setting out to confront the forces of evil alone, only to find the entire community of good people rallying behind him was quintessentially American. The fact that Captain Tachibana was one of those ‘good people’ and was also ‘Japanese’ had linked the two generic identities and thus given the empire the first good publicity it had had in two decades.
“Compensation? You will compensate a wife for the loss of her husband, their children for the loss of their father? All those two children will know of him is that he died a hero.” In truth, Toyoda felt slightly sick at the way he was using the death of a very brave man yet in doing so, he was making that death serve the interests of his country. That must count for something. Doesn’t it?
“Your torpedo planes sank our cruisers. What of the men, hundreds of them, who died when they sank?” Ott was blustering but he had little left to play with. He was in the grim position of a diplomat trying to represent a country whose machinations and misconduct had finally caught up with it. He now understood how the German ambassador in Washington had felt when the Zimmermann Telegram had been intercepted and shown to the Americans in January 1917. The current situation was every bit as disastrous.
“They were not our torpedo planes. They belonged to the Du . . . to the Indonesian Naval Air Force. And they were flown by their pilots in support of their patrol boat. In any case, your cruisers had fired on a Japanese fleet auxiliary tanker, a clear act of war.”
“It was a mistake, an error of identification.” Ott was desperate. He could see the declaration of war coming and it would be a disaster of unparalleled magnitude. Just throwing the Japanese Navy in on the side of the Commonwealth and the Soviet Union would completely change the balance of power. If every Japanese captain was as gallant as Tachibana, they would be formidable adversaries indeed. Ott was aware of the capabilities of Japan's two latest 64,000-ton battleships armed with 18.1-inch guns and had a vivid picture of one of those monsters methodically pounding Germany's Bismarck and Tirpitz to scrap metal.
“The Hoyo Maru was flying the Japanese naval ensign, 6 meters tall by 11.5 meters long. Are your Captains truly so blind?” Ott could say nothing and looked at the ground beneath his feet. It hadn’t escaped him that he had not been offered a seat. Toyoda waited for a carefully calculated minute and then continued. “Our government spent all last night in committee over this development. There was much support for declaring war on Germany, but cooler heads prevailed. We have reached a conclusion which is being sent by telegram to all the major capitals of the world. Including Berlin and Moscow. In that telegram, the Government of Japan formally repudiates the Tripartite Pact and withdraws from it and all its provisions. We also condemn your government’s attack on the Soviet Union as an act of unprovoked aggression. Please advise your government that the Empire of Japan is neutral in this war and will behave as such. That includes sinking any warship that tries to interfere with our trading activities. Anywhere. Now leave and advise your Foreign Minister that Germany should no longer consider the empire of Japan a friendly power.”
Ott blanched. When Ribbentrop gets that message, he will be furious. It is only one stage short of a full declaration of war and it destroys a decade of diplomacy. Did nobody think that something like this could happen when they sent raiders out to prey upon merchant shipping?
A few minutes later after a stunned yet relieved to be still at peace Ott had left the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Admiral Toyoda had another visitor. This time he rose to his feet as his guest entered and ushered him to a seat. “Tovarish Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov, welcome to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. You have received a copy of our telegram announcing the dissolution of the Tripartite Pact?”
Molotov nodded curtly. He was well aware that with the departure of Italy the year before, Germany had now lost both of its major international allies. It was a stunning political defeat. Toyoda nodded in acknowledgement of that fact. “I have asked you here to advise you, simply as a matter of courtesy, the situation in China requires us to withdraw many of our army units from our mutual border. Obviously, were you to withdraw some of your own forces as well, this display of mutual good faith and trust would be an example to the world. It would show that we are both responsible members of the international community.”
“It certainly would.” Molotov ran the thought through his mind. The Far Eastern divisions were the best-equipped, best-trained and best-led forces the Soviet Union had. Freeing them up would be an invaluable addition to the Soviet defense. Especially since the huge battle around Kiev was not going well. He also knew that Japan desperately needed the troops stationed along the border to pursue the China Campaign. This unspoken deal would suit both sides very well indeed. “How can we trust you?”
“You can’t.” Toyoda was disarmingly honest. “On another matter though, our intelligence services have arrested a man called Richard Sorge for espionage. We thought he was working for the Germans, but we now are certain he was one of your assets. We will release him, alive and unharmed, into your custody immediately. While your internal affairs are your own business, he might make a useful informal point of contact between our governments. Sometimes such things, a back door if you like, can be of great value when it comes to avoiding misunderstandings.”
Molotov simulated sincerity extremely well. “I know nothing of this man, but the Soviet Union is always willing to extend sanctuary and protection to a refugee with nowhere else to turn. If he wishes to stay in Japan as a Soviet citizen, that would be his decision.”
Inside he was stunned. He knew Sorge was in control of the largest espionage ring in Japan and the knowledge locked in the man’s head on both Germany and Japan was priceless. By giving him back to the Soviet Union, Japan was effectively opening its books to them and giving them an insight into their activities. Molotov realized this was a gesture of good will, one intended to assure the Soviet Union that Japan’s change of position was real and solid.
Toyoda looked at Molotov and knew that the implications of this priceless gift had sunk in. “By the way, the night before Sorge was arrested, he was sleeping with Frau Ott. The wife of the German Ambassador. If she did mention anything interesting during the inevitable pillow talk, could you let us know?”
Room X, Communications Security Establishment, Ontario, Canada
Lt. Col. Arthur Terence Roper-Caldbeck was just settling back with a nice cup of fresh tea when Geraldine Morris burst into his office with a message clutched firmly in her hand. "Colonel, Sir, sorry sir, but this has just come in. German diplomatic code from Tokyo. We cracked it easily enough but the message, Sir, it changes everything."
Roper-Caldbeck took the somewhat crumpled message flimsy and started to read it. "I hope this was worthwhile interrupting my afternoon cup of tea for . . .. My God, you're right. This does change everything. What do you think, Gennie?"
"Sir, if I'm reading that right, the Japanese are telling the Germans that if they call, nobody will be home. Reminds me of the time when an unwanted suitor asked me out and I told him I was washing my eyebrows." She paused for a second. "Sir, I think that may be the most important message we've intercepted here."
"It is. Gennie, please find Lieutenant Brooker and bring him here. Immediately." Roper-Caldbeck thought for a moment. "And, when we have our meeting, I would like you to sit in on it. Watch and learn session. I think you have a talent for this kind of work, and we ought to help you develop it."
Twenty minutes later, Brooker let out a long, low whistle. "The Japanese have kicked over the table, Sir. In a way, I'm surprised they didn't do this before. The Tripartite Pact was causing them nothing, but trouble and they were getting very little out of it. In fact, probably less than nothing. The only Chinese forces that are putting up any major resistance to the Japanese in China are their German-trained divisions. Come to think of it, it was German-trained Thai divisions that chopped up the Japanese attack in Indochina last year."
"It was indeed. And a mightily bloody chopping it was. Big question, should we pass this through to the Americans? We have a major conflict of interest here. On one hand, this facility and its capabilities must remain secret, on the other hand we can score a major coup with the Americans by telling them this has happened. The question is, which serves our interests better?"
Brooker thought carefully. "We depend on the Americans for the equipment and resources that keep us in the war. I think we should tell them, demonstration of confidence of course, but also telling them we aren't precisely helpless and can pay for our place at the table."
"Gennie?"
Morris looked a bit like a deer caught in headlights. She hadn't expected to be asked anything but wasn't naïve enough to think that her opinions would count for much in the balance. "I would say keep quiet, Sir. The Americans have good codebreakers as well and it isn’t as if the German diplomatic code is hard to crack. I bet they already know about this. Lieutenant Brooker makes a very good argument, Sir, and strangely the strength of his argument is a reason why we shouldn’t say anything. For all the reasons he has produced, they will expect us to tell them if we know. If we say nothing, they will assume we don’t know and that adds to the security around this place."
"Thank you, both of you. I'll think this over and give you my decision later this afternoon."
Room 208, Munitions Building, Washington D.C. USA.
Secretary of War Henry Stimson was enjoying the discomfiture of Cordell Hull with very carefully concealed glee. Hull, on the other hand, had an expression closely resembling that of a stunned cod. Watching from the sidelines, Stuyvesant could sympathize with him. In one short telegram, the Japanese had kicked the props out from under his entire foreign policy construct. In fact, opened the trapdoor under the gallows and let him drop would probably be a better simile. Hull had based his entire worldview on the Tripartite Pact being an immutable part of the international geopolitical scene and that has just come crashing down.
"I have just received another statement from the Japanese Government. More precisely, from the Ministry of the Navy." Stimson looked around the room. The feeling of trepidation was tangible. "The truth is that ever since that damned German raider opened fire, the situation has been changing faster than we can respond. The latest communique states that in view of the international need to prevent attacks on trade passing through Indonesian waters, the Navy will be donating four Shimushu class small destroyers to the Indonesian Navy so they can ensure safe passage for merchant ships though their waters."
Frank Knox, Secretary of the Navy nodded slowly while pushing out his lower lip. "That makes sense. A lot of sense. Those ships aren’t really destroyers, they're more like fast minesweepers with secondary anti-ship and anti-submarine roles. The Japanese were building a lot of them in anticipation of a major naval war in the Pacific and if that is going away, they really don’t need them. Or at least as many of them. Giving away the oldest is a good way of winning friends and influencing people. Which suggests, by the way, we ought to be doing the same thing. A couple of those destroyer escorts the Navy are building?"
"There was a little girl who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good but when she was bad, she was horrid." Henry Morgenthau quoted the poem thoughtfully. "It fits the Japanese, doesn’t it? They swing from one to the other without any warning. Looks to me like we've just had a swing. I just wish we knew what has caused it. The more important question is, what do we do about it? Judge?"
The use of his familiar nickname seemed to arouse Cordell Hull from his brown study. “We have a massive and complicated conflict of interest, and we can’t move until we resolve it. If the Japanese had intended to leave us completely bewildered, they couldn’t have done a better job. The Japanese have invaded China, an action that is inimical to our interests. Therefore, we were opposed to Japan and allied with China. Japan is, or was, allied with Germany who is are our most dangerous foe. Only Germany is also aligned with China. The Commonwealth is at war with Germany and is fighting them, with some degree of success, in alliance with the Soviet Union. Therefore, we are aligned with the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth. Only, Japan has been greatly affronted by the Germans and has repudiated its alliance with them. So much so it is now supplying armaments to the Du . . . to Indonesia so they can fight the German ships operating in their waters. So, Japan is now aligned with the Commonwealth and other countries in Southeast Asia. That means we are aligned with Japan as well. If any of you can make more sense out of that than I can you can have my position in government and welcome to it.”
“We have to consider the possibility that the time has come to throw China to the wolves.” Stuyvesant had been sketching flow charts on his pad. “Viewed purely from our perspective, if we do that, it knocks the blocking piece out of the puzzle. Once we do that, everything falls into place.”
“I’m sorry, we are talking about a major nation here, the most populous on Earth and one that is being invaded by a ruthless aggressor. This isn’t one of your companies we are talking about here, Philip, it's an entire society. We have a responsibility to them.”
“Why?” Stuyvesant was genuinely interested. He could see all the moral arguments being made and understood that the Japanese actions in China had been unspeakable but there was a much wider picture to be considered and Nazi Germany was the main enemy.
"Well, the China Lobby . . . ." Hull floundered to a standstill. The problem was that the importance of China had been accepted for so long that the justification for it, if one had ever existed, had been long forgotten. “They will raise hell if we leave the Chinese to their fate.”
"A group organized to influence U.S. policy using a narrow focus of activity on behalf of China? Do they have a veto on what we do?" Stuyvesant was asking the questions calmly and politely but each one thrust another steely knife into the carcass of the beast.
"These lobbyists on behalf of China use the most sophisticated public relations methods available. They employ mass mailings, press releases, speaker tours, petition drives to mobilize opinion leaders in the colleges, churches and civic organizations across the country." Hull realized that wasn't a reason why they should have any more influence than any other group of lobbyists. He also realized that the conflict of interest was a simple one once the primary problem was identified. Either upset the China Lobby and harm its interests, thus causing internal political problems inside the USA or face a massively complex international crisis. “They have a remarkable level of political influence and are not afraid to use it. Crossing them could easily cost us dear in the mid-term elections”
"Then, you have an opportunity right now to break that group." Stuyvesant thought for a second. "Tell the Japanese we'll quietly withdraw our opposition to their oil and other trade in recognition of their good international citizenship in Indonesia. And that our forbearance will only continue if Japanese conduct in China is compliant with international law. Look, Mr. Secretary, we're going to be in this war soon enough, we all know it. When we do, our support to the Soviet Union will be funneled through the Eastern Soviet ports. They're a few miles from Japan. If we don’t have an understanding about using those ports now, we'll have to get one in the future when the situation will be much worse. The price is throwing China to the wolves. It is like running a business, Mr. Secretary, timing is everything. If we’re going to make investments, we do it when we can buy low and sell high. So, we do that now when the situation is favorable. It's the price of peace in the Pacific.”
Hull looked as if he was about to be sick. “My God, what is the world coming to? We buy peace at the cost of tens, hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives?”
It was Henry Morgenthau who answered that. “It’s as Philip said, Judge. We buy low and sell high. We’re getting the peaceful Pacific we need buy buying low and we’re getting a good price for the Chinese. For some reason, we don’t know why, the Japanese have switched to being good, for a while anyway. It’s probably better they take China now before they switch back again. Look at Formosa. They acquired that when they were being ‘good’ and they built the country up with railways, schools, new industry, even hospitals. Who says they won’t do that for China? And they will know we are watching them carefully for any sign of unacceptable behavior.”
“Do we know they will?” Hull sounded desperate for reassurance.
“No.” Morgenthau was honest. “But that’s a better chance than anything else we can ask for.”
Re: 1941 - Conflict of Interest
Chapter Forty-Two
Isabel Jones' House, 70 Upper Debert River Road, Debert, Nova Scotia
"I was lonely, Digger. Where have you been for the last few days?" Isabel Jones sounded petulant.
"Oh, we had a major thing back at the base. There was a Hun submarine that came in close inshore and we got it. You must have read about it in the newspapers?"
"Oh, that! I did read about that in the local paper. You were involved in it?" Isabel snuggled a little closer to him. "How did a submarine get so close in?"
"Oh, it happens." Digby Dale was enjoying the feel of Isabel so close to him. "Submarines can be very hard to spot until they do something to attract attention. We think that one had run his batteries down low and took the chance of recharging them in daylight. The piece of sea he picked is away from all the convoy routes and ships tend to avoid it because the waters are treacherous. He just got unlucky, I guess. I was on a navigational test flight over the area and bob's your uncle."
Dale paused for a second there and remembered the discussion he'd had with the counter-intelligence people about the leakage of information from Debert. He reviewed what he had just said and reassured himself that nothing he'd said couldn't have been obtained from the newspapers. Well, the bit that I spotted the sub was but that didn’t matter much. Or did it? "That was it really. I called it in, and they sent a couple of bombers to deal with it."
"It sounds so exciting. What happened next?" Over the years, Dale had heard the expression 'being goosed by one's guardian angel' and had it described as a 'feather tickling the mind' or a 'breath on the back of the neck'. The message he got from his guardian angel right then was closer to receiving a full force kick in the groin by a rugby player wearing Canadian Army ammunition boots. That last question was one too many.
"I don't really know, Izzie, that's the honest truth. The bombers arrived and I was running low on fuel, so I left. I heard on the way back that they'd sunk the damned thing. I assume they made their runs, the sub tried to dive, and they got it with bombs but I really don’t know. Nobody talks about the details. I guess the bomber barons get a briefing paper but us fighter types don’t. Fair enough, it's not really our business.”
"But you spotted him. That's not fair. They should have told you what had happened." Isabel pouted. In fact, Dale had received a detailed briefing on what had happened and on the effects his shots had had on the submarine. The German U-boat crew had been remarkably cooperative once they fully understood their position.
"Operational security. Everything is judged by a 'need to know' and I suppose that the top brass has decided I didn’t need to know. Perhaps it will change when I move to our next project." Dale was watching Isabel very carefully and he picked up on the sudden increase in interest. My God, I think she is the security leak. Whether directly or somebody else is using her. I wonder if she knew the cock knocker who took a punch at me.
"You're not moving away are you, Digby?"
"Oh no, the new aircraft is coming to us. Don't know anything about it right now but it's supposed to be something special. Might even get a promotion out of it."
“I think I can come up with something better than that.” Isabel gave him a sly smile. “Come on upstairs.”
RCAF Station Debert, Nova Scotia, Canada
“Thank you for coming down, Geoff. I know you are swamped with work, but I really need some important advice.”
“Important enough for a joyride?” Detective Inspector Geoffrey Gour had ruined his bargaining position by failing to conceal the longing in his voice.
“I’ve got a Defiant trainer that needs a test-flight. Just like the fighter but with a second seat instead of the turret.” Dale was trying to hide his grin. Like Gour, he wasn’t being very successful. “Thirty minutes?”
“How about an hour?”
“Split the difference? Call it forty-five minutes?”
“Deal! How can I help you?”
“Remember that seaman who socked me? Helmut Schlee? I’ve been thinking about that, and something occurred to me. We know the attack was set up, don’t we?”
“It certainly looks that way. We do know you were specifically targeted. Why is an open question.”
“Well, I may have an answer to that. Remember I told you I had a girl in the town? Well, we met at that incident. Schlee bopped me on the nose, I was bleeding like a stuck pig, and she gave me a handkerchief to stop it. And her address so ‘I could return it’. Suppose she and Schlee had set it up between them for just that purpose. To lure me in so I could be discretely pumped for information. Or am I being paranoid?”
“There’s an old saying in the counter-intelligence business. The question is not whether you are being paranoid but whether you are being paranoid enough. Do you mind if I ask what set this off?” There had been a subtle change in Gour’s voice. What had started as one friend asking advice from another had suddenly become a matter of professional interest.
“I was over with her last night, and we were chatting on the couch. That submarine thing, you know the U-boat we sank, came up and she was asking questions that were just a hair too pointed. The first couple I wrote off as girl pretending to be interested in boy’s work, but the questions were that little bit too precise and there was one too many of them. I just got uneasy, that’s all. So, I fed her a line about us getting a new aircraft here for testing and the interest lights went on.”
Gour thought carefully. “Nothing conclusive there. Suspicious certainly but could just be an over-enthusiastic girl trying to hook a man. The punch-up with Schlee could have been pre-arranged but equally could have been happenstance. Nothing we could take to court. I should tell you though, we’ve had a directive in the RCMP to put counter-intelligence cases at the top of the priority list. The aim is to round up everybody with pro-Nazi sympathies.”
“I’d heard that.”
Gour’s head snapped around. “How did you hear that?”
“We have a security leak issue here at Debert. A couple of counter-intelligence people came down and were making inquiries. That’s what made me suspicious.”
“Have they indeed. There’s a problem there; you see counterintelligence is in the hands of "H" Division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. If anybody came to see you, it would have been one of us.” Gour paused. He was a member of ‘H’ Division although the need to mention that had never come up. “Digger, you have just done exactly the right thing here. We owe you. I’d like to see your commanding officer as soon as possible. And I need to call my headquarters.”
Ten minutes later, Gour returned with a much happier expression on his face. “I’ve briefed my superiors and we spoke to your adjutant. The people who came here earlier are on their way down. Big meeting at three down in Churchill.”
“That works well. I can fly you down there. Just time for your joy-ride Geoff?”
“I was rather hoping you would say that.”
RCMP Security Service Branch, Churchill, Nova Scotia.
The tension saturated the air in the meeting to a degree that made it hard to breath. Dale looked around at the high-ranking officers surrounding him and devoutly wished he had kept his mouth firmly closed. Deputy Commissioner Dylan Morrison glowered around the room with unmatched ferocity before that glare settled on Dale. “Thank you for flying Detective Inspector Gour down to this meeting, Pilot Officer. Also, I must commend you for coming forward with this information. It must have been a very difficult decision for you and in doing so you have rendered Canada a great service.”
Lt. Col. Arthur Terence Roper-Caldbeck said nothing but scowled at everybody. By opening the meeting with those words, Morrison had cut the ground from under his feet, and he knew full well that doing so had been the Deputy Commissioner’s intention. By that act, Morrison had presented him with a massive conflict of interest that defied easy resolution. On one hand he had to maintain the secrecy that surrounded the radio interception and code-breaking effort derived from the Bletchley Park operation that had been transplanted to Canada. On the other, a potentially dangerous spy ring was in process of being exposed and maintaining that secrecy had seriously compromised the effort to uncover it. Worse, he had trampled on the toes of the RCMP, and he knew the unofficial motto of that organization. This time he suspected that ‘their man’ was him.
Morrison returned the glare with interest. He was widely regarded as the most able and intelligent senior officer in the RCMP and had a talent for getting to the root of counter-intelligence issues. He was already beginning to see what had happened here and the danger it represented. “Pilot Officer Dale, could you tell us why you raised this matter with a member of ‘H’ Division? Although I believe you were unaware of that assignment at the time?”
“Yes, Sir. It all started several months back when we were working on the modified Hurricanes.” Dale told the story as it had happened, trying to omit nothing of any importance. That included his relations with Isabel Jones, something that made him flush bright red. When he had finished, he shrugged. “So, I was suspicious, but I didn’t know what to do. I knew Geoff, sorry, Detective Inspector Gour, well and I asked his advice.”
Roper-Caldbeck started to say something, but Morrison held up his hand. “It looks to me as if this was a classic honey-trap. Dale, if you had let this go on any longer one of two things would have happened. Either you would have been lured into greater indiscretions or, if you had failed to take the bait as it were, you would have been blackmailed into them. You had a lucky escape, young man, but in a sense, you made your own luck here. Problem is, as Detective Inspector Gour pointed out, we have no real evidence against this young lady. Let us move on. Colonel, the key here is your suspicion that there was a security leak from Debert. What led you to that conclusion and why did you not immediately advise ‘H’ Division of your concerns?”
“We received a whole mass of communications intercepts from the Indian Navy, obtained when their commandos seized those three German spy ships in Goa. Most were indecipherable but some were in a low-level commercial code that is freely available to everybody. One of those messages was a warning that all Canadian merchant ships were being fitted with radar.” Roper-Caldbeck was praying harder than he had every prayed before that this cover-story would hold up. If it doesn’t, the whole code-breaking operation will be exposed, and the allies will lose a priceless asset. “This information is false of course but we asked ourselves what the seed of that information could have been derived from. The only merchant ships we knew of that have radar are the CAM-ships. The CAM-ship development work took place at Debert so that seemed the most likely source of any leak. We made some inquiries, highly confidential inquiries. Regrettably, this confidence was breached.”
The last remark was aimed directly at Dale. He was saved from the assault by Morrison who banged his hand on the table. “Pilot Officer Dale behaved correctly in this matter. Furthermore, he is a Canadian officer. You are a British officer, and your authority does not extend to him. Now, to continue. Why were these intercepts sent to you, not to the Canadian government and, I repeat, why did you not immediately inform ‘H’ Division?”
Neither question could be answered without breaching the security that surrounded the Communications Security Establishment. If he gave truthful answers the fact that the CSE was the old Bletchley House signals intelligence operation moved from the UK to Canada would be exposed. Once that had happened, it would only be weeks before the Germans worked out that their communications had been completely compromised. Thus, a potentially decisive advantage would be lost. Roper-Caldbeck also knew that if he lied, then that lie would be exposed as soon as this inquiry was forwarded to higher levels and the political complications would be dire. Faced with this dilemma he did the only thing possible; he remained silent.
That silence seemed to drag on, to the obvious growing anger of the RCMP Officers. Eventually, it was Dale who dared to rush in where angels feared to tread. “Wait a minute, I know how that radar story might have developed. Just after I shot that Arado down over the South Atlantic, I was visiting Miss Jones and the subject came up. I remember now she asked me how I found such a small target. I said that the radar operator on the ship had coached me in. We were looking for some evidence to link her with the leakage. Isn’t that a good enough start?”
“It’s enough to start an inquiry. Not enough for a search warrant, let alone charges.” Gour sounded very thoughtful. “We need more.”
Morrison thought about that. “If there had been proper communications between the Communications Security Establishment and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, we would have been onto this weeks ago. You each had half the story and all that was needed was to put those two halves together. Colonel, the Communications Security Establishment should remember it is a guest in our country and should behave as such. That includes keeping your hosts fully informed about matters pertaining to its security. Is there anything else we should now about this affair that you haven’t told us?”
“No, Deputy Commissioner.” Roper-Caldbeck quietly breathed a sigh of relief. If that question had been asked only slightly differently, everything would have come apart.
“I am glad to hear it.” Morrison looked around. “Where do we go from here?”
There was another long pause. Within it, Dale was wrestling with a conflict of his own. Suppose I am wrong? Suppose Isabel isn’t the leak in question? I could ruin something that is beginning to be really good. But if she is the leak and I don’t do anything, she could do a lot of damage, not least to me when everything finally falls apart. His mind flipped back to the nights they had spent together and the desirability of getting a few more. That was when he realized the implications of the phrase a ‘honey trap’. Honey was sweet, sticky and near impossible to clean off.
“The problem is, we can’t firmly tie Miss Jones into this situation, right? Well, suppose I leak something to her, something plausible but unique to this situation. If word gets out, then it must be her. It’ll be like a fingerprint.”
“Won’t work,” Gour spoke sadly. “We won’t be able to decode the message, so we won’t know if the word has got out.”
“Perhaps not. But we can tell if she’s transmitting.” Roper-Caldbeck saw a way of keeping involved in this operation and he knew very well his people could easily decode the messages. “We train radio operators and one of the things we teach is how to use direction finders. We ring the Jones woman’s house with direction finders, Dale plants his news and we listen. If we get a transmission from that house, we record it and then we can go in. Then we search for the radio, for code books and so on. Then, your people can decode the messages easily enough and we got her.”
“Now that will work.” Gour sounded a lot happier. “Are you really all right with this Pilot Officer? It’s asking a lot of you I know.”
“I suppose so.” Dale sounded sad and slightly defeated. However, this ends up, I won’t be getting any more from Izzie. “We’ll have to come up with an exciting piece of information though, something urgent enough to make her send it through but realistic enough to be believable. She’s smart enough to realize that anything that sounds too good to be true probably is.”
Morrison thought carefully. “It’ll have to be something you would know about and have reasonable access to. Also, something that you might not realize is critical. If you start blurting out information that is obviously critical, she’ll get as suspicious as you did when she asked pointed questions.”
There was another long silence as people churned over ideas in their minds. Eventually Dale came up with an approach. “Everybody around Debert knows we’re flying a modified Hurricane with big guns under the wings. So why don’t I tell her we have a new anti-submarine gun on our Hudsons? Say a version of the Army’s six-pounder. We can even move a Hudson in with a mocked-up gun to support it?”
Gour nodded. “That’ll do the trick.”
Isabel Jones' House, 70 Upper Debert River Road, Debert, Nova Scotia
"I was lonely, Digger. Where have you been for the last few days?" Isabel Jones sounded petulant.
"Oh, we had a major thing back at the base. There was a Hun submarine that came in close inshore and we got it. You must have read about it in the newspapers?"
"Oh, that! I did read about that in the local paper. You were involved in it?" Isabel snuggled a little closer to him. "How did a submarine get so close in?"
"Oh, it happens." Digby Dale was enjoying the feel of Isabel so close to him. "Submarines can be very hard to spot until they do something to attract attention. We think that one had run his batteries down low and took the chance of recharging them in daylight. The piece of sea he picked is away from all the convoy routes and ships tend to avoid it because the waters are treacherous. He just got unlucky, I guess. I was on a navigational test flight over the area and bob's your uncle."
Dale paused for a second there and remembered the discussion he'd had with the counter-intelligence people about the leakage of information from Debert. He reviewed what he had just said and reassured himself that nothing he'd said couldn't have been obtained from the newspapers. Well, the bit that I spotted the sub was but that didn’t matter much. Or did it? "That was it really. I called it in, and they sent a couple of bombers to deal with it."
"It sounds so exciting. What happened next?" Over the years, Dale had heard the expression 'being goosed by one's guardian angel' and had it described as a 'feather tickling the mind' or a 'breath on the back of the neck'. The message he got from his guardian angel right then was closer to receiving a full force kick in the groin by a rugby player wearing Canadian Army ammunition boots. That last question was one too many.
"I don't really know, Izzie, that's the honest truth. The bombers arrived and I was running low on fuel, so I left. I heard on the way back that they'd sunk the damned thing. I assume they made their runs, the sub tried to dive, and they got it with bombs but I really don’t know. Nobody talks about the details. I guess the bomber barons get a briefing paper but us fighter types don’t. Fair enough, it's not really our business.”
"But you spotted him. That's not fair. They should have told you what had happened." Isabel pouted. In fact, Dale had received a detailed briefing on what had happened and on the effects his shots had had on the submarine. The German U-boat crew had been remarkably cooperative once they fully understood their position.
"Operational security. Everything is judged by a 'need to know' and I suppose that the top brass has decided I didn’t need to know. Perhaps it will change when I move to our next project." Dale was watching Isabel very carefully and he picked up on the sudden increase in interest. My God, I think she is the security leak. Whether directly or somebody else is using her. I wonder if she knew the cock knocker who took a punch at me.
"You're not moving away are you, Digby?"
"Oh no, the new aircraft is coming to us. Don't know anything about it right now but it's supposed to be something special. Might even get a promotion out of it."
“I think I can come up with something better than that.” Isabel gave him a sly smile. “Come on upstairs.”
RCAF Station Debert, Nova Scotia, Canada
“Thank you for coming down, Geoff. I know you are swamped with work, but I really need some important advice.”
“Important enough for a joyride?” Detective Inspector Geoffrey Gour had ruined his bargaining position by failing to conceal the longing in his voice.
“I’ve got a Defiant trainer that needs a test-flight. Just like the fighter but with a second seat instead of the turret.” Dale was trying to hide his grin. Like Gour, he wasn’t being very successful. “Thirty minutes?”
“How about an hour?”
“Split the difference? Call it forty-five minutes?”
“Deal! How can I help you?”
“Remember that seaman who socked me? Helmut Schlee? I’ve been thinking about that, and something occurred to me. We know the attack was set up, don’t we?”
“It certainly looks that way. We do know you were specifically targeted. Why is an open question.”
“Well, I may have an answer to that. Remember I told you I had a girl in the town? Well, we met at that incident. Schlee bopped me on the nose, I was bleeding like a stuck pig, and she gave me a handkerchief to stop it. And her address so ‘I could return it’. Suppose she and Schlee had set it up between them for just that purpose. To lure me in so I could be discretely pumped for information. Or am I being paranoid?”
“There’s an old saying in the counter-intelligence business. The question is not whether you are being paranoid but whether you are being paranoid enough. Do you mind if I ask what set this off?” There had been a subtle change in Gour’s voice. What had started as one friend asking advice from another had suddenly become a matter of professional interest.
“I was over with her last night, and we were chatting on the couch. That submarine thing, you know the U-boat we sank, came up and she was asking questions that were just a hair too pointed. The first couple I wrote off as girl pretending to be interested in boy’s work, but the questions were that little bit too precise and there was one too many of them. I just got uneasy, that’s all. So, I fed her a line about us getting a new aircraft here for testing and the interest lights went on.”
Gour thought carefully. “Nothing conclusive there. Suspicious certainly but could just be an over-enthusiastic girl trying to hook a man. The punch-up with Schlee could have been pre-arranged but equally could have been happenstance. Nothing we could take to court. I should tell you though, we’ve had a directive in the RCMP to put counter-intelligence cases at the top of the priority list. The aim is to round up everybody with pro-Nazi sympathies.”
“I’d heard that.”
Gour’s head snapped around. “How did you hear that?”
“We have a security leak issue here at Debert. A couple of counter-intelligence people came down and were making inquiries. That’s what made me suspicious.”
“Have they indeed. There’s a problem there; you see counterintelligence is in the hands of "H" Division of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. If anybody came to see you, it would have been one of us.” Gour paused. He was a member of ‘H’ Division although the need to mention that had never come up. “Digger, you have just done exactly the right thing here. We owe you. I’d like to see your commanding officer as soon as possible. And I need to call my headquarters.”
Ten minutes later, Gour returned with a much happier expression on his face. “I’ve briefed my superiors and we spoke to your adjutant. The people who came here earlier are on their way down. Big meeting at three down in Churchill.”
“That works well. I can fly you down there. Just time for your joy-ride Geoff?”
“I was rather hoping you would say that.”
RCMP Security Service Branch, Churchill, Nova Scotia.
The tension saturated the air in the meeting to a degree that made it hard to breath. Dale looked around at the high-ranking officers surrounding him and devoutly wished he had kept his mouth firmly closed. Deputy Commissioner Dylan Morrison glowered around the room with unmatched ferocity before that glare settled on Dale. “Thank you for flying Detective Inspector Gour down to this meeting, Pilot Officer. Also, I must commend you for coming forward with this information. It must have been a very difficult decision for you and in doing so you have rendered Canada a great service.”
Lt. Col. Arthur Terence Roper-Caldbeck said nothing but scowled at everybody. By opening the meeting with those words, Morrison had cut the ground from under his feet, and he knew full well that doing so had been the Deputy Commissioner’s intention. By that act, Morrison had presented him with a massive conflict of interest that defied easy resolution. On one hand he had to maintain the secrecy that surrounded the radio interception and code-breaking effort derived from the Bletchley Park operation that had been transplanted to Canada. On the other, a potentially dangerous spy ring was in process of being exposed and maintaining that secrecy had seriously compromised the effort to uncover it. Worse, he had trampled on the toes of the RCMP, and he knew the unofficial motto of that organization. This time he suspected that ‘their man’ was him.
Morrison returned the glare with interest. He was widely regarded as the most able and intelligent senior officer in the RCMP and had a talent for getting to the root of counter-intelligence issues. He was already beginning to see what had happened here and the danger it represented. “Pilot Officer Dale, could you tell us why you raised this matter with a member of ‘H’ Division? Although I believe you were unaware of that assignment at the time?”
“Yes, Sir. It all started several months back when we were working on the modified Hurricanes.” Dale told the story as it had happened, trying to omit nothing of any importance. That included his relations with Isabel Jones, something that made him flush bright red. When he had finished, he shrugged. “So, I was suspicious, but I didn’t know what to do. I knew Geoff, sorry, Detective Inspector Gour, well and I asked his advice.”
Roper-Caldbeck started to say something, but Morrison held up his hand. “It looks to me as if this was a classic honey-trap. Dale, if you had let this go on any longer one of two things would have happened. Either you would have been lured into greater indiscretions or, if you had failed to take the bait as it were, you would have been blackmailed into them. You had a lucky escape, young man, but in a sense, you made your own luck here. Problem is, as Detective Inspector Gour pointed out, we have no real evidence against this young lady. Let us move on. Colonel, the key here is your suspicion that there was a security leak from Debert. What led you to that conclusion and why did you not immediately advise ‘H’ Division of your concerns?”
“We received a whole mass of communications intercepts from the Indian Navy, obtained when their commandos seized those three German spy ships in Goa. Most were indecipherable but some were in a low-level commercial code that is freely available to everybody. One of those messages was a warning that all Canadian merchant ships were being fitted with radar.” Roper-Caldbeck was praying harder than he had every prayed before that this cover-story would hold up. If it doesn’t, the whole code-breaking operation will be exposed, and the allies will lose a priceless asset. “This information is false of course but we asked ourselves what the seed of that information could have been derived from. The only merchant ships we knew of that have radar are the CAM-ships. The CAM-ship development work took place at Debert so that seemed the most likely source of any leak. We made some inquiries, highly confidential inquiries. Regrettably, this confidence was breached.”
The last remark was aimed directly at Dale. He was saved from the assault by Morrison who banged his hand on the table. “Pilot Officer Dale behaved correctly in this matter. Furthermore, he is a Canadian officer. You are a British officer, and your authority does not extend to him. Now, to continue. Why were these intercepts sent to you, not to the Canadian government and, I repeat, why did you not immediately inform ‘H’ Division?”
Neither question could be answered without breaching the security that surrounded the Communications Security Establishment. If he gave truthful answers the fact that the CSE was the old Bletchley House signals intelligence operation moved from the UK to Canada would be exposed. Once that had happened, it would only be weeks before the Germans worked out that their communications had been completely compromised. Thus, a potentially decisive advantage would be lost. Roper-Caldbeck also knew that if he lied, then that lie would be exposed as soon as this inquiry was forwarded to higher levels and the political complications would be dire. Faced with this dilemma he did the only thing possible; he remained silent.
That silence seemed to drag on, to the obvious growing anger of the RCMP Officers. Eventually, it was Dale who dared to rush in where angels feared to tread. “Wait a minute, I know how that radar story might have developed. Just after I shot that Arado down over the South Atlantic, I was visiting Miss Jones and the subject came up. I remember now she asked me how I found such a small target. I said that the radar operator on the ship had coached me in. We were looking for some evidence to link her with the leakage. Isn’t that a good enough start?”
“It’s enough to start an inquiry. Not enough for a search warrant, let alone charges.” Gour sounded very thoughtful. “We need more.”
Morrison thought about that. “If there had been proper communications between the Communications Security Establishment and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, we would have been onto this weeks ago. You each had half the story and all that was needed was to put those two halves together. Colonel, the Communications Security Establishment should remember it is a guest in our country and should behave as such. That includes keeping your hosts fully informed about matters pertaining to its security. Is there anything else we should now about this affair that you haven’t told us?”
“No, Deputy Commissioner.” Roper-Caldbeck quietly breathed a sigh of relief. If that question had been asked only slightly differently, everything would have come apart.
“I am glad to hear it.” Morrison looked around. “Where do we go from here?”
There was another long pause. Within it, Dale was wrestling with a conflict of his own. Suppose I am wrong? Suppose Isabel isn’t the leak in question? I could ruin something that is beginning to be really good. But if she is the leak and I don’t do anything, she could do a lot of damage, not least to me when everything finally falls apart. His mind flipped back to the nights they had spent together and the desirability of getting a few more. That was when he realized the implications of the phrase a ‘honey trap’. Honey was sweet, sticky and near impossible to clean off.
“The problem is, we can’t firmly tie Miss Jones into this situation, right? Well, suppose I leak something to her, something plausible but unique to this situation. If word gets out, then it must be her. It’ll be like a fingerprint.”
“Won’t work,” Gour spoke sadly. “We won’t be able to decode the message, so we won’t know if the word has got out.”
“Perhaps not. But we can tell if she’s transmitting.” Roper-Caldbeck saw a way of keeping involved in this operation and he knew very well his people could easily decode the messages. “We train radio operators and one of the things we teach is how to use direction finders. We ring the Jones woman’s house with direction finders, Dale plants his news and we listen. If we get a transmission from that house, we record it and then we can go in. Then we search for the radio, for code books and so on. Then, your people can decode the messages easily enough and we got her.”
“Now that will work.” Gour sounded a lot happier. “Are you really all right with this Pilot Officer? It’s asking a lot of you I know.”
“I suppose so.” Dale sounded sad and slightly defeated. However, this ends up, I won’t be getting any more from Izzie. “We’ll have to come up with an exciting piece of information though, something urgent enough to make her send it through but realistic enough to be believable. She’s smart enough to realize that anything that sounds too good to be true probably is.”
Morrison thought carefully. “It’ll have to be something you would know about and have reasonable access to. Also, something that you might not realize is critical. If you start blurting out information that is obviously critical, she’ll get as suspicious as you did when she asked pointed questions.”
There was another long silence as people churned over ideas in their minds. Eventually Dale came up with an approach. “Everybody around Debert knows we’re flying a modified Hurricane with big guns under the wings. So why don’t I tell her we have a new anti-submarine gun on our Hudsons? Say a version of the Army’s six-pounder. We can even move a Hudson in with a mocked-up gun to support it?”
Gour nodded. “That’ll do the trick.”
Re: 1941 - Conflict of Interest
Chapter Forty-Three
Governor-General’s Residence, Batavia, Dutch East Indies
"There is nothing like a funeral for getting some confidential business done." Cordell Hull looked around the room seeing a group of people whose presence together would have been unthinkable only a few days earlier. The reasons why this gathering was possible were anchored in the harbor. The badly damaged patrol ship Enggano and the tanker Hoyo Maru, in even worse condition, had pulled in and were now being given emergency repairs. Each ship had moved their dead ashore, where the coffins had been carried through the streets of Batavia in solemn and dignified processions watched by crowds of Indonesian civilians. The Dutch sailors had been taken to St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral where they lay in state, attended by long lines of civilians who had travelled from far away to pay their respects. The Japanese dead had been taken to the Embassy where preparations had been made for their ceremonial cremation. That too would be attended by the crowds of civilians who wished to honor the bravery of those men. Cordell Hull had been struck by the fact that many of the civilians in question were not Indonesian but Australians, British and even Americans.
Admiral Toyoda Teijirō nodded in agreement. "A state funeral is always a good chance to hold private meetings away from the public eye. Perhaps, if we do not finish our business today, we will have to hope somebody else of importance will die. Herr Hitler perhaps?"
"I do not think Berlin will be very friendly towards any of us." Hull shook his head slowly. "Although I think that particular funeral will be very well attended."
"You think that so many people will wish to pay their respects to him?" Toyoda was surprised.
"No, to make sure he's dead." Hull came out with the response deadpan and the resulting laughter dispelled the tension in the room.
"Even in death, Captain Tachibana continues to serve with courage and honor." Governor-General Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer spoke quietly and the obvious respect for the deceased captain permeated his voice. "We owe it to his memory to put the past behind us."
Hull knew that remark was aimed at him and, much worse, the Governor-General was right. Hull had been searching his soul recently and he had not liked what he had seen. He gave himself credit for having acted in the best of intentions, but those actions had not been the deeds of a diplomat but of a school bully. He knew now that his re-education had been started by the Princess, he had negotiated with in Thailand a year earlier, continued by Stachouwer's astute political realism and driven home by Captain Tachibana's self-sacrifice. His invincible sense of self-righteousness and its related conviction that those who disagreed with him were irretrievably wrong and had to be compelled into compliance had evaporated. He had used American economic, military and political power to that end and now he knew that he was the one who had been wrong. He had indeed been an oafish bully and his actions had not only been short-sighted that their consequences could easily have been catastrophic.
"You are right, Governor-General. Is that correct? With Indonesia joining the community of independent nations, is that still the correct form of address?"
Stachouwer recognized the apology and accepted it. "For a short while, yes. When our new Constitution is accepted, we will have a Presidential style of government, validated by new elections. I will be standing for the Presidency. There will be other candidates of course. As to what will happen then, we are in God's hands - by whatever name we call Him."
"Now, to business. Firstly, oil. I have been authorized to advise you that while the oil embargo will remain in place, it will not be enforced. Nor will any penalties be applied to those who take part in the trade. We will not ask questions, and nobody needs say anything. We would like to remove the embargo completely but that is politically impossible right now. Perhaps, if events move in the right direction, this will change, and we can eliminate that foolish mistake. As a gesture of good faith, Governor-General, the United States would like to offer Indonesia a pair of our new destroyer escorts and two squadrons of P-40 Kittyhawk fighters. We would like to offer more, but our primary responsibility now is supplying the Soviet Union with the arms they need to defeat the attack on them."
"A very generous offer." Stachouwer nodded his acceptance. Privately he reflected that the jokes about Indonesia receiving so much aid that it would become a military superpower were beginning to come true. "Our new republic accepts the aid form both your countries in guaranteeing our independence. We hope this will be the start of friendly relations with you both."
"Japan wishes to clarify its position in the current situation." Toyoda was getting down to the hard facts that had to be resolved. "The fact we have withdrawn from the Tripartite Pact is now public. Our departure from that ill-starred agreement has been acknowledged by Ribbentrop, with much use of inventively foul language. We would point out that the pact was subsequently joined by Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia in November 1940, and by Bulgaria in March 1941. It is therefore incorrect to say that Germany is without allies at this point. We have also withdrawn from the Pact of Steel that integrated the military aims of Germany, Japan, and Italy. Our current position is that Japan will remain strictly neutral regarding the war currently fought by Germany against the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth of Nations. Obviously, our position within that basic principle of neutrality regarding other nations will be determined by the policies of those nations towards us."
And that is the shot across our bows. If we aid China, they will return to aiding Germany. If we maintain strict neutrality, regarding China, they will do so regarding the war against Germany. We now face a severe conflict of interest of our own. Which is the more important to us? Aiding China or maintaining peace in the Pacific? If we continue our policy of aiding China, we will alienate Japan and end any possibility of peace in the Pacific yet to drop China will cause major internal dissension in the States. Where does the interest of the United States reside? There is no doubt our primary enemy is Germany, not Japan. Those who fight Nazi Germany are our allies, those who side with them are our enemies, that much is clear. But what of those between? And how can we aid the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth defeat Nazi Germany if we also must fight a war in the Pacific? Stuyvesant was right, we really have no choice in this matter.
"Teijirō-san, the United States desires peace above all else. We are happy also to affirm our policy of strict neutrality regarding the various incidents that have troubled our past relationships. However, I must take advantage of the very private nature of this meeting and state that the issue of China is a very sensitive one in our country. We have many citizens of Chinese ancestry who have a deep attachment to their original home country and may wish to send it aid. Under American law, of course, such aid would be humanitarian only, food to avoid starvation, medical supplies to avoid plague, and money to purchase other essentials. Americans who join other country's armed forces forfeit American citizenship and we wash our hands of them. These feelings of attachment are likely to be proportional to the degree which hostilities in China inflict hardship on the Chinese population. If such hardships can be minimized so too is the likely scale of such assistance."
Toyoda nodded slowly. "We also have internal problems of a similar nature so I can understand exactly what you are saying. In our case, the problems come from a group of military and nationalistic leaders whose atavistic and xenophobic beliefs were combined with excessive faith in the virtues of fighting spirit rather than material advantages in assessing military power. For this reason, they are called the Spirit Warriors. They dominated our political scene in the 1920s and 1930s and their influence was most disadvantageous. In particular, their belief that fighting spirit can best be demonstrated by continuing displays of ruthless, senseless brutality caused many unfortunate incidents. Sadly, an impression that Japan was not treated with respect by the rest of the world gave them more power and support than they merited.
"Now, things have changed. One of the leaders of the Spirit Warriors, Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon, was killed during a drunken brawl in a brothel, by one of the women working there no less. For a group that blindly worships fighting spirit, this was a great disgrace. The attack on our tanker and the worldwide respect given to Captain Tachibana for his gallant fight and most honorable refusal to abandon the Enggano to her fate has struck a deep chord with our people. As a result, the influence and power of the Spirit Warriors have been drastically degraded and their beliefs have lost much of their influence on our conduct. I remember that in 1905, our conduct on the battlefield and our treatment of Russian prisoners was regarded as exemplary as was the same in 1914 against the Germans. Only when the Spirit Warriors gained power was this moral ascendancy lost. Now, it will be regained, and we hope, most sincerely, that support for China will not be of a scale and depth that endangers this progress."
So there we have it. The Japanese will rein in these Spirit Warriors and enforce proper standards of conduct in China if we do not provide military and economic support to the Chinese. What Teijirō-san carefully did not say is that the tightness of the reins will be directly related to whatever support we do provide to China. He is also conceding that it will be understood, and due allowance made if misconduct by the Spirit Warriors causes us to increase support to China. That's a deal we can live with.
“I think we all understand each other very clearly on this point?” Stachouwer looked around, despite the relative weakness of Indonesia, or perhaps because of it, he was effectively chairing the meeting. Acting as an honest broker in this very private yet critically important meeting, he was beginning to establish Indonesia as a player on the world stage. He had been aided by the Dutch Government-in-exile announcing its pride in being the first country to recognize the newly independent country of Indonesia. Following that, other recognitions had followed quickly although Germany and the remaining Axis countries had been conspicuous by their absence. Italy had been the most recent state to recognize Indonesia. Stachouwer took no offense at that; his guess was that Mussolini had been carefully weighing the situation and moving cautiously so as not to endanger Italy’s neutrality. Franco was doing the same thing in Spain although Stachouwer had been very unofficially informed that Spain’s recognition would be made in a day or so.
“I think so.” Hull looked across at Toyoda and saw the slight nod of agreement. “Now, we should join the mourners at the funerals of these brave seamen.”
Cabinet Room, 10 Downing Street, London
Sir Edward Bridges re-entered the Cabinet Room with the same sense of foreboding as King Charles I had mounted the scaffold on January 30, 1649. There was a very good reason for that feeling. He knew that it was a certainty that Lord Halifax’s Blackshirts had been nosing around in the complex mass of transactions that had taken place over the last year and had found at least enough solid information to raise suspicions that there were more irregularities to be found. Then, again, there always would be. It was a guiding principle of counter-intelligence work that any detailed investigation would turn up suspicious irregularities, regardless of whether they actually existed or not.
There was another reason why he saw this room as something very close to an execution chamber. He had survived his heart attack despite its severity, but the doctors had told him he remained seriously ill. The attack had placed great strain on his heart, and they had told him he could expect another attack that would not be survivable. They gave him two more years; if he rested and took life very carefully, he might manage four. Unfortunately, Sir Edward was very well aware that resting and taking things easily were not options. He had often used the expression “the prospect of being hanged in the morning clears a man’s mind wonderfully” but now he knew just how true it was. The doctors had pronounced a sentence of death upon him, and he had but little time left. Yet, the fear of famine still dominated his mind. I must make sure our ability to build up our food reserves continues once I am gone.
“Welcome back, Sir Edward!” Lord Halifax spoke with obvious enthusiasm although to a cynical ear, the enthusiasm was a little forced. Beside him, Butler smiled and nodded in agreement and that was enough to convince any thinking person that there were dark currents moving far down in the depths of the Cabinet waters. “Your return is at a most opportune time. You are aware of the dramatic developments that have taken place?”
“I have carefully studied my red boxes, Prime Minister. As you say, the changes over the last few weeks have indeed been dramatic. The split between Germany and Japan has changed the calculus on everything.” Not least because it endangers the Japanese merchant ships that were able to bring the Australian and New Zealand meat, cheese and butter all the way to Italy. Now Japan is a true neutral, that door is vulnerable to interdiction should Germany for some reason want to do so. And, if the reports from Russia are anywhere near correct, they may want to sooner than I thought. “Sir John, what is the word from Russia?”
Sir Edward watched Butler squirm uncomfortably in his seat. The newspapers might be full of stories about the great German victory in the Battle of Kiev but there is an undercurrent to the news that suggests this might be one of those victories that can hurt the victor more than the vanquished.
Sir John Dill opened his own red box. “The fighting is still going on of course. The official version is that another stunning German victory is in the making, and they have certainly achieved much around Kiev. They are claiming to have destroyed 411 tanks and 343 aircraft. They are also claiming over 600,000 Russian casualties killed or captured. If that information is correct, then we have seen an encirclement battle without parallel in human history. However, we have other information that suggests these figures may be exaggerated. It appears that the Germans obtained their figure by using the paper strength of all the divisions that are taking part in the battle and assuming they are all either killed, wounded or captured. However, most of those units are the remains of the ones that have been retreating since Barbarossa started three months ago and we can assume that those units were well understrength. We believe that the Russian forces defending Kiev totaled some 400,000 men, not 700,000. Of these, we know through our own sources that at least 150,000 have already escaped. General Rodin Malinovsky launched a counterattack at Luny and opened a corridor that allowed those men to evacuate westwards.”
“That means the Russians lost 250,000 men then.” Lord Halifax looked at his own papers. “That is still a terrible defeat. We could not take losses on that scale.”
Sir John Dill retrained himself from pointing out that Britain hadn’t. We lost 68,000 men in France and we left the war as a result. The Russians put us to shame. “It is now the middle of September, and the clock is ticking. In October, the mud will return, and it will freeze all movement for between three weeks and a month. After that, there will be six to eight weeks of campaigning weather before the winter sets in. We know what the Russian winter did to Napoleon.”
“Surely the Germans will have prepared for the winter?” Butler was trying to find reasons to justify his earlier argument that Russia would have been driven out of the war by now. Patently obviously, they hadn’t. He hated being wrong and he hated the people who had shown that to be the case.
“Undoubtedly, but they face a serious problem that has plagued them right from the beginning of this campaign. The German is not geared up for a long, grinding war. Their plans all center around a quick victory built on the decisive defeat of the opposing army. They have very limited logistic capability and even less adequate reserves. I suspect that they have winter equipment in their depots far to the rear, but they will be unable to bring it forward since ammunition and fuel will take priority. Quite rightly, I must say. It does not help a soldier to be warm if his rifle and stomach are empty and he must walk everywhere he goes.”
There was a long pause as that grim picture sank home. Sir Edward broke it. “What is the situation on the rest of the Russian Front?”
“Odessa continues to hold out. In fact, they have launched limited offensives and expanded their perimeter a little to ensure they can maintain their water supplies and hold defensible ground. I believe the Commonwealth Air Expeditionary Force has rendered great service there. The Crimea is not endangered – yet - since the Soviet Army in the south is still holding the line of the Dnieper. In the North and Central fronts, the German advance has stopped. They ran out of supplies and their tanks have been sent south to mount the attack on Kiev. They hold Smolensk but the front has stabilized just east of the city. It will stay there until the supply lines are re-established. In the far north, the Finns have attacked on the Kola Peninsula and gained some ground, but the Russians are holding them.”
“The Germans made a bad mistake in going for Kiev instead of Moscow.” Butler sounded both angry and disbelieving.
Sir John raised his eyebrows to himself. May the Good Lord preserve us all from amateur strategists
“They had no choice, Home Secretary, the cold equations of supply and consumption dictate their every action and have done since the start of this, for them, ill-advised operation. Their northern and central army groups are at the absolute end of their supply lines, and they are completely exhausted. They must stop and re-establish lines of supply adequate to support armored units before they can even consider resulting the drive east. By switching the axis of attack towards Kiev, they took advantage of already-established supply lines and eliminated a dangerous salient that would have threatened the flanks of the northern army groups.”
“But Moscow?” Butler almost whined the word in protest.
“To the Russian, it is meaningless. The Russian does not see military situations the way powers in the west do due to the immense distances they have available to them. Our armies fight desperately for areas of terrain that we consider to be strategically vital. To the Russian, such positions are meaningless because there will be another equally valuable area a few miles to the rear. They see the primary target as being the enemy army and their primary weapon as bleeding it to death while preserving their own front-line forces. Those front-line forces are only now being committed to action. The sensible action for the German, once the Battle of Kiev is over, will be to hold along their present line, consolidate and bring up their supply lines. They can use that time to bring their tanks back into action and fill out their depleted infantry. Then, resume the attack in the spring. If they lunge for Moscow now, they will be trapped in a meat-grinder in front of the city while their supply lines remain precarious and the winter closes in. That has the making of a military disaster. For us as much as them.”
“How so, Sir John?” Halifax sounded curious and alarmed.
“Because if there is such a disaster, the German will lose an enormous number of men. We believe he has already lost a million men one way or another. If he loses many more, he will have to come to his allies for support. He has lost Japan and Italy and has only the eastern European countries to count on and they are already stretched. So, he will come to his two remaining western European allies, us and Vichy France, demanding we send our armies to Russia. This will face us with a nightmarish conflict of interest.”
“And if we refuse?” Sir Edward had a terrible certainty as to what the answer would be.
“We will be invaded.”
Governor-General’s Residence, Batavia, Dutch East Indies
"There is nothing like a funeral for getting some confidential business done." Cordell Hull looked around the room seeing a group of people whose presence together would have been unthinkable only a few days earlier. The reasons why this gathering was possible were anchored in the harbor. The badly damaged patrol ship Enggano and the tanker Hoyo Maru, in even worse condition, had pulled in and were now being given emergency repairs. Each ship had moved their dead ashore, where the coffins had been carried through the streets of Batavia in solemn and dignified processions watched by crowds of Indonesian civilians. The Dutch sailors had been taken to St. Mary of the Assumption Cathedral where they lay in state, attended by long lines of civilians who had travelled from far away to pay their respects. The Japanese dead had been taken to the Embassy where preparations had been made for their ceremonial cremation. That too would be attended by the crowds of civilians who wished to honor the bravery of those men. Cordell Hull had been struck by the fact that many of the civilians in question were not Indonesian but Australians, British and even Americans.
Admiral Toyoda Teijirō nodded in agreement. "A state funeral is always a good chance to hold private meetings away from the public eye. Perhaps, if we do not finish our business today, we will have to hope somebody else of importance will die. Herr Hitler perhaps?"
"I do not think Berlin will be very friendly towards any of us." Hull shook his head slowly. "Although I think that particular funeral will be very well attended."
"You think that so many people will wish to pay their respects to him?" Toyoda was surprised.
"No, to make sure he's dead." Hull came out with the response deadpan and the resulting laughter dispelled the tension in the room.
"Even in death, Captain Tachibana continues to serve with courage and honor." Governor-General Tjarda van Starkenborgh Stachouwer spoke quietly and the obvious respect for the deceased captain permeated his voice. "We owe it to his memory to put the past behind us."
Hull knew that remark was aimed at him and, much worse, the Governor-General was right. Hull had been searching his soul recently and he had not liked what he had seen. He gave himself credit for having acted in the best of intentions, but those actions had not been the deeds of a diplomat but of a school bully. He knew now that his re-education had been started by the Princess, he had negotiated with in Thailand a year earlier, continued by Stachouwer's astute political realism and driven home by Captain Tachibana's self-sacrifice. His invincible sense of self-righteousness and its related conviction that those who disagreed with him were irretrievably wrong and had to be compelled into compliance had evaporated. He had used American economic, military and political power to that end and now he knew that he was the one who had been wrong. He had indeed been an oafish bully and his actions had not only been short-sighted that their consequences could easily have been catastrophic.
"You are right, Governor-General. Is that correct? With Indonesia joining the community of independent nations, is that still the correct form of address?"
Stachouwer recognized the apology and accepted it. "For a short while, yes. When our new Constitution is accepted, we will have a Presidential style of government, validated by new elections. I will be standing for the Presidency. There will be other candidates of course. As to what will happen then, we are in God's hands - by whatever name we call Him."
"Now, to business. Firstly, oil. I have been authorized to advise you that while the oil embargo will remain in place, it will not be enforced. Nor will any penalties be applied to those who take part in the trade. We will not ask questions, and nobody needs say anything. We would like to remove the embargo completely but that is politically impossible right now. Perhaps, if events move in the right direction, this will change, and we can eliminate that foolish mistake. As a gesture of good faith, Governor-General, the United States would like to offer Indonesia a pair of our new destroyer escorts and two squadrons of P-40 Kittyhawk fighters. We would like to offer more, but our primary responsibility now is supplying the Soviet Union with the arms they need to defeat the attack on them."
"A very generous offer." Stachouwer nodded his acceptance. Privately he reflected that the jokes about Indonesia receiving so much aid that it would become a military superpower were beginning to come true. "Our new republic accepts the aid form both your countries in guaranteeing our independence. We hope this will be the start of friendly relations with you both."
"Japan wishes to clarify its position in the current situation." Toyoda was getting down to the hard facts that had to be resolved. "The fact we have withdrawn from the Tripartite Pact is now public. Our departure from that ill-starred agreement has been acknowledged by Ribbentrop, with much use of inventively foul language. We would point out that the pact was subsequently joined by Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia in November 1940, and by Bulgaria in March 1941. It is therefore incorrect to say that Germany is without allies at this point. We have also withdrawn from the Pact of Steel that integrated the military aims of Germany, Japan, and Italy. Our current position is that Japan will remain strictly neutral regarding the war currently fought by Germany against the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth of Nations. Obviously, our position within that basic principle of neutrality regarding other nations will be determined by the policies of those nations towards us."
And that is the shot across our bows. If we aid China, they will return to aiding Germany. If we maintain strict neutrality, regarding China, they will do so regarding the war against Germany. We now face a severe conflict of interest of our own. Which is the more important to us? Aiding China or maintaining peace in the Pacific? If we continue our policy of aiding China, we will alienate Japan and end any possibility of peace in the Pacific yet to drop China will cause major internal dissension in the States. Where does the interest of the United States reside? There is no doubt our primary enemy is Germany, not Japan. Those who fight Nazi Germany are our allies, those who side with them are our enemies, that much is clear. But what of those between? And how can we aid the Soviet Union and the Commonwealth defeat Nazi Germany if we also must fight a war in the Pacific? Stuyvesant was right, we really have no choice in this matter.
"Teijirō-san, the United States desires peace above all else. We are happy also to affirm our policy of strict neutrality regarding the various incidents that have troubled our past relationships. However, I must take advantage of the very private nature of this meeting and state that the issue of China is a very sensitive one in our country. We have many citizens of Chinese ancestry who have a deep attachment to their original home country and may wish to send it aid. Under American law, of course, such aid would be humanitarian only, food to avoid starvation, medical supplies to avoid plague, and money to purchase other essentials. Americans who join other country's armed forces forfeit American citizenship and we wash our hands of them. These feelings of attachment are likely to be proportional to the degree which hostilities in China inflict hardship on the Chinese population. If such hardships can be minimized so too is the likely scale of such assistance."
Toyoda nodded slowly. "We also have internal problems of a similar nature so I can understand exactly what you are saying. In our case, the problems come from a group of military and nationalistic leaders whose atavistic and xenophobic beliefs were combined with excessive faith in the virtues of fighting spirit rather than material advantages in assessing military power. For this reason, they are called the Spirit Warriors. They dominated our political scene in the 1920s and 1930s and their influence was most disadvantageous. In particular, their belief that fighting spirit can best be demonstrated by continuing displays of ruthless, senseless brutality caused many unfortunate incidents. Sadly, an impression that Japan was not treated with respect by the rest of the world gave them more power and support than they merited.
"Now, things have changed. One of the leaders of the Spirit Warriors, Admiral Yamaguchi Tamon, was killed during a drunken brawl in a brothel, by one of the women working there no less. For a group that blindly worships fighting spirit, this was a great disgrace. The attack on our tanker and the worldwide respect given to Captain Tachibana for his gallant fight and most honorable refusal to abandon the Enggano to her fate has struck a deep chord with our people. As a result, the influence and power of the Spirit Warriors have been drastically degraded and their beliefs have lost much of their influence on our conduct. I remember that in 1905, our conduct on the battlefield and our treatment of Russian prisoners was regarded as exemplary as was the same in 1914 against the Germans. Only when the Spirit Warriors gained power was this moral ascendancy lost. Now, it will be regained, and we hope, most sincerely, that support for China will not be of a scale and depth that endangers this progress."
So there we have it. The Japanese will rein in these Spirit Warriors and enforce proper standards of conduct in China if we do not provide military and economic support to the Chinese. What Teijirō-san carefully did not say is that the tightness of the reins will be directly related to whatever support we do provide to China. He is also conceding that it will be understood, and due allowance made if misconduct by the Spirit Warriors causes us to increase support to China. That's a deal we can live with.
“I think we all understand each other very clearly on this point?” Stachouwer looked around, despite the relative weakness of Indonesia, or perhaps because of it, he was effectively chairing the meeting. Acting as an honest broker in this very private yet critically important meeting, he was beginning to establish Indonesia as a player on the world stage. He had been aided by the Dutch Government-in-exile announcing its pride in being the first country to recognize the newly independent country of Indonesia. Following that, other recognitions had followed quickly although Germany and the remaining Axis countries had been conspicuous by their absence. Italy had been the most recent state to recognize Indonesia. Stachouwer took no offense at that; his guess was that Mussolini had been carefully weighing the situation and moving cautiously so as not to endanger Italy’s neutrality. Franco was doing the same thing in Spain although Stachouwer had been very unofficially informed that Spain’s recognition would be made in a day or so.
“I think so.” Hull looked across at Toyoda and saw the slight nod of agreement. “Now, we should join the mourners at the funerals of these brave seamen.”
Cabinet Room, 10 Downing Street, London
Sir Edward Bridges re-entered the Cabinet Room with the same sense of foreboding as King Charles I had mounted the scaffold on January 30, 1649. There was a very good reason for that feeling. He knew that it was a certainty that Lord Halifax’s Blackshirts had been nosing around in the complex mass of transactions that had taken place over the last year and had found at least enough solid information to raise suspicions that there were more irregularities to be found. Then, again, there always would be. It was a guiding principle of counter-intelligence work that any detailed investigation would turn up suspicious irregularities, regardless of whether they actually existed or not.
There was another reason why he saw this room as something very close to an execution chamber. He had survived his heart attack despite its severity, but the doctors had told him he remained seriously ill. The attack had placed great strain on his heart, and they had told him he could expect another attack that would not be survivable. They gave him two more years; if he rested and took life very carefully, he might manage four. Unfortunately, Sir Edward was very well aware that resting and taking things easily were not options. He had often used the expression “the prospect of being hanged in the morning clears a man’s mind wonderfully” but now he knew just how true it was. The doctors had pronounced a sentence of death upon him, and he had but little time left. Yet, the fear of famine still dominated his mind. I must make sure our ability to build up our food reserves continues once I am gone.
“Welcome back, Sir Edward!” Lord Halifax spoke with obvious enthusiasm although to a cynical ear, the enthusiasm was a little forced. Beside him, Butler smiled and nodded in agreement and that was enough to convince any thinking person that there were dark currents moving far down in the depths of the Cabinet waters. “Your return is at a most opportune time. You are aware of the dramatic developments that have taken place?”
“I have carefully studied my red boxes, Prime Minister. As you say, the changes over the last few weeks have indeed been dramatic. The split between Germany and Japan has changed the calculus on everything.” Not least because it endangers the Japanese merchant ships that were able to bring the Australian and New Zealand meat, cheese and butter all the way to Italy. Now Japan is a true neutral, that door is vulnerable to interdiction should Germany for some reason want to do so. And, if the reports from Russia are anywhere near correct, they may want to sooner than I thought. “Sir John, what is the word from Russia?”
Sir Edward watched Butler squirm uncomfortably in his seat. The newspapers might be full of stories about the great German victory in the Battle of Kiev but there is an undercurrent to the news that suggests this might be one of those victories that can hurt the victor more than the vanquished.
Sir John Dill opened his own red box. “The fighting is still going on of course. The official version is that another stunning German victory is in the making, and they have certainly achieved much around Kiev. They are claiming to have destroyed 411 tanks and 343 aircraft. They are also claiming over 600,000 Russian casualties killed or captured. If that information is correct, then we have seen an encirclement battle without parallel in human history. However, we have other information that suggests these figures may be exaggerated. It appears that the Germans obtained their figure by using the paper strength of all the divisions that are taking part in the battle and assuming they are all either killed, wounded or captured. However, most of those units are the remains of the ones that have been retreating since Barbarossa started three months ago and we can assume that those units were well understrength. We believe that the Russian forces defending Kiev totaled some 400,000 men, not 700,000. Of these, we know through our own sources that at least 150,000 have already escaped. General Rodin Malinovsky launched a counterattack at Luny and opened a corridor that allowed those men to evacuate westwards.”
“That means the Russians lost 250,000 men then.” Lord Halifax looked at his own papers. “That is still a terrible defeat. We could not take losses on that scale.”
Sir John Dill retrained himself from pointing out that Britain hadn’t. We lost 68,000 men in France and we left the war as a result. The Russians put us to shame. “It is now the middle of September, and the clock is ticking. In October, the mud will return, and it will freeze all movement for between three weeks and a month. After that, there will be six to eight weeks of campaigning weather before the winter sets in. We know what the Russian winter did to Napoleon.”
“Surely the Germans will have prepared for the winter?” Butler was trying to find reasons to justify his earlier argument that Russia would have been driven out of the war by now. Patently obviously, they hadn’t. He hated being wrong and he hated the people who had shown that to be the case.
“Undoubtedly, but they face a serious problem that has plagued them right from the beginning of this campaign. The German is not geared up for a long, grinding war. Their plans all center around a quick victory built on the decisive defeat of the opposing army. They have very limited logistic capability and even less adequate reserves. I suspect that they have winter equipment in their depots far to the rear, but they will be unable to bring it forward since ammunition and fuel will take priority. Quite rightly, I must say. It does not help a soldier to be warm if his rifle and stomach are empty and he must walk everywhere he goes.”
There was a long pause as that grim picture sank home. Sir Edward broke it. “What is the situation on the rest of the Russian Front?”
“Odessa continues to hold out. In fact, they have launched limited offensives and expanded their perimeter a little to ensure they can maintain their water supplies and hold defensible ground. I believe the Commonwealth Air Expeditionary Force has rendered great service there. The Crimea is not endangered – yet - since the Soviet Army in the south is still holding the line of the Dnieper. In the North and Central fronts, the German advance has stopped. They ran out of supplies and their tanks have been sent south to mount the attack on Kiev. They hold Smolensk but the front has stabilized just east of the city. It will stay there until the supply lines are re-established. In the far north, the Finns have attacked on the Kola Peninsula and gained some ground, but the Russians are holding them.”
“The Germans made a bad mistake in going for Kiev instead of Moscow.” Butler sounded both angry and disbelieving.
Sir John raised his eyebrows to himself. May the Good Lord preserve us all from amateur strategists
“They had no choice, Home Secretary, the cold equations of supply and consumption dictate their every action and have done since the start of this, for them, ill-advised operation. Their northern and central army groups are at the absolute end of their supply lines, and they are completely exhausted. They must stop and re-establish lines of supply adequate to support armored units before they can even consider resulting the drive east. By switching the axis of attack towards Kiev, they took advantage of already-established supply lines and eliminated a dangerous salient that would have threatened the flanks of the northern army groups.”
“But Moscow?” Butler almost whined the word in protest.
“To the Russian, it is meaningless. The Russian does not see military situations the way powers in the west do due to the immense distances they have available to them. Our armies fight desperately for areas of terrain that we consider to be strategically vital. To the Russian, such positions are meaningless because there will be another equally valuable area a few miles to the rear. They see the primary target as being the enemy army and their primary weapon as bleeding it to death while preserving their own front-line forces. Those front-line forces are only now being committed to action. The sensible action for the German, once the Battle of Kiev is over, will be to hold along their present line, consolidate and bring up their supply lines. They can use that time to bring their tanks back into action and fill out their depleted infantry. Then, resume the attack in the spring. If they lunge for Moscow now, they will be trapped in a meat-grinder in front of the city while their supply lines remain precarious and the winter closes in. That has the making of a military disaster. For us as much as them.”
“How so, Sir John?” Halifax sounded curious and alarmed.
“Because if there is such a disaster, the German will lose an enormous number of men. We believe he has already lost a million men one way or another. If he loses many more, he will have to come to his allies for support. He has lost Japan and Italy and has only the eastern European countries to count on and they are already stretched. So, he will come to his two remaining western European allies, us and Vichy France, demanding we send our armies to Russia. This will face us with a nightmarish conflict of interest.”
“And if we refuse?” Sir Edward had a terrible certainty as to what the answer would be.
“We will be invaded.”
Re: 1941 - Conflict of Interest
Chapter Forty-Four
Airfield 11, Donuzlav Lake, Crimea.
“Tovarishchi! I bring orders from the Party and the workers and peasants it represents! They have seen the work you have all done here and judged the lessons you have learned are too valuable to be lost. The 10th Fighter Regiment, the Fourth Ground Attack Regiment and the Commonwealth Expeditionary Air Force are to be transferred to an airfield at Krymsk in the Kuban. There, you will rebuild your units and pass on your hard-learned lessons to other pilots. You will be replaced here by new fighter and ground attack regiments drawn from the Strategic Reserve.”
Napalkov looked around at the surviving pilots and their ground crews. There were few enough of them; the Russian units had been brutally mauled with barely a quarter of their strength surviving. Bearing in mind that they were units that had been created by amalgamating other Regiments that had been worn down so far that they could no longer be sent into combat, they were stark evidence of the butchery they had suffered at the hands of. The Commonwealth Air Expeditionary Force hadn’t suffered the same brutalization, but a steady stream of losses spread over time had reduced the unit to barely half its original strength.
"Bratishka of the Commonwealth Expeditionary Air Force, I have been asked by your governments to pass on their congratulations and that the Battle Honor 'Crimea 1941' will be added to those already held by your units. Your Flamingo transports will be arriving shortly to take your ground crews and administrative personnel to Krymsk. There, reinforcements and new aircraft will be waiting for you.
Squadron Leader Pim Bosede didn't want to leave the Crimea. Despite the barrier caused by the lack of a common language and a determined effort by the Soviet authorities to prevent too many meetings between the Commonwealth personnel and the Russians, somehow, the place and the people had worked their way into his heart. He felt as if leaving for the Kuban was betraying them. Yet, the idea of pulling back battle-tested units so that they could pass their hard-won expertise onto new arrivals made a lot of sense. That was badly needed by the Commonwealth as well as the Soviets. Bosede had come to the Crimea as one of the leading Commonwealth aces and had thought he was at the top of his business. That belief had not survived his first brush with the Luftwaffe fighter pilots. Privately, he counted each of the 32 kills he had scored before coming to the Crimea as being only equivalent to a quarter of a kill scored against the Germans and half a kill against the Romanians. That meant he had only twelve 'real' kills. When he handed out the decorations and promotions that had been sent by Cape Town, he would remind the recipients that fighting Germans was not the same as taking on Iraqis or Italians. Over-confidence was a dire and usually fatal fault.
Napalkov had waited for the buzz of discussion to quieten down. "The first movement will start immediately. Pilots of the 4th Ground Attack Regiment! Your Sturmoviks can carry two passengers each for this flight. You will be assigned your passengers within the hour and will leave immediately. Ready your aircraft at once!"
"Yezht! We serve the Party and the people!" Petr Anisimovich Ochakov led the pilots of the 4th away from the meeting towards the flight line.
Behind him, Napalkov continued. "Pilots of the 10th Fighter Regiment. You will carry one passenger each. You will leave here after you have covered the Sturmoviks in their flight. On arrival at Krymsk, you will receive a new type of fighter aircraft."
Ivan Anastasovich Balakai and his fellow pilots gave a very genuine cheer before repeating the time-honored formula and heading for the flight-line. Each of the survivors was thinking the same thing No matter what this new aircraft is, it has to be better than the Guaranteed Varnished Coffin.
With the Russian aircrew dismissed, Napalkov walked over to join the Commonwealth pilots. He dropped the formal and declamatory style that were standard for addressing Soviet military personnel and instead adopted the most friendly and informal manner he could. It hadn't escaped his notice that, while the political officer announced promotions and decorations in Soviet units, the same announcements were made by a Commonwealth squadron leader. "Bratishka, can your Flamingos help us to move everybody else?"
The list of promotions had included Pim Bosede. As of midnight, he would become a Wing Commander and would assume command of the Commonwealth Air Expeditionary Force. "We can carry 22 passengers per aircraft. The aircraft will be coming in singly. Might I suggest we move to Krymsk arm-in-arm? As each aircraft loads, we can place 11 of our people and 11 of yours on board. Once all our own people are out, we'll continue the shuttle flights until all your people are out."
Napalkov was genuinely touched. "That is a very generous proposal, bratishka. The aircraft will be safe flying alone?"
"They should be. We fly them south over the Black Sea and then we can just turn east. We'll be out of range of enemy fighters most of the way. One thing concerns me, Tovarish Politruk. Our fighters and bombers have longer range than yours; how will we continue to support the defenders in Odessa?"
Napolkov thought carefully about that, then decided to trust Bosede. "The new fighter regiment that will be replacing the 10th here is to be equipped with American fighters we are receiving as aid. They will have the range necessary."
"You're getting Kittyhawks?"
Bapolkov shook his head. "Another type. Something called the Airacobra. They are being flown to Krymsk while we speak."
Partisan Group, Kostopilskyi Forest, Ukraine
Valentina Aleksandrovna Nasonkina knew that the long, hot summer in the Ukraine was beginning to end. There were more days when it would rain and fewer when the sun would bake the mud dry. In the forest where the Partisans were making their stand, the woods and trees were slowly steaming away the moisture from the last rains. They had almost been heavy enough to classify as a storm and every Russian knew what that meant. The rains got heavier and soon the amount of water would overcome the very limited drainage in the soil. The thick black ground that grew crops in such quantity that the Ukraine had once been the breadbasket of Europe would absorb the moisture instead of letting it run away.
That would turn it into a thick, glutinous mud that would reach deeper and deeper into the ground until the solid footing was too deep to be reached. Then, the forest would turn into the Rasputitsa, the sea of mud. Valentine knew that one had to be Russian to understand what the Rasputitsa really meant. The unsurfaced roads would turn into swamps where men and horses could drown and leave no trace. Motor vehicles were no better and often just made things worse. Their wheels would grind the mud into paste many times worse than the natural original. What tanks would do to the Rasputitsa was unimaginable. The truth was, nobody went anywhere in the Rasputitsa until winter came and the ground froze. Then, once more, movement would be possible until the winter became too severe.
It was experience with the Rasputitsa, a lifetime living with wary respect for the power of the mud, that had led the partisan detachment to select their position. Osaulenko had picked out a point where a rocky outcrop made a sort of peninsula in the bend of a deep river. The river was evidence of good drainage, the rocks would keep the ground solid. That was optimistic for when the Rasputitsa struck, there was no good footage, and the ground was never firm. Here, though, in the days before the full fury of the mud was turned on the invaders, there was enough footing and enough solidity to allow fighting and movement. For those who understood the Rasputitsa of course. For those who did not, a uniquely Russian form of hell was about to descend.
There was another reason for this position. Stung by the constant pin-prick attacks in their rear areas, aware that the by-passed and encircled Soviet units were reforming as Partisan groups in their rear, the fascists had started to try and clear the areas worst affected. They had formed anti-partisan units from rear-area troops. They had scoured their units for truck drivers, laborers, mechanics, cooks, clerks, technicians, airfield auxiliary personnel, every imaginable category of rear-echelon personnel they could find and organized them into Partizanjaeger battalions. The problem had been that the front-line infantry had already scoured those units for personnel who had the makings of good, or at least passable, soldiers. What the officers forming the Partizanjaeger units had been left with were the men that even desperate infantry company commander would rather not have. Even the officers assigned to the Partizanjaeger units were hardly the pick of the crop. They were in the rear because they had been tried in the front lines and found wanting. Some were so mentally slow that they were barely capable of menial duties; others were disciplinary hard cases who couldn't be trusted without constant supervision. In desperation, the Partizanjaeger units had started taking men from military prisons and other disciplinary units. Combined with weak and inept officers, the dubious antecedents of the enlisted men was already causing the units to have a dire reputation.
One such unit was closing in on Osaulenko’s band right now. Its headquarters and the command post had been set up on the opposite bank of the river. That was their first problem. The wooden footbridge had been burned, there was no ferry, and the previous night the scouts assigned to reconnoiter any partisan positions had just waded across up to their waists in the chilling temperatures of the river water. They had stumbled across made a very perfunctory search of the opposite bank before making their way back. From the fact that nobody had fired a shot at them, they had drawn the conclusion that there were no partisans and reported that as a fact to their commander.
Osaulenko had been watching them carefully, taking pride in the fact his Partisans had held their fire despite the temptation to do otherwise. He could see that the fascists were already starting to advance on his little unit from a low ridge, leaving the ruins of yet another a burnt village in their wake. The sight of the blackened ruins reminded everybody of their reason for fighting this battle. The horrors of the last few months had reminded the population of the old traditions. When the enemy come, retreat to the forest with your livestock and everything you can carry. Leave nothing behind. Behind Osaulenko’s thin line of partisans, two more villages were hastily retreating to the protection of the dark, trackless forests. Osaulenko and his partisans were buying them the time to get clear.
The truth of the matter was that Osaulenko was beginning to learn the real conflict of interest that lay behind partisan operations. He could fight a guerilla war against the fascist invaders, and he could make their entry into the forests difficult. But the more successful he was, the greater the effort that would be made against him. The local people depended upon his handful of partisans to protect them against the fascists, yet that very protection brought the fascists down upon them. He had led his group of nine partisans well, striking out at the fascist units back by the highway, such as it was, forcing them to divert forces away from their onslaught on the Soviet Army. Thanks to his efforts, both the railways controlled by the fascists were suffering constant attacks, losing manpower, cargo, and transport. That was what had started this present engagement. Two nights before, Osaulenko’s group had succeeded in derailing a train over a deep cutting when the train was going downhill. The steam engine had jumped the tracks and bounced off the slopes while completely rolling over. The railroad cars continued to push down on each other creating a massive jam that had stopped movement on that part of the railroad until the fascists were able to remove the twisted mass of metal and wood.
Before they could do that, they had to clear a path through to the scene of the derailment. A few preliminary pushes by handfuls of fascist police or Ukrainian Nightingales had all been repulsed and driven back to their initial lines. One of the new Partizanjaeger units had been brought in and they had launched a new attack. Instead of following the railway line, they had cut across-country and outflanked the partisan positions. All they had to do now was to cross the river, secure the derailment site and the railway engineers could come in to start repairs. Once that situation was stabilized, the Partizanjaegers could begin the program of reprisals against the local population.
The silence was broken by the cracking of branches and a continuous, monotonous sound as the fascists advanced down the slope towards the riverbank in open files, staring fixedly in front of them and treading heavily. They obviously had not yet learned how to move through the forests silently and so lacked the key skill that made fighting in the endless Russian forest practical. Instead, to Osaulenko, they seemed to be trying to hypnotize his partisans with the impressiveness of their offensive. For a moment, his partisans held their breath, listening intently as the fascists continued the descent from their ridge. They were dispersed out, each taking maximum possible cover from the rocks and bushes. Watching the fascists approach, Osaulenko felt his stomach muscles clench with tense expectation.
“Let them come closer!’’ His command was more a matter of relieving his own apprehension than directing his partisans. He followed it up with and equally unnecessary, “When I give the order—fire!” He could see that the distance between the advancing fascists and his own position was rapidly diminishing. It was his ears that told him that some more of the fascists were trying to work around his flank and try to prevent the partisans from escaping into the forest behind them.
Carefully crouched behind the stump of a tree, Valentina Aleksandrovna Nasonkina was carefully taking stock of the situation. Since joining the group, she had acquired a Kuban cap with a red band and was wearing it pushed to the back of her head. She had three full magazines for her MP40 now. The men to her left each had two hand grenades, but it had been, rather apologetically, explained that she didn’t have the strength to throw them far enough and would be more of a danger to her comrades than to the enemy. As it was, she had an even more vital role, watching the flank for any fascist move to cut off her retreat. Like Osaulenko, she had heard the crunch of twigs snapping and the rushing noise of wet leaves being disturbed. Once she opened fire, Osaulenko would come and support her with his rifle. Whether they would get more support depended on how critical the situation to their front was. Also, if there was a threat to their other flank, then Jasa Andriychuk would give the alert and engage with his MP40.
She watched while the fascists approaching the river hit the area that was still waterlogged from the rain and the free water of the river. They were floundering in the mud, trying to get back to some solid footing. You wait for a month, suka, and you will understand what a real Rasputitsa is like.
Watching the front ranks trying to cope with the knee-deep mud had caused the rest of the fascist forward line to lie down, ready to provide covering fire. The lack of resistance added weight to the previous night’s reports that there were no Partisans here. Nevertheless, they watched carefully before some of them made a dash forward, then laid down again. Nasonkina saw Osaulenko give the word as a second rank of fascists started their run forward to leapfrog the first group. The thin stutter of rifle fire would have told them how weak the force in front of them was, but it had been timed so that the firing started just as that second group hit the mud. Despite floundering around like the first group, the fascists started to shoot back at the Russians they now knew had to be in the trees.
That was when the Russians threw their grenades. They soared through the air and landed amongst the lead troops of the fascist force. Shells and bullets were absorbed by the mud, their deadliness choked by the clinging ground, but hand grenades exploded on the surface. Nasonkina saw the fascist Partizanjaeger detachment commander continue to move amongst his men, encouraging them, leading them on. She saw that he was engrossed in the fighting and paid no heed to the red streaks of the bullets whizzing round him. Instead, he was counting his men that were firing on the partisans concealed in the forest line and checking that his machine-guns were still in commission. His voice rang across the battlefield “Don’t duck your head like that, look where you’re firing!”
As Nasonkina watched, she saw the German officer turn visibly pale. The grenades thrown across the river had knocked out his machine-guns and disabled more than half his firepower. Another machine gun was firing only single shots revealing that it was running out of ammunition. The Partizanjaeger units hadn’t just been the last in line for available manpower, they had been forced to accept old, obsolete weapons that had been outdated even in 1918. They had also had the lowest priority for ammunition and in situations where even front-line infantry were counting bullets in single numbers, the Partizanjaegers each counted themselves fortunate to have a second clip. In contrast, Osaulenko had equipped his unit by taking weapons from more privileged fascist units. Both fascists and partisans were short of ammunition, but the partisans were just a little bit less short and that made a big difference. The din of firing, magnified by malicious forest echoes, was ringing in her ears. Nasonkina felt the reek of powder getting into her throat and catching her breath.
That was when the fascists tried their flank attack. It was later than had been planned; the mud and the largely untrained troops saw to that. The Germans were out to finish the partisans, but the plan was now long past attainment. Instead, their commander was trying to work out how to disengage from this action without losing too many more men. Under those circumstances, the half-dozen men who came through the trees on the partisan’s position were more of an embarrassment than a tactical maneuver. Nasonkina saw their shadows in the trees and squeezed off a series of single shots from her position. At least one of the bullets must have bitten because she heard a loud yelp, one quickly cut off. The same sound alerted Osaulenko of the developing threat.
Nasonkina was working her way to a new position. She was as untrained and inexperienced as the partizanjaegers on the other bank of the river, but she had been in the company of men who had survived the catastrophic retreats that had taken place in the first days of the war. Those days had been brutally Darwinian, and the survivors had taken her under their wing. They had started teaching her a few lessons; ones like never fire twice from the same place and automatic fire attracts other machine guns and mortars so don’t use it.
Osaulenko joined her in a reasonably satisfactory position and started scanning the trees for any sign of the fascists. There was none; he guessed that the fascists had seen their flanking move had been detected and they had given it up. That was, he thought, the first sensible decision they had made. It also meant that it was time to disengage, slip backwards and set up a new position. That was the way of war in the forests.
Headquarters, SS Jägdverband 502, Zhovka, Ukraine
“Stefan, have you read this report?”
“The partisan attack on the railway line? Certainly, although I think it said little we hadn’t seen before.”
“There’s another one now. One of the new Partizanjaeger units found a band they thought were responsible for the derailment and exchanged fire with them. It was a pathetic display of ineptness. I would hope that the trembling of the ground we all detected last night was the result of generations of good, honest landsers spinning rapidly in their graves.”
Stefan Bahr couldn’t help laughing; there had been a minor earthquake the night before. “May I see it, Otto?”
“Certainly. Have a good laugh.” Skorzeny handed it over.
Bahr read it and saw what had happened almost instantly. “Damn. They blundered into the Partisans and exchanged fire. We had a couple of men killed and a few more wounded, no evidence of any partisans being killed. They just held our boys up, roughed them up and then slipped away. Sorry, Otto, three men dead.”
“Ohdearhowsadnevermind.” Skorzeny’s voice was loaded with complete unconcern. “The problem is that all the men in those Partizanjaeger units are the scraps of the scraps. Our training establishments are overloaded, and we can’t get enough instructors.”
“Or we got the ones we had killed.” Bahr could be rather tactless sometimes.
“True. So the recruits who are physically and/or mentally unsuited for even the most elementary front-line duties get just enough training to do whatever it is that they can do. Put them in charge of a worn-out retread officer and we get this kind of fiasco. What was the phrase the British used when we were in Iraq? A cake and arse party?” Skorzeny looked a little sad. “You know, I like the British. Anyway, note the conclusion at the end. Our gallant officer claims he won the engagement because the Partisans slipped away. He completely misses the point that he was supposed to kill them and failed dismally.”
“So, Otto, what is all this to do with us?”
“Because, my dear Stefan, this idiocy was the last straw. The fact is those Partisans are going where they want and doing what they wish. To us. It’s got to stop. So, as from today, SS Jägdverband 502 is to provide training cadres for all the Partizanjaeger battalions. My orders are to use our division to put a stop to this rear-area warfare. The only redeeming feature they have given me is that, apart from ensuring that the men in those units are properly trained, I have a completely free hand.”
Airfield 11, Donuzlav Lake, Crimea.
“Tovarishchi! I bring orders from the Party and the workers and peasants it represents! They have seen the work you have all done here and judged the lessons you have learned are too valuable to be lost. The 10th Fighter Regiment, the Fourth Ground Attack Regiment and the Commonwealth Expeditionary Air Force are to be transferred to an airfield at Krymsk in the Kuban. There, you will rebuild your units and pass on your hard-learned lessons to other pilots. You will be replaced here by new fighter and ground attack regiments drawn from the Strategic Reserve.”
Napalkov looked around at the surviving pilots and their ground crews. There were few enough of them; the Russian units had been brutally mauled with barely a quarter of their strength surviving. Bearing in mind that they were units that had been created by amalgamating other Regiments that had been worn down so far that they could no longer be sent into combat, they were stark evidence of the butchery they had suffered at the hands of. The Commonwealth Air Expeditionary Force hadn’t suffered the same brutalization, but a steady stream of losses spread over time had reduced the unit to barely half its original strength.
"Bratishka of the Commonwealth Expeditionary Air Force, I have been asked by your governments to pass on their congratulations and that the Battle Honor 'Crimea 1941' will be added to those already held by your units. Your Flamingo transports will be arriving shortly to take your ground crews and administrative personnel to Krymsk. There, reinforcements and new aircraft will be waiting for you.
Squadron Leader Pim Bosede didn't want to leave the Crimea. Despite the barrier caused by the lack of a common language and a determined effort by the Soviet authorities to prevent too many meetings between the Commonwealth personnel and the Russians, somehow, the place and the people had worked their way into his heart. He felt as if leaving for the Kuban was betraying them. Yet, the idea of pulling back battle-tested units so that they could pass their hard-won expertise onto new arrivals made a lot of sense. That was badly needed by the Commonwealth as well as the Soviets. Bosede had come to the Crimea as one of the leading Commonwealth aces and had thought he was at the top of his business. That belief had not survived his first brush with the Luftwaffe fighter pilots. Privately, he counted each of the 32 kills he had scored before coming to the Crimea as being only equivalent to a quarter of a kill scored against the Germans and half a kill against the Romanians. That meant he had only twelve 'real' kills. When he handed out the decorations and promotions that had been sent by Cape Town, he would remind the recipients that fighting Germans was not the same as taking on Iraqis or Italians. Over-confidence was a dire and usually fatal fault.
Napalkov had waited for the buzz of discussion to quieten down. "The first movement will start immediately. Pilots of the 4th Ground Attack Regiment! Your Sturmoviks can carry two passengers each for this flight. You will be assigned your passengers within the hour and will leave immediately. Ready your aircraft at once!"
"Yezht! We serve the Party and the people!" Petr Anisimovich Ochakov led the pilots of the 4th away from the meeting towards the flight line.
Behind him, Napalkov continued. "Pilots of the 10th Fighter Regiment. You will carry one passenger each. You will leave here after you have covered the Sturmoviks in their flight. On arrival at Krymsk, you will receive a new type of fighter aircraft."
Ivan Anastasovich Balakai and his fellow pilots gave a very genuine cheer before repeating the time-honored formula and heading for the flight-line. Each of the survivors was thinking the same thing No matter what this new aircraft is, it has to be better than the Guaranteed Varnished Coffin.
With the Russian aircrew dismissed, Napalkov walked over to join the Commonwealth pilots. He dropped the formal and declamatory style that were standard for addressing Soviet military personnel and instead adopted the most friendly and informal manner he could. It hadn't escaped his notice that, while the political officer announced promotions and decorations in Soviet units, the same announcements were made by a Commonwealth squadron leader. "Bratishka, can your Flamingos help us to move everybody else?"
The list of promotions had included Pim Bosede. As of midnight, he would become a Wing Commander and would assume command of the Commonwealth Air Expeditionary Force. "We can carry 22 passengers per aircraft. The aircraft will be coming in singly. Might I suggest we move to Krymsk arm-in-arm? As each aircraft loads, we can place 11 of our people and 11 of yours on board. Once all our own people are out, we'll continue the shuttle flights until all your people are out."
Napalkov was genuinely touched. "That is a very generous proposal, bratishka. The aircraft will be safe flying alone?"
"They should be. We fly them south over the Black Sea and then we can just turn east. We'll be out of range of enemy fighters most of the way. One thing concerns me, Tovarish Politruk. Our fighters and bombers have longer range than yours; how will we continue to support the defenders in Odessa?"
Napolkov thought carefully about that, then decided to trust Bosede. "The new fighter regiment that will be replacing the 10th here is to be equipped with American fighters we are receiving as aid. They will have the range necessary."
"You're getting Kittyhawks?"
Bapolkov shook his head. "Another type. Something called the Airacobra. They are being flown to Krymsk while we speak."
Partisan Group, Kostopilskyi Forest, Ukraine
Valentina Aleksandrovna Nasonkina knew that the long, hot summer in the Ukraine was beginning to end. There were more days when it would rain and fewer when the sun would bake the mud dry. In the forest where the Partisans were making their stand, the woods and trees were slowly steaming away the moisture from the last rains. They had almost been heavy enough to classify as a storm and every Russian knew what that meant. The rains got heavier and soon the amount of water would overcome the very limited drainage in the soil. The thick black ground that grew crops in such quantity that the Ukraine had once been the breadbasket of Europe would absorb the moisture instead of letting it run away.
That would turn it into a thick, glutinous mud that would reach deeper and deeper into the ground until the solid footing was too deep to be reached. Then, the forest would turn into the Rasputitsa, the sea of mud. Valentine knew that one had to be Russian to understand what the Rasputitsa really meant. The unsurfaced roads would turn into swamps where men and horses could drown and leave no trace. Motor vehicles were no better and often just made things worse. Their wheels would grind the mud into paste many times worse than the natural original. What tanks would do to the Rasputitsa was unimaginable. The truth was, nobody went anywhere in the Rasputitsa until winter came and the ground froze. Then, once more, movement would be possible until the winter became too severe.
It was experience with the Rasputitsa, a lifetime living with wary respect for the power of the mud, that had led the partisan detachment to select their position. Osaulenko had picked out a point where a rocky outcrop made a sort of peninsula in the bend of a deep river. The river was evidence of good drainage, the rocks would keep the ground solid. That was optimistic for when the Rasputitsa struck, there was no good footage, and the ground was never firm. Here, though, in the days before the full fury of the mud was turned on the invaders, there was enough footing and enough solidity to allow fighting and movement. For those who understood the Rasputitsa of course. For those who did not, a uniquely Russian form of hell was about to descend.
There was another reason for this position. Stung by the constant pin-prick attacks in their rear areas, aware that the by-passed and encircled Soviet units were reforming as Partisan groups in their rear, the fascists had started to try and clear the areas worst affected. They had formed anti-partisan units from rear-area troops. They had scoured their units for truck drivers, laborers, mechanics, cooks, clerks, technicians, airfield auxiliary personnel, every imaginable category of rear-echelon personnel they could find and organized them into Partizanjaeger battalions. The problem had been that the front-line infantry had already scoured those units for personnel who had the makings of good, or at least passable, soldiers. What the officers forming the Partizanjaeger units had been left with were the men that even desperate infantry company commander would rather not have. Even the officers assigned to the Partizanjaeger units were hardly the pick of the crop. They were in the rear because they had been tried in the front lines and found wanting. Some were so mentally slow that they were barely capable of menial duties; others were disciplinary hard cases who couldn't be trusted without constant supervision. In desperation, the Partizanjaeger units had started taking men from military prisons and other disciplinary units. Combined with weak and inept officers, the dubious antecedents of the enlisted men was already causing the units to have a dire reputation.
One such unit was closing in on Osaulenko’s band right now. Its headquarters and the command post had been set up on the opposite bank of the river. That was their first problem. The wooden footbridge had been burned, there was no ferry, and the previous night the scouts assigned to reconnoiter any partisan positions had just waded across up to their waists in the chilling temperatures of the river water. They had stumbled across made a very perfunctory search of the opposite bank before making their way back. From the fact that nobody had fired a shot at them, they had drawn the conclusion that there were no partisans and reported that as a fact to their commander.
Osaulenko had been watching them carefully, taking pride in the fact his Partisans had held their fire despite the temptation to do otherwise. He could see that the fascists were already starting to advance on his little unit from a low ridge, leaving the ruins of yet another a burnt village in their wake. The sight of the blackened ruins reminded everybody of their reason for fighting this battle. The horrors of the last few months had reminded the population of the old traditions. When the enemy come, retreat to the forest with your livestock and everything you can carry. Leave nothing behind. Behind Osaulenko’s thin line of partisans, two more villages were hastily retreating to the protection of the dark, trackless forests. Osaulenko and his partisans were buying them the time to get clear.
The truth of the matter was that Osaulenko was beginning to learn the real conflict of interest that lay behind partisan operations. He could fight a guerilla war against the fascist invaders, and he could make their entry into the forests difficult. But the more successful he was, the greater the effort that would be made against him. The local people depended upon his handful of partisans to protect them against the fascists, yet that very protection brought the fascists down upon them. He had led his group of nine partisans well, striking out at the fascist units back by the highway, such as it was, forcing them to divert forces away from their onslaught on the Soviet Army. Thanks to his efforts, both the railways controlled by the fascists were suffering constant attacks, losing manpower, cargo, and transport. That was what had started this present engagement. Two nights before, Osaulenko’s group had succeeded in derailing a train over a deep cutting when the train was going downhill. The steam engine had jumped the tracks and bounced off the slopes while completely rolling over. The railroad cars continued to push down on each other creating a massive jam that had stopped movement on that part of the railroad until the fascists were able to remove the twisted mass of metal and wood.
Before they could do that, they had to clear a path through to the scene of the derailment. A few preliminary pushes by handfuls of fascist police or Ukrainian Nightingales had all been repulsed and driven back to their initial lines. One of the new Partizanjaeger units had been brought in and they had launched a new attack. Instead of following the railway line, they had cut across-country and outflanked the partisan positions. All they had to do now was to cross the river, secure the derailment site and the railway engineers could come in to start repairs. Once that situation was stabilized, the Partizanjaegers could begin the program of reprisals against the local population.
The silence was broken by the cracking of branches and a continuous, monotonous sound as the fascists advanced down the slope towards the riverbank in open files, staring fixedly in front of them and treading heavily. They obviously had not yet learned how to move through the forests silently and so lacked the key skill that made fighting in the endless Russian forest practical. Instead, to Osaulenko, they seemed to be trying to hypnotize his partisans with the impressiveness of their offensive. For a moment, his partisans held their breath, listening intently as the fascists continued the descent from their ridge. They were dispersed out, each taking maximum possible cover from the rocks and bushes. Watching the fascists approach, Osaulenko felt his stomach muscles clench with tense expectation.
“Let them come closer!’’ His command was more a matter of relieving his own apprehension than directing his partisans. He followed it up with and equally unnecessary, “When I give the order—fire!” He could see that the distance between the advancing fascists and his own position was rapidly diminishing. It was his ears that told him that some more of the fascists were trying to work around his flank and try to prevent the partisans from escaping into the forest behind them.
Carefully crouched behind the stump of a tree, Valentina Aleksandrovna Nasonkina was carefully taking stock of the situation. Since joining the group, she had acquired a Kuban cap with a red band and was wearing it pushed to the back of her head. She had three full magazines for her MP40 now. The men to her left each had two hand grenades, but it had been, rather apologetically, explained that she didn’t have the strength to throw them far enough and would be more of a danger to her comrades than to the enemy. As it was, she had an even more vital role, watching the flank for any fascist move to cut off her retreat. Like Osaulenko, she had heard the crunch of twigs snapping and the rushing noise of wet leaves being disturbed. Once she opened fire, Osaulenko would come and support her with his rifle. Whether they would get more support depended on how critical the situation to their front was. Also, if there was a threat to their other flank, then Jasa Andriychuk would give the alert and engage with his MP40.
She watched while the fascists approaching the river hit the area that was still waterlogged from the rain and the free water of the river. They were floundering in the mud, trying to get back to some solid footing. You wait for a month, suka, and you will understand what a real Rasputitsa is like.
Watching the front ranks trying to cope with the knee-deep mud had caused the rest of the fascist forward line to lie down, ready to provide covering fire. The lack of resistance added weight to the previous night’s reports that there were no Partisans here. Nevertheless, they watched carefully before some of them made a dash forward, then laid down again. Nasonkina saw Osaulenko give the word as a second rank of fascists started their run forward to leapfrog the first group. The thin stutter of rifle fire would have told them how weak the force in front of them was, but it had been timed so that the firing started just as that second group hit the mud. Despite floundering around like the first group, the fascists started to shoot back at the Russians they now knew had to be in the trees.
That was when the Russians threw their grenades. They soared through the air and landed amongst the lead troops of the fascist force. Shells and bullets were absorbed by the mud, their deadliness choked by the clinging ground, but hand grenades exploded on the surface. Nasonkina saw the fascist Partizanjaeger detachment commander continue to move amongst his men, encouraging them, leading them on. She saw that he was engrossed in the fighting and paid no heed to the red streaks of the bullets whizzing round him. Instead, he was counting his men that were firing on the partisans concealed in the forest line and checking that his machine-guns were still in commission. His voice rang across the battlefield “Don’t duck your head like that, look where you’re firing!”
As Nasonkina watched, she saw the German officer turn visibly pale. The grenades thrown across the river had knocked out his machine-guns and disabled more than half his firepower. Another machine gun was firing only single shots revealing that it was running out of ammunition. The Partizanjaeger units hadn’t just been the last in line for available manpower, they had been forced to accept old, obsolete weapons that had been outdated even in 1918. They had also had the lowest priority for ammunition and in situations where even front-line infantry were counting bullets in single numbers, the Partizanjaegers each counted themselves fortunate to have a second clip. In contrast, Osaulenko had equipped his unit by taking weapons from more privileged fascist units. Both fascists and partisans were short of ammunition, but the partisans were just a little bit less short and that made a big difference. The din of firing, magnified by malicious forest echoes, was ringing in her ears. Nasonkina felt the reek of powder getting into her throat and catching her breath.
That was when the fascists tried their flank attack. It was later than had been planned; the mud and the largely untrained troops saw to that. The Germans were out to finish the partisans, but the plan was now long past attainment. Instead, their commander was trying to work out how to disengage from this action without losing too many more men. Under those circumstances, the half-dozen men who came through the trees on the partisan’s position were more of an embarrassment than a tactical maneuver. Nasonkina saw their shadows in the trees and squeezed off a series of single shots from her position. At least one of the bullets must have bitten because she heard a loud yelp, one quickly cut off. The same sound alerted Osaulenko of the developing threat.
Nasonkina was working her way to a new position. She was as untrained and inexperienced as the partizanjaegers on the other bank of the river, but she had been in the company of men who had survived the catastrophic retreats that had taken place in the first days of the war. Those days had been brutally Darwinian, and the survivors had taken her under their wing. They had started teaching her a few lessons; ones like never fire twice from the same place and automatic fire attracts other machine guns and mortars so don’t use it.
Osaulenko joined her in a reasonably satisfactory position and started scanning the trees for any sign of the fascists. There was none; he guessed that the fascists had seen their flanking move had been detected and they had given it up. That was, he thought, the first sensible decision they had made. It also meant that it was time to disengage, slip backwards and set up a new position. That was the way of war in the forests.
Headquarters, SS Jägdverband 502, Zhovka, Ukraine
“Stefan, have you read this report?”
“The partisan attack on the railway line? Certainly, although I think it said little we hadn’t seen before.”
“There’s another one now. One of the new Partizanjaeger units found a band they thought were responsible for the derailment and exchanged fire with them. It was a pathetic display of ineptness. I would hope that the trembling of the ground we all detected last night was the result of generations of good, honest landsers spinning rapidly in their graves.”
Stefan Bahr couldn’t help laughing; there had been a minor earthquake the night before. “May I see it, Otto?”
“Certainly. Have a good laugh.” Skorzeny handed it over.
Bahr read it and saw what had happened almost instantly. “Damn. They blundered into the Partisans and exchanged fire. We had a couple of men killed and a few more wounded, no evidence of any partisans being killed. They just held our boys up, roughed them up and then slipped away. Sorry, Otto, three men dead.”
“Ohdearhowsadnevermind.” Skorzeny’s voice was loaded with complete unconcern. “The problem is that all the men in those Partizanjaeger units are the scraps of the scraps. Our training establishments are overloaded, and we can’t get enough instructors.”
“Or we got the ones we had killed.” Bahr could be rather tactless sometimes.
“True. So the recruits who are physically and/or mentally unsuited for even the most elementary front-line duties get just enough training to do whatever it is that they can do. Put them in charge of a worn-out retread officer and we get this kind of fiasco. What was the phrase the British used when we were in Iraq? A cake and arse party?” Skorzeny looked a little sad. “You know, I like the British. Anyway, note the conclusion at the end. Our gallant officer claims he won the engagement because the Partisans slipped away. He completely misses the point that he was supposed to kill them and failed dismally.”
“So, Otto, what is all this to do with us?”
“Because, my dear Stefan, this idiocy was the last straw. The fact is those Partisans are going where they want and doing what they wish. To us. It’s got to stop. So, as from today, SS Jägdverband 502 is to provide training cadres for all the Partizanjaeger battalions. My orders are to use our division to put a stop to this rear-area warfare. The only redeeming feature they have given me is that, apart from ensuring that the men in those units are properly trained, I have a completely free hand.”
Re: 1941 - Conflict of Interest
Chapter Forty-Five
Isabel Jones' House, 70 Upper Debert River Road, Debert, Nova Scotia.
"How busy are you going to be with the new aircraft, Digger?" Isabel Jones had made dinner for them, rather than going out for a meal. She was a better-than-average cook and the scent of baking food coming from the kitchen was tantalizing.
"I don’t think it'll be with us for too long Izzie. I'll let you into a little secret, every new aircraft is pushed as being a revolutionary development that will win the war for us but when we finally get to see one, it turns out to be a minor modification of the earlier model. Up in the driver's seat, it's often hard to tell the difference. This one's no different. Good news is that because this is a simple job, it'll be done quickly and I can get some leave."
"Digger, that's wonderful! Can we go away together?"
"That's what I had in mind." Dale smiled cannily. "I'll have to tell the brass where I am of course, in case of an emergency, but we should be able to get away for a whole week. Assuming no more subs turn up."
"Subs?"
"Yeah, the problem's always been that the U-boats have flak guns, and they make life hot for the attacking bombers. The Navy have stuffed a six-pounder gun into the nose of a Hudson so we can shoot the subs up from outside the range of that flak. It's probably a big thing for the maritime boys but for me, I'm wasting my time. I can’t tell the difference. Unless we fire the gun then the flash is bit blinding."
He was interrupted by a loud ringing from the kitchen, a coincidence that made him think it was a divine signal that he'd said enough. While Isabel got the smoked chicken-and-cheese casserole from the oven he got out a guide to Canada and started looking up holiday resorts. "Izzy, how about the Breakers Hotel at Cobourg on Lake Ontario? They've got a cottage right on the beach."
"Sounds good, Digger. Now, I've got some white wine to go with our dinner. Can you pop the cork for me please?"
Room X, Communications Security Establishment, Ontario, Canada
"We got her, Sir! All four intercept sets got direction bearings on her transmission the night after our asset left her house. It's a perfect match; two bearings would be good enough, three would be conclusive and we have four. Even better, she didn’t transmit using Enigma. She used a high-level commercial code. The Navy should be able to decrypt it." Geraldine Morris put the original intercept on Roper-Caldbeck's desk and the decrypt on top of it. "We got a real break when she used the commercial-grade cipher. The question I'd ask is why?"
Roper-Caldbeck thought carefully about that. "At a guess, they only use the high-grade Enigma for really vital messages in order to avoid compromise from an excessive volume of transmissions. Or, quite possibly, she doesn’t have an Enigma machine herself. That would make a lot of sense since wireless operators are the most vulnerable link in the chain. If there is an Enigma machine ashore somewhere, it will be at a remote location."
"That makes sense, Sir. We've been cleverer than we thought by keeping this low-key."
"Have we got what we need?" Roper-Caldbeck knew the question was superfluous but his roasting at the hands of the RCMP had been traumatic. He was living on exceptionally thin ice, and he was extraordinarily aware of it.
"Oh yes, and damning it is. All about how the British, interesting that by the way, British, not Commonwealth, plan to take on submarines by using anti-tank guns mounted on Hudsons. Even specified a 57mm gun, that's what a German would call a six-pounder. It’s the agreed bait, no doubt about it. She even said it made no difference to the way the aircraft flew."
"So, radar in merchant ships qualifies for the top-level code, a different armament on a bomber probably does not, interesting set of priorities there. Very good, Gerry. Let's call the RCMP before they beat me bloody again. Tell them we think it’s a maritime code, attribute that opinion to one of our Royal Navy instructors who was in the merchant marine before joining up, and let them make their own decrypts."
RCMP Security Service Branch, Churchill, Nova Scotia.
"Well, Geoff, looks like your pilot will need a new girlfriend." Deputy Commissioner Dylan Morrison sounded sympathetic which was a remarkable piece of acting under the circumstances.
"It wasn't his fault, Sir. This was a beautiful, elegant set-up. It fooled everybody involved right up to the moment Dale spotted one question as being a hair too sharp."
"Smart kid that. Most youngsters in that position would have kept blabbering away. When are we going to take the Jones girl in?"
"Tonight, Sir. She'll be getting ready for another date and the shock of finding the police on her doorstep instead will be a good start in breaking her down."
Airfield Number 257, Khrym, Kuban.
Bosede had taxied his P-40 off the runway and into a parking revetment. He noticed a lot of things on the way; for example, how the aircraft were spaced out and dispersed so that a single strafing pass couldn't take multiple aircraft out with a single run. Each aircraft had its own camouflaged revetment for additional protection. For all the new arrangements, the airfield was well-established and had aged into the surrounding territory.
What did interest him were the new aircraft that were parked alongside the runway. A small, really neat-looking aircraft with a nose-wheel undercarriage. That’s an Airacobra. Long time ago, one of my aviation magazines, ‘Flying Aces’, had an article comparing it favorably with a Spitfire. I like the canopy, there'll be good all-around vision from that. The doors look a bit odd though.
"Wing Commander?" One of the men around the Airacobras had detached himself from the rest and come over to Bosede. The wing commander's rank markings were new enough to make Bosede look around to see who was being addressed. The confusion left him slightly flustered.
"Oh, sorry. Can I help you?"
"Seal. Barry Seal. I'm in charge of this delivery flight. We have some new P-40s for you as well. F-model Warhawks. If you could gather your pilots, one of my people will give you a quick run-down. There's not much difference, a bit more power and we've extended the glazing aft of the pilot's seat."
"I'll get everybody read . . ." Bosede hesitated; the American was in civilian clothes and there was not a badge of rank to be seen. In fact, his flight suit was distinctly Russian. Something about the color and cut made it very unlike any American uniforms he had seen. "Army Air Force?"
"Oh no." Seal hesitated as well. "I'm a civilian pilot employed by Bell to deliver P-39s to Russia. This is as far forward as we're allowed to come. We brought the Airacobras, there are also a group of Curtiss pilots here who brought the new Warhawks over for you."
"So that's the P-39. I've only seen pictures of them. How do they fly?"
"It's a P-400. Version we built for the British with a 20mm cannon instead of the 37mm. The Brits folded before we delivered them, so they've been sitting around waiting for a user. Army took some for advanced trainers, the rest were just sitting on airfields, so we flew them over. It's fast low down, maneuverable and very well protected. Downside is that it gets short of breath above 12,000 feet and has viciously bad spin and stall characteristics."
"The altitude won’t matter. The Russian pilots think anything above 3,000 meters is high altitude and give that to the MiGs. Their jaws drop when they hear about fighting over 20,000 feet. Between you and me, the Yaks are the only planes they have that are even close to being up to par. The I-16s are slow and thoroughly vicious to fly, the MiGs are pathetically under armed and the LaGGs are so sluggish even the 110s can outmaneuver them. To make things even worse they don’t have radios so they can’t coordinate in the air. If those Airacobras are as good as the book says, they'll be the most effective fighters out here."
Seal snorted. "Since when was anything as good as the book said? But the Army prefer the P-39 to the P-40 so that should tell you something. Now, the various species of brass are just sending everything they can. The way we heard it, the Russians have lost thousands of aircraft and anything they can get is needed yesterday."
Bosede breathed a deep sigh. "That's about the size of it. The fascists went through them like buzz-saws. It’s not just the aircraft, their pilots are shit hot. We've run into them and their 109s several times and we've done very well to break even. The 109 itself isn't so great but their pilots know them inside and out. They can do things with them we'd never even thought of. Those Airacobras had better be good because they're sure as hell needed."
Headquarters, Artillery Regiment 171, 71st Infantry Division, Pashkivka, Ukraine.
“It’s raining.” Major Heinrich Asbach had two bottles of his family brandy with him which provided him with an excellent excuse to state the obvious. They were also there to celebrate the promotion that he had just received.
“Promotions? Certainly.” Oberst Klaus Marcks was fully aware of the flood of promotions that had descended on the Army in the wake of Barbarossa. The junior officers had taken very heavy casualties and NCOs were being promoted to fill the gaps. The same applied all the way up the command structure; officers had been killed and junior personnel were being promoted prematurely to replace them. He had only just managed to dodge one such promotion himself and regretted that Asbach hadn’t managed to do the same. “There are, after all, enough vacancies in the Army now.”
Asbach nodded in agreement with the grim insight. The casualties taken so far had been brutal and he was well-aware of how many more were likely to come. The Army had been left horribly under-strength and he suspected that nobody would ever see a full-strength German unit again. The coming mud season would give the battered front-line units a chance to rebuild a little but that would just turn the situation from critical to dire. What was really needed was a six-month break in the fighting so the Army could repair the damage it had suffered. They’d had that after France, but he knew full well that was very unlikely to happen again. “The Kiev Offensive has changed everything. We would still be pinned behind the Dneiper now if that hadn’t torn the front open.”
“And it left the panzer generals foaming at the mouth which is never a bad thing. They won’t be able to swallow the fact that the Fuhrer was right, and they were wrong. They’ll howl about it until the day the Fatherland is just a memory. Still, let us forget them for the moment and drink to some good news.” Marcks raised his glass “Congratulations, Heini.”
“Thank you; any sign of a general’s stars coming?” Asbach took a good gulp of his brandy. He was beginning to understand why Russians drank so much. There was something about the endless expanse of Russia that made any reasonable man seek refuge in a bottle.
Marcks shook his head. “I managed to dodge it this time. I won’t be so lucky next spring. You’d better start setting up your defenses too Heini. There will come a time when missing out on promotions will be a small price to pay for the disaster that is coming when winter sets in. The sensible thing to do right now would be to dig on and hold this line throughout the winter. We’re secure along the Dneiper here and the ground just east of Smolensk in the north is very easily defensible. Holding a string line there will allow us to build up our supplies again and launch a spring offensive next year. It won’t happen. The panzer generals are obsessed with capturing Moscow; they will attack again after the mud dries and we’ll be caught over-extended in the winter. Once that happens, that winter battle will be a nightmare. Have you seen our reserves of winter clothing?”
“We don’t have any?”
“Precisely. And it’s not because there isn’t any, but it’s all held in depots back home. The Army is concentrating on shipping ammunition and fuel forward and don’t have the rail capacity for anything else. The further east we go now, the worse the winter will be for us. The Fuhrer sees that; that’s why he sided with the general staff faction that wanted to launch the Kiev offensive. The price is going to be a pre-winter offensive aimed at Moscow. We’re better off out of that. It’s going to fail, and the troops involved will be on the receiving end of a war in the snow. The good news is we’ll be all right down here. We’ll try and cut off the Crimea and end the siege at Odessa but that’s it. Just pity the poor bastards who’ll be fighting in the snow in front of Moscow and pray that we don’t get transferred up there.”
Asbach took another gulp of brandy. “Amen to that. You know, there are times when I think that the only way a German soldier could get to see Moscow was to join the French Army.”
“Well, Heini, don’t think that too loudly. And remember what happened to Napoleon’s Grande Armee. They lunged for Moscow as well. And ended up having to retreat in the winter. How many of them survived?”
“About 25,000, I think. Perhaps a few more. You think it will be that bad?”
Marcks thought about that. “No, but it could be close.”
Isabel Jones' House, 70 Upper Debert River Road, Debert, Nova Scotia.
When the doorbell rang, Isabel Jones took a few seconds to check her hair and make-up were in order and her dress was properly arranged. Then she opened the front door with a beaming smile that almost instantly froze in place.
“Miss Isabel Jones?” The RCMP officer was holding up a warrant card. There was a policewoman behind him. Like most female ‘mounties’, she was the wife of an RCMP officer, officially recruited to support operations in one- and two-man isolated posts. The employment of wives was seen as a way to supplement the incomes of the men in the face of government parsimony. The women’s duties ranged from answering phones and providing meals to prisoners, as well as providing lodging and meals to visiting officials. They also took complaints and were responsible for searching female offenders and detaining female prisoners. That was why Maritza Morgan had been attached to the raid.
“That’s me.” Jones sounded very guarded. It was already obvious to her that something was very wrong, for her at least. “Can we do this later? I have company coming around now.”
“I’m afraid Pilot Officer Dale won’t be coming. He’s assisting us with our inquiries in our Churchill station.” Detective Inspector Geoffrey Gour looked at the woman in front of him grimly. He was an experienced police officer and could smell guilt as soon as he used the doom-laden phrase ‘assisting with our inquiries’. The big question is, what is she guilty about? Spying for the Nazis or being caught obliging her boyfriend?
Behind him, Morgan looked severe. Most people believed that ‘assisting us with our inquiries’ meant that somebody was being interrogated before being charged with something. In fairness it usually did mean that, but sometimes it meant that the assistance was genuine and voluntary. She couldn’t blame the Jones woman for jumping to conclusions.
“Miss Jones, in pursuance of the provisions of The Defense of Canada Regulations Act of 1939, we have a warrant to search your house for a variety of objects that contravene national security.” What Gour hadn’t said was that the same warrant allowed him to detain Jones without due process on grounds that she had acted in a manner prejudicial to the public safety or the safety of the state. “I must ask you to step aside and allow us to execute the terms of this warrant.”
Numb with shock at the certain knowledge she had been caught, Jones allowed herself to be taken to one side as the search party went into her house and began a very thorough, very professional search. She noticed one thing almost immediately; the searchers knew where everything was and where the likely hiding places were. They were familiar with the inside of her house and that was information that could only have come from one person. Her suspicions were confirmed when the search moved upstairs, and the men had the same level of familiarity with the layout up there.
Nevertheless, the search seemed to be about to fail. The bedroom upstairs was the only room there and it was directly under the roof. There seemed to be no space for any hidden radio room. It was Morgan who made the breakthrough when she mentally compared the size of the room with that of the house. “Geoff, this room is too small.”
“What do you mean Mari?”
“The room is too short. There’s something we’re not seeing. Look around the wardrobe at the end.”
“Keep out of my . . .” Jones was panicking now and that was the confirmation that Morgan’s guess was right. Gour looked inside, pushing the clothing out of the way. The back of the wardrobe was solid but concealed in the top, above the clothes rail was a hatch. He had to detach the rail to get to it but when he did, opening the hatch caused a small ladder to unfold downwards.
“Got it. There’s a narrow triangular tunnel here, a couple of feet long. No more.” There was a long pause, filled with scuffling and grunts but eventually, Gour’s voice came down from behind the wardrobe. “It’s a tight squeeze but I could just get through. Jones wouldn’t have had much of a problem. Once we’re over the back of the wardrobe, it opens into a small room. It looks like it was made by building the room and then fitting the wardrobe in to hide it. Just big enough for one person and a radio. And here it is. Radio and what looks like a simple coding machine. Mari, ask Don to do the honors would you?”
Constable Donald Morgan turned to the woman standing beside his wife. Jones had realized she was done, that she had been caught and could very well face the noose. It was an expression he had seen many times before when a criminal realized that the game was up and now everything was deadly serious. He called it the “deer in the headlights” look. “Isabel Jones, I am arresting you on suspicion of espionage and treason.”
He passed the handcuffs to his wife who turned Jones around and secured, none to gently, the woman’s hands behind her back. As Jones was led away, Jones turned around and snarled in a voice filled with spite and hatred. “Tell that pig-shit flyboy that having him touching me made me sick. I always had a hot bath after he left, just to take his stink and filth off my skin.”
Once she was clear, Gour shook his head sadly. “I don’t think we’ll tell Digger that boys, do you?”
Isabel Jones' House, 70 Upper Debert River Road, Debert, Nova Scotia.
"How busy are you going to be with the new aircraft, Digger?" Isabel Jones had made dinner for them, rather than going out for a meal. She was a better-than-average cook and the scent of baking food coming from the kitchen was tantalizing.
"I don’t think it'll be with us for too long Izzie. I'll let you into a little secret, every new aircraft is pushed as being a revolutionary development that will win the war for us but when we finally get to see one, it turns out to be a minor modification of the earlier model. Up in the driver's seat, it's often hard to tell the difference. This one's no different. Good news is that because this is a simple job, it'll be done quickly and I can get some leave."
"Digger, that's wonderful! Can we go away together?"
"That's what I had in mind." Dale smiled cannily. "I'll have to tell the brass where I am of course, in case of an emergency, but we should be able to get away for a whole week. Assuming no more subs turn up."
"Subs?"
"Yeah, the problem's always been that the U-boats have flak guns, and they make life hot for the attacking bombers. The Navy have stuffed a six-pounder gun into the nose of a Hudson so we can shoot the subs up from outside the range of that flak. It's probably a big thing for the maritime boys but for me, I'm wasting my time. I can’t tell the difference. Unless we fire the gun then the flash is bit blinding."
He was interrupted by a loud ringing from the kitchen, a coincidence that made him think it was a divine signal that he'd said enough. While Isabel got the smoked chicken-and-cheese casserole from the oven he got out a guide to Canada and started looking up holiday resorts. "Izzy, how about the Breakers Hotel at Cobourg on Lake Ontario? They've got a cottage right on the beach."
"Sounds good, Digger. Now, I've got some white wine to go with our dinner. Can you pop the cork for me please?"
Room X, Communications Security Establishment, Ontario, Canada
"We got her, Sir! All four intercept sets got direction bearings on her transmission the night after our asset left her house. It's a perfect match; two bearings would be good enough, three would be conclusive and we have four. Even better, she didn’t transmit using Enigma. She used a high-level commercial code. The Navy should be able to decrypt it." Geraldine Morris put the original intercept on Roper-Caldbeck's desk and the decrypt on top of it. "We got a real break when she used the commercial-grade cipher. The question I'd ask is why?"
Roper-Caldbeck thought carefully about that. "At a guess, they only use the high-grade Enigma for really vital messages in order to avoid compromise from an excessive volume of transmissions. Or, quite possibly, she doesn’t have an Enigma machine herself. That would make a lot of sense since wireless operators are the most vulnerable link in the chain. If there is an Enigma machine ashore somewhere, it will be at a remote location."
"That makes sense, Sir. We've been cleverer than we thought by keeping this low-key."
"Have we got what we need?" Roper-Caldbeck knew the question was superfluous but his roasting at the hands of the RCMP had been traumatic. He was living on exceptionally thin ice, and he was extraordinarily aware of it.
"Oh yes, and damning it is. All about how the British, interesting that by the way, British, not Commonwealth, plan to take on submarines by using anti-tank guns mounted on Hudsons. Even specified a 57mm gun, that's what a German would call a six-pounder. It’s the agreed bait, no doubt about it. She even said it made no difference to the way the aircraft flew."
"So, radar in merchant ships qualifies for the top-level code, a different armament on a bomber probably does not, interesting set of priorities there. Very good, Gerry. Let's call the RCMP before they beat me bloody again. Tell them we think it’s a maritime code, attribute that opinion to one of our Royal Navy instructors who was in the merchant marine before joining up, and let them make their own decrypts."
RCMP Security Service Branch, Churchill, Nova Scotia.
"Well, Geoff, looks like your pilot will need a new girlfriend." Deputy Commissioner Dylan Morrison sounded sympathetic which was a remarkable piece of acting under the circumstances.
"It wasn't his fault, Sir. This was a beautiful, elegant set-up. It fooled everybody involved right up to the moment Dale spotted one question as being a hair too sharp."
"Smart kid that. Most youngsters in that position would have kept blabbering away. When are we going to take the Jones girl in?"
"Tonight, Sir. She'll be getting ready for another date and the shock of finding the police on her doorstep instead will be a good start in breaking her down."
Airfield Number 257, Khrym, Kuban.
Bosede had taxied his P-40 off the runway and into a parking revetment. He noticed a lot of things on the way; for example, how the aircraft were spaced out and dispersed so that a single strafing pass couldn't take multiple aircraft out with a single run. Each aircraft had its own camouflaged revetment for additional protection. For all the new arrangements, the airfield was well-established and had aged into the surrounding territory.
What did interest him were the new aircraft that were parked alongside the runway. A small, really neat-looking aircraft with a nose-wheel undercarriage. That’s an Airacobra. Long time ago, one of my aviation magazines, ‘Flying Aces’, had an article comparing it favorably with a Spitfire. I like the canopy, there'll be good all-around vision from that. The doors look a bit odd though.
"Wing Commander?" One of the men around the Airacobras had detached himself from the rest and come over to Bosede. The wing commander's rank markings were new enough to make Bosede look around to see who was being addressed. The confusion left him slightly flustered.
"Oh, sorry. Can I help you?"
"Seal. Barry Seal. I'm in charge of this delivery flight. We have some new P-40s for you as well. F-model Warhawks. If you could gather your pilots, one of my people will give you a quick run-down. There's not much difference, a bit more power and we've extended the glazing aft of the pilot's seat."
"I'll get everybody read . . ." Bosede hesitated; the American was in civilian clothes and there was not a badge of rank to be seen. In fact, his flight suit was distinctly Russian. Something about the color and cut made it very unlike any American uniforms he had seen. "Army Air Force?"
"Oh no." Seal hesitated as well. "I'm a civilian pilot employed by Bell to deliver P-39s to Russia. This is as far forward as we're allowed to come. We brought the Airacobras, there are also a group of Curtiss pilots here who brought the new Warhawks over for you."
"So that's the P-39. I've only seen pictures of them. How do they fly?"
"It's a P-400. Version we built for the British with a 20mm cannon instead of the 37mm. The Brits folded before we delivered them, so they've been sitting around waiting for a user. Army took some for advanced trainers, the rest were just sitting on airfields, so we flew them over. It's fast low down, maneuverable and very well protected. Downside is that it gets short of breath above 12,000 feet and has viciously bad spin and stall characteristics."
"The altitude won’t matter. The Russian pilots think anything above 3,000 meters is high altitude and give that to the MiGs. Their jaws drop when they hear about fighting over 20,000 feet. Between you and me, the Yaks are the only planes they have that are even close to being up to par. The I-16s are slow and thoroughly vicious to fly, the MiGs are pathetically under armed and the LaGGs are so sluggish even the 110s can outmaneuver them. To make things even worse they don’t have radios so they can’t coordinate in the air. If those Airacobras are as good as the book says, they'll be the most effective fighters out here."
Seal snorted. "Since when was anything as good as the book said? But the Army prefer the P-39 to the P-40 so that should tell you something. Now, the various species of brass are just sending everything they can. The way we heard it, the Russians have lost thousands of aircraft and anything they can get is needed yesterday."
Bosede breathed a deep sigh. "That's about the size of it. The fascists went through them like buzz-saws. It’s not just the aircraft, their pilots are shit hot. We've run into them and their 109s several times and we've done very well to break even. The 109 itself isn't so great but their pilots know them inside and out. They can do things with them we'd never even thought of. Those Airacobras had better be good because they're sure as hell needed."
Headquarters, Artillery Regiment 171, 71st Infantry Division, Pashkivka, Ukraine.
“It’s raining.” Major Heinrich Asbach had two bottles of his family brandy with him which provided him with an excellent excuse to state the obvious. They were also there to celebrate the promotion that he had just received.
“Promotions? Certainly.” Oberst Klaus Marcks was fully aware of the flood of promotions that had descended on the Army in the wake of Barbarossa. The junior officers had taken very heavy casualties and NCOs were being promoted to fill the gaps. The same applied all the way up the command structure; officers had been killed and junior personnel were being promoted prematurely to replace them. He had only just managed to dodge one such promotion himself and regretted that Asbach hadn’t managed to do the same. “There are, after all, enough vacancies in the Army now.”
Asbach nodded in agreement with the grim insight. The casualties taken so far had been brutal and he was well-aware of how many more were likely to come. The Army had been left horribly under-strength and he suspected that nobody would ever see a full-strength German unit again. The coming mud season would give the battered front-line units a chance to rebuild a little but that would just turn the situation from critical to dire. What was really needed was a six-month break in the fighting so the Army could repair the damage it had suffered. They’d had that after France, but he knew full well that was very unlikely to happen again. “The Kiev Offensive has changed everything. We would still be pinned behind the Dneiper now if that hadn’t torn the front open.”
“And it left the panzer generals foaming at the mouth which is never a bad thing. They won’t be able to swallow the fact that the Fuhrer was right, and they were wrong. They’ll howl about it until the day the Fatherland is just a memory. Still, let us forget them for the moment and drink to some good news.” Marcks raised his glass “Congratulations, Heini.”
“Thank you; any sign of a general’s stars coming?” Asbach took a good gulp of his brandy. He was beginning to understand why Russians drank so much. There was something about the endless expanse of Russia that made any reasonable man seek refuge in a bottle.
Marcks shook his head. “I managed to dodge it this time. I won’t be so lucky next spring. You’d better start setting up your defenses too Heini. There will come a time when missing out on promotions will be a small price to pay for the disaster that is coming when winter sets in. The sensible thing to do right now would be to dig on and hold this line throughout the winter. We’re secure along the Dneiper here and the ground just east of Smolensk in the north is very easily defensible. Holding a string line there will allow us to build up our supplies again and launch a spring offensive next year. It won’t happen. The panzer generals are obsessed with capturing Moscow; they will attack again after the mud dries and we’ll be caught over-extended in the winter. Once that happens, that winter battle will be a nightmare. Have you seen our reserves of winter clothing?”
“We don’t have any?”
“Precisely. And it’s not because there isn’t any, but it’s all held in depots back home. The Army is concentrating on shipping ammunition and fuel forward and don’t have the rail capacity for anything else. The further east we go now, the worse the winter will be for us. The Fuhrer sees that; that’s why he sided with the general staff faction that wanted to launch the Kiev offensive. The price is going to be a pre-winter offensive aimed at Moscow. We’re better off out of that. It’s going to fail, and the troops involved will be on the receiving end of a war in the snow. The good news is we’ll be all right down here. We’ll try and cut off the Crimea and end the siege at Odessa but that’s it. Just pity the poor bastards who’ll be fighting in the snow in front of Moscow and pray that we don’t get transferred up there.”
Asbach took another gulp of brandy. “Amen to that. You know, there are times when I think that the only way a German soldier could get to see Moscow was to join the French Army.”
“Well, Heini, don’t think that too loudly. And remember what happened to Napoleon’s Grande Armee. They lunged for Moscow as well. And ended up having to retreat in the winter. How many of them survived?”
“About 25,000, I think. Perhaps a few more. You think it will be that bad?”
Marcks thought about that. “No, but it could be close.”
Isabel Jones' House, 70 Upper Debert River Road, Debert, Nova Scotia.
When the doorbell rang, Isabel Jones took a few seconds to check her hair and make-up were in order and her dress was properly arranged. Then she opened the front door with a beaming smile that almost instantly froze in place.
“Miss Isabel Jones?” The RCMP officer was holding up a warrant card. There was a policewoman behind him. Like most female ‘mounties’, she was the wife of an RCMP officer, officially recruited to support operations in one- and two-man isolated posts. The employment of wives was seen as a way to supplement the incomes of the men in the face of government parsimony. The women’s duties ranged from answering phones and providing meals to prisoners, as well as providing lodging and meals to visiting officials. They also took complaints and were responsible for searching female offenders and detaining female prisoners. That was why Maritza Morgan had been attached to the raid.
“That’s me.” Jones sounded very guarded. It was already obvious to her that something was very wrong, for her at least. “Can we do this later? I have company coming around now.”
“I’m afraid Pilot Officer Dale won’t be coming. He’s assisting us with our inquiries in our Churchill station.” Detective Inspector Geoffrey Gour looked at the woman in front of him grimly. He was an experienced police officer and could smell guilt as soon as he used the doom-laden phrase ‘assisting with our inquiries’. The big question is, what is she guilty about? Spying for the Nazis or being caught obliging her boyfriend?
Behind him, Morgan looked severe. Most people believed that ‘assisting us with our inquiries’ meant that somebody was being interrogated before being charged with something. In fairness it usually did mean that, but sometimes it meant that the assistance was genuine and voluntary. She couldn’t blame the Jones woman for jumping to conclusions.
“Miss Jones, in pursuance of the provisions of The Defense of Canada Regulations Act of 1939, we have a warrant to search your house for a variety of objects that contravene national security.” What Gour hadn’t said was that the same warrant allowed him to detain Jones without due process on grounds that she had acted in a manner prejudicial to the public safety or the safety of the state. “I must ask you to step aside and allow us to execute the terms of this warrant.”
Numb with shock at the certain knowledge she had been caught, Jones allowed herself to be taken to one side as the search party went into her house and began a very thorough, very professional search. She noticed one thing almost immediately; the searchers knew where everything was and where the likely hiding places were. They were familiar with the inside of her house and that was information that could only have come from one person. Her suspicions were confirmed when the search moved upstairs, and the men had the same level of familiarity with the layout up there.
Nevertheless, the search seemed to be about to fail. The bedroom upstairs was the only room there and it was directly under the roof. There seemed to be no space for any hidden radio room. It was Morgan who made the breakthrough when she mentally compared the size of the room with that of the house. “Geoff, this room is too small.”
“What do you mean Mari?”
“The room is too short. There’s something we’re not seeing. Look around the wardrobe at the end.”
“Keep out of my . . .” Jones was panicking now and that was the confirmation that Morgan’s guess was right. Gour looked inside, pushing the clothing out of the way. The back of the wardrobe was solid but concealed in the top, above the clothes rail was a hatch. He had to detach the rail to get to it but when he did, opening the hatch caused a small ladder to unfold downwards.
“Got it. There’s a narrow triangular tunnel here, a couple of feet long. No more.” There was a long pause, filled with scuffling and grunts but eventually, Gour’s voice came down from behind the wardrobe. “It’s a tight squeeze but I could just get through. Jones wouldn’t have had much of a problem. Once we’re over the back of the wardrobe, it opens into a small room. It looks like it was made by building the room and then fitting the wardrobe in to hide it. Just big enough for one person and a radio. And here it is. Radio and what looks like a simple coding machine. Mari, ask Don to do the honors would you?”
Constable Donald Morgan turned to the woman standing beside his wife. Jones had realized she was done, that she had been caught and could very well face the noose. It was an expression he had seen many times before when a criminal realized that the game was up and now everything was deadly serious. He called it the “deer in the headlights” look. “Isabel Jones, I am arresting you on suspicion of espionage and treason.”
He passed the handcuffs to his wife who turned Jones around and secured, none to gently, the woman’s hands behind her back. As Jones was led away, Jones turned around and snarled in a voice filled with spite and hatred. “Tell that pig-shit flyboy that having him touching me made me sick. I always had a hot bath after he left, just to take his stink and filth off my skin.”
Once she was clear, Gour shook his head sadly. “I don’t think we’ll tell Digger that boys, do you?”
Re: 1941 - Conflict of Interest
Chapter Forty-Six
Political Staff Meeting, Yalta, Crimea.
“We are holding the Southern Dnieper and the Crimea is not yet besieged. The decision to hold on at Odessa had proved correct.” Senior Political Commissar Vasily Grigoryevich Lutsenko stared at the map on the conference table. "The fascists cannot assault through the Isthmus of Perekop until they dislodge us from the Dnieper. The fascist 11th and 17th Armies are still unable to deploy for that assault."
"And the Rasputitsa is coming." Petr Alekseevich Rassadkin had gained much prestige and authority from his stalwart defense of Odessa. Indeed, he had still further extended his perimeter and now held solid defensive ground on nearly all the fronts. He had even featured in a cartoon on the front page of Pravda where in one frame a colonel was informing him of a shortage of equipment and Rassadkin was ordering the colonel to find his own. In the next frame, the Colonel was driving past in a captured fascist tank. His Coastal Army was becoming a by-word for a determined resistance. "With the mud coming, the supply line through Odessa still blocked and our troops strongly positioned along the Dnieper, we have at least two months before another major fascist assault can be launched."
"We have stopped the fascist advance from Kiev some sixty kilometers north of the Perekop." Fedor Vasilyevich Rylin, Zampolit for the 51st Army viewed that outcome as something close to a miracle. A miracle it might be, but it shows that the war has changed. Once the only thing that stopped the fascist advances was their own supply lines and the distances they had to cover. This time, we held a fascist advance while they were still able to maneuver. At great cost, certainly, but our soldiers did it. Of course, the troops positioned forward were second-line forces, equipped with obsolete material. They have bought the time for our front-line forces to be brought up. We should just consider ourselves fortunate that the fascists struck when they did. Had they waited another six weeks, they would have caught us while repositioning between the previous defensive policy and its successor based on immediate counterattacks. Had that happened we would have lost much of our front-line forces as well. "Bratishka, what are our orders from Stavka?"
That caused a ripple of laughter to spread around the room. Asking for instructions from Stavka was always the safe option.
Lutsenko had the latest messages to hand and he had found their content very interesting indeed. "Stavka has said that since Sevastopol is already equipped to resist a long siege and has heavy defenses in place, it must not be allowed to fall. It is a key operating base and without it Odessa will surely fall. Stavka has also demanded that the stream of retreats must now end and that now we must fight for each foot of Russian ground. I have been told that Tovarish Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny and Tovarish Vasily Semenovich Kucherov have both been arrested and will face tribunals for allowing the fall of Kiev and Kharkov."
That caused a deep silence. It was not just that an Army Marshal was about to be tried and shot for his failure, but his NKVD Zampolit would be standing beside him when the executions took place. It was a clear signal that the operational and political chains of command had better start working together or they would both hang together.
"Can we presume that the attack that is sure to come once the mud dries will come from the north? If Odessa holds, surely the Dnieper will be too formidable an obstacle to cross?" Ivan Mihailovich Napalkov knew he was no expert in land warfare but his experiences in a ground-attack regiment had, as he had hoped, given him additional insight into a fast-moving war. Chief of those was the need to keep up the momentum of an attack. From that, he believed that disrupting that momentum should be the primary mission of the Sturmoviks
"It is most likely that the next fascist attack, after the Rasputitsa, will come along the front between Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov. The fascist objective in our area will be extend their front line down to the Sea of Azov. It is likely that the fascists in the north will try and seize Leningrad. We can but hope they will also try and reach Moscow. To attempt one of the three will be their most promising strategy, to try and achieve two will be fraught with danger. To try for all three will be a recipe for a military catastrophe." Lutsenko spoke with the fervor and zeal of a commander who knows he has an ace card in his hand. In his case, it was the sure and certain knowledge of what the Russian Winter would do to an invader. "Ivan Mihailovich, are the air forces ready for the next round of this battle?"
'We have withdrawn the battered regiments from Crimea and Ukraine to the Kuban so they can rebuild and re-equip with new aircraft. They have been replaced in the front line by new regiments who have learned many lessons over the last few weeks. The Commonwealth Expeditionary Force has also been pulled back to the Kuban to re-equip. We have just received the first batch of fighters as aid from America. They were stationed in Alaska, and they were flown to us. We will receive more as they become available. The Americans are also forming a unit of volunteers who will come to fly with us."
"This is good news although we cannot depend on help from outside." Lutsenko was speaking with centuries of collective Russian experience behind him. Every Russian leader had learned no matter how many allies the country had, eventually it would have to stand on its own two feet and not rely on outside aid. In the final analysis, allies could never be trusted but this had led to a fundamental conflict of interest. Faced with an invasion of this scale that had lunged deep into the country, the Soviet Union had to find allies and had to trust them no matter how unwise history had proved that to be.
"How will the news from Japan affect us?" Rylin had read the reports that accompanied the end of Japan's alliance with Germany.
"We don’t know. Words are words, we must judge by actions." Lutsenko was terse, this was a subject where great caution was needed before speaking. He was saved from the need to endanger himself further by the sudden howl of air-raid sirens. The crash of the anti-aircraft guns opening fire was almost simultaneous with the warning, telling the more experienced men present that the Luftwaffe aircraft had come in at very low altitude and hadn't been spotted until they were almost on top of their target. The crash and blast of the bombs that destroyed the conference room followed the roar of engines by only a few seconds and merely confirmed how low the attackers had been flying.
Ivan Mihailovich Napalkov recovered consciousness while he was still being carried out of the wrecked buildings. His whole world was dominated by the blazing pain that seemed to fill his head. He could see a nurse standing over him, but his vision was terribly indistinct and seemed curiously restricted. Despite that she seemed to be sympathetic, and her face was filled with pity for the injured. "What happened?"
"Twin-engined Messers, tovarish. Came in a few meters up and plastered the area with 250-kilogram bombs. There are many of our brat'ya dead and more injured." A doctor had answered, not the nurse.
"How am I?"
The doctor consulted his clipboard. "You have lost an eye. It cannot be saved for there is a small bomb splinter in it that will need care to remove. Otherwise, your injuries are mostly minor. Cuts, lacerations and blast. You were very fortunate. Not many in the room with you were so lucky."
Napalkov looked up with his one remaining good eye. Overhead, the clouds were filling the sky with a dull, heavy gray-black blanket that darkened still further even while he watched. Every Russian knew those clouds well; they were black because they were filled with rain and when the storms they heralded finally burst, the ground underneath would become an impassible swamp. The Rodina had won its race to survive until the Rasputitsa bought them time to regroup. Staring upwards, Napalkov found himself honestly believing that one eye was a small price to pay for that gift. That thought made him wonder if the painkillers he had obviously been given were affecting his judgment.
Cabinet Room, Government House, Calcutta, India
“Well, we solved the problem of Goa.” Deputy Viceroy Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had managed to shock himself by his casual acceptance of what had been an act of aggression conducted with only a tenuous cover of legality. He was painfully aware that had India performed such an act a mere 18 months earlier, he would have led the crowds out onto the streets to protest an act that was all too like the way India itself had been treated. Is that the price of being an independent country? He thought as his conscience started to chew away at his pride in expelling a foreign colonial power. Which was the more odious? Tolerating the occupation of a part of our country by a foreign invader or expelling that invader by force of arms? And how does the answer to that question affect our presence in Iraq? Do not the Iraqis in their country look upon our troops with much the same eyes as we looked upon the Portuguese? Then there is the question of Iran. We need to shift supplies to the Soviet Union by way of Iran and the country is in our way. The Shah of Iran is reputedly friendly to the Germans, and he is in our way. The supplies of oil from Iran are essential to the war effort and, again, Iran endangers them. Is this how imperial powers start? That a justifiable act is followed by a less justifiable one and that a desirable outcome is followed by merely convenient ones? So that eventually a policy of imperial expansion is adopted, not because it is proper or even desirable but simply because it is the most convenient option? We spent our lives damning the British for their Imperialism yet was their Empire simply the result of a series of decisions that were the most convenient at the time they were made? Is the imperialism that we condemned so loudly in others just the inevitable outcome of a country trying to defend its vital interests on the world stage? A stage on which there are no good answers but simply bad and less bad?
"There has been some civil disorder in Goa." General Auchinleck had the details to hand. "It appears that the Portuguese secret service, the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado or PIDE has tried to create a clandestine resistance movement in Goa and use general resistance and armed rebellion to weaken the Indian presence there. Our police have arrested two members of PIDE who had tried to obtain bomb-making materials and we have expelled them. We have also arrested and court-martialed an Indian Army captain who had two surrendered Portuguese soldiers beaten with rifle butts. Apparently, they enraged the captain by stating that Goa was Portuguese and would always be so. The captain has been convicted of breaching the Geneva Conventions and cashiered. Apart from that, the Portuguese Government has used broadcasts on Emissora Nacional, the Portuguese national radio station, to urge Goans to resist and oppose the Indian administration. Neither action has much substance to it. It appears the Portuguese government is simply going through the motions. They have cut diplomatic relations with us of course but that was inevitable."
"I think it is most probable that the situation will remain very low-key." Sir Eric Haohoa had the Indian Intelligence reports in his hands. "The Americans have paid the Portuguese off and discretely pointed out that Goa was an indefensible liability that merely served to compromise the ability of the Portuguese government to protect its homeland. Popular feeling in Goa could best be described as nostalgic. People mourn the passing of the old regime and are nervous about the future under the new administration but do not feel strongly enough about either to do something. If we make a major effort to conciliate them now, these feelings will subside and become just inconsequential memories. In a generation, perhaps two, it will be hard for the Goans to remember that they were anything other than Indians."
"Which brings us to the subject of our relations with the Soviet Union and our participation in the Commonwealth deployment to the Soviet Union." General Auchinleck looked around the room, his voice tinged with sarcasm. "The Embassy of the Soviet Union has expressed its satisfaction with the performance of our expeditionary force and have asked when they can expect more aircraft and ground forces. They have also supplied us with a very long list of urgent requirements which they expect us to give them."
Sir Martyn Sharpe snorted slightly. "How would we get them there? Assuming we have the equipment to give."
"Equipment, food and other supplies. Essentially everything we have. Even if we were to send everything we possess, which would not even begin to complete the list of demands we have received, it would not make a critical difference to the situation in the Soviet Union. The only direct route in that we have is through Iran and I think it is there that the Soviet interest really lies. We have received delicate hints that opening a supply route through Iran by means of a joint invasion of that country would go far to satisfy Soviet needs."
Even in Auchinleck's measured words, it was too much, Nehru slapped his hand down upon the table in disgust. "After we send the best of our young men to help them and go short ourselves to help feed their people, they demand we engage in this outrage? And wish to pauper us if we do not agree?"
"I wish it were as easy as that." Auchinleck understood where the Soviets were coming from on this. "The truth is that they are fighting for their lives, and they are holding on by the finest of margins. They demand everything because in their eyes, they need everything."
"And if they don’t ask, they don’t get." Sir Martyn Sharpe also could understand the position of the Soviet government. "In their position, they really do need everything they can get their hands on. Iran is the only way we can get it to them."
"What about the Trans-Afghan Railway?" Gerald Tarrant had developed a personal interest in that massive project. "Will this not offer an alternative to routing supplies through Iran?"
"It will when it is completed in two years’ time. We have a massive labor force digging their way through to Kabul right now. Now we are making good progress, but this is the easy part. The line from Amritsar to the border already exists and we're upgrading it. Once that's done, we'll face the real problems." Sir Martyn Sharpe had the latest progress report. "There's a major problem we hadn't anticipated. The towns and villages in Afghanistan are all built along the trade routes where the ground makes it easy to build roads and now, railways. Building the railway through those passes means knocking down those villages. There was a real fight between the villagers and the engineering crews in one border village when the engineers found the only way to get the railway through was to knock down the local mosque. So, they did, and the villagers rallied to defend their building. By the time, the fight was over there were 23 dead and about 50 wounded."
"That will come back to haunt us." Nehru shook his head sadly. "We are making enemies in Iran and Afghanistan, and Iraq too, come to that, which will bedevil us for decades to come."
264 Squadron, Martlesham Heath, Essex, U.K.
The sun was setting, leaving the Spitfires silhouetted against the dark red sky. A bit further down the parking area, the Defiants were also parked while their crews relaxed after a day's had work practicing flying with minimum fuel and ammunition consumption. Their efforts had resulted in the concealed bomb dumps and fuel storage tanks being filled. When the inevitable happened, 12 Group would be ready. Robert Stanford Tuck was certain of that.
"You heard about the Spitfires in Russia, Sir?" Frederick Hughes had been reading the reports on the Romanian Spitfires flying with the Luftwaffe. The realization that South African pilots flying Kittyhawks were fighting British-built Spitfires had been shocking. The technical reports that had come back from the Romanians had been surprising in that they had shown just how well the Kittyhawk managed to hold its own against the Spitfire in combat. The conclusion had been that in combat below 16,000 feet, the aircraft were equally matched, and victory was determined by which pilot used his aircraft's strengths to their best advantage. He and Fred Gast had been trying to work out how that would translate to fighting both the Kittyhawk and the Spitfire with their Defiant.
There was something else as well. The news that Spitfires were fighting with the Germans on the Russian Front had tarnished the aircraft with the taint of collaboration. The adulation with which the aircraft had once been regarded was subsiding as a result.
"I've read the reports, Fred. The Romanian Spits are basically Mark IIs with a DB-601 power egg fitted. They are a way behind our Merlin-engined Mark Vs. We'll still have an edge over them. Assuming the Romanians come here of course." Tuck hesitated slightly there. "I don’t think they will. The Germans are keeping all their allies in the East. And their best fighter groups are there as well. There are only two fighter groups in the west right now and they both still have 109Es."
"Sir, there are rumors going around That Man will be sending us to Russia as well."
Tuck shook his head. "No. Not yet anyway. It'll come and when it does, that's when everything will fall apart. I have heard that a volunteer Blackshirt 'legion' is being formed so that the fascists here can put their money where their mouths are. We might get a couple of recruiters coming around asking for volunteers. No more than that right now."
"My old man told me never to volunteer for anything. Said that principal had kept him safe throughout the Great War and it would keep me safe through this one."
"You have a wise father, Fred. At a guess, the only people those recruiters will sweep up are the terminally dissatisfied who will do anything for a bit of excitement and the hard-core fascists. The former doesn’t really matter and the latter we can do without."
Hughes shook his head. "You reckon, Sir, that the legion is a way of getting rid of the hard core of That Man's movement? Send them off to Russia to be killed?"
Tuck laughed. "How could you think such cynical thoughts, Fred? I really don’t know what the younger generation is coming to, really I don't."
Political Staff Meeting, Yalta, Crimea.
“We are holding the Southern Dnieper and the Crimea is not yet besieged. The decision to hold on at Odessa had proved correct.” Senior Political Commissar Vasily Grigoryevich Lutsenko stared at the map on the conference table. "The fascists cannot assault through the Isthmus of Perekop until they dislodge us from the Dnieper. The fascist 11th and 17th Armies are still unable to deploy for that assault."
"And the Rasputitsa is coming." Petr Alekseevich Rassadkin had gained much prestige and authority from his stalwart defense of Odessa. Indeed, he had still further extended his perimeter and now held solid defensive ground on nearly all the fronts. He had even featured in a cartoon on the front page of Pravda where in one frame a colonel was informing him of a shortage of equipment and Rassadkin was ordering the colonel to find his own. In the next frame, the Colonel was driving past in a captured fascist tank. His Coastal Army was becoming a by-word for a determined resistance. "With the mud coming, the supply line through Odessa still blocked and our troops strongly positioned along the Dnieper, we have at least two months before another major fascist assault can be launched."
"We have stopped the fascist advance from Kiev some sixty kilometers north of the Perekop." Fedor Vasilyevich Rylin, Zampolit for the 51st Army viewed that outcome as something close to a miracle. A miracle it might be, but it shows that the war has changed. Once the only thing that stopped the fascist advances was their own supply lines and the distances they had to cover. This time, we held a fascist advance while they were still able to maneuver. At great cost, certainly, but our soldiers did it. Of course, the troops positioned forward were second-line forces, equipped with obsolete material. They have bought the time for our front-line forces to be brought up. We should just consider ourselves fortunate that the fascists struck when they did. Had they waited another six weeks, they would have caught us while repositioning between the previous defensive policy and its successor based on immediate counterattacks. Had that happened we would have lost much of our front-line forces as well. "Bratishka, what are our orders from Stavka?"
That caused a ripple of laughter to spread around the room. Asking for instructions from Stavka was always the safe option.
Lutsenko had the latest messages to hand and he had found their content very interesting indeed. "Stavka has said that since Sevastopol is already equipped to resist a long siege and has heavy defenses in place, it must not be allowed to fall. It is a key operating base and without it Odessa will surely fall. Stavka has also demanded that the stream of retreats must now end and that now we must fight for each foot of Russian ground. I have been told that Tovarish Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny and Tovarish Vasily Semenovich Kucherov have both been arrested and will face tribunals for allowing the fall of Kiev and Kharkov."
That caused a deep silence. It was not just that an Army Marshal was about to be tried and shot for his failure, but his NKVD Zampolit would be standing beside him when the executions took place. It was a clear signal that the operational and political chains of command had better start working together or they would both hang together.
"Can we presume that the attack that is sure to come once the mud dries will come from the north? If Odessa holds, surely the Dnieper will be too formidable an obstacle to cross?" Ivan Mihailovich Napalkov knew he was no expert in land warfare but his experiences in a ground-attack regiment had, as he had hoped, given him additional insight into a fast-moving war. Chief of those was the need to keep up the momentum of an attack. From that, he believed that disrupting that momentum should be the primary mission of the Sturmoviks
"It is most likely that the next fascist attack, after the Rasputitsa, will come along the front between Dnepropetrovsk and Kharkov. The fascist objective in our area will be extend their front line down to the Sea of Azov. It is likely that the fascists in the north will try and seize Leningrad. We can but hope they will also try and reach Moscow. To attempt one of the three will be their most promising strategy, to try and achieve two will be fraught with danger. To try for all three will be a recipe for a military catastrophe." Lutsenko spoke with the fervor and zeal of a commander who knows he has an ace card in his hand. In his case, it was the sure and certain knowledge of what the Russian Winter would do to an invader. "Ivan Mihailovich, are the air forces ready for the next round of this battle?"
'We have withdrawn the battered regiments from Crimea and Ukraine to the Kuban so they can rebuild and re-equip with new aircraft. They have been replaced in the front line by new regiments who have learned many lessons over the last few weeks. The Commonwealth Expeditionary Force has also been pulled back to the Kuban to re-equip. We have just received the first batch of fighters as aid from America. They were stationed in Alaska, and they were flown to us. We will receive more as they become available. The Americans are also forming a unit of volunteers who will come to fly with us."
"This is good news although we cannot depend on help from outside." Lutsenko was speaking with centuries of collective Russian experience behind him. Every Russian leader had learned no matter how many allies the country had, eventually it would have to stand on its own two feet and not rely on outside aid. In the final analysis, allies could never be trusted but this had led to a fundamental conflict of interest. Faced with an invasion of this scale that had lunged deep into the country, the Soviet Union had to find allies and had to trust them no matter how unwise history had proved that to be.
"How will the news from Japan affect us?" Rylin had read the reports that accompanied the end of Japan's alliance with Germany.
"We don’t know. Words are words, we must judge by actions." Lutsenko was terse, this was a subject where great caution was needed before speaking. He was saved from the need to endanger himself further by the sudden howl of air-raid sirens. The crash of the anti-aircraft guns opening fire was almost simultaneous with the warning, telling the more experienced men present that the Luftwaffe aircraft had come in at very low altitude and hadn't been spotted until they were almost on top of their target. The crash and blast of the bombs that destroyed the conference room followed the roar of engines by only a few seconds and merely confirmed how low the attackers had been flying.
Ivan Mihailovich Napalkov recovered consciousness while he was still being carried out of the wrecked buildings. His whole world was dominated by the blazing pain that seemed to fill his head. He could see a nurse standing over him, but his vision was terribly indistinct and seemed curiously restricted. Despite that she seemed to be sympathetic, and her face was filled with pity for the injured. "What happened?"
"Twin-engined Messers, tovarish. Came in a few meters up and plastered the area with 250-kilogram bombs. There are many of our brat'ya dead and more injured." A doctor had answered, not the nurse.
"How am I?"
The doctor consulted his clipboard. "You have lost an eye. It cannot be saved for there is a small bomb splinter in it that will need care to remove. Otherwise, your injuries are mostly minor. Cuts, lacerations and blast. You were very fortunate. Not many in the room with you were so lucky."
Napalkov looked up with his one remaining good eye. Overhead, the clouds were filling the sky with a dull, heavy gray-black blanket that darkened still further even while he watched. Every Russian knew those clouds well; they were black because they were filled with rain and when the storms they heralded finally burst, the ground underneath would become an impassible swamp. The Rodina had won its race to survive until the Rasputitsa bought them time to regroup. Staring upwards, Napalkov found himself honestly believing that one eye was a small price to pay for that gift. That thought made him wonder if the painkillers he had obviously been given were affecting his judgment.
Cabinet Room, Government House, Calcutta, India
“Well, we solved the problem of Goa.” Deputy Viceroy Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had managed to shock himself by his casual acceptance of what had been an act of aggression conducted with only a tenuous cover of legality. He was painfully aware that had India performed such an act a mere 18 months earlier, he would have led the crowds out onto the streets to protest an act that was all too like the way India itself had been treated. Is that the price of being an independent country? He thought as his conscience started to chew away at his pride in expelling a foreign colonial power. Which was the more odious? Tolerating the occupation of a part of our country by a foreign invader or expelling that invader by force of arms? And how does the answer to that question affect our presence in Iraq? Do not the Iraqis in their country look upon our troops with much the same eyes as we looked upon the Portuguese? Then there is the question of Iran. We need to shift supplies to the Soviet Union by way of Iran and the country is in our way. The Shah of Iran is reputedly friendly to the Germans, and he is in our way. The supplies of oil from Iran are essential to the war effort and, again, Iran endangers them. Is this how imperial powers start? That a justifiable act is followed by a less justifiable one and that a desirable outcome is followed by merely convenient ones? So that eventually a policy of imperial expansion is adopted, not because it is proper or even desirable but simply because it is the most convenient option? We spent our lives damning the British for their Imperialism yet was their Empire simply the result of a series of decisions that were the most convenient at the time they were made? Is the imperialism that we condemned so loudly in others just the inevitable outcome of a country trying to defend its vital interests on the world stage? A stage on which there are no good answers but simply bad and less bad?
"There has been some civil disorder in Goa." General Auchinleck had the details to hand. "It appears that the Portuguese secret service, the Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado or PIDE has tried to create a clandestine resistance movement in Goa and use general resistance and armed rebellion to weaken the Indian presence there. Our police have arrested two members of PIDE who had tried to obtain bomb-making materials and we have expelled them. We have also arrested and court-martialed an Indian Army captain who had two surrendered Portuguese soldiers beaten with rifle butts. Apparently, they enraged the captain by stating that Goa was Portuguese and would always be so. The captain has been convicted of breaching the Geneva Conventions and cashiered. Apart from that, the Portuguese Government has used broadcasts on Emissora Nacional, the Portuguese national radio station, to urge Goans to resist and oppose the Indian administration. Neither action has much substance to it. It appears the Portuguese government is simply going through the motions. They have cut diplomatic relations with us of course but that was inevitable."
"I think it is most probable that the situation will remain very low-key." Sir Eric Haohoa had the Indian Intelligence reports in his hands. "The Americans have paid the Portuguese off and discretely pointed out that Goa was an indefensible liability that merely served to compromise the ability of the Portuguese government to protect its homeland. Popular feeling in Goa could best be described as nostalgic. People mourn the passing of the old regime and are nervous about the future under the new administration but do not feel strongly enough about either to do something. If we make a major effort to conciliate them now, these feelings will subside and become just inconsequential memories. In a generation, perhaps two, it will be hard for the Goans to remember that they were anything other than Indians."
"Which brings us to the subject of our relations with the Soviet Union and our participation in the Commonwealth deployment to the Soviet Union." General Auchinleck looked around the room, his voice tinged with sarcasm. "The Embassy of the Soviet Union has expressed its satisfaction with the performance of our expeditionary force and have asked when they can expect more aircraft and ground forces. They have also supplied us with a very long list of urgent requirements which they expect us to give them."
Sir Martyn Sharpe snorted slightly. "How would we get them there? Assuming we have the equipment to give."
"Equipment, food and other supplies. Essentially everything we have. Even if we were to send everything we possess, which would not even begin to complete the list of demands we have received, it would not make a critical difference to the situation in the Soviet Union. The only direct route in that we have is through Iran and I think it is there that the Soviet interest really lies. We have received delicate hints that opening a supply route through Iran by means of a joint invasion of that country would go far to satisfy Soviet needs."
Even in Auchinleck's measured words, it was too much, Nehru slapped his hand down upon the table in disgust. "After we send the best of our young men to help them and go short ourselves to help feed their people, they demand we engage in this outrage? And wish to pauper us if we do not agree?"
"I wish it were as easy as that." Auchinleck understood where the Soviets were coming from on this. "The truth is that they are fighting for their lives, and they are holding on by the finest of margins. They demand everything because in their eyes, they need everything."
"And if they don’t ask, they don’t get." Sir Martyn Sharpe also could understand the position of the Soviet government. "In their position, they really do need everything they can get their hands on. Iran is the only way we can get it to them."
"What about the Trans-Afghan Railway?" Gerald Tarrant had developed a personal interest in that massive project. "Will this not offer an alternative to routing supplies through Iran?"
"It will when it is completed in two years’ time. We have a massive labor force digging their way through to Kabul right now. Now we are making good progress, but this is the easy part. The line from Amritsar to the border already exists and we're upgrading it. Once that's done, we'll face the real problems." Sir Martyn Sharpe had the latest progress report. "There's a major problem we hadn't anticipated. The towns and villages in Afghanistan are all built along the trade routes where the ground makes it easy to build roads and now, railways. Building the railway through those passes means knocking down those villages. There was a real fight between the villagers and the engineering crews in one border village when the engineers found the only way to get the railway through was to knock down the local mosque. So, they did, and the villagers rallied to defend their building. By the time, the fight was over there were 23 dead and about 50 wounded."
"That will come back to haunt us." Nehru shook his head sadly. "We are making enemies in Iran and Afghanistan, and Iraq too, come to that, which will bedevil us for decades to come."
264 Squadron, Martlesham Heath, Essex, U.K.
The sun was setting, leaving the Spitfires silhouetted against the dark red sky. A bit further down the parking area, the Defiants were also parked while their crews relaxed after a day's had work practicing flying with minimum fuel and ammunition consumption. Their efforts had resulted in the concealed bomb dumps and fuel storage tanks being filled. When the inevitable happened, 12 Group would be ready. Robert Stanford Tuck was certain of that.
"You heard about the Spitfires in Russia, Sir?" Frederick Hughes had been reading the reports on the Romanian Spitfires flying with the Luftwaffe. The realization that South African pilots flying Kittyhawks were fighting British-built Spitfires had been shocking. The technical reports that had come back from the Romanians had been surprising in that they had shown just how well the Kittyhawk managed to hold its own against the Spitfire in combat. The conclusion had been that in combat below 16,000 feet, the aircraft were equally matched, and victory was determined by which pilot used his aircraft's strengths to their best advantage. He and Fred Gast had been trying to work out how that would translate to fighting both the Kittyhawk and the Spitfire with their Defiant.
There was something else as well. The news that Spitfires were fighting with the Germans on the Russian Front had tarnished the aircraft with the taint of collaboration. The adulation with which the aircraft had once been regarded was subsiding as a result.
"I've read the reports, Fred. The Romanian Spits are basically Mark IIs with a DB-601 power egg fitted. They are a way behind our Merlin-engined Mark Vs. We'll still have an edge over them. Assuming the Romanians come here of course." Tuck hesitated slightly there. "I don’t think they will. The Germans are keeping all their allies in the East. And their best fighter groups are there as well. There are only two fighter groups in the west right now and they both still have 109Es."
"Sir, there are rumors going around That Man will be sending us to Russia as well."
Tuck shook his head. "No. Not yet anyway. It'll come and when it does, that's when everything will fall apart. I have heard that a volunteer Blackshirt 'legion' is being formed so that the fascists here can put their money where their mouths are. We might get a couple of recruiters coming around asking for volunteers. No more than that right now."
"My old man told me never to volunteer for anything. Said that principal had kept him safe throughout the Great War and it would keep me safe through this one."
"You have a wise father, Fred. At a guess, the only people those recruiters will sweep up are the terminally dissatisfied who will do anything for a bit of excitement and the hard-core fascists. The former doesn’t really matter and the latter we can do without."
Hughes shook his head. "You reckon, Sir, that the legion is a way of getting rid of the hard core of That Man's movement? Send them off to Russia to be killed?"
Tuck laughed. "How could you think such cynical thoughts, Fred? I really don’t know what the younger generation is coming to, really I don't."
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jemhouston
- Posts: 4191
- Joined: Fri Nov 18, 2022 12:38 am
Re: 1941 - Conflict of Interest
Good one