Morrdh wrote:"These prisoners are pretty important to the Allies right?" Asked Wade. "So wot happens if, fer wotever reason, we're not able to get 'em out?"
Wade wondered whether he was the first in the room to consider the implications behind his question, surely the Squadron Leader would've done or at least been briefed by the top bass on that eventuality? Right? If these men were to be kept away from the Hun, who amongst this lot would stomach the cold, hard call to ensure that the men would not be able to talk to anyone? Though if the others understood Wade's question and Page's possible answer, it would reveal alot about those present.
Page's gaze darkened. There had indeed been a corollary in the orders dealing with this exact situation. It was very short, predictably vague, and infuriatingly indirect, despite being crystal-clear in its actual meaning. It hadn't been pleasant reading.
"They do not stay in German custody in any circumstances, Warrant Officer. That's all there is to say about it."
Grenartia wrote:"Well, in that case, I'd imagine we'd be dog meat anyways." Jimmy said, before considering the situation further, and realizing he did, in fact, have a question. "What I'm trying to figure out, is how we're supposed to find these guys if our inside man is dead and the safehouse is empty." And then he thought of an even more disturbing possibility. "Worse yet, what if they set up a trap for us?"
"Well, Flying Officer, if both of our wells come up entirely dry, we'll have to try and find us a German who'll talk about where they keep their prisoners. That's a long shot, though. But if the agent knew what they were doing, they'd have left a trail to follow."
Hopefully not the same trail that the Gestapo is on, Page thought to himself.
Then again, the idea of meeting up with some Gestapo agents on some dark Polish backroad, on his terms and with backup, was
deeply appealing.
Page thought about the second half of the question for a moment. "And in regard to this being a Nazi trap...it's a chance that our fearless leaders have decided to take. But if it makes you feel any better, Flying Officer, I highly doubt it myself. Who, after all, could possibly anticipate an operation like this and stage a trap to counter it?"
Len Hyet wrote:He swallowed, and spoke slowly.
"Sir, it sounds like we're going to a safe house that's probably been discovered by the Gestapo, to find information about a bunch of prisoners we don't know anything about, in a location we don't know, guarded by an unknown force, in the middle of occupied territory, with no, no, no..." He struggled to find the word briefly. His nerves were getting the better of him, usually his English was next-to flawless. All of a sudden however, he couldn't think of the word he wanted, and just spat out the nearest German analogue.
"Einsatz, entrance, yes, entrance or exit plan?"
G-d almighty save me from crazy Englishmen, David thought to himself.
Oooof.Page cringed internally as Richter's German made an impromptu and accidental appearance. Judging from some of the expressions on the faces of the other squadron members, they'd definitely noticed it too.
It didn't take a telepath to see this was going to be a problem. When he'd been reviewing the squadron roster, the idea that the RAF would assign a German national (no matter his anti-Nazi credentials) to a top-secret unit, which already had a number of members who had fought Germans before, was almost inconceivable. Richter supposedly had been through the most rigorous security checking that MI5 could furnish, and his background was certainly a special one - one that precluded the possibility of any kind of German sympathies (unless German Intelligence had pulled off a truly amazing coup).
There was no doubt to Page, given Richter's record, that he would be useful to the Squadron, maybe uniquely so.
But it was going to be an uphill struggle for the squadron to trust him, even in spite of all the evidence that he was their friend, rather than their foe.
"Well, Flying Officer Richter, we've got you on one count, in that the Navy has furnished us with a way
in, even if it is pretty risky. And yes, I will grant you, this entire scheme is, to put it lightly, pretty loose around the edges. There's no getting around it. I know it. You all know it. Command, I assume, knows it. But that's just how it has to be. It's true that our exit plan is not finalized, because it can't be, not while we're not sure what will be available to us. But if the intelligence is correct, the Germans have been moving so much stuff into Danzig that there's bound to be a way out. There has to be."
Alversia wrote:The Irishman could hold it in no longer. He burst out laughing, deep and heavy as he bent over to try and catch his breath. It lasted just a few moments before he was able to regain control of himself, one arm still folded over his stomach and the other wiping tears from his eyes as he looked at Page.
“Good god, Sir but you’ve been sold a total pup! I think I can see what you were getting at when you said the rest of command might want to get rid of us because nothing’s as sure to do it as this. Just so I’m absolutely clear; our goal is to get onto a submarine, sneak past the German navy and their fortifications, minefields, torpedo nets and destroyers, jump ashore at a city where, so far I can tell, the
entirety of their army was not three weeks ago, meet up with a fellow who may or may not have been captured himself already, break
into a Gestapo or SS prison filled with angry machine-gun totting Krauts to rescue these chaps who, for all we know, are speeding on a train to Berlin as we speak and will probably be shot as soon as we’re within five miles of them, if we recognise them. Which we can’t. Then, once we’ve done all that, we get back into our little boats and paddle out to the sub waiting patiently under the guns of the entire Kriegsmarine or, failing that, fight our way into a Luftwaffe
airbase, another doddle, steal one of those carthorses they call seaplanes and then escape from every fighter in northern Germany? Oh, and before I forget, there are…what? Twelve of us to do it?”
Even thinking about it brought yet more laughter and he had to take a moment to compose himself, leaning back as he shook his head, “Oh dear, that’s the best laugh I’ve had in
years,” He took a couple of deep breaths, “Even for the Air Force, this an absolute belter.”
After a few more deep giggles he finally had full control of himself, though his red face and tear-soaked cheeks told their own story, “A trap? It’s hardly worth their while is it? If we get one foot in the door of that house, we’ll be channelling the spirit of Jesus Christ himself. Sorry, Sir, but it isn’t a mission, it’s a suicide run. And I wonder what our brave leaders have given us for such a simple task? A Trojan Horse, perhaps? Or maybe the Angels of Mons are available for action? Maybe we’ll have to take a detour to Ireland and capture a leprechaun so he’ll grant us a wish!”
The silence as Fitzpatrick finished his tirade was profound. The tension hung in the air like a thick, wet, itchy wool quilt.
Page looked at Fitzpatrick icily, his face frozen, jaw muscles as set as if they'd been carved out of granite.
The silence continued.
Someone stifled a cough.
Still silence.
Slowly, Page circled the podium and came around to Fitzpatrick's seat, kneeling down to put himself at the Irishman's eye level.
"Funny you should say that last bit,
Flying Officer Fitzpatrick," Page said, his voice tight and mocking as he bit out the rank, "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like they sent us a leprechaun already."
Page honestly didn't know if Fitzpatrick was going to either storm out or take a swing at him (or both), but it had been a risk worth taking.
"And the really funny thing is, Flying Officer, if you can possibly fit any more laughs into your pot o'gold, is that I'm not even going to disagree with you very much. This is one hell of an assignment. I'm not going to pretend or tell you lot otherwise. But giving up, now, is not an option. That time has come and gone. For one thing, if you want to leave now, you're looking at running into the loving arms of the MPs outside, and they'll figure out what to do with you. Rest assured, it probably won't be too comfy.
"But I have to admit, I'm already a bit disappointed in you, Fitzpatrick. I was hoping, being a brave and hale Irishman, with a...singular...record like yours, that you'd have a little more stomach to mix it up with the Huns. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe this is all too much for you. The odds are just too long. The plan is just too unconvincing. The Germans are just too tough. Well. That's as may be. But it doesn't change anything. Sometimes, you've just got to buck up and get on doing with what needs doing. You're all here, after all, because the RAF and the SIS were sure that none of you were afraid of a fight - and that all of you were excellent at making one. And from what I can tell, when you get enough of those sorts of people working together, you can do things that any fool could tell you is flatly impossible.
"A quick example, if you'll allow me. About a year ago - maybe you heard about it - there was a lot of fighting down in Nicaragua, in Central America. Your standard peasant-uprising story. Farmers and miners joining up together to overthrow the military junta ruling over them. If you were to look up "hopeless" in the dictionary, you'd see these peasants. Most of them couldn't read, couldn't write, skinny, dirty, untrained, barely armed, going up against the fat, rich elite of their society, carrying shiny new German guns and wearing fancy new Italian-made uniforms. Any idiot could have seen that the whole war was suicide for these people.
"But they fought anyways. They fought dirty - tooth and nail - harder than they had any right to. They fought at great cost, outnumbered and with no homes to go back to. They fought barefoot, with knives and clubs and ancient carbines that dated from the Spanish-American War, and with whatever else they could beg or cobble together or steal from their oppressors. They came up with a plan to strike at the heart of the junta, set up in an island fortress off the coast. Totally impregnable, supposedly. But they came up with a plan - a crazy, stupid plan. They hired a pilot - a Communist drunk they found in the gutter. They stormed a government airfield, and stole a transport aircraft. They then proceeded to set their pilot behind the flight stick, cram that plane so full of guerrillas it could hardly take off, and crash-landed it on the island, behind the government's artillery and walls, within the fort itself. They stormed out, screaming and shooting like demons. They
savaged their enemy. The war was over a few weeks later."
For a few moments, Page stopped, his gaze glassy and unfocused. Then, he snapped back.
"I'm telling you this for a reason. This is a crazy, maybe impossible task we've been assigned. But if those farmers could do it in Nicaragua, so can we. We've got more support, more experience, and more skills at our disposal than they ever did. Sure, we're outnumbered - by a bunch of rear-echelon Fritzes who have absolutely no idea what's about to hit them. We're going to be given the opportunity to strike the first real blow against the Germans. We've been given that shot because, for all their qualms about us - and that includes me, for whatever that's worth to you - someone upstairs picked us as the most dangerous men in the entire world. The Huns ought to be afraid of us. We've got a job to do, and we're going to do it. That's all."
Page stood back up, and walked back to the podium, feeling surprisingly drained.
"I think the papers called it the Battle of Torquemada Island. You can look it up for yourself, if you make it back."
Kouralia wrote:"You'll have to apologise if they didn't teach the sort of critical thinking at Depot that they do at Cranwell, but the way I see it is that they at least consider us to have a chance at not immediately dying, because they wouldn't waste fifty-odd men and a submarine doing sweet fanny adams." He said, "There's questioning the plan, and then there's..." He stopped and shrugged.
"Apologies: how are we to approach this, sir?" He enquired. "We can hardly fight our way there through a half-thousand angry Germans and get out of there before the other five hundred have lined up to block our escape, and there's hardly room for one, let alone the half-dozen armoured cars we'd need on a submarine anyway. But if we don't intend to fight, a peaceful sojourn around the Polish countryside in khakis and blues seems unlikely. Are we to countenance going about this out of uniform?"
Page took a deep breath and nodded, trying to calm his nerves, grateful to Smythe for the support, however implicit it had been.
"Good question. In terms of the dress code for this particular party, we'll have to be out of uniform almost by definition. Given our...rather odd makeup and place in the RAF's structure, I don't know exactly what the regulations would prescribe about what exact garb RAF officers are to wear for ground raids deep into enemy territory, anyways. So, we've got some adapted gear from the Army and RAF that has been customized to be a bit more useful for our purposes. It's being kept in the armory, along with all the weaponry we might need for the job. We'll be heading over there soon.
"There's also something else worth trying. The French government have been kind enough to loan us - emphasis on 'loan' - a few sets of actual, genuine German infantry uniforms that they took from some unfortunate prisoners in the Saar. They won't stand up to very close scrutiny, but they would probably be good enough to get us past the scrutiny of a careless German sentry or guard post. We don't have enough for the entire squadron, but it might be worth considering to have one or two of our German-speakers-"
Page glanced meaningfully at Richter, trying to judge his reaction.
"-cobble together a set that fits and take point for the group. That could give us a good edge."
United Kingdom of Poland wrote:If it weren't for the unwanted attention it would have brought him, Henri would have commented on the irony of a man who had once helped invade Poland twenty years ago was now tasked saving men captured in the most recent invasion of it. A part of him wondered if these men had once sat on the opposite side of the trenches from him. Of course the rest of him was annoyed at how everyone else seemed more focused on complaining about the mission in front of them than working on how to pull it off.
"We don't have to fight a thousand Germans." Vodat finally spoke up. "If we set up a diversion or two away from the camp, the Nazi's will running all over the place while we slip in and out right under their noses. My unit did the same thing back in the revolution... drove Lenin's attack dog crazy chasing his tail. The Africans did the same thing to us in Algeria a few times too."
Vodat shrugged. "As for the safe house... we won't know until we get there."
"That's a good idea, Flying Officer Vodat. We're going to be taking these rear-area troops by surprise - and being so far from any German frontline, and operating in a target-rich environment like Danzig, would likely give us a lot of potential opportunities for mayhem that could have a pretty dramatic effect on the garrison. We'll be going in through the port and city itself - we haven't gotten much solid intel on what kinds of hardware the Germans have been bringing through there yet, but I'm certain we'll be able to find some way to take the heat off of us."
Page snapped his fingers as he recalled something. "And on that note, the RAF boffins actually have a pretty incredible new bit of kit for us that might help with that. You'll see it shortly."
The Two Jerseys wrote:Talbot, keeping his mouth shut until his seething anger at the Irishman's impudence subsided, finally spoke:
"If I may, sir, regarding the staff sergeant's question about our wardrobe...if we are in fact to go about this business in civilian clothing, would we not be at a serious disadvantage should we be forced into a firefight? After all, it's not as if we can go about unnoticed whilst wearing web equipment over civilian clothing..."
"Think of this, Flight Lieutenant, less as an undercover assignment, or a protracted fight, and more as a...er...high-speed, gangster-style arse-kicking of the German garrison. Our gear will reflect that."