Operation Traction

Daniel James

Description

Thirty years after James Hamilton was forcibly migrated to New Zealand as an orphan child, an unexpected inheritance draws him back to Cornwall, where he stumbles on a long-dormant WWII secret concealed in the shared memory of the small fishing village he once considered home.
Mystery deepens when James begins clearing out the cottage he has inherited and uncovers a bundle of letters that imply the owner of the cottage, a retired lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy, participated in a clandestine operation that has remained suppressed in the core of the village and has direct links to James''s true identity.
Determined to get to the truth of his past, James digs into the background and context of the letters he''s found and it''s more disturbing than he ever imagined. His attempts to unravel the past reveal a shadowy world of British Intelligence, the French Maquis and Nazi sympathisers within Allied ranks.
Against the backdrop of WWII exploits spanning North Africa and France, Operation Traction is a story of divided loyalties and extreme courage. A story of love, of deceit and of sacrifice.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528983310
• Langue: English

Extrait

O P E R A T I O N T R A C T I O N

Daniel James

AUSTIN MACAULEY PUBLISHERS

Operation Traction

About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Epilogue

About the Author

Daniel James was born in Cornwall, raised on the Ch annel Island of Guernsey and relocated to New Zealand as a teenager. He has spen t a large portion of his adult life globe-trotting. Now semi-retired, Daniel can permit his lifelong in terest in history and his vivid imagination, inspired by the cultures and places he has encountered, to run wild. Daniel lives in New Zealand on the rural fringes of Auckland City with his wife in a home surrounded by native bush. Operation Tractionis his debut novel.

Dedication

To Jo, my travelling companion, for her eternal enc ouragement and patience.

Copyright Information ©

Daniel James(2020)

The right of Daniel James to be identified as autho r of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Cop yright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication ma y be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in rela tion to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, busin esses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s i magination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living o r dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528983303 (Paperback) ISBN 9781528983310 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2020) Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd 25 Canada Square Canary Wharf London E14 5LQ

Prologue

Krakow, Poland. 22 January, 1940.

Tking, men shouting. Heavyhere was a loud commotion in the courtyard—dogs bar jackbooted footsteps thundered on the cobbles and t hen on the stairs. A furious hammering on doors. The sound of people whimpering. Cries of terror. Then it was their turn. The urgent hammering on their door. The chilling demand for them to come out. Hadassah, her sisters, brother and mother were herd ed out into the apartment block’s inner courtyard, shoved roughly at the end of rifle butts. Hadassah’s grandparents, who lived in an apartment two floors beneath them, were already there, cowed on their knees, surrounded by soldiers in field-grey uniforms pointing rifles at them. Her grandfather’s face was smeared with blood. While their neighbours concealed themselves behind their curtains, locked their doors, and slunk into the dark recesses of their ap artments, Hadassah, her siblings and her mother were forced to their knees alongside her grandparents. Two soldiers seized her grandfather and hauled him across the courtyard , his heels bouncing across the cobbles. Again, he was forced to his knees, his arm s bent painfully behind his back and his forehead thrust to the ground. The Nazi officer , dressed in an impeccably-tailored black uniform, wearing a cap with a death’s head in signia, withdrew his revolver with a malicious expression and pointed it at the old man’ s head. A German soldier with a broad Slavic face interpret ed the Nazi officer’s demand of Hadassah and her brother Ishmael. He said in Polish , ‘Agree, or your grandfather will be shot.’ Hadassah’s grandfather called out in Yiddish not to agree, his life was unimportant, he was old, and these beasts should be stood up to. He was not afraid to die. The Nazi officer placed the barrel of his Luger pis tol against grandfather’s neck and pulled the trigger. The girls screamed. Hadassah’s grandmother and moth er became hysterical. Her brother began to tremble uncontrollably. Hadassah s houted, ’No.’ No, she would not serve the Gestapo. As Hadassah’s grandfather’s blood ran between the c obblestones, the Nazi officer ordered two of his grim-faced soldiers to drag gran dmother over to him. He placed his pistol behind her ear, and again the broad-faced so ldier repeated his demands. Hadassah’s grandmother closed her eyes. ‘Let me go with Isaac,’ she wept in Yiddish. ‘Let me die with Isaac.’ Hadassah again shouted, ‘No.’ The Nazi officer’s pistol barked. Grandmother’s hea d exploded, showering the huddled family in tissue and blood. The horror. The bestial savagery of what they were being subjec ted to overwhelmed them. They cried, screaming in revulsion and fear. They begged for mercy. Again, the Nazi officer made his demand. This time, Hadassah’s mother was snatched by her hair and dragged to the officer’s b lack-booted feet. Her mother trembled and wept. Splattered with her own mother’s blood, she was at the point of madness. ‘No. No, no,’ the children begged. The Nazi’s Luger, still smoking from the bullets al ready fired, barked again.

Hadassah’s will was broken.She was saying yes.‘Yes, I’ll do it. I’ll do what you ask.’ At the sound of his sister’s acquiescence, fifteen- year-old Ishmael, who was transitioning into manhood, flung himself at the officer. He wrapped his arms around the man’s legs and dragged him to the ground. Though he ll-bent on revenging his mother, Ishmael’s gesture was futile, an uncontrolled fit o f rage. A rifle butt slammed into Ishmael’s kidney; he roll ed away screaming in agony. The Nazi officer scrambled to his feet, his face co ntorted in anger. Viciously, he swung a boot into Ishmael’s ribs. Again and again, he kicked him. In the head. In the face. Kicking out teeth. The sound of Ishmael’s bon es breaking echoed around the courtyard. The Nazi’s face gleamed with sweat. He b reathed heavily; his chest heaved with the effort. Hadassah clung to her sisters. She pleaded, ‘No more. No more. I will do as you ask.’ Hadassah and her sisters were bundled into the back of a mottled grey van and driven away. They were led to cells in the basement of Krakow’s Wawel Castle, Poland’s symbol of national pride, just three kilom etres from Hadassah’s home in the Jewish quarter. The ancient fortress Hadassah had v isited as a child and gazed upon with pride and delight was now the headquarters of the Nazi Governor-General, Hans Frank. The castle had been a place of beauty, of peace and calm, where her family had walked beneath its towering walls along the banks o f the Vistula. Now, it was feared. Nazi flags flew from its parapets. Hadassah was separated from her sisters and incarce rated in cell number 14, a small, grim room secured by a heavy wooden door, wi th just a chink of daylight coming from a tiny barred window at the top of one wall. A s she looked around the cell, she noticed that the stone walls were covered with graf fiti. Former prisoners had scratched or written inscriptions that conveyed a wide range of contrasting moods: defiance, despair, hope, anger. For six weeks Hadassah remained in that filthy cell . Until one morning she was dragged out, screaming, and thrown into the back of an enclosed truck with small iron- barred windows. Her wrists were manacled and chaine d. ‘Where am I going? Where are you taking me? Where a re my sisters?’ she screamed. Her tormentors ignored her. Fear engulfed her. The truck’s doors clanged shut behind her, and, wit h a lurch, the truck began to move, rapidly picking up speed, bouncing over the r ough cobbled roads, causing the cold steel manacles to bite into her wrists. Hadassah cried out in agony and anguish.

***

Brittany, France. 30 December, 1943. Illuminated by a feeble moon, Squadron Leader Georg e Martel expertly flew his matte black Lysander in at treetop level. It was a pickup sortie. A Moon Squadron mission. St raight in and straight out. No more than three minutes on the ground; he had done it dozens of times before. George was piloting solo tonight, so he had to cont end with reading the map balanced on his lap while looking out for the pinpr icks of light from three hand-held torches that would guide him down. He dropped the fixed-wing monoplane in a tight low circuit. There they were. Three tiny beacons of light, quickly followed by th e identifying code letter, flashed at him in Morse. George turned into the wind. The grou nd rushed up; his wheels bumped the thick frost-covered earth once, then settled in a perfect three-point landing. The thickly-grassed field, barely three-hundred metres long, was firm, providing George with ideal landing conditions. Within moments he was tax iing to a halt. The single propeller at the front of the bulging cowling cover continued to spin. Three figures emerged from

the darkened copse of trees on the edge of the fiel d and trotted towards him. George pushed open the Perspex panel on the side of his co ckpit bubble to greet them. The night was still. Soft velvety darkness shrouded the crouching figures as they moved silently through the long frost-encrusted grass tow ards him. An occasional breeze wafted through his open canopy, cooling the sweat o n his face. ‘Bonne soirée,’ called out a stocky, barrel-chested French Resis tance patriot as he hoisted himself up on one of the Lysander’s wheel s pats and grabbed hold of a wing strut for balance. ‘We have two passengers for you tonight. May I introduce Mademoiselle Mia Dubois.’ George knew the name was false. They always were. A liases imparted by the handlers back in England to protect the true identi ties of their agents on the ground. Looking down from his open cockpit, George pushed h is flying goggles to the top of his leather flying helmet and smiled broadly throug h his thick handlebar moustache. ‘Salut, mademoiselle. Enchante,’he called softly to his passenger. She was lingeri ng furtively at the foot of the small access ladder fi tted to his aircraft’s fuselage. ‘Board as quickly as you can, please. Don’t want to linger too long, what.’ The woman, dressed in men’s clothing, raised a hand in greeting. ‘Bonsoir,’she replied as she began climbing the narrow ladde r. ‘Good evening, old chap,’ called out a muffled, plu mmy British voice. The man, tall and lean, was wearing a crumpled, mud -spattered civilian pin-striped suit and fedora. The man hoisted himself up onto th e Lysander’s wheel spat beside the burly Resistance fighter. ‘I must say I’m looking forward to getting home,’ the man chirped brightly. ‘Good to see you again, Colonel,’ replied George le aning out of his open cockpit. ‘None the worse for wear, I see.’ ‘All tickity-boo, old chap. Never better.’ Colonel Mark Pierce-Brawley followed the diminutive British agent up the fixed access ladder to the rear cockpit and squeezed into the cramped space beside her as they awkwardly harnessed themselves into the seats behind George. ‘Au revoir. Bonne chance,’nd.called out the Frenchman and he jumped to the grou George signalled “thumbs up”, slid the canopy close d and trundled the Lysander back down the small field, ran about two-hundred me tres, pulled back on the stick, and was airborne. He ascended at a steep angle, set the propeller to coarse, throttled back the Bristol Mercury engine, gave a slight waggle of the wings to bid farewell, and was gone. He had been on the ground for just three minu tes and a handful of seconds. It had been a textbook sortie.

George was pleased.

Cornwall, England. 3 April, 1989.

Chapter 1

James stood totally still. His back to the sea, he stared at the cottage as though in a trance. Whole minutes passed. It was surreal. Back again, after thirty-six years. He really should not have driven all the way from Heat hrow immediately after the long-haul flight from New Zealand, but he would not rest unti l he got here. He was shattered. Exhaustion dragged at his body. He had been nearly thirty hours without any decent sleep. His back ached. His eyes were red-rimmed and raw, and his head felt as though it was disconnected from his neck, floating free li ke a helium balloon on a string.

‘Unbelievable,’ he said aloud. ‘Un-bloody-believabl e.’

Built from stone blocks hewn from pale-grey granite , the two-story cottage rose up in front of James like a monolith from the seashore ro cks. Its foundation and the outcrop of bedrock it was built upon merged seamlessly, as though the cottage had grown from the very core of the craggy rocks, squeezing its wa y to the surface like a mushroom. The heavily-panelled front door, squat beneath a so lid stone lintel, was barely five metres from the high tide mark. “Spitting distance” , was how Uncle Nat had described it. The weak afternoon sun felt good on James’s back. T he offshore breeze gently tugged at his neatly-cropped hair. He stood stock-s till, closing his eyes and savouring the moment. The fresh scents and sounds brought a s urge of nostalgia, unexpectedly powerful and intoxicating. It was as though the aro ma of seaweed, the tang of heavily salt-laden air and the gentle wash of the sea lappi ng on the slender shoulder of the pebble-studded beach were welcoming him back. A lifetime ago,thought James, running a hand over his unshaven fa ce. ‘I really am back. Incredible,’ he said, oblivious to the fact he was speaking aloud to himself again. The lawyer’s letter had come as a bolt out of the b lue. James could not believe it when he read it. A cottage bequeathed to him by “Na thaniel Ezekiel Moore, Commander, DSC, RNR retired”. He had long ago put the memory of Uncle Nat and his boyhood days out of his mind. The cottage stood apart from the others in the vill age, commanding an unfettered view of the harbour entrance and the long narrow st one pier, with its modest white and red striped lighthouse at the end, and the English Channel beyond. They say that on a fine day you can see the Isles o f Scilly, and, at night, the light on St. Martin’s Head. It was not true of course, just real estate hyperbole. All James could ever recall seeing was a mauve smudge on the horizo n. But then, he had not taken much notice of the view. As a boy, he had been more intent on catching crabs and digging for flatworms in the wet sand. It was here James had spent his summers, free from the restrictions of the children’s home. On the narrow crescent of sand in front of the ston e cottage, he had been a carefree lad armed with a wooden sword and a shrimp net. Now he was a grown man, father to two girls. Now he was a husband to Theresa, or Tee, as everyone fondly referred to her, his wife of fourteen years. He had a career to o, as a physics professor at Auckland University in New Zealand’s “City of Sails”. It was a good life, a solid life. James flexed his broad shoulders, attempting to str etch out the stiffness from the flight and long drive down to Cornwall. At 1.8 metr es tall, James was what Tee referred to affectionately as “burly”. He was still strong. Strong enough to regularly make the