Magestic 2

Copyright © Geoff Wolak

www.geoffwolak-writing.com

Part 7

RAF in China

Big Paul eased up, his wicker chair issuing a squeak. Stretching, he took in the view of the colony from the balcony of the command centre, and stepped inside just as the Colonel from the American Brigade arrived; the Colonel had flown back on a Buffalo during the night, summoned. Big Paul shook his hand and hugged him, five minutes of insults and jibes exchanged before they settled around the map. The Colonel marked a map, highlighting the Japanese positions as best he could, Po and Han adding detail of units.

‘Right,’ Big Paul finally said to the Colonel. ‘I want you spread out, right along that entire front, a war of attrition. But watch your flanks, because the emperor just landed two hundred thousand men up the coast. They’re three hundred miles away, but they will move south and west, buddy. We’re also getting reports of units from Manchuria coming down by train, more arriving all the time. Fucking bars in Tokyo must be empty.’

‘Supplies?’

‘Take whatever you need, and whatever you can squeeze onto a plane.’

‘How far have you penetrated?’ he asked.

‘Eight miles.’

‘Eight miles! Ya boys sleeping on the job?’

‘Those boys, mate, have sixty thousand Japs around them, all wanting a piece of them. You’re spread out and in the hills, we’re all bunched up. Our fucking front line has a Jap every two feet – mostly dead granted, but you have them every two fucking miles.’

‘You don’t want us to probe deeper?’

‘No, wear them down and keep them tied up, or we’ll have them all down here.’

‘Two Super Goose just landed,’ a runner shouted.

‘That’s risky in daylight,’ the Colonel noted.

The pilots came straight over, their planes now being unloaded, the two men both Canadian Rifles pilots. ‘Should have landed before dawn, boss, but we were late. Still, we reached here at fifteen thousand, circled and had a look, then dropped like a fucking stone, right down and landed.’

‘What did you bring?’ Big Paul asked the man.

‘RPGs, aviation version.’

‘Cool,’ Big Paul offered. ‘Can you hang around?’

‘We’re assigned here now.’

‘Even better; you now work for this reprobate,’ Big Paul told the pilots, thumbing towards the Colonel. ‘Load up and follow the Buffalos north.’

‘How about a couple of Boeings?’ the Colonel asked. ‘We have a decent strip up there.’

Big Paul faced the RAF officer. ‘Fancy sending a flight up north for some action?’

‘We have just the eight aircraft serviceable,’ the RAF protested.

‘Then tell your grandchildren a good story, and relocate them all to the north, mechanics and supplies in the Super Goose, plus personal effects.’

‘And fuel?’ the RAF asked.

Big Paul faced the Colonel, and waited. The Colonel said, ‘They’ll run off regular gas if we tune the engines right, we have that up there.’

Big Paul faced the RAF officer, and waited. The man said, ‘They will, but performance will be down a bit.’

‘Such challenges make for a good story over a beer. It’s your call, but I’d like you to go.’

‘As you say, it would be a challenge. OK, we’re in.’

‘Fly with full tanks and no weapons,’ Big Paul told the RAF officer. ‘Just in case you miss the dirt strip. And fly late, so that you reach it at dawn. You can always put down on a road.’

Sat on the balcony with the Colonel, Big Paul said, ‘Dead tally?’

‘Fifteen or so,’ the Colonel reported, none too concerned.

‘Wounded?’

‘Brought most of them back with us, they’ll make it.’

‘Morale?’ Big Paul broached.

The Colonel snapped his head around. ‘Morale is fine,’ he insisted. ‘We’re at war, buddy, this ain’t Spain, and the guys love killing Japs.’

‘Use the Super Goose to rotate them out for a week’s R&R back here. This’ll drag on.’

The Colonel nodded. ‘Could use some jeeps. We have trucks up there, but they break down every damn mile.’

‘You can fit a jeep in a Buffalo. Check your supply levels, then ship some up; it’s your call what sits on the plane.’

‘I will, it’ll make a difference.’ He paused. ‘Those Super Goose must have had the seats removed.’

‘Cargo version, bound to have.’

‘How big is the door?’

‘Not big enough for a jeep.’

‘What … sideways, with the wheels off?’

‘You’re not going to damage one of my planes!’

The Colonel reluctantly nodded, sipping a beer. ‘I’ll stick the regular supplies in the Goose, jeeps in the Buffalos. Guys will be right pleased; some use horses.’

We celebrated New Year in the hotel, the factory staff all given New Year’s Day off, not least because many of the managers and team leaders worked beyond their required hours now that we were at war, and they came in on the weekends voluntarily.

But New Year’s Day saw an Italian air attack on an escorted British convoy, two ships badly damaged, two aircraft shot down by the escorting destroyers.

Jimmy commented, ‘Britain won’t be able to hold off a war with the Italians much longer. And the Germans have been steadily building up in Libya.’

‘There was another raid on the RAF a few days ago,’ I mentioned. ‘In Chad. A few people killed.’

Jimmy folded his newspaper. ‘I’m hoping it will drag on a little longer, also hoping that Japanese losses will continue to be played down by the Japanese. So far … the Japanese are lying about their losses, which is exactly what we want.’

‘And a ground war in Libya?’ I nudged.

‘Would … most likely drag on at least till the summer, but we’d risk pissing off the British if they just sat and took it.’

A note arrived as I fetched fresh teas. ‘Pancakes, Cookie?’ I joked, getting a look from our trusty chef.

As I sat, Jimmy said, ‘Germans have moved into Czechoslovakia. And in the snow!’

‘They must be hoping that everyone else is snowed in, and can’t react.’

‘Britain couldn’t react anyway, save an air war, and France is in even worse state than Britain. So unless the Americans land – and they’re not in great shape for a war – no one will be opposing the Germans. And right now the Red Army is large, but couldn’t organise a tea party, let alone a war.’

‘And Herr Hitler can see Britain, and now America, all tied up in the Far East,’ I noted. ‘I bet he included the Jap Emperor on his Christmas card list. He must be rubbing his hands and smiling.’

‘He thinks he has a free run at Britain, and for all intents and purposes … he damn well has.’

Hal’s mishap

A scientist asked Jimmy if he could try a new jet engine in a prototype F15. Jimmy agreed without paying too much attention. The scientist grabbed the next prototype off the assembly line, just as its engines were being fitted, and made a few modifications with a team of engineers. The aircraft’s small reserve tanks were left with normal jet fuel, the wing tanks fitted with a new binary liquid, the liquid that didn’t burn, just expanded a great deal when mixed and when heated. Parts from a modified torpedo engine were fitted inside the belly of the F15; mixer pumps, heaters to warm the mixed liquid, high-pressure pumps and high-pressure hose to feed expanding warm liquid to the engines.

Once inside the engines, the liquid would be sprayed as a vapour into the burners made hot by the regular fuel, a chain reaction caused – similar to burning fuel, and a greater thrust should be achieved. That thrust was destined to assist our heavy jet bomber during take-off and climb, the portion of any flight that wasted the most fuel.

After a few days of fiddling they were set, Hal offering to test the new jet, a task that he shared with Hacker and a few other of the experienced pilots. He strapped in on a very cold day, light winds allowing a safe take-off, and took-off on normal jet fuel, not noticing any difference. At thirty thousand feet, the prescribed height, he turned on the mixers, the pumps, and the heaters, suddenly forced back into his seat. As he sat there, his airspeed indicator turned towards mach two, and kept going, getting stuck at mach three.

Concerned about structural damage, Hal now switched off the fuel, only to find that nothing happened, and that he was, apparently, at mach three. He didn’t dare knock off the auto-trim and try and turn at his speed, and spent fifteen minutes trying to throttle back or knock-off the binary liquid before the plane disintegrated. Trying his radio, his response was oddly garbled, and peering down he could see ice flows. He was in trouble, flying at mach three towards the North Pole.

Figuring he’d have to do something before the fuel ran out, or he met a fat guy in a red suit in a sleigh, he adjusted the auto-trim and nosed up, soon at forty thousand feet and climbing. He checked his oxygen and CO2 scrubbers, they were fine, and turned the cockpit heaters up full, now starting to shiver. At fifty thousand he uttered a few rude words, followed by a few prayers. At fifty-five thousand feet he could clearly see the curvature of the earth, but a wobble in the plane gave him hope, the thin air helping. He would have to chance it, the airspeed indicator now stuck.

He knocked off the auto-trim and initiated a slow and gentle turn to the right whilst keeping the nose up, the aircraft wobbling in the thin air. Facing due south, and noticing now ice forming inside the cockpit, he nosed down into a gentle glide, wondering at what point he could eject, and what his chances were; these seats had no oxygen supply.

After forty minutes he thought he recognised a few features below, and turned towards what he thought was the town at the railway junction, two hundred miles south of the Lemming Base. Banking, and peering down, he was surprised to find Chicago. After a few rude words he gently turned west, and set a course for the Canadian border, knowing where a few of the Goose refuelling points where located, still puzzling just how the hell he had arrived in Chicago – and was he hallucinating due to oxygen depravation.

Figuring he would have to suffer an ejection, he thought “fuck it”, and turned due south again, keen to reach a densely populated area; parachuting down into the frozen tundra would probably be a death sentence. He was dressed warm, and he knew the seat had one of those rubber suits for ocean survival, but a week in the Canadian winter would have finished him.

White fields became brown, towns visible, but he had no idea what his altitude was, his altimeter stuck as well now, the airspeed indicator long having given up. He left auto-trim to fly the plane and sat back, awaiting the inevitable. As the plane ultimately plummeted to earth he would try and glide it as far as possible, pull back on the stick and force a stall, then eject. It was not a pleasant prospect.

An hour later he was still waiting, but noticed the nose dipping, autopilot failing to correct. Red lights came on, and his world turned quiet, the engines now off, just a whistling sound.

‘Finally.’

Figuring he had ten minutes of hydraulic pressure, he switched off the auto-trim, took control, and nosed down, no signs of snow on the ground below, just a … sandy colour. After twenty minutes of steady descent he risked the flaps, but they came down, and he managed to maintain a speed of what he thought was probably two-fifty, the nose ten degrees below the horizon. Seeing hills, he turned away till he could see a town, and attempted to stay close to it, spiralling around the town. Farms and the odd ploughed field came into view, Hal judging that he was at ten thousand feet, but then a long straight road came into view. Could he do it, he wondered. Could he save the plane?

‘Fuck it.’ He lowered the undercarriage, but without getting three green lights. ‘Come on baby, glide for me.’

Continuing to circle, he lost height quickly, and made a life or death choice. He swung in a wider final circle to line up with the road, a road he figured was several miles long. Nosing down, he figured he’d want the speed at the start of his approach, to manoeuvre the bird. The road loomed large, the ground rushing up. He looked for posts and wires, but couldn’t see any yet. He did, however, notice cars in the distance, not sure if they were heading away, or coming head on. Too late, he was committed.

With the plane wobbling and hard to control without engines, and not pleased to be treated like a glider, Hal lined up and approached the road, way too fast for a normal approach; he had no choice, he needed the airspeed. Forty feet off the road he eased back, judging his speed by eye only, and at ten feet pulled right back, feeling the plane slow, ground cushion effect taking hold.

The main wheels hit, the undercarriage designed not to bounce the plane, and the nose came down. He pulled back on the stick till the nose hit, his feet on the rudder pedals - and a car coming head on.

Closing with the car at ninety miles per hour, the car swerved off the road in time, Hal struggling to keep the nose pointed down the road as he slowed, a gentle pressure on the brakes. A full eight hundred yards after touching down the jet slowed to a creep, and finally halted, Hal popping the canopy in case he had to make a quick exit.

After an undignified scramble down the side - no steps, Hal straightened to see the car returning. It approached and halted, a man, women and boy emerging, all now walking towards the jet with incredible stares.

‘Sorry about that,’ Hal offered. ‘It was an emergency landing.’

They closed in, staring at the big jet.

‘Could you drive to the nearest phone and get the police?’

‘Police? Federales?’

Hal stared at the man. ‘Where am I? New Mexico?’

‘Mexico, si.’

‘Mexico?’

‘Si, Valdez.’

‘I’m in Mexico,’ Hal repeated. He took in the shrubs, and noted the temperature. ‘I’m … in Mexico.’

Sat on the side of the road for an hour - two cars and two trucks now unable to pass, a police car finally turned up, the local police officers staring at the plane.

‘Hola,’ Hal offered. ‘American.’ He pointed himself.

‘I speak English, sir,’ an officer offered.

‘I’m American, I got lost. Can you call the embassy?’

‘You got lost, sir. The border is three hundred miles away, sir.’

‘I got … very lost.’

‘Where is the propeller, sir?’

‘The propeller … fell off, that’s why I crashed.’

The scientist responsible for the test, and his team, were flown straight down to the hotel, not looking forward to reporting what they thought was Hal’s death. Searches were underway in Canada, called off by Jimmy after we received a call at the hotel, collect, from Mexico.

With the scientist and his team lined up on the apron, Jimmy shouted at length, docked the team two weeks wages, and assigned them to toilet cleaning for a week. As we boarded a Super Goose, bound for Mexico - an impounded jet and diplomatic incident to deal with - the engineers sloped off, wondering just how the hell Hal had ended up in Mexico. Meanwhile, our jet had been pushed off the road, and was now surrounded by police and onlookers, the funny-looking aircraft a local curiosity.

Landing in Mexico City the next morning, we went straight around to the Mexican Government and explained that there was a war on, and that it was a navigational accident, and that we would hand over fifty thousand dollars towards the inconvenience, and that we were very sorry. After much hot air they allowed our teams to recover the jet. Our teams moved everyone well back, put enough explosives in the jet to send it to the moon, and blew it to pieces.

The pieces were collected and placed onto trucks, the trucks soon starting a long journey north, a very long journey. We collected a ripe and smelly Hal from the police, where he was a virtual prisoner, and boarded our plane, soon heading north, the story recanted. After a few beers we could joke about it, Hal believing that he was at fifty thousand feet going mach three, and suggesting we start on a high-altitude spy plane.

But people over Chicago had seen the high con trail, a plane moving at incredible speed, and all across America reports of sonic booms were appearing in the local papers. The US President was soon hard at work, war powers used to quell the story. One of our own Goose pilots saw the con trail streak across the sky whilst he was at fifteen thousand feet, amazed at what he was viewing. The age of the UFO had arrived.

Back at the hotel, people asked Hal how his holiday went, was there an in-flight movie, why he had taken it upon himself to invade Mexico alone, and that he should fly with his passport next time. A few parts of the jet had been placed aboard transports in Texas, and flown up, a quick examination suggesting many stress fractures, and that the wings were about to fall off before it was landed - and subsequently blown up. Still, the scientists and engineers were pleased, since the jet should have fallen to pieces. The one thing that saved the jet, and Hal, was the altitude. At low level the plane would have disintegrated for sure, and the engineers found heat scoring on leading edges.

Hal brushed off his near-death experience, and looked forwards to writing in the aircraft’s logbook what happened to it. But the net effect of the test was that the new fuel injection system would be good for getting heavy bombers off the deck and to altitude, Jimmy approving its testing, but with no more than ten minutes fuel ever to be used.

Sat with Jimmy in the hotel bar, he said, ‘That fuel … is about three times better than regular jet fuel, pound for pound. It’s not a hell of a lot more expensive, and cheap enough if you use it only to get a heavy bomber up. The main benefit is its weight. Back in the Cold War, many people experimented with jet-assisted take-offs.’

‘Because you waste a hell of a lot of fuel during a heavy take-off and climb,’ I put in.

‘This will act like a drop-tank; a light load that’s dispensed during takeoff. It’ll save fuel and boost range. What they’ll use it for now though is a sub-orbital rocket, and for cruise missiles. A fully fuelled cruise missile could easily hit Berlin from Scotland. But I tell you, some of our guys have really got it in for the Germans.’

‘How’d you mean?’ I puzzled.

‘They’ve built a guidance system for the auto-trim, a wind-up clock with a metal disk like an old vinyl record. It allows to you programme a course, and height and speed. That way, the missile could hit Berlin, or Tokyo. But they’ve just created one that will cause the damn missile to fly round and round at varying speeds and altitudes.’

‘The Germans would chase it,’ I said with a frown.

Jimmy lifted his eyebrows and nodded. ‘It’ll cause them to launch aircraft all over the country, and it has a four-hour flight time before it explodes, just a small bang – enough to destroy the mechanism. Its final ten minutes would be spent in a steep climb, so parts of it will scatter.’

‘Are we taking a risk by the Germans getting hold of it?’ I cautioned.

‘Yes, so I won’t sanction it till the war is well advanced. But now … now we have a few senior Americans calling for the bombing of Tokyo, even as a gesture. The pressure is building.’

‘They have bombers at their disposal, they can strike Tokyo from Guam, or the Philippines. They know the range.’

‘I’ve asked them not to, but people just don’t understand why.’

‘And why would they?’ I asked. ‘Can we hold them off?’

‘If we can’t, Germany will know. That may not prevent a war, but it will alter their air defences. Still, at the moment the American lines in the Philippines are holding, no significant naval clashes yet.’

‘Casualties?’

‘Not as high as they should be, but in the thousands already,’ Jimmy responded. ‘Not sure we can wait much longer, so tomorrow the RAF will shoot down a few Italian planes around Malta, Spitfires based there now.’

I awaited the news the next day, a telegram arriving late at night. Six Italian medium bombers had been shot down. I woke to find that additional Italian medium bombers had bombed Malta overnight, an act from which there was no going back; Britain declared war on Italy. Italy’s mutual defence pact with Germany was clear, so Germany declared war on Britain for attacking Italy, and that was that. Everyone was at war, and in January, 1938.

Nothing much happened for a few days, till German medium bombers attacked Malta, a daylight raid with fighter cover. Spitfires tangled with those fighters, eight lost, four German planes shot down. The air war over Malta had begun.

The German and Italian forward air units in the desert oasis launched an all out attack across the Sahara, finding the RAF bases largely empty, their aircraft and staff pulled back and flown to Egypt for the defence of that country.

I drove up to the Canadian Rifles Tank Brigade a day later, on instructions from Jimmy, finding the commanding officer. ‘Move your entire brigade, and all of your vehicles, to Nova Scotia by train just as soon as you can. Ships will take you to Britain.’

‘We’ll help defend Britain from invasion?’ the man asked.

‘There may be an expeditionary force sent across to France. If there is … you’ll be a part of it.’

On the way back I detoured to the American Brigade, some six hundred men in residence and busy training, all hoping to be posted to China. I gathered the senior officers. ‘Prepare to move out in two weeks, all kit and all weapons, you’ll be going to Britain.’

‘Britain, not China?’

‘There’s a war in Europe as well,’ I reminded them. ‘And that war may see America join in soon.’

‘America … will fight the Germans?’

‘Yes. So, get a map of France.’ They found a map, and gathered around. ‘I want a party of twenty senior men to go on holiday to this region straight away, and I want you to have a very good look at the lay of the land. Should Germany invade France you’d be dropped into this area, but that’s top secret for now, no one other than you lot allowed to know. And remember, you’re on holiday, take pictures of … roads, bridges, rivers.’

‘As you do on holiday.’

‘You leave tomorrow, so pick the team,’ I told them. ‘Get everyone else ready to go. You’ll soon be based in a place in Britain called Devon, which is lovely for the five days of the year when it doesn’t rain.’

At the Canadian Rifles base I gave them their marching orders; the remaining fifteen hundred men would go with the Tank Brigade to Britain, to a spot on the west coast of Scotland that was wholly unsuitable for tanks. The spot would, however, offer a deepwater port, and would be far from German aircraft and far from prying eyes. That deployment would place a total of three thousand Canadian Rifles in Britain, in addition to the six hundred in Kenya and the twelve hundred fighting in China.

Twenty instructors volunteered to remain behind, mostly due to local families, and would continue to recruit and train new members. The American Brigade would cease all recruitment and close its base.

Sand and flies

Mac and Handy had reviewed the units in Africa, moving men and stores around where they thought it was necessary. The tank brigade was moved to Chad, since it was no good sat in Kenya gathering dust. Once in Chad, the brigade assembled near the air base that lay fifty miles from the train track, but had been given its own patch of sand, fenced off. Vehicles were spread out in case of air attack, supplies stockpiled, the crews practising daily at throwing up dust storms with their vehicles.

The British Brigade now took on a new role and a new meaning, extra kit supplied, extra ammo, even extra food. Training stepped up a pace, with new exercises set by Mac, long range desert patrols practised close to the train track in Chad, long foot patrols, mine clearance, and the general practice of sneaking into places.

The best group of men were relabelled to SAS, and given new cap badges and shoulder flashes, and a new remit. They now practised HALO drops into remote areas as large teams, followed by a long walk to a target, sneaking in and laying explosives, sneaking out just as quietly, followed by a long walk back. After a week’s regular training they would be sent off again to another exercise with the same profile. But the British Brigade now operated with a senior British Army officer embedded with them, and he would call the shots when they deployed, after we had told Churchill what to tell the man. Still, the arrangement made it look like Britain was calling the shots.

The French Brigade was still deployed around the airfield and training in earnest, including parachute training. A few wanted to go join the French Army, since a war with Germany was possible. Mac explained to the men that if France went to war with Germany, that the men could fight for France in Libya or Algiers. Most of the men remained, only ten heading for the homeland, not least because most had fled minor charges in their homeland anyway.

The Kenyan Rifles were keen to be involved in any fighting, and were keenly training, Mac hinting at a role in Ethiopia soon. Abdi flew down to meet with Mac and Handy at Mawlini, meeting Doc Graham at the Kenyan Rifles Field Hospital base, aka Rescue Force. Abdi was now master to four thousand men in varying stages of skill and fitness, and had possession of jeeps and half-tracks, 105mm and RPGs, keen now to have a go at the Italians or the Germans. Mac telegrammed Jimmy, and Jimmy now gave the OK for Abdi to attack the Italians, but slowly. In parallel to Abdi’s efforts, four hundred men of the Kenyan Rifles were dispatched through Southern Sudan, to start a second front against the Italian forces in Ethiopia. They would attack from the northwest, Abdi from the south and the east.

The Third Reich

The effect of the Germans declaring war was limited, in that no land forces could get near each other very easily; there was no common border. The Royal Navy wisely withdrew from the Baltic Sea, and that prevented their ships from being bombed by German aircraft. It also prevented them from being torpedoed, as two had been in the North Sea. The Wolf Packs were out and about.

The German subs possessed a good range, and could stay at sea for three months, but for the moment they had to chance the Denmark Straits at night, one at a time, and slowly if they wanted to reach the Atlantic. Once in the North Sea they would be hunted by British destroyers - with limited success, but depth charges chased away a few U-Boats. It was when the U-Boats reached the Atlantic that they could do the damage. Two weeks after the declaration of war, the first British merchant vessel was sunk, the start of the battle for the Atlantic.

The Royal Naval Air Service, RNAS, now operated twenty Goose aircraft and twelve Dash-7s for maritime patrol, the aircraft based in either Scotland or Cornwall. They had a great range and duration, and now came equipped with limited radar, as well as the old radio direction finding kits. A U-Boat on the surface, using its radio, was vulnerable, even at night. The Goose also operated sonar, and could scare away a sub by landing on the water and pinging. The sub would believe the plane to be a destroyer, and dive deeper, fleeing the area.

A few days after the first merchant vessel had been sunk, six Super Goose maritime variants arrived in Scotland, fitted with better radar, and side firing thirty mil cannon. That cannon could be hand cranked towards a window after the window had been opened, a counter-balance moving the other way to maintain the aircraft’s trim. To fire the cannon at a sub, the pilot would approach the sub banked, and tightly circle the sub.

Having practised just that, the RNAS got their first chance their second time out, a sub spotted on radar. They approached through cloud till very close, dropping below the cloud ceiling at the last minute with the thirty mil ready, diving and banking. The cannon fired twelve rounds, a few seen to hit before the sub disappeared, its fate unknown. They dropped four depth charges, just to make a point. Anti-submarine warfare had arrived.

Three days later, a sub on the surface received a shock when it was fired upon at night, and damaged, the sub’s crew amazed that they could be found at night, let alone fired upon accurately – and in poor weather.

With the weather in northern Europe terrible, the various opposing aircraft now sat shivering on aprons, no one launching an air campaign against anyone else, but German trains and convoys moved south down the spine of Italy, their men and equipment loaded onto ships, from the heel of Italy across to Libya. We judged that they had enough men and machines to threaten Egypt, and so must have they. When it looked like they would simply continue to build up, we decided to alter the playing field a little.

Thirty of Abdi’s best men drove their jeeps to a point ten miles from the desert oasis in central Libya, driving through the night and arriving before dawn. They hid their vehicles under camouflage nets and moved away from them, burying themselves in the sand during the day. At sundown the desert bloomed with men covered in pink-orange shrouds, soon a column of men walking briskly towards the oasis. They arrived before midnight and split into three groups, already knowing exactly where the German mines had been laid; the tea boy was a cousin. They chose the most heavily mined area and cut the outer wire, soon on their bellies with mine detectors that would have been advanced in 2010.

Mines were found and marked, moved around as a dog-leg path was plotted by the first man. He reached the far side and cut the wire, pulling his shroud over himself after scraping out a hollow in the sand. His colleagues moved past one at a time, moving slowly, soon attaching Good Morning grenades to trucks, to oil barrels, and to expensive aircraft, a few left under tent flaps. After just over an hour at the base they withdrew, retracing their steps through the mines. But they didn’t leave. They spread out beyond the minefields, dug in and covered themselves where they had an angle on the base, .223 rifles with silencers pointed at the base.

At dawn the first charge blew, causing the sounding of an alarm and much running around, a dozen men picked off by the snipers and falling. The second blast caught men in the open, a third blast destroying one aircraft and damaging two others, the planes soon well alight. Fires were tackled, only for the men tackling the fire to be killed by further blasts. And after each blast, as the smoke billowed and sand rained down, the snipers would pick off men.

By noon, all of the grenades had detonated - the number of blasts counted by Abdi’s men, but few Germans or Italians were left alive. The snipers inched forwards, picking off the survivors, many of the camp’s inhabitants having been wounded from the blasts. With no further movement at the base noticed, additional grenades were used to destroy remaining aircraft and vehicles before Abdi’s men withdrew, a little something left behind for good measure.

When contact with the base had been lost, an Italian aircraft had been duly dispatched, arriving to find the base completely destroyed, no one left alive, the German commander in the country notified. Abdi’s men walked during the remaining daylight hours, and through the night, reclaiming their vehicles before driving out south in a hurry.

The first German vehicle to reach the base drove straight over a mine purposefully left for it. The Germans checked the positions of the minefields, clearly marked, and edged forwards on foot. The first platoon saw a wounded officer sat upright against the wheel of a burnt out truck, and rushed over, straight into a line of mines, the mines setting each other off, the platoon decimated. If the Germans were to make use of this base, they would have to clear every damn inch of it.

The trucks that had halted at the gate were turned around, to make a temporary camp outside, two driving straight over mines left for them, causing mayhem. In a slow and careful procession, the trucks reversed over their previous tracks, soldiers in the back very keenly shouting corrections.

With such heavy losses, of men and machines, the German commander in the country was under pressure to even the score, and there was only one way to do that. He launched a night raid against British positions in Egypt with most every plane he had, much sand moved around, but little real effect. A few barrack blocks were flattened, no one in them at the time, trucks destroyed, two half-tracks, a few people killed by direct hits to their bunkers and trenches.

The British had not been bunched up, and had expected an air raid, so the mass air attack had a limited affect. But the Germans were now missing six aircraft, the last flight to drop its bombs; they had not returned. Those Heinkels had fallen prey to six Boeing Mark 4s fitted with night sights.

The Fuhrer ordered a ground offensive, the whistle blown to go over the top. Fortunately for the British, the German armour was still sixty miles from the Egyptian border, the bulk of the British armour sixty miles beyond the border. It would not be a quick clash, it would be like two tortoises squaring up to each other across the lawn. The British ranks had also been swollen by their own medium tanks, if only fifty of them.

The British armoured brigades and infantry brigades moved out to take-up position closer to the border, their ground carefully chosen. Trenches were started, mines laid. Half-tracks and jeeps moved south, into the sand, the RAF made ready for its ground attack role.

On the third day, German armour met Italian mobile brigades and inched closer to the border, final positions taken, the Italians to be in the south – on the right flank. The Italian units would face the British jeeps and half-tracks, those half-tracks packing 105mm and mortar tubes. But as dusk fell that evening the RAF took off, a flight of six Boeings with night sights, eight RPGs per plane, and they were soon crossing the border. Nosing down from two thousand feet, their night sights highlighted warm engines and recently doused fires, the tank metal remaining warmer than the surface sand as desert temperatures plummeted.

German tank crews were amazed to be hit by accurate rocket fire, and from a plane that they couldn’t even see, tank after tank destroyed and now on fire. Their half-tracks exploded, their trucks also now on fire, but mostly the RAF targeted the tanks, circling time and time again. At dawn the carnage was evident: twelve tanks destroyed, sixteen other vehicles destroyed or damaged. The advance was halted, a change of tactic called for. The RAF would now be destroyed first, to gain air superiority.

The Luftwaffe lifted off at dawn the next morning, and flew with high fighter escorts, a line straight to the RAF bases, RAF radar illustrating the planes as soon as they lifted off. As the air armada crossed the border, the RAF themselves lifted off, and flew away to the east. Half an hour later the first RAF base was pounded, its runway hit, buildings destroyed. But no aircraft sat on the aprons. The second airfield was also hit, much damage, a lot of sand moved around and blown skyward, the third base having its runway pockmarked.

With the air armada turning around and heading for home, no sign of the RAF, German escort fighters that were low on fuel headed west. As they approached the border, RAF Boeings that had refuelled at a secret desert base pounced from height, attacking the last two fighter formations and scattering them, five shot down, the Germans with little fuel left for manoeuvring. The Bf109s lost height and took damage, chased back across the border for a few minutes before the RAF broke off - to return home to damaged airfields. Buildings could be replaced, expensive aircraft and trained pilots were not so easy to replace.

On the second day, the same air armada took off, this time an hour before dawn and in the dark, aiming to be over the RAF airfields at first light. Radar picked them up, mobile units close to the border, the RAF scrambling. But this time the RAF not only refuelled at the secret base, they loaded RPGs.

Timing their attack, the small RAF force waited for the signal that the air armada was beyond their first base, and flew north, diving down at the tank formations and firing from five hundred feet, each plane offloading its full compliment of RPGs in a single pass before climbing and setting a course east. Out of sight of ground units, and over the Egyptian border, they turned south and to the secret airfield.

The RAF bases again took a pounding, their runways badly damaged, barracks and buildings demolished. A few people would be sleeping in tents tonight, but the aircraft were safe. Concluding that the runways were out of action, but greatly puzzled by the RAF behaviour, the ground offensive began with German artillery pounding the British positions at length, dozens killed, many vehicles destroyed. The Germans and Italians moved forwards and across the border, advanced units of engineers clearing mines.

We watched the action from afar, reading the reports, the British being pushed back. It was time to act.

Two hundred men from our British Brigade had been moved by train to Tunisia, had offloaded their vehicles and moved to the Libyan border, making their presence known. With half-tracks and 105mm, mounted machineguns and mortars, they attacked the lightly guarded border at several key points and moved across, the Italians no match for them. As they moved across, the main Italian base in the west of Libya was attacked by a large parachute force, a lengthy battle leaving few Italians alive, five hundred dead or wounded.

With reports of tanks to his rear, the German commander had no choice but to ease his advance into Egypt and make ready to fight on two fronts, his forces split. That was not his only headache. The group that had gone to re-occupy the oasis airstrip had been subjected to air attack, few vehicles left working, few men without wounds, many dead. They were a spent force. And re-supply trucks heading to the front in Egypt were tripping mines every day.

At the hotel, I said to Jimmy, ‘Slow him up, or stop him?’

‘Slow him up, but it’s hard to justify to the British the casualties they’re taking when we could be bombing the crap out of the Germans.’

‘The RAF?’

‘Hitting a few vehicles each night, hiding in the day. 105mm are having an effect, making the German tank crews less cocky. The Germans are damaged enough not to be able to win quickly, but strong enough to still try, and that’s what we want.’

‘Bogged down,’ I noted. ‘Four German submarines have been hit, possibly more.’

‘They must be scratching their heads, and sweating in Das Boot,’ Jimmy said. ‘They don’t know our aircraft have radar. And who would be daft enough to put a side-firing thirty mil on a plane?’

‘Sykes intercepting their comms?’

Jimmy nodded. ‘There’s nothing about Poland yet, but movement on their western border, and around paratrooper units. Sykes think they may do something bold.’

‘A para drop … to where?’

‘Maybe around Paris, maybe somewhere in North Africa.’

‘Norway?’

Jimmy made a face as he considered it. ‘They’ll go by ship, it’s easy enough. Oh, our mountain and artic warfare guys are training in Scotland ready for Norway, but they don’t know about Norway yet.’

‘How many?’

‘Only fifty, but I borrowed another sixty from the Americans, their Rangers. I have to notify the President before their use, and … they’re not to be used against Germany, or … Italy. Only Japs.’

‘Are there … many Japs in Norway?’

‘I’ll use up a favour when the time comes. Besides, he already suspects I’ll use the American Brigade in Europe.’

‘And the guys in Norway?’

‘Will be used for harassment; blowing roads and bridges, and generally making life uncomfortable.’

‘And the President’s view on the war in Europe?’

‘They’re still considering their options,’ Jimmy carefully mouthed. ‘They’re also still fielding questions about Hal’s flyby. You know, I think he could have set some kind of record, even in our era. Damn plane should have disintegrated.’

‘They make them tough, from the alloy, and he was very high.’

‘It’s a record for that class of aircraft, I’m sure.’

‘Big Paul says that the Japs are pushing two hundred thousand men towards him.’

‘We’ve organised more weapons to be flown into Manchuria to ease that, and to create a second front. And the Japs have landed more units in the Philippines. That was a difficult conversation, because our subs shadowed them.’

‘It’s too soon,’ I let out with a frustrated sigh.

‘There are plenty of Marines landing in the Philippines now, and the bombers are having an affect. But there’re enough Japs there now to overrun the place.’

‘We’d be popular – not!’

‘I’ve got twenty MLRS on the ground, RPGs, mortars, and the Airborne unit is giving the Japanese a headache in the hills, heavy casualties inflicted. Their Rangers and Mobile Infantry will land there soon by ship, so that’s over thirty thousand well-trained men. Besides, it needs to look like an American fight, and an American victory.’

A few days later the President wanted a chat, so we flew down to Chicago, only this time at a respectable speed. Our plane sat near his heavily guarded plane, and we met in his conference room. His Secretary of State and The Secretary for War were sat ready, also the Vice President and a sour-faced General. They made us tea, which was better than their 2010 counterparts, and we settled after two minutes of pleasantries.

The Secretary for War outlined his equipment priorities, and we took his list, explaining just how busy we were.

‘We still get reports about strange things flying in the sky,’ the President noted, sounding none too concerned.

‘Call them … UFOs,’ I suggested, getting a look from Jimmy. ‘Unidentified flying objects. People might think they’re men from Mars.’

The President floated, ‘Some of our people … would like to try and bomb Tokyo.’

‘From where?’ Jimmy asked.

‘From Guam,’ the General stated.

‘Won’t the very large Japanese fleet then shell Guam, and take it from you?’ Jimmy posed.

‘That’s … a possibility,’ the General admitted.

‘So, you’d only get one shot at it.’

‘Your planes have the range from the Philippines,’ the General added.

‘Depending on the weight of bombs carried,’ Jimmy explained. ‘And you only have six operational bombers so far. So, they won’t do a heck of a lot of damage.’

The President had been sat back. Now he eased forwards and said, ‘We were thinking of a token gesture, to wipe the grin off their faces.’

Jimmy nodded. ‘Tell me General, if the Jap fleet sailed over to Hawaii and bombed it, would that make you back down?’

‘Hell no.’

‘And if the Japanese built larger planes and bombed Alaska, San Francisco, or Los Angeles, would you back down and surrender.’

‘Never.’

‘So … bombing would make you mad, especially the bombing of civilians?’ Jimmy floated.

The General glanced at the others. ‘Well, yes.’

‘If I was the Jap military leader, and I was bombed, I’d fear what my own people might do to me … for backing down. I would … take Guam, and Midway, and then pound the hell out of Hawaii before invading. I’d want to show my people a … gesture.’

I eased forwards, facing the General. ‘If the Jap fleet sailed for Hawaii, could you stop them?’

‘No,’ the President cut in with.

‘So maybe,’ Jimmy suggested. ‘You should be prudent, and build your fleet, your aircraft, your subs, and hope to prevent the fall of Hawaii. And, maybe you should build-up your aircraft numbers, and when ready … bomb the hell out of Tokyo at a time when a reprisal attack is less likely, always keeping in mind American prisoners held by the Japanese; they may not fair too well if the Royal Palace is bombed, the Emperor killed.’

‘General?’ the President asked.

‘It … would be a morale booster, rather than sound military sense, yes.’

‘Fact is,’ the President stated. ‘We’re not ready, in any department. If they head for Hawaii we have a very low chance of stopping them. Once the islands were taken we’d have a very low chance of getting the islands back, our routes to the Philippines cut. We’d have to sail well south, and at greater time and cost. And as for aircraft re-supply, well, if they took Hawaii then the Philippines would be cut off.’

‘Perhaps,’ I began, ‘the build-up of soldiers on Hawaii would be your most prudent move at the moment. Anything we can do to help?’

‘We have most every spare plane ferrying troops across,’ the President reported. ‘And every spare ship.’

‘We’re working hard to produce more aircraft,’ I informed them.

‘And we appreciate it,’ the President offered. ‘Let’s talk about China. How are things going over there?’

Jimmy reported, ‘We’ve sent more weapons to the communist in Manchuria so that they can distract as many Japs as possible, but another two hundred and fifty thousand are heading towards Hong Kong.’

‘Something of a mismatch there,’ the President noted.

‘The colony is holding out,’ Jimmy informed them. ‘Supplies coming in by plane from Burma. The defenders are well dug in, the attackers at a disadvantage in the local topography.’

‘And the American Brigade?’ the President asked.

‘Fully supplied, and now with the support of a small RAF unit. They’re spread out along a front some two hundred miles long, tying up a great many Japs. If they weren’t, and Hong Kong fell, then a quarter million Japs would land in the Philippines.’

‘Overrunning it,’ the General noted. ‘I’d like to say we could help, but…’

‘We have our own hands full,’ the President noted. ‘Are you concerned that the colony – and your business interested there – will be overrun?’

‘No,’ Jimmy adamantly stated.

‘Twelve thousand men, verses a quarter million?’ the President floated.

‘We have the American Brigade, what more do we need?’ Jimmy said with a smile. ‘But we do have a favour to ask. We’d like the planes we gave you to make a few bombing runs over China, cut-up the Jap supply lines. If not … well, then some of those quarter million may make it to the Philippines.’

‘How about … one day a week redirected there,’ the General offered.

‘How about two days a week,’ Jimmy suggested. ‘And we’ll review it as we go.’

The General faced the President. And waited.

The President cleaned his glasses. ‘Two days a week, since I don’t want that quarter million with time on their hands. But could I ask that we hit ports first, embarkation points?’

‘Of course,’ Jimmy offered him. ‘But if each plane had its own target, at least some damage and confusion could be caused across a wider area.’

‘You’ll supply the target location from your people there?’ the General asked.

‘We will, when our people in Hong Kong have drawn up a list of key bridges, ports, rail yards, barracks.’

‘Gentlemen, I’d now like a private chat to our guests,’ the President requested.

We stood as the men filed out, possibly for some toast from the galley, and sat again.

‘Can your people in Hong Kong really hold out?’ he began with.

Jimmy began, ‘We’ll make our responses to the Japanese advances … proportionately; they’ll get bogged down. Their bombers are not much use since we’re spread out, and their navy has decided to keep its distance for now.’

‘Casualties?’

‘A few killed every day, a slow wear down, yes,’ Jimmy agreed.

‘And you still wish to hold back your full potential?’

‘We’re waiting for a German commitment before we show off,’ I put in. ‘Or the action in China could alter Hitler’s plans.’

‘Britain is already at war, so the British RAF could bomb Germany with your aircraft,’ the President puzzled.

‘Each move has a counter move, and they’d bomb London at night instead of going for the RAF to start with,’ Jimmy explained. ‘And he would set his clever people on building high-flying aircraft to shoot down ours. Action, and reaction. Besides, bombing cities would take years to force a submission, his armoured brigades still intact, his air force, and his subs. There’s no quick fix.’

‘Some of the cabinet feel that we should make use of our trump card,’ the President floated.

‘If you made a reckless move, Mister President, you would find that our aircraft capable of delivering the bomb were … unserviceable.’

‘You’d block its use unilaterally?’

‘No, since Britain would vote against a reckless move, and this is a three-way agreement. Use an atom bomb too soon, or in the wrong way, and the world could pay a very terrible price for that mistake. This is not just about America, it’s about Britain, the Philippines, Africa, France, Norway, Poland. They’re all at risk, whilst your job is – obviously – to do what’s best for America. I would hope that you see the big picture … and consider what is right for everyone.’

‘It’s a small round planet,’ I put in. ‘Everyone affects everyone else. Leave Japan with a quarter million men in China, and how can we call that an end to the war – even if Tokyo is destroyed. If the Germans are defeated, but Italy starts work on a bomb, where does that leave Europe?’

‘As ever, you make convincing arguments, and I have an eye on the post-war world; you’ve made us stop and consider surrender terms before we’ve even started the fight. But I’m conscious of what the American people might say if they knew we had the means to destroy Tokyo, yet held off using it.’

‘First of all, our heavy jet bomber is still being worked on,’ Jimmy illustrated. ‘Second, we could not produce many bombs – and Britain would want some, so we’d have a delay, then a single shot at it, maybe many months before a second shot at it. It’s not like there are ten sat on the shelf with a means to deliver them.’

‘And that argument I’ve already used. But your accidental flight from Canada to Mexico didn’t strengthen my hand.’

‘You should point towards our lousy pilot navigation,’ I told him. ‘We couldn’t even find Tokyo, let alone bomb it.’

‘And the British strategy?’ he asked.

‘Is to wait and react,’ I said. ‘They don’t have the numbers to attack, but they could use high altitude bombing as you could. But that would just piss off the Germans – not force a surrender. When the Germans attack, then we’ll use a few of our special toys to destroy their toys.’

‘It’s taken me a while, but I do now understand the reasoning, since forcing a stalemate is just passing over the problem to the next generation.’

‘Very true words,’ Jimmy commended. ‘Very true.’

‘And god help us all if someday there are atom bombs in the hands of dictators and aggressors.’

Big Paul studied the map of Canton, and blew out.

‘We appear to be surrounded, and out-gunned,’ Han noted, stood at the map table with his hands behind his back.

‘Only by thirty to one.’

‘Ah, in which case I shall not worry, not with you guiding us.’

Big Paul gave Han a look before thrusting his hands into his pockets. He called the Canadian Rifles officer. ‘I want thousands of AK47s loaded on the planes ready, with ammo, for tonight’s run to the Brigade, the weapons to be given to the communists.’

‘To the communists?’ the officer queried.

‘Yep, or we’ll be Jap prisoners soon enough, bamboo shards under the old fingernails. And get ready every plane we have that can fire RPGs. I want every road and rail line cut, every bridge damaged, every vehicle convoy hit at least once. And I want those planes in the air in five minutes, back in time for tea and medals.’

‘Are the aircraft sufficient?’ Han softly asked as orders were barked.

‘They’ll buy us time, and a large attack in the north should cause the Japs to consider who they hate the most, us … or the commies.’

Over the next three days the aircraft hit every convoy they could find, every bridge, rail line or crossroads, reaching out fifty miles or more. Japanese Zeros attempted to intercept a few, modest damage picked up by a few of our aircraft from ground fire, but our fighters acceleration and climb was fantastic, especially when viewed by Zero pilots attempting to move into position. With new night sights found in boxes - and a few rude words uttered, the planes were given a nocturnal role, since Japanese vehicle convoys had taken to moving at night – as a prudent move.

The prop fighters flew out just before midnight in ten groups of five, each allocated a target area, compass bearing and range. Approaching the target, our aircraft would throttle down and nose down, a quiet powered-glide towards the target. Since few of the target areas had been attacked at night before, vehicles still moved with headlights on, yet masked from above with tape on the lamps. Their engine heat signatures could not be masked, infrared radiation leaving the metal and shooting off towards the heavens.

RPGs rained down, soldiers caught out in the open, trucks and light tanks hit, the resulting fires highlighting well the target areas. Five aircraft in a line would swoop, and fire before coming back around to strafe. RPGs spent, they would return to base, their pay earned for the night. Many would re-arm and return to previous target areas, those areas typically busy with soldiers moving damaged vehicles or assisting injured colleagues. Those soldiers were often just as surprised as during the first strike.

Six days of continuous flights and aerial assault had halted the main Japanese advance, few roads passable, all rail lines cut, bridges down. In several areas the detour was sixty miles or more thanks to the uncooperative local terrain, and millions of years of erosion.

Tapping the map, Big Paul could see an opportunity. The most advanced Nepalese unit now sat sixteen miles north, the most advanced American Brigade unit just sixty miles away from them, and sat in the middle was a crossing, the closest point at which Japanese reinforcements could make any progress west. Studying the map, he could see a flat valley, and ordered a fast flypast in daylight by a fighter – a verbal report back to him only.

Radioing the American Brigade, he asked if they could insert by Buffalo in numbers to the coordinates given. ‘Hell, yes,’ came back.

Big Paul ordered thirty parachutes and reserves loaded onto a Buffalo for tonight’s run, for an advance party of Brigade members to drop into the valley ahead of Buffalos landing. Then he whooped as a note was read.

‘Your diagnosis from the clinic … is favourable?’ Han softly asked.

‘Better than that, mate; the Americans will carpet bomb any area we give them for the next two days, starting tomorrow.’

‘And where, exactly, would such a tactic be of most benefit – given our current situation?’

‘A bottleneck,’ Big Paul said without detracting from his study of the map. He placed a finger on a valley. ‘Three roads come together here, one rail track, and the diverted traffic needs to cross these bridges, which is five miles from this nice wide valley.’

‘If the Americans land at that location, will there not be a great many Japanese but a short distance away?’ Han enquired.

‘Let’s hope so, Han me old mate, let’s hope so.’

Big Paul sent the American Brigade a note. ‘Death or glory, thirty thousand Japs bottled up in a valley below previous co-ordinates. Go all out, we’ll bomb first using heavy bombers from Philippines, air support available.’

When the recon pilot returned he drew a sketch, illustrating a long road surrounded by fields of the same height, and what looked like a Japanese compound at the southern end, a few trucks parked outside. He also reported a continuous line of trucks, jeeps and light tanks moving along ‘Nip Highway One’, as he called it.

Big Paul lifted his face to the Canadian officer. ‘Ground all aircraft for now. No, they’ll be suspicious if we do that. Send them down the coast to hit ports, and ships in ports. But tell them there’s a big op tomorrow night. And I want any Cessna or Dash-7 that has RPG mounts, or that could drop a grenade – fuelled and ready to go tomorrow night.’

He called over the Nepalese Rifles officer. ‘We have hundreds of parachutes, so send someone to go grab them and count them, and select a team for an insert. Then, tell your men to grab as many Jap trucks and vehicles as they can, rifles and hats.’ He tapped the map. ‘Your advance unit will make a dash twenty miles up this back road, to this bottleneck. The road should be quiet, because we knocked out all the bridges that are east of it days ago.’

He pointed at the pilot. ‘Fix a night sight, get back up to Nip Highway One, and take a damn good look down that route from end to end. I don’t just want a sketch, I want a fucking oil painting!’

At dawn the next day, Big Paul awoke to find that he had fallen asleep on the balcony, his shoes and lower trousers having caught some rain. Coughing, spitting, and then cursing, he stepped inside, a coffee thrust into his hand. ‘Report?’

‘Two hundred parachutes,’ the Nepalese Rifles officer reported. ‘Men selected, kitted, and … stood ready. We have separate chutes for supply tubes to drop, but a few suitable aircraft might be nice – unless we’re walking.’

‘After the American Brigade is inserted, the birds will come here, pick you up, and drop you into this valley.’

The officer closed in. ‘And do we know what kind of reception we’ll get?’

‘If we don’t get the signal from your ground units, you abort. Fair enough?’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Have the commandeered vehicles display three green lights vertically, or they’ll be fired on.’

‘We have plenty of Japanese vehicles, but they all display damage.’

‘That’s OK, so do most of those in use,’ Big Paul pointed out. He raised a finger, and pointed it at the officer. ‘Tell your men driving the trucks … to have passengers with faces covered in bandages, some visible in the back, even a few dead Japs near the tailgate; it might just buy them a few seconds if they’re stopped.’

In the Philippines, the bombers made ready for a dawn run the next day, hoping that the target would be illustrated with smoke, having been promised that the valley in question would be the only area on fire. They were to approach from the south and to bomb in a northerly direction along the valley floor, staggered bomb release, trying not to copy each other’s patterns, but to parallel them. In Hong Kong, pilots took it easy ahead of the night’s action, sat on the edge of the runway and throwing pebbles into the lagoon as the hours ticked by.

At dusk, the Nepalese Rifles moved northeast in damaged Japanese trucks, a column a mile long, two dead Japanese soldiers at the tail of each truck, and smelling ripe. Drivers and front passengers all wore at least some bandage, bloodstains displayed, a few faces completely covered. The green lights were out for now, save a Japanese roadblock questioning the odd items, the convoy trundling into the dark.

Four miles up the road they met their first roadblock, pistols with silencers ready, the men in the back hidden low, and ready. The lead truck eased to a halt with a squeak of brake, a torch shined at the faces before an inspection of the back. That inspection was cut short at the first glance, the barrier ordered raised by a soldier with his nose in his elbow crease. The convoy moved off.

The second roadblock consisted of just four men, and no one else around, silenced shots used to kill them, the bodies thrown into the back for added affect, left draping over the tailgate. A few miles further on the Nepalese joined with four Japanese trucks heading in the same direction, and fell into line, the next checkpoint negotiated without halting, a few Good Morning grenades discreetly tossed out for good measure.

In a dark and wooded valley the convoy halted, the dim moonlight reflecting off a river bend ahead of them. They checked the map, and dismounted; the last three miles to the RV would be covered on foot, a speed march. Grenades were left under bodies in the trucks, the Nepalese moving out quietly in two long lines – bandages discarded.

An hour later our prop fighters downed both of the two road bridges, and one rail bridge, that crossed the river at the northern end of the valley, their colleagues hitting bridges eight miles down the valley. Having achieved their aims, the prop fighters returned to Hong Kong, the Japanese convoys log-jammed within the valley left unmolested.

Four miles north of the first bridges to be blown, Buffalos were now dropping American Brigade paratroopers down the valley, their arrival loudly announced. The planes were heard and seen just as two Boeings fired on the Japanese compound at the southern end of the valley, silencing any comment from within. The paratroopers landed on dried and dusty fields, a soft landing, and released their parachutes, weapons made ready. Formed up, they moved down the valley unopposed, and to the smouldering compound, wounded finished off. A radio signal was duly sent to land the Buffalos, fires lit down the edges of the road.

Thirty men had parachuted in, but three hundred now landed, a good supply of kit carried. Clear of their human cargo, the Buffalos powered up on the same road and took off, heading to Hong Kong. Over three hundred men now force-marched down the valley, hardly a sound made. A lonely Japanese soldier, at the first roadblock they came across, swung a lamp to signal the barrier, the lamp-swinger shot, as well as his colleague emerging from a nearby hut. The two Japanese sentries had not expected any action in this area, being far from both front lines.

The lead Americans placed Japanese hats onto their heads, slung weapons and picked up bolt-action rifles with long bayonets; they figured it might buy them a few seconds at the next roadblock. That roadblock was a compound with lights, the smell of cooking on the breeze, idle chat coming from within. The lead men got close enough to toss a grenade.

The lead men dived down, the compound raised, wounded picked off, no sign of any other units along the dark road ahead.

Around the next bend they could see burning trucks in the distance, the blown bridges beyond. Moving left, they adopted the wooded riverbank and crept slowly along, climbing up a ridge that the river snaked around. Below them sat three blown bridges, trucks burning, the Brigade soldiers now spreading out around the steep and wooded ridge, and waiting.

Refuelled, the Buffalos accepted the Nepalese paratroopers, just over two hundred of them, and lifted off, the prop fighters refuelling and re-arming. Thirty minutes later, the Nepalese officer on the ground radioed the Buffalos as the aircraft approached, an arrow of green lights placed in a field, but only visible from above. Through broken clouds and dim moonlight, the Buffalos descended before levelling off at twelve hundred feet, two opposite doors used to dispatch the paratroops.

The landing was unopposed, a lone curious farmer stabbed quietly, the men forming up, parachutes left where they lay, no time to bury them. At a fast pace the Nepalese moved off, arriving at a steeply wooded ridge forty minutes later, soon afforded their first glimpse of the bottleneck at the southern end of the valley, trucks on fire still. They broke into three units and headed off, the lead units soon three hundred yards above the bottleneck, atop a cliff and peering down.

In the command room at the Shanghai Hotel, Hong Kong, Big Paul ticked a list. ‘All in place. Now we wait the dawn.’

People checked watches.

In the Philippines, bombers were already taking off and heading north. In Hong Kong, the re-armed prop fighters sat waiting their ‘go’ signal, the American Brigade sat watching the earnest repairs going on below them – trucks six deep halted on the approaches, the Nepalese peering down at forced labourers working on the damaged bridge below them, eight miles from their colleagues at northern bottleneck.

With the US bombers radioing their approach to Hong Kong, the prop fighters lifted off in sequence and powered north towards the target valley; Nip Highway One. Little more than fifteen minutes later the lead plane flew up the valley at two thousand feet, soon arriving at the tail end of a massive traffic jam. He nosed down, and loosed off eight RPGs as he slowly pulled the nose back up. He didn’t need to aim, the valley full of trucks, as well as dozens of trains resting on tracks parallel to the road. His colleagues hit the same area, the centre of the valley, and peeled away, the US bombers spotting the rising smoke some ten minutes later.

Bombsights were focused, altitudes re-checked, speeds enquired about, settings checked again. Release patterns were selected, the crosshairs soon on the damaged southerly bridges, the first trucks coming into view.

‘Bombs dropping … bombs gone … bay doors closing.’

The Japanese had abandoned their trucks when the prop fighters had attacked, but their temporary shelters in houses and behind mud walls offered no resistance to the bombs now raining down on them. Six heavy bombers dropped their ordnance in sequence, trying not to repeat the previous aircraft’s pattern, the length of the valley soon shrouded in smoke. The radio operators on the ridges reported a good bombing pattern achieved.

From the north, the RAF appeared at low level, hitting the bridge repair crews, who scattered. It was the start signal, the American Brigade firing down at Japanese officers and NCOs from above, confusion the aim. The Nepalese waited an hour, six fighters returning to pound the bridges below them, their signal to open fire, again at officers and NCOs. The fight was joined, the men committed, and massively outnumbered. RPGs flew down from the Nepalese, a few of them airburst, the bridge repairs abandoned.

The two parallel sniper campaigns lasted all day, ammo conserved, heavy casualties inflicted on the soldiers below, disorderly without their very orderly officers and NCOs. An hour before sundown the RAF returned to the north, firing at those truck groupings that appeared undamaged, the colony’s prop fighters diving in and firing at anything that looked untouched, noting many trucks on their side, large craters in fields, trains now on their sides, craters in tracks. Fifty prop fighters loosed off eight RPGs each, the valley well blanketed with fire, but the valley was also very long.

At dawn the prop fighters returned, firing at the centre of the valley, kindly generating a smoke signal for the US bomber’s second pass. That second pass shook the ground along the valley, a rolling earthquake of destruction that tossed trucks aside, the resonating growl slowly dissipating after the last bomb had exploded, the smoke cloud a silent witness to the carnage it now hid from the world.

Unknown to Big Paul, was Han’s modification to the plan. He had flown up to Mao and made a very clear point. The best twenty thousand communist soldiers had then been called in, half getting a five-minute demonstration on the AK47. Finding out about the modified plan, the closest American Brigade units joined in – or they’d have a real lack of pupils to teach.

Late on the third day of the operation, after the second bombing run, the lead communist soldiers and American Brigade men arrived by truck and horse at the head of the valley, their arrival observed by the American Brigade men on the ridge. With no reason to stay on the ridge any longer, the sniper unit moved down to join their colleagues, scrambling over the damaged bridges.

‘What?’ Big Paul asked Han.

‘Ten thousand or more communists drove, walked, or rode down to the valley, fighting as they went. They are now at the head of the valley, although I assume that they are somewhat spread-out back along the route taken.’

‘Fricking ‘ell.’ Big Paul pointed at the senior officers. ‘Advise all of your men. And I want an air drop of ammo organised right away, half a million rounds. Move it! And airdrop some food and medical kits while you’re at it.

‘Next, I want the light tanks to fight their way up towards the south end of that valley, and to escort the Nepalese back. Get the planes reloaded, and hit any valley to the east of Nip Highway One. The west has a fucking great river, so that’s blocked.’

The combined communist and American forces worked their way down the valley, firing as they went, checking bodies, spread out in a wide front across the valley floor. Many Japanese soldiers had moved to the sides of the valley, now chased by keen and bloodthirsty communists soldiers in their drab grey outfits; thousands of them, followed by thousands more.

The Americans tried to coordinate the attack, but it was hopeless. They gave up and moved down the middle of the valley, firing RPGs at compounds or at light tanks, tossing grenades over walls, and taking casualties; some from the communists now armed with AK47s and spraying it around a bit. Mao’s forces were more keen than able, firing from the hip whilst running, but their sheer numbers and their volume of fire pushed the Japanese aside.

The small men in grey pushed down the valley all day and into the night, slowing up halfway down the valley due to stiff Japanese resistance caused by a bottleneck of men. Japanese officers turned the Japanese enlisted men around, and made them dig in and fight. With the battle raging, casualties heavy, inches gained per hour, an air strike was called in. Our fighters flew down the valley from north to south, and to a cluster of burning vehicles that delineated the lines of the two opposing factions. RPGs flew down, eight in quick succession from each plane, the first pair striking just beyond the burning vehicles. Banking left and climbing, the fighters came around for a strafing run across the valley.

With the resonance of the prop fighters engines dying, the communists surged forward, going hand to hand with the Japanese in places, the casualties heavy on both sides. Ammo floated down behind the forward positions, soon being brought up and issued. But when the AKs ran out of ammo and stopped, there were plenty of bolt-action rifles lying around to be grabbed, ammo pouches pulled off dead Japanese soldiers.

Dawn saw men who had not slept in three days shooting at each other, death a welcome release from their fatigue-induced pain. Air strikes kept the front line advancing, four hundred RPGs striking at a time, followed by strafing. The odd Zero put in an appearance, but they were thin on the ground now in this sector, rare birds to be seen gracing the skies.

Big Paul managed to fit in three air strikes that day, his light tanks having reached the Nepalese, taken up station and now pounding the Japanese across the river. That night, the final half mile saw intense and desperate fighting, often at ten yards, bayonet duels common. The light tanks tormented the retreating Japanese, the Nepalese sniping at them across the river.

Before dawn, Big Paul studied the map, and ticked four bridges, the prop fighters sent up as dawn arrived. Having downed the bridges, the new occupied area was now contained, a strip of land almost forty miles long and four to ten miles deep. Our main tanks and half-tracks were ordered east ten miles, to touch the southern end of the action, extra Nepalese Rifles sent out to that area.

Stood at Big Paul’s side, and peering at the map, the Governor observed, ‘You’ve cut a swath right through their territory.’

‘We’ll call it the Han Corridor,’ Big Paul said with a grin. He faced his officers. ‘Find trucks, spare grain and rice, spare ammo, and start a re-supply mission up that corridor. Abandon our positions to the west, and put everyone in that corridor, roving air patrols up and down the sides.’

At our hotel in Canada I read the report twice, and studied the map. ‘Fucking ‘ell.’

Hal said, ‘We cut their lines in half, and an estimated thirty thousand dead Japs. With the bridges gone, we’ll keep the corridor.’

‘According to Han’s report, Mao is delighted, and pouring more men into it,’ I noted. ‘A few communist liaisons have made it to Hong Kong.’

‘Aye, fucking Mao’s telling the Chinese people that he fought back the Japs and relieved the British.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Communists haven’t even taken over yet and they’re re-writing the history books.’

‘At least they’re consistent, and it should be good for morale and recruitment for budding commies. According to this, the bulk of the Japanese replacements are bottled up in the east, and can’t reach Hong Kong.’

The US President confirmed the details with us, and made a speech, detailing the serious Japanese setback in China at the hands of the American Brigade. I had to laugh at the spin. Jimmy made a statement, explaining that the communists attacked from the north whilst the Americans parachuted into the middle, the Canadians and other units attacking from the south – a combined operation. Hell, truth was always subjective in war.

Wops and Limeys

The majority of the British Brigade now resided in western Libya, and were creating havoc for the Italians, who lacked armour, or the basic commodity that’s useful to all soldiers – the will to fight. That was followed closely by the lack of desire to be in the damn desert; hot as hell during the day, cold as the Italian Alps at night.

A German brigade had moved west, mostly made up of half-tracks and towed guns, a few anti-aircraft units, and four thousand men. They joined their Italian colleagues and set up defences, wires and mines, and awaited the Limeys to show themselves again, certain that recent failures were more down to Italian cowardice than English fighting ability.

At dawn on the second day a German guard stepped on a mine. His legs went one way, the rest of him the other way, and he had been walking in an area that should have no mines. Could it have been an accident? The mine areas were checked, engineers called to check the path where the incident occurred. Life returned to the mundane, but the next evening two men tripped mines, two dead and several wounded. Those rushing to see what was up tripped further mines, the fuses a gift from our engineers. A wind-up mechanism would count down for up to a week before the mine became active. They were Good Morning mines, and partly made of plastic.

Everyone in the base now feared where they walked, men seen to be stepping where others had already trodden – for all the good that would do, the German engineers kept busy checking and re-checking areas. Seeing a light in the distance that evening, the sentry called for backup, a detachment made ready to move out as an RPG flew in and exploded, an airburst shell, several men killed. Fire was returned at once, the patrol sent out in half-tracks, around to the rear of where the light had been seen. Nothing, no tracks; they were being attacked by ghosts.

Defensive mortars were set up, sharpshooters posted on trucks, and the Germans made ready just before a storm moved in from the south, a sand storm. Fearing a surprise attack masked by the storm, the base’s defenders made ready, tight lines of men with goggles now in trenches as the wind howled around them, sand deposited on them. Thirty minutes into the storm, with visibility now little more than six feet, mortars started to land, the sounds of the blasts deadened by the howl of the storm, men in trenches unsure of what they had heard. Vehicles were hit, buildings, and trenches - scores of men killed or wounded. Men hunkered down into their trenches and hoped for the best, command and control a forlorn hope as fifty mortars slammed into the base from upwind. Airburst shells caught men in their trenches, the number of wounded rising by the minute.

Then the barrage suddenly ended. The howl continued, no further blasts felt, first aid given where it could be as wounds filled with sand, the mouths of the wounded also filling with sand. Men choked where they lay. In the morning, the men woke to find themselves covered in sand, their colleagues lying next to them - quite dead. Patrols rushed out to try and find the attackers, but tracks would have been eroded by the storm. The patrols returned empty-handed.

Fifty blasts had been felt during the storm, if anyone could have accurately counted, but a hundred and fifty shells had been fired. Now, as the sun threatened to break through the haze, soldiers watched in slow motion as a modest blast caused something to fly twenty feet into the air, and to detonate. Thirty men were caught by that one Jumping Jack, devised by Mac and Handy. Another puff of sand, another tumbling mortar seen to pop up, more men caught in the open.

After some two hundred men had been injured, the German commander ordered the temporary evacuation of the base, soldiers still managing to find mines to stand on even as they evacuated. From a ridge half a mile away, the German commander watched puffs of sand at the base, one every six minutes or so, amazed and horrified in equal measure. He ordered his men separated from the Italians, a new base to be created down the road on an area of hard ground, raised, and with a mile of clear view in all directions. Barbed wire was laid, slit trenches dug into hard soil – not sand, patrols set up. He was learning, after sixty men had been killed, three hundred wounded sent back to Tripoli on trucks.

The Italians abandoned a great deal of equipment at the base, and marched to their nearest outpost, to make a happy home there, morale now an issue for men - who didn’t want to be there in the first place.

The German commander now felt secure, many eyes with binoculars scouring the horizon, mines left in several distant places after being planted at night, machineguns facing outward. The first roving patrol moved out a day later, consisting of six half-tracks, and disappear into the distance. And then just simply disappeared. They were overdue the next morning, a second patrol sent out, the tracks of the first patrol followed. The vehicles of the first patrol were eventually found, burnt out, no sign of the men. Each vehicle displayed a large hole in the engine, most with two or three holes in the armoured sides. Blood was found inside the vehicles, the relief patrol returning with the bad news. Aircraft were called in, spotter planes.

With a circular camp of British half-tracks spotted, the plane was damaged by ground fire and limped away, fighter aircraft called in, the relevant coordinates given. No half-tracks were spotted, nor any tracks in the sand. Part of that was down to a collapsible aluminium frame with a heavy canvas shroud on top, part was down to a clever sand-blower that Mac had come up with, part was down to gasmasks that filtered sand and dust, and part was down to good positioning of the vehicles. The warm British crews sat eating tinned meat as the fighters flew over, a few hundred yards from where they had been spotted. Moving position, sand had been sucked and blown behind, no tracks left visible, Mac getting the idea one day when watching a Canadian snow clearer. And the ambushed German patrol? That had followed human tracks into a prepared ambush, two-dozen RPGs fired at close range from men popping up behind dunes.

At dusk it was the turn of the British Brigade Air Wing, and six Boeing 4s, plus a beaten up old Dash-7 held together with sticky tape. After sundown, the Boeings dived down and hit the new German base with RPGs, aiming at the half-tracks, the mayhem caused allowing the Dash-7 to trundle past without too much anti-aircraft fire directed towards it. It carefully monitored its height and direction, the co-pilot pulling a cord at what he thought was the right time. A large bundle fell away from the bottom of the Dash-7, the aircraft bouncing upwards. With power increased, it climbed away, a few extra ventilation holes caused by flack.

The bundle drifted down after its chute had opened, all two thousand pounds worth, enough to have stressed the wing spars of the Dash and given our engineers a heart attack in the way that the aircraft had being abused. The bundle drifted slowly down, those that spotted it believing it to be a pilot, since it was shaped that way. They ran to where it may land.

At sixty feet the bundle exploded with a blinding flash, six Claymores detonating, a hundred men wounded immediately, twenty fatally. Bomblets flew out after a second explosion, two hundred of them flung far and wide, the first exploding after ten seconds. The last would take twelve hours, so it was going to be another long night.

The base was abandoned, another twenty men seriously wounded every passing minute, some three hundred acquiring wounds of some description before the base was emptied, equipment abandoned. They returned at noon the next day, finding a sign in German at the gate. ‘We have mined the base. Don’t go in. Up yours.’ A smiley face had been drawn below the writing.

The German commander stood with his hands on his hips staring at the sign, then ordered the engineers to clear the base. After all, it was hard ground and so difficult to lay mines. The first group of engineers blew themselves up, their bodies removed by attaching rope around ankles. The second group of engineers also blew themselves up, as did the third and fourth. The base and its equipment was finally abandoned, the Germans withdrawing towards Tripoli with the wounded hobbling along in a long line.

Before the war, Mac had come up with a new type of mine, one that blew up if a magnetic field passed over it, such as the magnetic field of a mine detector; by trying to find the mines, the German engineers were setting them off. They were tricky mines to arm, and great caution was needed. The explosive base had to be laid first, the mine’s detonator activated well away from the base. Letting the detonator settle for a minute, it would be placed on the base without rotating it – the base all plastic, the mine gently covered with sand. It didn’t even matter if it was well covered, since engineers would confirm what it was with their metal detectors.

The German commander in the country was not a happy bunny, the casualties staggering, and he had seen no such ‘trick’ devices used on his front with the British. Now with reports of British medium tanks arriving in the west, he had to dispatch armour that way, a few medium tanks of his own. A few rude words were uttered, but in German.

Northwest of his headquarters, a re-supply of fifty Spitfires to Malta shifted the balance there, the next wave of German daylight bombers being mauled, the Bf109s kept busy, a few new Focke-Wulf 190s putting in an appearance and displaying a performance that was close to that of the Spitfires. The Battle of Britain was being fought in the skies over Malta and Sicily, not over the white cliffs of Dover.

February saw the air war over Malta continue, the RAF being worn down every day, the small island of Malta taking a pounding from night bombing. Then Sykes sent us a note: German paras heading for Italy. We knew what that meant, a drop onto Malta. RAF Buffalos were hurriedly flown to Tunisia, two hundred men of the British Brigade picked up and dropped at Malta’s Luqa airport, which they would now defend. The existing British enlisted men and RAF personal squinted in the bright sunlight at men in short-sleeve shirts with arms bigger than their legs, the new arrivals holding funny looking rifles.

The RAF base commander met the Brigade men off the planes. With his hands on his hips, he addressed the assembled Brigade. ‘You chaps are supposed to be some special unit operating out of the deserts, with a remit to freelance, and to attack the Germans and Italians at will. Well this is my base, and it’s not the desert, so you’ll toe the line. We have a barracks set up for you, a mess tent, and somewhere to store weapons and munitions.’

The senior brigade officer walked forwards. ‘With all due respect, sir, we’ll sleep outside with our weapons, and you can bring food to us, because intelligence says that five thousand hairy-arsed German paratroopers will be landing on this very spot … in the next few days.’

The RAF boss lost his cool. ‘Five … thousand? A parachute drop?’

‘If I was you, sir, I’d sleep with a pistol under my pillow.’

The RAF officer pointed at an AK47. ‘What do those … funny looking rifles do?’

‘Allow me to demonstrate. You see that oil drum full of water?’

The RAF officer and his staff faced the barrel, the barrel now sat against a wall of local beige sandstone. The brigade commander made ready, and put thirty rounds into the barrel, the RAF taking a sharp step back.

‘That’s what these funny rifles do, sir.’

The wall slowly bent in the middle and collapsed, throwing up dust.

‘We’ll, eh, organise food, blankets and tents for your men. Disperse around the edges of the airfield when ready.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ They saluted each other.

Two nights later the bombing was particularly intense, and centred around the airfield, eight brigade men killed, ten wounded, many RAF personnel wounded, planes damaged on the ground, the runway pockmarked. In the morning, the Brigade C.O. sent the RAF a message. ‘They’ll come tonight, after a light raid.’

Extra soldiers were brought closer to the airfield, but the army commanders on Malta wanted the beaches defended, since they feared an invasion. As the sun lowered in the sky that evening, mouths were dry, everyone with a weapon - even the mechanics, all waiting the inevitable.

In our hotel, Jimmy showed me a note. ‘Oh dear,’ I let out. ‘Do we do anything?’

‘We can’t, the Germans might suspect we broke their codes,’ Jimmy insisted.

‘History repeating itself,’ I said with a sigh.

At Luqa airport, Malta, the drone of bombers grew, men deep into their foxholes awaiting the inevitable. But they received just four waves of bombs before the airfield fell quiet. Up above, chutes drifted through partial cloud cover, lots of chutes, the smoke still wafting across the base. An alarm sounded.

Men of the brigade casually eased out of foxholes and stretched, took aim, and started picking off the German paratroopers. Those that landed had twenty seconds before they could free themselves of chutes and grab weapons, easy prey for the brigade, each paratrooper hit multiple times. A few paratroopers landed away from the airfield and formed up, firing at British soldiers and overrunning their positions, the enlisted men putting up modest resistance.

Those paratroopers met the brigade at the airfield perimeter, withering automatic fire brought to bear against the Germans, as well as RPG rounds. It was all over in an hour, a few prisoners taken, wounded Germans stretchered away, mouths now even drier.

But the main action was elsewhere. The principal German force had landed on the lightly defended Greek island of Crete, and easily overran the island, heavy casualties amongst the British enlisted men at the airport there. With the airport secure, German re-supply aircraft were being flown across, as well as German medium bombers. Those bombers were now a direct threat to the shipping routes to Suez, and could reach Alexandria, HQ of the British Army now fighting on Egypt’s western border. The bombers could also hit Cyprus, an important British outpost.

‘Should we attack the island?’ I idly enquired, coffee in hand.

‘The shipping routes are just as affected by Sicily, this won’t affect them so much. Most shipping goes around Africa now anyway. But I’d bet a dollar he has in mind a para drop behind Alexandria.’

‘To attack the HQ structures?’ I posed.

‘To attack them, and the British supply routes from Cairo.’

‘It’s a big old desert, our boys could drive around,’ I pointed out.

He nodded. ‘There are few places that are impassable. But any para drop would be coordinated with a ground push, for the two groups to meet up, so we’ll need to watch for that.’

‘British just landed sixty heavy tanks,’ I noted.

‘It was a nudge I gave them a few years ago, to develop heavy tanks. They break down every mile, but they pack a punch, and their forward armour can take it.’

‘Could they produce enough of them?’

‘In time, but they’re expensive and unreliable; too heavy for the engines. And they throw tracks easily enough, all by themselves.’ He stopped and stared at the ceiling. ‘Still, there is one problem with the Germans being on Crete, and that’s Israel.’

I sat up. ‘Shit, yes. You think they’ll bomb Israel?’

‘It would serve no military purpose, but their hatred for the Jews may be enough to waste a few bombs. And they wouldn’t expect any resistance.’

‘We gave the Israeli Air Force twenty Boeings 4s,’ I reminded him.

‘Then maybe its time we upgraded them.’

‘Oh, we have so fucked up this time line,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘The Israeli Air Force fighting off German bombers?’

He shrugged.

The British took some comfort from the repulse of the German para’s invasion of Malta - prisoners displayed to the press, but were naturally concerned about Crete. Bomb shelters were hurriedly arranged in Alexandria and around Egypt, HQ Command moved from its building. Twenty additional RAF Boeings were flown up from Kenya, additional RAF Spitfires earmarked for Egypt, reducing the number in Britain. That was a ploy, a deliberate ploy, since Hitler could not count too well, especially when a hundred prop fighters sat hidden.

It was a week before we saw Alexandria being bombed at night, the main barracks targeted, and flattened. The lights were out at the time, but someone - a local Arab, had lit a fire nearby just as the drone of aircraft grew. Shipping near the Suez Canal was hit, the Germans happy, the British now unhappy.

After ten days of the Germans repeatedly hitting British shipping, and hitting Egypt, we got a note from Churchill. Jimmy had anticipated such a nudge, moving twenty prop fighters up to the secret airbase in Egypt, drop tanks fitted. Refuelled, armed with RPGs, and fitted with the latest night sights, they set off at dusk one evening and flew towards Crete, secure in the knowledge that no radar awaited them. The Germans were still mopping up in the hills and towns of Crete, only a handful of troop transport ships landed so far.

Our fighters reached the main airfield on Crete at five thousand feet and throttled back, the airfield lights out in case British medium bombers from Egypt attacked. Nosing down, they glided in with reduced engine noise, a long approach to the airfield, the aircraft on the concrete below easily silhouetted by differences in temperature signature. The first RPGs were released without anyone on the ground noticing the approach, German aircraft hit and set alight, the arrival of our squadron loudly announced.

Less than eight minutes later our aircraft were out at sea and heading south, the airfield now ablaze, a kick in the balls for the Luftwaffe. Churchill received his report the day that the cabinet ousted the incumbent and placed Churchill in the Prime Minister’s seat, Timkins made Minister for War, Sykes a special advisor on security, Jack now made up to be Special Liaison to Africa, a task that involved notes sent back and forth to Mac and Handy, or Rudd and Ngomo.

But our prop fighters did not head south for long, they turned east, and eventually landed in Tel Aviv, the Israelis awaiting them. The planes were kept in RAF colours for the most part, but with the Star of David painted over RAF roundels. The Israeli Air Force now operated twenty prop fighters, and twenty old Boeings, four mobile radar vans, and four mobile radio direction finding vans. We had shipped them a good supply of ammo for the aircraft guns, but had held off RPGs yet, our fear being that troublesome Arab villages might feel the heat. The new prop fighters had one other stipulation, and that were the words “Boeing Mark 6” to be stencilled on them, just in case.

The British had gained their modest victory, even if it failed to make the British newspapers, and Churchill set about a strategy of building up reserves, ready for “that inevitable day when the Hun come calling.”

February was also noteworthy in that the Atlantic threw up a series of terrible storms, the U-Boats having little success at sinking merchant vessels. Air patrols were cut back due to the weather, and both sides of the cat and mouse game took it easy for a while, the main action being the air war around Malta, and the ground war in Egypt. That ground war was now benefiting from British heavy tanks, which pushed the Germans back ten miles before the tanks ground to a halt, and were towed back to their engineers. The Germans re-took the ground a week later, still building up their forces in the country. That worried us, because they could have pushed on Cairo and taken the city, as well as the Suez Canal.

So when Germans infantrymen started to be flown from Libya to Addis Ababa we were relieved. They flew at night, and we made sure that they were not intercepted, a constant stream of aircraft moving back and forth. Abdi had probed the Italians in the south and east, in his own good time, and was now inflicting casualties on a daily basis. The Kenyan Rifles sat in the northwest of Ethiopia and also inflicted casualties in a slow war of attrition. Soon, black soldiers would face The Master Race in the Ethiopian hills.

The German infantry in Adis Ababa formed into units and moved south, straight towards Abdi’s forces, and on a direct line for Mogadishu – should their course be extrapolated. Jimmy and I looked at the map, and wondered just what was on their minds. It seemed that in this timeline, Hitler wanted a piece of Africa. We sent a note to Abdi, asking him to let them through, to thin his lines, and to sacrifice a few new recruits.

The German infantry reached the border hills, exchanged fire with local tribesmen, and moved right up to the border, seemingly making an assessment. Abdi’s new recruits tackled them with more fervour than ability, and were killed after inflicting a few casualties. Fortunately, they only carried bolt-action rifles and old British grenades.

As we sat and read reports from Africa, we scratched our heads, more and more German infantry flying to Adis Ababa each night. What was on their minds, a second front to split the British in Egypt? A few days later a German unit of eight hundred men drove their Italian jeeps to the coast, and started to take-up position on the Gulf of Aden. Two days later they crossed by plane and by boat, and quietly seized the port, several British vessels impounded. From two Italian merchant vessels they unloaded artillery, and we know knew what was on their minds. They had seized Aden port and captured a number of British and Indian soldiers, the artillery to be used against warships attempting to re-take the port. But some of that artillery was also seen to be shipped across to the Ethiopian side, and to islands in the narrow channel. They had cut the Red Sea at the far end.

The number of ships using the Suez had been greatly reduced because of the attacks by both German and Italian medium bombers, but the Red Sea was still the principal re-supply route for Egypt. Churchill was concerned, and sent us a note. After discussing it, we sent Abdi a note: ‘Kill them all.’

Abdi loaded his best men into our Kenyan Rifles Buffalos, and flew them across to Yemen at night, landing thirty miles from Aden, a total of two hundred men placed on the ground. In a separate move, he flew another two hundred men to a quiet strip in Eritrea, the men to march south along the coast.

Three days after the insert into Yemen, Abdi’s men entered the port in local dress, selling oranges and dates to the Germans. German and Italian soldiers soon started to disappear, local sympathisers suspected. That led to the Germans being banned from going anywhere in a group of less than eight, and armed. Fratenising was not an issue, since the local women wore Burkhas and had facial tattoos - and black pointy teeth. Intermittent machinegun fire could be heard the evening of the enforcement of the new rules, soldiers running around to see what was up, running past Abdi’s men sat selling dates and being shot from behind.

As the evening wore on the firing intensified, the Germans and Italians withdrawing to their barracks, and now believing that a British counter-offensive was under way. Their barracks disintegrated in one large cloud of dust and smoke, thirty-six timed grenades having been placed. Artillery positions blew, Italian ships in port suddenly erupting into flames, the echo of gunfire everywhere as this very long night dragged on.

A gentle dawn light revealed the dead and dying, no Germans or Italians left fighting. That dawn light also signalled the arrival of Abdi’s second force, across the Straits, the men having spent the night climbing up and around the German artillery positions. As soon as Abdi’s men were in position they opened fire with sniper rifles, German gun crews soon dead or pinned down. RPGs rained down, hitting artillery pieces, showering the gun crews with hot metal, Battery Grenades thrown down. As we had requested, none were left alive. At sundown, Abdi’s men descended, timed grenades left down the barrels of artillery pieces before withdrawing northwest. British supply ships began moving north up the Red Sea again.

But that left the artillery on the mid-channel islands, who now knew that they were alone, their radio signals ignored, smoke rising from the positions of their colleagues on the distant shores. Six of our Boeings from Kenya had flown up, a long old trek, refuelled at the CAR base used for fuelling the Royal Navy, and set off towards Aden in daylight. They met no resistance, circling before pounding the defenceless artillery pieces, just eight of them to deal with. The sandbag positions were destroyed, stocks of shells, supplies and water; there was no natural water on the islands, and no re-supply would be coming anytime soon. They strafed the men that they could see, few places for the ground crews to hide, before flying to Yemen, where the aircraft would be handed over to RAF crews to defend the port of Aden.

In our hotel, I commented, ‘Hitler will be mad.’

‘But he will learn from it, learn from stretched supply lines. He’ll also figure that to win a war in Africa … he’d first need to defeat Britain, and that means either a bombing campaign, or an invasion. At the moment I’d say that he knows he can’t bomb the British into submission, and he’s not ready to invade, but he must know that Britain is well placed in Africa.’

Hitler did figure that Britain had the edge in Africa and all points east, and so ordered the Wolf Packs south and to hit the supply routes along the West African coast. The signals were intercepted, and a risk taken in moving RNAS Goose aircraft to Tenerife with the permission of the Spanish, who still owed us a great deal of money. Gibraltar’s fleet of maritime Goose were boosted, and subs enjoying the pleasant warm waters off Morocco were soon diving for cover, picked up on radar up to twenty miles away. Mobile radar units were dispatched to the Canary Islands and to Morocco, the radar capable of being adjusted for horizon scans as well as an air scan. Any surface vessel within thirty miles was reported, Goose vectored onto them.

March saw a bit of a lull, which meant that the Germans were sat thinking. So far, the Italians had done little other than to fight in Libya and Ethiopia, and to bomb convoys or Malta. That now changed with the invasion of the Greek island of Rhodes, where the Italian dictator had a house atop a hill. I guess he wanted planning permission for a few stables, and the local council had blocked it.

Greece declared war, for all the good that did, its small army already mobilised over the German invasion of Crete. British troops landed in Greece, the numbers in Cyprus bolstered, but not enough to prevent an invasion of the Greek mainland. Several islands to the west of the Greek mainland were seized next, followed by a land invasion of the small Albanian state, little resistance met. At this rate, the Germans and Italians would grab the Mediterranean countries without a shot fired towards mainland Britain.

Oddly enough, the attack on Greece stirred the White House to consider action, but just to consider it.

We approached March with the RNAS hunting U-Boats off Morocco, the Italians leapfrogging across Greek islands, the Germans advancing slowly in Egypt, and the Italians losing men wounded in Ethiopia. In Hong Kong, the corridor was still open, and now contained some thirty thousand communists or local Chinese volunteers. Our prop fighters attacked road convoys day and night, and stalemate was achieved, a large Japanese Army tied up, our tanks causing havoc to the daily Japanese attacks.

Fearing a Japanese attack on Hawaii, we had moved two subs that way, the sole US sub joining it with our test sub. That put four capable subs off Hawaii, and more than twenty maritime Goose now patrolled the waters. Mobile radar sat atop every peak, and we were confident that any move towards the islands would be seen. But instead of the Japanese using a storm to approach Hawaii, they used a storm to approach Guam, pounding the small island and its base before seizing it. The Japanese Navy then went on the offensive.

They sailed south in three large groups, soon scaring off lone US Naval vessels, and directly threatened the supply lines to the Philippines. US merchant vessels were directed a long way south to avoid the large concentration of Japanese surface vessels, Japanese subs also now starting to have an effect on the shipping routes. US regular subs out of Hawaii were dispatched, but we were not hopeful of their chances of success. The four most capable subs sat off Hawaii, the US Navy adamant that they could not be moved, the next four advanced subs being finished off in San Diego.

We sent a note to Big Paul, asking about the remaining two subs, and he was not concerned at losing them. They took on fuel and supplies, and set off south to harass the Japanese ships – but slowly; their orders were to engage in hit and run, and to conserve torpedoes.

In order to ease the pressure on the Philippines, the British Navy’s task force moved north from Singapore, and to a point as far west as the Japanese land army reached in China. Once there they shelled a few ports and coastal positions, and sank a few Japanese merchant vessels, the idea being to draw Japanese warships towards them, and away from the Philippines.

The Philippines were now witnessing the most intense action of the war so far, some sixty thousand US troops on the island, but now benefiting from over two hundred Boeings. The aircraft had been shipped over on existing US carriers, plus Po’s transport ship. The odd scene witnessed in the Pacific after the shipment, was of several US carriers heading east with no planes aboard. The Boeings came equipped with RPG racks, and a good supply of ammo was available, daily raids launched against anything of interest across the forward lines. The effect they had was great, since daylight movement of Japanese men and supplies was soon banned, roads and bridges torn up, rail track long since useless.

The US Generals on the ground were not requesting more men, but more Boeings, and more MLRS. The Boeing factory had been on a war footing and running three shifts a day since the declaration of war, producing two new Boeing Mark 6s every day. They were also turning out their medium bombers in reasonable numbers, the bombers capable of reaching Hawaii with drop tanks and an extra internal fuel tank. The aircraft’s ordnance went by ship, and the bombs were compatible with our own aircraft. The aircraft’s daring delivery crews flew onwards to the Marshall Islands, to Papua New Guinea, then up to the Philippines, pressed into service straight away to pound the Japanese lines. Forty were in place for March 1^st.

But the aircraft were desperately needed for another reason, and all forty took off one morning and headed east. There they searched the oceans for Japanese surface ships, and bombed from four thousand feet. Striking the ships below was rare, but it kept the ships occupied a few days a week, the odd lucky hit striking a battleship. Daring crews sometimes swooped down to two thousand feet and released their bombs at the last minute, a few Japanese ships damaged.

Those Japanese blockade ships were soon reached by our two subs, who had split up, several surface ships damaged en-route just for fun. Once they had arrived at the old Philippine supply routes, our subs made it known that they were in the area, the Japanese now suffering damage most every day, ships having to leave the area and head for a port. The Philippines re-supply lines crept north a little. America’s traditional subs did what they could, sinking a few surface ships, but were chased down with a professional and practised ease, many damaged and sunk by Japanese destroyers.

On the Philippines, a First World War style standoff had been achieved, which was fine by the Americans because they were outnumbered three to one at the moment. The US Airborne, the Rangers, and their SAS were doing a good job in the hills, both tying up large numbers Japanese units - as well as wearing them down with daily casualties. Those units were outnumbered ten to one, but practised hit and run guerrilla tactics to great effect.

And that was what we wanted, a stalemate for now, and the wearing down of Japanese infantry units and ships. We watched the calendar and ticked off the days, cursing the weather over Europe, and longing for a German attack. We built up supplies in Britain and elsewhere, we trained men, and we sat waiting for the spring.

In mid-march, Italy took the whole of Greece, as well as many British prisoners. Italy suffered many casualties in the fighting around Athens, but Greece - and its organised resistance, was soon quelled. But Italy then went and surprised us with a move against the French Island of Corsica.

‘Brilliant move,’ Jimmy commented. ‘And great timing.’

‘Why?’ I queried.

‘Because France will be in a bind now. They should declare war on Italy, but don’t dare because of the pact the Italians have with Germany; if they do, then they’re also declaring war on Germany. So the French Government will sit and stew, and that will cause much in-fighting, and possibly a fall of the government at this critical time.’

In response to the Italian move on Corsica, the French army moved men and equipment to its borders with Italy and Germany, and made ready the Maginot Line fortifications. But they did not declare war. As predicted, they were in a quandary as to how to handle it, all now believing a German attack to be likely. Churchill offered to send an expeditionary force to Belgium to protect French flanks, and we were delighted. A hundred telegrams flew out the day we got that news.

The American Brigade were now in Devon and enjoying the damp weather, and were told to standby ready for an air insert, and a subsequent re-supply operation by the RAF. In chilly old Scotland, the Canadian Rifles tank brigade was told to get ready, and to place all vehicles back onto the ships that were now on their way. The RAF bases in Scotland that we wished to utilise were made ready, details checked, and the air base near Dover came alive – an airbase that never saw planes take off or land during the day, except a few old biplanes belonging a local training school.

The British began to slowly ferry men across the channel when the weather permitted, and marched them into barracks provided by the Belgians. Light tanks were shipped across, a grass airfield created in northern France not far from Calais and populated with Spitfires and their mechanics. That build-up of men and equipment progressed through the end of March and into April, the weather now improving day by day. Some eighty thousand British soldiers ventured across the channel with trucks, cars, and four hundred light tanks – some from the First World War. That number was less than planned, and less than our era, and consisted of two seamless groups; the cannon fodder, and the specially trained units, although no one in the British War Ministry would have worded it that way.

The plan was simple: a pull back from the border to more hardened positions, and the hope of speedy re-supply from Britain. Those hardened positions were anything other than fixed positions, and would involve the creation of a pocket west of Antwerp, surrounded by rivers and canals. Once bridges had been blown, the movement of armour towards it would be limited, but it would present a tasty target for the Germans, as well as a thorn in their sides.

The British troops occupying that area had been trained by us in Kenya or Canada, and now started to dig trenches and foxholes, as well as numerous underground weapons caches. Those caches received boxes labelled as “.303 Lee Enfield Ball Cartridge”, but actually contained 7.62mm ammo, RPGs, mortars, Battery Grenades, enough to start a war. Above them, soldiers wandered along roads smiling at locals, a few of those locals being German agents, the soldiers .303 bolt-action rifles on show.

The British soldiers also busied themselves turning a side road they had seized into a runway, farmers sheds appropriated, compensation handed over. Concrete was purchased locally, taxiways and aprons laid, the work going on at least two miles from the eyes of the nearest civilian. From April 10^th, Buffalos started to land at night, a constant stream, Canadians stepping off with several large kitbags each. The men wore standard British Army uniforms, the Rifles camouflage clothing in kitbags. Jeeps that had travelled amongst other British vehicles, our jeeps, were soon being driven at night to the pocket, and covered in brown sheets that matched the local ploughed soil.

Six hundred Canadian Rifles landed over the space of four evenings, boxes of mislabelled ammo arriving and being checked. Their half-tracks came ashore at night in Antwerp, driven out of the docks at 3am and soon hidden, close to a hundred of them, as well as more jeeps. The 105mm for the jeeps came by Super Buffalo, making a noise as they landed at the improvised strip, one aircraft landing every hour.

The build-up continued, and on April 16^th Royal Navy landing craft came ashore in the estuary at 2am, offloading our light tanks, twenty of them each night for four nights, the tanks hidden during the day in long trenches dug for them, covered in plastic sheet to look like green houses from a distance. With Sykes reporting the build-up across the German border, the Royal Navy landed our heavy tanks in the dead of night, but just eight at a time. Their ammo came by regular British army transport, labelled as “Shells, 3 pound, HE”.

It was a tense time, because we would be hard pressed to know the exact date of an invasion. When the invasion came we’d still have a few days till the Germans overran Belgium and reached the coast – the original battle having taken ten days in our era, so we should be able get a few more tanks in. Six more tanks arrived the following evening, followed by six recovery vehicles, and I was now wishing we had ordered more landing craft. On April 18^th, six MLRS landed with ammo and crews, the German radio traffic going crazy across the border. We were helped by a timely storm, in that it passed over the channel and hung around Germany whilst we landed more tanks. Now getting desperate, we risked a larger ship, and sailed it into Antwerp at night, offloading twelve MLRS at an isolated dock. Since they had no guns, they would not be reported as tanks. We were not sure just how the vehicles would be reported by the local spies, but we were sure that the Germans would be confused. Ten recovery vehicles landed at the port the next evening, also showing no guns, not even a turret. Tracked artillery followed, but that had a gun and no turret to report.

By May 1^st we had all Canadians in place, alongside two thousand British soldiers trained by us, three hundred jeeps, sixty light tanks, twenty-six recovery vehicles, thirty-six MLRS, thirty tracked artillery vehicles, and now eighty-five main tanks. Tank ammo, artillery ammo, and MLRS ammo was now stacked high in several well-guarded places, and a few nosy civilians had been found dead in canals, or had just gone missing.

Small arms ammo and RPGs continued to poor in, enough for each man to fire off a few hundred RPGs each, and to fire 7.62mm rounds till his barrel melted. We knew the Germans would have spies, and would know the base’s location, but we were not concerned; it was a base spread over almost twenty miles. Also hidden were four hundred fifty cal rifles, six hundred .223 sniper rifles, and six thousand AK47s, many with optical sights.

On May the 5^th, Sykes sent a note that simply said: “Tomorrow at dawn”. We notified the men in the Antwerp pocket, who broke out weapons and ammo after dark, and started to power-up vehicles. The vehicles were loaded with their particular ammo, water and food stowed, bread for making toast, toilet paper, engines duly revved and tested. They did not deploy yet, since we needed to be sure. Like us, they sat and awaited the dawn.

In Devon, the American Brigade sat with kit ready, faces blackened, also keenly awaiting the dawn, a little drizzle making life uncomfortable – as usual. Their officers had visited the target area “on holiday”, and each man now knew every road and bridge from maps and photographs.

At the hotel, those of us in residence sat about the diner and waited the phone to ring, Cookie and Sandra sat looking pensive; as did we all that evening. At 10pm the phone rang.

‘It’s started,’ Cookie announced, no energy in his voice.

The American Brigade boarded their aircraft in no time at all, a mix of Super Goose and Super Buffalos, six of each. The lead aircraft powered down a damp runway and climbed, heading due south. Above the clouds, the aircraft grouped at fen thousand feet, soon crossing the French coast near Brest, turning southeast.

The men of the Antwerp pocket moved out, and to pre-planned positions. Several farms had been bought years earlier along a stretch of land west of Antwerp, sheds made up of a suitable size, but with concrete bases that held dips. Tanks now rolled into those farms, whether the farmers liked it or not, and nudged cars and old bits of equipment out of the way, soon sat in the dips and hidden from aerial view. Support vehicles moved onto brown fields, throwing brown camouflage nets over themselves, each of the vehicles part of a squadron with a captain in charge; six main tanks, two recovery vehicles, six light tanks, a few jeeps and two half-tracks with thirty men of the Rifles.

Those men now stood staring across estuaries, rivers and canals, and bridges, considering ranges and angles, and where the Germans might try and cross to reach them after the bridges had been inconveniently blown up. It was a fine spring day, with no signs of war anywhere, few locals realising what lay ahead, or what was about to shatter their peace.

Part 7B