The Nazi Hunters by Damien Lewis Read Free Book Online

and then become stuck fast. He’d landed heavily, the weight forcing him to fall backwards and suffer a savage blow to his head. In spite of his helmet, Druce had suffered a bad case of concussion, and he could be heard ‘babbling nonsense’ to anyone who would listen.
    On the opposite side of the DZ, one of the stick’s ‘old sweats’, SAS man Ron Crossfield, was also in trouble. Crossfield had joined the Army in 1934 and had several brothers in uniform. While trying to avoid one of the raging bonfires, the veteran operator had landed in a mature stand of trees. As he crashed through the thick branches his helmet and leg bag were torn away, and he came to rest swinging to and fro, with no idea of the extent of the drop below him.
    Regardless, Crossfield punched the quick-release catch on his parachute harness . . . and fell. It was a good 15 feet, but at least his landing was cushioned by a thick carpet of pine needles. He came to his feet, only to see a shadowy figure dashing towards him through the trees. He grabbed his pistol, but the cry of ‘ Très bien, Angleterre! ’ (Very good, England!) stayed his hand.
    Druce’s force represented the first Allied parachutists ever to drop into the Vosges, an area of mountainous terrain of approaching 2,500 square miles. The names of the tallest peaks attest to the mixed Franco-German heritage of the region. The highest basks in the very French moniker of the Grand Ballon, but the next two in line are the entirely Teutonic-sounding Storkenkopf and Hohneck – testifying to just how close the airdrop would bring these men to German soil.
    Just 20 miles due east of the drop zone lay the border, marked by the line of the mighty River Rhine. Very few navigable passes cut through the Vosges, but if the British soldiers – together with the Maquis – could sow havoc and confusion here, then they were to switch to a very specific task: they were to seize and hold one of those passes, so enabling Patton’s armour to punch through, and to reach the Rhine before the bridges across it could be blown.
    Such grand designs were very far from the minds of Hislop, Crossfield and a dazed Druce as they took stock. They found themselves surrounded by a hugely curious and excitable crowd. From the way in which the Maquis poked and fingered them, grabbed and pumped their hands and kept repeating the same enthusiastic greetings – ‘Bienvenus! Bonne chance! Bonne chance!’  – it seemed to Hislop that they might as well have been Martians descended from a spacecraft.
    It was approaching three o’clock in the morning before some semblance of order was wrestled out of the chaos. As the parachutists mustered, so others reported in with injuries. One SAS man had burned his hand while fighting with the stubborn cord of his leg bag. Another had sprained his knee. But no one – the babbling, incoherent Druce included – seemed incapable of walking, which was of utmost importance right now.
    Priorities had to be established, and quickly. Another aircraft was due any minute, so the marker fires had to be re-stoked. Once the second airdrop was complete, the party needed to load up, move off and melt into the hills. Come daybreak, there had to be zero evidence that a force of parachutists had landed here, which meant dragging the silk chutes down from the trees, stamping out and scattering the fires, and clearing away all debris.
    The majority of the second aircraft’s cargo was to be non-human – weaponry and war materiel for the Maquis. But one of the first signs that the drop was underway was a piercing cry that rang out from the darkness.
    A figure had descended under his chute, the cursed leg bag causing him to badly twist his ankle and break his toes upon landing. The injured man was Sergeant Kenneth Seymour, and he found that his pain was so acute that he was unable to move without removing his right boot. He would need to be stretchered if he were to make the journey into the