Willie's War Ch. 03

"She's done it." muttered Herr Strasser, squinting through a car windscreen along the street. "The little bitch has the guard's attention and he's turning his back to us. Signal the others that we're going in."

There was a hand signal through the rear window of the first car, and the two black Opals moved off and skidded to an abrupt stop in front of the Radio Station. Six figures leapt out and raced up the steps towards the entrance. Hermann Strasser had no compunction about hitting the guard on the back of the head with the muzzle of his Luger pistol and the old fellow went down hard like a felled tree, but without making a sound.

Willie shrieked and stepped back. He definitely didn't want to be there. The silent majority inside him wanted to be treated like a weak and defenceless woman and sent somewhere pink and cuddly to sniff Sal Volatile.

Just at that moment Naujocks entered to take command. "Bring that silly cow upstairs with us; we can't leave her wailing at the door like an air-raid siren."

Leaving three men to round-up any staff still on the ground floor he led the others up the stairs to where he knew the radio studio was situated. Hermann and another man followed at his heels sweeping a near hyperventilating Willie along between them.

The surprise was total. In an upstairs room a man was found sitting behind a desk, and Hermann pistol-whipped him just as he had done with the guard. The man pitched forward, splashing blood onto the papers he had been studying.

Willie shrieked again but there was no pause in the momentum now. Immediately they dashed into the radio studio where a pale-faced young man pushed his hands in the air at the point of Naujock's gun. "Switch over to a national transmitter." Naujock told him.

The man swallowed hard, his eyes nearly popping. "I don't know how to do that. I'm only the newsreader. You're friend's just brained the technician who does that kind of thing."

Naujock grunted with ill temper and pushed him against a wall. "Herman, you do it." he snapped out briskly.

Hermann Strasser quickly found his way behind the thick glass panel of the transmitting room, confusion showing on his face as he stared at rows of switches. He was clearly unsure of which one would link into the wavelength of the transmitter at Radio Breslau.

"Everything as a different lay-out to what I expected. I can't find it. I can't find the right connection for Breslau." he lamented.

Naujock felt his face drain. After all his careful planning he was going to be let down by an incompetent fool. Failure would bring an end to his career, maybe even an end to his life if certain people were in a nasty enough mood.

"Damn it man, I thought you knew your job. Can we use a local channel?"

"Yes, but on one will hear it beyond the immediate area."

"Do it. A local broadcast is better than no broadcast at all."

"No, I think it's alright. I think I've found Breslau." Hermann said, and he immediately began to scream into the microphone. "The city of Danzig is Polish forever. The city of Breslau belongs to the Polish nation. Hitler is an evil gangster..."

Naujock fired a couple of shots from his pistol into the ceiling for effect, which made Willie scream in high-pitched hysterics. That wasn't a problem now. It fitted in exactly with the sound of on-air mayhem Naujock wanted to create at that moment for the listening public.

Hermann, already at a high pitch of excitement himself, lost track of his script and began repeating what he'd already said while adding new elements of his own. "To Hell with the German Reich. The German people are sluts and thieves and we Poles are going to teach you how to behave."

The young radio newsreader had ducked under a table when the shooting started and Naujock told him to stay there.

"That's enough," he shouted to the rest of his group, "Let's get out of here before the local yokels wake up to what's happening."

Together everyone bundled back down the stairs and hurried to the entrance. Inside the front foyer they needed to step over a figure dressed as a Polish soldier who was sprawled out beside the stunned security guard. Whilst they had been busy elsewhere the Gestapo had delivered their own contribution to the evening -- the 'Konserve', a callous codename that referred to tinned meat -- but which was really an unfortunate man selected from an internment camp for political dissidents who would remain as evidence of a Polish intrusion. He had been shot through the neck and lay dying.

***

Comparatively few people in Germany heard that brief hate-filled broadcast from the little town of Gleiwitz that night, but the fact it had happened was enough to satisfy Hitler. Within an hour of the raid he had been informed of the encroachment of armed Polish terrorists across the border and of their vicious assault on innocent German civilians. Blandly he had remarked that it was his first good news of the day.

At 10-o-clock the following morning he addressed the German people on the radio from the Kroll Opera House in Berlin, ensuring that what he said could be relayed around the world by overseas transmitters. Using the impassioned, crowd-stirring eloquence for which he was noted, he magnified what was essentially a minor incident of self-inflicted thuggery into a drama of nation-threatening proportions.

Ending his speech on a fiery note he declared... "I have now decided to speak with Poland in the same language they have been using with us. For the first time they have used regular soldiers to shoot at us in our own territory, so since 5.45 this morning we are shooting back."

Things were already in motion. Without any declaration of intent and several hours before his speech on 1 September 1939, German Panzer units had smashed through the Polish frontier posts and the second great war of the twentieth century had begun.

"It will be a quick war." Fraulein Dietz assured everyone at the house later. "Herr Strasser refers to it as a Blitzkrieg -- a lightening war. If it continues for more than a few weeks I'll be tempted to suggest to him that Ravenskopf should serve the Reich as a Recuperation Centre for senior military officers. By doing that I'm sure I'd get some help in restoring parts of the building."

"If Fraulein Dietz turns this place into a kind of hotel we're going to be kept very busy." said Rosalyn, when the woman had gone.

"Hope she brings in some more help," responded Loti, ruefully stroking his bum, "There's a limit as to how much a girl should be expected to take."

Willie stood well back from the others, arms clamped across his chest while he thought of Eduard, who would be in the thick of things. There was no stopping love and, having known it he would hold Eduard in his heart forever, no matter what else happened.

He thought about how much he himself had changed recently, despite Fraulein Dietz's constant harassment. He had arrived at Ravenskopf as a slightly introvert student and become a rather happy girl. He still looked mostly the same, and he was still a bit of a disaster area when it came to organising himself. But he had changed inside. No regrets about that. No sadness. He had made the decision to take happiness where he found it and hold it for as long as it lasted.

The trauma of the previous evening had shaken him badly, but surviving it had brought on a curious effect. Rather than cowing him it had proved to be a rite of passage that had shocked him into mental maturity, and on a new day he felt strangely confident in his own ability to look after himself.

He believed that entering into any war, however brief, was a tragedy, and the tragedies were not yet over. In the middle of the coming night there would be an inexplicable misfortune when Fraulein Dietz's library together with all her father's irreplaceable notes and the manuscript he had unwillingly laboured over for so long, would all be destroyed by fire.

It was an awful thing to predict, but there was no doubt it would happen. Willie was sure of it, because he'd already taken a box of matches from the kitchen cupboard.