THE LAST WEISS Read online

  THE LAST WEISS

  By

  Rolf Richardson

  Copyright © Rolf Richardson 2015

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

  The moral right of Rolf Richardson has been asserted.

  ISBN-13: 978-1512287073

  ISBN-10: 1512287075

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  CHAPTER 60

  CHAPTER 61

  CHAPTER 62

  CHAPTER 63

  CHAPTER 64

  CHAPTER 65

  CHAPTER 66

  CHAPTER 67

  CHAPTER 68

  CHAPTER 69

  CHAPTER 70

  CHAPTER 71

  CHAPTER 72

  CHAPTER 73

  CHAPTER 74

  CHAPTER 75

  CHAPTER 76

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There is plenty of information on Quisling, who had little influence on events, but hardly anything on the man who ruled Norway for five years: Josef Terboven. I have therefore relied heavily on the only work I could find: “Joseph Terboven”, Berit Nøkleby, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1992.

  CHAPTER 1

  APRIL 1944, GERMANY

  Seeing a Lancaster explode wasn’t a pretty sight. Unnerving, in fact. Most of the guys who didn’t make it did the decent thing and went quietly. In the darkness of the night. First we knew was some empty beds, soon to be replenished with fresh cannon-fodder.

  Occasionally there might be a hint of how and why. We’d spot a feathered engine, the lame duck falling behind, to be picked off by the ever-attentive 109s. Or hear a garbled voice on the RT telling of flak damage. Then silence.

  But those of us who’d done a few ops – and I’d done twenty-five – had witnessed at least one big bang. A tracer in the fuel tank? A lucky hit on the bomb load? Who knows? But seeing seven of your mates blown to bits in one ghastly moment shook even the best of us. Some idiot at Air Ministry had once decreed we fly close formation, but this had stopped when the blokes who copped it also took out their wingman.

  I had these nightmares from time to time, but usually dismissed them with daylight. Except today I realised I wasn’t in my own bed. Not in a bed at all. But in open country. A Lanc was damned cold at 20,000 feet, so I was glad to be still wearing my flying suit with plenty of layers underneath. All this insulation had come in handy for what had apparently been a night in a German ditch.

  Stretching limbs and rubbing eyes, I tried to work out what the hell had happened. We’d been aiming for Schweinfurt. To have another go at those ball-bearings the Yanks had hit a few nights before. That had been a bit of a disaster. Ours as well, it seemed.

  We had definitely been outward bound, bombs still on board. Exactly where things had gone wrong, I had no idea: after all, I spent my life aloft stranded well away from the rest of them. Tail gunner was often reckoned to be the suicide position, but on this occasion it might have saved my life.

  Because there was no hint of other RAF life around. Bill, the skipper from Brisbane? Joe the canny Scots navigator? Herb in the upper turret...? What the hell had happened!

  Surely it hadn’t been a night fighter? I’d seen nothing and couldn’t bear the thought I’d somehow let the side down. 110s now had upward pointing guns and could sneak in from below for a belly shot. I couldn’t depress my guns enough to hit them, but at least I could normally see them and could have shouted a warning. But there’d been nothing. I could swear it.

  Such agonising was pointless. Couldn’t sit there all day reliving the past, because I was in a spot of bother. I vaguely remembered the tail turret falling away. Falling into space. Parachute opening. And landing with a heavy thud somewhere in the Third Reich.

  I’d managed to disentangle myself from the chute and half-bury it under some leaves. Then nothing. A bit of concussion perhaps? Whatever the cause, I’d been in the land of nod for... I looked at my watch... something like ten hours. It was now broad daylight and I needed a plan.

  Some gentle probing suggested no broken bones. I got up, walked around, checked out the Mark One Human Body. Seemed OK. My long sleep had probably been a blessing, because I felt fit and with-it. Also very hungry. I broke into my emergency rations, a small bar of chocolate and some boiled sweets; like gold dust in ration-ravaged Britain.

  Man can survive for days without food, so my most urgent task was finding out where I was. Back at base we’d all had escape and evasion lectures. What to do if you found yourself in the sort of situation I was now in. Top of the list was that the first few hours were vital. It was easier to escape before you were caught – if that doesn’t sound Irish.

  Looking around, I saw that my alfresco bedroom had been a small hollow on the edge of a copse. On the other side was a meadow, sloping down towards a brook, burbling away happily with snow-melt. No lying snow around here, but the temperature was barely above freezing. My flying suit had kept me snug during the night, but I couldn’t walk around the Reich dressed like that. The climate would soon become a factor.

  I surveyed the possibilities, which told me I’d been lucky to come down in one of the few open spaces; beyond that, in every direction, only hills and trees. Mostly evergreens. No sign of human habitation. This could be planet earth before the arrival of homo sapiens. Except for a track, that led out of the meadow to...? Time to find out.

  It was all very well for the escape-and-evasion guys to talk blithely about not getting caught in the first place, but this was far from easy. For the past four years we’d been systematically trying to kill my new hosts. Not the best way of making friends. I had no local money, so no prospect of feeding myself, beyo
nd foraging and thievery. And no proper identification papers, so vital in a police state. A lot on the debit side.

  The credit side was painfully light, but could have been worse. My faithful old Lanc had obviously spread itself over a large rural area, miles from the usual targets. If I’d landed near Berlin, Hamburg or anywhere in the Ruhr, my chances would have been close to zero. Here – wherever here was – they might be less used to rounding up stray airmen.

  Luckily, I spoke German. Not like a native, but well enough to get what I wanted and hold a decent conversation. The escape-and-evasion fellows had told us that most of the young men in the Third Reich were now labourers, brought in from occupied countries to do the work previously done by Germans who were now mostly abroad, dying for the Fatherland. So foreigners would be common.

  There was a final string to my bow – how useful it might be, I’d no idea. I was Norwegian. The powers-that-be often tried to crew aircraft by nationality. A few months earlier, our famous wordsmith, Nordahl Grieg, had died over Berlin trying to record one of their trips. But national crews were not always possible, so you could get a real United Nations up there. We had an Aussie, a Scot, some English and myself.

  The first step was to make a better job of hiding the incriminating evidence. Without a spade, the best I could come up with was a stone to scrape a small pit. Into this went the chute and flying suit. Also my uniform. Prancing around Germany in battledress blue, with an Air Gunner brevet on my left breast was not a good idea.

  This still didn’t leave me anywhere near naked. I’ve mentioned the many layers needed to cope with the intense cold at altitude, but there was another factor. Chances of surviving a tour of ops was roughly fifty-fifty, so most of us took the optimistic view and planned for a life after being shot down. I was now wearing the clothes I’d had on when leaving Oslo. Nothing, I hoped, to connect me with England. With one exception: I kept my military tag as proof of service status should I be caught. Didn’t want to give the Gestapo an excuse for shooting me as a spy.

  Burial party complete, I took stock. I was wearing a good warm sweater, ditto trousers. The flying boots stood out rather too much, but were stout and good for walking; anyway, going barefoot was not an option. Although food could wait, I was not going to die of thirst. I tanked up with water from the brook, hoping it was upstream from any sheep droppings.

  I pondered the idea of scouting around for any evidence of Bill and my mates, but soon realised this was pointless. All the signs were that they were goners. I’d only survived by the lucky chance of being far enough away from the blast.

  So off I went down the track. With absolutely no plan. Must still have been shell-shocked, because I felt almost euphoric. Or was it fatalistic? My most probable destination was a POW camp, but what the hell! It was now four months into 1944. The war couldn’t last forever. And miraculously, I was still alive.

  But that mantra they’d dinned into us wouldn’t leave me: ‘your best chance of escape is not to be caught’. I decided to give it a go.

  When the track reached the valley floor it turned sharp right and became broader. Pine trees towering on either side. After half an hour I came to a small clearing with a mill straddling the stream. No one in sight, so I ventured an inspection. The mill wheel was moss-covered and wouldn’t budge. All very picture-postcard, but the machinery had seized up years ago. So onward.

  It took another hour to reach the first house, single story, with steeply tiled roof and exposed timbers in off-white walls. It stood in quite a large clearing, at the centre of three meadows and some outhouses. There was a rather neglected air, but a faint curl of smoke from the chimney showed that someone must love it. A farm, or at least a smallholding. Which meant food.

  It was now well into the afternoon, so I decided to make this my first hotel in enemy territory. But not to rush it. They say time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted, so I picked a comfortable spot, hidden by some undergrowth, and sat down to enjoy the scenery. The weather continued fine, with scattered cumulus; the temperature had risen to spring-like, which, after all, was the season.

  My eyelids were beginning to droop when I registered movement. An old lady, stooped and hesitant of step, appeared from around the back, carrying a basket. She proceeded to fill this from a pile of logs, stacked down one side of the house. Then shuffled back indoors again.

  Promising, but I needed to see more. Was she on her own? And what about dogs? Most dogs turn out to be sloppy rather than stroppy, but there’s nothing like a sloppy mutt for raising the alarm.

  So I sat there. Watched day turn to dusk and lights come on in the house. Eventually, the old lady reappeared and made her way painfully into one of the outhouses. Ten minutes later she returned to the house.

  So what I had was a rather infirm elderly lady trying to run a farm. Apparently in the absence of any family. Men away at the wars? Already dead? Daughters working in the city? Many possible scenarios. But, as far as I could tell, just one person. And no dogs.

  To be on the safe side, I gave it another hour. The night was almost clear, with a gibbous moon, so finding the way was no problem. It’s amazing how well one can see if your night vision hasn’t been ruined by light.

  I gave the main house a wide berth, approaching the barn from the opposite direction. In the dark I almost missed the first course of my meal, but a faint clucking off to the left brought me up sharp. Chickens! Already roosting for the night, but my presence had disturbed them.

  Taking care not to encourage more clucking, I rummaged around. Eggs! Some still warm. A feast fit for the Ritz. This was important because so early in the year food would be hard to come by. In a couple of months, there’d be berries, vegetables, all manner of edibles sprouting like mad; I should really have waited to be shot down until the summer.

  My mother made a fantastic dessert called eggedosis, basically whisked up raw eggs. I didn’t have a whisk handy, but ordinary raw egg would go down a treat. Masses of protein. Had to hope they didn’t make me egg-bound.

  My penknife got me into the eggs, although it was a messy business. I’d put away maybe half a dozen by the time I decided it was time for the next course. In the barn, perhaps?

  The big door creaked alarmingly, but was too far away from the house for the old dear to hear. Anyway, she looked a suitable candidate for deafness. The inside of the barn was very dark, but after a moment I picked out some sort of four-legged friend. It turned out to be a cow. Daisy, or the German equivalent. All alone. Hopefully, a milk store.

  There was only one way to find out, so I fumbled around and eventually tripped over a pail, washed it under a tap, and set to work on Daisy. As a kid on a farm holiday, I had once tried hand-milking, which turned out to be easy once you had the knack. However, Daisy must have been recently been emptied, because she yielded barely a cup. At which I decided to call it a day. Or rather, a night.

  Now without my flying suit I needed shelter, so bedding down in the hay was worth the risk.

  I slept fitfully, whether because of the previous night’s over-indulgence or fear of being disturbed I don’t know. It was just beginning to lighten when I gave up the struggle, brushed the hay from my clothes, and got up.

  Time for breakfast, provided by Daisy, who had spent the night refilling her udders. Plus a few more eggs. Then I was on my way, with silent apologies to the old dear, who would soon be wondering why her hens had stopped laying and Daisy had gone dry.

  It had clouded over during the night, so the temperature had not dropped too much. The valley was beginning to widen, with fewer trees, more meadows. Then a gaggle of houses halfway up the hill. Soon I would be seeing my first members of the master race.

  I doubted whether a ‘Heil Hitler’ salute would be appropriate. A mumbled ‘guten morgen’, perhaps? I was painfully aware that the smart young airmen who had left Lincolnshire a few hours earlier now looked like a tramp: crumpled clothes and the beginnings of a beard. I stood out like a chimney sweep in a snowfie
ld.

  Ten minutes later I came to the first village. A straggly row of Hansel and Gretel cottages. A dog yapped hopefully; a curtain parted to reveal a curious face. Nothing more. No point in stopping. It was still early, so I pressed on. On a road where tarmac had replaced gravel. Civilisation beckoned.

  It must have been lunchtime before I arrived. A sizeable place, visible from a couple of miles away, castle on the skyline. The forest had given way to farmlands, my companionable stream to a proper river.

  Although the main road carried on past the town, I was too weary – and hungry – to go any further. Come what may, I now had to confront the Teutonic ogre in his den. So I turned right and headed into town: up the cobbled hill, an ancient wooden gallery on my left, a terrace of venerable houses on my right. Up towards the mediaeval towered gateway, complete with twirly spires. Where a clock told me it was 12.57. Did Adolf insist on accurate public timekeeping? It looked about right. My watch had stopped, so I re-wound it and set it to what I hoped was local time.

  As I approached the massive stone arch leading into the old town, a pair of chattering hausfraus passed by. Although they gave me a curious glance, this didn’t stop their flow for more than a couple of seconds. Promising. This place should be big enough for strangers to survive for a while without the Gestapo being called in.

  Through the gateway and I was into the old town square. Although it had been my job to demolish Germany, I was glad this place had so far eluded us. It was like something out of a Dürer etching, which would make it... how old? I seemed to remember that Albrecht Dürer was 16th century, or thereabouts, which looked about right. This version had been polished up a bit and would doubtless have been a tourist trap before its masters had set off to conquer the world.

  I sat down on a bench under a tree and surveyed the scene. To the left, the way I’d come, was the road up through the gate. At that moment the belltower announced one o’clock, accompanied by a pantomime of little figures emerging from a recess below the clock. They danced a brief courtly pirouette – a quadrille perhaps, I was too far away to see exactly – before retreating back into their stone niche. A welcome moment of sanity in war-torn Europe.