Crosswire Conspiracy Part 2 (1/1) By Buick McCain

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

I was back at Baker Street by 9.45am and I knew that if I looked anywhere near as shattered as I felt, I was in trouble. The ubiquitous Sergeant Craig, the unfriendly giant, led me straight up to a second floor room. This time the welcome party consisted of one man, not much older than me. Although he was dressed in civilian clothes he introduced himself as Captain Jack Murray and he was responsible for my training, development and, as he succinctly put it, my ultimate survival.

The standard procedure for conscripted recruits was six weeks basic training, you learned to shoot straight, you learned how to avoid being shot and then you were off to bag the Hun! With S.O.E the training was completely unorthodox and, without a shadow of a doubt, not in any readily available army training manual. For the next six months! I was going to learn how to crack a safe, blow up bridges and trains and, according to Murray, "become a very hard bastard"

We had been hard at it for over three hours and oddly, although I felt tired, I had a new found enthusiasm and alertness and a motivation that I had never felt before. Murray ordered a working lunch. As we ate we discussed the situation in Europe. France and the Low Countries were now as good as integrated into the Reich. Resistance was spasmodic and brutally suppressed. The tranquillity of the France that my mother had lovingly described over the years and the quiet, gentle village life had disappeared under the Nazi jackboot. France was now split into two, not just as a country.

Brother fought brother. Neighbour betrayed neighbour for a packet of cigarettes, and then there was, as Hitler euphemistically called it, the Jewish problem. I had Jews in my family. We celebrated bar mitzvahs, some of my relatives attended synagogues to pray. I was embarrassed by my complete ignorance; Murray smiled, opened a drawer and passed me a tattered book." Read this shit" It was the English language version of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler.

In August 1939 Molotov had signed the Pact with Nazi Germany that gave Soviet Russia carte blanche in much of the east and allowed Hitler to dominate the west. After the Allied retreat from Dunkirk, Hitler had made it clear that Britain was next. The German U-boat campaign in the Atlantic was causing terrible losses to shipping and to the brave men of the merchant navy. Without essential supplies from the U.S.A and Canada we would be starved into submission. Morale among the British public was sapping and the consensus was, when would Hitler lead his men down Whitehall and not if?

The Luftwaffe's bombing strategy had changed over the past few weeks. The R.A.F, although desperately outnumbered, had disrupted the German aerial onslaught and, halted what had been perceived by many of my friends as the prelude to an imminent Nazi invasion. Prime Minister Churchill had been right in calling it the Battle for Britain. The raiders had become increasingly indiscriminate in their bombing.

Initially most of the raids had been aimed at military instillations along the south east coast, but now it seemed that the industrial heartland of the Midlands and the docklands of London were the prime targets for Goerings pilots.

I stood to stretch my legs and looked out of the window onto the bustling street below. Ordinary people doing ordinary things. I turned to Murray and as I went to speak a succession of bangs went off from somewhere close by. Murray pulled me away from the window but after what seemed ages we looked out onto a scene of chaos. From every direction people were running, some covered in blood and debris, some just running in confusion. From Regents Park and Marylebone Road plumes of smoke hung in the air. There had been no air raid sirens and, ordinarily, the Luftwaffe restricted their raids until after dark and there wasn't the deafening drone that always accompanied the bombers.

We ran downstairs and out into the street. Traffic had stopped. There were no planes in the sky only half a dozen ethereal static clouds. Whatever or whoever had caused this carnage, it wasn't the Luftwaffe.

Continued.. Part 3

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