It's just after one o'clock in the morning of March the 28th, 1942.
It's cold, it's pitch black, and you're a soldier crouched on the deck of a small boat almost within sight of the coast of Occupied France.
The proximity of land brings with it the first tabs of real fear, and you wonder if the other commandos in your small party are feeling it too.
They're all around you, their faces dark beneath the dull steel of their helmets.
Everyone's weapons are at the ready. Packs full of explosive charges, pouches stuffed with ammo and grenades.
Aside from muffled orders to the sailors of the Orlicon camp, the only noise to be heard is with the boat's own powerful engines, a roar so loud they must surely be able to hear it in Paris.
Just before leaving Falmouth, they've finally mentioned all the guns that are going to be waiting for you on your approach to San Jose.
A lot of you boats lived in the port, just like the one your escorting destroyers had put under yesterday.
Silly buggers to show yourself anyway, must have imagined no British ships would dare to be seen where we were.
Hard to tear your thoughts away from all those unseen guns. How many are even now pointed straight at you?
You twist around and search the darkness for the rest of the fleet.
Up ahead, that darker patch, that must be Campbelltown, with tons of high explosive packed in her bower.
Somebody's going to get a nasty surprise.
Trailing on either side of the old destroyer, feathers of phosphorescence breaking from their bowers are the remaining 17 ships.
Built of wood, just like your own.
Bloody tinderboxes still, after all this way, with 2,000 gallons of petrol in each of their tanks.
Some Royal Navy, if that's all they can afford to give a person.
At least Campbelltown, rusting relic, bearishly my being, was built from good old steel.
To aid in identification, each boat bears a number painted in white, just like they were in a black pool pond.
Maybe there won't be any firing after all.
Maybe the enemy will just grab megaphones and call out from the shore, come in numbers so and so your time is up.
Hard to take your mind off all the fuses, detonators and plastic explosives filling the pack you're going to be lugging ashore.
A pack which now has become a target, seems to have grown twice its former size.
Another stab of fear, this time almost crippling, as the brilliant ice-cold pencil of a searchlight sweeps across the waves, only just missing the last boat's wakes.
As he goes out, there's a loud metallic clicking next to you, as one of your protection party cocks his tommy gun.
Nerves stretch so tight, you could probably play a tune on them.
A drink would be good, just about now.
Your officer appears out of a gloom.
It's the Navy's job to defend the boat, but with nothing but these tiny auricans against the whole might of the enemy,
they'll need all the help you brown jobs can give them.
Orders are to be ready at a second's notice, but absolutely no firing until the klaxon sounds.
Up ahead, the Navy are exchanging stolen signals with the Germans, hoping they'll accept the fleet of strange ships as their own.
Can Jerry really be that stupid?
You've been told they believe the port to be incredible.
Complacency on their part was to be the fleet's trump card.
The British would never dare come here.
Ergo, the British can't be here.
Ergo, the ships must be German.
Simple.
Flash is up ahead now, coming from the shore.
Then the fad of heavy guns heard only microseconds before 1st Campbelltown's Klaxon.
Then all the klaxons on the following boats shriek out the signals to return fire.
A sudden hammering of an auricum only feet away from your ears stones your senses.
Then the commandos, Tommy Guns, and Brins join in.
You think you hear the sound of somebody beneath your feet hanging on the howl with a mallet,
then you realize it's enemy fire tearing through the thin mahogany skin.
You feel so bloody helpless.
As part of a demolition team, all you can afford to carry in addition to your waiting pack is a coat pistol.
May as well chuck it on the shore for all the good it'll do.
So you make yourself small, very small, and you pray.
Maybe you'll think how long it seems now since you and your mates were swanning around Scotland,
taking full advantage of the effect your commando flashes had on all the girls.
And not just the girls, sometimes their mothers too.
A muffled choke and the auricum gunner is hit, slumping dead in his sling.
A flurry of activity as he's quickly replaced and the dreadful racket of the gun begins all over again.
A wall looms on the port beam, an enemy gun on top of some building is firing over your head at the starboard column.
You're in the outer harbour already, only a few hundred yards to go and you'll be ashore on the soil of France.
No passport control on this trip.
Your officer gets the various parties sorted out, protection in front, demolition behind,
while the crew begin to pull down the side stentions. Stand up, pack on, my goddess like sling your bag of cement.
A head of silhouettes of the twin pillboxes that defend the old mole, the landing point for all the boats in your column.
You wonder if anybody's made it, then find your answer in the gush of flame that suddenly engulfs the boats just in front of you.
Poor bastards, what a way to go.
Your own boat heels sharply to port as it breasts the lighthouse at the tip of the mole.
For a brief moment you catch a glimpse of Campbelltown, the old girl lit up like a Christmas tree, shell after shell, crashing into her sights.
She must be almost there, going fast as hell from the size of her bow wave.
It's a sight you will remember as long as you live. As long as you live.
Amidst the dreadful racket you can still make out the tinkling of broken glass falling from the shattered lantern room above your bed.
The stream of tracer from the mole guns can no longer depress enough to hold you as a target, so your boat slides easily beneath them and comes to a stop alongside a single head.
More thubs, this time from Grenades, tossed down from its upper surface and landing on the deck where you'd just been.
A bark of orders and you're off, stumbling over the bodies of the forward gun crew.
There's seaweed on the slipway, you stumble, can't fall over or you'll be helpless as an upturned turtle.
A rattle of Tommy Gunfire up ahead and then you're off the mole, heading for the shelter of the dockside buildings and the deepest, darkest shadow you can find.
Ahead of you, empty as a Scotsman's wallet after a night out in Glasgow, lies the broad square that separates the old town tenements opposite.
From the sprawl of silent dockyard buildings to your rear, you can still see the history, but you might have wished you couldn't.
From a rippling horizon of flame and smoke, seems to be all that now remains of all your comfy floating billets.
A staccato metallic clutter and a long spray of bullets shreds a nearby metal waste can.
The Germans must have put machine guns in the tenement's upper window. Beneath the shattered can, your protection party officer lies sprawled like he was still in a firing range.
His Tommy Gun ticking as he seeks them out. He only looks about 18, wants to be a doctor, so they say.
Maybe you should have stuck to that instead of this.
It's all going pear-shaped. The square you have to cross to get to your target looks about as welcoming as a shark's smile.
Your own officer tries to pick his way across, but soon collapses to the ground, dead like it's not.
No way you're getting across there tonight. No way ahead, no way back.
Not now, all the boats have gone. Outnumbered 20 to 1. But I'll be down-hearted.
No, we're bloody not. We're commandos chum. And we will do the job and get back home one way or another, just like we always do.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Okay.
Hold me. What's going on?
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
We were told that if we had succeeded, the Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea, and that they should have remained in Germany.
Apparently, the reason why we have to defend ourselves in English is that the Tepits continue to forget their old vision.
You are right, the Tepits are the only one who can receive the Tepits. I understand your goal, but I wonder why you are still in the Atlantic Sea.
The Tepits continue to forget their old vision.
The Tepits continue to forget their old vision.
The Tepits continue to forget their old vision.
Johnny, we were told that if we had succeeded, the Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
We were told that if we had succeeded, the Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
We were told that if we had succeeded, the Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
The Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
The Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
The Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
We were told that if we had succeeded, the Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
We were told that if we had succeeded, the Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
We were told that if we had succeeded, the Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
We were told that if we had succeeded, the Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
The Red Cross and the Tepits could not have arrived in the Atlantic Sea.
And for all I know, you could be a collaborator. If you want nothing more to do with us, then fine, we'll move on.
Life, she's pregnant. Jean, why are you asking me this? Every second, like you can't imagine.
My name is Christophe Ducroix. My wife, Madeleine, is in the bedroom of her member of the Resistance.
In this country, there are three types of day. Those who betray, those who accept, those who believe. I am not a believer. I believe that we should not be captured in front of the Germans. I believe that one day, we will fight to regain our country.
My friends and I will do our best to help you escape the Germans and regain the territories of the Allies.
Thank you.
