Opening Moves

Ike stubbed out his cigarette, using his free hand to beckon a newly arrived Hood to his side.

“Good morning Sir. How may I be of service?”

“Good morning Thomas. I hope your trip was successful?”

Colonel Hood had spent a day away liaising with the French at their new headquarters in Nancy.

“Yes Sir it was. I will have the report ready for your evening brief.”

Unusually for Hood, he drew closer to his Commander and whispered conspiratorially.

“I will also prepare a separate report on a matter I became aware of. Someone was indiscrete within my earshot Sir, and I believe you may wish to know of it, but not officially.”

“Intriguing statement Thomas, I shall look forward to it. Thank you. Now, for this moment, I want you to scare me up some information on the Soviet specialist units, artillery, engineers, and the like.”

“For what specific purpose Sir?”

“I’m looking to get a feel of their deployment and use, which are performing as they should or as expected and which are not.”

The Colonel made a note on a small pad, his pencil working furiously. Ike sensed rather than saw that the man needed further focus.

“I see our forces having difficulties with specialists, from pilots through to drivers, Thomas. I want to know if the Red Army has similar issues ok? The more information I can get on them at the moment the better.”

“I understand fully General.”

The Colonel came to attention and went on his way, seemingly ignoring but actually just not hearing Eisenhower’s parting words.

“And I will look forward to your reports later Thomas.”

Ike took another cigarette and turned to the head of the small queue that had formed.

“Good morning Anne, and how are you this morning?”

Receiving the normal response, a report changed hands. There was a contrite apology and covering explanation as to how some parts of it had been missed for the last few days.

General Clark had sent a message regarding the extraordinary visit he had received from an escaping officer of the Waffen-SS, and the intelligence the man had passed him, enabling some sort of early warning to go out, saving many lives.

USAAF Intel had done some work on the information therein and generated some interesting possibilities. Using the escaping prisoners debriefs, cartographical interpretation and civilian reports, Intelligence had identified five other possible sites for the same sort of concealment, all of which were in central and southern occupied Germany.

RAF Air Recon and British Military Intelligence had picked up twitches at three of the locations but found nothing conclusive.

Photos taken by a Spitfire reconnaissance aircraft over the forest south-east of Gardelegen showed what looked like smoke from a fire in the woods, but as the annotation stated, it could as easily be a steam train, plus there was evidence of increased road traffic to the area to add to the pot.

The large wooded area between Suhl and Schmeidefeld had drawn attention because of the ferocious AA fire that greeted some passing Thunderbolts, who were driven off by the swift arrival of Soviet fighter aircraft. Both photo-recon aircraft sent out had not returned, in itself a possible pointer.

The final possibility was underlined and emphasised in Red.

‘Where the hell is Ceske Kubice?’ enquired Eisenhower of himself, and then aloud of the Captain.

“Czech border region, approximately fifty miles north-east of Regensburg Sir.”

Most significantly, this was intelligence from an on the spot source, albeit more negative than positive input.

‘Villagers cannot use this road; this area of woodland is now restricted and guarded by army and NKVD units. Curfew imposed commencing two hours before dusk.’

Ike read and reread the next line.

“Increase in train traffic, particularly at night time. Tuesday night 12. Wednesday night 17.”

He looked at the Captain encouraging her response.

“Contact has been lost with the informant. No messages since Thursday Sir.”

As Ike read on he felt his senses start to sharpen, hairs prickling on the back of his neck, wondering if the clandestine Manchurian units had actually been located.

“Anne, make me another copy and then pass it onto Marshall Tedder. Ask him to provide me with a strike plan to hit these targets tonight. Please tell him I consider this a matter of the highest priority.”

Impressed with the importance of her mission, the pretty young officer fairly skipped away to do her commander’s bidding.

Eisenhower moved to the next offering, reports on submarine attacks in the Atlantic. One particularly unwelcome paper recorded the sinking a full troopship returning to Europe with veteran soldiers and striking an entire tank-destroyer group from the Allied inventory.

As he read the painful pages, his attention was suddenly piqued by a highly polished pair of shoes that halted a respectful distance from his chair.

He finished the paragraph and slid his thumb into position to show him where he had to start reading from and looked up.