Young Lions Roar Read online

  Published by New Generation Publishing in 2012

  Copyright © Andrew Mackay 2012

  First Edition

  The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.newgeneration-publishing.com

  eISBN 9781909395541

  Young Lions Roar is dedicated to the memory of my Great Uncle, Alec MacLennan, who served his country in the Merchant Navy during the Second World War.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter One

  “We don’t stand a snowman’s chance in the Sahara.” Sam shook his head dejectedly as he peeked through the lace curtains from his first floor bedroom window.

  “How many are heading your way?” Alan asked as he stood at the window next to Sam’s.

  “About a platoon of SS stormtroopers, and they look as mean as hell,” Sam answered. “How many are heading your way?”

  “About a platoon of SS stormtroopers and they also look as mean as hell,” Alan echoed as he peered through the lace curtains at his window.

  “Same here,” Alice answered from the downstairs living room. “We’re outnumbered and outgunned.”

  “So what else is new?” Sam guffawed grimly. “We’re always outnumbered and outgunned, Alice.” He carefully looked out of the window again. “The Huns are taking hostages. What’s the current rate of exchange, Al?”

  “One hundred hostages are to be executed for every German soldier that’s killed,” Alan answered.

  “A platoon is walking up the street towards us and they’re arresting all of the men from every house. They’ve just dragged Mr Cobb out of his front door.” Alice’s hand darted up to her mouth in concern as she gave a running commentary. “Oh no! Mrs Cobb is trying to stop them! Mrs Cobb! Don’t do that! They’ll-” Alice almost forgot herself and was on the verge of shouting a warning out of the window as a stormtrooper rifle butted Maria Cobb squarely in the face. There was a loud and sickening crack that echoed up the street as Maria collapsed like a sack of potatoes.

  Edward Cobb moaned in despair as his wife lay in a motionless mound on the pavement. “Get your hands off me, you Nazi swine!” he shouted as he managed to momentarily twist free from the grip of the two stormtroopers who were holding him. He rushed over to the still form of his wife, carefully rolled her over onto her back and started to search for a pulse.

  Alice watched as an SS officer walked over to Edward, pulled out his Luger pistol, cocked it, flicked off the safety catch and shot him twice in the back of the head. The Nazi side stepped nimbly out of the way as blood jetted from the back of Edward’s head. Edward collapsed over Maria’s body. The Cobb’s two small children wailed inconsolably as they tried to pull their two dead parents to their feet.

  Alice jammed her knuckles into her mouth and tears sprang to her eyes as she struggled to take in the scene of complete and utter horror that she had just witnessed. Lucy and Sophie Cobb had been turned into orphans in a matter of seconds. She had babysat the two Cobb girls on several occasions and knew the Cobb family well. Alice watched open mouthed as the SS officer pointed his pistol at the nearest crying child. Sophie screamed. Another SS officer batted the murderer’s arm to the side just as he pulled the trigger. The round knocked a chunk of brick off the wall before ricocheting harmlessly into the air.

  “What happened, Alice?” Sam asked from upstairs.

  “They… they just murdered Edward and Maria Cobb,” Alice said in shocked disbelief. “They were just about to kill Sophie and Lucy…” Alice’s voice trailed off.

  “Those murdering Nazi bastards!” Sam exploded in fury.

  “They’ll be here any minute,” Alice continued as she wiped away her tears with the back of her hand. “If one of those dirty German swine sets one step inside the house then we open fire and kill as many as we can,” she said, with steel in her voice.

  “Killing’s too good for those Nazi savages!” Alan said, with venom dripping.

  Alice cocked her Schmessier submachine gun. “ For mother and father, Edward and Maria Cobb and for all of the other poor souls who those murdering Nazis have killed. To hell with Ansett and keeping a low profile. Kill them all! Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” the boys answered as they cocked their machine guns in unison.

  “Strength and honour, Sam. Strength and honour, Alan.”

  “Strength and honour, Alice,” the boys chorused.

  “You interfering old woman, Monat,” the SS officer said with steam coming out of his ears. “You shouldn’t have stopped me from shooting those two brats.” He took out a cigarette from a silver case, tapped the end twice and lit it in order to calm his temper that was close to boiling point. He had never been so angry in his entire life. To have been humiliated in front of his own men, publicly manhandled by a brother SS officer no less. And all over the fate of a couple of English brats. What on earth was the world coming to?

  “They were just children, Niebergall,” Obersturmführer Hans Monat stuck resolutely to his guns. “You would have regretted it afterwards. We’re not monsters.”

  Obersturmführer Martin Niebergall stopped walking so suddenly that Monat collided into the back of him. Niebergall turned around to face Monat, took out his wallet, flicked it open and shoved it roughly into Monat’s face. “See these photos, Monat?” Niebergall stabbed the photos rapidly with his forefinger as he bared his teeth only inches from Monat’s face.

  Monat grimaced in disgust as spittle landed on his nose.

  “These are my nephew and niece, Kurt and Heidi,” Niebergall continued.

  Monat found it hard to resist the urge to automatically recoil as Niebergall’s garlic sausage breath assaulted his nostrils.

  “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  Monat nodded again. He had absolutely no idea where Niebergall was going with this.

  “They’re my sister’s children. Sabine’s children. They’re German children. Aryan children. Those brats,” Niebergall gestured down the street with a contemptuous flick of his fingers, “those brats are English. They’re not children. They’re one step above Jewish untermenschen scum. They’re the enemy and don’t you forget it. I would kill those two brats with as little thought as I would stub out this cigarette.” Niebergall dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out with the heel of his boot. “Or crush a cockroach. Try and stop me from carrying out my duties again and I’ll shoot you like the cowardly English-loving dog that you are.”

  “Achtung!” Niebergall thumped the door with the heel of his hand. “Raus! Raus! Schnell! Schnell!”

  The door opened to reveal a strikingly beautiful young woman. Niebergall was stunned and could not help staring. A genuine English rose. The evening had suddenly become more interesting. Who said that
you could not mix business with pleasure? “Good evening, fräulein… are your parents at home?”

  “My parents are both dead. You hanged them both from the Town Hall balcony.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, fräulein, but I’m sure that you don’t blame me personally…”

  “As a matter of fact I do,” Alice interrupted defiantly. “You Nazis are all equally to blame.”

  “I admire your spirit, fräulein.” Niebergall bowed and clicked his heels in genuine admiration. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sehr gut. I’m going to have to teach this young lady some manners, boys,” Niebergall said over his shoulder in German.

  His stormtroopers laughed and nodded their heads with grim amusement. “It’s much more enjoyable if they put up a fight, sir!”

  Niebergall laughed. “Is that a fact, Hotz? Well, since you’re such a Casanova you can have sloppy seconds as a reward for your advice.”

  “Thank you, sir! Much appreciated.”

  “Don’t say I’m not good to you! Any of you boys not a double veteran yet?” Niebergall asked.

  “Me, sir.” A young soldier shyly raised his hand like a schoolboy. “Von Choltitz, sir.”

  “Tonight’s your lucky night, my boy, and with such a beauty as well. You go last. You know what to do afterwards, von Choltitz?”

  “Jawohl, sir! Thank you, sir!”

  “Right boys, in you come. You know the drill: search the house from top to bottom,” Niebergall ordered. “I don’t want any nasty surprises like two big brothers hiding in a bedroom waiting to batter my brains out with a cricket bat.”

  “Yes, sir!” the soldiers answered in chorus. The stormtroopers streamed past him with practised ease and started mounting the staircase.

  “Now, fräulein,” Niebergall turned to Alice and pinched the pressure point above her elbow with a practised vice-like grip, “if you would be so kind as to show me to the nearest bedroom. I would like to sample firsthand some of your famous English hospitality…”

  Two prolonged bursts of Schmessier submachine gun fire interrupted his sentence. Niebergall turned around in time to see two young men at the top of the stairs fire a full magazine, sending his stormtroopers tumbling to the bottom of the stairs to lie in a bloody heap.

  Niebergall looked at the scene in open-mouthed horror.

  “You were going to let von Choltitz rape me and then kill me?” Alice asked with fire and fury in her eyes.

  The blood drained from Niebergall’s face. “Wait a minute, I…!”

  Alice hit Niebergall right between the eyes with the butt of her Schmessier and he dropped like a felled tree.

  “Goodnight, Vienna.”

  “Did you hear that, sir? Schmessier submachine gun fire! It sounds as if Obersturmführer Niebergall’s patrol may be in trouble, sir.” The SS sergeant gestured over his shoulder.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t trouble yourself, Scharführer,” Obersturmführer Monat said casually as he examined his dirty fingernails with deliberate nonchalance. “Obersturmführer Niebergall is a big boy: I’m sure that he can take care of himself. He and his boys are due a spot of weekend leave. They’ve probably found some English girls who may be rather reluctant to join their party. I’m sure that the good Obersturmführer is merely trying to convince the girls of the error of their ways. A machine gun can be a very persuasive incentive to cooperate.”

  The scharführer chuckled. “Boys will be boys, eh, sir?”

  “My thoughts exactly, Scharführer,” Monat nodded. “After all, we wouldn’t want to try and stop the Obersturmführer from carrying out his duties, would we?”

  “Wakey, wakey, Fritz, rise and shine.”

  Niebergall spluttered and shook his head as another bucket of water was thrown over him. He slowly opened his eyes. He felt as his eyelids and eyelashes were glued together. He had a cracking headache. He felt as if someone had stabbed him between the eyes with a red-hot poker. The first thing that he noticed was that two people were sitting on what appeared to be milking stools in front of him. The second thing that he noticed was that he was tied up in a spread-eagled position. The third thing that he noticed was that he was completely and utterly butt naked.

  “Good morning, Niebergall,” Alice said.

  Niebergall was too petrified to answer.

  “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” Alice turned to her companion. “And this Nazi was going to teach me some manners. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

  Her companion chuckled good-naturedly. “Hello, Fritz. My name is Archie Leon.”

  Niebergall was gradually becoming aware that he was in a large concrete block building with a curved corrugated iron roof. He was also aware that he was lying propped up on a pile of straw on the floor so that he could see his interrogators. He was also aware that the straw was soiled with a matted mixture of urine, vomit and excrement. His own corrupt bodily fluids.

  “I’m going to tell you three things, Fritz, that I want you to remember, so pay attention. The first thing is that I’m a pig farmer.” Leon held up his fingers as he counted.

  Niebergall looked at Leon in blank bewilderment.

  “Contrary to what most people think, the domestic pig, or to use its Latin name, the Sus Scrofa, is a very intelligent and adaptable animal. Pigs are omnivores rather than herbivores. They will eat just about anything including grass, vegetables, plants, snakes and lizards and so on and so on. You name it, they’ll eat it. I bet you didn’t know that, did you, Fritz?” Leon flashed a full set of gum-lined hyena like teeth.

  Niebergall shook his head. “No, Mr Leon, I didn’t know that.”

  “I didn’t think so, Martin. But please, call me Archie. You don’t mind me calling you Martin, do you? After all, I feel like I know you so well already.”

  “You can call me Susan if it makes you happy, Mr… Archie.”

  Leon slapped his thigh and chuckled. “I like this man, Miss Roberts. I know that he’s a murdering Nazi bastard, but he’s got guts and guts go a long way. Talk about laughing in the face of death.” Leon shook his head in admiration.

  “Yes, Mr Leon. I’m glad I wore my corset this morning or I fear that my sides would split from laughing so much,” Alice said dryly.

  “Now, now, Miss Roberts, we must always keep our sense of humour,” Leon scolded jokingly with a wagging finger. “The second thing I want you to remember is that although I give the impression that I am a salt of the earth country bumpkin, I like to flatter myself that I am a bon viveur and a raconteur and I am, in my own small way, a patron of the arts. Did you know that I co-sponsored the recent Cambridge production of my favourite musical, Sweeney Todd?”

  “The demon barber of Fleet Street?” Niebergall had seen the production himself with some fellow officers. In fact he had seen it twice as the horror story appealed to his morbid and macabre sense of humour.

  Leon slapped his thigh again. “The very same! You see, Miss Roberts? Martin is not a complete and utter philistine! There’s hope for the boy yet! He is not completely beyond redemption!”

  Niebergall allowed a glimmer of a smile to ghost across his lips for the first time. What did the ‘Escape and Evasion’ manual suggest? Try to build up a rapport with your captor? Well, he was certainly well on his way to doing that.

  Leon threw a handful of shiny pieces of metal onto Niebergall’s lap. They looked strangely familiar but Niebergall couldn’t identify them.

  “What were their names again, Miss Roberts?” Leon asked rhetorically.

  “Hotz, von Choltitz. Sound familiar, Niebergall? Rapists one and all. Those are fillings, Niebergall,” Alice explained. “Those are all that the pigs left of your men…”

  Niebergall recoiled in disgust as he unsuccessfully tried to heave the grisly mementoes off his lap.

  “The third thing that you must remember is that Edward Cobb, the man that you murdered yesterday, was my brother in law,” Leon’s face was as cold as that of an iceberg. �
�And Maria Cobb was my sister.”

  Niebergall vomited violently.

  “The only difference between what happened to your men and what is about to happen to you, Niebergall, is that your men were already dead when my pigs ate them, where as you will be very much alive…” Leon let the full horror of his words sink in.

  Niebergall’s bowels erupted in a tidal wave of faeces.

  “The pigs are going to eat you alive, Niebergall…”

  “No! For the love of God…!”

  “I’d like to promise you that it will be a quick and painless death, but that would be a complete and utter lie so I won’t…”

  “No, please…!”

  “You will probably still be alive as they eat your balls and intestines…”

  “Nein! Nein! Bitte… bitte…!” Niebergall pleaded desperately through tear-filled eyes as he struggled futilely against the heavy chains that secured him to the floor.

  “And then the cherry on the cake, so to speak, is that after the pigs have eaten you we are going to slaughter them and sell the bacon, ham, pork chops and pork pies to your countrymen…”

  “How could you lose a whole patrol?” Sturmbannführer Norbert Ulrich shook his head in disbelief, as he leaned on his clench-fisted knuckles on his desk.

  “Strictly speaking, they weren’t my patrol, sir,” Obersturmführer Monat stood at a rigid position of attention looking at a portrait of Adolf Hitler above Ulrich’s head. “Obersturmführer Niebergall was in command of the patrol and he asked me to accompany him…”

  “On whose orders?” Ulrich interrupted.

  “Sir?” Monat asked in genuine confusion. “I’m afraid that I don’t understand…”

  “Who gave Niebergall the orders to take an entire neighbourhood hostage?” Ulrich asked with mounting impatience and anger.

  “Well, it’s standard procedure to take one hundred civilians into protective custody every time one of our men is murdered, sir… I just assumed…”

  “When you “assume” something you make an ass out of you and me.”

  “I’m sorry, sir…?”

  “Never mind, Monat,” Ulrich waved his hand dismissively. Pearls before swine, he thought to himself.