01:25 (Paris Time)
Thursday, January 2, 1941
Field East of Wissant,
Coastal area of the Pas de Calais
France
Nancy landed in a field near Pihen-les-Guines, a small French village six miles East of Wissant, on the coast of the Pas de Calais. She was heavily loaded with an armored assault vest and assault helmet, her assault rifle, night vision goggles, directional microphone, two pistols, a radio, a signal lamp and ammunition. Nobody had heard her plane or seen her land, since she had jumped in HALO mode, like on the raid on the prison near Gravelines. The nearest known German positions were two miles away and the night was pitch dark. Gathering and hiding her parachute took less than two minutes.
Her first task was to orient herself and determine accurately her position, so that she could guide the platoon of commandos due to join her in less than an hour. She wished silently that she had a functioning GPS receiver with its constellation of satellites, but had to make do with a compass and a map. Walking directly North from her landing point, she hit a road after covering half a mile, then turned West and followed the drainage ditch alongside the road. She soon encountered a road sign indicating that she was following the Départementale 244 road. After another 500 yards, she arrived at a tiny village. Searching for a good five minutes, she finally found a sign indicating that she was in Wadenthun. Checking her map, she saw with satisfaction that she was where she wanted to be. Taking off her equipment pack and grabbing her silenced Ruger target pistol, fitted with a laser dot sight, she explored the quiet village to make sure that no Germans were in it. After fifteen minutes of cautious searching, she was satisfied that none were around and returned to the spot where she had hidden her pack. Putting her pack back on, she walked southward for 300 yards through the waist-high grass and brush before stopping and getting out her signal lamp. The lamp had a long black tubular baffle to avoid being seen from anywhere but directly in front. At precisely two O’clock, she switched on the lamp, directing it skyward and blinking its light in a precise pattern.
17,000 feet above, Major George Townsend, standing in the opened door of the converted Armstrong Whitworth Whitley Bomber, saw the blinking light at the same time as the navigator. Turning towards his twenty Royal Commandos and the four RAF personnel they were escorting for this mission, he then talked through his oxygen mask.
“The beacon light is on, directly below us. Get ready!”
He watched on as the commandos, wearing assault armor, formed up in single file behind him. Mixed within their ranks were the two men and two women of the RAF, much less heavily loaded than the commandos and without assault armor. The four of them had been chosen for this mission for their good knowledge of the German language and for their familiarity with air traffic control and radar procedures.
“Grab the leashes!”
Everybody took hold of the short elastic rope with handle dangling from the back of the person in front. The leashes, if everything went well, would keep the group together as they fell through the night sky. During the practices, it had worked well three out of four times.
“Remember, step lively and jump out without hesitation! On my mark, one, two, three, GO!”
Running out of the plane door back-to-belly, the 23 men and two women fell together in the dark sky, towards Nancy’s blinking light. At 6,000 feet, Townsend tapped on the arm of the commando behind him, who in turn made the same signal to the RAF woman next in line. The signal went down the line, then back up, each parachutist loosening their grip on their handle after passing back up the signal. As soon as he received back a tap on his arm, Townsend opened his parachute, followed in quick succession by the others. Now gliding at altitudes ranging between three and four thousand feet, the 25 British converged on Nancy’s light. To Nancy’s delight and considerable relief, all of them landed safely within one hundred yards of her position, with Major Townsend and another commando actually landing practically on her back. It took ten minutes to regroup the raiders, after which Nancy led them single file towards Wadenthum. From there, using her night vision goggles and directional microphone, she guided them in the direction of Wissant and the coast.
05:23 (Paris Time)
Wissant
Nancy silently came back towards George Townsend and the other British soldiers kneeling alongside a wall in a dark and narrow alley of Wissant. Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“The French resistance reports were accurate. The headquarters of the JagdFliegerFührer 2 {9} are in the town hall, on the other side of this block of buildings. I could see a total of four Luftwaffe sentries in front of it. There is a house and bakery shop just across the street from the town hall’s main entrance. The street is less than twenty yards wide at that point. I found a back entrance to that bakery shop that should be easy to break in without making a noise.”
“Excellent!”
Townsend was still amazed at how easy it had been up to now. There were actually three good reasons for it being so: first, the fact that the local German Wehrmacht troops were watching the sea and had all their heavy weapons pointed that way; second, with the area being so heavily used by the Luftwaffe for its fighter airbases, rear area security had naturally been handed over to Luftwaffe troops who, in Townsend’s opinion, made poor sentries; and, last but not least, Nancy’s planning itself. When it came to combined arms special operations, she had revealed herself to be a real genius at them, being both fiendishly devious and innovative. Nobody on General Joubert’s staff could come close to her when it came time to plan an apparently impossible mission. The general had clearly seized on her qualities and had made sure a number of times that the War Office staff in London knew about that. As a result, she had already earned the nickname of ‘dirty tricks Nancy’, apart from her German nickname of ‘Die Wolfin’.
Following Nancy along a narrow alley between two house blocks, the British raiders stopped behind a brick house as Townsend quietly broke open a door. The 26 men and women then disappeared inside the bakery shop.
Jean Poissant was startled out of his sleep by the firm contact of a hand covering his mouth. His wife Marthe was similarly awaken besides him. With a feeling of panic, they looked at the two large silhouettes looming over them in the dark upper floor bedroom. A woman’s voice, speaking in perfect French, calmed them down a bit.
“Do not be afraid, we don’t want to harm you. We are British soldiers and need your house to hide in it for a while. If you agree to be quiet, nod your heads.”
They both nodded and the hands came off their mouths. The middle-aged couple then cautiously sat in their bed, still watched by the woman and her companion.
“Is there anybody else in the house, mister…?”
“Poissant, Jean Poissant. This is my wife Marthe. My eight year-old daughter Diane is sleeping in the bedroom next door.”
“Please have your wife wake her up and bring her here. We don’t want to scare her.”
“Can I switch on the light first?”
“Wait!” Said urgently the woman’s voice. “At what time do you routinely wake up in the morning?”
“Er, no later than six O’clock: I have to prepare the day’s batch of fresh croissants and bread.”
“Then, switch you bed lamp on.”
He did so and his eyes bulged with surprise, while Marthe took in her breath. Both the man and woman wore armored vests and helmets that made them look like medieval soldiers. The woman got most of their attention: extremely tall and broad-shouldered for a woman, she had the expression of someone you didn’t want to mess with. Jean then saw her rank insignia and twitched: he had fought alongside the British in the 1914-18 war and still could recognize the crown and two pips of a colonel.
“You’re a colonel?”
Marthe looked at Jean, then at the woman with disbelief. The woman then urged them on.
“Please bring your daughter here now, we have much to do.”
“Marthe, go get Diane!”
While his wife went to fetch their daughter, Jean scrutinized both soldiers. Their expressions, while not exactly friendly, were not hostile either, maybe just cautious.
“What do you want from us?”
“Mister Poissant,” answered the woman, still in perfect French, “I simply want you and your family to follow your normal morning routine, serve your customers and keep quiet about our presence here, that’s all. We plan to attack the German headquarters across the street later in the morning. We were going to leave you tied-up and gagged so that the Germans would not harm you after, but…”
Jean understood her hesitation. He would have been willing to take his chances with the Germans, since he and Marthe could cling to a likely story. With Diane, it was another matter: an exuberant and talkative little girl, it would not take much of an interrogator to make her divulge the truth, even without using the dreadful methods of the Gestapo. What followed anyway sent that solution down the drain. Marthe came back with little Diane, still half-asleep. Instead of being frightened by the soldiers, Diane instead became all excited after a single look at the woman.
“Mom, dad, it’s Nancy Laplante, the she-wolf from the future!”
“Oh dear…” whispered Nancy, as Jean and Marthe stared at her while Diane jumped up and down with joy.
08:05 (Paris Time)
Bakery shop, Wissant
“Where is your cute little girl, Mister Poissant?” Asked in fair but slow French the young German female Luftwaffe helferin as she was about to leave the shop with the customary daily order of croissants. Jean, a nervous wreck inside, forced a smile on his face.
“I’m afraid that she is feeling sick today and has to stay in bed. In fact, I believe that I’m coming down with the same virus as hers.”
The German teenager instinctively stepped away from the counter.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Please wish her a prompt recovery on my part.”
“Thank you, Fraulein Weiss, I will do that. Have a good day.”
The German girl then left the store, crossing the street and entering the headquarters with her bags of croissants. Nancy Laplante left the corner where she was hiding but stayed away from the shop window.
“The local Germans seem to be fairly decent with your family, Mister Poissant.”
“They are on the most part polite, some like this young one being actually friendly and likeable. I have seen worst Germans than this bunch.”
Nancy nodded her head. Luftwaffe personnel generally had a reputation for being more civilized as occupants than the Wehrmacht, probably because they were on the whole a better educated and more technically oriented lot.
“That last one looked awfully young to wear a uniform. She looked no more than seventeen years old to me.”
Jean smiled at Nancy’s comment.
“Her NCO confided to my wife once that she suspected as much, but that she could not prove that Ingrid was underage. Personally, my bet is that she is sixteen, no more. She told me once that she lost her whole family in a British bombing raid.”
Nancy bit her lower lip, looking thoughtfully at the German headquarter across the street.
“We will try to keep casualties to a minimum. Our plan is to take them prisoners anyway, not to kill them if we can help it. I…”
The arrival of a German staff car escorted by two motorcyclists cut her off. The driver of the staff car hurried to open the rear right door as the Luftwaffe sentries presented arms. A very senior-looking German officer then stepped out of the vehicle, followed by an aide. Nancy, grabbing her small binoculars, swore quietly in surprise and delight.
“It’s GeneralFeldMarshal Kesselring, commander of Luftflotte{10} 2!”
“Is he that important?”
“You bet he is! He must be here to conduct an inspection. What a piece of blind luck!”
She then looked at her watch.
“It is nearly time now. Remember, once the shooting starts, stay low and especially stay away from glass panes: there may be a lot of flying glass later on.”
On a short order from her, the commandos hiding on the floor above the shop came down, taking position behind the counter. When they were all ready for the assault, Nancy ordered Jean Poissant upstairs and, kneeling besides the entrance, cautiously poked out of the slightly opened door the muzzle of her silenced pistol. After carefully selecting the order of her targets and waiting for the sentries to look away from each other, she quickly fired five shots, then grabbed her assault rifle and flung the door open before starting to run towards the German headquarters. Twenty-five British men and women rushed to follow her.
08:17 (Paris Time)
JagdFliegerFuhrer 2 headquarters
Wissant, France
“What more do you want me to do, Herr GeneralFeldMarshal?” Exploded General-Major Osterkamp. “My fighter division is at less than forty percent of nominal strength and I lost nearly all of my experienced pilots in September. Add to that the fact that the British bombers are now faster than my fighters. I need more aircraft and faster ones too!”
“That is out of the question for the moment.” Answered Kesselring in a resigned voice. He knew that Osterkamp was right but had been ordered by ReichMarshal Goering to gain back air supremacy over France, or else.
“Our fighter aircraft factories have been hit very hard by these new British bombs and are having problems resuming production. As for faster fighters, we have something in the works but they are still at least one year away.”
“Then, GeneralFeldMarshal, you can tell that fat effeminate in Berlin that we have lost the air war over France and Belgium.”
Kesselring didn’t reply at first. Osterkamp was a competent commander and had done as best as anybody could in the present circumstances.
“If it would not have been for that damn Wolfin!”
Osterkamp nodded at Kesselring’s frustrated remark.
“She sure played a trick or two on us. Her knowledge is costing us the war. Too bad the Russians didn’t get her in Washington.”
“What can you expect from those incompetents? It seems that they only succeeded in making her meaner.”
They both looked in frustration at the ‘wanted’ poster with the picture of Nancy Laplante pinned to one of the walls of Osterkamp’s office. That was when loud automatic fire rang out from inside the building. Reacting instinctively, Kesselring took out his pistol and flung the door of the office open, stepping in the large air operations center. He was immediately confronted by several armed soldiers wearing armored vests and helmets with faceplates.
“DROP THE GUN, NOW!”
The command had been shouted in German. Sensing that he would only endanger the lives of his airmen, Kesselring let his pistol drop and raised his hands above his head, imitated by Osterkamp, who slowly walked out of his office. They were quickly searched and then pushed towards the line of Luftwaffe personnel facing one of the walls, their hands crossed behind their necks. Kesselring was placed besides a very young helferin{11} who was sobbing, completely terrorized by her ordeal. By then all firing had stopped, proving that the British were now in full control of the building. They had to be British, even with those weird armored suits. Kesselring saw that the British were now methodically searching the Germans one by one, starting at the other end of the line he was in. Using the best English he could muster, he shouted, still facing the wall.
“I’m GeneralFeldMarshal Kesselring. I want to speak to your commander.”
He heard footsteps approach before somebody grabbed him and turned him around. He looked at the tall British soldier, who was still wearing his faceplate down, noticing the slip-on with the crown and two pips of a colonel. The officer spoke in good German, the voice muffled by the faceplate.
“What do you want?”
“There are female auxiliaries here. Your men must not search them.”
“Agreed! I will thus search them myself.”
“You bastard! How can…”
Kesselring’s sudden rage died down as soon as the colonel raised her faceplate.
“YOU?”
Kesselring was now staring at the same face he had just looked at on the poster inside Osterkamp’s office.
“Correct, Herr GeneralFeldMarshal. Colonel Nancy Laplante, at your service. Your concern for your female personnel is appreciated. I assure you that all of your people will be treated correctly, as long as there is no resistance.”
“You don’t seriously expect to get away with such a hare-brained raid, Miss Laplante?”
“Oh, I think I will, Albert.”
“Don’t call me by my first name, you…”
“THEN CALL ME BY MY RANK, GENERALFELDMARSHAL!”
Laplante then slung her rifle across her back and pulled out a huge gold-plated pistol before grabbing the young helferin besides Kesselring. She then pushed the small teenager with reddish-brown hair towards Osterkamp’s office. The girl squealed in terror, probably expecting to be executed. Laplante patted gently the girl’s back, speaking softly in German to her.
“Don’t worry, Ingrid, I am just going to do a quick search on you. You have nothing to fear. By the way, you should have given your real age to the Luftwaffe recruiter.”
Ingrid’s look of terror changed abruptly to one of complete surprise. Staring at the smiling face of her captor, she then walked by herself in the office. Nancy closed the door behind her before starting to search the German teenager. She didn’t find any weapon or interesting document on Ingrid Weiss, exactly as she had expected. Nancy then examined closely the girl, trying to guess her real age. She was tall for a girl, standing about 175 centimeters tall, and had a well developed, feminine body with long, shapely legs. Her angelic and very beautiful face was framed by medium-length reddish-brown hair and she had big sparkling blue eyes. Her youth however showed up on her face, something Ingrid seemed to have tried to hide with some makeup and lipstick. Nancy spoke to the girl in a soft tone, keeping her volume low.
‘’What is your age, Helferin Weiss?’’
She saw a flash of apprehension in the eyes of the girl before she answered.
‘’I am nineteen, Colonel.’’
Nancy gave her a critical look.
‘’Ingrid, don’t take me for an idiot. I was myself a precocious girl in my youth. I promise you that I will keep your answer to myself.’’
‘’I am seventeen, Colonel, truly.’’ Replied Ingrid in a voice she tried to keep firm.
‘’And I’m Prime Minister Churchill. Listen, Ingrid, I respect your desire to serve your country but being a prisoner of war is no picnic. On the other hand, the Geneva Conventions forbid the taking of children as prisoners of war.’’
‘’I’m not a child!’’ Replied heatedly Ingrid, before realizing that she had overreacted. Nancy looked at her with sadness.
‘’Ingrid, you joined the Luftwaffe because of the death of your family in a British bombing, right?’’
Tears came out of the teenager’s eyes at that question and she lowered her head, answering between sobs.
‘’Yes! All my family died that day, including my grand-parents, my uncles and my aunts. We were celebrating my grandfather’s birthday and my father sent me out to go buy more wine and beer. When I came back, there was nothing left of our house but burning ruins. I was about to be fifteen and…’’
Ingrid couldn’t go on then and cried, her hands covering her face. Feeling bad for the girl, Nancy got close and hugged her in her arms.
‘’I am sorry for your family, Ingrid, truly. I myself lost my parents in a car accident when I was sixteen. I have been managing alone since then. So, you are now fifteen?’’
‘’Yes! My anniversary is on September the seventh.’’
Nancy thought with bitterness about all the suffering and tragedies caused by wars, still holding Ingrid in her arms. She finally stepped back and looked the teenager in the eyes.
‘’Ingrid, I promise you to keep your real age a secret if you really want to stay with your comrades. I am also ready to let you go now, if you wish so, in view of your age. Think well about that: captivity is no fun.’’
‘’I…I can’t abandon my comrades like this, Colonel. What would they think of me after that? What would I think of myself?’’
Nancy nodded her head, impressed by this young girl with such a tragic past but who had kept her sense of honor and self-esteem through such adversity.
‘’Very well! For me, you are officially nineteen, Ingrid. You can now go and join back your comrades, Helferin Weiss.’’
The teenager wiped away the last of her tears, then came to attention and saluted Nancy, using a military salute rather than the Nazi salute. Nancy returned her salute before escorting her back to the line of prisoners and then picking up another female auxiliary to search her.
After all the Germans had been searched, including the seven female auxiliaries, they were bound and gagged before being lined once again against the western wall of the air operations center. Kesselring then noticed with no small surprise that two of the four British in RAF uniforms were women. One of the telephones near the main plotting board soon rang. One the RAF women then answered it in fluent German.
“JagdFliegerFuhrer 2 headquarters!… No, no problems at all, sir. A group of French underground terrorists tried to attack us but were repelled with heavy casualties to themselves. Our men are hunting them down right now… Thank you, sir!”
“Good work, Corporal Martin!” Said Nancy Laplante to her after she put down the telephone. Another telephone rang a minute later, picked up by the other RAF woman.
“JagdFliegerFuhrer 2 headquarters!… British bombers heading towards us? One moment please!”
The female sergeant then yelled towards the corporal standing by the plotting board, making sure the caller could hear her.
“British bombers on the way! Stand by to plot!”
She then returned her attention to the caller, yelling the bearing, distance, speed and altitude as she got them.
“We are scrambling a wing of fighters as I speak, sir. Keep us informed.”
Nobody of course called a fighter airbase to pass that information on. Mortified, Kesselring started to understand what game the British were playing: by seizing this headquarters, they would temporarily paralyze all German fighter activity over Northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands, thus opening the skies to massive British bomber attacks. His own bomber airbases were likely in for a terrifying pounding. Four more calls from radar stations were similarly decoyed before Laplante yelled in English.
“Two minutes to first air strike! Take cover and stay away from the windows!”
She then switched to German for the benefit of her prisoners.
“Our bombers are about to pound the coastal defenses and airfields around Wissant. It will probably feel like judgment day but don’t worry: we are not part of the target list, at least not the intentional one.”
Kesselring didn’t find her joke funny. Young Ingrid didn’t either. The noise of heavy bombers approaching then got their full attention.
“EVERYBODY DOWN!” Yelled Laplante, doing so herself. Less than a minute later, what sounded and felt like the end of the world shook the whole building, shattering all the windows. Seven more huge blasts quickly followed, the last one close enough that the blast wave, penetrating through the broken windows, temporarily knocked out the breath of everybody inside. Kesselring understood that the British were using the same dreadful blast bombs that had literally blown away the fighter factories in Germany. Ingrid was by now hysterical, her screams of terror only muffled by her gag. Laplante crouched besides the teenager and firmly grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Ingrid!… Ingrid! You wanted to prove something to yourself by enlisting, right? Then prove it now by being brave. Control yourself!”
The teenager looked at her briefly before starting to cry. Laplante held her in her arms, trying to soothe her with calming words. Kesselring and Osterkamp looked at each other in puzzlement. Then, another wave of heavy bombers approached.
Karl Gross watched with horror from his company’s dug-in positions on a hill northeast of Wissant as the battalion’s forward positions along the beaches were swept by gigantic blast waves. The British bombs were falling over half a mile away, yet each blast knocked him flat against the earthen back wall of his trench, nearly taking his breath away. He thought that everybody in those forward positions must have been crushed to death by the overpressure. Then another wave of bombers approached at low altitude. He followed one of them with his eyes as it was coming directly at him, its bomb bay opened. A single, huge bomb fell out of it, a parachute deploying from its tail and braking its fall. Gross could do nothing but watch in abject terror as the bomb headed directly towards his trench.
09:22 (Paris Time)
JagdFliegerFuhrer 2 headquarters
Wissant
After the fourth wave of bombers was gone, Nancy Laplante let go on Ingrid, who had mostly quieted down by now.
“Are you alright, Ingrid?”
The teenager nodded her head. Laplante then went to talk with another British officer. She next went to a soldier wearing a field radio on his back and talked in the microphone for a while. After another few minutes, what sounded like multiple aircraft engines approached from the direction of the sea. That was when Laplante got moving and yelling again.
“THE RIDE HOME IS ARRIVING! PACK UP AND GET READY TO MOVE! WARRANT HIGGINS, GET THE PRISONERS TO THE MAIN ENTRANCE!”
Still gagged and with their hands tied, the Germans were firmly but not brutally put on their feet and walked to the main entrance. Laplante, waiting by the opened door, saw them shiver as the cold outside air blew in on the Germans. She then looked at the nearby cloakroom, full of German overcoats.
“Warrant Higgins!”
“Yes, Maam?” Answered the British NCO in charge of the prisoners.
“Bring each prisoner in turn inside that cloakroom and have them find and put on their coats. Make sure there are no weapons or interesting papers inside the pockets first.”
“I’m on it, Maam!”
As Kesselring was putting on his own overcoat, he heard the noise of heavy tracked vehicles approaching. His anticipated joy at seeing a Wehrmacht armored column deliver them was doused by the attitude of the British soldiers, who did not look alarmed one bit. He then understood with a pang that the column must be British. As they were being lined up outside by the British, the Germans saw the first of four tanks turn a corner towards them. Kesselring could see immediately that the machine was no German tank: the impressive beast now close by could apparently eat raw for lunch a Panzer IV, the most powerful German tank in service at this time. The four tanks, followed by what looked like four armored troop carriers, sped by them before taking position at the next corner. Three British trucks then stopped in front of the headquarters building. Three of the six British soldiers who jumped out of the trucks were women. Nancy Laplante pointed at the middle truck and yelled in German.
“All male prisoners will now get on this truck. Move!”
She then took aside the seven female auxiliaries and the two general officers.
“You go in the last truck.’’
Letting two armed commandos escort the Germans to the truck, Nancy walked quickly to the bakery shop, where Jean Poissant was locking the door of his house, his little family standing on the sidewalk with six suitcases at their feet. The baker had tears in his eyes as he looked for a last time at his home.
“We are abandoning our whole life but I suppose that it is better than waiting for the Gestapo to visit us later. For the sake of my little Diane, let’s go.”
Nancy escorted the Poissants to the third truck, helping at the same time to carry their belongings. By then, the rapid fire of tank guns could be heard from the South. Nancy shouted at both German generals.
“That, gentlemen, is the rest of our mechanized force finishing off what’s left of a couple of your airfields.”
Stepping aside from the truck, she then signaled to Major Townsend, standing besides the lead truck, to start rolling. Climbing in the cab of her truck, Nancy sighed discreetly in relief as the convoy rolled out, escorted by the four tanks and four armored personn