Young Lions Read Online Free PDF

determined to show the Germans that they were still soldiers.
    One man started whistling “Colonel Bogey.” More RRiFFs joined in. Soon they were all singing the familiar song:
     
    “Hitler
    Has only got one ball,
    Goering has two
    But very small,
    Himmler
    Has something similar,
    But poor old Goebbels
    Has no balls at all.”
     
    The Fusiliers marched into a field with Lieutenant-Colonel Hook in the lead with his swagger stick stuck under his arm. Witherspoon called a halt. As if on cue, German Army lorries arrived and parked with their rears facing the RRiFFs. The Fusiliers cheered. S.S. troops positioned themselves at the rear of the lorries to help unload the food.
    “That’s a lot of lorries, Lance-Corporal,” Sam observed.
    “Well, Sam,” Vincent said, “there’s a lot of us,” pointing to the other RRiFFs, “there’s well over a hundred of us and there’ll be food in there for the Jerries as well.”
    “Oh yes,” Sam conceded, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
    “What’s for breakfast, Jerry?” A Fusilier good naturedly asked the S.S. officer in command.
    “Lead, Tommy,” he replied. The S.S. officer swung the Schmessier machine gun up in an arc and sprayed a stream of bullets, catching the RRiFF in the chest and throwing him backwards like a rag doll.
    The S.S. troops dropped the lorry tailgates with a loud sudden bang. The machine guns inside opened up, their crews methodically sweeping the barrels from left to right. The MG 42 machine guns spat out 1200 rounds per minute and tore great strips through the unarmed Fusiliers knocking them down like ten pins. Groaning in heaps and dying silently on their own. Head wounds, stomach wounds, leg and arm wounds. The crews traversed their machine guns from left to right until no one was left standing. Gradually the screaming and the shouting died out to be replaced by moaning and crying.
     
    “Run, Sam! Run!” Vincent screamed. Sam ran until his chest was bursting, until his lungs were screaming for oxygen. A machine gun burst stitched a line of holes in the wall of the house to his left. He didn’t know where he was going. Anywhere out of here. He was in Fairfax. I can hide in Fairfax, he thought to himself. Another burst. A yell of pain. “Keep going, Sam!” Vincent shouted his voice hoarse with pain. As Sam turned around he saw a German fifty yards behind him. Firing a burst point blank into Vincent’s back as he ran past.
    “Bastard!” Sam thought. No time to grieve. Keep running. Another burst. Sam tripped and fell. He lay on the ground. Where’s the pain? I feel nothing. Am I paralyzed? Am I dying? Is this what it’s like? His brain was still working. Not another burst. Three single shots. From ahead of him. Not behind. Sam looked over his shoulder. The German lying flat on his back. A gaping hole in the centre of his chest. Sam turned back to the front.
     
    “What the hell’s going on?” Lindau asked as he got out of the lorry.
    It was painfully obvious. S.S. troops were wandering around the field which was covered in a carpet of British dead. They were firing at point blank range into the heads of the wounded to finish them off.
    Von Schnakenberg spotted the S.S. officer in charge and stomped up to him.
    “Hauptsturmfuhrer, what is going on here?” von Schnakenberg demanded.
    The S.S. officer looked at von Schnakenberg as if he was the local village idiot. “The prisoners tried to escape, sir.”
    “‘Tried to escape?’”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Over one hundred prisoners tried to escape? All at once? One hundred unarmed prisoners being guarded by thirty S.S. soldiers armed with six machine guns tried to escape?” Von Schnakenberg shook his head in disbelief.
    “Yes, sir.” Hauptsturmfuhrer Zorn stuck to his guns.
    Von Schnakenberg had the distinct feeling that Zorn did not care one way or another whether von Schnakenberg believed him or not. “Hauptsturmfuhrer, what were your orders?”
    “To take care of the prisoners,