S-Day: A Memoir of the Invasion of England

1

A HUNDRED FEET ABOVE THE TOMATO PATCHES, oat fields, and dairy barns of southwest Scotland, a German Messerschmitt 110 streaked toward Glasgow. The howl of its dual engines pierced the green Scottish countryside as they pushed the plane 300 miles an hour.

The pursuit-fighter had departed from Augsburg, near Munich, at 6: 00 P.M. and had flown in an unwavering course across the channel. At the English coast the plane had descended from 15,000 feet and begun hedge-hopping to avoid detection by English spotters. A British Spitfire would have made an easy kill of the Me 110, because the Me’s three fuselage cannons and four wing machine guns would never be fired. The three-man fighter carried only a pilot. This was the plane’s first and last flight.

The Luftwaffe serial card in the flight purse identified the pilot as Hauptmann Alfred Horn. Unlike most fighter pilots, Horn was a big man, and his broad, beefy shoulders strained sorely against the side panels of the cockpit. A minor irritation during the first hour of the flight, this discomfort had evolved into a pain that began between his shoulderblades and seared down both arms. But this was the only blemish in a journey that had thus far been flawless.

German coastal weather stations had promised excellent flying conditions over England. Broken clouds at 10,000 feet forecast for the English coast had not materialized, which made flying by landmarks even easier than the Hauptmann had hoped. The packet of maps of England and Scotland in the leather compartment by his knee was unopened. For weeks before the flight he had studied maps and pictures of British towns. Shapes of steeples and town halls had been committed to memory. Now a glance at a distinctive building or lake or mountain would immediately confirm his location and course.

Flying the Messerschmitt was an intense physical experience. Horn’s senses were assaulted by the fighter. On each side of the cockpit was a Daimler-Benz twelve-cylinder 1,350-horsepower engine. Their combined effect was to produce a roar, an endless piercing bellow of such ferocity that only with concerted effort could Horn prevent the cacophony from overwhelming him.

Air in the cockpit was thick with oil and exhaust. During his first flight in an Me 110 five months ago, Horn had prematurely landed the plane and vaulted from the cockpit almost before it rolled to a stop on the runway. He ran toward the hangar, frantically waving for the fire team. With sirens screaming, the fire trucks dashed to the fighter, but found it warm, ready to run, and distinctly not on fire. Horn asked the amused ground-crew sergeant why the Me 110, the crux of the Luftwaffe fighter force and the scourge of Poland, was devoid of such refinements as padded seats, breathable air, and a bearable decibel level. The sergeant explained that in 1938 Hermann Göring and his retinue visited Augsburg for a tour personally conducted by Professor Willi Messerschmitt. Göring was delighted by the Me 110 and posed for photographers while sitting in the pilot’s seat of a plane that had just rolled off the production line. As he climbed out of the cockpit, the obese Reich Marshal became wedged in the hatch. Although this embarrassing incident lasted only a minute, the flushed Göring and the frantic Willi Messerschmitt pulled and grunted at each other just long enough for scores of photographs to be taken. Göring’s aides immediately rounded up most of the photos for reasons of state security, but Himmler was rumored to have two or three. Funds for the comfort of Me 110 pilots became one of Göring’s lower priorities. This incident, the sergeant added, was not mentioned above the rank of lieutenant to that day.

So now Hauptmann Horn was paying for the Fat One’s fat. The engines’ howl, the acrid cockpit air, and the increasingly sharp shoulder and back pain began to dominate and muddy his thoughts. Scottish countryside, so breathtaking from 15,000 feet, swept past at a mesmerizing pace as the Messerschmitt screamed toward Glasgow a few hundred feet above the ground.

Dusk made hedge-hopping even more dangerous. Horn peered intently through the windshield, trying not to lose the land’s contour. At this elevation the altimeter was useless. He suppressed the urge to yank back the stick and climb to a safer altitude. Treetops and hills flew at him in an unending, numbing stream.

Dusk dimmed to darkness. Horn could now see only the land’s silhouette against the deep purple sky. Fewer landmarks were recognizable. His eyes flashed to the instrument panel. The directional gyro and magnetic compass, glowing in muted green light, showed his flight to be on course, directly northwest. All other instruments checked out. He smiled grimly as he saw the fuel gauge registering eighth capacity. This, it said, was a one-way flight. Years would pass before he would again see his lovely Ilse and their four-year-old son, Wolf.

In the weeks before his flight, Horn had bid a silent good-bye to his family. Wolf would be much older when his father returned and Horn worried that his son’s memories would not survive the absence. The boy was young. Memories didn’t last. And so during April and early May, Horn had left home late and returned early each day to be with him. They walked for hours in the zoo at Hellabrunn and along the Isar River. Evenings were spent playing games in the study of their home at Harlaching. At Horn’s request, his wife used rolls and rolls of film capturing father and son together.

Horn sadly remembered his wife’s many questions during this time. Why during the war should he come home early? Why the new radio transmitter-receiver in the workroom, contrary to war regulations? And why the long hours reading in the study at night, door bolted from the inside? Not telling his beloved Ilse about the plans had pained Horn. But a few hours from now she would know. The entire world would know. And they would not believe.

Horn looked up from the panel and instantly knew he was in peril. There was no purple sky, only blackness. Gott in Himmel. The ground. He jerked back on the stick and slammed the throttle to full. The Daimler-Benz engines erupted with sound and Horn was thrust back into the metal seat as the Messerschmitt shot upward. For three timeless seconds the fighter screamed into the blackness. And then the curved, dark indigo line of the horizon dropped into view and rushed under the plane. The Me 110 skimmed over the crest of a large hill.

Horn fought back the euphoria that drugs men who have cheated death. There was no time for it, because he instinctively knew that the small mountain which almost took his life was his target, Dungavel Hill.

Horn leveled the straining plane and banked it southwest toward the Firth of Clyde. He throttled back until it was cruising toward the sea at 150 miles per hour. A few minutes later he reached the firth and turned south, to follow the coastline. He spotted Ardrossan, the small spur of land jutting out from the Ayr County coast. His flight had been exactly on course. He pulled a catch under the panel and the auxiliary tank dropped from the fuselage and fell toward the sea.

Night was almost total as the plane banked left to make the final approach to its destination. He cinched up the front buckles of his parachute and for the last time checked the position of the release cord. To have attempted to land the plane in a rough Scottish meadow in pitch blackness would have been fatal. And he was too good a German to give the Tommies a chance to closely examine an intact Messerschmitt with its new and secret innovations. Pilot and plane would part company at 3,000 feet.

Several lights flickered below. This was Eaglesham, a tiny town eight miles west-by-southwest of Dungavel House. Anyone so flagrantly violating the blackout laws in Germany would have been arrested.

Horn’s eyes darted between the panel clock and the ground-speed indicator. He could no longer see landmarks, so to gauge distance he counted slowly, unaware he was mouthing the seconds. Twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Thirty.

He thrust the stick ahead. The fighter plunged downward in a power dive, accelerating faster and faster toward the ground. At 1,000 feet he pulled the plane up into a tight arc. Centrifugal force crushed him into the seat and ground pain into his shoulders. The plane swept toward the stars.

Horn had rehearsed the bail-out maneuver in his mind a hundred times. He tugged the hatch release on the windshield frame and slid the cabin roof back over his head. Cold, violent wind poured into the cockpit. He flicked the engine tumbler switches and feathered the props. The mills died abruptly.

The chilling silence heightened the German’s sense of impending danger. Penetrating engine rumble had been a source of confidence, and now there was only rushing wind. The plane was pushed by momentum and it slowed rapidly as it climbed. Timing was critical. At stall speed the flaps and rudders would be useless and the plane paralyzed. Horn had to anticipate the loss of maneuverability by several seconds, because the Messerschmitt had one final, vital act to perform.

An instant before the stall, Horn rolled the plane onto its back. Black Scotland turned upside down. He jammed his left arm against the cockpit wall to brace himself and then popped the safety-strap buckle. Twisted by the wind, the straps dangled crazily and the buckles slapped Horn’s chin. Blood rushed to his head. Gripping the window frame, he let himself drop to a standing position on the seat. Even at this low speed the crash of wind pummeled him against the hatch cover as he emerged from the cockpit. The German waited until the plane was almost motionless, released his grip, and fell into space.

A thudding jolt ripped through Horn and sucked out his breath as the chute burst open and the billowing white cloth strained against its rope environs.

Crystalline silence. Stillness. Horn’s taut muscles unwound. The night air was brisk as he gently swayed to and fro in the harness. His chute was an ephemeral vision, a pale, ghostly presence obscured by the darkness above him. Time was suspended. Maybe only seconds passed. Maybe minutes. Horn had no sensation of descending, just a comforting calmness as Scotland came to him.

Horn hit the pasture, and something cracked in his ankle. He rolled twice, then lay still for several seconds, trying to orient himself. The grazing grass was damp and cold. Just as he raised himself to his knees, a wind gust caught the chute and jerked him backward into the air and heavily to the ground. The parachute bloomed and raced along the pasture. Horn was pulled like a sled at a frantic pace across the field. His hands automatically reached for the release buckles. His one thought: he did not want history to record he had been pulled through a Scottish cow pie.

A new squall blustered the chute into a swirl and whirled it across the field like a cartwheel. The lines twisted and spun Horn onto his stomach, then onto his back, and finally into a bumpy roll. Plow rows, gopher mounds, and creeping blackberry vines bruised and tore him. Damp rye grass splashed his face. His arms bounced and jarred against the ground, reducing his efforts to release the harness to a wild flailing of his chest. He skidded across the pasture.

The parachute suddenly collapsed. Horn quickly stood, tore off the harness, and stepped toward the spiritless chute. His right leg crumpled and he dropped heavily to the ground. He sat upright and painfully reached for his ankle.

“Who ae ye?” The yell was unnaturally loud over the still pasture. “Ae ye German?”

A winded, partially clothed farmer stood ten yards from Horn, whooping great lungfuls of air and nervously rubbing his hands. From his craggy, weatherbeaten face, Horn guessed the man was a plowman who had spent his entire life walking behind a team of horses.

As if in answer, the sound of a metallic, screeching, rending crash lashed out across the pasture. Metal tore from metal, and glass splintered violently. The grinding jumped to a high-pitched wail, which ended four seconds after it had begun. There’s the crash, thought Horn, but where’s the explosion?

The farmer turned from the sound to the pilot, who was trying to stand again, and said, “’ Twasn’t an RAF plane, was it?”

“No,” Horn grunted as he cautiously tried weight on his right leg, “it was a Messerschmitt.” His English was webbed with a guttural German accent.

“Where’d it come froom?” the farmer asked, glancing again toward the wreckage.

“From Germany.”

“And where’d ye come froom?”

“From Germany.”

“Jaysus.” The plowman could not move. He was frozen by the history of this moment. A German had landed on Scottish soil. The invasion had begun.

“Where’re yer goons?”

“I have no weapons. I am alone. There are no others,” answered the German as he stooped to unlace his boot. “I think I have broken my ankle.”

The plowman ran forward and put his arm under the pilot’s to help take weight off the injured leg.

“Me ’ut’s o’er there.” He pointed to the small cottage barely visible in the darkness. Just as the plowman and pilot took the first arm-in-arm step, the sound of a dull, thudding explosion reached them from the remnants of Horn’s fighter. Both men looked over their shoulders, to see a brilliant flame shoot up from the silhouetted wreckage and sputter and die just as suddenly. Horn smiled to himself. Now there would be very little left of his plane.

Tea was brewing when Horn and the farmer reached the house. The plowman’s mother had put her white-lace doily on the lamp table and was scooping sugar into a bowl when he pushed open the door with his foot. He was utterly exhausted and used both arms in a clumsy attempt to keep weight off Horn’s bad ankle. Despite the farmer’s efforts, Horn winced with each slow step. The plowman hauled Horn to the best chair in the cottage, a grainy, horsehair-stuffed leather affair whose springs had long ago conformed to the bony protrusions of the peasant’s thin backside. The pilot gratefully slumped into it as the old woman brought him a cup of steaming tea. She was a little, intense woman with gray hair pulled back into a severe bun. She wore an oft-repaired night robe the same color as her hair.

“No, thank you, madam. May I have a glass of water.”

It was meant to be a question, but it wasn’t. The old lady knew from his first accented word that the man seldom asked for anything. His appearance reinforced this. German pilots wore blue-gray uniforms made of the poorest-quality wool. Horn wore a single-piece fine leather jumpsuit that fit him as if made by a Bond Street tailor. The supple leather of his boots was capped by a dark fur lining that ringed the boot tops. On the silken collars of his azure shirt were patches edged in twisted aluminum cord and embroidered with oak leaves.

“Who ae ye?” The plowman managed to blurt out the question through great quaffs of air. He had fallen into the wooden rocking chair near the fireplace, and his gasping efforts to catch his breath spastically rocked the chair.

“I am Captain Alfred Horn of the Luftwaffe.”

When the pilot failed to contribute more information, the farmer awkwardly volunteered, “Weel, I’m David McLean, and this here’s me mother.”

The pilot nodded. “I must see the Duke of Hamilton immediately. Tonight.”

“The Duke o’ Hamilton? Now, why would a fighter pilot be wantin’ to see the duke?” McLean asked. He knew whatever answer he got would only be partially true at best. Horn may have come in a Messerschmitt, but he was no fighter pilot. He was too old. Must be forty-five or forty-six. And fighter pilots of all countries were short, thin men who could fit into cramped cockpits. Large men were made waist gunners on bombers. McLean had seen several downed German fighter pilots being paraded near the Glasgow city hall by their Home Guard captors when he was in town three weeks ago. Without their planes wrapped around them, they were nothing. Horn was big, over a head taller than the farmer. And heavy. After half-carrying the German across two fields, McLean could testify to that.

McLean’s glance dropped to the thin gold wristwatch on Horn’s left hand. The farmer had seen only a few watches as expensive as this, and they were all worn by Members of Parliament touring the county, reluctantly extending their dainty hands to farmers to demonstrate they were humble enough to be elected again. In Lanark County they usually weren’t.

The McLeans sensed there was more to the German than the trappings. Horn projected commanding competence, an aura of dignified, noble ability. It was an element which so rarely entered their peasant lives that it was not defined or understood but was overwhelmingly impressed upon them. The man was of the social stratum that transcended national boundaries and was as inaccessible to the McLeans as a foreign country.

It was his eyes. Almost hidden behind overpowering thick black eyebrows which grew together over the bridge of his nose, the eyes missed nothing. They were sharp and unrelenting. Never did they slip out of focus, clouded by a fatigue or a passing reverie. They contacted, analyzed, accepted or rejected, and flashed to another subject. The eyes, more than the leather boots or the gold watch, were the indicia of Horn’s station.

“I have a message for the duke. I must speak to him tonight. How far is his home?” Horn asked, speaking slowly, molding the words with his German accent.

“Weel, ’tis aboot twelve miles or so froom here. But ’tis unlikely ye’ll be seein’ the duke tonight. ’Tis past…” McLean glanced at the wall clock and saw that the pendulum hung lifeless behind the beveled lead glass. This was the cap to an already bizarre evening. He had lived in the cottage all his life, and this was the first time the pendulum had stopped. “It moos be ten-thirty or so.”

Horn’s wristwatch sparked reflected light from the ceiling bulb. “Oh, no,” he said, “it is nine-thirty. I set this watch before I left Augsburg.”

“Ye ferget,” McLean said, a small smile coming to his craggy face, “Scotland is on Dooble Soommer Time. We use the extra hour o’ light each day to load the antiaircraft goons.”

The little victory was not savored long.

“That must be why the British gunners are doing such a good job protecting London from our nightly bombings, nicht wahr?” Horn asked, but as soon as he saw McLean’s face drop and, perhaps more importantly, the old lady pick up a pair of scissors from the mantel, he quickly added, “That was ungracious of me. Please accept my apology. My flight tonight is an act of peace, not of war. Here, look at my son I left behind.”

Horn fumbled into his jumpsuit and extracted a billfold. “This is Wolf. He is four.” Horn paused and added softly, “I don’t know when I’ll see him again.”

The aristocracy and authority fell away from Horn’s voice as he spoke of his son. The photograph showed Horn dressed in slacks and a white shirt, kneeling next to a small dark-haired boy. Both were smiling, enjoying the moment. McLean knew the pilot would not see his son again until after the war was over.

The cottage front door shuddered from the force of a beating meant to be a knock.

“Open up, McLean. There’s a kroot ’idin’ aroon’ ’ere.”

McLean recognized the high-pitched voice of Archie Clark, the local Home Guard. The thudding came again. “McLean. Open up.”

“Jaysus,” McLean said as he leaned to the side of his chair, flicked the door handle, and slumped again back into his seat. He didn’t look up as Clark burst into the room, waving his World War I Webley pistol wildly.

“McLean,” Clark yelled, oblivious of the closeness of the small room, “there’s a kroot ’idin’ oot aroon’ ’ere, and…” He saw Horn and froze, speechless.

Horn pointed to the closet door and with his deep German accent said, “You might look in that closet.”

Clark’s head thrust forward as if to get a better look at the German officer. The paralysis vanished. He jerked the heavy pistol at Horn and shouted, “’Ands oop. Get those ’ands oop.”

Startled by Clark’s sudden recovery, Mrs. McLean raised her hands above her head.

“God’s teeth, poot the bloomin’ goon away, Archie,” McLean said. “Last time ye ’ad it oot, ye shot woon o’ Widow Hightower’s goats in the arse.”

Clark was quickly reassured by McLean’s sardonic command. He knew from their long friendship it was a tone McLean used only among friends and in controlled situations. But who was the big man sitting in McLean’s chair? He was dressed in a pilot’s jumpsuit, yet he was too old. From the twigs clinging to the fur on his boots, Clark guessed the pilot had crawled to McLean’s doorstep. Clark’s confused thoughts were disrupted by bootsteps on the cobblestone walkway.

Two soldiers loudly stomped through the open door. The distinctive blue-and-white flashes on their shirt sleeves marked them as signalers from the Royal Signal Corps, probably posted to Eaglesham. Both were clean-shaven and wore newly pressed uniforms. They had no doubt been called in from Saturday-night plans to aid in the search. Except for size, the two looked remarkably similar, and neither was in good humor.

“So, ano’er woon shot doon, eh? Ye’re a wee bit astray, me friend,” the shorter one said, not expecting the German to understand.

“Yes,” said Horn, “I was ordered to bomb the signal station near here but could not find it, so I began looking for the nearest church to drop my payload. We never waste a bomb.”

David McLean laughed, and was joined by his mother and Archie Clark, who holstered his pistol. The soldier went red in the face and his eyes hardened. He grabbed Clark’s pistol and pointed it at Horn’s head. The German’s smile vanished. He saw the veins stick out on the signaler’s neck and the corners of his mouth turn down. Unlike Clark, this was a man who didn’t point a gun unless he was seriously considering using it. Horn slowly raised his hands.

“Easy,” he said softly. “I am unarmed and I am here on official business and must see the Duke of Hamilton tonight. I will go with you to his home.”

Horn put the right amount of obsequiousness into his voice, to satisfy the signalman, who slackened the pressure on the trigger but did not lower the Webley. The malevolent smile returned.

Horn lumbered up from the deep chair, carefully keeping the weight off his right foot. He turned to Mrs. McLean and said, “I am apparently going with these gentlemen. Thank you, madam, for your kindness. You and your son”—he turned to McLean—” will be remembered.”

The larger signalman put his arm under the German’s and helped him out of the house. The smiling soldier followed without returning the pistol.

Archie Clark snapped the holster cover shut and said, “I moos say, the Home Guard acted bloody swift this night, wha’ say?” He paused to brush unseen dust from the epaulet straps on his khaki shirt and looked to McLean for approval.

McLean yawned widely, stretched, and clasped his hands behind his neck. “Donna ferget to mention yersel’ in yer report.”

Ignoring the comment, Clark continued, “Migh’ e’en be a promotion in this.”

“Wha’ does a farmer get promoted to?” McLean asked as he winked at his mother. Home Guard promotions were unheard of.

“Good na, General,” Mrs. McLean said, escorting Clark to the door. “And, Archie, thank ye.” She affectionately patted his shoulder as he walked out.

“Wha’ll happen to him, David?” she asked as she bolted the door and turned to her son, who was thoughtfully rocking in the chair and staring at the clock.

“Oh, he’ll go down to the McTavish Pub and yarn how he’s just shot down three or four bombers wi’ his pistol,” McLean replied, anticipating his mother’s hearty laugh.

Not this time. “Nae, nae, no’ Archie. Be serious. Where’ll they take the German?”

“Why, Mama, I do believe ye’ve been charmed,” he said. Seeing the concern which wrinkled her eyes, he continued, “Pe’eps to the Eaglesham jail foor a time. And then into the POW camp near Glasgow.”

“Foor how long?”

“A long time. At least till the end o’ the war. But there’s woon thing foor certain: Horn’ll nae see the Duke o’ Hamilton.”

Douglas Douglas Hamilton, the fourteenth Duke of Hamilton, Marquess of Douglas and Clydesdale, Earl of Angus, Arran, and Lanark, eleventh Duke of Brandon, and on and on, lay on the canvas cot in the whitewashed corridor outside the fighter-command operations room at Turnhouse. Layers of regulation RAF blankets warded off the chill of the Scottish May dawn. He had lain awake most of the night expecting the bell that had rung repeatedly during the previous four nights. Hamilton knew the alarm would sound before sunrise. Germans never did anything in fours, always in threes and fives. They would make it five in a row, and this certainty kept him awake.

For the last four successive nights the thirty-four-year-old duke had patrolled southwest Scotland in his Hurricane. The German bombing runs had been sporadic, without pattern, but with lethal effect. Glasgow and suburbs had been hit, as had the airfields on the firth. The RAF was reeling under the Luftwaffe’s attacks.

Fighter squadrons impressive on command charts were in reality painfully undersupplied and undermanned. Planes were robbed to keep other planes operable. Parts were promised, but rarely arrived. Many of the Hurricanes in Hamilton’s squadron were kept together with bailing wire and curses.

The pilots were chronically fatigued. A night’s sleep was unheard of. Irregular catnaps, gobbled food, and a sense of duty made hazy by tension and uncountable hours in the sky kept the pilots running to their planes at the alarm bell.

Hamilton was pushed not so much by loyalty to the Empire as his desperate desire for revenge. For weeks London and other English cities had been the bombers’ targets, and duty argued for his efforts. Now Scotland too was on fire, and loyalty became a burning. When the alarm bell rang, Hamilton was always first to his plane and first in the air. Rarely did he return with ammunition in the belts. His ground crew was perpetually overworked, because Hamilton’s plane required more service and care than any other at the airfield. The reason: Hamilton flew harder, longer, and with more ferocity than any other pilot in the squadron.

“Sir, wake up.” The controller rounded the corner from the ops room and approached the duke’s cot. His boots echoed in the hallway. “Wake up. It’s urgent.”

“What’s urgent, Corporal?” Hamilton responded without moving in the bed. If it wasn’t the alarm, it wasn’t urgent.

A German pilot has parachuted down near Eaglesham. He’s asked to speak to you.”

Hamilton lifted his head off the pillow to look at the controller, but still didn’t commit himself to leaving the bed. “Corporal, I suggest you mix a little water with it next time.”

“His name is Captain Alfred Horn, and he’s asked to see you personally.”

“I don’t know a Captain Alfred Horn. I don’t know any German pilots, for God’s sake. Can’t this wait, Corporal? It’s four in the morning.”

“No, Sir. The chief wants you at Maryhill Barracks immediately.”

The corporal was not usually this insistent, and Hamilton could see he was not leaving until the duke’s feet were on the ground.

“All right, all right. Get the staff car ready and out front.”

“It’s already there. So’s the driver.”

The efficiency by his subordinates was typical. The Duke of Hamilton had been appointed RAF wing commander at the outbreak of the war. Because he was the premier peer of Scotland, many airmen believed Hamilton would treat the position as an honorarium. They joked that any man who could trace his ancestors back to the thirteenth century must be genetically adept at staying alive long enough to procreate. The duke hadn’t.

His detractors didn’t know him. Hamilton had been in love with flying since age fourteen, when he spent hours watching the British pilots train in their biplanes. At age eighteen he was a skilled pilot. In 1933, as chief pilot on the Houston Everest Expedition, he became the first man to fly over Mount Everest. He had owned several planes before the war and flew them incessantly. He was now respected throughout the RAF as one of the most capable fighter pilots. His origins and reputation commingled and produced a mystique which caused junior officers and airmen to revere him.

Hamilton sat upright on the cot. The tension that had kept him awake did nothing to revitalize him. He was so exhausted he seemed as if in a cloud. The cot pulled at him, begging his return. His feet were a hundred miles away, and the lines of communication were scrambled by fatigue. The duke switched his mind off and began the routine. Feet into the pants already open and in position on the floor. Shirt off the wall hook. Flight jacket. Leather helmet. The helmet was almost strapped when his brain caught and he remembered that a car, not his Hurricane, waited for him. He threw the helmet onto the bed and numbly marched out the ops-room door toward the waiting automobile.

Since the outbreak of the war, Maryhill Barracks had grown from a single barracks to a small encampment of soldiers training for the front. No one considered dropping the name “barracks,” however, because it so aptly described the camp. Everything was single-ply—the walls, paint, blankets, barbed-wire fence, and toilet paper. Maryhill Barracks had been designed to last for the duration of the war, and the Army Architect Corps had great faith in Britain’s war machine. Five seconds after England’s victory, the barracks would crumble to the ground in a fine, forgettable powder.

There was an affinity between the barracks and his stables, thought the Duke of Hamilton as the staff car slid to a stop in front of the Barracks’ headquarters’ door. He stepped out into a knee deep haze of dust churned up by the car’s abrupt halt. The dust was the driver’s last effort to break the land-speed record on the road from Turnhouse to Maryhill Barracks. From the car’s squealing start Hamilton knew he would not catch up on his sleep during the jolting ride. An authority superior to the duke had ordered the driver to get the duke to the barracks as fast as possible. The lane-and-a-half-wide twisting country roads had become a Grand Prix circuit. When Hamilton had ordered the driver to slow, the private had grinned fiendishly and embedded the accelerator pedal even farther into the fire wall. Now it was over, and Hamilton was intact.

“Will that be all, sir?” called the private from the driver’s seat. Without looking, Hamilton knew the driver was still wearing the wolf’s grin and probably checking his watch for an elasped time.

“Yes, Private. Thank God.”

The car shot away, raising another film of dirt, which clung to Hamilton’s pants and gave his uniform a two-tone appearance. An RAF interrogation officer met him at the barracks’ headquarters’ door.

“Thank you for coming, sir. At 2200 hours, May 10, a Messerschmitt 110 crashed into a field in Lanark County, six miles from Eaglesham. The pilot bailed out and has suffered a broken ankle.”

The officer was well trained. His welcome had been short, rudely short from anyone other than an interrogation officer. Within thirty seconds the duke knew all the officer knew about the flight.

“Here’s what the pilot carried with him,” said the officer as he pointed to an assortment of objects on the table in the middle of the room. There were several photographs, a gold wristwatch, a camera, a flight purse, and an identification card. More interestingly, there was a small syringe with several needles. Hamilton opened a small, ornately carved wood box that contained an assortment of vials and capsules.

“Is the man ill?” asked Hamilton, nodding to the needles and bottles.

“No, sir. Our company doctor said those are homeopathic drugs.”

“Homeopathic?”

“Yes. The capsules and bottles contain extremely weak toxins that in large doses produce symptoms of diseases the man who takes them is trying to avoid. In the seventeenth century, people believed that by taking these drugs the diseases could be escaped.”

“Is Horn a kook?”

“I don’t believe so. He’s lucid and acts with a purpose. That purpose is to speak with you.”

“Perhaps I should see this Captain Horn.”

Horn had spent the night in the Maryhill stockade, the official title for a six-by-ten-foot room fastened to the headquarters building seemingly as an afterthought. The only furniture was a wood-and-canvas cot. He had slept with his flight uniform on. And slept well. The rigors of his cross-channel flight and night jump, combined with the interrogation officer’s incessant late-night questions, had taken their toll. He had been asleep before the door on his cell closed that night.

The sound of the bolt grating against its catch propelled Horn from sleep. The importance of his mission cleared his head like a breath of ammonia. He immediately knew where he was and whom he was expecting.

Nor was he disappointed. Horn had studied numerous photographs of the Duke of Hamilton, and the duke now stood before him in the open doorway. The duke’s strikingly handsome face was unmistakable. He was the highest-ranking Scottish nobleman and he looked it.

Hamilton entered the cell and closed the door behind him without saying anything. Horn stood, stepped gingerly forward, and said, “We met, sir, during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. I have come as Adolf Hitler’s emissary, with proposals for peace. I am Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess.”

* * * *

If Rudolf Hess had been expecting to be treated as a visiting dignitary, he was immediately and sorely disappointed. Rather than the prime minister or foreign secretary, Hess was visited by a series of psychiatrists, intelligence agents, and other assorted interrogators. When he wasn’t being questioned, Hess was confined in tiny cells in various prisons and secret houses.

Two weeks after his flight, Hess stopped jumping off his cot every time the cell door opened, expecting an emissary from Churchill coming to negotiate the future of Europe. His captors took his shoe laces and belt and returned his pill kit only when he stopped eating in protest. He was allowed to shave only when a guard hovered over him. The dim light bulb in his cell was always on, so that intent eyes could watch him twenty-four hours a day through the brick-size slot in the iron door. He was given only a spoon to eat with, which was taken from him as soon as he swallowed his last bite of each meal. When the doctors found spectacularly unsuccessful slashes on his wrists, the MP’s searched his cell for an hour and finally removed his bed springs. Then they pulled out the light fixture and lit the cell with a spotlight shining through a thick glass shield in the ceiling. He was shown how to salute his guards and how to properly address his superiors, which included everyone who visited his cell. His diet, exercise routine, and toilet habits were rigidly controlled.

Thus the British professionally and thoroughly reduced Germany’s deputy führer to a prisoner of war. The world thought it had heard the last of Rudolf Hess.