This story and its sequel are combined as the third and final in the collection Sjef’s Super Stories, the product of my 11 year old mind in that last year of primary school, 1992. In this story the names of the characters have been changed in order to protect the identities of the individuals involved, and two words I was required to censor in class have been restored to their rightful place. Now I will also apologize to Germans, what can I say, I knew you only from old pulp war comics. Most of you are alright.

“Lewes bombs,”
“Check.”
“Grenades,”
“Check.”
“All right that’s the lot,” Tom said. “You got the plans Jim?”
“Yep, first we’ll take the jeep and latch onto the convoy headed for the airfield, destroy all the trucks but two, get on the airfield and blow it sky high…”
“And get caught and put in a POW camp.” Joe butted in.
“No,” said Tom, “getting caught is SIG (Special Intelligence Group)’s job.”
“All right, all right,” Joe said. “What do we do then?” he asked me.
“We go out along this back road,” I said. “Then we shoot up the petrol dump on the way and hide out in the hills for a while.”
“Sounds like fun for half a million,” Joe said, “let’s go.”

Two hours later we were racing along when the convoy came into sight.
“O.K Joe, you get behind the first truck then move up and stop the other trucks as Tom and I move along.” The first part of the operation was a cinch. Joe drove up behind the truck, Tom and I jumped onto the back of the truck, ‘quietly detained’ the driver and then kept on driving like nothing had happened. Joe then drove up to the driver of the next truck and asked for a light while I jumped on the back, threw the driver out, gave the thumbs-up to Tom and kept on driving. About 10 seconds later Joe was signaling that he needed to pee so Tom and I quietly stabbed a tire each on the excuse that we had run over a nail. Joe told the other drivers to go on and that he would stay and help. After Joe had had his pee we decided how to get rid of the remaining three trucks. Tom and I would burn past the trucks shooting them up with our M:16’s and Joe would follow up in the jeep biffing grenades into whatever was left.

The tires were quickly changed and soon we were racing down the track leaving three small infernos behind us. We passed onto the airfield easily with Joe passing as an armored escort. That night we crept out onto the airfield and planted lewes bombs with half hour fuses on all the aircraft. Then we took our gear which we had hidden and drove away in the confusion. Half an hour later we were miles away laughing and talking about what we would do with the money from the operation, when we heard the steady beat of a chopper.
“Aw shit!” Joe yelled, “I knew we should have put a bomb on that last shed!” The chopper came into sight and turned out to be nothing but a charter, but when four leant out on the struts brandishing AK47s and rocket launchers our relief was quickly cut off.
“Shivers!” Joe yelled as he swerved off the track into the trees only to crash into a big rock which sent all the equipment over the front and us with it. We got up again rather quickly because of the machine gun storm around our feet.
“Joe you organize some transport, Tom and I are gonna kick some copter!”
About 5 minutes later Tom and I had succeeded in killing one of the men and Tom was just crawling over to grab his bazooka when Joe came racing over the hill on a motorbike rigged with a rocket launcher. He blew the copter away.
“C’mon!” he yelled, “your bikes are over the hill!”

After that we blew up the petrol dump (which was easy meat) and headed for the hills. After about six months, the Germans decided that they couldn’t find us and almost immediately we were wired by our C.O for our next job. As we drove up to the offices Joe reckoned something was wrong but Tom and I ignored him and walked into the building. As soon as we stepped in the door, we knew that Joe had been right. The security doors slammed shut and about 12 men armed with Gatling guns stepped out from behind the desks and from the balconies.
“DAMN!” Tom yelled, “DAMN, DAMN, DAMN!”
Then a German officer stepped out, “Aahhh, the legendary S.S.S… …YOU WILL ALL BE IN COLDITZ FOR LIFE!!!!”

HOW WILL THE S.S.S SQUAD ESCAPE?
FIND OUT IN S.S.S 2, ESCAPE FROM COLDITZ

###

Secret Sabotage Service 2
ESCAPE FROM COLDITZ

“O.K, You were right and we were wrong,” Tom said to Joe as we clanked along, manacled together in the prison exercise yard,
“We aren’t at a total loss, we’ve still got the gelignite we always keep stuffed under our toenails, the fuse Jim keeps in his hair…”
“But not the detonator on my ring,” Joe butted in. “You may recall that we were stripped for jewellery before we even got here…OW!!” he exclaimed as a rifle butt connected with his shoulder.

A few hours later we were discussing our situation over porridge and black bread when Joe became frustrated and biffed his spoon at the wall. The metal struck the rock and sparks flew from it.
“Yes!” yelled Tom jumping in the air and whacking his head on the low roof of our cell.
“What’s so great?” I asked.
“Don’t you see?” Tim said. “These cells have just been fitted with nice new electronic locks, we can stuff our gelignite in the lock, set it alight and fry out the system!”
None of us really thought about the fact that our cell was 2 floors and 20 guards below ground, and when we got outside there were walls, fences, machine guns and dogs before we were free. We agreed to carry out the operation that night.

The 10:00pm guard had just walked past, and Tom was packing the explosive into the locks, Joe was trying to light a fire with the spoon and some leaves and I was keeping watch. Our moment of glory came at about 10:10 when Joe finally got the fuse to burn and we heard a fizzz POP! As our lock snapped open and we climbed out into the hallway, we realised our first mistake. We had no idea where to go or how to get there, and there were about four different passages leading out just down the hall. We decided not to split up but stick together and try the passages by trial and error. We tried two passages but they were both dead ends.
“Oh well, third time lucky,” Tom said.
“Knowing your luck we might as well give up now,” said Joe who seemed to have a sixth sense for failure. He was right. We walked down the passage, opened a door and walked right in on Adolf Hitler, lying on his bed in long johns cuddling a teddybear.
“Oh fuck” I said and made the worst mistake of my life. Cuddly Adolf woke up and before we knew it we were in separate cells in the cooler. That night a guard that spoke english came past and started up a conversation with Joe. Tom and I listened in carefully. Finally came the crunch. The guard asked Joe if he had a motorbike. Joe replied,
“Yeah, a Slow Scrap Suzuki…” to which the guard replied,
“I have a custom with Special Integrated Gearing.”
“Could you slip us some coarse beard?”
“I’ll do even better”, the guard replied, “I’ll get you some hot chilli.”
“Thanks,” I replied, and that was all. The next week the guard came past again, all he said was “By your doors, 2300 hours.”

That night at 11 o’clock we were all waiting at our cell doors, wondering what would happen. Then the guard (whom we later found out was called Steve), came running down the hall. He threw us flack-jackets shouting, “Get down!”

At that moment there was a massive explosion and a colonel came through the hole in the wall brandishing a M:16 with a smoking grenade launcher fitted.
“Anders!” Joe said, “Tom, Anders and I went through high school together!”
“Yeah, wow,” Tom said, “Let’s just get the heck out of here shall we?” The sirens went off then, and searchlights started waving around in the darkness. We were quickly spotted and the air was shattered by the sound of nazi machine gun fire. Then, almost as if on cue, the tower exploded, the searchlights shattered and all power was cut.
“How the heck..!?” Tom exclaimed.
Then Jake and Len whom we knew from S.A.S training came around the corner, grinning with an AK47 and a rocket launcher.
“All right let’s go!” Jake yelled. All it took was a few more grenades and we were out of the prison. We jumped into the waiting jeeps and drove off towards Switzerland.

A few weeks later we were approached by our C.O who offered us a million to blow up the prison we had just escaped from. We relished the thought of vengeance but our answer was,
“No thanks, we quit.”

Sjef van Gaalen, 1992.