Urotsukidoji - Overfiend ‘44: The Hell Portal.

Chapter 1.
England.
RAF Bisterne.
Hampshire.

  “Okay, boys. This is gonna be a trip. You’re ‘chuting down into a field on the edge of woodland on the Polish/German border…”

  “Lieutenant Kahn, I believe this presentation is my domain.” 

Kahn, First Lieutenant and Platoon Commander ground his teeth at the way the clipped accent of the British Colonel pronounced his rank ‘left-ten-ant’ but he said nothing. He merely stood to attention and stared up at the tall, fifty-something English gentleman. The British officer stood almost a head taller than Kahn but he was a pencil pusher, a fuddy-duddy, an asshole.

However, he wasn’t wrong. Kahn might like to brief his own people, but here in this British Airforce base in Hertfordshire… No, Hampshire - these stupid British places all sounded the same – he wasn’t in charge.

He held the Colonel’s steel grey eyes for a long moment, a hint of a scowl touching his thin lips, just until the Colonel’s drawn cheeks started to colour, and then he stepped down from the little podium and turned to face his men, rolling his eyes surreptitiously at his Squad Leader as the bulky Sergeant Carson caught his eye, his own eyebrows raised, mouth scowling.

The British Colonel cleared his throat and cast his cold, arrogant eyes across the dozen men seated before him. Less than half of them were looking his way.

  “Right then, pay attention, you men. You shall be dropped… Here.”

The officer used his swagger stick to point out a green polygonal shape on a map pinned to a corkboard on the wall. They were inside a mission planning room at the Royal Airforce base, which essentially resembled a classroom. A score of simple wooden chairs filled the floor, facing a raised dais which itself housed a small low table and the wall-mounted corkboard, with a large blackboard alongside it. There were numerous tables against the outer edges of the room’s walls, pushed up out of the way. A wall-to-wall bank of windows to the Colonel’s left, revealed a bright blue summer sky and beyond them came a subdued grumble of aircraft engines undergoing maintenance. The low din provided a constant underscore of background-noise. 

The corkboard offered a necessary focal point for the men and sported a largescale map showing the eastern half of Germany and the western half of Poland, along with the northern slash of Czechoslovakia forming the lower third.

The dozen men facing the officer, sitting on the hastily arranged wooden chairs, were doing pretty much anything but paying attention. They were slouching and lounging on the too small chairs, smoking and muttering to each other. The Colonel baulked but said nothing, just looked down at them with a passive-aggressive grimace. These were the dozen hand-selected men of an Air Infantry platoon, from the American 541st Parachute Infantry regiment? They were acting like a bunch of ill-disciplined children? Bloody Yanks!

  “You’re to march through these woods to this point…” Another tap with the swagger stick. “That’s one mile from this small village, here, where you will rendezvous with a small team of operatives, in a farmhouse just outside the village. There are two British Engineers out of our Baker Street Irregulars… That’s the SOE to you lot…”

  “What the fuck’s SOE?” One of the paratroopers drawled.

  “Special Operations Executive, dumbass…” Sergeant Carson growled, tossing some balled-up paper across the room at the ‘dumbass’.

The Colonel, huffed impatiently and then raised his voice, talking over the elevating clamour of good-natured ribbing that had abruptly started to infect the Americans.

  “…The two Royal Engineers are already in-situ and are working alongside a small team of a joint Polish and, as I understand it, German Resistance…”

  “German resistance?! Bullshit!”

Frustration getting the better of him, the Colonel whacked his swagger stick down onto the low table separating him from the men.

  “Lieutenant, would you kindly ensure your men refrain from these impromptu outbursts?” 

Lieutenant Kahn stifled a lopsided smile, cleared his throat to bring them men under control and then eyed the private who had made the outburst.

  “They tend to be German-Poles plus a few Germans who are opposed to the government. Members of Olimp…” Kahn clarified.

  “Still sounds like bullshit to me!” The private muttered to himself but refrained from further outbursts.

  “So, Lieutenant, lemme get this straight… We’re being dropped in to help out some Germans?” Another mouthed off, voicing obvious incredulity.

The British Colonel, ignoring the previous comment took advantage of a momentary lull in interruptions and continued with his briefing.

  “The Germans, I have been informed, number two operatives. Specialists of some description who have been helping the resistance movement. But we have not been given any details. Just that they have certain ‘advantageous skills’ that have been of significant use to the Polish resistance thus far.”

More murmurs filled a second of silence. The Colonel ground his teeth.

  “Your orders are simple. Rendezvous with the resistance cell and the SOE Engineers and give them whatever aid they require.”

 “What the fuck is this?! We’re being dropped behind enemy lines, slap bang between the Soviets and the Germans and we’re expected to babysit Limeys, Poles and fucking Krauts?” 

This time the Lieutenant growled, his abrupt frown passing across his men through the haze of cigarette smoke pervading the room. Everyone shut up. The colonel took over again, initiating the final part of his briefing with a long, exasperated sigh.  

  “We have a special plane, with extra fuel reserves. Which is scheduled to depart from the airstrip at twenty-three hundred hours.”

The officer once again raising his voice above the tumult, this time of the protests and colourful language that was thickening the air. Possibly at the lack of notice. He was a professional but these individuals didn’t seem to understand the ideals of discipline or respect for the chain of command. What if they were experienced personnel and crack shots? Without discipline they were just scum, potential criminal scum.

  “That is all, gentlemen…” The last word almost stuck in his throat. “Dismissed.”

He marched quickly out of the briefing, muttering assorted dissents about ‘filthy Yanks’ under his breath.

And the dissenting voices and colourful language continued.