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Army. That was exactly what had happened. He had a brief period as a second lieutenant in the Artillery and in 1936 had answered the call for volunteers to do parachute training at Stendhal, more to relieve the boredom of military life than anything else.
     
     
It had become obvious immediately that he had a talent for that kind of freebooter soldiery. He'd seen ground action in Poland and parachuted into Narvik in the Norwegian campaign. As a full lieutenant he'd crash-landed by glider with the group that took the Albert Canal in 1940 during the big push for Belgium and had been wounded in the arm.
     
     
Greece came next - the Corinth Canal, and then a new kind of hell. May, 1941, a captain by then, in the big drop over Crete, severely wounded in savage fighting for Maleme airfield.
     
     
Afterwards, the Winter War. Radl was aware of a sudden chill in his bones at the very name. God, will we ever forget Russia? he asked himself, those of us who were there then ?
     
     
As an acting major Steiner had led a special assault group of three hundred volunteers, dropped by night to contact and lead out two divisions cut off during the battle for Leningrad. He had emerged from that affair with a bullet in the right leg which had left him with a slight limp, a Knight's Cross and a reputation for that kind of cutting-out operation.
     
     
He had been in charge of two further affairs of a similar nature and had been promoted lieutenant-colonel in time to go to Stalingrad where he had lost half his men, but had been ordered out several weeks before the end when there were still planes running. In January, he and the one hundred and sixty-seven survivors of his original assault group were dropped near Kiev, once again to contact and lead out two infantry divisions which had been cut off. The end product was a fighting retreat for three hundred bloodstained miles and during the last week in April, Kurt Steiner had crossed into German lines with only thirty survivors of his original assault force.
     
     
There was an immediate award of the Oak Leaves to his Knight's Cross and Steiner and his men had been packed off to Germany by train as soon as possible, passing through Warsaw on the morning of the 1st of May. He had left it with his men that same evening under close arrest by order of Jurgen Stroop, SS Brigadefuhrer and Major-General of Police.
     
     
There had been a court martial the following week. The details were missing, only the verdict was on file. Steiner and his men had been sentenced to serve as a penal unit to work on Operation Swordfish on Alderney in the German-occupied Channel Islands. Radl sat looking at the file for a moment, then closed it and pressed the buzzer for Hofer who came in at once.
     
     
'Herr Oberst?'
     
     
'What happened in Warsaw?'
     
     
'I'm not sure, Herr Oberst I'm hoping to have the court martial papers available later this afternoon'
     
     
'All right,' Radl said 'What are they doing in the Channel Islands?'
     
     
'As far as I can find out, Operation Swordfish is a kind of suicide unit, Herr Oberst Their purpose is the destruction of allied shipping in the Channel.'
     
     
'And how do they achieve that?'
     
     
'Apparently they sit on a torpedo with the charge taken out Herr Oberst, and a glass cupola fitted to give the operator some protection A live torpedo is slung underneath which during an attack, the operator is supposed to release, turning away at the last moment himself.'
     
     
'Good God Almighty,' Radl said in horror 'No wonder they had to make it a penal unit'
     
     
He sat there in silence for a while looking down at the file Hofer coughed and said tentatively 'You think he could be a possibility?'
     
     
'I don't see why not,' Radl said I should imagine that anything would seem like an improvement on what he's doing now Do you know if the Admiral is in?'
     
     
'I'll find out, Herr Oberst'
     
     
'If he is, try and get me an appointment this afternoon Time I