by Terry Deary
She had learned enough Welsh back in Aberpont to say a few sentences and knew the soldiers were English. ‘Esgusodwch fi, dyn ifanc,’ she croaked in a voice that could have come from the witch in Hansel and Gretel.
The soldier jumped away from the rail, slid a bullet into the chamber of his rifle and pointed it shakily towards the oak tree. ‘Who’s there?’
‘Ydych chi’n siarad Cymraeg?’ she asked.
‘Speak English, you German joker,’ he called.
‘Sorry. I’m Welsh, not German,’ Brigit said in English but with an accent she’d borrowed from the Reverend Williams.
As the man’s eyes grew used to the shadows of the woods he could make out an old woman in a shawl. ‘What do you want, you old Welsh witch?’
‘I just wanted to ask you a question.’
‘I’m busy.’
‘I just wanted to ask if you knew about the man who landed in our fields – we have the farm on the other side of these woods.’
‘Landed?’
‘In one of those… parasiwt things.’
‘Parasiwt? You mean parachute?’
‘That’s what I said. He jumped out of a plane with black crosses on the wings. He left the parasiwt in the field and headed this way with a rifle.’
‘A German paratrooper?’ the man cried. ‘I can’t see one.’
‘You wouldn’t. He’s at the corner where the woods meet the seashore. You can’t see it from this watchtower and you can’t quite see it from the tower that looks towards the sea. It’s in what you’d call a blind spot.’
‘But we have an important visitor,’ the guard wailed and began to leap down the wooden ladder to the tower, two steps at a time.
‘Don’t bother to say thanks to a helpful old farmer’s wife,’ Brigit sighed. She threw off her disguise and ran to the foot of the tower. Using all the strength and skill she’d learned from the assault course she began to climb upwards, using the wooden cross-braces on the tower like rungs of a ladder. She reached the height of the barbed wire on top of the fence, threw her leg over and placed her hands between the sharp spikes on the wire. She hung for a moment and dropped to the ground.
‘You thought you’d keep me away from meeting the king, did you, Sergeant Evans?’ she said as she ran over to the shower hut and pushed herself flat against the back. Her plan was to stroll out and say, ‘Hello, King George. Pleased to meet you. I was hoping you’d help me to get to France.’
But the plan hadn’t worked. As soon as the guard had climbed down he ran towards the huts shouting, ‘German paratrooper landed. Far corner of the camp where the wood meets the seashore.’
Major Ellis grabbed the guest, a heavy man in army battledress and dragged him inside the nearest hut – the men’s sleeping quarters. Sergeant Evans gathered the other guards while the saboteurs went into the weapons’ store and came out with the pistols they trained with on the firing range.
There was no time to form in battle order. Everyone with a weapon, guards or SOE members, ran towards the north-west corner of the camp.
‘Oooops,’ Brigit said when she saw the storm of anger she’d created. She knew she’d have to bury the old farmer’s wife in the woods – or her clothes at any rate – as soon as she could get outside again. ‘If they ever find out, I’ll not be on bread and water for a week. It’ll be for the rest of my life.’
She stepped out from her hiding place behind the shower hut and gazed at the men’s sleeping hut. That was where she’d seen Major Ellis take the important visitor. She wanted to speak to the king and beg him to let her go to France, but she knew the sergeant and the other SOE members would hush her and pull her away. ‘But it’s better this way,’ she said and rubbed her hands. ‘This way I get to see him alone – or at least just with Major Ellis, and he understands.’
Overhead a small aeroplane buzzed and circled the camp and headed towards the beach to land. Aimee Furst, the pilot, looked down and wondered what was going on. She was dead on time, but no one was waiting to watch her land, the way they’d planned. Everyone was crowding towards a corner of the field and guns glinted in the sun. She lifted the nose of the plane and decided to make another circle around the hills to the east before coming back.
Brigit gave a tiny wave to the plane as it disappeared, took a deep breath and strode over to the hut where the important visitor was sheltering. She knocked politely on the door. After a moment Major Ellis opened it and pointed a pistol in her face. ‘Brigit? I thought you were in the village?’
‘I wanted a word with the king,’ she said.
Major Ellis looked more annoyed than she’d ever seen him. He threw open the door and let Brigit enter the hut. ‘No king,’ he said.
Brigit looked at the important visitor, sitting on a bed.
‘Oh. It’s you,’ she gasped.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘I must go and meet with danger’
‘Come in and sit down,’ the important guest said. Brigit felt a little weak at the knees but managed to walk across to one of the beds and sit opposite the great man. Her mouth was dry, but she managed to say, ‘You’re Winston Churchill, aren’t you?’
The man put on a serious face and leaned towards her. ‘There is a German paratrooper in this camp, probably here to assassinate me. It’s not you, is it?’
Brigit laughed and relaxed a little. ‘It’s just a story some crazy old farmer’s wife told a guard. You are safe, Mr Churchill.’
The prime minister took a handkerchief from the pocket of his battledress jacket and wiped the sweat off his brow. ‘I’m pleased to hear it. What is a young lady like you doing here?’
‘I’m Brigit, and my maman is training with the SOE.’
‘So you are not an enemy come to assassinate me. I am pleased. Mind you, I am not afraid to face the enemy guns, you know? I rode with the cavalry at the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan in 1898.’
‘I know you fought in the Boer War, Mr Churchill.’
The man chuckled. ‘What an adventure that was. People think prime ministers are dull fellows, but I have seen dangers and escapes.’ He turned to Major Ellis. ‘Light me a cigar, there’s a good chap, and I’ll tell our young guest the tale.’
Churchill said he had been a newspaper reporter in the war in South Africa. He marched with the British army. But when they were defeated, the South Africans (the Boers) captured him and shut him in a camp as a prisoner of war.
‘They locked me away in an old school. Imagine that? A school used as a prison.’
Brigit nodded. ‘A bit like my school back in Castle Bromwich.’
‘I timed the guard patrols. I spotted a few minutes every hour when no one was watching the ten-foot wall that surrounded the camp. A blind spot.’
Brigit grinned. ‘That’s what I told the guard on this camp,’ she said.
‘When?’ Major Ellis asked sharply.
The girl blushed. ‘I mean that’s what the old farmer’s wife told the guard. He left his watchtower and I climbed in. But it wasn’t me. I didn’t trick the guard. It was the old woman. Ask the guard.’
The major looked at her sternly. ‘I will be asking him a lot of questions when all this fuss has died down.’
‘So you escaped, Mr Churchill?’ Brigit said quickly.
Churchill sucked on his cigar and watched the smoke drift up to the roof. ‘It was 12 December 1899. I waited for the moment to happen and then raced forward and scaled the wall. But my troubles were just starting. I had to make a three hundred-mile journey to East Africa. I only had seventy-five pounds and some chocolate to eat.’
‘You couldn’t walk three hundred miles,’ Brigit said.
‘No. I went to the rail yards and jumped on a freight train. I found a wagon with empty coal sacks. Very comfy.’ He gave a sudden laugh. ‘That was when I found I was sharing the space with a vulture. It looked very interested in me.’
‘But you escaped?’
‘I had to get off the train because I was so hungry and
thirsty. I tried knocking on the door of a strange house. And, as luck would have it, that was the house of the only Englishman for miles around. The Boers were offering a reward of twenty-five pounds for my capture… dead or alive. But that Englishman hid me down a mine shaft… plenty of food and cigars to keep me going and I read books by the light of a candle.’
‘I did that in Aberpont when I was evacuated,’ Brigit said.
‘You hid down a mine?’
‘No. I read a book by candlelight.’
‘Ah. Anyway, they hid me on a train carrying wool to East Africa and it took me to freedom. I went back to South Africa to fight the Boers. This time we won, and I had the pleasure of riding into their prison camp and telling the British prisoners they were free.’
‘That’s an amazing story,’ Brigit said.
Churchill looked out of the window at the fences beyond the huts. ‘I never feel comfortable in a place like this. Being fenced in sends a shiver down to my boots.’
‘So why did you come here, sir?’ Major Ellis asked.
The prime minister rose to his feet. ‘When I was in school we read plays by William Shakespeare. Have you ever read Shakespeare, Brigit?’
‘No, Mr Churchill. We didn’t read plays or stories or poems. We just did practice tests, so we could pass the exams at the end of every term.’
‘Oh dear. I’ll have to change that when this war is over. I didn’t always like Shakespeare at school. It’s in later years I saw how wise he was. I always remember he said something about the perils of this world. He said you shouldn’t sit back and wait for menaces to come and find you. What you should be doing is going out to meet them head-on. Do you remember Shakespeare’s words, Major Ellis?’
‘I must go and meet with danger there, or it will seek me in another place,’ the major said. ‘From the play Henry IV, Part 2.’
‘That’s it.’ Churchill nodded. ‘Let’s not wait for Mr Hitler to attack us. Let’s go and attack him in any way we can.’
‘That’s what Maman and the SOE are going to do,’ Brigit said.
‘Exactly. I formed the SOE to wreck the German plans – to hold them up just long enough for us to build our strength and go on the attack. The Royal Air Force is doing it now. The army won’t be far behind. That’s why I’m here. I cannot let my SOE agents go to war without seeing them for myself and finding out a little about each one. I am the one sending them to meet with danger. If anything goes wrong, it will be me to blame.’
The girl thought for a while. ‘But when my maman goes to… meet with danger… she will need help.’
‘The SOE will get all the help I can give them,’ Churchill promised.
‘Yes, but she may need someone in France. Someone like me.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
‘Mr Churchill is a fool’
Winston Churchill looked at Brigit and his face was serious. ‘That is the sort of spirit that will win the war for us,’ he said. ‘I wish I could allow you to go, but…’
‘But you are going to say I am too young.’ Brigit sighed. ‘Maman was my age in the last war. And she saved hundreds of lives.’
Churchill frowned. ‘Did she? And she is here now?’ He looked up at Major Ellis.
The major nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Her name was Aimee Fletcher and she lived at Bray-on-Somme. We suspected a spy – Silver Hand we called him – and it was Aimee who found the way to put a stop to him. Aimee’s mother still lives in Bray. That’s where we’ll drop her.’
‘And that Aimee Fletcher has grown up to be an SOE agent?’
‘Yes, sir. When you set up the SOE she was top of our list. At the end of the Great War she helped to get a young German soldier home. He came back to France after the war and married Aimee. She is Aimee Furst now.’
‘I remember now,’ Churchill said. ‘I heard the story of Silver Hand many years ago, but I used to think it was a legend. How remarkable. Aimee was a brave girl.’ He looked across at Brigit. ‘And she has a brave daughter.’
‘Maman was my age when she took all those risks. If she could help the British in the last war, then she can’t object to me helping them in this war. And anyway, I don’t have anywhere else to go.’
‘Your father? The German soldier?’ Churchill asked.
‘He’s in an internment camp back in Castle Bromwich,’ Major Ellis said. ‘He’s a doctor and helps in the Spitfire factory, but he has to return to the internment camp every night.’
‘Let him go back to the family home,’ Churchill growled.
‘We tried, sir, but the Castle Bromwich people didn’t like the idea of a German living in their street. They threw bricks through his windows. Every time we repaired them they were smashed again. He is safer in the camp.’
‘Then Brigit here may be safer with her grand-maman in Bray,’ the prime minister said.
‘Brigit has learned a lot of SOE skills, but she can’t land on a parachute.’
‘Major Ellis, we have the wonderful Westland Lysander aeroplane that can land on a field the size of a playing card. Brigit and her mother can squeeze into the passenger seat and we shall drop them by the side of the Somme. There must be a good field near there?’
The major smiled. ‘There is the airfield the famous German fighter pilot, the Red Baron, used in the Great War.’
‘Then it is decided,’ Churchill said and sucked on his cigar till it glowed like a coke oven.
There was a knock at the door and it opened. Sergeant Evans entered and saluted. ‘All clear, sir. False alarm. It seems some old farmer’s wife was stirring up trouble – they don’t all like us moving on to their land.’
‘Very good, Sergeant,’ Major Ellis said. ‘We will carry on with the displays. Firing range next isn’t it?’
‘Yes, sir. Excuse me, sir, but would you like some of us to search outside the fence and see if we can find any clues about the old woman who said we were under attack?’
Brigit held her breath. She had covered Alice’s shawl and skirt with a few dead leaves, but they would soon be found. All the SOE agents had seen her get on to the bus at Aberpont when she was wearing those clothes. It would be a year on bread and water.
Major Ellis was looking at the girl with sharp eyes and the ghost of a smile. He spoke slowly. ‘No, Sergeant, everyone is too busy. But Brigit here can do a search in the woods near the north watchtower. I’m not sure what you’re doing back here, but you may as well make yourself useful. You don’t mind, do you, Brigit?’
Brigit started breathing again and babbled, ‘No, Major… glad to, Major…’
‘And if you find any clues you know what to do with them?’
Brigit nodded and tried to look serious. ‘I know exactly what to do with them,’ she said.
‘Then Mr Churchill can enjoy the rest of the displays we have.’
Churchill nodded to Brigit. ‘I hope to see you before I go,’ he said, then he dusted cigar ash off his battledress and followed Sergeant Evans out of the door.
*
It was almost two o’clock when the SOE agents assembled again by the huts. Brigit was back in time to join them as they lined up.
Aimee Furst had made a perfect landing on the beach and the prime minister met her and shook her warmly by the hand as she arrived from the beach gate. He then took her aside and spoke quietly, so no one could hear them. Aimee looked up and met Brigit’s eyes. She was frowning and shaking her head. Mr Churchill hit the palm of his hand with his fist, determined. Aimee’s shoulders sagged, defeated, and she nodded slowly. She walked across to join her daughter at the end of the line of agents.
‘It seems you will be seeing Grand-maman in France after all,’ she whispered.
‘Mr Churchill ordered it,’ Brigit said.
‘Mr Churchill is a fool,’ her maman said crossly.
The prime minister stood in front of the group and said farewell. ‘I envy you,’ he said. ‘I am sitting in an air-raid shelter in London, giving orders. But you are going out there and doing so
mething. We don’t know when you may be needed. We do know you will be ready to meet with danger when the time comes. Farewell, I wish you luck and I hope to see you all back safe when we have won this war.’ He strode across to the waiting car and disappeared.
‘A great man,’ Yvette said.
‘A fool,’ Aimee Furst snapped.
Part II
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘They’re looking for the agents’
Monday, 2 June 1941: Bray-on-Somme, France
‘We do know you will be ready when the time comes,’ Mr Churchill had said. The group continued their daily training until they were close to perfect in all the skills they’d need. And suddenly that time had come. One bright June morning, Brigit and Aimee found out they would be flying to France that evening.
The aeroplane was a Lysander – the airmen called them ‘Lizzies’. This one was painted black to hide it from the German planes as it flew eastwards over France. A half-moon helped the pilot follow the silver line of the River Somme.
It was cramped and noisy. It was meant for a pilot and one passenger, but Brigit and Aimee Furst were squeezed into it with their equipment in suitcases; a radio, weapons and bombs, French money and spare clothes, identity papers (fake of course) and maps disguised to look like playing cards.
It was too noisy for Aimee and her daughter to talk. The woman looked at the river below and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. ‘That’s Amiens,’ she shouted over the noise of the Bristol Mercury engine.
He nodded and slowed the engine till the small plane lost height and dropped to just two metres above the river. ‘Bray.’ Aimee pointed to the left. ‘The landing field is half a mile ahead.’
All three peered into the deep grey of the moonlit fields and the inky blackness of the tree shadows by the edge of the river. ‘There,’ Brigit cried, excited that she’d been the first to spot the flash of a torch.
The pilot climbed a few metres and turned the Lizzie to face west. This time the French saboteurs on the ground showed four torches. They made the corners of an oblong of smooth grass where the plane could land safely. The pilot lowered the speed till the plane dropped on to the field and he cut back on the engine so it rolled to a stop in less than two hundred metres.
