by Terry Deary
‘Bray is a quiet sector on the Somme. We’ve never had trouble there before. The Gestapo have a Major Strauss in charge. A bus inspector before the war. He just has an old corporal to help. His report says there was a storm and an old tree branch fell on the line. And last night there were reports of a light aircraft landing near the town… the sort the British would use to land a special agent.’
General Fischer looked up sharply. ‘A British agent? Why didn’t you tell me at once?’ he demanded and slapped a hand on his desk.
Colonel Roth picked his words carefully. ‘I have the report here… sir. But it arrived late last night, and you were in a hurry to get to dinner.’
The general glared at him. ‘I had to go to an important meeting… in a restaurant… with some of Herr Hitler’s closest advisers. They think a lot of me. They wanted my opinion… as we ate dinner.’
‘Of course, sir,’ Roth said and tried to hide his sneer.
‘Can we send a troop of real Gestapo men to investigate this landing?’ asked the general.
‘There’s trouble in Lille,’ replied Roth. ‘We don’t have any Gestapo units to spare. Major Strauss can deal with this for now. We’ll send a unit to help him as soon as we have one to spare.’
General Fischer nodded and his three chins shook. ‘Fine. We will let Major Strauss stay in charge of the sector for now. Just keep an eye on it, Colonel Roth. Keep an eye on it.’
Bray
Colette Fletcher picked up an oil lamp from the mantelpiece and handed it to her granddaughter. ‘Go and see if there are any animals wandered into the barn, Brigit. We don’t want the corporal gored by a bull,’ she said, and smiled at the old soldier.
Brigit joined in the trickery. ‘Oh, it’s all right if I am gored then?’ she snapped.
‘The cattle know you,’ her grandmother said. ‘Get them out of the barn before I risk showing the corporal around.’
Brigit gave a great sigh. ‘Oh, very well.’ She hurried through the darkness to the barn. The Resistance group were looking at a map and arguing over the best place to destroy a rail line.
‘An old man from the Gestapo is at the farm and he wants to look in the barn. He says he stayed in here when it was a hospital in the last war.’
‘It’s not safe to let him in,’ Marie Marcel said.
‘But not a problem,’ Blacksmith Legrande said. ‘There is a door at the rear. When he comes in the front, we can slip out the back.’
‘Which is exactly why I said we shouldn’t hide in an attic with no escape,’ Brigit muttered.
‘Let’s go quickly,’ Aimee said, and led the way out of the barn as they heard Colette and Corporal Rudolf crossing the farmyard. Colette was speaking loudly to warn the agents they were on their way.
‘Yes, this was a hospital for a few months,’ the farmer was saying.
‘Do you remember a boy? He helped Doctor Weger.’
‘I remember him well. Marius Furst was his name.’ She raised the lantern and shone it inside the barn. The only person in the light was Brigit.
‘All gone, Grand-maman.’ She shone the lantern around the barn while the corporal told his tale of falling sick and being nursed there.
‘Glad I got to see it before I leave,’ he said.
‘We will be so sad to see you go,’ Brigit lied. ‘When do you leave?’
‘I don’t know yet. But I’m sure the Gestapo crack troops will be arriving soon,’ the old soldier said.
After he had gone, Brigit turned to her grand-maman and said, ‘So we don’t have long to take a few risks and do as much damage as possible.’
‘If only we knew when those crack troops were coming,’ Colette muttered. ‘Because when they do arrive those risks will be deadly.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘We can’t throw another tree on the track’
Wednesday, 4 June 1941: Bray-on-Somme
Colette Fletcher shook her head. ‘No, Blacksmith Legrande. We can’t throw another tree on the track.’
‘That’s what is bringing a tough Gestapo force to Bray,’ little Henri Caron said with one of his usual sneers on his thin little, mean little, sour-plum face.
The group had met in the barn the following night so they could watch the farm track and see anyone approach half a kilometre away. The single lantern threw a warm glow upwards, but the shadows made their faces look grim.
‘I wasn’t here when you did that,’ Aimee Furst said. ‘But the front wheels of the train hit the tree trunk and jumped off the track before it came to a halt. Is that right?’
The Resistance group nodded, glum.
‘The Germans sent a message to the next station for help and the train was back on the track in four or five hours,’ Marie Marcel said quietly.
‘If we’d used one of your bombs,’ Henri Caron said. ‘That would have twisted the tracks and taken a lot longer to repair.’
‘I did my best,’ Blacksmith Legrande said like a sulky child.
‘You did a great job,’ Aimee said. ‘But I was sent to show you how you could do even better.’
‘Tell us,’ Colette put in.
Aimee took the map they’d been studying the night before and spread it in front of the lantern. ‘Let me tell you how SOE think it is best. Then you tell me where is best.’
They bent over the map, but Brigit, who already knew what her maman was going to say, kept her eyes on the dark track from the town to the barn.
‘The Germans are very good at repairing their tracks quickly, especially where they run across flat fields. They can even put a locomotive back on the track if we derail it… as you saw. But what about if we send the train so far off the track it overturns and takes the trucks and carriages with it?’
‘Plant a bomb,’ Henri Caron said with a smug nod. ‘Just like I said.’
‘But some German patrol might hear the bomb and investigate. Or we’d have to hang around, wait for the train to get within a few metres and set it off. We might not have time to escape.’
Marie Marcel looked cross. ‘So we want something that is silent but wrecks the train?’ she sniffed.
‘A magic bomb?’ Henri Caron huffed.
‘Something much simpler,’ Brigit said quietly, looking back from the open barn doors. ‘The rails are bolted to the sleepers with connector plates. Undo the bolts and the train will charge off the track at full speed.’
‘I have large spanners in my forge,’ the blacksmith said. He looked brighter now. ‘They’d do the job.’
‘Thanks, Monsieur Legrande,’ said Aimee. She pointed at the map. ‘If we do it on a curve in the track, the train will be flung to the side and will probably turn over. If you know of a curve beside a ditch it will be a massive job to dig the locomotive out. When the locomotive comes off, the trucks will ruin the track behind it.’
Henri Caron leaned forward. ‘I used to be a trainspotter when I was a boy. I know every centimetre of that line.’ He placed a fine finger on the map. ‘Leclerc Woods,’ he said. ‘It will crash into the trees. It’ll take days to get rescue machines near the spot. The line will be out of action for a week.’
Aimee smiled. ‘Henri, you are a genius,’ she said.
‘I know,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘So when do we do this?’
‘Soon,’ Aimee said. ‘Why not tomorrow night?’
Thursday, 5 June 1941
Ragged clouds drifted over the moon as the saboteurs made their way around the edge of the town of Bray. They waited in an old shepherd’s hut, silent. Blacksmith Legrande had slipped into the town to collect his spanner. If he were caught by an army patrol he would have no excuse for being out on the streets after dark. He would be taken to the army base and shot. Would he betray his comrades before he died? They didn’t know.
They shivered as they waited, but from fear, not from cold. Brigit’s fear melted away when the blacksmith came panting over the field. They were going to act against the invaders. This was what she’d come to France for. Her heart race
d with excitement.
Henri Caron led the way to the west of the town. The old houses and shops stood silent and grey. If there were army patrols out tonight they were as quiet as the bodies in the churchyard. They already knew the old corporal was off to his bed for the night.
Still Brigit’s eyes strained in the dark in case a soldier was watching from the woods, or lying in the grass waiting to shoot anyone who moved. The girl shook her head. She was imagining it. ‘I hope we don’t get lost,’ she whispered to her mother.
But Henri Caron needed no map. It was a long walk, sometimes stumbling over uneven fields still damaged by shells from the war of more than twenty years before, sometimes finding a sheep track worn smooth in the grass. They didn’t dare turn on a torch. The assault course back in Wales had made Aimee and Brigit fit for this sort of venture. Marie Marcel and Henri Caron struggled.
An angry owl flew over them, hooting and making Marie Marcel cry out. They walked on until they reached a fence and Henri told them to climb over it. The railway line on the other side of the fence gleamed in the broken moonlight as they reached the track. ‘It’s too straight here,’ Brigit said.
‘I know, I know,’ Henri Caron snapped. ‘We’re not at the right place yet.’
They stumbled over sleepers and slid on the gravel between them. It was worse than the fields. They arrived at a place where the track began to curve and the fields at the edge dropped away in a steep slope. ‘Yes,’ Aimee said. ‘Perfect.’
The little newspaper reporter shrugged. ‘It’s like you said, Madame Furst. I am a genius.’
Blacksmith Legrande squirted oil from a can on to the four bolts that held the rail then placed the spanner, long as Brigit, on the nut. He paused.
‘What is it?’ Brigit asked.
‘There’s a tremor on the rail. The genius Henri forgot to check the railway timetables. There’s a train coming.’
‘The Germans don’t publish their timetables,’ Henri began to argue. But Marie Marcel grabbed him by the arm and said, ‘Let’s not fight among ourselves.’ She dragged him down the slope towards the hedge at the side of a field.
The others followed, sliding through long grass in places, tripped by bramble branches in others. Now they could hear the fast thumping of the steam locomotive and the ground tremble. They were all wearing dark clothes and even if a driver had looked from his cab he’d have seen only bundles of cloth. The train roared above them with a screaming of metal as its weight was thrown against the curve. Brigit and the schoolteacher looked up.
‘Coal wagons and petrol tankers,’ Marie Marcel said. ‘They’d have made a nice fire if he’d wrecked them in time.’
After a long while the ticking, clacking of the wagons faded and the group scrambled up the bank again. Blacksmith Legrande heaved against the spanner but it took all of them to help him push till the rusted nut began to turn. A warm breeze sprang up when they needed a cool one. By the time they had released all four bolts they were sweating. The blacksmith used the spanner like a lever to force the rail away from the joint. The weight of the train would do the rest.
‘Let’s get back,’ Aimee said.
Marie Marcel looked at her fiercely. ‘I think we should wait to see if it works.’
‘We will risk being caught,’ Aimee said.
‘Who put you in charge?’ the teacher snarled.
‘I thought you said we shouldn’t fight among ourselves,’ Henri Caron whined.
‘She isn’t one of us,’ Marie Marcel argued. ‘She was sent by Mr Churchill to spy on us. To make sure we spend his money well.’
‘I was sent to help,’ Aimee said, chewing her lip to keep her temper.
‘We were doing fine without you,’ the teacher said.
‘We were,’ little Henri Caron put in.
Aimee was about to reply when Brigit said, ‘I hear a train.’
Her young ears had picked up the sound before the others in the group. ‘If we stay here the train will fall on top of us,’ Henri went on, with a little panic in his voice. He tumbled down the embankment and the others followed. They pushed through the hedge at the bottom and into the field.
‘Further,’ Brigit said. ‘We need to get further away. If it’s pulling more petrol tankers, the burning fuel could spray a long way.’
No one argued. They staggered over the rough grass till they were a hundred metres from the line. The moon came out enough for them to see the dull black locomotive against the purple sky as it came round the bend. Brigit’s lungs were aching from running and she realised she was holding her breath. Aimee wrapped an arm round her shoulder and the saboteurs watched, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘We’re going to attack the Germans with pencils?’
First came the screaming of iron as the wheels of the powerful locomotive and its heavy line of trucks scraped against the rails. Then a creaking of tortured metal being twisted; the clank of couplings was drowned by the thunder of tons of metal rolling down the embankment of half a kilometre of train. There was a soft explosion of steam as the boiler burst and the rush of truck wheels as they spun off and rolled down towards the saboteurs.
‘Run,’ Brigit cried as she felt the breath of a rushing steel wheel against her cheek.
The Resistance group didn’t need her to tell them that. They raced over the field and into the shadows of the woods before they looked back.
‘Better than fuel trucks,’ Henri Caron gasped. ‘A trainload of tanks. There must be fifty at least. The German plans for them will be ruined.’
‘And so will we if we don’t move soon,’ Aimee Furst said quietly. Hot coals from the ruined locomotive set fire to the grass at the bottom of the embankment. The flames leaped upwards to the first twisted tank and in a minute the fuel from it spilled down and sent a fireball into the air. That started fires further down the line and more tanks burned in a golden glow.
‘I want to stay and watch this,’ Blacksmith Legrande said. ‘It’s better than the fireworks on Bastille Day.’ His face was lit by the orange glow of the flames and he looked shiny-eyed as a child.
‘The tanks will come with ammunition boxes. When they explode they’ll send the shells in all directions,’ Aimee explained. And to prove her words right there was the sharp crack of the first shell exploding and sending shrapnel high over their heads. Then the rattling roar of more from the first ammunition box that crashed into the branches of the trees over their heads and showered them with twigs.
They ran through the wood and heard trees falling behind them as the sky over their heads was noon-day bright and sunset gold. They didn’t stop till they reached Colette’s barn, where they sat panting, joy filling their faces. Even Marie Marcel managed a smile. ‘We’ll do that again,’ she crowed.
‘We won’t,’ Aimee said.
The schoolteacher looked at her with poison in her eyes. ‘We don’t take orders from you.’
‘You do if you want the money and the weapons and the radios to carry on the fight,’ Brigit said. ‘At least listen to what she has to say.’
Madame Marcel looked sulky and Henri Caron looked suspicious. Blacksmith Legrande just looked puzzled. ‘It worked this time. It’ll work again,’ he grumbled.
Aimee spoke quietly. ‘Charles, what would you do if you were a German?’
‘That’s easier for you to say,’ Henri Caron sneered. ‘Since you’re married to one.’
Aimee kept her temper. ‘You are a Gestapo commander in Bray and you see all those tanks wrecked. What are you going to do?’
‘I’d try to find out who did it,’ the blacksmith said.
‘And?’
‘Make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘How?’
‘Use the army to guard the line.’
‘Not the whole line,’ Henri Caron said. ‘It would take hundreds of troops.’
‘So where?’ Brigit asked, starting to see where her mother’s thoughts were leading.
&n
bsp; Marie Marcel sighed. ‘The Gestapo will look at all the places on the line where the Resistance can make an accident happen easily. The downhill stretches with a sharp curve.’
‘That’s what I was going to say,’ the little newspaperman said with a sniff. ‘As soon as we try to unbolt the track we’ll be caught. We’d be mad to try the same trick again.’ Aimee said nothing.
‘We need to try something different next time,’ Marie Marcel said, nodding as if it were her idea.
‘And I know just what it is,’ Brigit said. ‘We’ve brought some pencil bombs with us,’ she added. The girl crossed the barn and found a box that had been hidden behind a straw bale.
‘We’re going to attack the Germans with pencils? How do we do that? Put it in their ears and push hard?’ Henri Caron snorted.
‘Wait and see,’ Aimee said.
Brigit returned with the box, carrying it as gently as a tray of eggs, and opened it. ‘The SOE call them Number Ten Delay Switches,’ she explained, lifting a thin brass tube out. ‘At this end is a glass tube full of cupric chloride. Underneath it is a striker on a spring. You just crush the copper section to break the tube of cupric chloride, and that starts to eat away at the wire holding back the striker. When the wire snaps, the striker shoots down the hollow centre of the detonator, it hits the percussion cap at the other end of the detonator… and boom.’
‘Would we have time to escape if we set one off?’ Marie Marcel asked.
‘Oh yes. There are different timers – some are set to go off after ten minutes and some after a day.’
‘That won’t stop a tank,’ Blacksmith Legrande said.
‘No,’ Aimee agreed. ‘This is just the detonator. You have to put one of these delay switches inside some explosives.’
‘And the Germans are just going to let us walk up to their supplies, plant a bomb, then run away?’ Henri Caron asked with a harsh laugh.
