by Thomas Wood
“Are you okay to carry on, old fruit?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” I replied, shortly, annoyed that he had assumed that I was anything but prepared to carry on.
“That’s alright then. We’ve got a long night ahead of us after all.”
Without any other options for us, apart from wandering around Tours until we found Suzanne again, we had decided between the two of us that we would head back to the only other place in the whole of France that we had any friends at all; Restigné.
There, we would see a few friendly faces, faces that we recognised at least, despite the fact that we were still outsiders to them. At least there, there were considerably fewer German soldiers, which meant that we would be able to recuperate there for a while, reorganise our thoughts even.
We had another time for a radio communication the night after, at two in the morning, which with any luck, would be considerably easier to carry out than it had been in Tours.
All we had to do now was make it through this night and get to our destination.
I felt happy that we were going back to Restigné, as it had become a sort of safe haven in my mind, one where I could not imagine any danger or threats, and where I could see myself staying for quite some time.
Locating the river Loire, we stopped for a moment, behind a series of hedgerows that seemed to grow all around this part of France.
“Have you got a light, old fruit?”
“Do we really have time for you to take a smoke?”
“Not for that, Johnny. For the compass. I can’t see a damned thing.”
We fumbled about together for a moment as I searched for a light, and he for his compass.
“Right then,” he said as the small flame lit his way. “We need to head in this direction. South-West, along the river. Hopefully we begin to recognise some things along the way. When we get to that old barn, we’ll know we’re in Restigné. Looking forward to going back?”
“I didn’t think we would be back so soon.”
“Neither did Suzanne. It seems like everything she says we will do ends up going the opposite way, doesn’t it, old fruit?”
“Yes, I suppose it does. Every time I think of her, it reminds me of you.”
“What? Why?”
“Not sure. I suppose it just about sums up your luck with women, I suppose.”
“Here, you’re not far wrong with that one!”
It was the last conversation that we would have for quite some time, as we trudged our way through the fields, making sure that the river was always on our left somewhere. We desperately needed to know where we were, and that we weren’t simply going around in circles. At least this way we would know if we were going in a complete circle because our feet would end up being wet.
We stopped for a moment, a welcome one. My feet were burning with exertion and my chest was not faring much better either. The dampness of the night was seemingly getting to my lungs, making it near on impossible to breathe.
I looked across at Mike, who had just finished relieving himself at the bank of the river. I could tell that the walking was taking the same toll on him.
He plonked himself down next to me, flopping himself out onto his back. He sighed.
Even in the darkness, I could tell that something was bothering him, his eyes already filling up with unexplained tears.
His voice, normally loud and gravelly, perfect for Shakespearean theatre, took on a different tone, one that seemed to inflect downwards in line with his disappointment.
“When you were a flight leader, Johnny.”
The question seemed more like a statement, and I wasn’t entirely sure if he was requiring an answer or not. Instead, I responded only by flooding my mind with the memories that I had.
Trundling down the runway together, with five other glorious Hurricanes, then lifting from the grass one by one and just clipping the treetops at the end of the airfield. It gave such a rush, such an exhilaration. So much so that one could almost be forgiven for feeling utterly invincible.
The power in the Hurries was like nothing that I had ever experienced before, each time my head smashing into the padded cushion behind my head, as my entire body was taken by surprise yet again.
There was nothing more overwhelming than the feeling of flying together, in formation, banking and climbing in perfect sync with one another, before landing in unison back at base.
But that was before the war started. That was before I started to return with only five kites in my formation. Sometimes four, sometimes three. On a rare occasion it was just me and one other.
“Did you ever lose someone that you felt awfully responsible for?”
“Of course I did,” I said without any kind of hesitation.
“No…What I mean is, did you ever feel like you could have saved them?”
Many times. The name Rawlinson came into my mind. He was young. Perhaps only twenty-two or twenty-three when I met him. He was an eager Pilot Officer, ready to take on the Luftwaffe and shoot every last one of them down.
It was on his first patrol that I watched him go down. A ball of flames and smoke. He hadn’t had the chance to bale out. He was most likely dead a few seconds after his aircraft had first been hit.
He had dived on a Heinkel 111, on my orders, but he went at an odd angle. I watched as instead of approaching directly from the rear, he approached slightly off to the port side, allowing the rear-facing turret gunner a clear field of fire.
I noticed his mistake almost immediately, but instead of issuing another command to dive or disengage, I instead decided to open up on the 111 that was by that time directly in front of me.
A few short bursts later, and I had scored another aerial victory. But Rawlinson had lost his.
His engine was ablaze, and I could hear his screams as he went down in a blazing fury. I had whipped my flying helmet from my head. I did not want his howls in my ears for any longer than they had needed to be.
“Yes. Many times. Why are you saying this now?”
He waited a few moments, before propping himself up on his elbows.
“I think maybe, Johnny, that I am cursed.”
“You? Why, of course, you are. Look where you are!”
“No…I mean it, Johnny. I think I am a curse on our time here.”
“Don’t be such a fool, Mike. It’s not your fault that things have gone belly up.”
“I fear they are. As a punishment, you see. Teddy Higgins…”
“There was nothing you could have done about that, Mike. It was just the luck of the draw. We lose men all the time like that. It is a sad reality.”
“Johnny…You don’t understand. I could have saved him. When we scrambled that day, to fly over Maidstone…I took his parachute. It was on the wing of his plane and I took it.”
“Why?”
“He already had one on. My one. He went and took it earlier in the day. He was joking that it would give him good luck, wearing my things. So, he sat in the thing all morning. That parachute, that failed to open, it was mine. I should have been wearing it. He should have been wearing his own one. He could have still been alive.”
I did not know what to say. It was a natural risk that came with being a flight leader that you would feel responsible for the men that you lost, but for Mike, it went deeper than that. Teddy Higgins had died as a result of a failed parachute. The very parachute that Mike should have been wearing.
There was no way that Mike could have known it would fail to open. But that did not mean that he could have no feelings of guilt. There would now be a family without a son, all because he was joking around with another man’s parachute.
He carried on, “I just don’t know how—”
“Shh. Be quiet.”
He looked at me with a shocked expression on his face at first, but slowly, as I raised a finger to my ear, he began to tune his ears to the noise that I could also hear.
There was a motorcycle. And there was a truck coming up close behind it
.
“How on earth—”
“It doesn’t matter,” I screamed. “We need to find some better cover!”
Hauling the suitcase up onto my shoulder, we began to run, for the second time that night.
For a moment, I found myself wondering if it was the same group of soldiers that had located us in the forest as before, or if this was a different group of men. If it was the same, then I hoped that they were as tired as we were, and that their eyes were not up to standard for spotting two shadowy figures in the darkness.
But the darkness was not preserved for long, as the motorcycle suddenly angled itself in such a way that Mike ran straight into its beam.
He was seen instantly.
His initial reaction was to duck down, as if it would somehow keep himself hidden for a little longer. But it was far too late.
Men began calling out from behind us, as Mike picked up his pace and began to run for his life.
“Take the case!” he cried, “I’ll draw them the other way!”
He ran away from me, and out onto the road, carrying on in the opposite direction to the now screaming soldiers behind.
“I’m coming with you!” I hollered back, not really knowing what else he was expecting me to do. There was nowhere else left for us to run.
The first gunshot sailed high over our heads, which I could only presume was a warning shot. It was that or the soldiers had been out of bed for far longer than I previously assumed.
I prayed that all the others followed in a similar pattern. I was not so lucky.
The second and third ripped just over the top of my left shoulder and I felt the fourth thud into the ground just ahead of my feet.
The next few were directed straight at Mike.
As I ran, I forced my head up, to see what it was we were running towards, and if there was anywhere about that we could hide. I could see nothing.
But then, as I was beginning to feel myself slowing down, a pair of headlights suddenly flooded the road from ahead of us, the occupant clearly waiting for his moment to flick the switch.
Both Mike and I slowed, accepting our fate and awaiting our arrest. The motorcycle behind us began to roar once again, as it had done earlier on, as it closed in on us. So did the vehicle dead ahead of us.
As it came closer, I stopped, refusing to let go of the suitcase that I was prepared to guard with my life. I could make out the shape of a car, just over the top of the headlights, which were aimed lower than the truck’s, so that it did not light so much of the way.
Suddenly, the brakes were slammed, and the vehicle stopped just short of Mike and me. We waited, to see the officer step out from behind its doors, pistol drawn, ready to take us into custody. But no officer came. Instead, just a simple command.
“Entrer!”
Get in.
No sooner had the man spoken, then there were bullets once again flying around our heads, as the men behind suddenly realised that the vehicle ahead was not one of their friends, it was one of ours.
With renewed vigour and optimism, we launched ourselves into the back of the car, landing on top of one another and cracking our heads together. The door hung open as the car began to manoeuvre around, and rounds began thudding into the bodywork, making the most spectacular of noises.
Within seconds, the car was screaming at the top of its lungs, hitting a phenomenal speed. The driver flicked the lights off, before yanking the wheel over to the right and into a field. Still, the man kept his foot depressed on the accelerator, with such stamina that I wondered if he had feet at all, and instead simply had slabs of meat.
We were thrown about the car wonderfully, as we barrelled our way over the field, and I could only imagine the horror that this farmer would be faced with, come sunrise.
Eventually, it seemed that the man could no longer keep his foot pressed on the pedal, as he began to ease off and, for the first time, he spoke.
“Are you two alright?”
“Have the Germans gone?”
“Yes, my friend. It would appear so, for now at least.”
“Then, yes. We are alright,” I said, finally answering his question.
“Who are you?”
“Don’t you recognise me, my friends? It’s me!”
He leant around from the steering wheel, to reveal his face, his old, stretched face.
“Alfred?”
“Yes! My friends! It is Alfred!”
“Thank you, Alfred.”
“It is quite alright, my friend. Although, I am not so sure how I am going to explain the bullet holes to Monsieur Genet.”
“Who?”
“The owner of this car.”
I felt like throwing up but with a smile on my face. My feet no longer burned, and my head no longer pounded with the force with which I had connected with Mike’s own.
“We’re alright, Johnny! We’re alive!”
“Yes…”
My voice trailed off, as the feeling of vomiting suddenly reached my head. How had he known to come and get us? And how had he known where we were? I felt uneasy, and not for the first time that we had arrived in France.
“Alfred, what were you doing there? At this time of the night too.”
“I was told to. I was on my way to Tours to find you. Apparently, you were in trouble.”
“You could say that,” Mike interrupted.
I ignored him, “Who? Who told you?”
“Who do you think, my friends? Suzanne. Suzanne Seguin told me to.”
I looked across at Mike. His face was as puzzled as mine.
19
The forest that surrounded us gave off the impression that everything that happened within it was a total secret, shut off and hidden from the outside world. I felt as if I was in some sort of secluded retreat, where mythical creatures arose from its depths in the dead of night.
They didn’t, of course, and I should know, as we had spent the night lying in the same patch of foliage that we now occupied.
It wasn’t comfortable, which was probably just as well, as if it had been, there was more than a slight chance of either of us dozing off. We had tried our best to clear our patch of ground of dried twigs and leaves, but there always seemed to be one defiant weed that was intent on cutting our stomachs open to investigate our insides.
The discarded leaves and branches were piled up in front of us, to the point where we could no longer see over the small bank of rotting woodland that we had built up. That was fine, as we could still see through it at various points, which allowed us to keep a watchful eye over our target area.
The hope was, at a glance anyway, that we were nothing more than an unthreatening bush at the side of the wood, no cause of concern or need for investigation.
The deadwood around Mike began to rustle slightly, as he wiggled himself closer to me, leaning into my ear without taking his eyes off whatever it was he was focusing on.
“So, what do you reckon?”
I knew what he was referring to, it was all he had spoken about for the last couple of days. But still, I did not feel like giving him the immediate satisfaction.
“I reckon that I am going to be asleep within the next hour if something doesn’t happen soon.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” I interrupted, not wanting him to repeat what he had repeated a hundred times already.
The truth of the matter was that I was as in the dark as he was. There was no way of really knowing what was going on in Suzanne’s head. It seemed that even Alfred, who had claimed to have known her for some time, was none the wiser over what it was that she wanted in her life.
There was a large proportion of my mind that warned me that she was evil, not in the conventional sense of the word, but she was someone who for some reason enjoyed being on no side in particular, causing havoc for as many people as she could.
She had certainly done that already. We had been in France for less than three weeks and already she had been res
ponsible for us being chased from a safehouse, having informed the Germans of our whereabouts.
There was also an element of suspicion about how the German radio finders had found us so efficiently. I had managed to convince myself that she had disclosed a time and date to her German counterparts to assist in our capture. It was a notion that I had not yet shared with Mike.
On the other hand, she had displayed some signs of loyalty, which dispelled my fears and attributed the misfortunes that we had to bad luck. Without her, Alfred would not have come looking for us, and instead of carrying out our order from London, we would be in some damp, stone-walled castle somewhere, which now belonged to the local Gestapo.
No matter how hard I tried to convince myself that she was in fact on the same side as us, she was our London-given contact after all, I could still not bring myself to tell her what it was we had been ordered to do. This had many of its upsides, one of which being that I felt secure in what we were doing. No one else knew where we were or what we were planning to do.
But there were far more pitfalls. It meant that we were on our own. We could ask for help from nobody. It meant that our cache of weapons extended only so far as a sharpened branch, that Mike had fashioned out of boredom through the night.
And I didn’t much fancy charging at an MG34 with a three-foot-long sharpened twig.
“So then,” Mike repeated. “What do you think we’re going to have to do?”
I ignored him again, which did not seem to ruffle him as much as it did other people. I supposed, being an only child as he was, he had grown used to it, with nobody else to talk to as he grew up apart from his own reflection and imaginary friends. It was more than likely the reason why he had made up for it in his adult life so far.
Instead of answering him, I pondered the events of the last few days, trying to conjure up some sort of context to the answer that we were both still searching for.
Alfred had taken us back into his fold and had spent the following days tending to our every need and request. We had asked for everything, from food and water, to a host of names where we could go if we needed a friendly face. A friendly face that was not his.
