The latch on the door doesn't want to give at first. And when it does it makes a sound which breaks the stillness like a gunshot. Standing either side of the door, weapons ready, Jones and I listen for a response. Nothing. Not even the barking of a dog. Complete silence. Which, for a farmyard — even a farmyard after four years of Occupation — strikes me as just a little odd.
The door creaks open with a deafening grating noise. We enter a courtyard, bounded on one side by an open barn, on the other by a handsome, L-shaped stone residence, part of which gives on to the main road. Still there is no sign of life. No dog. No hens pecking in the cobbles, though there must have been once because you can still see their feathers gathered in downy brown drifts.
I glance nervously towards the house - first at the half-open door, then at the dark windows. There's no movement but I have the definite feeling that someone is watching us. So does Jones, clearly, because - rifle pointed at the house — he's sidestepping as swiftly as he can across the courtyard, and, after a quick look over his shoulder, backing into the barn for cover.
As I move to join him, I stumble and nearly trip over something heavy and soft. Regaining my feet, I look down to see the corpse of a dog, its teeth bared in an ugly grin, with gunshot wounds in what is left of its head. This is worrying. But what worries me more is, when I kneel down to touch it, the body isn't quite cold.
Jones has made another discovery. Concealed beneath a pile of straw, but not nearly well concealed enough, are the strings and silk of a parachute. American, at a guess. Did its owner perhaps kill the dog to try to stop himself being discovered? But if so, why did he use a gun and not a knife? And why was he worried anyway, when surely the balance of probability must be that a French farmer would wish to help him, not give him up to the Germans?
I indicate to Jones that he should cover me. Then, eyes flitting from window to window, gun cocked, nerves like piano wire, I step smartly across the courtyard, prod the door further open with my boot and push inside.
'Monsieur? Madame?'
In front of me, running perpendicular to the entrance is an empty corridor. No one answers. But there's a creak of a floorboard upstairs and I know there's someone around, for why else would there be the smell of baked bread wafting from one end of the corridor. Whatever went wrong, assuming anything has gone wrong, it must have happened very suddenly.
Then, like a startled gamebird breaking cover, a figure bursts from a side door and comes hurtling towards me. My instinct is to shoot. God knows what stops me but I'm glad it does, for the figure belongs to a plump, middle-aged woman, her face drawn and pale with fear.
'Je m'excuse, Monsieur. Je dormais,' she says, red-eyed and quite clearly terrified. It's obvious that this lie she's telling me — 'Sorry. I was sleeping' - is intended not for my benefit but for someone else who is listening in.
'Oh pardonnez-moi, Madame, de vous avoir interrompu,' I say, playing along with her lie. 'Tout va bien?'
'Oh oui, Monsieur,' she insists, her smile about as merry as that of her late dog. 'Tout va bien. Mais il faut que vous partez maintenant. Je suis tres tres pressee et j'ai beaucoup a faire. Vous comprenez?'
But of course I understand. I've interrupted her sleep, yet now she's telling me she's very busy and she has lots to do. And there's definitely someone upstairs, I heard another creak of the floorboard.
'Merci, Madame. Au revoir,' I announce loudly for the eavesdropper's benefit, while beckoning Jones to come quickly. But the woman isn't happy with this at all. She's shaking her head vigorously, her face a mask of agony, her eyes pleading with me to go. 'Mon mari!' she whispers. My husband.
I raise my eyes ceilingwards. 'Combien de Boches?' I mouth.
She raises an index finger.
Jones has now joined me.
'We'll have to go,' I tell him.
He pulls a face. 'What about the - ?'
'We're leaving. Now!' I say.
And we would have done, too, except at just this moment there's the snap of a gunshot upstairs, and suddenly all hell has broken loose.
The woman's screaming. 'Non! Non! Non! Jacques!'
The floorboards above us are thudding.
Jones and I are heading in different directions down the corridor, trying to find a route upstairs.
'There's just the one,' I call to him, before I disappear round the corner and find myself in the main entrance hall at the bottom of a stone staircase. Pelting up the stairs, fully expecting that at any moment the fugitive is going to appear and take a shot at me, I make it, gasping, to the top and carefully approach the mouth of another corridor. At the other end is a man with a gun.
'Hande hoch!' I shout.
'It's me,' says Jones.
'Jesus. Where's he gone?'
We run towards each other and meet in the middle, where there's a half-open door. Jones boots it hard, but it barely budges. Something's blocking it. Under normal circumstances, one might prefer, at this point, to lob in a grenade or two — I've no doubt Price would - but it isn't the sort of thing that goes down well in private houses, so, with a resigned sigh, I squeeze through the crack, adrenalin and rage overriding caution and fear. Once I'm through, it becomes clear what the problem is. Slumped in front of the door is the body of a middle-aged man with a hole in his temple. Propped up with pillows on a large bateau lit on the far side of the room there's another man, equally dead, his head bandaged, the sheets that are covering him now soaked in dark, sticky blood, eyes still open and staring as if in surprise towards the open window in front of him. Outside a horse whinnies.
'There!' I say, rushing towards the window, to be greeted with one of those picture-postcard Norman views that in peacetime quite make your summer hols: the rolling fields undulating towards the grey and gold towers of a twelfth- century abbey; the lush hedgerows; the orchard, enclosed with an old stone wall.
Tethered to one of the trees is a horse — a gorgeous-looking beast, far superior to anything you'd expect to be owned by a French farmer. He's a dappled grey with muscular jumper's hindquarters, at least seventeen and a half hands - perfect for hunting, I should imagine, if only they did such things round these parts.
But I see that he's already spoken for. There's a chap in a peaked cap and a dark military coat hurriedly untying him and preparing to mount him.
I raise my machine pistol. Somehow I’ve managed to keep hold of a German weapon, rather than any of our inferior British ones. But the Schmeisser is a close-quarters weapon and at this range I stand every chance of hitting that splendid horse, and missing that murderous Hun altogether.
At this rate, if I’m not careful, the bugger's going to get clean away.
'Halt!' I shout.
But, of course, our friend doesn't. Why should he? His left foot is already in the stirrup and he's swinging his right leg over the saddle.
'Allow me,' says Jones, elbowing me to one side, no manners, the Welsh. He raises his rifle and takes aim. The German jerks, falls backwards, and collapses at the foot of his mount with a dull thud.
'Couldn't have happened to a nicer person, eh?' crows Jones, all but slapping himself on the back. But under the circs, I find his vaunting more than forgivable. In fact, damn it, I’ve almost grown to like the fellow.
Still, war's not all fun and games and manly bonding, you know. Just listen to the wails of that poor farmer's wife as she grinds her forehead into the chest of her dead husband.
'Madame. Je suis desole,' I say and she looks up blankly, then clutches at her husband and begins sobbing once more. God knows who the other fellow is. The owner of the parachute, I would guess. But whatever the story behind it all is, I never do find out because now Jones and I are pushing past the distraught woman and haring to inspect the German officer.
He's lying where he fell, his loyal horse standing over him, nuzzling the body.
'Shot, Jones,' I say.
'You any good with horses?' says Jones, warily, as the horse tosses his head and scuffs the
ground with his front hoofs.
'Depends on the horse,' I say.
'We could always leave him,' says Jones hopefully.
'He's an officer. SS. He might have some useful information on him,' I say.
'I was worried you might say that.'
Twice the horse drives me back with his terrifying hoofs. On the third attempt, though, I manage to hook a hand through his reins and then, deftly avoiding his kicks, to position myself close to his shoulder, with a good hold of his bridle, my hands close to the bit. Once I've stroked him on the neck a few times, he appears to settle and I'm feeling rather pleased with myself. If only Price were here to see me now.
'Nothing,' says Jones, once he's rummaged through every pocket.
'I can't believe — wait! I wonder if he's got a saddle bag.'
So, indeed, he has. It's not immediately obvious. It's a slim, fine leather bag which he has concealed beneath the saddle, where presumably he thought it would be safer than on his person. Or maybe he was just worried its bulge might ruin the lines of his uniform. Bespoke, by the looks of it. Swanky buggers, these SS.
'There's some useful-looking stuff in here,' I say to Jones. 'Maps. Orders of battle. The whole damn shooting match.'
'We should get it back to HQ,' he says.
'We should. And quickly,' I say.
The cogs are grinding slow. But to judge from his dazed expression, he's working on it.
'You don't ride by any chance?' I prompt.
'No but you do.'
'God, so I do. Do you think, perhaps, I should —'
'We were given orders,' he says.
'To shoot me if I looked like running away?'
'Yeah. How did you know?'
'Captain Dangerfield is an old friend of mine. You didn't take him seriously, did you?'
'He was joking?'
'In a manner of speaking.'
Jones is persuaded. I get him to relieve the dead officer of his greatcoat and peaked cap — both slightly too big for me, but they'll serve well enough to get me through enemy territory and back to our lines — and, having paused just long enough to scrawl a few more words to Gina, I'm up into the saddle, wheeling round and heading towards the road at what I dare say Price would call a collected canter.
Now, I've done some pretty odd things in my time - perhaps, if I live long enough, you'll hear a few more of them — but I don't recall many sensations quite so strange as the one I experienced mid afternoon on 6 June 1944, riding behind enemy lines on a handsome grey charger in the coat and cap of an SS Sturmbannfuhrer.
You might think I'm asking to get myself shot by mistake by my own side. But the way I see it, when you're riding on your own through enemy territory, you're far safer dressing like one of the opposition than you are with a green beret. And besides, the moment I get anywhere near our lines, I'm going to whip off this Nazi uniform to reveal the British one underneath.
As I trot back down the drover's path whence I came, heading towards the distant gun battle, I can scarcely believe how dramatically my luck has changed. Not half an hour ago, my military career was in ruins, with the stigma of cowardice hanging round my neck. Now though — like some impetuous young scout in the Peninsula with urgent news for Lord Wellington — I'm about to gallop back into my unit's favour in the most dramatic style.
If there weren't so much physical evidence to the contrary — the coarseness of the salt-sodden battledress against my skin; the damp chill which even on a midsummer afternoon has refused to dissipate; the rattle and pop and thump of the continuing skirmish round La Rosiere; the leather of the reins between my fingers; the equine muscles straining against my calves - I might almost think I were dreaming. And it's only when my reverie drifts Price-wards and I suddenly hear his voice in my head going 'Look sharp, sir, you dozy sod, sir. Or you'll get us all killed' that it occurs to me that this isn't just another hack in pleasant Norman countryside, that in fact I'm in a war zone and getting closer to the action by the second.
Round the next bend, as if I were in any doubt, is one of those bizarre sights you see so often on battlefields that after a while you take them almost for granted. It's a German staff car, the top completely crushed, the driver and passenger still in their seats and apparently unharmed, save for the fact that neither of them has a head. On either side, the hedge bordering the sunken lane has been pulverised by the passage of an armoured vehicle the exact width, I'd guess, of a Bren Carrier. It can't have been deliberate: a Bren Carrier's so noisy you can't hear the person next to you, let alone the purr of an approaching Mercedes engine. I doubt either fast-moving party even saw the other until it was far too late to do anything about it. I'm sure they never felt a thing.
The lane is completely blocked, unfortunately, and the hedge is too high to jump over, so I'm forced to retrace my steps and find another route. After many false leads and dead ends, I eventually find one. Soon, I'm sufficiently close to the outskirts of La Rosiere to start wondering whether perhaps it's time to slough off my Nazi kit and turn back into a commando.
Just a bit further, I persuade myself because, damn it, it does go to your head, after a while, when you dress in SS fig. One minute, it's an innocent game of fancy dress, the next you're all ready to roll across the Ukraine, massacring every Slavic Untermenschthat comes your way.
Besides, there's no point dismounting just yet because my elevated position gives me a better view of what's ahead. I've slowed my horse to a cautious walk — not easy, I might tell you: the gunshots have made him jittery - and, by listening out for the distinctive tone of the gunfire (English .303 sounds quite different from German 9 mm., though of course, in this case, matters have been confused by the fact that a lot of our weapons are captured enemy ones) I've given myself a pretty good idea of where our respective forces lie.
Now, all I need to do is reassume my guise as a British commando. Which I'm on the verge of doing when, not fifteen yards away, there's the most almighty bang from a stray mortar bomb, and whether my horse is wounded or just startled I don't immediately know but the result is exactly the same. First he rears up so violently that only an instinctive clutch of his mane stops me being tipped off backwards ('If only!' I later wish). Next he pulls sharply forward, damned near dragging me headfirst over his shoulders, takes off like a starter at Aintree and accelerates rapidly into one of those insane gallops even the most experienced rider knows he'll never arrest.
No one likes being on a bolting horse. When it's as big and powerful as this one, you've only two real options: make a tactical exit and pray for a friendly fall, or cling on as if your life depended on it and hope the bugger's strength wears off before he can kill you. This is the problem with a horse. He's not really your friend, you're reminded at times like this. When the chips are down, he's as wild and intractable as any lion or rhino or croc. About as bloody dangerous too.
So dangerous in fact that my immediate response as the bullets start to sing and whine about my ears is 'Thank God!'. At least if I'm hit, I'll have an excuse to abandon my desperate struggle to stay on. This may sound odd, but if ever you've been on a runaway horse you'll know it's true: almost the hardest part is to resist the siren voices urging you to end your misery now.
As the bullets draw closer, however, I begin to reconsider my position. The bullets — all from my own side, that's the galling thing - are coming really too close for comfort now. One shot has hit my cap and whipped it clean off, another has nicked my reins. Really, you want to be clinging on with both hands at times like this, but I'll just have to risk it. So I pass the bridged reins into my left hand and, quick as I can, I dip my right one into the front of my officer's coat, where I've stuffed my green beret, and try to get it on to my head. Well, of course, it's a two-hand job, putting on a beret. Doing it with just one, while simultaneously trying to keep control of a horse galloping over uneven ground under intense small-arms fire, is, I have to say, one of the most maddeningly difficult tasks I have ever undertaken.
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I manage just in time.
'Cease fire! He's one of ours!' a voice cries.
Tuck me, it's Coward,' says another.
'Heels down! Get his head up! Lose the beret,' bellows Price.
Then I'm leaping over the hedgerow where our chaps are hiding, and bombing straight towards whatever they're firing at. The firing behind me has ceased. But the firing ahead of me has flared up with renewed intensity and most of it seems to be directed at me.
'LOSE THE BERET!' repeats Price.
And this time I do.
'Nicht schiessen! Nicht schiessen! Ich bin deutscher Offizier!' I yell in front of me, for good measure. There's a blur of coalscuttle helmets, field-grey uniforms and startled faces looking up, as my horse bounds over the German positions. Then I'm safely past, heading I know not where, and not really caring that much either, just so long as I stay on because, having got this far, I'm damned if I'm not going to stay the course.
And somehow, miraculously, I do. Some of the hedges we jump would challenge a Galway Blazer. And the galloping is more than equal to the swiftest, straightest run after an Exmoor stag. We travel down cobbled roads, and high-banked lanes; we wade through bogs; we fly across meadows and fields of young wheat; we leap streams and stone walls and — ugh - far too many wire fences; we terrify several herds of Charolais; we see dead cows everywhere. I don't even attempt to make up the horse's mind for him. Cling on, that's all I can do, for his strength cannot last for ever.
Our journey ends, suddenly and unexpectedly, when my shattered, gasping, sweat-drenched grey finally decides to turn off the road and stagger through an open gate. It belongs to the most elegant chateau. Its walls are white; its lawns beautifully tended; and in the middle, a round linen-draped table has been set for tea. Beside it a woman in white sits all alone.
Chapter 13
French Oral
Sometimes, when I'm in one of my clubs, and in my cups and in the company of kindred spirits, I'll have occasion to be asked by one sozzled ex-roue or another: 'Tell me, Dick. What's the best blow job you ever had?'
James Delingpole Page 18
