Colette changed back into her overalls, keeping behind a tree for modesty’s sake as she did so. The rest of Douglas’s party checked their weapons and packs, ate a little bread and cheese out of the store she had brought with her from the village, and washed it down with clear water from a small stream that trickled down between the trees. Then they set out, moving in single file with Douglas in the lead.
It was hard going. Moving horizontally across the wooded hillsides, they often had to negotiate deep gullies, the landward ends of the steep inlets that cut into the coast. But it was a route that kept them well under cover, and the nature of the terrain was such that an enemy was unlikely to take them by surprise; a large body of troops would have been heard a long way off.
They passed a few hundred yards to the north of Carry-le-Rouet and eventually picked up the railway line at a spot where it curved back towards the coast on the last few miles of its run into Marseille. They followed the track down a fairly steep gradient and at length, when the trees began to give way to flat, sandy ground, they came within sight of the tunnel Colette had spotted earlier from the village. Here they paused for a while to spy out the lie of the land, and Mitchell took the opportunity to try and raise London again, but without success. Douglas told him to keep at it; it was to be the signaller’s sole task until he produced a result.
They waited for half an hour. Nothing but seabirds moved on the lonely strip of land that fronted the sea below the limestone hills. At last, Douglas stood up.
‘Stan, you stay here with the others,’ he ordered Brough. ‘I’m going down to see where the tunnel leads. You two, come with me,’ he said to the two demolition experts.
Sansom and Willings shouldered their kit and followed Douglas at a steady lope downhill towards the tunnel mouth, their MP-40s held ready against their chests in case of trouble. They sprinted over the last few yards of open ground and dashed into the shadows, Douglas turning briefly to give a thumbs-up to Brough, who was watching their progress from the edge of the wood.
Cautiously, followed by the other two, Douglas made his way along the single track into the tunnel’s darkness, finding his way with the aid of the narrow beam from his hand-pump torch. He sensed that the tunnel was curving gently, and was right; as they moved further along a spot of light came into view, some distance ahead.
‘How far d’you reckon?’ Douglas asked his companions. ‘I’d say about half a mile.’
‘About that,’ Sansom agreed. He was prodding at the walls of the tunnel as they went along. ‘Surprised this lot hasn’t come down already,’ he commented. ‘It’s in a pretty lousy state of repair. Soft as putty in places. We’ll see if we can engineer a bloody great fall of rock.’ He grinned in the light of Douglas’s torch.
They plodded on towards the far end of the tunnel, taking care to keep close to the walls so that their figures would not be silhouetted against the light of the tunnel entrance. Sansom and Willings conferred frequently with one another, selecting likely spots to plant their charges.
‘Trouble with limestone,’ Sansom said, ‘is that it’s powdery. You’ve got to pick just the right spots, or all you end up with is a few tons of dust. It tends to smother the force of the explosion. Still, we’ll see what we can do,’ he concluded matter-of-factly. Douglas had no doubt that Sansom knew exactly what he was talking about; he had been a highly experienced quarryman before the war.
They reached the far end, having completed their inspection, and Douglas watched in some fascination as Sansom and Willings began their task of turning the tunnel into a death-trap. What they were doing seemed simple, when they explained.
‘What we do first of all,’ Willings said, ‘is to plant charges at intervals along the tunnel, at spots on the wall we have already picked. We place the charges in holes we drill as we go along — not a hard job even for a hand-drill, in rock like this, and they don’t need to be big charges.’
He worked as he spoke, placing the first set of charges in record time. When he had finished, he carefully strung a length of very thin wire across the track at about chest height. It was attached to each detonator. The process was repeated at fifty-yard intervals throughout the length of the tunnel. Sansom brought up the rear, making some sort of adjustment to each detonator.
‘Simplest thing in the world, sir, really,’ he told Douglas. ‘You see, going on experience, we’ve worked out the speed the train is likely to be doing when it reaches the tunnel. If it’s the average length, it will take it about twenty seconds for it to get completely inside the tunnel and another ten seconds before the front end comes through the far side. So, here’s what happens. Locomotive comes along and breaks the wire. There is then a timed delay of twenty-two seconds before the two charges back there go off. The time lag is progressively reduced as we progress along the tunnel, so that when the engine breaks the last strand of wire the whole lot goes off more or less at the same moment — near enough to make no difference, anyway, Get it?’
‘Yes,’ Douglas said dubiously, ‘I think so. It all seems a bit problematical, though, doesn’t it?’
Sanson looked at him in surprise. ‘Why no sir, not really. We’ve taken all sorts of things into account — the approach to the tunnel, the maximum speed on this bit of track and so on. We’ll be accurate enough, don’t worry. That train won’t be going anywhere after we’ve done with it.’
Douglas couldn’t help smiling at the man’s confidence. However, he had a question.
‘Wouldn’t it have been easier, to place your explosives under the tracks and simply derail the thing?’
The two men looked at him with expressions akin to pity.
‘Good heavens, no, sir,’ Willings said. ‘People can get out of a derailed train, especially one that’s been going fairly slowly, and start fighting. They can’t do that if the whole caboodle’s pinned down under tons of rock — even soft rock like this. They’ll have to dig it out. Probably take weeks,’ he added hopefully.
‘Well, just an extra day would do,’ Douglas said. ‘Well done, both of you. I just hope it works, that’s all, or we’re in even worse trouble than we are already.’ Privately, he was quite sure that the scheme would work, and that the task of extricating their men trapped inside the tunnel would keep the Germans occupied for a while.
They went back up the slope to the wood where the others were in position. There was nothing to do now but settle down and wait for nightfall.
While Douglas and his party maintained their uneasy vigil that afternoon, Louis, the youth from Carry-le-Rouet, finally reached Arles after a gruelling forty-mile cycle ride. He had stuck to the back roads to avoid being challenged; nevertheless, he had been stopped at two road blocks manned by the Milice. Luckily, his comings and goings between Arles and the coast, ostensibly carrying produce, had made him a familiar figure in the area, and he had no trouble in getting through.
Arles itself was full of Germans and Milice, parading on every street corner. Their very presence seemed to desecrate the ancient town which, in Roman days, had been a major trade centre and key port on the lower Rhône, rivalling Marseille. The Romans had made it their capital of Provence and later of the ‘three Gauls’ — the territories of France, Spain and Britain. Its links with Britain were close; it was here that St Augustine had been consecrated the first Bishop of Canterbury. Now, in 1944, the Germans had turned it into a grey place, a place devoid of its traditional life and colour.
Louis carefully chained his cycle to a set of iron railings and went into a small hat shop not far from the old Roman baths — all that remained of the palace built by the Emperor Constantine — that stood near the banks of the Rhône. A middle-aged man looked up in surprise from some ledgers as the youth entered.
‘Louis! What brings you here? It is not the day of your usual visit.’
‘I have urgent news, Monsieur Bizot,’ Louis said. ‘I saw that the blue flowers were hanging outside, so I knew that no one was watching and that it was safe to come here.’
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The blue flowers hung in a basket above the shop doorway. If they had been red it would have meant that the shop, a meeting-place for Resistance workers, was under possible surveillance by the Germans or the Milice.
‘Well, my boy, what is it that I can do for you?’ Bizot asked. Louis leaned forward across the counter and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone.
‘Monsieur Barbut,’ he whispered. ‘Has he been here?’ The other nodded.
‘Yes. He was here a very short while ago, but he is here no longer. He came on the autobus from Port-de-Bouc, stayed for a little while to refresh himself, and then borrowed a cycle, saying that he had friends to visit. You know what that means. He seemed very agitated.’
Louis’s heart sank. The expression “friends to visit” meant that Barbut had gone to make rendezvous with the Maquis at their nearby hideout of Les Baux. That in turn meant another cycle ride of seven or eight miles out of Arles, most of it uphill. But there was nothing for it; he would have to pursue the rancher as fast as he could go.
He thanked the shopkeeper courteously and went back to his cycle, looking round guardedly to see if anyone was watching him. There were two policemen on a corner opposite, but they were engaged in animated conversation and took no notice of him. He mounted his cycle and pedalled away slowly, so as not to arouse anyone’s undue interest.
He took a small, winding road that climbed laboriously into the high ground north-east of Arles, past the low hill on which stood the former Benedictine abbey of Montmajour. Further on, he passed without hindrance through the village of Fontvielle; and it was half a mile after that, as he approached a place where a side-road branched off towards Tarascon, that he ran into trouble.
Louis had dismounted from his bicycle to push it up a short but steep hill when suddenly he heard voices up ahead. Pushing the cycle off the road and hiding it behind some bushes, he crept forward under cover to find out what was happening. At the top of the hill, close to where the road forked, he wormed his way forward until he was able to peer through some scrub.
He saw at once that a road-block had been erected at the point where the road divided. Behind it, that is to say on his side, a German half-track straddled the road, the machine-gun mounted on it pointing towards Les Baux. To one side of the road a group of half a dozen German soldiers were sitting on the grass, playing cards; a seventh was sitting in the rear of the vehicle, behind the MG, smoking a pipe.
Something that looked like a tow-bar protruded from the rear of the half-track. A man was trussed securely to it, his head bowed dejectedly forward. A bicycle lay abandoned on the road nearby.
Louis knew, instinctively, that the bound man was Etienne Barbut. He also knew that he must do something to try and rescue him from his predicament. But what? If only he could get close enough …
He retreated some distance down the hill and crossed the road, working his way back up the other side among the undergrowth. He made scarcely any sound, for this was the way he often stalked rabbits and other small game in the woods near Carry-le-Rouet. Reaching the top of the hill, he lay still for a minute and surveyed every possible avenue of escape. Fifty yards away to the left, a dip in the ground curved round the side of a low hill; the hill itself, and those beyond it that rose progressively towards Les Baux, were densely covered in scrub. If he could release the prisoner and get him as far as the first hill, there was every chance that they could hide safely. It would take an army to find a couple of fugitives in that scrub, he told himself, and there were only seven Germans.
Cautiously, still under cover, he snaked his way forward. Reaching the edge of the road, he risked another peep through the vegetation. The card-playing Germans were out of sight on the other side of the half-track; he could still hear them talking and laughing amongst themselves. The German in the half-track, whose head and shoulders were visible, was looking the other way, puffing contentedly on his pipe and gazing towards the blue-misted hills of the Vaucluse that rose on the horizon.
Taking a deep breath, Louis felt in his pocket and pulled out a jack-knife, opening the razor-sharp blade with great care and gripping it between his teeth. Then he slithered forward into the road, inch by inch, until he lay in the shadow of the half-track, invisible now to the vehicle’s sole occupant. The bound man had his back to him and Louis knew that he had to be especially careful, for a sudden move on his part might cause the prisoner to cry out in fright.
He crawled alongside Barbut, who sensed his presence and looked round sharply. At once, Louis raised a finger to his lips, cautioning silence. Barbut nodded in understanding. Working quickly, Louis sliced through the ropes that bound the rancher, who let out an involuntary gasp of pain as the circulation started to return. Man and youth both froze in apprehension, but there was no sign that anyone had heard the sound. The laughter from the far side of the half-track told them that the card game was still in progress.
Louis put his lips against Barbut’s ear and whispered, so quietly that the rancher could barely hear the words: ‘Follow me, monsieur. But be silent!’
The two crept away from the half-track. As they crawled into the scrub by the side of the road Louis glanced up fearfully, but the German behind the machine-gun was still gazing into the distance. Fighting against a desperate urge to get up and run, or even to move too quickly, the two crawled on their bellies away from the road, yard by yard, until they reached the dip in the ground Louis had spotted earlier. Just as they slipped into it, a hoarse cry split the air behind them.
‘Halt! Halt sofort, oder Ich schiesse!’
‘Run, monsieur!’ Louis screamed in terror. ‘Run like the wind!’
They scrambled to their feet and raced as fast as they were able along the gulley, swerving from side to side like hares. For an elderly man, Barbut had a surprising turn of speed. Suddenly, the machine-gun on the half-track opened up, sending clods of earth and grass flying into the air around the fleeing pair. The curve in the gulley, where it ran round the slope of the hill, was only yards away.
Then a searing pain lanced through the flesh of Louis’s thigh. He screamed and stumbled but somehow kept going, driven on by the strength of fear. Blood streamed hotly down his leg as they put on a final spurt and rounded the hillside, plunging into the sheltering scrub. Behind them, they could hear guttural commands as the Germans launched themselves in pursuit.
Almost weeping with pain, Louis hobbled after Barbut. After a few more steps the two of them flung themselves down and began to claw their way up the hillside, keeping their heads well down. The scrub’s rough branches tore at them, scratching their faces. After several agonizing minutes, they reached a particularly dense thicket and burrowed their way into its sanctuary.
The sounds of pursuit grew louder. Desperately striving to control their laboured breathing, Barbut and Louis crouched lower into the scrub, praying that the enemy would pass them by. Louis clutched his jack-knife, resolved with all the determination of his sixteen years that he would try and take at least one German with him if their hiding-place should be discovered.
Close by, jackboots crunched on dry twigs. The bushes quivered with the passage of a body through them. Louis cowered against the earth next to Barbut, certain that each of his heartbeats must be loud enough to be heard a hundred years away, hardly daring to look up.
There was a sudden exclamation, and Barbut seized the boy’s arm. A shadow fell over them. Louis, forcing himself to look up at last, found himself staring into the muzzle of a machine-pistol. Behind it was a blond, bareheaded German, not much older than himself. There was a thin smile of satisfaction on his face.
‘Hier sind die Schweine!’ he yelled. ‘Ich habe die Blutspur gefolgt!’
Louis gripped his knife tightly and prepared to hurl himself at the German’s throat. His eyes were on the knuckles of the finger that curved around the trigger. They were white.
There was a sudden bang and Louis hurled himself to one side, screaming. There had been no time to make his m
ove. No time. It was all over. He dropped the knife and clutched himself, wondering where he had been hit.
But he had not been hit. Feeling alternately hot and cold with reaction, he rolled over on to his knees and looked wildly around him. The blond German was lying spreadeagled on his back, blood pouring from his throat. He was making feeble movements, his eyes rolled back in their sockets until the whites showed. Barbut had already seized his fallen machine-pistol.
A crackle of gunfire erupted on the hillside behind them. It was returned by the other Germans, who were steadily retreating down the slope. Louis looked round; some distance away, a man was waving his arm at them, beckoning.
‘Allez!’ he called. ‘A nous, vite!’
They scrambled up and pushed their way through the scrub, Louis limping and wincing with the pain of his injured thigh. Hands grabbed at them and pulled them down into cover. The firing resumed and now the Germans were in full flight, running for their lives down the slope. One of them threw up his arms with a scream and tumbled over and over like a shot rabbit.
The men in the scrub ceased firing and began to move back up the hillside in relays, taking Louis and Barbut with them, each relay covering the other. There were a dozen of them, armed with an assortment of weapons. Barbut faced one of them, a stocky man with aristocratic features and a tonsure of dark, wavy hair.
‘My friend,’ he said grinning, ‘to say that I am pleased to see you would be an understatement!’
‘We spotted your predicament,’ replied the other, ‘and set out to give you some help. But it seemed that someone else had the same idea.’ He smiled at Louis and shook him by the hand. ‘Well done. You are very brave. But you are injured,’ he observed, suddenly full of concern, looking at the youth’s leg. ‘Let me look at that.’
The wound turned out not to be serious; little more than a graze, but the bullet had taken a chunk of flesh with it and caused a lot of bleeding. It was quickly bandaged. Louis felt a flush of intense pride as both Barbut and the Resistance man showered praise on him; the pride became even deeper when he learned, later, that the man was the legendary Auguste, the Englishman who had come at great risk to help Louis’s countrymen.
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