A Future Arrived

by Phillip Rock

  The plane hit with a terrible crash and groan of smashed wood and snapping metal. Derek flew up in the seat, held cruelly by the safety harness, the straps cutting into him like steel bands. The plane bounced … wobbled … hit again and turned over. He blacked out as something slammed the back of his head. When he came to he had no idea where he was. An awful stillness … something gurgling close by. He closed his eyes to calm himself, then opened them and looked about. He was upside down, head a few inches from water. The gurgling sound was fuel pouring from the ruptured tank behind the engine, the stench of it filling his lungs. Please, God, don’t let it explode … please. He fumbled with the release catch on his harness, tearing away the oxygen tube and the radio wires from his helmet and mask as he did so. The harness slipped off and he fell headfirst into the brackish water below.

  The water was less than four feet deep. He went down to a bottom of sand, crawled through the tangle of broken wing, and then stood up in sunshine. He was in a pond ringed by sand dunes and could hear the ocean and the cry of seabirds. The plane lay belly up with its nose under water, the cracked fuselage hanging down like the broken spine of some prehistoric bird.

  “Over here, mate!”

  The words were indistinct on the wind. A soldier with a rifle crouched on the dunes, waving at him. He took off his flying helmet and rubbed his eyes. Hard to tell at this distance what he was. German? A tommy? Another soldier appeared over the rim of the dune, cupped his hands to his mouth, and shouted … “Get a bloody move on, carn’t yer!”

  Derek, sobbing with relief, sloshed on through the chest-deep water to the shore.

  One of the soldiers helped him out of the water and out of his bulky, waterlogged flying suit while the other lay warily on top of the dune with his rifle leveled.

  “You’re bloody lucky, mate. Me an’ Flapper saw you come down. Them bastards over other side of the dunes must’ve seen you too.”

  “Germans?” Derek said through clenched teeth. His right shoulder was probably broken. The numbness replaced by pain.

  “Jerry? Not bloody likely. Fuckin’ deserters. Frenchies … some of our lot … a couple of bleedin’ bints from a whorehouse. Wild as fuckin’ crazy cats they are. Cut your throat for your bleedin’ boots an’ what’s in your pockets.” He glanced up the slope of sand and windblown grass. “Spot ’em, Flapper?”

  His answer was four rounds of rapid fire.

  The soldier grinned, revealing missing teeth. “Ol’ Flapper don’t talk much. I’m Lance Corporal Darby. Call me Sid. We’re pullin’ back with the rear guard. All mixed in together. We’re with the Dorsets … Second bloody Battalion. You all right now, mate? Best get on other side of the dune. Easy walkin’ along the beach.”

  “I think my shoulder’s broken.”

  “Is it now? Lucky for you then you don’t walk on it, ain’t it? Come on … let’s step lively like.”

  Dunkirk lay six or seven miles ahead along the beach, wreathed in smoke and haze. Columns of black smoke from bombed oil tanks rolled inland on the wind. French troops were digging in among the dunes, laying field guns and stringing barbed wire. They didn’t bother to look up as they walked past them. Farther along the beach they met small, straggling groups of tommies, some with their rifles, most without. All of them had the dazed expressions of sleepwalkers. Lance Corporal Darby shouted at them, trying to form them into a cohesive unit, but all ignored him, stumbling on through the sand.

  “Dunkirk bloody fever, I calls it. The poor sods don’t know where they are.”

  The clean, tide-swept beach began to change after a couple of miles. Abandoned trucks and guns and a thousand odd lots of equipment came into view. Offshore, just beyond the gentle breakers, lay the burnt-out hull of a British destroyer, a wisp of smoke still rising from amidships. More wrecked boats farther along, the stern of a yacht bobbing on the water close to shore. SKYLARK painted in bright green across the white-painted wood. Someone’s pride and joy.

  “And little Skylark went to war,” Derek muttered in his fog of pain.

  “What’s that, mate?”

  “Nothing.”

  Lance Corporal Darby placed a strong, callused hand on Derek’s good shoulder. “Keep your pecker up. Won’t be long now.”

  Long files of filthy, shabby men snaked from the beach to the water, to small boats which ferried them out to larger boats. A major with walrus mustaches and a face the color of port wine was directing the operation with the awesome power of his lungs. “?’Ware plane!” he shouted.

  The long lines of men did not need to be told. They hunched down in the sand as the Stuka howled out of the vivid blue sky. The bomb fell up the beach, exploding deep in the sand, jarring the earth but injuring no one.

  “Where’s your bloody friends?” the major bellowed.

  Derek stared at him blankly, the man’s vivid face inches from his own. “Sorry. What?”

  “You bloody well heard me! On holiday, are you? Damn RA bloody F!”

  “The young gentleman shot down a fuckin’ Stuka … sir,” said Lance Corporal Darby with icy politeness. “We saw him do it.”

  The major, saying nothing, turned about and strode away—shouting at the men.

  It was lovely on the sea in the summertime. By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea … down the lazy Thames to Margate … Cliftonville and Broadstairs. Ices and licorice strings. Grandpapa smoking his cigar by the rail. The sun so warm. He smiled blissfully, rested his head against Lance Corporal Darby’s shoulder, and fell deeply asleep.

  15

  RADIO-PARIS AND THE more powerful Paris PTT were off the air. Nevertheless, Martin finished typing his broadcast in the offices of INA on the rue Boissy-d’Anglas. Through the window beside his desk he watched a German staff car race down the empty street toward the Place de la Concorde, preceded by two soldiers on motorcycles, machine pistols strapped to their backs. The sight added to his gloom and marred the exquisite beauty of the June day.

  “Maybe you can phone it to New York tonight,” Charlotte Dale said from her desk across the room.

  Martin eyed the attractive, leggy brunette morosely. “Not a chance. The German signal corps have taken over the exchange. No telling when things will get back to normal—not that they ever can.”

  “Not the way they were, anyway,” Charlotte said, a distant look in her eyes. She had been chief of the Paris bureau for three years. “Do you think I should stay on here, Marty, or get the hell out and go back to New York?”

  “Working with the German censors is going to be tough … being with INA even tougher. Goebbels hates this agency, you know that. The chances are good you won’t be given a choice. If I were you I’d be packed and ready in case the Nazis give you ten minutes to get out of France.”

  “Sound idea. I’d been thinking the same thing.”

  Martin slipped the dust cover over the typewriter, folded his sheets of copy and slipped them inside his breast pocket. “I’ll buy you a drink if any place is open.”

  “Sure, why not? Nothing coming over the wires anyway.”

  Paris lay paralyzed, numb with shock. The unthinkable had taken place after all. Les Boches were in their glorious city. A million or more Parisians had fled the capital, jamming the roads to the south. Terrible rumors had swept the city for days before the German columns had entered the suburbs. The city would be burned … the women raped in the streets … the men machine-gunned against the walls. Nothing of that sort had taken place. The soldiers of the Wehrmacht had arrived with a provincial shyness, painfully polite and self-conscious in this, the City of Light. They paid for their purchases of souvenirs in the few shops that had not closed their shutters and they posed in stiff little groups to have their pictures taken on the steps of Sacré Coeur, in front of the Madeleine, or against the soaring backdrop of the Eiffel Tower. They had conquered an ancient enemy, these boys from Bavaria, Westphalia, Saxony, and Prussia, and they felt a sense of pride at doing it, but no feelings of hatred or vindictive triump
h.

  “We are not Huns,” a young panzer commander had told Martin that morning when he had interviewed him and his crew, their dust-streaked tank parked under the chestnut trees on the rue de Rivoli. The Gestapo and the SS had not yet arrived.

  “I think Ricard’s is open,” Charlotte said as they walked up the empty street and into the equally deserted boulevard Malesherbes. Eerie to see the city streets empty of taxis, trucks, and cars, all bleating their horns in mad cacophony. There were German staff cars, trucks, and a line of commandeered buses parked by the Madeleine—more soldier tourists in feldgrau and soft forage caps, many with cameras. Ricard’s was open, a few German officers drinking beer and wine at the little sidewalk tables. Not a Frenchman in sight except the waiter, and he turned out to be Spanish. They took a table at a distance from the Germans and ordered martinis.

  Before the drinks arrived one of the officers walked over to their table and made a stiff little bow. He was a colonel of engineers and wore the Iron Cross First Class from the last war on his tunic. “Good afternoon,” he said in guidebook French. “It is good … to see civilians … return to their … pursuits of pleasure.”

  “We are Americans,” Martin replied in his pristine German. “Journalists. Would you care to see our identity papers?”

  The colonel smiled and pulled up a chair. “Not at all. Your German is excellent.”

  “My father was German-American. My mother came from Alsace and spoke both German and French. I learned the language early in life.”

  “And your name?”

  “Martin Rilke … and the lady is Charlotte Dale. She also speaks German.”

  The colonel made another sharp bow to Charlotte and then sat down, looking at Martin intently. “I read one or two of your books many years ago. I recall most vividly the one on the Somme battles … A Killing Ground. A good book. I fought there, at Montauban and Delville Wood.” He shook his head in wonder. “After the horrors of that war I cannot understand why England so perfidiously would start another.”

  Martin said nothing and calmly picked up his glass when the waiter set the drinks on the table.

  “Well,” the colonel said, getting to his feet, “this one is now over. The English lost everything in Flanders. Those who got away left only with their underclothes. They will sue for terms in a few days. Kindly allow me to place your tab with mine. We will drink a toast to the memory of the last war. To no more killing grounds. To peace.”

  Charlotte toyed with her glass as the colonel returned to his table.

  “Will Britain ask Hitler for peace, Marty?”

  “Never.”

  “What in God’s name will they fight with?”

  “The English Channel and the navy. If the Nazis manage to get troops across, they’ll fight with rocks and clubs if they have to.”

  She sighed and took a drink. “I hope I am bounced out of here. I have a sudden longing to go home.”

  “And where’s home? New York?”

  “Sacramento.”

  “Not exactly Paris.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s free.”

  When Martin entered the lobby of the Crillon later that afternoon it was to find all of his luggage hastily packed, dumped by the desk, and being watched over by an angry member of the CBC radio team.

  “They kicked us all out, Chief. The German high command took over the entire hotel.”

  “That’s okay. It’s time we moved, period. Get over to London.”

  “Now you’re talking, Pop! They haven’t reached the south yet. We could get a neutral ship in Bordeaux or Toulon. Shall I run over to the embassy and see what I can come up with?”

  “I talked with them this morning. An American liner leaves Cherbourg tomorrow afternoon. Makes a stop in Cork and then goes on to the States. The embassy is sending half their people home on it. There’s nothing left for us to do here, Jim.”

  “Boy, you can say that again. But I’m sure going to miss the place.”

  He would not miss it, Martin was thinking as the motorcade swept through the streets toward St. Germain and the highway to Normandy. It was early morning, the soft yellow sun a glowing magic in the Bois and on the Seine at Neuilly. The Paris that he had loved for so many years, the city of his birth, was too painful to look at now. An elegant and beautiful woman stripped of her pride and forced into beggary. The Parisians were drifting back now by the tens of thousands, an endless stream of haggard, thirsty, worn-out people. On foot, in overloaded, radiator-steaming cars, jamming into and onto wheezing trucks and buses. A people returning because there was no other place to go. Life would come back to the city, but it was not a life that he cared to witness. The limousines, national flags of the occupants fluttering above them, crossed the looping bends of the river escorted by German motorcyclists. Americans and Brazilians, Cubans and Colombians—embassy staffs and newsmen going home or, via Ireland, to London.

  “I hope we never have to do this any more,” someone in Martin’s car muttered.

  “We won’t,” he said, his voice a growl of Churchillian intensity. “We’ll never be run out of anywhere again.”

  THE MONTH OF June drew to a close with the usual routines, flying the daily patrols out of Beauly Firth on varied assignments. Flanking the southbound convoys from Newcastle-on-Tyne one day, roving far out across the gray wastes of the North Sea the next. There were moments of high excitement when a U-boat was sighted on the surface, or a raider detected attempting to break out into the Atlantic between Iceland and the Faeroes. But mostly it was endless hours of numbing boredom.

  Eccentricity began to creep through the squadron and, because it seemed to have a positive effect on morale, Squadron Leader Allison went along with it. The eccentricity began with Colin, who appeared in the briefing room one morning wearing his lizard-skin cowboy boots.

  “And what, may I ask, are those?” Allison had said.

  “Riding boots, sir … from Texas.”

  “I see. Are you, by any chance, contemplating forming a troop of irregular cavalry?”

  “No, sir. I’ve always found them comfortable when flying.”

  Allison had merely raised an eye toward heaven and let it go at that. It had been both a mistake and a blessing to do so. The idiosyncrasies of pilots and crews knew no bounds. Men began wearing tam-o-shanters or glengarries over their flying helmets. Men bought, or had their girlfriends knit, long wool scarves in a bewildering variety of tartan plaids. His own navigator boasted a ten-foot scarf—the longest in the squadron until a waist gunner proudly turned up with one two feet longer. One flying officer, a hitherto dour and sober young Scot from Aberdeen, befriended a mallard and took it with him on all his patrols, the duck resting comfortably above the instrument panel. All of the men were reasonably cheerful for a change, but Allison lived in dread of some group captain or air commodore dropping by without warning. The Colorado Squadron began to be referred to by the ground personnel as the “Nuthouse Gang.”

  Colin came back from a patrol that had taken them west of the Shetlands to search for the crew of a torpedoed freighter. The gunner-observer had spotted a lifebuoy bobbing in the choppy sea and they had flown low over it, scanning it through binoculars. S.S. CARMARTHEN CASTLE—SWANSEA had been clearly seen in black lettering on the white ring. And that had been all. Not a sign of life, only flotsam on the water and wide drifts of oil. And gulls pecking at God knew what terrible garbage beneath the surface of the waves.

  He felt tired and depressed as he returned to the hotel that evening with half a dozen other officers who were billeted there. A few of the permanent residents sat in the lobby reading or having before-dinner drinks. Someone rose from one of the deep leather chairs …

  “Hi, cowboy.”

  “Fat Chap! Jesus H. Christ!” Colin stared at him. “I don’t believe it. Goddamn, what the hell are you doing in Scotland?”

  “I’m stationed here,” Derek said. He pointed to the boots. “Join the Texas air force?”

  “I have
an understanding skipper.” He gripped Derek’s hand and noticed the two broad rings on the sleeve of his uniform. “A flight lieutenant. You son-of-a-bitch. When did that happen?”

  “While I was in hospital.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t get down to London to see you, Derek.”

  “That’s all right. I was only in for a few days. Kate popped over from Norwich with a basket of plums.”

  “Did she? Nice of her.” He scowled at his boots and then brightened, patting Derek on the arm. “Heck, we’re wasting time. I’ll take a quick wash and we’ll head for Inverness.”

  Derek had a car and brought Colin up to date as he drove to the ferry. It was nearly nine o’clock, but the sun still lingered, sparkling off the Moray Firth. They got out of the car and stood by the rail and he told of how his squadron had been attached to another at Kentish Hill and that the nine pilots who were left, including himself, had been sent to Turnhouse near Edinburgh to qualify in Spitfires.

  “You lucky bastard.”

  “I hate to rub it in, old boy, but it is one hell of a kite. Light as a feather and powerful as a train.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy.”

  “The job that bad?”

  Colin thought about it for a moment. “Not really. I like the guys, especially the skipper. And what we do is important, I guess, but we don’t kill Germans. I’ve dropped a tin can or two but never even damaged a sub as far as I know. One of our mob sank an E-boat off Bergen a few weeks ago. That’s about the size of it. How many planes have you shot down?”

  “Three confirmed. Two probables.”

  “You’re an easy man to envy, Fat Chap. Say, how would you like to go out with me tomorrow? I’ll show you the wide and empty spaces of the North Sea.”

  “I’d like nothing better, but I’ll be flying down in the morning. I was on a training flight to Wick but ran into some mag problems on the way back and landed at Dingwell Field … just up the road.”

  “Convenient.”