Put Out the Light

by Terry Deary

  ‘If I can, I will,’ the German smiled.

  ‘Your bombers hit their targets in the dark. We have a blackout, but it doesn’t seem to do us much good. How do they find the targets?’

  It was not a question, it was an order.

  The spy swallowed hard and twisted his fingers. ‘It is one of Germany’s greatest secrets,’ he whispered.

  The officer spread his hands. ‘Not really. We already know you have some sort of beam to guide your bombers. Every time you use it we learn more about it.’ He leaned forward and spoke quietly. ‘Here is a British secret. In two weeks, we will have cracked the secret of your beam. Tell us what you know and you won’t betray Germany – you’ll just make the war two weeks shorter.’

  The spy rested his chin on his chest for a long while. Finally he looked up.

  ‘You are talking about the X-Gerat radio-beam system. I trained with the Luftwaffe, so it’s something I know about.’

  ‘And now you can train us?’

  The spy nodded slowly. ‘I will.’

  Dachau, Germany 2 September 1940

  Manfred slept badly. Some nights he lay awake, listening for the British bombers to come and kill him. Other nights he had dark dreams about slaving in a bomb factory with the Polish girl sweeping up behind him. Then a kapo would march up to him and make him stand in a pool of freezing water till he collapsed, face down, and began to drown. That’s when he woke, sweating and afraid.

  In the morning, he dressed and wandered wearily downstairs. There was a rattle at the letterbox and his mother came in with a handful of letters. ‘Here’s one from Ernst at the aerodrome… Oh, and look, Manfred – he’s written one to you, too.’

  Manfred was suddenly awake. He took the letter and tore it open. He read it quickly and then read it again slowly. ‘My dearest brother,’ it said, ‘I am delighted to tell you we are winning this war and I am safe and well. I was so angry to hear about our grandfather. I guess he will be out of hospital soon. He is as tough as the meat in our stew! Anyway, I told my commander about the British dropping a bomb on a harmless old man and how they are bringing terror to my family.’

  ‘What does he say?’ Manfred’s mother asked, looking up from her own letter.

  Manfred covered the letter and thought quickly. ‘Ernst says his commander wants to show the people of Dachau that there is nothing to worry about. He says that I can go to their bomber base and see how mighty the Luftwaffe is. Then I can come back and tell all the boys at school how we are going to win the war.’

  ‘Oh, Manfred, that is wonderful. You can see all the planes you dream about. Maybe Ernst will even take you on a flight! Will you go by train?’

  ‘Ernst says the bombs from the Dachau factory are delivered to his base once a month. I can take a ride on one of the wagons, and it can bring me back later.’

  ‘That makes sense,’ his mother agreed.

  Manfred nodded. ‘And Ernst says I can take a friend.’

  ‘Little Hansl?’

  ‘Maybe,’ the boy said quietly. An idea was forming in his mind. An impossible, crazy idea. He jumped to his feet and slipped the letter into his pocket. ‘I’m off to school,’ he said.

  The old clock ticked on the wall. ‘You’re half an hour too early!’ his mother gasped. ‘I’ve never seen you leave the house at this time.’

  ‘I have things to do,’ Manfred said as he snatched his coat and cap from the clothes-stand, grabbed his school bag from behind the door, and ran out into the street.

  When he reached the end of the road, he turned and ran towards Hansl’s house. He hammered at the door till his friend answered.

  ‘Hansl, come quickly, I have a plan.’

  ‘I haven’t finished my breakfast.’

  ‘Does it taste nice?’

  ‘Terrible.’

  ‘Then come on – walk up to the munitions factory with me and I’ll tell you my news.’

  Hansl grabbed his school stuff and followed Manfred down the road. The first leaves of autumn were falling and the hillside forests were turning gold and pale green. The hedge at the side of the road was full of ripe blackberries. The boys picked some and ate them. The bushes would soon be stripped by the folk of Dachau.

  High above, the clear sky was scarred with the white vapour trails of aeroplanes, but it was still hard to believe there was a war on.

  Manfred stopped and pointed at the factory. ‘What I’m going to tell you is so secret, Hansl, we could both be shot if you say one word.’

  ‘Shot?’ the small boy said, and his eyes flicked around as if a sniper were hiding behind the hedge.

  ‘Swear on the life of Adolf Hitler that you will tell no one what I say.’

  ‘I swear on the life of Adolf Hitler that I will tell no one what you say.’

  Manfred licked his lips and began. ‘I want to get into the factory to write on one of the bombs.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘I know a way into the factory.’

  ‘Is that the secret?’

  ‘No – shut up.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That skinny girl we rescued from the bullies will get us inside the factory, but it will have to be on a night when one of the friendly guards is on Gate C,’ he explained.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why would she do that?’ Hansl asked.

  ‘That’s the great secret,’ his friend hissed. ‘She wants to escape. If we help her to escape, then she’ll get us into the factory.’

  ‘Help a prisoner escape!’ Hansl cried, and Manfred wrapped a hand around his mouth.

  ‘Hush! Do you want the Gestapo to hear you in Berlin?’

  ‘Mmmmf!’ Hansl said shaking his head. Manfred released his smothering grip.

  ‘Yes, Hansl. Helping a Polish prisoner to escape will get you executed. But this girl is no danger to Germany. If we help her get away, it won’t mean we lose the war. My brother Ernst says we are already winning the war.’

  ‘How will you help her?’

  Manfred pushed a fat blackberry into his mouth and chewed on it as he turned back along the path to the town. ‘I don’t want to tell you now. But one day, I will come to you and ask you to do something for me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can’t tell you just yet. But if you promise to help with my escape plan, I’ll get my brother to take you up in one of his planes after the war. You’ve always wanted to do that, haven’t you?’

  Hansl’s eyes shone. ‘Always, Manfred. But won’t it be dangerous, what you want me to do?’

  ‘Just a little,’ Manfred said. ‘But you have to trust me.’

  ‘I do,’ Hansl nodded.

  Chapter 17

  16 September 1940

  It was a fortnight before Manfred had a chance to put his plan into action. He didn’t see the girl on the streets after school. He wondered if she was still alive.

  Then, in mid-September, when the trees were half bare and leaves were whipping down the street, he saw her leave the grocery store and ran after her.

  ‘Irena?’

  She turned. He had thought she was icicle thin when he’d last seen her. Now she was even thinner and her dark eyes more sunken. She looked at him silently.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

  ‘They changed my work. I sweep the factory by day and I have a new job most nights.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She fell silent and stared at the pavement, a strange look of shame and disgust on her face. ‘People in the camp … slaves … they die.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They are buried in a pit … but first their clothes are removed.’ The girl looked ill. ‘Suits, dresses, shirts … underclothes. Some are good material … some are rags. The good clothes are washed and given to German people. The rough clothes, with the lice and the stains, are washed and given to slaves. The rags are used for cleaning.’

  ‘And your job?’

  ‘I sort out the clothes int
o the good, the bad and the rags,’ she said.

  ‘The clothes off dead people? That’s awful.’

  She shrugged. ‘It means I have something good to sleep on. Last night, I had a dead woman’s fur coat to keep me warm. The dead don’t mind. Some of the clothes have blood on them, but not many. The worst thing is –’ She stopped and looked up at the evening sky.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There are more,’ she said simply.

  ‘More what?’

  Irena looked at him as if he was simple. ‘More than there used to be.’

  ‘You mean it’s harder work for you?’

  For the first time, he saw anger in the girl’s face. ‘No, you German fool,’ she spat. ‘I mean there are more slaves dying. At first it was a few, but now they’re getting weaker and the kapos are getting crueller. Now the burial pits are filling up. And most of them are Poles like me. One day I will join them.’ She gave a small snort. ‘I suppose the Germans will ask me to sort my own clothes before I die.’

  ‘You won’t die,’ Manfred said.

  She looked at him steadily. ‘We all die.’

  ‘I mean, you won’t die in the camp. I have a plan. A plan for you to escape.’

  ‘Where would I go?’ she asked.

  People in the street were looking at them curiously. The well-dressed schoolboy in a warm coat and scarf and the ragged slave girl. Manfred pulled Irena into an alley between the shops. ‘You wanted to go to England,’ he said.

  She gave a small smile. ‘When the war started, the Germans took over the radio stations. When we listened to the news, we only heard German lies. So my father found a way to get the BBC radio from England.’

  ‘So you heard English lies instead?’ Manfred said, scowling. ‘If we listen to English radio, we will be shot.’

  Irena went on as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘After the news there was music. There was a woman they call Vera Lynn – she sings beautiful English songs. We learned to speak English from the radio, and I learned to sing her songs.’

  The girl wandered down the shadowy alley towards the rubbish bins at the back of the shops. Her thin voice rose into the air, sweet as an evening nightingale.

  ‘There’ll always be an England

  While there’s a country lane,

  Wherever there’s a cottage small

  Beside a field of grain.

  There’ll always be an England

  While there’s a busy street,

  Wherever there’s a turning wheel,

  A million marching feet.’

  She stopped and looked east towards England.

  ‘I think I can get you there,’ Manfred said. ‘But first you must help me get inside the factory.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ Irena asked suddenly.

  Manfred explained where his house was.

  The girl pulled a square of blue silk from a pocket in her dress. ‘Silk. It belonged to a rich Pole who ended up in the camp.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Of course. How do you think I got her handkerchief? If the Germans knew I had it, they would beat me.’

  ‘Then why keep it?’

  ‘Because it is beautiful,’ she said simply. ‘When it is a good night for you to visit the factory, I will tie this handkerchief to your front gate. You will come that night, to Gate C at ten o’clock. Do you understand?’

  Manfred nodded. Irena turned away. The boy called after her, ‘There’ll always be an England,’ and she gave him a half smile. ‘There’ll always be an England … even if it is ruled by Germany,’ he murmured quietly to himself.

  Manfred wrote to his brother to set the plan in motion. He asked Ernst if he could visit him at the aerodrome and if he could get a fake permit that would allow him to visit the factory. Amazingly, it arrived soon after. Now all he needed was a sign from Irena.

  The weeks slipped by. The days grew shorter. The evenings came quicker, but every night Manfred looked for the blue handkerchief before he went to bed.

  It didn’t appear.

  He sat with his mother and listened to the radio. It was cold enough now to light a fire but Manfred’s mother only used a few pieces of precious coal and some scraps of wood she picked up from the bombed houses.

  ‘We could be burning Grandpa’s house,’ she chuckled.

  In late September, Ernst Weiss wrote to say Manfred’s trip to the aerodrome must be forgotten for a while. Every day, his bombers were attacking England.

  ‘We bomb their air bases by daylight. Their Spitfires shoot down a few of us, but many get through. Soon they will have no air bases left and no planes. Then we can invade England and the war will end. It may be over before Christmas.’

  At the end of the month, Grandpa left hospital and came to live with them.

  ‘Ha!’ he cried one wind-whipped night when the gale outside sucked sparks up the chimney. ‘Italy and Japan have joined us in this war. It’s as good as over. The British cannot hold on much longer.’

  ‘Will Japan send troops to attack Britain?’ Manfred asked.

  ‘No, boy. Japan will use its mighty power to control the Pacific Ocean. If the Americans even think about joining Britain in the war, then Japan will conquer America from the west. Easy!’

  Manfred nodded. If the war was going to be so short, he would have to hurry with his plan to set Irena free.

  But still the blue handkerchief didn’t appear.

  October

  Chapter 18

  Sheffield, England 16 October 1940

  School was as dull as the October skies. In history lessons, old Mr Cutter taught us about the Battle of Hastings and the Battle of Stamford Bridge.

  Mr Cutter was a chalk-dusted, Hitler-moustached, elbow-patched, blotch-faced, watery-eyed, stained-tooth man. He hated the way I wrote.

  ‘Thomas, you cannot throw all those words together. You will never make a writer. You must write the way your English teacher tells you, in clear sentences.’

  ‘But you understand what I mean.’

  ‘That is not the point. You must write correctly.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because … because I say so. Now, where was I?’

  ‘At the Battle of Hastings,’ Freddy York reminded him.

  ‘Yes … the Battle of Hastings took place on the 14th of October, in the year 1066. That’s 874 years ago yesterday. Or was it the day before yesterday? Anyway, it was the last time Britain was invaded,’ he droned on like a wasp in a jar.

  I didn’t want to know about the last invasion. Why couldn’t we talk about the Battle of Britain? That’s what they were calling the fight in the skies over England. I wanted to know what would happen the next time Britain was invaded.

  Mr Hitler was sending his bombers over every night to kill the people in London. As soon as the RAF was destroyed, the German troops would sail across the English Channel and take over the country. Our fighter pilots were trying to shoot them down with their Hurricanes and Spitfires. They were holding back the swarms of Luftwaffe planes, Dad said, but only just.

  Sheffield was safe and there hadn’t been any air-raid sirens lately, so we couldn’t try out our burglar-catching plan.

  I waited for Sally at the school gates and we raced home till we had no breath left to hear the latest news.

  ‘Has Mr Hitler landed in London yet?’ Sally panted.

  Our mum was listening to the radio and waiting for the four o’clock news. ‘Not yet, Sally. Let’s pray he doesn’t or we’ll all end up speaking German.’

  ‘I can’t speak German,’ Sally cried. ‘What’ll I do?’

  ‘You’ll have to learn,’ Ma said with a shrug. ‘You’ll have German teachers in your school.’

  ‘Will they be as nasty as our Mrs Morrison?’ Sally asked.

  ‘Nastier … Nazi-er!’ I laughed.

  ‘Nobody’s as nasty as Mrs Morrison. She gave Mary Ramsbotham the cane yesterday and the cane snapped she hit her that hard. But then she just got a new cane out and kept on hitting her. Mary
didn’t cry though. We watched. She said she wasn’t going to cry and she didn’t. I think that made Mrs Morrison hit her harder and –’

  ‘Hush, Sally,’ Mum said. ‘I want to listen to the news.’

  We sat at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and some dripping on bread. The news was a shock. The biggest attack of the war hit London last night, the man on the radio said. Four hundred enemy aircraft bombed for six hours. The RAF sent forty fighters against them, but only shot down one enemy plane.

  ‘They can’t shoot down the enemy at night,’ Ma muttered.

  ‘The searchlights show them where the German planes are,’ I argued. I’d seen the searchlights sweeping the Sheffield clouds when the false alarms came.

  ‘The searchlights don’t light up bombers that are flying over twelve thousand feet – that’s what the fighter pilots at Firbeck tell your dad. Now, shush – what was that he said?’

  ‘He said the Germans attacked Birmingham and Bristol last night as well,’ Sally told her.

  ‘The war’s getting closer,’ Ma whispered. ‘Maybe it’s time we sent you two away to the country.’

  ‘No-o!’ Sally and I cried together.

  ‘Where’s Birmingham?’ my sister asked.

  ‘Just a quarter of an hour away in an aeroplane. They make the Spitfires and Hurricanes there. If they’re attacking Birmingham, it won’t be long before Sheffield gets its own Blitz.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ I asked.

  Our mum snapped off the radio. ‘The Germans know what our factories make. Hadfields makes the shells, Vickers makes the Spitfire engines … then there’s the steelworks and the coalmines. We’re sitting in the middle of a firework waiting for somebody to light the fuse.’

  She picked up our empty mugs and plates and carried them into the kitchen. Sally’s eyes were bright. ‘There’ll be an air-raid warning tonight,’ she said softly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Listen, Dr Watson. The Blackout Burglar knows the whole of Sheffield is waiting for a raid. So, he’ll send a message to the Home Guard saying there’s an attack on the way. The sirens will sound. People will run for the shelters. The Blackout Burglar’ll rob them. If he’s clever, he’ll take a little from each house. Or he’ll look for one big pile of money – like Mrs Haddock’s safe, or the fortune Mrs Grimley says she’s got hidden away.’