Put Out the Light

by Terry Deary

  I hadn’t thought of that. Sally acted stupid most of the time. But her brain was as sharp as broken glass. ‘So, what can we do to catch him or her?’

  Sally chewed her lip and thought. ‘We’ll be no use in the shelter. We need to be out on the streets, looking for anybody wandering around. We’ll follow them. See if they go into houses. Then, when the all-clear sounds, see where they go home.’

  I thought about it. ‘What if there really is a raid? Mum says we’re next. What if bombs start falling? We’ll be caught in the open.’

  ‘Smart question, Dr Watson. We need to know if there really is a raid.’

  ‘I just said that. So what would happen if German planes were heading for Sheffield?’ I asked.

  ‘Somebody would phone and warn the Home Guard,’ she told me.

  ‘Who? Who would phone?’ I asked.

  Sally screwed up her eyes and thought. ‘Dad told us, didn’t he? Before he left. The air force has ray guns –’

  ‘Not ray guns,’ I sneered. ‘Radar. Some sort of radio signal that bounces off enemy planes and lets us know they’re coming from fifty miles away.’

  Sally nodded. ‘Radar – ray gun – anyway, they phone and let the Sheffield Home Guard know.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, Sherlock, they don’t. They phone the RAF fighter bases. They get our Spitfires and Hurricanes up in the air and shoot the bombers down before they can do any damage!’

  I went to the cupboard by the fire where Ma kept old newspapers to burn. I pulled some out and found the one I wanted. ‘Look. August. The Germans sent planes to attack the south of England. They thought all our fighters would head south and leave the north without any planes. So they sent hundreds of bombers to bomb the north. The radar saw them coming and our fighters shot them down over the sea.’

  ‘So they never even reached England?’ Sally asked.

  I read the report. ‘A dozen houses in Sunderland were wrecked, but that’s about all. The radar saved the north-east.’

  My sister shook her head. ‘I don’t see how that helps us, Watson.’

  Now it was my turn to feel clever. I took a plate and put it in the middle of the table. ‘That’s Sheffield.’

  ‘It’s a bit white,’ Sally sniffed.

  I put the saltcellar a few inches away. ‘That’s the RAF fighter base.’

  Near the edge of the table I put the pepper pot. ‘That’s the radar station.’

  I quickly folded a sheet of newspaper into a paper plane. ‘German bomber.’

  ‘You won’t get many bombs in that.’

  ‘The edge of the table is the coast. Radar sees the bomber. What do they do?’

  Sally tapped the plate. ‘Phone Sheffield.’

  ‘No!’ I cried and pointed to the saltcellar. ‘They phone the RAF.’ I picked up the pepper pot and flew it towards the paper plane, making machine-gun sounds. I let the bomber drop. ‘See?’

  Sally screwed up her face so hard she looked like one of the evil gnomes in her book of fairytales. ‘The RAF will know about the attack before we do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘RAF bases like Firbeck?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So when we hear the air-raid siren go off, we phone Dad. We ask him if the fighters have taken off.’

  ‘Uh-huh, that’s right.’

  ‘If they have taken off, then the raid is real and we head for the shelter.’

  I grinned. ‘And if the fighters are on the ground, it’s a false alarm.’

  ‘We can stay out of the shelter and look out for the Blackout Burglar –’

  ‘And be safe. The burglar thinks he’s the only one who knows it’s a false alarm. But so will we!’

  Sally’s eyes went wide. ‘That’s quite clever, Dr Watson.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s brilliant. Let’s go out and help Warden Crane,’ I said, grabbing my coat and scarf and gas mask from the peg on the back of the door. ‘As soon as the siren goes, we’ll run to the wardens’ post and phone Dad – the wardens will all be out getting people into the shelters.’

  Sally found her hat and coat and gloves and called, ‘We’re off to help the warden, Mum!’

  ‘What if there’s a raid?’ Mum called back.

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll use the nearest shelter,’ Sally said as she slipped out of the door after me into the moon-bright streets.

  I looked up. ‘It’s a bomber’s moon, all right.’

  Chapter 19

  Dachau, Germany 16 October 1940

  Hansl was moaning as the boys tramped home from school. ‘Manfred, you said you were going to get inside the factory and write on a bomb. You said you’d arrange it.’

  ‘I know, Hansl. And I will.’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve been saying that for weeks. The war will be over before Christmas and you’ll never get to kill a Tommy. We’ve invaded Romania now – where’s Romania, Manfred?’

  ‘Oh, somewhere down near Italy, I think.’

  ‘So why have we invaded Romania?’

  Manfred turned up his coat collar against the chill wind that blew from Russia in the north-east. He thought of the girl in her thin grey dress and hoped she hadn’t had to stand in a freezing lake like her father. ‘Grandpa says Romania has lots of oilfields. Now we’ve captured them, we’ll have all the petrol we need for our planes and tanks. We’ll smash Britain from the air and march across to Russia in our tanks.’

  ‘How do you march in a tank?’ Hansl asked.

  ‘You know what I mean. Anyway, invading Romania is a smart move. Mr Hitler knows what he’s doing.’

  They turned into Manfred’s street. ‘So when are we going to the factory?’

  Manfred stopped and looked at his small friend. ‘Tonight, Hansl. Meet me at the gate to our back garden at quarter to ten tonight.’

  ‘Really?’ Hansl cried.

  ‘Really,’ Manfred said, ‘and bring some sausage.’

  ‘Sausage?’

  ‘Everybody knows your mother is a friend of the butcher’s wife. She can get as much sausage as she likes without a ration card. Bring some with you – nice and fresh, mind. Two packets.’

  Manfred watched Hansl race off down the street. He took a step towards his front gate and carefully untied the blue handkerchief. He slipped it into his pocket and walked into the house.

  That night, the boys ran through the green-lit streets, stopping at every corner to look out for police patrols. Sometimes, they met groups wandering from the taverns, grumbling about the food and drink, remembering how good it had been before the war.

  Manfred hurried past the new houses that were being built on the spot where Grandpa’s house had been bombed. Ahead, he saw the factory, looming in the light of the moon. ‘If the British knew it was here,’ Manfred said, ‘they’d bomb it tonight when the moon is full.’

  Hansl just nodded and stared at the grim building. From the road he could hear the thumping of machinery and the rumbling of trucks. Light spilled out through the blackout screens and showed the shadows of bent workers trudging wearily around the concrete building. They pulled trolleys with heavy crates towards the waiting trucks. Small cranes lifted the crates gently onto the back of the lorries.

  ‘Bullets and bombs,’ Manfred said.

  When they reached the gate, the friendly old guard was on duty. ‘The little girl said you’d be here,’ he said.

  ‘So can we go in?’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no – it’s not that simple,’ the man said. He wiped a drop of water from the end of his nose. ‘First I have to look after myself – I need some sort of note from you. Then if the Gestapo check, I can say you had permission.’

  ‘The Gestapo!’ Hansl squeaked. ‘The Gestapo torture people, don’t they? The boys in school say they rip out your fingernails to get you to talk. They fasten wires to you and give you electric shocks. They’re Mr Hitler’s Secret Police. I didn’t know they were here!’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ the old guard sighed. ‘The Gestapo run Dachau ca
mp – they supply the slaves to work in the factory. The factory pays the Gestapo for the slaves’ work.’

  ‘So who pays the slaves?’ Hansl asked.

  Manfred groaned, ‘No one, dummy. That’s why they’re slaves. They get fed, they get a place to sleep and they get clothes when they wear out. But they don’t get money. They’re prisoners and traitors.’

  ‘Ah,’ Hansl said. ‘So what do the Gestapo do?’

  ‘They just come along from time to time to check. If a slave looks too weak to work, they take him back to the camp and fetch a fresh slave,’ the guard explained.

  ‘And the sick slave gets a rest?’ Hansl said.

  The old man shuffled his feet and sniffed away another water drop from his nose. ‘Something like that.’

  Manfred handed the man the note from his brother. ‘Will this do?’

  The guard flicked a torch over the paper and saw the Luftwaffe aerodrome address printed at the top. ‘That’ll do.’

  ‘So can we go in now?’

  ‘No, no, no, no, no. Even with the note, I am taking a risk. If a Gestapo officer turns up, he may still want to know what I’m doing letting two kids wander round. No, no, no, no, no. I need paying if I’m going to let you in.’

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ Hansl said with a sigh.

  ‘Sausage,’ Manfred hissed. ‘Remember?’

  ‘Ah, yes!’ Hansl cried. He turned to the guard. ‘I have two hundred grams of fresh sausage here.’

  ‘Let me see it.’

  Hansl unwrapped the greasy paper and the spicy scent of the sausage drifted up on the chill east wind.

  ‘Ahhhh!’ the guard groaned. ‘Beautiful. Bring me that and you can come in any time, boys.’ He lowered his rifle, took the wrapped sausage and said, ‘Little Irena’s waiting for you by the side door on the left. Watch out for the trucks. They can flatten you thinner than a slug under a jackboot.’

  The boys ran through the gate in the wire fence and up the path to the factory. There was no chance of being run over by a truck because even in the darkness the roar of their engines gave them plenty of warning.

  But the car that came up behind them was ghostly quiet. The first they knew it was there was when its harsh horn sounded behind them. The huge Mercedes screeched to a halt. The rear door opened and a tall man stepped out, waving a pistol at them. He tilted his head back and looked down his eagle nose at them. ‘Get out of my way, Polish scum. Next time I will order my driver to run you down. He only stopped because he thought your under-human bodies would damage the car. Move!’

  Manfred dragged the frozen Hansl onto the thin grass at the side of the road and watched the man get back into the car. His throat was too dry to speak. At last he managed to say, ‘Gestapo … a Gauführer … a commander for the region. Very high up.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Hansl whispered as the car wheels spun and it shot past them.

  ‘Two stripes on his armband,’ Manfred explained.

  ‘What does he want? I thought the Gestapo didn’t come here very often? Maybe we should go straight home,’ Hansl moaned.

  ‘No. If he didn’t shoot us now, he must have more important things to worry about. We should be safe.’

  They hurried up the road and reached the side door where Irena waited, hopping from foot to foot. ‘The Gestapo have arrived,’ she said. ‘We must be careful. Come in quickly.’

  Chapter 20

  Manfred and Hansl followed Irena through two doors and were met by the roar of machinery. The light was dazzling after the dim moonlight outside. Rows of workbenches had screeching lathes and steel saws, mechanical hammers and conveyor belts. Hundreds of grey-faced, silent men were bent over the machines. Others wandered down the aisles, sweeping up the metal shavings or mopping up oil drips with rags.

  The tall figure of the Gauführer marched down one of the rows, led by a scuttling kapo. The Gestapo chief’s badges sparkled in the light – badges that showed a shining silver skull on his black uniform.

  The kapo stopped and pointed at one of the workers. The man had a shaved head and he looked as if he had been powerful and heavy at one time. Now his clothes hung on him like a scarecrow. He switched off the machine and turned to face the Gestapo chief. The Gauführer shouted something that Manfred couldn’t hear over the sound of the other machines. The slave looked up angrily and seemed to argue. Suddenly, the Gestapo chief’s arm swung and struck the slave’s face with the back of his hand. In the same movement, he reached for the pistol in a holster under his leather coat.

  The slave jumped behind his machine then began to run down the aisles. The Gauführer raised his gun and fired. Workers dived under their machines as the escaping man began to weave between them.

  He headed straight for the door where Manfred, Hansl and Irena stood. His face was white and his eyes bulged like a panicking horse. Another bullet splintered into the door an instant after he’d stepped through it. Manfred felt the hot air as it passed his ear.

  The Gestapo chief ran past them, shouting at his guards to make sure the main gates were all shut, then he hurried out into the night.

  Manfred heard three more cracks of the pistol. A minute later, the Gauführer stepped back through the door and spoke to the kapo. ‘That is one less troublemaker for you to worry about. He asked for more food, did he?’

  ‘Yes, Gauführer Linz.’

  The Gestapo chief began to reload his pistol and smiled a thin smile. ‘When I was at school we read an English book by a man called Dickens. It was called Oliver Twist. A boy in the book asked for more food.’

  ‘Yes, Gauführer Linz. Did they shoot him?’

  ‘No, but they should have done. These underhumans should be grateful we feed them at all. In fact, to teach them a lesson, you will not let any of them eat for the next day.’

  ‘Then they may not be strong enough to work tomorrow,’ the kapo said.

  ‘Good. The weakest ones will fail – get rid of them and replace them. We have just taken some Romanian gypsies prisoner. Nearly a hundred. They are fresh and strong. You can set them to work tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes, Gauführer Linz,’ the kapo said, bowing as the Gestapo chief strutted out through the door.

  Manfred was silent and Hansl had tears in his eyes. Irena’s face was blank.

  ‘Will they starve you till you’re too weak to work? Even though you had nothing to do with it?’ Manfred finally asked.

  ‘I don’t need much food – not like the men who do the heavy work.’

  Hansl slid a hand inside his jacket and pulled out a second packet of sausage. ‘This will keep you going.’

  Irena looked at the meat. ‘I will give it to the ones who need it,’ she said, and quickly hid it under a pile of old clothes in a room to the side of the factory.

  The workers were slowly getting back to their tasks, more weary than ever, barely shocked by the murder of their comrade.

  ‘You want to see the finished bombs?’ the girl said.

  Hansl nodded and followed Irena across the factory floor and into another room. It was as large as an aircraft hangar and filled with metal racks holding bombs and crates. They were wheeled in from the factory at one end and loaded onto the waiting trucks at the other.

  Irena ran to a small room at the side, filled a kettle from a tap and placed it on a gas ring to boil. She put tea into a pot and got a cup ready.

  ‘I thought we were going to write on a bomb,’ Hansl said.

  ‘I have a job to do. I must make tea for the kapo or I will be beaten. And if you want to touch the bombs, the kapo must be in a good mood.’

  She turned back to her work and carried a mug of steaming tea into the loading room. The kapo was better fed than the other workers and there was a cruel look on his narrow, unshaven face. ‘You’re late, girl,’ he snarled and raised a stick.

  Manfred stepped between the man and the girl. ‘It’s not her fault. The Gestapo came to arrest a worker and he was shot. We had to hide from the bullets.’


  ‘Who was shot?’

  ‘Nicolaus Piłsudski,’ Irena said.

  ‘Serves him right,’ the kapo told her. ‘He was always a troublemaker. I thought I heard something. It’s hard to tell with the noise of the machines. Another one dead, eh? And who are you? You don’t look like workers.’

  ‘We’re from the town,’ Manfred explained. ‘My grandpa is a hero from the last war. He asked me to write on a bomb with chalk, and now we need your help.’

  ‘Why should I help?’

  ‘Hansl can get you food – his mother has friends in the butcher’s shop.’

  The man gave a smile showing crooked, yellow teeth. ‘For good food you can write on my forehead with a carving knife.’

  ‘We want to write on one of the bombs that are headed for my brother’s base, at Cambrai,’ Manfred explained.

  The kapo shrugged and walked towards a list that was pinned to the wall. ‘Cambrai is supplied on the tenth of each month. The October run was last week. Try again in November, and don’t forget the food!’

  Irena led the way back through the factory to the door. A pile of clothes was lying there. The girl picked up the jacket. There were blood-stained bullet holes in the back. A German guard stood over them. ‘Get them sorted, girl, it’s your job.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Irena muttered.

  ‘Whose are they?’ Manfred asked.

  ‘Nicolaus Piłsudski’s,’ she replied.

  ‘But he was shot just ten minutes ago!’ Manfred gasped.

  ‘Yes. This is a factory of death. People as well as bombs pass in and out. It’s all the same,’ she said, and began to pick through the clothes.

  Manfred and Hansl walked back to the gate in silence. They collected Ernst Weiss’s letter from the guard. ‘Get what you wanted, lads?’ the old man asked.

  The boys shook their heads and walked back to the town in the light of Manfred’s blue-bulb torch. They were as silent as the stones beneath their feet.