At that point, he’d run for his life.
The bomb had not exploded and after he’d had a stiff whisky at home he decided to report his discovery. Clearly the fellow had been shocked, but for the police of the North York Moors this was a fairly regular occurrence in the years following the Second World War.
The moors were littered with discarded bombs and shells because when the Germans had flown over them towards Teesside during their raids, they sometimes completed their missions over the target area without dropping all their payload. The surplus bombs were jettisoned on the homeward run. Many of them fell on to the open moors and failed to explode; some lay buried for years, often in a state where they were capable of exploding and causing considerable damage.
Another reason for the large crop of bombs on the moors, in both an exploded and unexploded condition, was that during the Second World War false towns were established on the remoter heights. These consisted of nothing more than large groups of makeshift buildings with lights, set in the middle of the moors. At night-time, from a high-flying plane, they had all the appearances of townships. The incoming Germans dropped their precious bombs on these places — a useless exercise. Even today unexploded bombs (UXBs) are still discovered on the moors, especially in the soft, marshy areas. Claude had found one of them.
For the police the procedure was simple. We had to identify the precise location of the discovery, mark it in some way so that the bomb disposal experts could locate it, and keep the public away.
Howe Plantation, on the moors to the west of Aidensfield, was shown on recent Ordnance Survey maps of the district, and after discussion with Claude about the most suitable route to the bomb I was able to pinpoint the general area. I would, however, require Claude’s presence to guide the military experts to its precise position. I rang Sergeant Blaketon to inform him of the discovery and said I would deal with it; my next task was to call the Bomb Disposal Unit of the Royal Engineers at Catterick Camp. They dealt with reports of all foreign or enemy bombs while the Ministry of Defence, Directorate of Weapon Engineering, dealt with reports of British or Allied bombs.
I rang them and made my report; they wanted to speak to Claude to establish as much detail as possible, and finally we agreed to a rendezvous on the southern edge of Howe Plantation. The maps showed a rough track to that point and the Bomb Disposal Unit spokesman said his men would arrive at that location by 11 a.m. I assured him that Claude and I would be there to meet his team.
‘You’re not expecting me to go back there, Mr Rhea, are you?’ He was still nervous.
‘No one else can tell us where to find this infernal machine,’ I said. ‘And I thought you’d done service in the army, I thought you’d undertaken all manner of dangerous missions and daring deeds on behalf of the country.’
‘Aye, well, mebbe I did, when I was younger and dafter, but this is dangerous work, Mr Rhea.’
‘No it isn’t! All we require of you is to show us precisely where the bomb is, you don’t have to touch it or go near it. If you don’t show us, it could kill somebody.’
And so he agreed.
In my police minivan, Claude and I, accompanied by the faithful Alfred, arrived some twenty minutes before the appointed rendezvous time. I was surprised to see an open-topped military jeep standing at the meeting point. It was occupied by a driver and a major both clad in camouflaged outfits. The major leapt out and came towards me.
‘Ah, Constable, you are on routine patrol here?’
‘No, not really, not routine . . .’
‘Then I wonder if I might ask you to depart, we are engaged upon a secret escape and evasion exercise in this plantation, we start at eleven, we must secure the entire area. It’s the SAS, top secret work, you understand, we are guarding all entrances to the forest to prevent unauthorized access.’
‘But . . .’ I began.
‘I have seniority here, Constable, I am a major in Her Majesty’s Special Air Services and I am in command. This is a military operation. I must ask you both to leave.’
‘You have men in this wood?’ I asked.
‘Yes, a dozen, they are already concealed and camouflaged, they must not be taken by a team of ‘enemy’ invaders who are due at eleven o’clock . . . the invaders will comb this wood for my men, and my men must evade them at all costs.’
‘And I am here because this friend of mine, Mr Greengrass, has discovered an unexploded German bomb in this plantation.’
‘You tell him, Mr Rhea!’ chipped in Claude.
‘Oh my God!’ The major went a ghastly shade of white.
‘I have called the Bomb Disposal Unit at Catterick,’ I went on. ‘They are due to arrive at eleven o’clock to deal with the bomb. We are here to show them where it is.’
‘But I have spent months organizing this exercise, it’s vital for my unit . . .’
‘It seems to me that you will have to cancel or postpone it,’ I said. ‘I should hate any of your men to tread on Claude’s bomb. It might just explode and it would blow a huge hole in these moors if it did. And the Germans might claim it had killed a few British soldiers!’
‘I can’t call it off,’ the major spoke weakly. ‘My men are all concealed in this plantation, there’s about ten square miles and I have no idea where they are. I cannot contact them because they have no radios. They are all hidden and will remain concealed until eleven o’clock tomorrow morning — unless they are located and captured by the enemy.’
‘But surely they’ll emerge if we can get a message to them?’ I suggested. ‘Loudhailers or something.’
‘No, whatever you do, they’ll think it is a piece of trickery by the enemy, that’s what they have been told. They know the enemy will make use of all kinds of devices and devious tactics to persuade them to leave their hiding places and get caught. They will resist every move which encourages them to show themselves.’
‘So when will they come out?’ I asked.
‘Tomorrow. Those who are not caught will rendezvous here, with me, at eleven tomorrow morning.’
‘If the bomb is made secure, there will be no problem,’ I said. ‘But if it goes off, it could kill everyone within range — and I’ve no idea what the range of this bomb is. If any of your men are hiding within range of it, they could be killed. Surely you have some official and acceptable means of recalling your men?’
‘Well, actually no,’ he admitted. ‘We haven’t. The only way they can be persuaded to emerge is if they are arrested by the enemy, who will be arriving soon for their briefing.’
‘So that means we shall have to find and arrest them all before the bomb can be made safe? But if one of them treads on the bomb or disturbs it during their exercise, it could go off and kill several. It has been partly uncovered already.’
Claude had been listening to us during these useless exchanges and said, ‘PC Rhea, if I went into that wood with Alfred, we could find ’em. We’re good at tracking, we’re a crack team, me and Alfred.’
‘You?’ I smiled.
‘I mean it. I’m the best. Me and Alfred that is. We could search the area within range of that bomb and arrest ’em all.’
‘Could you really?’ I must have sounded surprised.
‘Aye, course I can. Us old soldiers have to stick together, eh, Major? Alfred would point ’em out to me, he’d tell me where they were hiding, he’s good at that sort o’ thing, flushing out them that thinks they’re well hidden.’
‘You’d need one of the enemy soldiers with you,’ said the major. ‘They have a coloured tag on their uniforms, the concealed men know what colour it is.’
‘Colour sergeants, are they?’ blinked Claude, jokingly.
The major ignored this and said, ‘Those colours will authenticate an enemy soldier. They will only submit to soldiers wearing those tags, everyone else will be regarded as a decoy and thus ignored or even captured and held until the conclusion of the exercise. They would be regarded as collaborators.’
Minutes later some
army vehicles carrying two dozen soldiers with rifles and in heavy camouflage came to a halt at our point. The ‘enemy’ had arrived. They were followed by a smaller vehicle bearing a sign saying ‘Bomb Disposal Unit’ and sporting a blue light. A captain and a sergeant disembarked from the latter while another major descended from the ‘enemy’ vehicle. The officer in charge of each arrival wondered what the other was doing in this vicinity and there followed some rather intense and heated discussions between the assembled parties.
The captain in command of the Bomb Disposal Unit stressed that under no circumstances could the escape and evasion exercise continue with an unexploded bomb in the middle of it. Some wit said it would add an air of reality to the exercise, especially as it was a genuine enemy bomb, but after a lot of hot air, swearing, discussions about army protocol and procedures, it was decided that Claude must first show the captain the bomb. The captain would then make an assessment upon which to order any further action.
So we all trooped into the plantation of young conifers, plodding along an identifiable but little-used footpath for about four hundred yards until Claude halted. Alfred halted at his side and sniffed the air. Claude then pointed ahead and there, some ten yards away and very close to the edge of the footpath, was the distinct shell of a bomb. It was clearly showing where Claude had scraped away the peaty earth and seemed to be in reasonably good condition with little rust or serious deterioration.
The bomb disposal wizards crept forward to carry out their preliminary inspection. It took them but a few seconds to declare that the bomb was a relic of the Second World War; it was German, it was not particularly large or powerful, but it was alive. Closer inspection showed that the fuse was still in position and there was some slight corrosion; it could, in fact explode at any time. It wouldn’t require much to set it off.
‘I’m off!’ said Claude.
‘Me too,’ I said.
And at that point Alfred wandered towards the bomb. Claude saw him and yelled, ‘Alfred, you daft bat! Come here. Here, heel . . .’
But Alfred ignored his lord and master, if only for a few seconds. He instinctively approached the bomb, sniffed at it while those present held their breath, then he cocked his leg and directed a steady stream at the bomb. Thus he had marked the bomb; it was now upon Alfred’s territory.
‘Alfred!’ There was pain and worry in Claude’s voice, and Alfred then came to heel. At this stage the captain, whose name was Chambers, advised everyone to get well away from the bomb; the vehicles we had left on the track should be at a safe enough distance, he said. They were parked in a hollow, the edge of which provided a barrier between them and the bomb. He reckoned that if the bomb did explode it could kill at three hundred yards, with flying rocks and debris being a danger over a far greater distance, even up to five or six hundred yards, although that danger would be lessened by the density of the growing conifers.
The trees near the bomb would be destroyed, but those at a distance would act as a barrier to the effect of the blast, as would mounds of earth which were dotted around the forest. Many trees could withstand such a blast, depending upon their distance from the point of the explosion. He said he felt confident that the bomb would not explode unless it received a severe knock or direct hit; he also said he felt sure he could defuse it and make it safe without an explosion. Nevertheless, the problem of the concealed soldiers remained. If the bomb did explode, any soldiers hidden within a hundred yards of it could be killed. And they would resist any moves to tempt them out of hiding simply because they thought that such pleas were trickery.
‘Can you really find them, Claude?’ I asked him.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Me and Alfred can. We can find ’em, using our sixth sense. I was a wartime scout, me, tracking through the jungles of Burma and moving like a wraith . . . But I can’t track with a bomb waiting to go off!’
‘It won’t go off unless it’s knocked or damaged,’ said Captain Chambers. ‘I can assure you of that. It will be perfectly safe unless it receives a severe knock. I’ll stand near the bomb while you do a recce within four hundred yards. Any soldier you find will be considered taken by the enemy — but as I said earlier, you must be accompanied by an enemy soldier suitably marked.’
And so Claude found himself exercising his considerable tracking skills in the wood, aided by the sensitive nostrils of Alfred his lurcher and accompanied by an ‘enemy’ soldier.
Together they found five soldiers hiding within range of the bomb and these were ‘captured’ by the enemy; Alfred angered one of them by peeing upon his helmet as he lay prone. It seemed Alfred liked marking things in his own specialized manner. Then a loudhailer message was broadcast to those who were not caught, warning them of an unexploded bomb. The location was given. Captain Chambers moved in quickly, saying it would take at least an hour to complete his work, and so the testing time began. We all worried that the soldiers who had not been found might begin to move around, but that was a risk which had to be taken. But Chambers did a good job. By one o’clock, he had defused the bomb, saying it had been in remarkably good condition and that the fuse had been somewhat complicated. It could have exploded but it was now safe. The exercise could continue.
The SAS major was not very pleased that his men had been found by a poacher and his dog; the enemy major said that if a local man and his dog could find the concealed soldiers, then so could his experts, while Captain Chambers thanked Claude for his assistance. He showed his appreciation to Alfred too, by giving him a bar of chocolate; Alfred showed his appreciation by raising his leg against the wheel of his vehicle.
And so our drama was over. Claude was silent on the way back to Aidensfield, clearly thinking over what might have happened. I told him how pleased I was that he had volunteered his services in that way — he could have saved a life.
‘There’s only one thing bothering me,’ he said at length. ‘Me being an old soldier, like.’
‘What’s that, Claude?’ I asked.
‘I was working for the enemy wasn’t I? Helping them to find our men. Me, a good, loyal member of His late Majesty’s forces.’
‘But you helped to defuse a real enemy bomb,’ I reminded him.
‘Aye, so I did. Me and Alfred. Alfred doesn’t remember the war, Mr Rhea, he wasn’t even born then.’
‘He’d have made a good spy,’ I said. ‘The Allies could have dropped him in France. I wonder if he likes parachutes?’
8. Ladies of the Village
When he has ladies to please, every feature works!
JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817)
Police officers and authors have one thing in common — they enjoy observing people.
For the police officer on foot patrol, the practice of watching people going about their daily routine can be both productive and fascinating. The productive side comes from knowing what is happening on one’s patch and many a crime has been solved through the observational skills of a uniformed constable. Knowing who the person was and why he or she was at that place at that time has always been a good aid to the detection of crime.
The fascination comes from studying, in very real terms, the behaviour of human beings. One peculiarity is that one sees the same people in the same place each day; they are buying the same items from the same grocer’s, they are seen sitting on the same park bench to rest their feet or catching the same bus back home after standing at the same bus stop facing the same way while carrying the same shopping bag.
We are all creatures of habit and we do not realize that others are keenly aware of those habits; it is only when we cease to follow our daily pattern that others miss us.
Many old folk have been saved from death because neighbours and friends have noted that these vulnerable members of society have not undertaken their daily rituals. If old Mr Brown isn’t buying his bread at the usual time, his absence is noted and becomes a cause for alarm; if Mrs Green doesn’t come into the post office at 10.15 a.m. on Thursday like she always does, we worry about h
er; if Mr Grey is walking along the street without the overcoat he wears every day of the year, then we know he’s having problems and we do something about it.
One skill which develops from years of observing others is that it is sometimes possible to foretell a person’s next move. Many is the time I have been standing on a street corner, knowing that a motorist is going to turn left or right in spite of that driver never having signalled his or her intention. There is some indefinable indication in the way the car and its driver behave that provides a clue to the immediate future.
Likewise, one instinctively knows that the lady walking in front of you will suddenly stop, turn around and hurry back to the shop she has just left; one knows that a child on the pavement will suddenly dart across the road or that the old lady with the puzzled frown on her face and clutching a pile of cheap novels will ask for directions to the nearest library. Groups of little old ladies always manage to get lost in shopping precincts and bus stations, old men catch the wrong trains and young mums often manage to lose infants in crowded places. Tourists always ask for directions to the car parks, the toilets and the nearest cafe, while Americans ask the way to Buckingham Palace, Scotland or Herriot country.
One interesting pastime when observing the public is to try to work out a person’s occupation from their appearance; this is particularly fascinating if travelling by InterCity train, when one may spend up to two hours sitting opposite another traveller. Business men with notions of their own importance in the world are readily identifiable by their smart suits, black briefcases and statutory portable telephones, even if they are merely going to a seminar about brass screws or a new range of scented air fresheners. Others are not so easy to identify.
Teachers are fairly easy to pick out, as are off-duty police officers, nurses or fire officers. Salesmen and saleswomen often look harassed but especially so if the train is even two minutes late; they usually have piles of forms which need to be filled in at every minute of the day. Holidaymakers tend to be excited and noisy, people going for interviews or exams are nervous and read their notes over and over again, pensioners read the Sun because they can’t afford anything else, shoppers repeatedly make new lists of their requirements and students spend their time walking the corridors drinking from cans of lager or coke they’ve brought on board. Male students will walk time and time again past a group of pretty female students, hoping to make some favourable impression. European nationals seem to think that every seat is booked automatically upon purchase of one’s ticket and Scotsmen speak in long sentences of incomprehensible dialect which is delivered with the speed of a machine gun. Long train journeys are a rich source of material for authors.
CONSTABLE BENEATH THE TREES a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain's best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 13) Page 15
