by Max Hennessy
It began to grow colder and food became scarce because the Germans were grabbing everything ahead of us and probably hoping to take it home to their starving families. But the damage they left behind them didn’t appear to be deliberate any longer – as though they were sick of the destruction, too – and no one took any notice of the stories of atrocities the newspapers still hopefully put out.
Then we found ourselves on an old German airfield in a mess still decorated with salvaged Lewises and the rondels and numbers of British machines. Photographs of former occupants who’d been killed still hung over the bar, and, as I had as a prisoner, I thought it was a funny way to decorate a mess. Munro was banging away on the piano and, because I was so tired, it was only then that I realized where we were.
I stood up with a jerk and stared round. I could still feel the cold wine of the previous year in the glass in my hand and could remember as though it were yesterday the stiff figures with high-collared tunics giving me jerky little bows. I looked round almost as though I could hear a German voice speaking in my ear.
‘How old are you, Herr Hauptmann?’
‘Nineteen.’
‘You look twenty-six. It is the war.’
I swung on my heels, staring at the walls, almost as though I could see that small blond figure with the blue and white cross at his throat, older than I’d expected, as tired as I felt now and just as lacking in enthusiasm. Suddenly I knew how he must have felt.
Abruptly, I left the mess and went to the farm building where we were billeted to snatch up my map and smooth it out. There it was, as clear as day: Lambres. Tournai. Noyelles. I was still staring at it when Munro burst into the hut.
‘Y’all right, laddie?’ he demanded.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m all right.’
‘The way ye went oot, I though mebbe ye’d been taken sick.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not sick. I’m fine.’
‘Fine?’ He gave me a quizzical look.
‘Well, fairly fine.’ I managed a grin. ‘Like you, I expect.’ I gestured. ‘This is where I was shot down, Jock. I half-expected Krefft to walk in.’
‘Who’s Krefft?’
‘The man who nabbed me. He’d been to school in England. He gave me a couple of books – to make captivity less boring, he said. There were some others: Pastor and Gontermann and Von der Osten. It was here I met Richthofen. He stood right where you were sitting at the piano. For a minute I thought I was looking at a ghost.’
Munro gave a wry grin. ‘Me an’ you, laddie, have been doin’ naethin’ else but look at ghosts for a long time.’
I jabbed at the map. ‘It was there they shoved me in clink,’ I went on. ‘And that’s where I met Sykes and where we got out and walked north.’
‘Wi’ yon gel?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Jock, I’ve got to find out what became of her.’
He frowned. ‘I always haird it was no’ a guid thing tae gae back on y’r tracks, laddie. I always haird that things never seem the same. Hills that ye thought were high as a child turrn oot tae be only pimples, an’ people ye thought were beautiful turrn oot tae be just naethin’ but plain. Ye don’t question much when ye’re young.’
‘I wasn’t young, Jock,’ I said. ‘I’d done two, nearly three, tours in France by that time. And that made me as old as any man alive. I knew what I was doing then and I know what I’m doing now. I’m going to find her.’
‘The war’s still on, laddie,’ he pointed out gently.
I shrugged. ‘Then for twenty-four hours or so,’ I said, ‘it’ll have to do without me.’
Chapter 7
It was raining just as it had been the year before, blowing in flurries against the windscreen of the major’s tender, which I’d borrowed without asking.
By this time, I thought, he’d be wondering where it had gone, and would probably be asking himself whether I’d been taken sick, deserted or simply gone off my chump. I’d decided he could wait to find out, though, and that my reputation was good enough to get me past any enquiries that might be made, and had just tossed on my old leather flying coat without buttoning it and gone.
With the aid of my map I had no difficulty finding the place. I’d had no idea it was called Ferme des Quatre Vents but, then, on my last visit the previous year I’d never gone to the gate to see the name on the post except after dark. The place didn’t seem to have changed much except that there was a hole in the roof that looked as though it had been made by a shell or a bomb, there were no cattle, and the barn looked a little lopsided as if it had been caught by blast.
When I pulled the car to a halt at the front, I realized it had been taken over by a battery of heavy guns. The great weapons were dug in behind the orchard and a couple of officers were sitting in the armchairs I’d last seen occupied by Marie-Ange and her mother. The barn where Sykes and I had hidden was jammed with gunners. They’d erected bunks like shelves from floor to roof and were sleeping, reading, writing letters, washing, shaving, and repairing their clothes at every level.
‘Something we can do for you, old boy?’ one of the officers asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for the family.’
‘What family?’
‘The family that lived here. I was here last year.’
‘Couldn’t have been, old boy. Must have got the wrong place. The Germans were here then.’
‘So was I,’ I insisted. ‘In that damn’ barn. I’d just escaped from prison.’
The officer, who was about my age, gave a whistle. ‘Such fun,’ he commented mildly. ‘Hide here?’
‘They hid us.’
‘Well, I’m sorry, old fruit, but there’s nobody here now. There was nobody here when we arrived and we just took it over. Used the top of the windmill for an observation post.’
‘There were two of them. Mother and daughter. Know what happened to them?’
‘There’s a grave in the orchard. Would that be ’em? Name of De Camaerts, I think.’
He led me round the back of the house and showed me the crude wooden cross that had been erected. The name on it wasn’t Marie-Ange, however. It was Giselle-Marie and, judging by the age and the date, I guessed it must have been her mother.
I wondered if the shell that had gone through the roof and knocked the barn sideways had killed her, or whether – because she was pretty frail – she’d just died. And then I wondered who’d buried her and if it had been Marie-Ange and what heartbreak she’d gone through.
‘What happened to the other one?’ I asked. ‘Any idea?’
‘Not the foggiest, old son. I can ask about, if you like.’
‘No—’ I had another idea – ‘I think I know where I might find out.’
Leaving the officers sitting in their chairs drinking tea, I drove to Noyelles. The place was full of allied troops now, as it had been full of men in field grey then, and the guns and the horses and the shouts and jeers as they passed were in English instead of German. They were going by in a steady stream towards the east, guns, lorries, horses, men, jamming the narrow streets and scraping great scars on the shoddy red-brick buildings that hung over the roadway. They were moving forward this time with a sureness and a certainty that I’d never seen before and for the first time I knew that the war really was ending.
The maire was in his office in the red-brick mairie, probably the first time he’d sat in it since the Germans had originally occupied it in 1914. He knew what had happened.
‘The mother lived alone there, monsieur,’ he said. ‘When we heard she died, I got permission from the Germans to go out and bury her. We dug the grave in the orchard.’
‘And the daughter?’
‘I don’t know, Monsieur. I heard the Germans arrested her and took her away.’
My heart heavy in my chest, I thanked him and left. There was still one more place.
It took me about thirty minutes to get to Lambres near Roubaix and another ten to find the centre of the town and the headquarters
of the town major. It hadn’t changed much since I’d last seen it, just the union jack instead of the black, red and yellow of the German flag. There were guards outside still, though they wore khaki this time instead of grey, and it had the same look of smart super-efficiency you always found around headquarters, bases, dumps, and all the other places where the stress lay less on fighting than organization, spit and polish. Perhaps they’d just taken it over as it was, lock, stock and barrel, tables, chairs, discipline, everything.
The town major wasn’t in his room as I put my head round the door, but for a moment the walls seemed to ring with those words that had so frightened me the previous year: That I would be sofort totgeschossen – shot dead at once – if I tried to escape.
Without asking anyone if I could, I found my way up the stairs and on the next floor stopped outside a door. That hadn’t changed either, but the room beyond was empty this time, except for what looked like the same two iron bedsteads we’d used to make our escape and the same two straw-filled sacking mattresses. I went straight to the corner of the room and read the pencilled inscription on the peeling whitewash – ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’ It had been there the previous autumn when I’d been there. I looked further along for the list of names. Lieutenant, F Holben, RA; Captain FJH Carter, Warwicks; Lieutenant Hawkins, G, Lancashire Fusiliers. They were still there – a whole string of them – longer now than it had been when I’d seen it last – and there, bang in the middle, were Captain M Falconer, RFC and Major CLWBD Sykes, 12th Lancers and RFC.
I was still staring at them, feeling as if I’d moved back in time, when I heard a footstep on the landing. I whirled round, scared and half expecting to see a spiked helmet, but it was just a plump fat-faced lieutenant with pink cheeks, a well-brushed uniform, a provost officer’s armband, light-coloured breeches, polished riding boots you could see your face in and the air of someone with a little authority who thought a great deal of himself. He belonged with those smart, officious young men at the pilots’ pool at Berck and it stuck out a mile that he’d only recently come to the front and was trying hard to look martial.
He took one look at the back of the unfastened smelly leather coat I wore, staring down his nose at all its oilstains and the absence of rank badges, and I saw his pink cheeks grow pinker still with indignation. People who looked like I did clearly had no part in the tight little unit he ran.
‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ he asked. ‘This is the detention room!’
‘I’d call it a cell,’ I said.
‘Never mind what it is! What do you want?’
I shrugged. ‘Just to have a look at it. I once spent a night in here.’
He stared at me as though I were some old sweat who’d been picked up drunk in the gutter, and took another look at my coat. ‘I can imagine,’ he said. ‘It must have been before we got here.’
‘Not half it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘When I was in this cell the Germans were still here and your opposite number was a fat chap like you with a spiked helmet who threatened to shoot me dead.’
‘Who the devil are you calling “fat”?’ he exploded. ‘I’ll have you know, my good fellow, that I’m acting town major!’
‘And I’m Charlie Chaplin’s half-brother,’ I said. I jabbed aggressively at the whitewash. ‘That’s my name – Falconer—’ I jabbed again – ‘and that’s the name of the chap who shared the cell with me.’ Then for the first time I turned completely round, leather coat flying, and glared at him. ‘And don’t call me “your good fellow” because, as it happens, if I take this coat off you’ll see I’m senior to you in rank and a great deal older, I’ll bet, in terms of active service!’
As he saw the string of ribbons I’d collected, he blushed and saluted and began to bluster, until he looked just like the elderly German who’d threatened to shoot me the year before in that very same building, and I reflected there were just as many stuffed dummies in our army as there were in the German. And as I watched him slapping and stamping and generally thrashing about like a stranded whale in an effort to make up for putting his foot in it, I even found I liked it, and decided that I must be growing bad-tempered and malicious enough in my old age actively to enjoy other people’s discomfort. Or perhaps it was just impatience with people who were playing at being soldiers. Either that or else there was something developing inside me that would one day make one of those senior officers Sykes said I ought to be, all fuss, feathers and fury, because for someone only just twenty I was doing pretty well.
‘How long were you here, sir?’ Fatface was all obsequiousness and concern now, trying to make amends.
‘One day,’ I said.
‘Not long, sir.’
‘Long enough, but there was a chap in here at the time who had a few bright ideas.’ And who was a sight better man than you are, too, I thought.
He shuffled his feet and tried again to be friendly, frightened I’d court-martial him or something, I supposed. ‘How did you get out, sir?’ he asked.
I jerked a hand at the tiny window, set in a deep recess high up on the wall. ‘Through there.’
He stared, as though he didn’t believe me, and perhaps he didn’t because we’d had to reach it by using one of the beds as a ladder and climbing up without our boots, with our toes in the springs, and we’d made a rope of our scarves to lower ourselves to the roof outside. After that we’d scrambled down God alone knew how many more roofs before we’d finally dropped to the ground in the dungheap of the stables and bolted.
‘You got all the records for this place?’ I asked. ‘The German records?’
‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘They took off so fast we captured the lot.’
‘Arrests and everything?’
‘I think so.’
‘Do you read German?’
‘No.’ I hadn’t expected he would.
‘Anybody who does?’
‘There’s a sergeant downstairs, sir.’
‘Get him. Fast.’
I was being horrifyingly rude to him but, if the boot had been on the other foot, I know he would have been even worse to me and I hadn’t the graciousness of Sykes and people like him. He reappeared shortly afterwards, spraying ‘sirs’ round the room like a garden hose, and produced a sergeant with a batch of ledgers.
‘Arrests,’ I said. ‘You got my name down there?’
The sergeant found it in no time. There obviously hadn’t been all that many prisoners lodged there.
‘How about civilians?’ I asked.
‘There are a few, sir.’
‘Women?’
‘Three, sir.’
‘One of ’em De Camaerts? Marie-Ange de Camaerts?’
He lifted up his head and stared at me as though I were clairvoyant. ‘How did you know, sir?’
‘Never mind how I know. What happened to her?’
The sergeant ran his finger over the spiky German handwriting. ‘Accused of helping British prisoners to escape, sir.’
‘That was me. Go on.’
The sergeant looked up, his face set in an expression of sorrow. ‘Sentenced to death, sir.’
My heart felt like stone. ‘When?’
‘Last year, sir.’
‘Where is she buried?’
‘Sir—’ the sergeant was still busy reading ‘— I think she probably isn’t dead. The sentence was commuted to imprisonment during the governor’s pleasure.’
‘Which prison? Come on, man, quick.’
‘Fort Ralas, sir.’
‘Where is it?’
‘Douai, sir.’
‘Are they all still there?’
‘No, sir. We freed everybody when we arrived.’
‘Then where is she now?’
The sergeant peered at the ledgers and turned over a few pages while I fidgeted impatiently.
‘It says here, sir, that she was transferred to hospital two months back, sir. In August.’
‘Which one?’
‘Hôpital de Sainte Mari
e de Douleur. At Douai, sir. It’s one we took over when we arrived.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes, sir.’
I swung round on Fatface. ‘Telephone ’em,’ I said. ‘See if she’s still there.’
He jumped for the telephone as though the hounds of hell were after him. I still hadn’t taken off my leather coat and he probably thought from the way I was acting that I was at least a colonel – probably even one of the boy brigadiers the war had thrown up. I decided I’d learned a lot in three years.
There was a lot of talk over the telephone because the hospital seemed to be as hidebound as the army and there seemed to be a lot of people there like the staff at Berck and Army HQ, who seemed more concerned with following the rules than getting anything done, but at last his face changed and he seemed to be getting somewhere.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s correct. De Camaerts, Marie-Ange.’ He looked up at me and I nodded quickly. ‘That sounds as though it could be her,’ he went on. ‘Have you her address? Where? Rue de la Paix, Lille. You sure? There’s another address? Ferme des Quatre Vents?’
I signalled wildly that that was enough. I didn’t want her life history. I knew that already.
He put down the telephone, flushed with success. ‘I think I’ve found her, sir,’ he said.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Where is this hospital?’
‘Just off the Grande Place, sir,’ the sergeant volunteered.
‘Anyone there will tell you, I imagine,’ Fatface said. ‘There’s a military policeman in the middle of the square. He must direct ambulances in and out of the place a couple of dozen times a day.’
‘Right. Thank you.’ I was thawing out a little, so that he wouldn’t think all senior officers were stinkers.
‘You’ve been very kind.’
He actually blushed with pleasure – probably expecting at least a DSO – then, as I swung away, he coughed and called after me.
