Army of Shadows

by John Harris

  There was no longer any question of waiting to bail out or get Collins and the newspaperman out. Now it was a question of ‘Could they make it?’ It was obvious that something had broken and Crombie had lost all control.

  ‘Get out!’ Urquhart yelled and, now that the time had come, Neville didn’t hesitate. Urquhart followed him. After four years of war he’d acquired a sixth sense that told him when the time had come to quit.

  But it was harder now because the aircraft was on its side and he was being pressed to the floor. With an effort, he dragged himself to the hatch and flung himself through. The angle was awkward and his foot caught the opening a resounding whack, but he barely noticed it as the blast of clear cold air seized him and whipped him away.

  For a second or two he allowed himself to fall through space, turning head over heels. Then, with a bang, the parachute opened and he was swinging in mid-air, conscious that he’d been given a chance to live. Almost immediately, caught by the moon, he saw another parachute a hundred yards away on his left and slightly below, and he guessed it was Neville.

  In the distance he saw the flash of moonlight on the perspex of the mid-upper turret and a few seconds later a glow of red as the aeroplane, the whole thirty tons of it, smashed into a disused bam. It tore off the trees that surrounded the building, then demolished the wall and the roof in a crash that sent bricks and tiles and timbers flying, before hurtling out of the opposite side, taking with it a shattered cart, two mangled goats, a few chickens and a rusty harrow, finally coming to a stop in a crater ten feet deep. Inside it were the bodies of everybody who had been on board except for Urquhart and Neville.

  2

  Urquhart’s thoughts as he floated down were mixed. Having slipped through the German panzers in France in 1940 to escape unhurt from Dunkirk, and then survived the disasters of Greece and North Africa, he had come to expect that he might emerge from the war untouched. Now, if nothing else, it seemed he was going .to sacrifice his freedom. Below him he could see mile upon mile of forest round a wide patch of open land, the snow silvery in the moonlight, and he wondered what was waiting for him on the ground, because he’d heard of crews being murdered by the Germans for the bombing of their cities.

  He saw the trees rushing up to meet him, and the next moment his feet touched earth. Immediately he was conscious of a searing pain and remembered banging his left boot on the escape hatch as he’d dived through. Picking himself up, he thumped the buckle of his parachute harness so that it fell away from him, and turned awkwardly on his heel, wondering what to do.

  Then he remembered the compass sewn into the seam of his battledress blouse, the German money and the handkerchief in his back pocket with a map on it, and decided it was up to him. Rolling up his parachute and harness, he held them to his chest and hobbled to the edge of the clearing. There was a barbed wire fence and he scrambled underneath it and sat down, panting, until he could gather his thoughts.

  The moon through the trees made them look like the bars of a prison. For a moment, as he remembered Crombie, he felt deflated and depressed, finding it hard to believe that everybody in the crew but himself and Neville was dead, together with the anonymous-looking wingco from Air Ministry and the newspaperman, both of whom had seemed far too old to go tearing round the night sky.

  It seemed important that he should find Neville. With his experience, he felt responsible for him. Neville’s family were wealthy and he had a degree from Cambridge and had always quoted history at the rest of them in a smug way that had seemed to suggest they were a lot of uneducated morons. It had annoyed Urquhart and infuriated Udell, the mid-upper gunner.

  Perhaps because Neville had been new to the crew or because he’d taken the place of a man they’d trusted, perhaps simply because he still had that enthusiastic innocence about him that had gone for ever from the older men, Urquhart had never quite been able to hit it off with him. Even the fact that he was practising Church of England while Urquhart was a non-practising Catholic had seemed to add to the irritation.

  Urquhart frowned. They were an ill-assorted bloody couple, he decided, and they hadn’t known each other long. There was an undoubted mutual dislike between them and they had surely never been intended to fight a personal war together.

  He stuffed the parachute into the undergrowth and as he straightened up he heard twigs crackling. Immediately he heard Neville’s voice calling his name and he climbed to his feet, furious.

  ‘Over here I’ he snapped. ‘And, for Christ’s sake, shut up! You’ll have the whole bloody German army on to us!’

  Neville appeared between the trees carrying his parachute. ‘You all right?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ Urquhart said bluntly. ‘I’ve done something to my foot.’

  ‘I think the rest bought it.’

  ‘I don’t think they knew much about it - except for Crombie.’

  Neville was silent for a moment. ‘You know,’ he said at last, ‘that was a bloody brave thing Crombie did. He stayed in so we could escape.’ ‘He might have got out.’ ‘I didn’t see another parachute.’

  For a moment, Urquhart was silent, thinking; then he lifted his head. ‘You know, Crombie was right,’ he said. ‘They’ll not bother to search for us if we hide the ‘chutes.’

  ‘We might even be able to pinch some civvy clothes some’ where,’ Neville said. ‘Off a scarecrow or a clothes line or something.’

  Urquhart stared at him coldly. Neville’s enthusiasm was that of a schoolboy. Why the hell did it have to be Neville, he thought with a bitter sense of injustice. Why couldn’t it have been Udell or Collins or one of the others - even Crombie, come to that? With Neville, he sensed that he’d be making all the decisions.

  Neville shuddered. His thoughts seemed to be following the same line. ‘Poor buggers,’ he said. ‘You know, somebody ought to recommend Crombie for a gong.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For what he did.’

  Urquhart shrugged. ‘He wouldn’t have thanked you for it. I don’t suppose he even considered he was doing anything very unusual.’

  They were silent again. It was a cold night and they were both suffering from delayed shock. Neville spoke again, slowly, almost painfully.

  ‘Piece of chocolate?’ he said. ‘I always keep my ration for eating on the return journey.’

  It was then that Urquhart realized how hungry he was. ‘Thanks. How about a cigarette?’

  ‘Got some?’

  ‘About three. They’re a bit bent.’

  They finished the chocolate and lit the cigarettes, carefully shielding the flame of the match. There wasn’t a sound about them and they were silent for a while before Urquhart spoke again. ‘Fine bloody ending to a tour,’ he said. ‘I’d only four more trips to do, and then there was a nice office job at an O.T.U. lined up for me. Training new boys.’

  ‘Not any longer.’ Neville always knew the snags. ‘There are so many intrepid birdmen about from the Empire Training Scheme these days, they don’t need any more.’ He stared round and shuddered.

  ‘Crombie -’ he began and Urquhart whirled savagely on him.

  ‘Shut up about Crombie, for God’s sake,’ he snarled. That’s what we joined for, isn’t it? To get killed. Now, for God’s sake, stop binding.’

  ‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you?’

  ‘Look, I was at Dunkirk and a few other places. I’ve seen it too often to get hot under the collar about it.’

  ‘You’ve got no bloody feelings!’

  ‘Because I don’t smear them all over the bloody walls, it doesn’t mean I don’t feel things just as much as well-bred, nicely-brought-up little men like you. I’ve discovered in the end it makes no bloody difference. It doesn’t lick Hitler any quicker and it just makes you and everybody else miserable. Nobody believes that being in a war’s one long round of happiness and jollity, but we can at least make it bearable by not dwelling on the bloodiest bits. For what it’s worth, I liked Crombie; though, because he was an officer, I d
on’t suppose he ever thought much about me. But he’d got me home safely more times than I like to remember so he meant something to me. Now shut up.’

  Neville was silent for a moment ‘Sorry,’ he said, and even that irritated because he sounded like a kicked dog.

  Urquhart looked about him. ‘Where are we?’ he asked. ‘Any idea?’

  Neville shrugged. ‘North of Dijon. But not much north. Côte d’Or area. Somewhere on the Plateau de Langres.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Pretty empty. It’s roughly a triangle standing on its tip. Bounded by Chatillon and Langres to the north, with Dijon in the south. It’s wooded and high - though nothing like the Vosges. I passed through it by car once or twice on the way to Nice before the war.’

  ‘Did you now?’

  ‘We used to have a house down there for the summer.’

  ‘Filey was where we went - if we went anywhere at all’

  ‘It’s nothing but woods and fields and deep valleys. No big cities. Just a lot of small places that call themselves towns but really aren’t much bigger than villages: St Seine-l’Abbaye. Aignay-le-Duc, Sémur-en-Auxois, Baigneux-les-Juifs.’

  ‘Good place to hide?’

  Neville managed a smile. ‘Well, the Germans couldn’t possibly patrol it all. It’s mostly farming. It’s an isolated area and they’re an uncommunicative lot. Even their guide books say they’re as wooden as their own trees. Burgundy used to be an independent monarchy in the Middle Ages. Philip the Bold came from here.’

  ‘Who the hell’s Philip the bloody Bold when he’s at home?’ Urquhart growled, knowing that another of Neville’s historical diatribes was on its way.

  ‘One of the dukes of Burgundy. Fought against the English at Poitiers -’

  ‘One thing,’ Urquhart said, interrupting before he could get going. ‘Plenty of wine.’

  Neville even had the answer to that one. ‘Not here,’ he said. That’s further south. Here it’s straightforward farming.’

  Urquhart was on the point of a retort but he changed his mind, deciding that quarrelling wouldn’t help much. ‘How far can we go by the woods?’ he asked. To that place the skipper mentioned.’

  ‘Pontarlier? A lot of the way. But what do we eat if we stick to the woods? I think we’ll have to shelter in one of the villages.’

  Urquhart was staring about him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’ll soon be daylight, anyway, and we’d be bloody silly marching about Occupied France in British uniform, wouldn’t we? I think we’d better wait until tomorrow night.’

  Urquhart was the first to wake. A jagged blade of sunlight was driving through the trees into his face like a nail driven into wood, penetrating, rigid and hostile.

  For a moment he lay still, aware that, despite his flying clothing and the parachute that was wrapped round him, he was stiff with cold and for the last ten minutes had been trying to force himself to stay asleep. Expecting to see above him the roof of the hut where he normally slept, he wondered where he was; then, with a shock, the memory of the night came back and he recalled twisting uneasily in the darkness in a nightmare of being trapped inside the Lancaster.

  For a long time he lay in the damp grass staring at the sky, which seemed incredibly blue through the bare trees. Then he drew a deep breath and sat up. The snow was beginning to melt in the sunshine, the water dripping from the undergrowth and catching the light like jewels. His foot was throbbing and tight inside his boot and he stared down at it disgustedly, wondering why the hell he’d had to complicate things by damaging it. Climbing to his feet, he hobbled with difficulty to the edge of the trees and stared over the clearing where he’d come down. The land looked purplish in the early light, and there was no sign of life beyond a single spiral of grey smoke rising from the valley beyond the curve of the hill where he could see the spire of a church. As he turned, he saw Neville had also wakened and was climbing to his feet.

  For a moment, he stamped his feet and slapped his arms about him; then Urquhart pointed.

  ‘There’s a village over there,’ he said.

  Neville fished in his pocket and produced a Mars bar. ‘Breakfast,’ he said.

  ‘Your clothes must be stuffed with them.’

  ‘This is the last.’

  They ate the chocolate; then Urquhart produced the last cigarette, lit it and passed it to Neville. They finished it smoking alternately.

  ‘Well get cracking as soon as it’s dusk,’ Urquhart suggested.

  ‘What about your foot ?’

  ‘I’ll manage. I walked all the way from Brussels to Dunkirk in 1940. What have we got that we can use?’

  ‘Bloody little. Compasses, maps and some German money - which, come to think of it, won’t be much good in France.’

  Urquhart stared down the slopes at the white Burgundy countryside. It was wide, foreign-looking and empty. All through the winter the offensive had gone on. against Germany and he had never realized what was beneath him. Northern France had become familiar to him in 1940 but down here there was a strange unbelievable distantness, so that he felt he didn’t belong; bare and empty, but different from the bareness of the flying field with the Lanes lined up black and menacing on the perimeter track, and emptier than the emptiness of the flat Yorkshire meadows that surrounded it.

  He felt slightly worried, but not afraid because he’d already been involved in three campaigns as an infantryman and was confident in his own skills.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of escape equipment,’ he said. ‘I was thinking of special qualifications. I mean, you’re a navigator. That’s a help.’

  ‘How about French?’ Neville asked. ‘Can you speak French?’

  ‘A bit. More than a bit, in fact. I learned it at school and I was in France from September, 1939, till they chucked us out. I can get by.’

  ‘Enough to sound like a Frenchman ?’

  ‘I think so. You?’

  ‘I told you. My family used to spend every summer in Nice. I also took a degree in European History and I had to learn it for that. I did a lot of research.’

  Urquhart nodded. ‘I’ve noticed.’

  They dozed and chatted through the day, conscious of the emptiness of their stomachs. Then as the sun disappeared and the shadows began to creep across the countryside, Urquhart climbed to his feet. His foot felt as if it were about to burst. ‘I think we ought to get moving,’ he said.

  He broke off a stick and, limping heavily, led the way to the road and along it in the shadow of the trees, following the curve of the hill.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Neville asked, running to catch up.

  ‘Anywhere. Anywhere away from here.’

  ‘It won’t be much good if we don’t know where we’re going, surely to God.’

  ‘It won’t be much good if we do,’ Urquhart said, hobbling energetically along. ‘But, for Christ’s sake, let’s do something, even if it’s wrong!’

  ‘With that foot you ought to be resting.’

  ‘I’ve told you - ‘ Urquhart’s voice sounded savage ‘ - I’ll manage.’

  The sprinkling of snow seemed to have laid a blanket of silence over the countryside and there was no sign of life.

  ‘Think the bloody place’s deserted?’ Urquhart asked uneasily.

  ‘This is France, old boy,’ Neville pointed out, cheerful now that the knowledge and experience was his. ‘Not England. The villages are a bit further apart.’

  They set their course towards the church spire in the next valley and Neville began to hesitate. ‘It’s a long way,’ he said eventually. ‘What are you expecting to find when we get there?’

  ‘Christ knows.’ Once again it was Urquhart, not Neville, who was making the decisions. ‘Somewhere to hide. Somewhere we can steal some food.’

  They walked without speaking for a while, awkward in their heavy flying boots.

  ‘If we get as far as Switzerland -’ Neville began.

  ‘If.’

  ‘If,’ Neville said doggedly. ‘I shal
l sit out the next twenty years of the war there. Plenty of food in Switzerland.’

  ‘Don’t kid yourself,’ Urquhart growled. ‘It won’t be that long. The second front’ll come soon.’

  There was silence again until Neville announced bitterly that he had a blister. ‘Two, I think,’ he added.

  The sweat standing out on his face, his teeth gritted against the pain in his foot, Urquhart gave him a sour look. Then Neville indicated the houses in the valley below them. ‘I reckon this is where we start to be careful,’ he said. ‘There might be the odd German about.’

  As he spoke they heard the low growl of a lorry engine and Urquhart slapped him on the arm and dived for the trees. As they huddled among the wet undergrowth in the last of the light, they realized that what they heard was not one lorry but a whole column of them. Lights were coming up the hill and they managed to make out the shape of heavy canvas-topped vehicles, led by motor cycles, scout cars and a large Mercedes staff car.

  ‘The odd German,’ Urquhart breathed. ‘It’s the whole bloody German army!’

  The lorries were grinding up the hill in low gear, packed with soldiers sitting face to face, with their rifles between their knees, their helmets strapped behind their shoulders. They were obviously not expecting trouble and were singing a German marching song of the sort that normally took the beat from the step so that they kept perfect time.

  ‘Die Wirtsleut und die Mödel,

  Die rufen beid: O weh!

  Die Wirtsleut wenn ich komme.

  Die Mödel, wenn ich geh...’

  Urquhart’s face was bleak. He’d heard the songs in France in 1940 and in Greece and the North African desert in 1941, and he hated them as he hated everything that symbolized Nazism. ‘Where are they going?’ he asked.

  Neville shrugged and Urquhart turned on him angrily. ‘You’re the bloody navigator,’ he snapped. ‘You’re the man with the maps. You know France, you say. Okay, then, pull your finger out and think.’