The America Ground (The Forensic Genealogist Series Book 3)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  Tugging back on her errant thoughts, she tried to replay her mother-in-law’s last words before she had plummeted over the cliff, but they were grainy, vague and distorted. The Spyglass File—that was what she had said.

  If Elsie found The Spyglass File, she would find her baby.

  Chapter One

  3rd June 1940, Dunkirk Beach, France

  They entered the town of Dunkirk as the walking ghosts of their fathers’ generation. They wore their boots, their scarred helmets and their ill-fitting uniforms. They carried their Great War guns. They had marched through places appallingly memorable: Ypres, Cambrai, Flanders and the Somme. They had fought on the land of the dead, ploughed and planted just twenty times since.

  Laurie Finch, with his two remaining comrades, staggered into the town. The three men instinctively stopped and looked around them in a detached way, shiny black sludge from a discarded Austin K2 ambulance licking at their boots.

  He knew that it was Dunkirk because the road signs had told him so. But this place could never have been a normal French seaside town. It could never have lived. It could never have seen joy or laughter or love; it could never have been anything other than what it was now.

  Long columns of British army trucks and lorries had been dumped at the roadside. Wheels missing. Smouldering. Wires spewing forth from open bonnets. The buildings around them abandoned, windowless and roofless, like unfinished dolls’ houses, fire continuing the destruction wrought by the endless pounding of Luftwaffe bombs and bullets. The streets, soaked from burst water mains, were strewn with debris: glass, shrapnel, clothing, unidentified engine parts and the charred unrecorded corpses of bullet-ridden soldiers and civilians. Several severely wounded men were slumped on the pavement, their eyes empty, accepting their certain fate.

  By wordless agreement, the three men continued through the town, side-stepping the wreckage and the rubble, the craters in the road and the twisted remains of their comrades. Their vision was blinkered, centred on the point just a few streets ahead, where the buildings ended and the salvation of the beach began. The place where the rescue boats awaited them.

  None of them flinched as a drunken naked man suddenly appeared from a side road on horseback, galloping past them, whooping and waving a tin helmet in the air.

  Onwards they walked, following in death’s footprints.

  Just as they neared the final row of beachfront properties, Laurie shot out his arm to stop his friends, recognising the brief agonising groan of surrendering bricks and mortar. The men dived to the ground as the entire corner building collapsed in a thunderous crash, enveloping them in a dirty granular darkness.

  It was the first moment in several days when time had behaved as it should; each minute that passed with the men pinned to the floor, choking, contained exactly sixty seconds.

  One by one, the men stood, spat out mouthfuls of grainy spittle and shook off their rind of dust. Then they gazed ahead.

  For days they had known that they would be the last of the last. The fourth battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment had been among the ill-fated chosen to form the rear-guard, allowing the rest of the British Expeditionary Force to evacuate. At every bridge they had crossed, sappers had waited, detonating their charges just moments later.

  Yes, they knew they were the last of the last, but they hadn’t expected this. Evidence of the final hours of tens of thousands of soldiers was encapsulated in the detritus which appeared on the beach like an uninterrupted lurid tide line: countless bicycles with frames twisted beyond recognition; dozens of axe-smashed motorbikes; hundreds of thousands of smashed rifles, stacked in an enormous pyre; an unimaginable quantity of helmets; thousands of burned out cars and trucks; horses with bullet holes behind their eyes; crashed and wrecked RAF aircraft.

  And the dead.

  All around them, the dead.

  A ragged mongrel chewing on the fingers of a corpse.

  ‘Your land is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Your fields—strangers are devouring them in your presence; it is desolation.’

  Laurie turned to Bill Rhodes, who had just uttered those words and wondered when he had last heard him speak. Had he spoken today, before now? Had Joe spoken today? Or had the three of them just walked, one foot in front of the other, as they had done since the order had been given to evacuate? Five days ago, the bleakness of their situation had percolated down through the ranks, when an order to retreat to high ground at Mont des Cats had been issued. Somewhere in the region of seven thousand men and bumper-to-bumper queues of British army transport had ascended the hill for the dubious sanctuary of the Gothic monastery. But the order of Trappist monks residing there could not offer them any protection from the twenty Luftwaffe warplanes that had relentlessly bombed and machine-gunned the hill, nor could the monks protect them from the blasting that followed from approaching German tanks and mortar fire, nor from the advancing line of infantry. Chaos had infiltrated the infallible precision of the British army, and finally the order had been given to abandon the monastery and head twenty miles north-east to an evacuation point at Dunkirk. It had been, and continued to be, every man for himself.

  Tears welled in Laurie’s eyes.

  Amidst the carnage, there was hope.

  A snaking line of soldiers—a few hundred, Laurie guessed—wound its way from the beach, through the shallows of the English Channel, past the carcasses of several destroyed vessels, to two small navy warships, where the men were being dragged aboard. Above them, a swarm of Nazi Stuka dive-bombers circled rapaciously. Waiting.

  It was Laurie who went first. He broke into a run, summoning the last of his energy for the short distance to the end of the line that led—in surely just a few hours—to the embracing shores of England. To home.

  He reached the blood-stained khaki of the final soldier in line and fell to the sand behind him, at last surrendering to the pain that blistered his mind and body.

  A hand squeezed his shoulder and Laurie turned and smiled. It was Joe Morrison, his oldest friend. He and Joe had signed up together for six months’ service in July 1939, when the absolute certainty of war had yet to disseminate to the working men being recruited into the militia. Why had they even signed up? He had no idea, now.

  Directly above Joe, Laurie caught sight of the first of the Stuka bombers manoeuvring into a descent at almost ninety degrees, its inverted gull wings silhouetted in the sun’s hazy periphery. The hideous, terrifying wail of the plane’s Jericho trumpet pre-empted his warning cry and the line of men dispersed chaotically, the desperation to run outweighing the certain knowledge that they had nowhere to go.

  Laurie fell to his side and covered his head with his hands.

  The guns opened up, loud and staccato, ripping through the sand right beside him, the wail growing to a deafening crescendo.

  There were screams and shouts all around him, as bullets tore into flesh.

  Laurie rolled to his front and closed his eyes, sand raining down on his back, knowing that his life was all but over.

  Finally, just a few feet above the beach, the Stuka pulled up, heading into a steep climb to re-join the rest of the group circling above them. But another had just begun to dive.

  The hope of rescue and setting foot back in England dissolved, escaping him like a drop of water on the sand. He wouldn’t get to see his wife, Elsie, or his mother or sister ever again. He would never have children. He would never grow old. The knowledge that he was going to die in France, all alone, crushed the final grains of his resolve. With that clarity of understanding came a weakening of his muscles and a speeding up of his heart. He urinated on himself and began to sob.

  The ear-splitting cry from the Jericho trumpet signalled the imminent opening up of the Stuka’s guns.

  Something—he didn’t know what—forced him to open his eyes.

  With his hands clasped to his ears, he watched as the Stuka’s bomb cradles opened in the air directly above them, and four hundred-and-ten-pound bombs came
hurtling down in his direction.

  Paradoxically for Laurie Finch, the seconds of helpless waiting as the bombs fell, were both brief, giving him no time to react, move or speak and yet also simultaneously drawn out, allowing him the time to realise and accept his fate.

  Chapter Two

  21st June 1940, Bramley Cottage, Nutley, East Sussex

  Elsie Finch stood at the open back door of her cottage, gazing out into the garden. It was so perfect that it could have been a painting, she thought, with a note of contempt. The sky was one simple tone of turquoise, the woods behind the garden a thousand shades of green. She exhaled as she took in the neat cobbled path that wound its way through immaculate flower beds to the orchard beyond. It was too damned perfect, that was the trouble. ‘You must open your delightful garden to the public,’ Mrs McKay had enthused last week from her high perch in the village hall, speaking on behalf of one of the several committees of which she considered herself an indispensable part. ‘We could charge a shilling entry to raise money for the war effort.’

  Elsie stepped outside, leant back on the doorframe and raised one arch-shaped eyebrow, thinking about the war effort. What bloody war? Here, tucked away in the Sussex countryside, her nearest neighbour more than half-a-mile away, there was no war. She strained her ears to hear something—anything at all—but there was nothing to be heard but that wretched, empty silence. Even the honey bees, flitting and shuffling restlessly between the purple chive flowers and those of the mauve sage were silent. As she fussed with her blonde hair, pointlessly impeccable and styled in shoulder-length rolls, she was certain that, if she were to die in wartime, it would be from the slow sinking-sand monotony of what her life had become.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ she murmured, just to break the pitiful stillness, as she plucked a cigarette from the packet of Wills’ Gold Flakes that she squeezed in her hand. She lit it and took a long drag, reflecting on the last few months since her wedding day. Her heart began to tighten as she thought of that blustery day, two weeks before the declaration of war, when she had become Mrs Laurie Finch. Just four weeks later, her husband had been whisked off to France with the British Expeditionary Force, leaving her here, the anxious housewife. Since that unremarkable day last August when she had ceased to be Miss Elsie Danby and she had left her job as the village school teacher—as was the expectation—her life had fallen into a ghastly routine. It was a routine no less exacting or precise than one of the dreadful knitting patterns given to her by her mother, which was now stuffed among a pile of other useless papers in the kitchen. Baking, tidying, washing, cleaning, knitting. Endlessly.

  Last Sunday, in an act of churlish defiance, Elsie had not attended church, but had instead done her washing, leaving Monday to become her day of rest. Her muted sense of satisfaction and mild victory over the scourge of housewifery had been dulled by the fact that it had gone completely unnoticed. She had rather expected a visit from the vicar, one of the neighbours or perhaps Mrs McKay or another church busybody. But nobody came and Elsie’s defiance twisted into stubbornness; she had made up her mind that she wouldn’t be attending church this coming Sunday, either. What did it all matter, anyway? She couldn’t work on a Sunday but soldiers could fight, could be lost, could be killed on a Sunday.

  Pushing small haloes of smoke into the air through her plump red lips, Elsie realised with horror that history was repeating itself: she was turning into her mother, a timid little Victorian creature who had married on the eve of the Great War. Elsie, born a drearily predictable nine months after the Armistice, imagined her mother passing those four long years, rocking in her wicker chair by the fire, eternally knitting scarves and socks for the men in the trenches. Doing her bit.

  The brace around Elsie’s heart tightened. It wouldn’t be like that for her. It wasn’t already; it was very different. She turned and there it was, on the mantelpiece. It had arrived last week when she had been in the kitchen boiling the whites. The door knocker had resounded and she’d dithered about whether or not to answer it, convinced that it had been the Kleeneze man back again with his wretched set of dusters and brushes. But it hadn’t been him, it had been the telegraph boy. All that she could now recall of him was the red piping on his navy uniform cuff as he handed over the telegram and had asked if there was a reply. No reply. What could she have said? Thank you, War Office, for informing me that my husband is missing, presumed killed on war service.

  Elsie held the cigarette to her lips perfunctorily, but breathed around it. She had guessed, of course, even before the telegram had arrived. ‘Tens of Thousands Safely Home Already,’ the Daily Express headline had shouted from their edition of 31st May. ‘Many more coming by day and night.’ But Laurie did not come. The follow-up letter, as promised in the telegram, had revealed nothing more. And that was the last that she had heard. Missing presumed killed.

  She let the burning cigarette fall to the floor, turned back inside and shut the door.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, Elsie closed her wide blue eyes, trying to unclench her heart; but it refused. The pathetic helplessness of her situation echoed in the repetitive metallic striking of the grandfather clock in the hallway, each strike gaily announcing the death of more of her life.

  The first thing that her eyes settled upon, when she finally reopened them, was the ceramic sign hanging just above the stove. The Devil makes work for idle hands, it warned. To people visiting Bramley Cottage it was simply a light-hearted wall adornment, but to Elsie it represented so much more than that. She wasn’t silly, she had been able to see the look in her mother-in-law’s eyes when she had unwrapped it on her last birthday; it was a look that had unquestionably summarised the wifely expectations placed on Elsie. It had been a warning to uphold her marriage vows, no matter what.

  Elsie calmly stood, pulled the sign from its nail, carried it into the hallway and smashed it into the circular glass face of the grandfather clock. Shards of glass and pottery crashed noisily to her feet. She drew a quick breath and smiled.

  The ticking had stopped and finally, the clamp on Elsie’s heart loosened.

  She knew what she had to do next.

  Passers-by—predominantly men in dark suits and bowler hats, carrying briefcases—slowed their pace to an admiring gait, taking in the long rainbow-like line of colour that snaked its way below the tall grey building on the corner of Kingsway and Aldwych in central London.

  Elsie, sighing noisily, side-stepped from her position in the queue and collided directly with a plump man, whose bulbous eyes had been riveted to a group of giggling girls just up in front of her.

  ‘Pardon me, Miss,’ he apologised, pulling a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbing his forehead as he stumbled on his way.

  ‘Men,’ the woman directly in front of Elsie said, turning with a smile. ‘So incredibly primitive.’ She pursed her lips and exaggeratedly placed a hand on her tilted hip. ‘Of course, that’s why I dressed to impress.’ She tossed her head back and her perfect red lips parted to release a gravelly burst of laughter.

  ‘Me too,’ Elsie admitted with a smile. She had worn her best outfit: a simple mustard skirt, worn just below the knee with matching boxy jacket with padded shoulders. It was complemented by black leather gloves and a veiled hat, which was set at a fashionable slant. ‘Though I rather think we weren’t the only ones,’ Elsie added, casting her eyes back and forth over the line of women.

  ‘What are you here for?’ the woman asked, in her plummy voice.

  ‘Women’s Auxiliary Air Force,’ Elsie stated, a sheen of pride coating her answer.

  ‘Oh, me too.’

  Elsie suddenly saw herself in a detached view, as if from the ogling stare of one of the men across the street. She was so terribly ordinary. And, in comparison with the others around her, so terribly young. The woman in front of her, dressed in a similar outfit but in a powder blue, must have been in her early thirties. And that group of women in front her—how old were they? Certainly older than she
was.

  ‘Violet,’ the woman introduced, extending her black-gloved hand to meet Elsie’s. ‘Violet Christmas. Absurd name—you don’t need to say.’

  ‘I think it’s a lovely name,’ Elsie said with a grin. ‘I’m Elsie—Elsie Danby…’ She faltered at her error. ‘Elsie Finch,’ she corrected, her face hot with a wash of embarrassment and shame at forgetting.

  Violet nodded her head in understanding. ‘Like that, is it?’

  ‘My husband—Laurie—he’s missing in action. Lost at Dunkirk.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Violet said. ‘And now you want to do your bit for your country?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ Elsie mumbled. She looked up and met Violet’s dark, almond eyes. ‘Actually, no. I’m doing it entirely for selfish reasons: I’m dying a terrible death of boredom at home and I can’t stand it for a moment longer.’

  Violet laughed another of her throaty laughs. ‘Well, good for you, Elsie Finch. Perhaps it’s wise, though, to keep that little admission quiet when you get inside.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry, it’ll be King, country and Empire when I get in there. Plus a heavy dose of this’ – she fluttered her eyelashes—‘and maybe even a bit of this’ – she puffed her chest into the air like a boastful pigeon.

  ‘Elsie Finch, I rather like you,’ Violet declared. ‘Smoke?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Elsie said, taking the proffered cigarette.

  At last, the queue began to move and, embracing the comfort of the cigarette between her lips, Elsie began to relax again. ‘What about you?’ she enquired. ‘Are you married?’

  ‘God, no,’ Violet answered flatly. ‘Never. The very idea of one man for all of eternity doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  A slight movement in the queue and the horn beep from an appreciative man in an Austin Seven placed a chasm in the conversation until Violet asked, ‘Are you local?’