For King and Country

by David Monnery

  As the smoke cleared the damage done by the V-1 became visible. Three three-storey buildings had been effectively destroyed, their roofs and top floors blown to kingdom come, their second floors broken and flung down into the three shops that lay beneath. On both sides of the wide road windows had been blown in, and as McCaigh looked round he saw a woman stagger out of one door with blood pouring down her face.

  Behind him there was a child’s cry for help from inside one of the shops, and then, as if in reply, the sound of something shifting on the floor above, followed by a series of thunderous crashes as things fell through. McCaigh strained his ears but there was no further sound from the child, and a few seconds later all he could hear was the sound of the approaching fire engines.

  ‘Saved us the trouble of visiting,’ he murmured, as the first engine disgorged his uncle and a team of firemen. Eamonn McCaigh looked momentarily surprised to find his nephews there before him, but was soon fully occupied in trying to reach an agreement with the head of the salvage-rescue team as to how they should best approach the business of reaching those trapped in the wreckage. This agreement once reached, firemen, salvage-rescue people and members of other volunteer services were soon at work on a cautious shifting of the rubble. The McCaigh boys, Rafferty and Jimmy Cullen all pitched in without being asked, and no one told them to leave it to the professionals.

  It took just over half an hour to recover two adult bodies from the grocer’s, and about the same again to reach the young girl at the back of the shop. She was about six years old, McCaigh reckoned, and her dust-caked face peered blankly round the corner of the wardrobe which had crushed the life from her body. As the firemen carried her out his uncle pulled him aside. ‘Go and get your drink, Mickie,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing more to do here.’

  They walked on towards the pub, not talking, not feeling much like doing anything, and were about a hundred yards short of their destination when the two MPs stepped out of the shadows and barred their way. From the smart red caps to the mirror-like surface of their boots they looked like they’d just stepped off the parade ground.

  ‘And where do you think you’re going, Sergeant?’ one of them sneeringly addressed Rafferty.

  ‘For a drink,’ he told them shortly.

  The MP pointedly studied the two dust-covered uniforms in front of him, and poked Rafferty gently in the chest with his truncheon. ‘Not like this you’re not.’

  In that moment it all came to a head for Rafferty – Beth’s betrayal, the loss of his son, the endless frustrating wait in Gloucestershire, the dust-caked face of the girl in the bombed shop – and almost before he knew it his fist was crashing into the MP’s nose, blood was spurting, more blows were flying and something very hard was coming down on his own head. The last things he remembered were the sounds of whistles blowing and boots on stone.

  Farnham had managed to borrow a car for the Saturday morning, and he and Eileen took a picnic out to Epping Forest. As they walked through the summer trees the war seemed unusually far away, and when he told her he’d soon be leaving she seemed less worried than usual. ‘I know you can’t tell me where you’re going,’ she said, ‘but will you be seeing her? Madeleine, I mean, or whatever her real name is?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he told her. ‘I hope so. It just seems almost too theatrical – dropping in behind enemy lines to see my lady friend.’

  ‘Like the Scarlet Pimpernel,’ she said.

  He’d dropped her back at the Shelter on the Isle of Dogs, returned the car to his friend in Knightsbridge and walked back across Kensington Gardens to the hotel, where he found Tobin nursing a hangover and a most unwelcome telephone message from Rafferty.

  He and Tobin took a taxi to the barracks in Camden Town, where his men were being held, listened to their story, and satisfied himself that their actions, though stupid, had hardly been criminal. He then set to the task of talking the two men out of their predicament. Several times he nearly lost his own temper, but eventually, after issuing just about every veiled threat he could think of, he managed to persuade the oaf in charge that the two men would be more use to their country risking their lives in France than consuming rations in an English jail.

  The taxi deposited the four men alongside the platform at Paddington with what they thought was seconds to spare, but it turned out their train had been delayed for at least an hour. While the other three wandered off in search of a drink, Tobin, feeling guilty about not seeing his parents that weekend, ensconced himself in a telephone kiosk and called them.

  His father answered.

  ‘I’ll be going away for a few weeks,’ Tobin told him.

  ‘Anywhere exciting?’ his father asked with an almost-visible wink.

  ‘I’ll tell you when I get back.’

  His mother took over at the other end, told him to look after himself and wished him luck. She kept up a good front but Tobin could almost hear the tears in her voice, and was about to claim someone else wanted the phone when she dropped the bombshell. ‘Your Megan came round,’ she said. ‘Asked me to give you a message if you rang. She said she’s sorry, she still loves you and she hopes you’ll forgive her.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Tobin said neutrally, as if he expected that the forgiveness part would take some time. And so it should, he reminded himself, but there was a wave of relief sweeping through his body and his feet seemed to want to dance on the kiosk’s concrete floor.

  5

  France, August–September 1944

  The banter and the laughter slowly died away as the Halifax approached the drop zone in the Vosges. Sixteen men were crammed in on either side of the plane’s belly, and the floor between them was piled high with their supplies, leaving no room for the stretching of cramped limbs. Looking down the rows of faces, Farnham was struck by the similarity of expression they wore – a sort of artificial stillness, a tightly controlled anxiety.

  With only one plane at the squadron’s disposal, the original plan had been to fly in half the men and half the jeeps on two successive nights, but Farnham had insisted on the whole squadron dropping together. The jeeps would not be needed for several days, and the more he thought about it, the less he liked the idea of bringing them down from the high meadow. Once the men were down he and Yves could find a more convenient place to receive the drop.

  Always assuming that Yves was still alive. Since leaving the area in May Farnham had received fairly regular updates on the Maquis group’s record of successes and failures, but he had heard nothing of a personal nature. There were bound to have been some casualties. Yves might be dead. So might she.

  ‘Five minutes,’ the dispatcher yelled as he came through the cockpit door. He clambered across the equipment containers and wrenched open the bomb bay doors, letting in the wind and revealing a moving square of moonlit France. ‘Lovely night for it,’ he shouted above the roar of their passage, and a couple of the men made faces at him behind his back.

  They all got to their feet, fixed their static lines to the fuselage and waited in line behind Farnham for the order to jump. It wasn’t usual for the CO to lead off, but as his was the only face familiar to the Frenchmen below, it seemed like the diplomatic thing to do.

  ‘Go,’ the dispatcher yelled in his ear, and he stepped out into the void. The plane’s engines roared briefly in his ears, then abruptly faded. The slipstream tried to tip him, but the opening parachute jerked him upright and suddenly the landscape made sense again. Beneath him the L-shaped pattern of red lights was visible at one end of the huge meadow. Above him a line of open chutes was strung across the sky, palely reflecting the moon.

  He could see figures in the meadow now, and hoped to God they weren’t Germans. As the ground rushed up to meet him he braced himself for the impact, bending his knees as his feet touched the grass and executing a perfect roll. A swift glance was enough to confirm that the men running towards him were French, and he concentrated on reeling in the billowing silk.

  ‘Robert!’
a familiar voice cried out, and a garlic-breathing Henri embraced him like a long-lost friend. ‘And this time you’re in uniform,’ the Frenchman said, examining him. ‘That must mean the war’s getting serious, no?’

  Farnham grinned, and shook hands with two more smiling Maquisards. On the far side of the vast meadow the last of his men were drifting to earth – the pilot and his French contact on the ground had done a perfect job. The Halifax was now flying a wide circle, giving the men time to clear the field before dropping the supply canisters.

  Farnham was about to ask Henri where Yves was when the Maquis leader limped up to him, hand outstretched. ‘A fall,’ he explained, noticing Farnham glance at his leg. ‘It is good to see you again,’ he said, ‘though whether you should be here is another matter. But we will talk when we reach the site we have picked out for your camp. It is about two miles north-east of ours, in the hills above Sadey.’

  ‘I know where you mean,’ Farnham said, feeling pleased. By this time the supply containers had all been recovered, and were being carted by mixed teams of SAS and Maquisards to the edge of the meadow. A few minutes later everyone was gathered in the same spot, the two groups smiling at each other with their mouths, sizing each other up with their eyes.

  They started down the mountain, leaving the relative brightness of the meadow for the less comforting darkness of the silent forest. About ten men back in the forty-strong column Rafferty found himself hoping the locals knew what they were doing, because this seemed as good a spot for a German ambush as any he’d ever seen. Behind him McCaigh was having a spot of trouble with the knee which the fucking MP had slugged with his truncheon. But as he limped downhill he could still see that look of utter disbelief on the face which Rafferty had bloodied, and he knew it had been more than worth it.

  They walked on through the endless trees, making little more noise than the breeze in the branches above, and despite Rafferty’s anxieties no German fire erupted out of the darkness on either side. The occasional logger’s track offered the only sign of another human presence. There were no houses, no lights, no fields – only trees and more trees.

  After about two hours of walking they reached the site chosen for the SAS camp-site. At first sight this particular section of forest didn’t look any different from any of the others they had passed through, but it soon became apparent that their hosts had chosen well. The soil was dry yet water was only a short descent away; no existing paths crossed the area but access remained easy; the lie of the land offered good perimeter defences and lookout positions.

  As the men set up camp, digging latrines and putting up the camouflaged tents, Farnham and Yves sat on a hamper full of Sten guns and talked. In the last couple of weeks, it seemed, the situation in this part of France had radically changed. ‘Of course we can’t see the whole picture from here,’ Yves said, ‘but it looks to me as if the Germans have given up any hope of holding any line west of the Moselle, and that they’re considering withdrawing all the way to the Saar and the Vosges. Whichever it is, the whole of eastern Lorraine is crawling with them, and I’m afraid your chances of carrying out the sort of raids we talked about before have worsened considerably. It’s not just a matter of avoiding the main roads any more – there’s a chance of running into the bastards almost anywhere.’

  ‘It couldn’t just be that your exploits in June have caught their attention?’ Farnham asked hopefully.

  Yves smiled. ‘Oh, we caught someone’s attention all right, but it wasn’t the Wehrmacht’s. The Gestapo’s anti-partisan units in Strasbourg and Nancy received big reinforcements, and in the second half of July they swept through a couple of areas to the north of us, but they didn’t do much damage. They’re still a problem, but what I’m talking about is regular troops swarming all over the place. They won’t be looking for you – not until you make them, anyway – but the chances of just running into a troop convoy are too high for comfort, and once you’ve been seen, well, it’s not hard to bottle up a motorized force in these mountains – there are so few roads.’

  Farnham was thinking. ‘I see what you mean,’ he said eventually, ‘but if the Germans are planning to make a stand in this area then all the more reason for us to find out just how they intend to do so, and with what. After all, creating mayhem is only one of the reasons we’re here; the other is to gather intelligence. We’ll just have to put the emphasis on the latter, at least until we have a clearer picture of what’s going on, both around here and on the main front. Like you said, it’s easy for a motorized unit to get bottled up, but if the worst comes to the worst we can always abandon our jeeps – the Americans seem to be making more than enough for everyone on the planet.’

  Yves grinned. ‘So where are these famous jeeps?’

  ‘They’re coming. I need to find a drop zone with better access. I took another look tonight – the path down from the meadow is too narrow in too many places.’

  It was the Frenchman’s turn to look thoughtful. ‘How about the meadow above La Truche – do you remember? The track which goes across it eventually intersects with the road down the valley to Sadey. But first we must check that the Germans haven’t set up shop in that area. I’ll get Henri on to it.’

  Henri seemed to be Yves’ second in command these days. ‘I haven’t seen Jules,’ Farnham said pointedly.

  Yves sighed. ‘He was killed in June, only a week or so after you left. Four of them had just wired a bridge when they heard a train in the distance – they’d used half-hour pencils to give them a good start – and Jules went back to exchange them for the ten-minute kind. He just couldn’t resist the idea of getting the train too.’ Yves shrugged. ‘He must have done something wrong – the bridge went up and him with it.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Farnham said, thinking of Jools Morgan and Morrie Beckwith under the bridge at San Severino.

  ‘Jean-Paul was killed too,’ Yves added. ‘He walked into a German patrol down in the valley and panicked for some reason. They just shot him in the back.’

  Farnham didn’t want to ask, but the look on his face must have given him away.

  ‘She’s all right,’ Yves said.

  By first light the SAS camp was fully operational; lookouts had been posted and most of the men invited to catch up on lost sleep. The Maquisards had long since departed for their own camp, happily carrying the new shipment of weapons with them. Twenty new recruits had come forward in the past week, Yves had told Farnham, and he was considering setting up a second camp a few miles to the south.

  Farnham was still sitting on the hamper, which looked set to become an unofficial seat of command. In a circle around him sat Captain Hoyland, his number two, and the unit’s two sergeants, Rafferty and Wycherley.

  Phil Hoyland was a career soldier who had joined the SAS late in 1942. Tall, gangly and extremely bald for someone in his late twenties, he had a reputation for over-icing the cake in times of calm and clarity of thought in times of crisis. Which, Farnham reminded himself, was certainly preferable to the other way round. He had never really taken to Hoyland – the man was too ‘public school rugby club’ – but the men who’d served under him didn’t seem to have any complaints. Steve Wycherley was one of these. Also a two-year veteran of the SAS, he was a dour Scouser with crinkly fair hair and the face of a pugilist with a lot of pyrrhic victories to his credit.

  Farnham gave them a rundown of what Yves had told him, taking care not to sound as deflated as he felt by the news of the growing German presence.

  ‘Can we trust what these Resistance chaps tell us?’ Hoyland asked. ‘I mean, I assume they believe what they’re saying, but how good is their information? When you’re stuck up here in the woods it must be hard to come by that sort of hard intelligence.’

  ‘And after being stuck like that for a while, you can start exaggerating enemy strength just to justify the fact that you’re doing sweet fuck all,’ Wycherley suggested.

  Farnham shook his head. ‘I know we’ve had mixed results in our dealin
gs with the Maquis, but I’d stake my life on this group being reliable. The fighters may spend most of their time in the woods, but they’ve got excellent contacts in the nearby towns’ – a picture of her sprang into his mind – ‘and the intelligence, as far as it goes, will be good. Yves didn’t claim to know exactly what was happening, only that the area’s filling up with Germans. Now we don’t have to let that little fact cramp our style too much, but I don’t think we can afford to ignore it either.’

  ‘Right,’ Hoyland agreed.

  ‘So what I suggest is this – that while we’re waiting for Yves to check the drop zone for the re-sup, we set up OPs overlooking all the major roads within a ten-mile radius. That’ll not only give us a good idea of just what we’re dealing with – it’ll also give the men a chance to familiarize themselves with the area. In fact, before they go anywhere I want them all to know the immediate area of the camp – say within a mile radius – like the back of their hands. Neil, Steve, if you could get on to that straight away. Nothing on paper though, just in case. Mental maps only.’ He looked round at the others. ‘Any questions?’

  ‘What about cooking, boss?’ Wycherley asked.

  ‘I don’t see any problem with using the hexamine stoves,’ Farnham decided, ‘provided the usual precautions are taken. In fact I could do with a hot cup of tea right now.’

  Two days later Tobin was counting the lorries of the German troop convoy which was slowly winding its way along the road below. There were seventeen in all, and he dutifully recorded the figure in his logbook.

  ‘Say about twenty-five per lorry,’ McCaigh murmured by his side. ‘That’s more than four hundred men.’

  Rafferty sighed. ‘The Maquis bloke was right – the place is crawling with them. I mean, I don’t mind the odds being a bit on the chancy side, but this is ridiculous. We’re just going to end up hiding in the woods for a month.’

  ‘Makes you feel nostalgic for Fairford, doesn’t it?’ said McCaigh. ‘At least we caught sight of a woman every now and then.’