The Bench

by Nigel Jones

“I think this will be the most effective place to attack the train.“ She pressed her finger onto the map. “The train will have slowed for the station at Lisieux, where we will have the signalman arbitrarily put a speed limit on it after it passes through. There is cover in the woods about fifty yards from the track and good access back to the road for the getaway.”

  “How many men?” Alain asked.

  “Just our little band for this one, boys.” She looked round the men and saw their smiles. She knew they loved to keep it within their own group. Although she was young she was totally accepted as the leader, each one of them owed their life to her in some way or another and they had all played their part in looking after her. Yes, this was what they liked, small and devastating. All for one and one for all.

  “Philippe, are you okay going with Pierre tonight?” Yvette watched for his reaction.

  “Of course. I want to learn from the best,” he said with a genuine respect in his voice.

  Yvette smiled to herself. Her boy was good, good at a lot of things! She looked for Pierre’s moustache to twitch, it didn’t, just a smile. This was going to work. It had taken a month before Pierre had accepted Albert, but hopefully after the next two nights they’d all think of Philippe as one of them.

  That night Pierre and Philippe set off in the most ancient Citroen Philippe had ever seen. They were heavily armed and carrying enough explosives to derail a dozen trains.

  “It’s simple, Philippe, if we are caught with this lot all we can do is shoot our way out,” Pierre said as they loaded the last box of explosives.

  “Just say the word, head saboteur, and I’ll start shooting.” Philippe gave him a disarming smile, which was greeted by a wide grin.

  It was about an hours drive to the site of the proposed attack. At one point Pierre stopped the car by a gate and opened it, then drove across a number of fields before emerging back onto a tarmac road.

  “What was all that about?” Philippe asked.

  “Avoiding a German checkpoint. You’d think the idiots would move it occasionally. Still, Albert has raised and toughened the suspension on this old girl. She loves the fields.” He laughed. “Now, when we get there we must be careful, they patrol the railway. We must work fast and then cover up our wires.”

  They were able to park by the forest as Yvette had indicated. One hour later the charges were set and the wires to the detonator were laid along a ditch that led to the woods, and then covered with leaves and undergrowth.

  “Good, the real fun will be tomorrow,” said Pierre, as he fired the old banger back into life. Its engine purred like a brand new vehicle.

  Back at the farm they grabbed a few hours sleep before the sun came up. Later in the morning they made their final preparations for the attack. At 14:00 in the afternoon a boy arrived on his bicycle with information for Yvette. The train was estimated at 23:00 hours and it would have three anti-aircraft carriages with the ensuing weaponry and skilled artillery forces. The attack would have to be clean and lethal, but more importantly their retreat would have to be rapid.

  Before they left Yvette appeared in the kitchen, her face camouflaged with dark streaks. This time she had deliberately accentuated the cat’s whiskers for Jacques’s benefit, who had told her how sexy they had looked.

  Jacques was finding it difficult not to take her in his arms. Since their first date he had never been in her presence without being able to kiss her, and now as she smiled at him through her whiskers he was in agony. His nineteen-year-old hormones were getting the better of him.

  “She is very pretty, our Yvette, non?” Pierre had caught him almost salivating at the pussycat.

  “Yes, she is very pretty,” replied Philippe, his face turning red at having been caught in his fantasies.

  “Don’t let her pretty face fool you, Philippe, she is deadly.” Pierre was quite serious. Later that night Philippe would learn just how deadly.

  They took two vehicles that Albert and Alain had been working on all day, purely so they had a spare in case of a fault or attack. Pierre and Alain left first and the other three followed about half an hour later. They took separate routes and arrived at 21:00 hours. Yvette and Alain stealthily swept the woods and surrounding area for anything or anybody who may interfere with their night’s work. All seemed well; Yvette had chosen the spot carefully as it was well away from any other habitation.

  “You will like this, Philippe. We are going to use a Waffen S.S. blasting machine, the M40. We stole it a year ago. It has its own generator that sends 300 volts to detonate the explosives. It’s bloody marvellous, the Germans really do make the best kit, you know!” He laughed and his moustache wagged like a dog’s tail. He connected the wires to the detonator. “I love it when they are killed by their own equipment.”

  It was 22:00 hours and the expected advance train carrying floodlights and about twenty men came down the track. The lights swept the landscape for any sign of possible terrorist attack; occasionally troops would jump from the carriage and investigate anything they thought might be suspicious.

  The powerful lights lit up the woods around them as if it were daylight, but caught no trace of the five people buried under leaves, or the ends of the rifle barrels that protruded about an inch from their cover as their eyes stared unblinking through the sights.

  The train moved on without any soldiers disembarking to search the surrounding woods. Yvette had chosen the location well as the woods were considered far enough away, but there still might be foot patrols to consider, especially as the road was nearby. However the vehicles were well hidden under the nets with a tapestry of woodland life woven into them.

  Now it was a waiting game. 22:45 hours, and Yvette could hear a vehicle approaching along the road about two hundred yards away.

  “Shit, I thought they might search this area as it’s so close to the road,” Yvette whispered. “Philippe come with me, but we must move quietly.”

  The armoured car pulled into the side of the road about a hundred yards from their own vehicles. It was an Sd.kfz 232. ‘Six wheels and four crew, perfect,’ thought Yvette. It stopped exactly where she thought it would. “We’ll take the driver and the machine gun operator first. Look, the fool is standing up with his head out. We must make sure they don’t get a chance to transmit their position. Then we take the other two who will be searching the woods, give them one minute so they are out of sight. I’ll kill the gunner, okay? Silence, no guns, understood?” Philippe nodded.

  Exactly as Yvette predicted, two S.S. soldiers got out of the armoured car and stepped into the woods with flash lights and their guns at the ready.

  Yvette and Philippe were perfectly positioned to strike. She had studied one hundred yards of road when they’d arrived and picked hiding places for twenty possible scenarios. She had driven up and down the road at least ten times, imagining where anyone could pull in and what vehicles they would probably use. There would be no traffic along this road until daybreak, yet it seemed to be human nature to park the vehicle on the verge, or if a definite parking place presented itself, ninety percent of the time a driver would take it. That is exactly what had happened.

  Philippe and Yvette were no more than five yards away when the two soldiers crossed the road to the woods they were about to search.

  Exactly one minute later Yvette leapt like a panther onto the armoured car, and before the gunner realised what was happening a six-inch hunting knife had severed his jugular artery. Yvette’s hand over his mouth prevented any sound from coming from the dying man. His body slumped back into the vehicle, and then she dropped a tear gas canister into the tank and closed the metal turret lid trapping the driver.

  Jumping from the armoured car and using all her body weight she ripped the aerial from its side, thus preventing any transmissions being made. The driver struggled to get his head into the fresh air and as he pushed the turret open again Philippe snapped his neck.

  The total noise level was not enough to alert the other two sol
diers to what had happened. Gesturing silence to Philippe they followed them into the woods. Four minutes later Yvette had slit the throats of the two clumsy soldiers as they trudged noisily through the undergrowth. They never heard the panther‘s approach.

  As the last man died, the moonlight caught Yvette’s beautiful catlike face and Philippe saw a look in her eyes he had never seen before. She was covered in blood and there was a mixture of bloodlust and hatred on her face. She saw him watching her as she wiped the knife on her sleeve.

  Jacques was not sure what had just passed between them. She did not look away; she just stared back at him without saying a word, a blank malevolence in her eyes. She defiantly fixed his stare for another second then gestured that they should rejoin the others.

  Jacques looked at the bodies on the ground and he remembered the man he had just killed. It was his first ever kill, he did not have time to think about what he had done or time to judge Yvette for her part in it because there was still work to be done.

  In the distance they could hear the train approaching as they reached the others. “Albert, wait with the vehicles. Take off the nets when you hear the explosion and start the engines. We’ll leave in the same ones we came in. Do you remember the routes we’ve chosen, and did you open the gates as we discussed when we planned the routes last week?”

  “Yes, we did the gates on the way over. It’s been dry and any fields we have to cross should be okay,” replied Pierre.

  “Good, we’ll see you two back at the farmhouse and we’ll all help Albert dismantle the vehicles,” Yvette said.

  The train slowly approached the charges they had laid. One, two, three carriages in and Pierre pushed the plunger that would signal the end of life for over seventy young German soldiers.

  It was spectacular. The explosion lit up the night sky and highlighted the carriage flying high into the air with flailing bodies falling like water in a fountain to the ground below. The rest of the train was ripped from the track as the explosives and the screams of ravaged bodies shattered the quiet night air.

  Alain pulled Philippe’s arm as he knelt mesmerised by the pyrotechnic display. Pierre had already cut the wires to the M40 and had it tucked under his arm as he started to run. Another hand grabbed Philippe’s arm and pulled him to his feet, it was Yvette. He looked into her eyes. They had changed. Once again there was the vulnerability he’d seen the night she’d cried whilst laying in his arms, the woman he knew had returned. They ran as fast as they could to the vehicles, which had their engines running and were ready to go.

  They knew they would have a good start on any pursuers and they knew the countryside like the back of their hands. Though it did not stop a frantic drive from the scene of their crime.

  They arrived back at the farmhouse within fifteen minutes of each other. Yvette, Philippe and Albert were last to get there because they stopped for five minutes whilst Albert radioed that the outcome of their mission was positive. He always did this away from the farmhouse so the source of his signal could not lead the Germans to their refuge. When they arrived, one vehicle was already partly dismantled. The second was quickly put to bed in various parts of the barn and all the weapons returned to the subterranean bunker before they retired to the kitchen to debrief the mission and drink a toast to a liberated France.

  “You are strangely quiet, Yvette, are you all right?” asked Alain.

  “I’m fine, just a bit tired. I’ll go and leave you boys to it,” she replied. She looked at Philippe as she said it. He had seen her; he had seen the woman she could be, the woman she did not want to be. Would he judge her? Would he hate what he had seen? He was the best thing that had happened to her since this living hell had begun.

  She looked for a sign in his eyes. Something that said he understood. Was it there or did she revolt him? His kind eyes smiled at her. She wanted to run over to him and hold him, try to explain why she was the way she was and try to make him love her again. His eyes did not say that he was disgusted, they reached out to her and she wanted to be in his strong arms again.

  Meeting Jacques had changed her. She had never felt any disgust or remorse for her actions; all her victims deserved their fate. But now Jacques was here it was different, she had been shocked at her own reaction to what she had just done and what she’d become. She had killed countless Germans, many with her own bare hands just as she had done this evening, but she had never questioned herself or thought about trying to justify it. When he’d watched her killing them the look on his face had cut her to the quick. It wasn’t disgust. It was shock. He had seen the monster that lived inside of her, the monster she had always denied.

  So now, if she could not be with Jacques she needed to be alone so she could search deep into her own soul to see if the young, happy-go-lucky child that Sarah had once been still existed. When she had been with Jacques in England she had been that person again and it had felt wonderful. But did that Sarah only exist there, or could that innocent child be reborn again in her beautiful France?

  Jacques watched the enigma leave the room and his heart went out to her. He had seen the hatred in her eyes as she’d killed the German soldiers and was reminded of the terrible demons that had inflicted such pain on the soul of the beautiful woman he’d given himself to.

  They both lay in their separate beds, each wrapped in thoughts of the other. Sleep was slow to come before the short night’s rest was over and the five liberators became bad farmers once again.

  Buster hadn’t seen the man smile much in the past hour or two and he was glad when he was back in the present, offering him a piece of pork pie and saying, “Yvette, what a woman.”

  As far as Buster was concerned pork pie was almost as good as ham, and now the man was smiling a lot and tickling him behind the ears, so all was well again. Buster preferred it when the man’s remembering brought smiles and laughs.

  SEVEN

  It was raining quite heavily with strong winds blowing up the side of the hill and round the glass conservatory of their cottage.

  The cottage is where Buster and the man lived; it was situated half way down the hill on the Totland side of Headon Warren. Today the remembering would be done in the conservatory, sitting on the wicker sofa. It wasn’t Buster’s favourite sofa but the man liked it and the view was wonderful.

  The man placed his cup of tea on the table by the chair and stroked Buster. “No walks today, old boy, it’s horrid out there. Tea and cake inside our dry little nest.”

  Buster’s ears pricked up at the mention of cake, he was particularly partial to a slice of cake, especially after a ham sandwich.

  The man settled into the inviting cushions of the sofa, making sure his tea was within reach after Buster had taken his place next to him.

  It would be a Honeysuckle day. Every other day was a day for remembering Honeysuckle, but this was one day he would not be proud of.

  After Honeysuckle had kissed him in their private pool by the mill, he had never stopped thinking about her and his reaction to her kiss. Over the next six months his relationship with Yvette had become both intense and immensely physical, yet his private thoughts would often turn to Honeysuckle and whenever he thought of her there would be a smile on his face. He couldn’t think of her without seeing her incredible smile, or more precisely the aquatic smile before her siren kiss, which had aroused him so much. These thoughts and others like them warmed his innermost being. It was the constant that helped him through times that were brutal and cruel. Her smile helped him deal with the killing and havoc he wreaked on his enemy, it helped him deal with the death he handed to countless men whom he knew in his heart were probably good people who had just become caught up in the same war as him. Her smile was the light at the end of the tunnel. Her innocence, the reason he did what he did. Honeysuckle and her smile were constantly with him, as was her kiss.

  So was Yvette. Where Honeysuckle was innocence and virtue, Yvette was experience and wantonness, but she was also vulnerable and complic
ated. If Jacques was being honest, it was Yvette’s physicality that had mesmerised him. He was young and she had taken his virginity. He had loved every second of their carnal relationship, but there was more. He cared for Yvette, and believed he could be in love with the defenceless girl that lurked within the ruthless woman she sometimes became.

  Lusting after Yvette whilst thinking about Honeysuckle all the time left Jacques with an uneasy feeling. He wanted to be infatuated with Yvette, to worship more than her body but he couldn’t get Honeysuckle out of his mind and he didn’t want to, she was a huge part of his life and always had been. He was totally confused about his feelings for Honeysuckle. Until his last visit she had been his little sister, but now what was she?

  He decided he would write a letter to Honeysuckle and give it to one of his old colleagues when they made a pick up one night. How naïve could he have been? He allowed his adolescent feelings of guilt and his honourable desire to be truthful with Honeysuckle to cloud his judgement. He wished he’d never written that letter, and as the Lysander got airborne he knew he’d made a mistake.

  Jacques had been in France for seven months when he wrote it and had become a battle-hardened veteran, already having seen a number of colleagues die or disappear at the hands of the Gestapo. He could cope with the killing, he did not enjoy it but it was necessary. Each life he took, or saw taken, gave him a primeval desire to procreate. He was unaware that it was a perfectly natural reaction to death. In Yvette he had a willing partner who was driven by the same longing, but whose demons sought more from their lovemaking. For her, being with her perfect Jacques was a cleansing process. His purity and goodness, in some way, easing the culpability of her deeds and the shame she felt for the enjoyment she experienced when killing the people who had taken her family.

  They needed each other for similar yet different reasons. Their relationship was no longer a secret from the rest of the group, it couldn’t be, but on operations it never got in the way of their work. Jacques had an apartment in Caen close to the depot from which he distributed his wines. He had a permit for a van and all the correct papers to allow him to carry on his business, so he was able to travel freely. The first time he’d been stopped he was nervous, but his perfect French with a slight Normandy accent made the process a simple one and subsequent checks had proven less uneasy. Yvette would regularly stay with him at the apartment and the fact that she was his girlfriend added to their cover. This was France and there was a war on, that they were not married did not appear to be a problem. They would walk hand in hand for all to see, and smile at both the police and the Germans with equal warmth. All became accustomed to the love-struck young couple taking coffee in the cafés near the barracks, train stations and communication centres of Caen, or drinking Pernod in a bar near the docks of Le Havre. There was nothing suspicious about the couple holding hands and staring doe-eyed at each other. If anyone had cared to notice, often a couple of days after one of their romantic interludes an arms dump or radio mast close to the point of their assignations would be blown up, but nobody did.