The Bench

by Nigel Jones

“I understand, Jacques.” It was Yvette.

  “Call it a woman’s intuition. He asks too many questions and is too eager to be everyone’s friend. He wants to know everyone’s business.” Sophie was being wonderfully irrational.

  It was enough for Yvette who had decided she loved Sophie the first time they met. “He’s slippery. Sophie is right, be careful.”

  Jacques knew better than to argue with the pair of them, so promised he would treat Henri with a degree of respectful guardedness.

  That evening they met him again, this time he came with Francis Suttill along with three other men. Despite only having one brief meeting Henri greeted them all as long-lost friends, whilst Francis, though polite, was more circumspect and far more to Sophie’s taste.

  Yvette quickly took to Francis. On two occasions they had just missed meeting each other, once at Baker Street in London, then later at Wanborough, the S.O.E. training establishment. He had attended another invasion briefing a week earlier and had been spoken of with high regard. She was told he was an impressive figure with an incisive mind and excellent leadership qualities, with inspiring motivational skills. She had looked forward to meeting him.

  Francis was a tall, lean man with a wonderful bird-like, hooked nose beneath bright eyes, which when he smiled were framed by an explosion of laughter lines. Listening to him, Yvette remembered the description she had been given of him at Wanborough. Yes, this was a man she could work with, and their co-operation would be key in a successful campaign.

  Next to him, Henri sat with his insincere smile permanently painted on his face. Sophie’s eyes still never left him. Their meeting lasted several hours, as the logistics were worked out and the targets assigned to the various factions within the Resistance. The next month would see Henri and Jacques pick the sites for the shipments. The following month they would retrieve those consignments of weaponry and explosives, and during the months leading up to the invasion they would be used on various targets. London would control the whole operation using the coded messages they had been given, which the BBC would transmit. All this would lead up to a glorious crescendo of destruction that would herald the Allied invasion and its liberation of France.

  However, once this was accomplished their work would not be over. They would then wreak havoc on the retreating forces of Nazi Germany as the Allies continued their push to rid France of the vermin, which had infested their country. And in Paris, they would arm the civilian population to drive the Nazis from their beloved capital before the Allies marched triumphantly down the Champs Elysee.

  Once the meeting that helped determine the liberation of France was over, Yvette and Sophie seamlessly slipped back into talk of babies as if Jacques was not there. He sipped another beer whilst wondering about Henri and the seed the girls had planted in his head about his trustworthiness. He listened to them giggling in the kitchen, two young women who had remained alive for five years because of their instincts. He would watch Henri closely.

  Jacques spent the next week with Henri assessing drop zones and landing sites, along with their environs, for safety and ease of recovery. It proved far more difficult than Jacques had expected. It was not easy to find a field flat enough for landing a reasonable sized aircraft for the supplies to be offloaded, or more often where they could be parachuted in and collected with ease and with a minimum of risk to the Resistance.

  A week later he returned to Normandy where he went through the same process with Albert and Pierre. This reconnaissance, along with others like it, allowed more than 10,000 tons of arms and stores to be delivered, enough to arm over 200,000 Resistance fighters along with the 2000 extra personnel that were flown in from Britain.

  Amongst the 2000 were a large number of female agents, as they possessed the advantage of being able to move freely around the country without attracting attention, unlike male equivalents of a similar age who would normally have been conscripted into forced labour, or rotting in prisoner-of-war camps.

  Over the coming months Jacques formed the reception committee for a number of these girls, some only a few months older than Honeysuckle, and with each girl that arrived he half-expected to see her face.

  While Jacques was preparing and co-ordinating the drops, Yvette and Sophie were organising the campaign of sabotage with the various maquis. Telecommunications and railways were hit, bridges demolished and roads paralysed. Sophie refused to allow Yvette to actually take part in any of the operations, but the now heavily pregnant Yvette was busy planning, assigning and organising the resources for each of the raids.

  Henri had met regularly with Jacques, who had taken heed of the girls’ advice. By the end of that first week he was in firm agreement with them, Henri was slippery. At each meeting he found himself fending off questions about personnel and arms caches in Normandy. At one point Jacques got angry when he asked about proposed operations. “Henri, you know that our survival depends on subterfuge, so stop asking me these fucking questions.” Henri just gave him his most obsequious smile and apologised.

  Some of his questioning about Sophie and Yvette had so riled them all that they had Albert, the radio operator, call London to voice their concerns about the reliability of the ex-French Air Force pilot they had sent to co-ordinate the supply lines.

  Unfortunately their suspicions were dismissed.

  Albert walked into the kitchen of the farmhouse where the others were gathered. His looked anxious. He had been making one of his routine calls to Sophie’s radio operator in Paris and received some worrying news. “Francis Suttill has been taken.”

  “Merde!” Yelled Pierre. His moustache was twitching furiously.

  Francis probably knew more about the campaign being run in France than anyone, except for maybe Yvette. He certainly had all the details of the Prosper network’s operation.

  Alain turned to Yvette. “You must leave. It must be that prick Henri. You are not safe. If they have taken Suttill it is just a matter of time before they come for you, Yvette.”

  Yvette was thinking. “No, what does Henri know of our operation and where we live. I have never told him anything, what about you, Philippe?”

  “Nothing, I told him to fuck off and stop asking questions,” replied Philippe.

  “So we should be safe here. We have kept everything to ourselves. Outside of our group Sophie is the only one who knows about the farm and she is completely reliable.”

  “We’re safe for now,” Alain interjected.

  That thought brought a concerned look to Yvette’s face, but she continued. “We have an arsenal of weapons and explosives here, it would be impossible to move them all at short notice, and where to? Hiding this stuff is difficult. Moving it to one of the other sites would draw attention and we may lose two caches. I say we take a chance on this one.”

  Albert said, “I’ll have one of the cars permanently ready, in case you need to make a rapid exit, Yvette.”

  “No, I will stay and fight with you,” she insisted.

  Jacques, the brothers and Albert just looked at her and then Pierre said, “No, you will take our baby and start a new France.”

  She turned to each of them and saw resolve and love in their eyes. She put it down to hormones, but the tears welled up inside her. “I love you all.” It would have been useless to argue. She pulled herself together then asked Albert, “Has anyone else been arrested yet?”

  “Yes, Andre and Gilbert.”

  “The two men we met with Francis.” Yvette was almost talking to herself. “Sophie. How is Sophie?”

  “Fine, her radio operator said that they have left her apartment and moved out to the country.”

  “Good. If the whole Prosper network falls apart the plans are in tatters, but it sounds as if she may still be able to run it. When it is safe to use the radio again tell her to come here, Albert. We need to rethink some of those plans.”

  He nodded and gave her a reassuring smile.

  “It is only a matter of time before they start picking up mo
re of the Prosper people.” Pierre voiced what they all knew. “Francis will break, or one of the others.”

  In reality it was not that bad. Whoever had talked did not give them much intelligence and as a result the majority of personnel within Prosper were left alone. A number of arms dumps were raided, but several others remained untouched. Each one taken was unguarded so no Resistance fighters were killed. Whoever had talked had protected their people well. Close to Paris two arms drops had S.S. reception committees, here a number of the Resistance fighters were killed and others captured and interrogated. But no one was sure if the Germans had just been lucky or they had been tipped off.

  Sophie avoided the attentions of the Gestapo and was able to re-organise the compromised Prosper network. This time Henri was sidelined, as she could not be sure if he had actually given Francis to the Gestapo. She was not going to take any chances, so Henri was kept firmly in her sights and fed misinformation in an attempt to trap him. She never knew if he was aware of this, but he never gave any of this misinformation to the Gestapo, so all she had were her suspicions.

  Sophie visited them at the farmhouse and final plans were made. Jacques worked closely with Sophie to facilitate the final consignments, during which time they built a great trust and mutual respect.

  Yvette’s group in Normandy appeared to have been left alone, and their build-up to the invasion was all going according to plan.

  The baby was due in four weeks time, and Yvette was no longer arguing about going out on missions, when the Sd.kfz 232 tank drove through the gates of the farm.

  Jacques was with Sophie briefing a group for the retrieval of an arms drop. Pierre, Alain and Albert were preparing the distribution of arms from other caches with their comrades in Le Havre. Yvette thought it just a routine visit by the S.S. They happened fairly regularly and the fools had never suspected anything out of the ordinary about the farm. She assumed today would be no different, so she made no attempt to get to the vehicle in the barn.

  The officer knocked respectfully on the door and gave her a friendly smile when she unlatched the bolts and opened it. “Bonjour, Mademoiselle,” he said, as he eased the pistol from behind his back and gently held it to her forehead.

  ‘You bloody fool,’ she thought. She was happy, revelling in the idea of motherhood and she had let down her guard. For the fist time in five years she had finally let down her guard. “Merde!”

  The black Mercedes crunched on the gravel as it drove across the farmyard. Two leather-clad Gestapo agents stepped menacingly from the rear and walked towards her, as three S.S. troopers held their rifles at shoulder height pointing directly at her head.

  The senior Gestapo officer leered at her through horn-rimmed spectacles, a smirk appearing at the side of his mean lips. One year ago she would have broken his neck before the first bullet cut her down, and she would have died quite happily knowing there was one less Nazi walking the earth. Now, there was Perdy, and Perdy must have her chance in life. So she stood perfectly still and stared into the tiny slits that passed for eyes in the small man who stood in front of her. He was the most contemptuous looking man she had ever seen, standing not one inch over five-feet-three.

  She stared at him and wondered at the arrogance of the self-styled master race. The race that had seen fit to take her proud and handsome father, along with the rest of her family, to their probable deaths.

  “Madamemoiselle Yvette, you have much to tell us, come and join me in my car.” He raised his arm, gesturing her to join him.

  She couldn’t help herself, the hatred welled up inside her and she spat at the little reptile. His snide grin just grew wider as the rear of his hand, which had been raised to show her to the car, slapped her violently across the face, his chunky ring breaking the skin on her cheek. “This will be fun, Yvette, or whatever your real name is.”

  The smile suddenly left his face as he grabbed a handful of hair and dragged her to the Mercedes. The driver roughly tied her hands behind her back and manhandled her into the rear of the car before the two Gestapo agents slid in beside her.

  She flinched as the weasel-eyed midget placed his hand on her heavily pregnant stomach and said, “A French bastard, eh?” His hand moved to her breast and he squeezed the generous globe. “The little bastard will not starve, if he is lucky enough to even be born.”

  Yvette had been about to spit at him again but suddenly realised the nature of the threat, so closed her eyes and allowed him to grope her.

  Sophie’s radio operator got a call from Albert. “They have Yvette, Sophie,” he yelled as he ran into the room where she was discussing that night’s retrieval with Jacques.

  “What?” Sophie was on her feet, grabbing her coat before he could tell her the rest. “The Gestapo have taken her. Two hours ago. She is still in the prison in Lisieux. They will be interrogating her.”

  Jacques was already half way out of the door on his way to the van, with Sophie in hot pursuit. “If she is there, Jacques, we can still get to her.”

  “I know, but they will soon take her to Gestapo headquarters at Avenue Foch. There she will be tortured and then, at best, will disappear into one of their concentration camps. At worst, they will kill her and our baby.“ He was calm; this was what he had been trained for. Panicking would not help. If they were to save Yvette, they needed to be calm.

  Sophie yelled to her radio operator, “Tell Albert to get as many men as possible to the police station. Tell him we will be there in two hours.”

  Albert, Pierre and Alain had already leapt into action and had thirty well-armed fighters in the back of the lorry.

  Normal procedure would have seen Yvette taken straight to 84 Avenue Foch, but the weasel could not wait to get his hands on Yvette and extract as much intelligence as he could, before reporting to his seniors so he could receive their accolades. He also had a fetish about pregnant women, and what he wanted to do to Yvette could not be done at Gestapo headquarters. It was this fetish that was to cost him his life and save Yvette’s.

  In the prison cell Yvette was tied to a chair and stripped to the waist. He had dismissed his colleague, who had no appetite for what he knew was about to happen. He was waiting in the reception till his superior had finished, hoping he would not take too long.

  Her breasts fascinated him; it seemed to Yvette that most of his questions were being addressed to them and not her. She knew her only chance of survival was to keep him there as long as possible. Here, her friends stood a chance of rescuing her. Once she was spirited away she would be dead, and so would Perdy.

  He asked about her colleagues and her part in the Resistance. Nicely at first, but when she refused to answer he slapped her hard across the face.

  “I don’t know anything, I’m not in the Resistance.” He slapped her again, this time harder. In his eyes she saw something new, a lustful look appeared between the slits and his lips parted, savouring her pain.

  “We know you run the Resistance here.“ He stepped towards her and took her nipple between his fingers, pinching it as hard as he could as he slapped her across the face again. “Who is your radio operator?” Her other breast became the recipient of his lecherous attention.

  She averted her eyes. If she looked at him her loathing would take control of her and she would snap. She needed time.

  Between inflicting pain on her breasts he would stroke her belly. Quite gently at first, then he started to talk to the child inside. “You will like these, French bastard. They are ripe.” He leant down and bit hard into her nipple.

  Suddenly he was on his knees, his ear against her stomach. Then he started sniffing her belly like a hunting hound. “Do I smell Jew in there?”

  Yvette tried to show no reaction, but she must have made the slightest of moves as she tensed.

  “Ha! Yes, I smell Jew.” He laughed out loud. He pulled the other chair over and sat in front of her, his legs splayed out either side. He removed a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, and then pulled one out and li
t it.

  Yvette was watching him now. Smugness had been added to lust. She had never wanted to kill anyone as much as she wanted this man to die.

  Without warning he took a long draw on the cigarette and stubbed the burning end into her belly. “There, bastard Jew. You must get used to the smell of burning flesh.” This he followed with a chilling laugh. It scared her, it scared her for Perdy’s sake.

  The cigarette found her breast this time. She noticed his spare hand was stroking himself now as he inflicted pain on her, and saliva was actually dribbling from his mouth.

  “So, bastard Jew.” He was talking to her stomach again, the cigarette hovering an inch above her belly button. “Shall we drown you in good Aryan sperm?”

  He put the cigarette back in his mouth and started to release his belt. ‘Oh my God, he is going to rape me,’ thought Yvette. ‘I am about to give birth and he is going to rape me.’ Her brain was racing. There would be a way, a way she could kill him even with her hands bound. He would have to move her if he intended to penetrate her. There would be a moment, he would let down his guard and she would kill him.

  His trousers were round his ankles and an angry penis poked at her stomach. “There, bastard Jew. This hose will drown you. What do you think?” He gave that evil laugh again. He turned his attention to Yvette, striking her breast with his open hand then pulling hard on her nipple once again. “Jewish bitch, I will fuck you till I kill your bastard.”

  He untied her from the chair, pulling her to her feet by the hair and then spat in her face. Moving behind her he lifted her skirt, pulled down her pants and then ripped them from her legs. His fingers greedily explored her vagina and she could feel and smell his foul breath on her neck. She closed her eyes and gathered herself. She would not let it happen. She would rather die than let him harm her Perdy. “Wait.”

  It was virtually the first word she had spoken since the interrogation had begun. He’d been disappointed, they usually screamed or cried. “So the Jewish bitch talks.”

  He stepped back and allowed her to turn round and face him. She was smiling and pushed her breasts hard against his chest, then raised her head as if to kiss him.