by Nigel Jones
His reaction made her heart leap. He took her in his arms and whispered in her ear, “I know, Sophie.”
She held him tightly and fighting back tears, managed to say, “Go and talk to the fucking idiots!”
The reaction of the C.O. was exactly what Jacques had expected it to be. No thought given to retreat. He would take the fight to the enemy. That night the shelling began.
The next day patrols were sent to engage the enemy and diminish its firepower. All returned bloodied. As Jacques had warned, they were completely surrounded by the Vietminh.
As the siege commenced Sophie recorded the events and observed the troops at the disposal of the French Command. It seemed to her that ‘disposal’ was the perfect description of the men, who were mostly French, but included many Algerian and Vietnamese. The fighting machine even included two Bordels Mobiles de Campagne, mobile field brothels, where Vietnamese and Algerian prostitutes attended servicemen. These girls fascinated Sophie. She had no problem with the oldest profession in the world and had no time for the moralising of her generation. After all, her best friend and Jacques’s girlfriend had been a whore. What fascinated her was the way the girls’ attention to duty naturally moved from pampering to the delights of the flesh, to caring for that same flesh as it became scarred and burned. Almost seamlessly they began to nurse the men they had pleasured. The brothels became hospitals and the beds used for healing not whoring. It was a natural progression, not driven by the authorities, but by the girls themselves.
It was a story she could not wait to write and her camera worked overtime on the fallen angels that cared for the men.
Another angel had found her way to the camp, a real nurse whose plane had been damaged during a medivac flight. Shortly after her arrival the runway had been bombed to such an extent that escape was impossible. Not that she would have left anyway, and under her direction the fallen angels worked wonders with the production line of war-ravaged bodies that were carried broken and bleeding from each of the seven fortified emplacements. The mistresses, Beatrice, Gabrielle and Anne-Marie witnessed the mutilation of hundreds of young French soldiers as shelling was followed by wave after wave of Vietminh attacks on the entrenched and battered French battalions. The French fought back, and on one day Elaine, mistress number five, changed hands a number of times as fierce trench warfare, reminiscent of the First World War, sent hundreds to meet their maker. Both French and Vietnamese.
The airfield was out of commission so any supplies had to be dropped by parachute from planes desperately trying to avoid the anti-aircraft fire expertly being delivered from the Vietminh. Supplies became sparse, but so did their intended recipients.
Throughout the siege, which lasted over three months, Jacques fought courageously with his men. They conducted clandestine ops, in a vain attempt to locate the positions of elusive artillery that seemed to vaporise from known positions, and then reappear on another hilltop. On a couple of occasions he was able to neutralise some guns, but he would often find wooden guns masquerading in place of the real things. They would sit there totally benign, yet more menacing than the real guns that appeared to have an itinerant life of their own.
Sophie had wanted to come with him on one of these forays into enemy territory, but he would not allow it. “This is not your fight, Sophie. You shoot your pictures and win a bigger war,” he repeatedly said to her.
Again, she knew he was right. She was gathering a portfolio of pictures and the written word that was compelling, but she desperately wanted to be at his side. Throughout the months their bond grew greater and they spent time together whenever they could. Often no more than five minutes at a time, but they were five precious minutes.
When Sophie was not gathering her ammunition she would help the medics as best she could, and became firm friends with the angels, fallen or otherwise.
After the first six weeks everyone in Dien Bien Phu knew what the outcome of the battle would eventually be, everyone except the generals. It was a matter of survival and praying that the generals would concede to the ever-increasing strength of the Vietminh. On May 7th 1954 the final assault took place. As each of the mistresses had fallen and the central positions captured, those who were able had fallen back on Isabelle where a garrison, of sorts, still remained. Within their number were Sophie and Jacques.
From Isabelle the C.O. radioed the generals in Hanoi and said, "The Viets are everywhere. The situation is very grave. The combat is confused and is going on all around us. I feel the end is approaching, but we will fight to the finish."
Jacques heard the voice on the other end of the line say, "Well understood. You will fight to the end. It is out of the question to run up the white flag after your heroic resistance." He shook his head in disbelief and knew he would either die, or the plan he had made for escape months previously would have to be put into action.
In reality neither actually happened, at least not according to his original plan.
“Well, Buster, I think three scones is enough, don’t you?” He handed the last piece to him, which Buster devoured with his usual enthusiasm. “You won’t eat your dinner when we get home.” A statement the man knew to be untrue, as Buster was a Labrador and would only stop eating when he’d drawn his final breath.
At the word dinner, Buster ran to the car and sat waiting patiently for the man to let him in and take him home for some food. He felt quite peckish and could remember the aromas of the casserole the man had put in the oven before they had left the house.
SIXTEEN
“Come on Buster, let’s visit the old mill before we go up onto the Warren.”
There was a lovely walk along the old railway line that had once passed behind the mill. Now it was a cycle path with walks off into the woods that lined the banks of the Yar estuary. At the end of the line, in Freshwater, a cup of tea and a teacake would await them.
Jacques loved to come here occasionally. It was still their place. The place she had first kissed him. He was not so keen that the path and cycle way had brought a glut of people to their special pool, which once could only be reached by rowing boat. But it was still beautiful and people had to walk through the trees to find it. The last time he’d been there someone was sitting by the water’s edge and he was quite piqued that they should be there. ‘You silly old fool,’ he’d chided himself. It was a happy place, a place that others should enjoy. But he had not been back since, until today.
The mill’s wheel no longer turned, but the building still played host to a number of happy families during the summer months. As they walked by, two children cast off in sea kayaks from the wall that manfully held the tide at bay at the side of the mill. A boy of about ten, and a girl with curly black hair perhaps five or six, hung on his every word as he gave her instructions. Jacques smiled.
It wasn’t far, perhaps half a mile, and they left the hard-packed surface of the path for a narrow, dried mud path which wound its way beneath encroaching ferns and through the trees to the water’s edge. Ducking beneath overhanging branches and round the roots of a sapling that had not endured the winds of the previous week, they stepped out by the hidden pool. Good, there was no one there.
Buster watched the man sit on the rock and throw a small stick into the crystal clear water for him to retrieve. In his day, Buster had been something of a champion retriever, so knowing his role he stepped gingerly into the water, albeit without quite the same enthusiasm he once possessed.
The man watched the look of semi-indignation on Buster’s face and laughed. “Okay, how about this then?” He produced a bone-shaped biscuit from his pocket, which a rejuvenated Buster relieved him of.
Buster heard a sigh from the man, and knew it was time to settle at his side and wait for lunch.
Honeysuckle had her head on his shoulder and she was crying. Through tears she half-whispered, “I’m so sorry, Jacques.”
Far too long had passed since he had seen her. When the fighting was over he had managed to write a number of
letters, most of which she had received. In turn, she had replied to each one, most of which had not found him as he was constantly travelling. The ones he had received contained nothing of the news she had just imparted. It could not be written. She had to tell him to his face.
He had finally arrived back unannounced the previous evening. He’d knocked on her door before going to see his parents, and had left six hours later. He did not see the floods of tears that engulfed Honeysuckle after he had gone.
It was a further three hours before he went to bed after he had caught up with his parents.
At ten o’clock in the morning he had met a strangely subdued Honeysuckle who, armed with a picnic and oars, had rowed him to their pool.
The previous evening, and all the way back from Poland, Jacques had felt like an excited schoolboy. His heart was fluttering at the thought of finally seeing her again, and palpitating when he did. At first he couldn’t speak when he saw the look of sheer delight on her beautiful face. Quite naturally she had stepped into his out-stretched arms and pressed her head to his chest without saying a word.
Still holding her Jacques said, “I have so much to tell you, Honeysuckle,” and without waiting for a reply or seeing her reaction, he started to explain all that had happened since he was last with her.
He described Yvette after she returned to France and explained how her remarkable recovery was down to a certain English girl who had visited her in hospital. How they had prepared the way for the advancing Allies, and taken Paris from the retreating Nazis.
Honeysuckle listened intently, enthralled by his news whilst dreading having to tell him hers. When he described the concentration camps and what they had found there she completely forgot about her own predicament, and simply sat in disbelief and shock at all he described. But what he told her about Yvette made her agonise even more about what she knew she had to tell him. The woman she thought had taken the most precious of things from her, was now a woman she could not help but feel compassion for.
“When we got to Treblinka it was as if she had taken the final step into the hell that had been awaiting her. Her mood changed and I knew the previous days had been the culmination of our journey as a couple, and so did she.” Jacques had said.
“What happened there, Jacques?”
“At the camp it was remarkably easy to find out about her sisters. One of the survivors showed us the record of their deaths, and then took us to where they had been murdered. From the main camp, where they were stripped of their clothing and had their heads shaved, he led us up a short hill that the S.S. cynically called Himmelstrasse, road to heaven. It was still lined with barbed wire. At the top they were marched into the gas chambers, where hopefully they will have died before their bodies were dragged out and thrown into pits full of burning bodies. The man displayed no emotion when he showed us these places, and neither did Yvette. She spent two hours kneeling by a temporary memorial at the site where we think they were buried. Initially I held her hand then stepped back to allow her time to grieve. I watched her, wanting to take her in my arms and tell her they are safe now, but I did not. Yvette was no longer there. Her spirit had gone.”
“It must have been terrible.” Honeysuckle touched his arm.
“Yes, but we had seen so many terrible things. What was terrible for me was knowing that the last spark of life in what had been a vibrant girl was flickering and dying.” He paused. “The next few days Yvette spent gathering names of all those who had worked there. She hardly spoke during this time. When she had all the names she thought she could get, she turned to me and said, ‘I still don’t have them all. You can’t help me any more. When I have them all, I will make them pay for what they have done. You must go now. Go to Honeysuckle.’ I could not leave her like that and we still hadn’t tried to find her parents, so I stayed for a while.”
“What happened next?”
“She shot two known collaborators. One a local dentist who pulled out the gold teeth of the dead, and another who made the victims hair into jerkins for U-boat crews.“
“What about her parents?”
“After Treblinka we went to Auschwitz in the vain hope that they may have survived. They had not, but three more collaborators met their maker. One of them being the man whose company installed and maintained the ovens that had gassed her parents along with thousands of others. More names were gathered and added to her death list, hearing of the deaths of the collaborators many others fled, fearing they would be next. I begged her to stop her indiscriminate killing and to try and pool resources with others who saw themselves as avengers. There was a man called Tuviah Friedman, a Polish Jew who had escaped from one of the camps. He was starting his own quest to hunt down any Nazi who had been involved in the extermination programme. I managed to get him to come and talk to Yvette. He was a good man and had managed to fight off the red mist that still engulfed her. They got on, united by their hatred. He was about to be appointed as Chief Interrogation Officer at Danzig Jail, where his role was to gain information from Nazis who’d been involved in the death camps.” Jacques half-smiled to himself. “He even got Yvette to laugh when he described what his role would be. He was good though, giving her some direction for her hatred. He offered her a job with him in Danzig and a promise that together they would make them all pay. And privately to me, he promised he would look after her and address her need for revenge. I believed him.” Jacques was thinking about what to say next and Honeysuckle waited as he found the words. He added simply, “So she went to Danzig with him and I pray that she is well.”
Honeysuckle could see the affection he still felt for Yvette and she understood. “Don’t worry, Jacques, Mr. Friedman sounds a good person. She will be fine.” She knew Jacques had shared a life with Yvette that she could never be part of and what they had witnessed and done together must make it feel like several lifetimes.
“When she left, she kissed me one last time and said, ‘Thank you, darling Jacques, for everything. I will always love you, but you deserve more. You deserve Honeysuckle.’”
At these words Honeysuckle almost broke down. She had pulled him to her and lent her head on his shoulder, fighting back the tears.
Now, here by their pool, it was Jacques’s turn to fight his emotions.
“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “You know I love you more than life itself and nothing will ever change that, nothing can ever come between the way we feel about each other.”
“Will you marry him?”
“I don’t know yet.” She moved her eyes away from his. It was too much to bear.
“How bad is he?” Jacques knew he had to be strong for them both.
“Pretty bad. They have been experimenting with a new surgery putting skin grafts on his face from other parts of his body. It has been going on for months and I know it must be agony.” She looked at him, “You do understand, don’t you, Jacques?” She was almost pleading with him.
Unfortunately Jacques did understand. It was so typically Honeysuckle, part of the reason why he loved her and why he would always love her. And he felt sorry for Simon. It was every pilot’s worst nightmare, being trapped in the cockpit of a burning aeroplane.
Not waiting for his reply she continued, “He asked me to marry him just as he was about to get on the ferry back to the mainland and report for duty, then he handed me the ring. ‘Think about it, just think,’ he said. I didn’t give him an answer. If only I had said no then. But now, how could I refuse him after what has happened?” Her eyes again pleaded with him.
“I understand, Honeysuckle. I know it must be awful for you both. This damned war has ruined so many lives.”
All he wanted to do was to take her head in his hands and kiss her passionately and beg her to change her mind, but he did not. They were so much alike that they may just as well have been one person. He would have done exactly the same thing, and in a way he had already done so with Yvette. “I love you. You know that. I will try and be there for you.”
“That was a shit day, Buster!” Jacques tickled the old dog’s ears.
Buster perked up and made a theatrical production of sniffing the lunch bag.
“You and your stomach, old boy! Come on then, lunch.”
SEVENTEEN
Jacques stepped out of his front door with Buster by his side and noticed the wind had brought the first leaves down from the old oak tree by the garage.
Buster sniffed a couple of leaves before re-acquainting himself with the trunk of the tree, and then trotted off down the drive to the gate.
The wind had abated and it was a pleasant early autumn day. Not many leaves had started to change their hue, but a few of the older trees had given up the fight to keep their foliage.
As they walked up the chalky path towards the bench, the man watched the sailing boats in the Solent down below, which had arrived too late to capture the wind that had been blowing the evening before. Those boats had now migrated to other parts.
He noticed Buster was lagging a few yards behind instead of his usual habit of leading. “Come on, Buster. Keep up, we won’t stay too long today.”
At the bench Jacques stroked the lettering on the plaque, lovingly tracing the O, an E and the H. He always did this whenever he arrived and also when he left, then he sat down after lifting Buster’s back legs onto the wooden seat.
“Where to today, old man?” Answering his own question, he said, “Oh yes, we have unfinished business in Vietnam, don’t we?”
Vietnam sounded a bit like ham to Buster, so he looked questioningly at the man.
Another shell slammed into the earth about fifteen yards away bringing a shower of debris down onto their heads.
