Waiting For the Day

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘But tomorrow is going to be okay?’ asked Miller.

  ‘We’ve got clearance. After breakfast.’

  *

  That morning the East Anglian sky seemed to go beyond even the level horizon. The early March sun was washed out and the wind edgy. ‘You can work out why the painters came from here,’ said Pitt. ‘Constable got famous because of these skies.’

  He raised the palm of his hand. ‘Straight from Russia, this wind, from the Ural Mountains. Not a thing in between to stop it.’

  ‘How d’you like this place?’ asked Miller. They were walking across to a formation of parked aircraft, nine Dakotas, blunt noses held high like sniffing dogs.

  ‘I like it okay. I’m a career soldier and I figure that you need to like places, get to know them, or you’re just wishing time away, wishing your life gone. On the other hand, it’s not such fun as the Philippines pre-war.’

  He led the way into one of a series of stark steel huts below pine trees. It was over-warm in there. Men in unzipped flying kit were sitting in cane chairs drinking coffee. On the wall was a Hollywood poster of Shirley Temple and another of Rita Hayworth. Someone had crayoned a black eye on Shirley Temple.

  The men did not stand as the officers entered. They were young and languid. Pitt said: ‘Okay, you fellows. This is Captain Miller from the Training Inspectorate, US Army, and he’s here to check how good or how bad you are. That’s his job. He’ll be flying with you and he trained with 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg so he knows the business.’

  ‘I’ll just be sitting in.’ Miller felt the need to assure them. The young faces surveyed him without enthusiasm. ‘I’ve completed my Airborne training but I don’t know about flying a plane, only jumping out of one.’

  He looked around. ‘Is there a volunteer to take me?’

  A round-faced, pudgy-looking youth with tight blond hair saluted casually and said: ‘Sure, I’ll fly you, sir.’

  ‘With him up front you’ll want to jump,’ said another of the pilots. There was a guarded laugh.

  Miller strode forward and shook the young pilot’s hand as he rose. ‘Remember, sir,’ the youth said, ‘up front where we sit there’s no room for a ’chute.’

  Miller said: ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Butterfield.’

  Someone called: ‘Butterball.’ There was another brief laugh.

  Some of them had another cup of coffee and Miller talked with them about their home towns, their families, their service life. Same routine. ‘We flew these planes across,’ said Butterfield as they were walking towards them.

  ‘How were they? Did they behave?’

  ‘They’re okay. Slow and heavy. But they won’t let you down, sir. It just took one long time.’

  ‘You flew up through Nova Scotia, Greenland, Iceland?’

  ‘Certainly did. Over the top of the world. For ever and a day. But we got here.’

  ‘You always fly the same aircraft?’

  ‘The very one,’ said the young man. ‘I wouldn’t know how to handle one of the others.’ At the bottom of the steps leading to the Dakota he stopped and pushed out his hand again to shake with Miller. There were two ground crew sizing up the twin propellers.

  They boarded the Dakota. Fifteen paratroops were already crammed in sideways along the hull, piled beneath their equipment. Miller wished them good morning and there were grunts and some nods but none of them spoke.

  A small man, seemingly swamped in his flying suit, was waiting in the seat next to the one into which Butterfield now manoeuvred himself. Miller sat behind them. The airman was already wearing earphones and stared intently ahead as though he was not hearing or seeing well. ‘That’s Rushton,’ said Butterfield, talking to Miller over his shoulder. ‘He don’t talk to no one, except me in exceptional circumstances. Like the plane’s on fire.’

  Rushton said: ‘Good morning, sir,’ to Miller as he kept listening and looking fixedly ahead.

  ‘He’s from Wyoming,’ said Butterfield. ‘They all stare like that, way into the distance. They got so much distance in Wyoming.’

  He remembered that Miller had said that he was from Dakota. ‘You got some good space in your home state, sir. Nice they named this aircraft after it.’

  He started first one engine, then the other, stopping all conversation. He began muttering into his mouthpiece and Rushton muttered into his. Theirs was to be the leading aircraft of three. Half turning, Miller watched the engines of the other Dakotas start in clouds of pale smoke.

  It took ten minutes to warm the engines, then they were waved on by the ground-control man, his orange overalls vivid in the wan daylight. The plane coughed and began to turn, then straightened, trundling towards the concrete runway. Rabbits ran away. The sky remained flat. He watched Butterfield and saw how comfortable he was with the clumsy plane, almost ushering, persuading, it on to the runway. ‘Here we go,’ the young man said as though to himself. The door behind them opened and a paratroop sergeant appeared. ‘Okay, loadmaster,’ said Butterfield. ‘Tell your guys to be ready to leave the earth.’

  Miller glanced at him from the tight seat behind Rushton. He felt the glance and half turned. ‘They don’t mind. They enjoy a joke.’

  The loadmaster said: ‘We love ’em.’ He returned to the back and closed the door.

  Butterfield gave the engines more power. The plane seemed glad to be moving and bounded along the runway, taking off with surprising grace and swiftly gaining height across the pale green Suffolk countryside. ‘Like an elevator with a view,’ laughed the young pilot. He spoke into his mouthpiece, then half turned. ‘You married, sir?’

  ‘Who’s been asking?’ smiled Miller.

  ‘Only me, sir,’ said the pilot. ‘I got married just before I left the States.’

  Miller saw the worry suddenly touch Butterfield’s face. ‘Is this going to be so dangerous?’ he asked. He patted Butterfield’s shoulder.

  ‘This will be okay,’ said Butterfield. ‘But the real thing it ain’t. Nobody’s shooting to get you.’

  Miller sensed his fear. ‘It will be straight in to the dropping zone, out go the passengers and then straight out,’ he said reassuringly. ‘There’ll be nothing to it.’

  ‘I hope that’s right, sir,’ said the young man. ‘I’ve never flown into anti-aircraft fire and this is a farmhorse, not a racehorse.’

  It took only minutes to reach the dropping area. Suffolk, sunlit, spread green below them, the blue-grey band of the sea beyond the port engine. ‘No wind,’ said Rushton suddenly. ‘It’s quit.’ He turned to smile at Miller. ‘Today nobody’s going to float down into the ocean.’

  ‘It’s cold, that ocean,’ said Butterfield.

  Miller watched and admired them executing a concise manoeuvre, the plane turning, then flattening. Butterfield spoke into his mouthpiece. ‘Okay, sergeant. Abandon ship!’

  They watched the parachutes open below them like sudden flowers, floating away as the Dakota turned. ‘Perfect,’ said Miller. ‘Great.’

  ‘Best we’ve done so far,’ nodded Butterfield. ‘So good, maybe we ought to go and get ’em back and do it again.’

  ‘Real nice day for jumping,’ said Major Pitt. He looked from the hut window of his bare office into the drifting afternoon. ‘Couldn’t have been better.’

  Miller nodded. ‘Perfect conditions. But the real thing won’t be so easy. It’ll be a night drop, dawn at latest.’

  Pitt clasped his hands and gently pummelled the desk. ‘It’s got to be. They need to secure targets before the beach landings,’ he said. ‘These guys have had some night drops but not many.’

  ‘How did they make out?’

  ‘Somebody landed on a roof and woke the people out of bed, and a bunch dropped in the middle of a herd of cows.’

  ‘At least at night the enemy have difficulty locating you.’

  ‘But you don’t know where the hell you are,’ shrugged Pitt.

  He could see Miller was worried.

  ‘It’s th
e pilots,’ Miller said carefully.

  Pitt looked surprised. ‘They’re good,’ he said. ‘First-rate guys. They flew those boxes all the way from the States in all kinds of conditions.’

  ‘Sure, sure. But they’ve never flown over enemy territory yet.’

  ‘Ninety-five per cent of our ground troops have never set foot on enemy territory. Never had a sniff of action.’

  ‘Nearly all of us,’ admitted Miller. ‘But these men have only to go in once. In, drop the ’chutes, and out. They may never have to fly into anti-aircraft fire again. But they will this time. This once.’

  ‘You think they’ll blow it?’

  ‘They’re concerned. There’s got to be no going back – not on the big night. We can’t have anyone losing their nerve. Anti-aircraft fire can look pretty in the distance, but in front of your face it’s not nice. It’s frightening. We can’t allow them to turn away.’

  Pitt said: ‘You mean run away.’

  ‘If you are a bomber pilot, okay, you can get away with it,’ persisted Miller. ‘There’s always a next time. But there’ll be no next time, this time. They need to get to their target zone and drop their paratroops. Every man they drop is needed. Once they’ve done it, and only then, they can head for home.’

  ‘As fast as their asses will take them,’ nodded Pitt. He looked cornered. ‘What’s in your mind? Practice drops over Nazi lines, just to get the experience?’

  Miller held up his hand. ‘It’s my job to think about angles, foul-ups that could happen, and we don’t want those Dakotas coming back with the paratroops still in the back. There’ll be no second try.’

  ‘Okay, what?’

  ‘I’ll need to think it through. But I believe that, somehow, some way, those pilots will need to have flown over enemy territory before the big day, even if it’s some place of no significance, if there is such a place, where the opposition will be light. Just to make them feel that they’ve done it – and there’s nothing to it.’

  ‘So they fly over, cruise around, see it’s all safe and harmless, and come back?’

  ‘That’s the idea,’ said Miller. ‘I’ll expand it in my report. And next time I come here I’d like to make a jump myself.’ He grinned. ‘I got the taste up there today.’

  Pitt said: ‘You’re fit?’

  ‘I believe so. I’ve kept in shape and I’ll get up early and do some track work. Hyde Park is just across the street.’ He could see Pitt was still doubtful. ‘I’ve been right through Fort Bragg, in one way, out the other,’ he said. ‘And I’d like to keep my hand in. Major, I don’t intend to sit on my ass and watch all the other guys go off to a war. I didn’t come here to do that.’

  Pitt understood. ‘Next time,’ he said, ‘I’ll see if we can fit you in for a practice drop. But I can’t make any promises.’

  Miller stood and they shook hands. ‘And if I can sell the idea of the pilots getting a taste of enemy airspace,’ he said, ‘I’ll be going with them.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  By that spring of 1944 the traffic in agents and prospective saboteurs across the English Channel had reached its most active. Although the occupying Germans had built a concrete shield along the French upper coast, north-eastwards into the low countries, extending to Norway, and south to the Spanish border, there were still isolated inlets in Brittany, and landing grounds concealed in the interior of France, where the useful Lysander high-winged monoplane might alight; and there were hidden meadows that could easily accommodate a secret parachute drop.

  As far back as 1938, a year before hostilities, the War Office in London had established the roots – a solitary officer and a secret shorthand typist – of a bureau to conduct covert operations in enemy territory and from this, two years later, had grown the initial organisation of the Special Operations Executive.

  An eccentric entity, hardly an organisation, it was staffed by unusual people. Its critics have scorned it, alleging that it cost more money and lives than it was ever worth. There was a dashing unorthodoxy to it that at times bordered on the amateur, and it went about even its serious business with a touch of comic opera. The comedy ceased abruptly when agents, some of them brave women, were arrested, tortured by the Gestapo, and executed.

  Almost thirteen hundred agents had been shipped and smuggled into occupied France by the springtime before the Normandy invasion of June 1944. Some sections of the French resistance actively shunned them; to others they were just a British oddity, a sideshow. There were some notably failed exploits. One parachutist famously landed on the tiles of a police station; codes were cracked routinely by the Germans who were sometimes aware of secret landings but did not interrupt them, preferring to follow the interlopers back to what the agents believed were safe houses; and it was an astonished and grateful French peasant (or possibly a German soldier) who found a bag containing half a million francs dropped by parachute to finance a guerilla cell that no longer existed.

  For all its detractors, however, the Special Operations Executive, one of a number of covert agencies working in France – organisations which at times got dramatically in each other’s way – helped, by wireless contact and operatives, to point the often disparate sections of the French resistance in the triumphantly right direction following the Allied landings of June 1944, in sabotaging rail communications and delaying reinforcements.

  In London the bureaucracy had proliferated, military fashion, to occupy blocks of Baker Street, a tangle of backstairs offices.

  Paget invariably reported at the bureau with a sense of both excitement and foreboding. He did not count himself a brave man nor a particularly resourceful one; nor was he filled particularly with either zeal or hatred. Why they had picked his name he did not know; unless it was out of a hat. This office was a threadbare upper floor only reached once you had shown your pass and spelt out your appointment to the short-sighted man behind the desk by the street door. There were quaintly silly code-names for the people he had to see. Friar was one, Fairy was another. No one liked playing spies more than the spies. They believed it was only faintly daring to take a captured Nazi officer out to lunch at a decent restaurant in the hope that he might become talkative with drink. At senior level the bureau was nothing if not civilised.

  At the reception desk on the top floor there was invariably an upper-crust girl with a pearly voice. Whatever her name, she was known as Fanny, the letters FANY displayed on the shoulder flash of her uniform. It stood for First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, a title provoking even more confusion in that den of disguises and subterfuge. Many women agents who parachuted into occupied territories, some never to be recovered alive, were in the ranks of FANY.

  Today’s Fanny was a pink, plumpish young woman with strong teeth which she concealed for much of the time by not smiling. ‘Please wait, squadron leader,’ she instructed Paget. ‘Fairy will be with you shortly.’

  Fairy was. He puffed up the carpetless stairs, cheeks expanded, waving a worn briefcase that appeared to be empty. He tried to regain his breath. ‘Would it be beyond the war effort to get somebody to mend the lift?’ he demanded. He offered Paget a damp, resigned palm.

  ‘Next week earliest, sir,’ Fanny told him.

  ‘What a way to run a war,’ said Fairy.

  ‘When I became insistent they asked me if I realised there is a war on,’ pouted the girl. ‘We’re in the queue.’

  ‘Behind the War Office canteen, I’ll wager.’

  ‘Aliens Archives,’ she said.

  ‘Come on in,’ the man said in a deflated way to Paget. He was Colonel Peter MacConnel and he preferred his everyday name to be used rather than Fairy, except under operational conditions. He called back through the door: ‘Coffee please, Fanny.’ Paget could hear her already making it.

  MacConnel sat in an oriental armchair with dragons for arms. The room appeared to have been furnished with properties from the stage show Chu Chin Chow, including an exotic screen and a bamboo desk.

  Fanny brought in the coffee tr
ay. The coffee pot and cups were bluntly stamped with the initials of the War Department. The plump girl poured the coffee and added the cream in a motherly way. ‘Saccharin only,’ she said sadly. ‘Balkans have appropriated the sugar bowl.’

  ‘Damn them,’ said MacConnel absently. He thanked the young woman and took a long and longing look at her thickly stockinged legs as she left. ‘Sorry to pull you in again so soon, Paget,’ he said. ‘But you’ve done so well in the past despite your lack of a convincing French accent.’

  Paget said: ‘I say I’m from Alsace. Even the Germans think that’s amusing.’

  ‘Good, excellent.’ He stood up from behind the desk and wandered in a circle. There was a worn, almost ceremonial, ring on the carpet which he had trodden since 1941. ‘Agents are always fallible,’ he ruminated. ‘Not far short of stupid at times. You can only hope that Jerry is even more so. There was a useful chap down at Poitiers, I think, yes, Poitiers, stopped at a barrier, produced his forged identity card, and then absent-mindedly produced another with the same photograph and a different name.’

  He went on: ‘Then other dimwits were in a school at night outlining a railway sabotage operation on a blackboard. When they had done they went off home and left the bloody plan chalked on the board. You wouldn’t believe that, would you?’

  ‘And the Germans found it?’ said Paget.

  ‘The school caretaker spotted it first and rubbed it off.’ He returned to the desk. ‘Anyway. Here you are.’ He leaned closer as if to prevent anyone in the empty room overhearing. ‘Operation Hole.’

  ‘Hole?’ said Paget. ‘Who dreamed that up?’

  ‘Me, actually.’

  There was no point in apologising. ‘It’s not bad, as it happens,’ said MacConnel, taking no umbrage. ‘Reasonably appropriate. There are seventy resistance members, from northern and mid-France, the usual mixture, in prison, awaiting execution. The Germans are just getting the paperwork done. The RAF claim they can drop a bomb accurately enough to breach the wall of the jail and allow the prisoners to make a dash for it.’ He studied Paget. ‘I know it sounds implausible. I sometimes thought that these blue jobs could hardly hit Hamburg, but they claim they can do it.’ He took in Paget’s air force uniform as if it were the first time he had noticed it. ‘No offence, mind.’