Courageous

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “Then let’s get started right away,” says Aidan. He switches on the radio they have built, and at first they hear only static. But Sally’s good with the radio—she did most of the building. She fiddles with the dials, adjusting them back and forth, and soon they hear some German voices, rapid-fire and loud. Neither Sally nor Aidan understands German, so most of what they hear is incomprehensible. But there is one word they do understand. Dunkirk. Isn’t that just a little French town on the other side of the English Channel? Aidan is pretty sure George is somewhere near there. Anyway, it’s been repeated several times, so it must be important. Now they just need to find out why. “Why do you suppose they keep mentioning Dunkirk? Is something going to happen there?” Sally asks.

  “It could be an invasion,” Aidan ventures. “Or maybe it’s a defensive position.”

  “Nothing defensive about the Germans right now,” says Sally. She’s right. The Germans are getting stronger every day. In fact, they seem invincible. Their early, easy victories—in Austria, Poland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands—make them seem almost superhuman, on the march and on the rise.

  Sally keeps turning the dial, and soon she’s found an English-speaking station. “… the government is getting ready to requisition civilian ships to aid in the war effort …” But a burst of static interrupts the broadcast, and the rest of the words are lost.

  As Sally tries to adjust the dial, a noise on the stairs makes them both fall silent. She quickly switches off the radio as her father walks into the room. “I wondered where you kids ran off to,” he says. “I should have guessed.”

  “You know we just like it up here, Dad,” Sally says. “Looking out over the water. The view’s grand and …”

  “Right,” says her father, glancing at the radio. “And then there’s that thing you two managed to cobble together. Pretty clever, I must say. Does it actually work?”

  “Sort of …” says Sally. “Not all of the time though.”

  “And what do you hear? Secret messages from the other side? Cracking the German codes, are you?”

  Aidan can tell he’s just joking—he has no idea of what they’ve been able to hear. But Sally looks nervous, so Aidan jumps into the conversation to rescue her. “Even if we did hear something, it would be nothing but gibberish to us, sir,” he says. “Sally and I don’t understand a word of German.”

  “Not many of us do,” says her father, suddenly serious. “I just hope and pray that we’re not going to be forced to understand it one day.” He sighs and sits down at the desk.

  On the other side of the Channel, somewhere in a little French village not far from the coast, Aidan’s brother George is sound asleep. So deeply asleep that he doesn’t hear Commanding Officer Rogers’s barked orders, and it’s not until another soldier gives him a less than gentle shove that he reluctantly opens his eyes.

  “Get a move on, mate!” says the soldier who shoved him.

  “What for?” George wants nothing more than to go back to sleep. They were up almost all of last night, marching to this nameless little village, and it’s only been an hour or two at most since he tumbled into bed—or the stiff, unyielding cot that passes for a bed.

  “Didn’t you hear? CO’s just said we’re to pack up. We’re headed for Dunkirk.”

  “Dunkirk?” asks George. “Why there?” He’s familiar with the name—it’s a coastal town and has some strategic importance. But why now when they’ve only just arrived here and are all so desperate for a few hours of sleep?

  “Haven’t you learned anything yet, mate?” The other soldier looks at him pityingly. “There’s no point in asking why. Just obey orders and make it snappy.”

  “Can’t we sleep a little longer?” George says. “An hour. A half hour even.”

  “Orders are orders,” says the soldier.

  So George reluctantly pulls himself up and begins to gather his few belongings. By the time he falls into line to begin the march, he’s fully awake and wondering what they’ll find at Dunkirk. Only now, he doesn’t even bother to ask—he just does what he’s told.

  “One, two, three, four.” They march down the road for two hours, but it might as well be two days. It starts to rain, a chilled, stinging rain more suited to November than late in May, and to George it feels like it will be raining forever. He’s discovered that there’s a hole in the sole of his left boot, and every time he takes a step, a nasty mixture of cold water and mud squirts inside. His foot makes squelching sounds as he marches. Not only that, he now feels like he’s coming down with a sore throat and his head is so heavy it feels like it’s filled with rocks. His clobber bag feels like it’s full of rocks too, even though he knows it’s his clothes, his shaving gear, a book, and a dented tin of biscuits that are making it such a burden.

  George struggles to keep pace but it’s hard with that hole, the heavy clobber, and the persistent throbbing in his head. What he wouldn’t give to get out of this cursed rain, and to be sitting by a crackling fire with a hot mug of tea in his hand—

  “One, two, three, four!” The sharp voice of the CO breaks into George’s reverie and he refocuses his attention on the present. The village they’re now marching through seems like a ghost town: There’s no one around, and the cottages are all shut up and dark. Well, no wonder, with the Germans swarming through the countryside, gobbling up everything in their path. He begins to pay closer attention to the buildings as a way of staying alert: cottage, cottage, barn, cottage. There’s something up ahead that looks like a school, and beyond that a church. Then another scattering of cottages and a barn, this one quite large, its once-red paint faded to a soft, muted pink.

  For some reason, his eye lingers on this barn for a little longer than the other buildings he’s passing. Maybe it’s because of the handsome black horse extending his powerful neck out of the opening to his stall, the only sign of life George has seen in this desolate little village. And it’s in that second that he sees it, slow like in a dream: the shadowy figure just behind the horse, the raised arm. But that mere second or two spells the difference between life and death.

  “Take cover!” George shouts at the top of his lungs, and with a strength he’s not aware he has, he shoves the two men closest to him, just in time. There’s a flash and burst of fire as a grenade explodes practically in front of him. He can feel the heat from the fire that flares suddenly and then sputters in the rain, and the brightness blinds him for a few seconds.

  When his eyes clear, George cautiously gets to his knees, keeping his head down. Apart from being coated in mud, he’s all right. And so, apparently, are the two mates he shoved into the mud with him. He knows because he can hear them exclaiming, “He’s in the barn! It’s Jerry”—that’s what they call the German soldiers—“he’s in there!”

  There are a few seconds of confusion as someone gives the order to fire and the shooting begins, a deafening rat-tat-tat of machine guns. The horse utters a panicked whinny and retreats into the recesses of the barn as the men rush toward it. George can’t tell what’s going on in the noise and rain—and suddenly everything is strangely, eerily silent. Their attacker was just a lone German soldier.

  The other soldiers swarm around the man’s corpse, arguing over who will get his boots, his gun, his jacket, which is in good shape and made of wool. George climbs to his feet and helps pull upright the men he knocked over. Rogers walks over, claps him on the back, and says, “Right, good work,” and the two men who had been on either side of him grab his hands and raise them up in the air, a victory pose.

  “Thank you, sir,” George manages to say.

  He badly wants to spit the mud from his mouth but he waits until Rogers has resumed his place at the head of the unit. The other men are still tussling over the German’s possessions, and finally they get it all sorted out and they file back to re-form their lines. Something small and blue catches George’s eye and before anyone can say anything, he darts over and scoops it up. No one even notices. It’s
some kind of leather wallet, but there’s no time to look at it now. He decides he’ll save it for later, when he’s by himself.

  Rogers gives the order and the unit continues its march. It’s still raining, but George is no longer tired and, amazingly enough, his head no longer throbs. His eyes seek out the opening of the stall. There is no horse visible and this makes him inexplicably sad. He wishes he could run into the barn and see if the beautiful animal is all right but of course he can’t. So he marches alongside his comrades, and when they break into a rousing fight song, he lets his voice rise up to mingle with theirs.

  Later, when they’ve stopped for a break, George takes the opportunity to move away from the group. Turning his back to shield what he’s doing, he pulls out the blue leather wallet he found earlier.

  Inside, he discovers a few German deutsche marks, some kind of identification card, two photographs, and, tucked deep inside a corner of the wallet, a bit of red ribbon. He looks at the ID first. Gerhardt Lieber, born January 5, 1922. That means he is—or was—eighteen, a year younger than George. There’s a picture of him dressed in a knit cap and parka, holding a pair of skis in one hand, his other arm draped casually around the shoulders of a pretty girl. Is she his sister? No, she looks more like his girlfriend. She’s smiling, and has braids poking out of her own knit cap. The braids are tied with ribbons. Red ribbons, like the frayed bit in the wallet? George can’t be sure from the photo.

  The other picture is of a middle-aged man and woman in good clothes, standing in front of a solid-looking brick house with flowers by the door. Are they Gerhardt’s parents? And is that his house, the one in which he grew up and to which he’ll never return?

  “What’s that you’ve got there?”

  Startled, George looks up to see Clarence Ivers, who has the annoying habit of nosing into everyone’s business.

  “Nothing,” says George, and he quickly stuffs everything into his pocket.

  “You look pretty interested in … nothing,” Clarence says.

  George walks away to join the others. He’d like to spend more time examining the contents of the wallet, but even after just a single look, he feels that he knows a few essential things about Gerhardt. He was eighteen and liked to ski. He was sentimental enough to keep a picture of his parents and his sweetheart in his wallet when he went off to war. That middle-aged couple—how they will grieve when they get the news about their boy, just like his mum and dad did when they got the news about Trevor. And the girl with the braids—she’ll cry too. War leaves everyone crying, he realizes. There’s no way around it. Every single man, on either side of the fighting, is loved and cherished by people back home—wherever home happens to be. And the loss of any life, anywhere, leaves a terrible hole in the hearts of all those people who are left behind.

  Sally must have fallen asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow, because even from his little room across the hall, Aidan can hear when she starts to snore. But he remains awake and restless, with the word Dunkirk beating a disturbing refrain in his mind. He knows it’s a port town on the other side of the Channel, and because it’s a port, it’s a strategic city for the Germans to capture. Is that why they were talking about it? Or maybe something else is going to happen at Dunkirk? From the excited sound of those voices, Aidan imagines that it must be something of great importance. He thinks again about George and hopes his brother is nowhere near Dunkirk.

  Finally, just before dawn, he falls into a light, restless sleep. The dream comes to him again, and he feels the familiar terror as he crashes into the sea and gazes up at the forty-foot wall of water before him. He wakes, and the fear recedes, replaced by relief. Yes, it was awful. But it was just a dream.

  Aidan dresses in a hurry. He’ll come back to see Sally later, but right now, he’s got to get to church. He’s promised his mum that he’ll be there, and more than anything, he doesn’t want to let her down. Lord knows she’s had enough sadness in the last months, and he’s not going to add to it, even with a little thing like missing church. Aidan knows his dad’s faith has been shaken, that he questions what he’s believed in his whole life long. Mum is different though. Hope is still alive in her, and Aidan realizes, with great clarity, that he wants to be like his mum in this way and not like his dad. He wants to keep hope alive—hope that his brother, and all the other English boys with him, will stay safe and return to the families they love, the families that are just waiting for them to come home.

  The church service, led by Reverend Blake, is unusually subdued. So many of the town’s boys are overseas fighting against the Germans, and the villagers know they are lucky to be alive to fight, since many of their comrades are not.

  When it is over, Aidan files out quietly with his parents.

  The rest of the day is slow and still, all the shops closed, though the pub is open. Aidan’s father doesn’t go out fishing on Sundays and neither does Aidan. And he doesn’t go with his father to the pub either. Mum serves the stew again for supper but that’s all right. Aidan’s just glad to have a hot meal at home two days in a row, since neither of his parents have acted much like themselves lately. In the evening, they gather round the radio for the news. Aidan is on the alert for any mention of Dunkirk, but there is none.

  The next day, he heads off to school, where he meets up with Sally and some of their other friends—Aggie, Isabel, Mikey, and Bradford. There’s the familiar routine of maths and history in the morning, writing and grammar in the afternoon. There’s a weak bit of sun struggling to get through the clouds, and the May afternoon is, if not warm, at least not chilly. After school Aidan joins a game of football. At this moment, in their quiet little seaside village, Aidan can almost let himself believe that everything is all right.

  But as soon as Aidan gets home, that illusion is shattered. Both of his parents are sitting in the parlor, and the radio is blaring its news loudly. They neither speak nor move, and their faces are ashen. And they barely even look over when he comes in. Their eyes remain fixed on the radio, as if it can offer them images to go with the words.

  Aidan drops his satchel and plants himself on the floor, right next to the radio. The announcer’s somber voice prompts the panic he sees reflected on the ashen faces of his parents.

  “… the Second Panzer Division rolled on, covering forty miles in fourteen hours. In a single, massive stroke, they cut the Allied forces in two. The BEF, two French armies, and all the Belgians—nearly a million men—are now sealed in Flanders, pinned against the sea and ready for taking.”

  “Turn it off,” says Aidan’s mother. “Please, turn it off.”

  Aidan’s father does as she asks and now the room is filled with a silence even more awful than the BBC announcer’s words.

  “George is a member of the BEF,” Aidan says quietly. It’s too awful to think of—George and his mates, surrounded, trapped and at the mercy of their enemies.

  “That he is,” says Aidan’s father. His mother says nothing but gets up and quietly leaves the room.

  “What will happen to George, Dad?” asks Aidan when they’re alone.

  “I wish I knew,” says his father. “Maybe Mum is right—we do have to keep praying for him. And hope our prayers can keep him safe.”

  Aidan had been in church with his parents and seen the grave expressions on faces all around him. Dad was right the first time—they need more than prayers. But what?

  At school that week, everyone is talking about the stranded boys. Aidan is not the only one with a family member in danger. So many of his schoolmates have brothers, cousins, uncles who have been called up for duty. Even the teachers are not exempt. One has a son who is in the army, and another a husband. Some people are even saying that the government is going to ask for help from civilians. Isn’t that what he and Sally heard on the radio the other night? Aidan thinks about what this could mean. People back home were already helping by accepting the rationing of food and other resources and by knitting socks and caps for boys. What else could they b
e doing?

  After chores are finished on Saturday, Aidan and Sally hurry down to the lighthouse and go straight for the radio. There is the usual static as they try to get a clear signal, but today the static doesn’t resolve as quickly as it usually does. “I think there’s a problem,” says Sally. “Maybe it’s this tube here …”

  Aidan watches while she disconnects one tube after another, seeking to find the source of the trouble. He’s a little bit in awe of her skills in this department. She just seems to know what to do, and even when she doesn’t, she can puzzle it out. And after about fifteen minutes, she’s fixed the radio.

  Eagerly, they return to the dials in an effort to get a clear signal. Today they home in on something new and startling: The government is about to ask that all civilians living along the coastline of the Channel—Dover, Kent, Deal, and others—bring their boats to Dunkirk, to ferry the stranded men to safety. Fishing boats, yachts, sailboats, tugboats—every boat on the English coast is needed. Tomorrow, the little boats are going to start making their journeys and Operation Dynamo will officially begin. Dynamo! Sally said she heard that word in the message and it must have had to do with this. Churchill says if they all join together, they’ll be able to bring their boys safely home.

  “Do they mean little boats like the Margaret?” Aidan asks.

  “I think so. The announcer said all the boats.”

  “But how many boys could the Margaret carry?” asks Aidan.

  “Didn’t he say something about little boats being used as ferries? The smaller boats could bring the soldiers to the bigger ships. Then the bigger ships can go across the Channel.”