by Terry Deary
‘Why did the Lord your God let me hurt my ankle?’ Grimm spat.
‘You fell hundreds of feet from an aeroplane. Your life was spared. The ankle will heal. Those thieving brats can’t move fast. Take your time. You will catch them.’
Grimm breathed deeply. Then he hobbled to the church gate. ‘They have the pass from General Bruce too. It’ll make it harder for me to move through the British lines.’
Father Gaulle nodded. ‘You are the same size as I am. Let me lend you my spare robes. If you look like a priest then no one will stop you. I’ve walked through the British lines many times. They see the dog collar and the priest and not the man. They don’t even notice my German accent. Come inside. I will give you the robes and a new pack of food.’
Grimm turned slowly back to the church. Half an hour later he was on his way.
Ten minutes after that a man in a black cloak arrived at the church gate. He rested his cane on a gravestone and asked the gravedigger about two young peasants. The old man pointed the way to the east. As the watcher picked up his cane the gravedigger said, ‘And that new priest followed them.’
‘New priest?’
‘Aye. The Father here’s a German. The other one was British, but they seemed thick as thieves.’
‘Ah.’ The follower sighed and nodded.
‘The feller arrived here dressed like a British sergeant then left looking like a priest.’
‘Did he now? Thank you.’ The watcher set off thoughtfully, his cane clacking on the cobbled road.
‘I suppose the Father won’t be needing those extra graves after all,’ the gravedigger chuckled.
Marius and Aimee struggled against the flow of people shuffling along the road from Peronne. Some were pulling hand carts piled high with furniture. Others had wheelbarrows and prams loaded with their pitiful riches. A tottering old man pushed his crippled wife along in a wheelchair. Sick people hobbled on sticks along the rough cobblestones. Mothers carried babies in their arms. When shells whined over their heads they flung themselves on the ground and sheltered their children with their bodies.
An old woman shivered and clutched her thin woollen shawl about her thinner body. Everything she had left was contained in a small leather bag and she held a picture. It was a photo of a young man in French army uniform. From time to time she kissed it with her dry, cracked lips and muttered, ‘My son.’
A poor old man who could go no more laid his few poor goods beside him on the side of the road. He sat with his back to a smashed piano on the pavement and gazed with pitiful eyes at the crowd flowing past.
‘Refugees from Peronne,’ Aimee said. ‘Trying to escape the fighting. Will this war ever end?’
Marius stayed silent. As they climbed the hill back to the drovers’ road they escaped the crowd of misery. In the shelter of a few trees they opened Sergeant Grimm’s pack and took out some of the food. They ate little because they needed to make it last. ‘We reach Peronne tomorrow and then we say goodbye,’ Marius said.
Aimee didn’t answer directly. She was looking through the pack. She pulled out the plans for the Whippet tank with a note that said it could be stopped with a can of mustard gas. ‘These are the real plans,’ she said. She began to tear each sheet in half, made a small pile of them, then she took a box of matches from Silver Hand’s pack and made a small bonfire of them.
The girl reached into the pack again and pulled out a sheet of thick cream paper. She nodded and gave a small smile. ‘This is General Bruce’s free pass to anywhere in the British army. It’ll be useful.’ She looked at Marius. ‘Yes, tomorrow we say goodbye.’
Of course, she was wrong.
31 August 1918: West of Peronne
When the sky grew light they struggled out of their shelter and had a small breakfast. They set off on the drovers’ road to Peronne again. The main roads in the Somme valley below them were choked with refugees and wounded Australian soldiers rolling west and tangling with army forces moving east, carrying shells and tanks and food and fresh fighting men with their weapons.
Marius looked down. ‘When we win the war we will rule France,’ he said. ‘I will come back to Bray and find you and make sure our rulers treat you kindly. You will be a heroine of Germany for helping me. They’ll give you an iron cross.’
Aimee turned suddenly angry as a wasp. ‘You will not win the war,’ she raged. ‘And I am not helping you... you just helped me uncover some spy called Benedict. You are just the bait in a trap. Someone was following Grimm. We have caught your spy.’
Marius sighed. ‘I don’t know if a spy could follow Grimm. Not if he used a plane to fly to Cléry.’
‘Maybe there is no follower, but when we reach the front line I’ll tell them that Grimm’s a traitor and there’s an evil priest in Cléry called Benedict Gaulle. They’ll arrest him and I will be a heroine of France... like Joan of Arc.’
‘She was burned alive by the English,’ Marius muttered miserably.
‘I would rather be burned alive than wear one of your iron crosses. When we win the war, I’ll find you and shoot you if my father doesn’t come home safe.’ She strode off ahead of Marius and he had to trail behind until the drovers’ road reached a hilltop and looked down over the river to Peronne.
The low cloud was lit by the flashes of exploding shells and glowed orange-red like the gateway to hell that it was for those on the ground. Yellow clouds of mustard gas rolled across the plain behind the town and a damp westerly wind blew it into the faces of the German defenders.
An Australian officer stood on the hilltop and spoke into a radio, directing the firing of the big guns.
The town of Peronne was covered in smoke and dust as buildings were hit and crumbled. ‘What’s happening?’ Aimee whispered.
The officer looked at them wearily. ‘We’ve been driving the Germans back for weeks. Now they’ve dug in at Peronne and we’re struggling to shift them.’
‘Why Peronne?’ Aimee asked.
The officer lowered his voice. ‘How do I know you’re not German spies?’
Aimee gave a light laugh. ‘I am a French girl with an English father. Armand here is a simpleton,’ she explained, then muttered in Latin to Marius, ‘I’ve told him you’re an idiot. Act like it.’ She turned back to the Australian and said, ‘I’m trying to get him back to his home in Peronne.’
Marius let his face go blank and stared at the sky, which was full of aeroplanes flying east from Bray to attack the town.
‘Not today,’ the officer said. ‘Peronne is on the other side of the Somme there, so the river’s like a moat around a castle. The Germans have blown up all the bridges, see?’ He pointed to the ruined pillars where they’d once stood. ‘When our men try to build new ones they are machine-gunned. We’ve lost a lot of brave men in those marshes by the side of the river. We put down planks of wood to walk on. They’re just half a metre wide.’
The man bit his lip as he lived the pain again. ‘Our lads walked into the enemy guns one by one to their deaths. They fell in heaps on those boards or into the marsh and sank. The bravest were the ones who tried to rescue their wounded pals and ended up being shot themselves. That’s not a river, it’s a death trap. And of course our tanks can’t swim across it.’
‘What will you do?’ Aimee asked.
‘We’ve done it. We crossed the river further down and we’re attacking the town from the north side. See?’ He stretched out an arm and pointed to a steep hill outside the town to their left. ‘That’s Mont Saint Quentin... a steep hill the enemy are defending with everything they’ve got. We started the attack at five this morning. The shells batter the German trenches then our men rush forward to capture the shell-shocked enemy.’
‘It sounds simple,’ Aimee said quietly.
‘Except that the hill is full of shell-holes and slashed trees, it’s uphill and the men are already tired from trying to cross the river. Plus we can only spare five hundred Australians to attack nearly two thousand crack German troops.’
>
‘So the odds are against them.’ Aimee nodded.
The young officer grinned suddenly. ‘Nah... one Australian is worth ten Germans so we have twice as many.’ He placed his binoculars to his eyes then handed them to Aimee. ‘See? German soldiers throwing their weapons down and putting up their hands. They’ve lost. Hey, you could be in Peronne in time for supper after all.’
Aimee watched the enemy troops swarm down the hill, hands in the air, weapons thrown to the ground. They were loaded into boats and ferried back across the river to be taken to prisoner-of-war camps. The German defenders in the town couldn’t fire at the river now without killing their own men.
Further to the east, on the far side of Peronne, there was a rush of lorries and carts on the road back to Germany. The enemy were fleeing.
‘Can we get into one of those Australian boats?’ Aimee asked.
‘I suppose so. You’ll need to cross a lot of old battleground between here and there, though. And of course you’re still heading into a battle. You’d have to be desperate to risk it.’
Aimee looked at the main road in the valley below. German prisoners were limping away from Peronne and resting in a field by the roadside. She lifted the binoculars again. Standing at the gateway to the field was a man in a priest’s robes over his army trousers and boots. He was talking to an Australian guard. They were too far away to make out their faces. But in the weak sunlight that broke through the smoke of war she could see the silver hand of the British man.
‘We’re desperate,’ she said.
31 August 1918: West of Peronne
The German prisoners sat on the damp grass of the field and ate greedily from the tins of cold beef stew a supply wagon had brought them. Sergeant Grimm marched up to the soldier on guard at the gate. ‘Good morning, Corporal,’ he said cheerfully. ‘A nice bag of enemy soldiers here.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The soldier leaned forward and spoke quietly. ‘If you ask me they look glad to be alive and out of the war. Some of them haven’t seen meat for a month.’
Grimm’s face turned dark with anger. ‘A hungry man is a dangerous man, Corporal. They can still win this war. Now get back to your regiment.’
The man blinked in surprise. ‘I’ve got to guard them till their transport gets here.’
Grimm sniffed. ‘I’ve been sent to relieve you.’
‘Are you sure, sir? You’re a priest.’
Grimm pulled the priest robes over his head to reveal his sergeant’s uniform. ‘A disguise. I dress as a priest to fool the German prisoners and get them to talk to me about their battle plans.’
The man shook his head in wonder. You don’t have a rifle...’
‘I have a pistol. These men won’t give me any trouble.’
‘But your hand, sir...’
‘I fire my pistol with my right hand,’ Grimm snapped. He raised the silver hand in the air. ‘I got this saving an officer under heavy machine-gun fire. Do you think I can’t manage a few defeated men with no weapons? Well? Do you?’
‘No, sir. Sorry, sir,’ the corporal said. He saluted smartly and marched out of the gate and joined the crowds of men plodding towards the battle.
Sergeant Grimm turned to the prisoners and spoke rapidly in German. ‘My friends, you are heading for a prisoner-of-war camp in France.’ The prisoners looked at one another in surprise. Silver Hand went on. ‘But there are two types of camp. The good ones where you get food like this every day. You’ll get Tickler’s Jam, fresh milk and eggs and the best doctors to care for you. But there are evil camps for the prisoners who behave badly. The food is potato water and turnip skins, the work is hard and the huts are cold.’
The Germans looked suspicious. Why was this man telling them this? They soon found out. ‘There are two young peasants on the run from Bray – a German boy and a French girl. It’s a bit like Romeo and Juliet, you might say. But the French girl’s father is a general and he wants her back. If any man can capture them he will be treated like a prince. I have tracked them to the hills a mile from here. But my ankle is slowing me down and they are slippery young people.’
A German sergeant rose to his feet. ‘Why doesn’t the general use a squad of British soldiers to catch them?’
Silver Hand sneered. ‘Because he would be thrown out of the army. Imagine it? Using fighting men that are needed for the war just to catch a couple of young runaways? No. I am his assistant and he’s given me the job. I am offering you the chance to have a comfortable life in your prison camp. What do you say? Is anyone willing to help me?’
The prisoners muttered among themselves. It seemed too good to be true – was it a trick or a trap of some kind? Their sergeant asked, ‘Will we be armed?’
‘No need. They are two young people. With thirty men I can surround the moorland and catch them and destroy them.’
‘Destroy them?’
‘I mean... return them to where they belong. Destroy their foolish plan to escape back to Germany.’
The German sergeant looked around. ‘Are there any of you willing to give it a go? I’ll do it? Anyone else? Stand up.’
Slowly the prisoners began to rise to their feet. At last they were all standing. There were around fifty of them. ‘Excellent,’ Grimm said and made a fist of his good hand. ‘Follow me out of the field and on to the moors.’
As they set off the German sergeant turned to Grimm and said, ‘You speak good German.’
‘I was brought up in Wales but my parents were German.’
‘And yet you fight against us?’
Silver Hand gave a sour grin. ‘Yes, but not very hard.’
‘Your hand? You are a hero.’
Grimm limped along and murmured, ‘I was opening a tin of soup. The opener slipped and I cut my hand. It turned septic and the doctors had to amputate it. I made up the story of my gallant rescue. It helps. People like a hero. I get away with a lot more than an ordinary sergeant.’
The German gave a harsh laugh. ‘I think I could like you. Let’s get Romeo and Juliet, shall we?’
31 August 1918: West of Peronne
On the moors to the west of Peronne there wasn’t enough cover to hide a cat.
As the afternoon sun burned, the clouds melted and the area was flooded with light that made the fleeing couple stand out. The open moorlands were prison walls, and the war-scented air of death was like a breath from a forgotten dungeon.
Down the slope, a couple of kilometres away, the German soldiers formed a curving line that was sweeping round to make a circle.
Silver Hand limped along and fell behind but he could wait. The fit German soldiers would do his work for him.
‘Can you run, Marius?’ Aimee asked.
‘Not for long,’ the boy replied. ‘You head for safety. If they capture me then don’t worry. You’ve done your best. Run, Aimee, run.’
Aimee’s face turned red with fury. ‘How dare you tell me what to do?’ she demanded and gripped him by the shoulders.
‘I thought...’
‘We’ve been together for months. Haven’t you learned I don’t give up easily?’
‘Yes, but...’
‘You want me to abandon you to save myself? Did you abandon those sick soldiers when they had flu and save yourself? Or did you risk catching the sickness and letting it kill you?’
‘Yes, but...’
‘You saved a hundred lives. I can save one.’
Marius finally managed to get in a word. ‘They were my comrades. You want to save an enemy.’
Aimee pulled a face. ‘Yes but a feeble one who wouldn’t shoot a Frenchman if he had a dozen machine guns.’
‘Thanks,’ Marius muttered.
‘Now we only need to get to the top of this ridge. They will see us clearly against the sky. I will run west as if I were running back to Bray. You go over the hill and head east down to the River Somme where they’re crossing. I’ll join you in an hour or so. They’ll follow me because they will see me running along the ridge.’
‘But if they see you they’ll catch you,’ Marius said as they climbed to the top of the crest. They stumbled over shell-holes. When they looked back the searchers were closer now... less than a kilometre away and striding out.
‘They won’t catch me if I run fast enough,’ Aimee said. ‘Take my backpack and I’ll fly like a swallow.’
She handed the pack to Marius and he panted to the top of the ridge after her. He looked down on the crowded river below and across to Mont Saint Quentin. ‘Three broken bridges,’ Aimee said quickly. Meet me at the one in the middle.’
Marius crouched down so he could look back down the hill they’d just climbed. When he turned back he saw Aimee racing across the long ridge, pigtail streaming behind her. Angry German voices were carried on the west wind.
But she was right. The line of fifty followers had swung around to follow her. One man broke away from the line. A slim, young soldier who was fitter and faster than the rest. He headed along the bottom of the ridge. If he got to the drovers’ road before Aimee he’d surely cut her off or drive her back into the arms of the other hunters.
It was a fair race. Aimee in her light boots running along the top. The soldier in his clumsy uniform keeping pace with her along the bottom. The young man threw off his helmet, then his belt and his jacket.
There was a wood a kilometre ahead. Aimee talked to herself as she ran, the beat of her words keeping time with her flying legs. ‘Reach the woods. Go to earth. Hide beneath a fallen tree. Let them think I’ve run back home. When they’re gone I’ll double back. Look for Marius. Cross the Somme.’
Then she remembered she wasn’t supposed to cross the Somme. This was where she’d say goodbye to the boy. She’d use General Bruce’s letter to make sure the boy got a passage on a troop carrier. He’d have to catch up with the fleeing German army without her help.
But thirty of the German army were after her at the moment. The young soldier was definitely closer – half a kilometre now... maybe less. Four hundred metres.
