Those who remember the soldier’s life in Flanders during the war will recollect the numbers of men from every kind of unit and formation whom one might meet in the course of a few hours behind the lines—men going on and returning from leave, as escorts for prisoners, lightly wounded rejoining their units, batmen, runners, orderlies. Their business was seldom questioned by anyone in authority; and certainly, if zealously plodding towards the battle zone, no such man would court suspicion. I marched on. At the wayside I fell in with a group of soldiers and discovered that the 229th Reserve Infantry Regiment was in the line at Passchendaele, the defence consisting of scattered outposts in shell-hole positions and machine-guns in concrete “pill-boxes.”
I then made up my mind to attempt to penetrate the line and cross no-man’s-land under cover of darkness.
As soon as dusk set in, I set out towards the lines. Should I be interrogated I had made up my mind to declare quite simply that I was returning from leave and before rejoining my battalion which was not in the line I wished to recover the field-glasses of my Oberleutnant who had been wounded and whom I had visited in hospital while on leave. I had a good idea exactly where to find them, that was to say about one hundred paces due east of the gasometers, in the pill-box destroyed by a shell when he was wounded. It seemed a sufficiently plausible tale to tell to inquisitive soldiers; but if an officer questioned me, then I would simply state that I had lost my way, returning from leave. I would probably be ordered to remain in a dug-out during the night and return the following morning.
My intention was, therefore, far less hazardous than it may seem to anyone unfamiliar with the conditions in the Ypres Salient during the winter of 1917–18. I followed in the wake of a ration party. After two hours I reached the forward zone and trudged uphill towards the ridge on which were the shattered ruins of Passchendaele village. It was about nine o’clock in the evening and I could now see the Very rockets fired from the British posts as they rose into the air and fell behind the skyline.
As with growing assurance I was going forward, a group of men suddenly loomed from the darkness in front of me. A voice ordered me to halt and declare myself. I gave the usual curt reply of “Friend,” and turned slightly aside to proceed.
“Who are you?” asked the voice. True, indeed, is it that “the best laid plans of men and mice gang aft agley!” I had prepared myself to answer every conceivable question except the most obvious which I might be asked.
I could not hesitate and replied simply, “Rifleman Bruno Peltzer.”
My interrogator drew aside a blanket curtaining what I observed to be the entrance to a dug-out and surmised to be the headquarters of a battalion or company in the line, and shouted to someone below.
“Herr Leutnant, Rifleman Bruno Peltzer.”
“Mein Gott!” replied an excited voice. “There’s a telegram for his arrest. I told you! Quick!…” There were sounds of someone rushing up the stairway, cursing.
So my escape and ruse had been discovered. Telegrams had obviously been transmitted through headquarters to command posts along the whole German line.
I took to my heels and ran towards the British lines, distant I reckoned certainly another five hundred yards. It was hard going: I floundered through mud and slime, pitched into shell-holes and could hear shouting in my wake. Lights began to soar into the air. They made it easier for me to avoid the shell-holes, but I was sometimes obliged to cower for shelter when a light fell too dangerously near me and spluttered on the ground. I was terrified that my pursuers would open fire; but hoped that fear of inflicting casualties among their own men in front would deter them.
I leaped, stumbled, staggered, dived, swayed, and reeled on, with heart and brain bursting with the excitement of the chase and filled with unknown terrors that I should be stricken down before I could reach the British line. The German officer shouted orders to someone in front, and a moment later rifle fire opened in my rear. I judged that I must by now be about two hundred yards in advance of my pursuers, and working my way rapidly on hands and toes to the right flank, taking cover among the shell-holes, I evaded them for the moment. Then, summoning all my strength I rushed forward again, and had covered a further hundred yards when I was again spotted, and a machine-gun began to beat the ground, in a cavity of which I sprawled.
The excitement in the German lines provoked uneasiness among the British and more lights began to soar into the air. My heart sank. My safety lay in quietness but I had stirred up a hornets’ nest; and within a few seconds machine-guns were hammering away on both sides, the air crackling with bullets above my wretched body. However, as long as the duel continued I was safe, and could rest in the shelter of the shell-hole until the alarm of the night had passed. The nervousness soon passed and the firing on both sides ceased. I again crawled forward carefully keeping my ear cocked for the sound of British voices. Some minutes later, to my joy I heard the familiar brogue from across the Scottish border; and, well concealed in a hole, I called “Kamerad,” and again repeated the familiar cry of surrender.
A voice ordered me to come in. This time I replied with a wealth of expletives dear to the ear of the Scot, concluding by begging the men not to shoot even if I should appear in German uniform.
Sound carries far on such a night; and a further burst of machine-gun fire from the German lines again turned the night into a hell around my body. I lay quietly until the fury had subsided, and then came in and gave myself up to a post of the Scottish Rifles.
The details of how I was hurried down the line, preceded by telegrams to Lord Plumer’s headquarters at Cassell, do not matter. I was able to deliver myself of my tale. That the vital message which I had to deliver, as I judged from subsequent events, was not at once acted upon, concerns high politics. Having also committed the unforgivable offence of kicking over the traces of red-tape, in not remaining to be shot as a spy in Düsseldorf, thanks indeed to the love and heroism of a woman to whose honour I pay deathless tribute, I was reposted to the command of a battalion on the 26th February, 1918. Thank heavens! With some knowledge of Ludendorff’s intention I was enabled to play my little part in destroying “Georgette,” the deadly German thrust towards Hazebrouck between 12th and 18th April, and had my revenge for the death of a sweet lady. It is strange that she, too, was known as “Georgette.”
FLOOD ON THE GOODWINS
A. D. DIVINE
ALTHOUGH Arthur Durham (David) Divine (1904–1987) wrote sixteen espionage, political, adventure, and crime thrillers between 1930 (Sea Loot) and 1942 (Tunnel from Calais), his most successful books were such nonfiction titles as Dunkirk (1948), The Blunted Sword (1964), and The Broken Wing (1966), the latter two being severely critical of the British government’s military for its lack of modernization and preparedness at the height of the Cold War.
Dunkirk recounts the famous World War II evacuation of the trapped British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk across the English Channel in small boats. Divine made the trip three times on a thirty-five-foot boat, being wounded on the third run and winning a Distinguished Service Medal for his heroic actions. He also wrote a novel about that action, The Sun Shall Greet Them (1941), as well as a factual account, Nine Days at Dunkirk (1945), which he expanded to Dunkirk three years later. Divine also wrote the screenplay for Dunkirk (1958), the first film on the mission.
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, he was hired as a journalist for the Cape Times in 1922, where he worked until 1926 and again from 1931 to 1935. After the end of World War II, he was hired by the Sunday Times foreign news service in London to be its correspondent on matters of defense, a position he held until 1975. His boss for several years was the former naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming.
The most resonant title among Divine’s more than two dozen books is Boy on a Dolphin (1955), which became a big-budget motion picture starring Sophia Loren, Alan Ladd, and Clifton Webb. Released in 1957, it is the charming,
romantic story of a poor diver in Greece who discovers a gold and brass statue of a boy riding a dolphin. Idealistically, she wants to turn it over to the Greek government but her boyfriend wants to sell it to an unscrupulous art dealer for a lot of money. Legend has it that the sculpture has the magical ability to grant wishes, which is soon tested.
I have been unable to trace the original publication of “Flood on the Goodwins.” It was collected in My Best Spy Story, edited anonymously (London, Faber & Faber, 1938).
FLOOD ON THE GOODWINS
A. D. DIVINE
DUNDAS LOOKED OUT into the fog and blew reflectively on his finger-tips. The night was cold, raw with the steady drift of the westerly wind, and the fog poured over the dark bulk of the harbour wall as flood water pours over a breach in the dykes—as evenly, as endlessly, as ominously.
The last greyness was fading out of it now, and within twenty minutes at the outside the night would be down, and the sea as lost as the black earth in a snowdrift. Dundas blew again; not a night for fishing, he decided. Not even for wartime fishing, when food was scarce and prices high.
The complete darkness of the harbour was daunting. No lights showed even on a clear night now—save when the immediate necessities of shipping demanded it. Even to find one’s way through the narrow entrance was a matter for caution and skill. Dundas knew that he could do it despite the fog—but whether he could find his way home again was another matter—and this fog might easily be a two-day affair.
It was not as if he were a regular local fisherman—though, heaven knew, even the “locals” had not gone out this night. Dundas was a “deep sea” man, third mate he had been when the war began, third mate of the Rosvean, five thousand tons, flush decked, running regularly like a ferry in the Rio Plata maize trade.
In the May of 1917 he had watched the Rosvean sink off the Casquets. The incident had made a considerable impression on him, but had in no way affected his nerves. His principal reaction had been largely one of scorn at the poorness of the shooting of the submarine which had put them down.
In the July he went down with his next ship, the Moresby, because the torpedo gave them rather less warning than the gun of the previous sinking.
He was picked up after two hours by a destroyer, and her commander commended him on his swimming ability.
That left him with nothing worse than a cold in the head, and at the end of July he signed on again. By this time he had won promotion. He signed on as second mate.
His new office lasted precisely seven hours, allowing for three hours in dock before the ship sailed. Off Selsey Bill, he being then on the poop supervising the readjustment of a hatch tarpaulin, the ship was struck just for’ard of the engine-room by a mine.
The explosion cracked five ribs, dislocated his shoulder, and three parts drowned him.
After he was brought ashore the doctors told him to take it easy for at least a month. By way of taking it easy he went down to Ramsgate, where his uncle had one of the new motor fishing boats. After five days of his aunt’s cooking he began to get restless for the sea again. After seven days he was skipper of his uncle’s fishing boat, and his uncle was taking a holiday.
It was a small boat, eighteen feet long, open, with the engine under a little dog-kennel cover, and no particular virtues. To-night the engine had been sulky, diffident over starting, and secretive about its disabilities.
Dundas was inclined to thank it. If the engine had started easily, he would now be out in the very thick of the fog. When he came down to the dock there had been little sign that it would close down on them suddenly an hour later.
He bent down after a moment’s rest, and began tinkering with it again. He had found the trouble—dirt in the magneto—and nothing remained now but to put the pieces together again.
The lantern he was working by made a pleasant pool of reddish light in the wide blackness about him. There was little more to do now. He felt curiously alone. Save for the steady lap and splash of the water against the sides of the boat and the stone of the wall, the night was empty of sound. Even the long low chorus of bellows and wails and grunts that normally accompanies a Channel fog was absent.
He finished piecing the engine together, replaced the cover, rolled the strap round the groove, and, giving a mighty heave, jerked it into sudden life.
After a moment he throttled down and listened contentedly to the steady purring.
Above him a voice spoke suddenly. It was an educated voice, pleasant, with a faint burr to it. “May I come aboard?” said the unknown.
“Who are you?” said Dundas, startled suddenly out of the calm emptiness that had enclosed him.
“Cutmore’s my name,” said the unknown. “I’m from the minesweeper down the wall. Taking a breather before turning in.”
“Mind the weed on the ladder as you come down,” said Dundas.
The unknown came slowly down, a pair of long legs coming first into the glow of the lamp, followed gradually by a long body. The unknown wore a heavy overcoat, which appeared to impede somewhat his freedom of action.
“Been having trouble with that?” he said, indicating the engine. “I heard you cursing when I passed a few minutes ago.”
“Yes,” said Dundas; “she’s a bitch, she is, but I think I’ve fixed her.”
“Going sweetly now?” said the unknown.
“Yes,” said Dundas.
“What can you get out of her?”
“Seven knots or thereabouts,” said Dundas.
“And what’s her range with full tanks?”
“Eighty miles or so, I suppose,” said Dundas. “I’ve never tried her out, really.”
“Tanks full now?” said the stranger.
“Yes—er——” Dundas’s tone suddenly changed. “May I ask why you are cross-examining me like this?”
“Forgive me,” said the stranger, “but can you keep your mouth shut?”
“I—well, I suppose so; what is it?”
“As a matter of fact,” said the stranger, “I’m a member of the Naval Intelligence service, and it is urgently necessary that I should be landed on the Belgian coast to-night. Almost anywhere along the coast will do, as long as it’s clear of the German lines. I’ve an extraordinarily important job on hand, and it’s got to be done in complete secrecy.”
Dundas lifted his face away from the glow of the lamp.
“Question of getting close enough in. You know the Belgian coast, I suppose. You know how it shoals? Difficult to get a destroyer close enough in to land me with comfort. The size is against it, too, she might easily be seen by the shore posts. It’s essential that I should go by a small boat. As a matter of fact, the sweeper up the wall was to have taken me along, but she’s developed engine-room defects….That’s why I came along to see if there was any possibility up here. They told me there was a motor-boat here. I came along, missed you the first time, and then found you by the noise of your engine.”
“You said you heard me the first time,” said Dundas. “Heard me swearing.”
“Oh, yes,” said the stranger. “I heard somebody swearing, but I didn’t know it was you. As a matter of fact I went along to another boat up there, and they told me you were farther back.”
“And that,” said Dundas, feeling in the dark for a screw wrench, “proves you to be a liar, for there was only Terris up the wall, and he called good night to me an hour ago. Your story’s a lot of bull. You’re coming along with me to the sweeper now.”
“I was wondering how long you’d take to see through it,” said the stranger coolly. “No, don’t move, I’ve got my foot on the monkey wrench, and I’ve got you covered with a fairly large calibre revolver. Now listen to me….”
“You swine…” said Dundas provocatively.
“No you don’t,” said the stranger. “Keep absolutely still, because I shall shoot if you make the slig
htest movement, and I can hardly miss. I use soft-nosed bullets, too. Listen, I’m going to make you a fair offer. I want to charter this boat; it’s absolutely necessary that I should charter it, and if you want it back you’ll have to come with me. I’ve got to get to Bruges before ten o’clock to-morrow, and that means I’ve got to be on the Belgian coast by dawn. This boat can do it, and this fog makes it possible. If you’ll take me there I’ll give you sixty pounds, in one-pound notes. It’s all I’ve got. If you won’t do it, I’m going to shoot you now, and make a run for it myself. I can find my way out of this tin-pot basin, and I guess I can find the Belgian coast by myself. It’s a fine night for yachting.”
The stranger used the same tone as he had used in the early stages of his conversation, but a faint over-tone of menace had crept into it. Dundas, thinking as swiftly as the other talked, decided that he meant what he said.
“You wouldn’t dare,” said he after a moment. “The shot would rouse the whole harbour, and the sentries on the wall would get you long before you could clear the entrance.”
“In this fog?” said the stranger scornfully. “I’ll take the chance.”
“There’s a boom across the mouth,” said Dundas.
“That’s an afterthought,” said the stranger equably. “I don’t blame you. I’d lie myself if I were in your position, but it isn’t any use, you know. Are you going to accept my offer?”
“No,” said Dundas. He thought rapidly for a moment. If he could edge back slowly he could perhaps slip the tiller out of its socket and, hitting blindly in the dark, knock the other out of the boat.
The Big Book of Espionage Page 20
