by Thomas Wood
“Yes…” he said, speaking slower and weaker than he had done before, “I will tell you…But please, give me the suitcase.”
I thought about opening it up to check its contents in case it did house some sort of secrets that he wanted to clutch hold of as he died, but he soon dispelled my theories for me.
“It has a picture of my daughter in it. Please. While I die.”
I flicked it open for him and retrieved the picture of the young, blonde-haired girl, eyes wider than they had seemed before, despairing at the loss of her daddy, her mother standing beside her proudly, clutching hold of her daughter’s hand at the news of her husband’s untimely death.
I placed it on his stomach, dragging his bad arm over it, smothering it with blood.
“Come on!” I screamed, with every blood vessel in my head exploding with pain, “I’ve done what you said, now it’s your turn!”
26
I had made a fatal error in assuming that the resistance would have known that I had a German in situ, it’s just that the fatal consequence of the error fell on someone else and not on me. To say that I was relieved would have been a little bit of an understatement, I was thrilled to still be alive and even more ecstatic to have not been hit yet, but I couldn’t resist the feelings of overwhelming guilt for Rudolf.
He was an enemy soldier, an SS soldier at that, one of the most brutal sects of the Nazi regime and that is what I had to keep telling myself. A few months ago, had I seen that uniform, I would have squeezed the trigger of my rifle, or ordered the round from a tank that would have happily seen him killed in an instant. But now, he was no longer an enemy soldier, he had been my companion through some of the most tumultuous periods of my own mind. To call him a friend may still have been a bit much, but he was an acquaintance that I would have rather have seen alive than dead. The same couldn’t be said for a man like Joseph.
He still had a family after all, his wife would soon become his widow and his daughter fatherless. That was who I felt for the most in amongst all of this, apart from Rudolf himself. They would be losing the main man in their lives, through no fault of their own. For all I knew they could have been some of the most aggressive anti-Nazis in the whole of Germany, they might have wanted peace with Britain instead of this bitter fighting.
Maybe that’s what Rudolf himself might have wanted, maybe that was why he was so desperate to get to England and not simply surrender the intelligence to me in the first five minutes of us meeting.
All these things were buzzing around my head like a swarm of incandescent bees as I leant in to him, to try and hear every single word that he spoke, every minute syllable that came from his mouth. I wanted to hear it all, I deserved to hear it all.
He spoke for longer than I had expected him to, it had turned out that he knew far more than I was giving him credit for, but he left me with far more questions than he gave me answers. As he spoke, as I began to breathe in his words and let them bounce around in my head, I began to feel sick to the very pits of my stomach. It was not a normal sickness, like a nausea that seems to cling to you as you prepare to go into battle, but a debilitating sickness, one that I wasn’t going to be able to shake until I got to the bottom of this whole ridiculous situation.
I felt sorry for him as he grew more and more pale, the colour being stolen from him and given up to the grass that surrounded him. He was losing pints of blood now, his heart rate increasing dramatically as his hands began to call out for more blood, succeeding in doing nothing other than watering the ground with more of his crimson liquids.
Pulling the pistol that he had been carrying all this time in closer to me, I slid the top of it back slightly to see if there was a round waiting in the chamber. Seeing that there was, I dropped the magazine out to check how many rounds he would have left once I left him to his own devices. He wasn’t going too far with an arm smashed to pieces in the way that it was, and he seemed quite content to lie there with the picture of his small family on his chest and not take any further action.
Clunking it back into the magazine well, I made sure that it was secure, before pushing it into the palm of his good hand.
“One round in the chamber Rudolf. Five in the magazine.” He looked at me knowingly as I released it into his grasp.
“Thank you…” he said weakly, trailing off lethargically, as he slowly battled with his eye lids to remain open for as long as possible.
We both knew what was about to happen. The resistance, if they were going to do some sort of clean-up operation, would soon have him back in one of their safe houses, if they let him live that long. Chances were that he would have a bullet in his skull by the time that I had reached the aircraft, not even a man such as Louis would be able to stop that, I doubted he would even want to.
If the Germans found him first, they would do much the same. If he was even still alive when they got to him.
By giving him that pistol, I had offered up a third option to him, the most likely out of the three. He would want to bow out from this mortal realm on his own terms; still with an element of dignity and pride, thinking of his little girl and wife when the time came. I knew that that pistol would be pressed up against his temple, before blood and brain matter was sprayed all over the floor as he ended his own life, in his own time.
At the end of it all, he had been a traitor, a worm, using his own position as a bargaining chip to get the best deal possible, the best life possible in whatever country would pay him the most. If I was in his position, I wouldn’t even be considering any other option, to myself, I would have been the lowest of the low.
My head was all over the place as I prepared to say goodbye to him, a mixture of feeling compelled to leave amid all of his treachery, but also to stay out of a duty, as if I somehow owed it to his wife and daughter to have the knowledge that he died with someone alongside him.
My decision was made for me only seconds later, as the sickness at the thought of what he had told me really began to hit home. I needed to get this back to Jimmy, to anyone that would listen and act upon it. The ill-feeling deepened even more as I realised that the wooded area surrounding the field had exploded into life and that the rounds that were missing their targets were making their way towards me.
My whole world erupted, and the trees seemed to suddenly have a mind of their own as flashes of light lit up the darkness that enshrouded them, small silhouettes ducking behind them or throwing themselves to the ground in utter desperation.
I immediately felt an overwhelming relief, one that was misplaced owing to the fact that I knew the rounds weren’t being fired at me. It was possible that it hadn’t been my error that had got Rudolf shot, but someone else’s. A few more seconds of firing, and a machine gun or two opening up, confirmed to me my suspicions about what was happening. The resistance didn’t have that kind of heavy weaponry; the Germans had turned up.
For a brief second, I imagined that the round that had entered Rudolf’s shoulder was in fact from a German gun and that, had it not been for Louis’ men hiding in the undergrowth, the next round was aimed at my head.
The firefight continued to rage on all around me as I began to rack my brains to see how on earth this little meetup could have been compromised. It was possible that a patrol had heard the plane coming down and had decided to follow its path to see where it ended up. But a patrol wouldn’t have had machine guns at their disposal; the low booming of heavy weaponry told me all that I had needed to know, someone had grassed.
It wouldn’t have been Louis, I was fairly confident about that, I did not have him down as a German informer, more because he was too timid and quiet than any kind of ideological reason. The thought crossed my mind that he had struggled to mobilise the men, and so had been forced to approach Joseph as a result. I still couldn’t quite understand why I distrusted Joseph so much, he had displayed no outward signs of being a traitor, but maybe this was it.
The gunfire became less intense, but sprung up in short, hig
hly concentrated bursts as the firefight began to die out. I hoped that would be it and that Louis’ men had prevailed, buying me a few more minutes of time to get out in the aircraft.
Rudolf was still at my feet and I was beginning to think that he had no idea what was going on. His eyes were wide, his pupils so dilated that they encompassed the whole of his eyeball as they slowly swayed from side to side, his eyelids threatening to drop down permanently. He was fighting against his own instincts to give up and die, he still had a hope that he would get treatment soon and live, otherwise he would have given up long ago.
The blood that dribbled out onto the floor was beginning to sparkle in the moonlight and it was the first time that I took note of what a brilliantly clear night it was. The stars were vibrant and clear, the moon full and bright, and I spent a couple of seconds just mulling everything over.
A bright red flash zipped right across my vision as I sat back on my heels, and I was pulled back into the here and now of what was turning out to be one of the most exciting nights of my life. Some of Louis’ boys were still giving it their absolute all, not letting the Germans have an easy ride to try and take down the plane and its passenger. I wondered how many enemy soldiers they had managed to eliminate, but in the same thought how many good men they had also lost in the process.
Some of the Germans were beginning to break through the final barrier of resistance that was in their way and before too long, they would be out in the open, firing at the fish in the very small barrel as he tried to get to his awaiting taxi.
Now was the time for me to move. There was nothing I could do for Louis now, nothing I could do for Rudolf. The only person that I could reasonably help right now was myself. So that was exactly what I had to do.
I patted Rudolf on the chest one last time, just so that he could feel me there more than anything, his eyesight was more or less shot to pieces by now. The stars would be floating in from either side and the soft focus would slowly become more and more prominent as he lost consciousness.
I wasn’t sure if he could hear what was going on around him either, but I whispered a quick “Goodbye Rudolf,” in his ear, before I began to collect my emotions together and prepare for the quick sprint to the aircraft, props still turning.
Pushing myself up from my heels, a stabbing pain shooting up through my thigh from my knee as I did so, I began slipping on the grass once more as I tried to find my footing. I eventually got some sort of traction and made it to the side of the aircraft physically unscathed. My chest was heaving and the sickness that I had felt returned, and a meagre, watery liquid began to leak from my nose and mouth, the familiar burning sensation of vomit lingering in the back of my throat as I pulled myself aboard.
I sucked in air desperately for my lungs, as the fumes of the engine began to increase, making my sickness even worse. But I was in the aircraft, now all we had to do was take off.
27
My leg got caught in the ladder as I raced my way up the rungs and into the aircraft, sending me flying headfirst into the seat that was reserved for me. My head cannoned into the far side of the fuselage, fuelling the almighty headache that had decided to reside inside my skull almost permanently.
I eventually managed to untangle myself and get my body in order, finally finding my seat and sitting in it properly. The pilot barely flinched as I hopped into the back of his aircraft, his eyes permanently staring forwards and down the makeshift runway, probably just waiting for a group of Germans to suddenly emerge and block our path. I didn’t know what would happen if that was to occur. Would we still carry on? Would we be able to simply smash our way through body after body with the steel props that had been spinning slowly ever since it had touched down? I wasn’t so sure.
The chances were we would have to abandon our attempt at getting out and simply surrender ourselves over to the Germans. I was glad that the pilot was focusing, hopefully it meant that he would give us a better chance of getting out alive.
There was a leather flying helmet lying on the floor at my feet, which I assumed was meant for me, and I hastily pulled it on to my head and found the intercom switch. I flicked it so hard that I thought I might have snapped the thing off completely but began shouting regardless.
“It’s just me! Only one of us made it!”
“Alright, alright, don’t shout!” He grunted back instinctively before calmly adding, “Welcome aboard, by the way.”
In the brief exchange that we had shared, he had already irritated me. What did he have to be so calm about? Any second now the rounds that were tumbling from weapons all around us would be directed straight towards our aircraft, and we would be in a mortal danger. Here was he being completely calm, but at the same time, not really taking in the gravity of the situation and not doing as he should have been doing; getting us out as quickly as possible.
As if he had started to read my thoughts, I caught sight of him beginning to manoeuvre around in the cockpit, pulling on dials and pushing buttons before eventually using the most important instrument and the only one that I could recognise; the throttle.
The engine noise increased in pitch and intensity, as he, too slowly for my liking, gently began pushing it forward to increase the revs in the engine. Any second now we would begin bumbling down the field, trying to pick up some speed before rotating upwards and into the full moon sky. I still wasn’t convinced by this method of exfiltration.
The engine continued to scream violently as we sat there, like a sitting duck, and it sounded as if the plane was in some sort of discomfort as it begged the pilot to let it begin charging down the runway. If the aircraft had had hooves, I imagined it gently pawing at the ground, snorting through its nose like a bull does before going into a charge.
As if by magic, the plane suddenly launched my head backwards and we soon found ourselves bumping all over the place as we managed to hit every tuft of grass and divot in the ground. For a moment, I wondered whether or not the pilot would be able to keep control of the thing on such a rough terrain, as the control column began to bob around just as furiously as my own head did.
We gradually picked up speed, to the point where I thought we would be taking off at any second, which is why I was so shocked to see the little bright orange flashes of German tracer rounds zipping past us on either side of the cockpit. It was almost as if the little bullets were jealous that I was getting away, as if they wanted to be a part of whatever this was and wanted to hitch a ride back to England with us.
The faster we got, the brighter the flashes became, each one of them beginning to morph into nothing more than a constant orangey glow on either side of the cockpit. This was really bad news, the tracer would have been in one in every four or five rounds, which meant that for every bright light that I could see whizzing past my cockpit, there was another three or four rounds sharing the same airspace; plenty to fill the night air with such a concentration that it was only a matter of time before we started taking direct hits.
Once those direct hits began to come in, I would have a few concerns over what they would hit. The first would be the pilot as, without him, I would be getting nowhere. The second was the engine; superficial strikes to the fuselage we could probably take but taking one to the engine compartment or other vital area like the fuel tank, would mean that we were heading towards the same fate as Rudolf. The third and final place where I didn’t want to see a round was in myself. I felt like I deserved it now, I had come so far and dealt with so much that to be hit with a bullet this late on in the game would seem desperately unfair to me.
Until that point, I had kept my head facing straight forwards, boring my eyes into the back of the pilot’s seat and trying to see what he was doing up ahead of me by pressing my head against the canopy and sneaking a look down the sides.
Now though, I felt so utterly helpless, everyone else was in control of my fate, so I thought it would be okay for me to take a reprieve and examine the situation outside. Turning my head slightly so th
at I was looking over my left shoulder, I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
I couldn’t make out figures anymore, no more blackened silhouettes, all I could see was the entire treeline behind us erupting in flashes of light, accompanied by the vibrant fireflies of tracer rounds as they sped towards us. The Germans had broken out from the safety of the treeline, clearly confident that nothing would be firing back at them anytime soon.
It meant that the resistance fighters were all but eradicated and I began to hope sincerely that Louis had either not been with them, or that he had the presence of mind to withdraw as soon as the Germans had made an appearance. Neither eventuality had seemed likely given the loyal nature of Louis’ personality.
I wondered for a moment if there were even any of Louis’ men left, and whether they would be able to continue the fight in this small part of France, or if that was it now for them. Joseph would have to wait a number of years until boys like Louis’ son were old enough to join in the fight himself. I prayed earnestly that by the time Louis’ son had made it to a reasonable fighting age that Joseph was either dead or out of the picture completely. I had a strong foreboding feeling that Joseph would send many more of his men needlessly to their deaths by the end of the war, due to his ineptitude and poor handling of situations.
The more I looked around, the more despondent I became. Tracer had now joined in from every angle it seemed, the only place it didn’t emanate from was the treeline directly in front of us, the one that was looming ever larger the faster we got.
I entertained myself with the notion that I hoped a few of the German’s stray rounds were catching one another on the far side of the field, and wondered what kind of incapable officer was commanding the troops on the ground in such a way that he let them put themselves at so great a risk. A resurgence of joy appeared at the thought that maybe one side weren’t Germans at all and that the resistance fighters were still there, still making a stand, right until the bitter end. If it was them, then I knew that they would stay there long into the night, long after I had departed, to make sure that they took down as many of the oppressive regime’s soldiers as they possibly could. They were good men. They were brave men. But before too long, I was sure they would be dead men.