by John Gardner
The air smelled of fresh grass, and, he thought, night-scented herbs and flowers, all mixed up with drifting smoke. Cordite.
He caught movement, low, on the side of the ditch, just behind him, so he gently turned, bringing the carbine to bear on the crouching figure that showed as a slightly darker mass against the night.
A voice whispered, ‘Natives.’
Without thinking, Newton gave the password response, whispering, ‘Guard.’
The figure dropped flat, rolled into the ditch, and crawled up to him. ‘Thank God. Who is it?’
‘Newton. Tert Newton.’
‘Joe,’ whispered the figure. ‘Joe Farthing.’
‘You okay, Big Joe?’
‘Guess so. Guess we’re the only ones, though. Looked like most of the guys got hit in the air.’
A single shot cracked in the night, somewhere to their right on the far side of the big field. Joe Farthing motioned Newton to stay down as he peered over the edge of the ditch.
‘Shit,’ he muttered. ‘They’ve got flashlights. A whole line of them. Combing the field.’ He paused, and then peered out again. ‘The map showed cover up front – a small wood.’ The low voice was barely audible. ‘We should make for that cover, Tert. You want to try?’
Newton shook his head. He really just wanted to be left alone in the ditch, where he felt safe.
‘You want to go? I’ll cover you, then you can cover me.’
‘I’ll cover you, Joe. But I’m staying where I am.’
There was a pause as Farthing made up his mind. The silence went on for a long time. Farthing poked his head up again, then leaned back. ‘They’re way over on the far side. I’m going. If you change your mind I’ll be in that wood somewhere. Hide up until daybreak, then make for the road.’
‘I’ll cover you, Joe,’ Newton whispered, levering himself up onto the parapet of the ditch. ‘You ready?’
Joe Farthing nodded.
‘Okay. Go!’
Farthing rolled quietly over the side of the ditch and into the dew-soaked grass. For a couple of minutes he snake-crawled slowly to the left, then rose and began to move fast, in a low crouch.
Newton figured he had gone about twenty yards when a pair of flashlights with beams like long bright cones reached out – for a second they reminded him of the searchlights on the 20th Century Fox credits. There was a shout in German. Then another, and the cones met, clamped on to Farthing’s figure so that it looked like some strange humped animal, and the Schmeissers rattled.
Though he did not appear to falter, Farthing’s whole body, still running, hit the ground. It looked as though pieces were flying from him as a burst of tracer curved from the shadows behind the flashlights – arcing over Joseph Burns Farthing’s body.
Tert Newton slid down to the bottom of the ditch again. It took him a couple of minutes to realise that a stray bullet had caught him in the fleshy part of his right shoulder. Only now, at the bottom of the ditch, among bracken and fern, did he feel the pain. Groping with his left hand he touched his jacket. It was wet and sticky.
Newton’s shoulder throbbed and he knew he had lost a lot of blood. He managed to get a field dressing out of his jump-jacket pocket and wedge it in place, pushing it up inside the jacket, over the wound. Then he pulled bracken over himself, put his face on his good arm, and lay still. ‘I guess I must have passed out,’ he told the interrogators – and the Board. ‘Next thing I heard was a shot, quite near to me.’
It was day, quite late, he thought, because the sun was high and warm. He moved cautiously and found the blood was dry and caked through his jacket. The shoulder and arm were difficult to move. He hoped there was no infection. Then, remembering the shot, he slowly climbed up the side of the ditch. German soldiers were wandering about the field, some grouped around what he took to be a pile of equipment until, with a sense of nausea, he realised the pile was not just equipment but the bodies of his comrades. Romarin had become a mound of useless flesh in the middle of a French field.
Two soldiers came from the small wood for which Joe had been making. An officer followed them, tucking a pistol back into its holster. The men were dragging something, and gradually it became visible as a body. So when they found him they would shoot him. Now he knew.
But the soldiers appeared to have completed their search, for a pair of trucks had been driven into the field – big Krupp six-wheelers. There were three officers – one a tall man in SS uniform. They were giving orders and the soldiers loaded the pile of shattered bodies into one truck, the equipment into the other. Newton thought they treated the corpses of his friends like animals.
When they finished loading, the officers got into the front of the trucks with the drivers while the enlisted men climbed in the back of the truck with the equipment. He heard the trucks driving away as he slid down into the ditch.
‘I tried to figure out what I should do,’ he told the Board. ‘I ate some of my K-rations and realised I was weak. When the whispering began I thought I was hallucinating.’
But the whispering was real. It was also in French and Newton whispered back, saying he did not speak the language. ‘I could see these two guys on the other side of the ditch – away from the field. One had a bicycle, the other was a priest.’
The priest asked if he was American, and he told them. Then the other man said, ‘Natives.’
Newton automatically answered, ‘Guard,’ the operations password.
The priest whispered that if it was safe they would come for him after dark. The other Frenchman said they had saved one of his companions.
‘I hoped it would be Big Joe,’ Newton said later. ‘And even though I knew it was impossible I still kept hoping.’ The hours dragged by. Dusk came, and then the night. Newton thought he had dreamed the whole episode with the priest and the Frenchman. The moon came up, then there were footsteps, along the far side of the ditch. Footsteps and a rumbling noise. Four men had come with a handcart – breaking the curfew regulations.
They took him to a house nearby, and a doctor was waiting. The wound was tended, cleaned, and bandaged. The doctor told him to rest, and Tert Newton asked where the other American had got to. ‘You’ll see him tomorrow,’ they said, then put him to bed.
The next morning the Frenchman he had first seen with the priest arrived with a dilapidated van that smelled of pigs. They wrapped Newton up in blankets and hid him among straw and pig shit in the back of the van and drove him away.
The next stop was a pig farm – he knew by the all-pervading smell of pigs outside and the more pleasant aroma of ham being smoked in the kitchen. He was helped up a narrow flight of stairs to a small room. ‘They managed to squeeze two beds into the room. Dollhiem was in the other bed, unconscious. He looked very bad to me, but by the next day he was sitting up and talking.’
Dollhiem had taken a bullet in the side as he parachuted in, but he was off course and landed in the little wooded area. By a near miracle he had time, and enough energy, to successfully bury his parachute and hole up on the far side of the wood, quite near the road. The Germans did not get to him during the night and he could not explain why, because someone else was groaning in agony nearby. In the night he heard the wounded man cry out and knew it was Cartwright.
On the next day, though he lost consciousness several times, Dollhiem managed to crawl across the road, undetected. He heard the shot from the woods and presumed they had put Cartwright out of his misery. He was very lucky because the Germans did not search any of the area across the road. The priest and the other Frenchman had come looking, though, and they risked a great deal by getting the badly wounded Dollhiem out in daylight. Newton figured it must have been shortly before they found him.
The Frenchman said they were part of the Tarot réseau and his name was Felix. Newton identified Jules Fenice from a photograph, and described the other members of the network – including Maxine and Dédé. In all, he accounted for the entire known membership of Tarot, which was interesting in
the light of further information.
In a couple of days Newton was up and walking – quite fit again. Felix told them there was still heavy fighting in France, Belgium, and the Low Countries and Newton felt they should try to rejoin ‘The Outfit.’
Dollhiem – who had also recovered quickly – was now very friendly with all the Tarot members, but Newton held back. ‘I asked some questions about how the massacre of Romarin had happened,’ he told both the initial interrogators and the Board. ‘They simply said it was one of those things. They had gone out to the DZ, ready to meet us, but were alerted that the SS and Wehrmacht had got there first. The girl they called Maxine apparently bicycled back to the farm in an attempt to warn SOE and OSS. But nobody acknowledged her signal.’
(Note on the file: there was no incoming signal from Tarot on the night of July 4/5th, 1944, in spite of stand-by operators being instructed to listen out on the usual Tarot frequencies.)
‘Felix seemed a good enough guy,’ Newton continued. ‘But I wasn’t certain about some of the others.’ In particular he cited a fat man called Albert, identified as a local butcher; two young men who were spoken of as St Christophe and le Teneur de Livres, the Book-keeper. He was not completely happy about either Maxine or Dédé, and another French girl they called Florence.
Another note in the file stated that, regarding the women, Newton’s dislike should be regarded with suspicion, as he had tried to have sex with each one of them. He admitted that to the interrogators, just as he admitted there were no takers.
In the end he tried to get Dollhiem to join him and leave, but the German-speaking American preferred to stay and told Newton he could probably be of help to the réseau. In any case, he felt that he was not yet recovered enough. So Newton left in the middle of the night and headed towards Paris. He told no one that he was going, not even Dollhiem. On his fourth day a German patrol arrested him. He gave them his name, rank, number, and the name of a fictitious unit. ‘Those guys were jumpy,’ he said. ‘Still and all, so was I. But I guess they were decent enough. They took me to a temporary military POW stockade where they did not even process me properly. The guards were old guys, and when the British finally got into the area, they ran away and we were liberated. ‘
(Note on file. Newton was captured three nights after the SS in Orléans rolled up Tarot.)
Newton, being fit enough, and with no unit, joined up with an assorted band of British, French, and American troops who had all somehow lost their original units. It was pretty chaotic in that area at the time. He ended up with the U.S. Ninth Army early in 1945 and was with them at the Remagen Bridge and through the rest of the campaign. In the end he rejoined his OSS colleagues – who knew and approved of what he was doing – in Berlin, from whence he was evacuated in the summer of 1945. A note attached to the file stated that by the time Newton rejoined the OSS he was a copybook case of battle fatigue, but pronounced fit and well again by January 1946. The interrogators added the comment that he appeared to be truthful, and, though questioned by several different teams, did not alter his story once. They were also ‘very impressed’ by his attention to detail and attested that his memory could not be faulted on ‘matters of record.’
Then the Tarot Board of Enquiry began to question him.
Chapter Twelve
Looking back on the whole line of interrogation, Naldo realised that the Board went for Newton like a careful pack of wolves. First they circled him, sniffing with innocent-sounding question, then, when they saw he had nothing with which to defend himself, they moved in and started to tear the man to pieces.
‘Mr Newton,’ the chairman began – and you did not have to hear him to know that he spoke softly, with no trace of guile – ‘Mr Newton, this Tribunal – er, this Board – first requires to test your, how shall I put it? Your bona fides. You understand what I mean?’
‘Sure.’ Innocence drifted from the line.
‘You’re a trained man, Mr Newton. A trained covert operator. Am I correct?’
‘Of course. Yes.’
‘Perhaps we should hear a little about your training, and your experiences before you joined the team known as Romarin.’
‘Okay.’ He waited for further questions but there were none. ‘I was invited into OSS – for training – in April ’42 – ’ He stopped again, as though needing help.
‘How did that come about?’ The chairman was so soft of speech that Newton had to crane forward to hear him.
‘Pardon me?’
‘How did you come to be interviewed?’
‘Well… Well, I guess I was asked to see this officer in Washington.’
The chairman would frown, Naldo thought, then fiddle with his papers. ‘We have a few – very few – of your details here…’ A long, long pause while he seemed to be thinking over the next move. ‘I’m correct, aren’t I? You were inducted into the United States Army in December 1941?’
‘Yes. Fort Mead. Did my basic there as well. I couldn’t wait to get in. Straight out of UCLA and I couldn’t wait. They took me first time off. A-1.’
‘Yes. You were recommended for a commission?’
‘That was after basic, yes. I did the officer-training course.
Then they sent me to Fort Bragg to wait for a posting.’
‘You expected what?’
‘To go to some infantry outfit.’
‘And what happened?’ The chairman was patient, calm.
‘They said a guy, an officer, wanted to talk with me in Washington.’
‘What officer was this?’
‘Never knew his name. Never knew he was an officer, come to that. Just a guy. In the old Willard Hotel. Talked for about an hour. Then he said would I fancy working in secret; maybe behind enemy lines?’
‘And you said yes?’ – from the chairman.
‘I was young. I’d achieved my dream since Pearl Harbor. I wanted to fight the Japs or the Nazis. It didn’t matter which. The guy made it sound glamorous. Intriguing.’
‘What happened after you agreed?’
‘He said I had the right qualities but I’d have to satisfy them regarding other things.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Well, they sent me off to jump school first. I guess they had to be sure I wasn’t scared.’
‘And you were scared, Mr Newton, like all of us.’ – The SOE officer.
‘Oh, sure.’ He laughed.
‘So you did a parachute course. Then what?’
‘It seems a long time ago. Lifetime…’
‘Several lifetimes,’ the SOE officer murmured.
‘Let’s see. I suppose I went to the Camp.’
‘Didn’t you do a couple of months somewhere else before Camp X?’
‘Yes, you’re right. A couple of months near Washington.’
‘Wasn’t it the U.S. Army School of Languages?’
‘That’s right. Yes, I did. I did a two months’ refresher course.’
‘To brush up your French and German. Your knowledge of those languages was the main reason OSS recruited you in the first place. Am I right?’
‘I guess so.’ Reading his curt answer, both Naldo Railton and Arnie Farthing sensed that Tertius Newton suddenly saw the trap into which he had fallen. He would be waiting, they thought, for the wolves to spring. But they only moved a fraction closer, as though they had not spotted the way in which his defences had dropped. He must have braced himself for the next question.
‘How did you like the Camp, Mr Newton?’ Naldo thought Newton must have breathed a sigh of relief – thinking they had missed his inconsistency.
‘It was tough. Very absorbing, but tough.’
It certainly was; Arnie had trained there. The picture came back into his mind. Oshawa, in Canada, forty miles from the main Toronto-Kingston freeway, perched on the edge of Lake Ontario: a sprawling old house and a large area of land, fenced and protected – on the south by the lake, on the north by treacherous and dense bush. The east and west perimeters had electrifi
ed wire as well as the constantly vigilant guards – British veterans of early raids on Europe. The huge area contained huts, disguised to look like barns, other odd structures, and varied kinds of terrain.
Arnie had been taken from the States – from New York to Roosevelt Beach, east of the Niagara Falls, on the U.S.A. side. Then across the lake into Canada, glimpsing blackened faces from the rubber boat as they stepped ashore. Like other OSS men trained there, Arnie got a medal for overseas service long before he came to Europe, because he trained at Camp X, Oshawa, Canada.
‘Who did the silent killing – old Fairbairn?’ – The SOE officer. Who else would have asked?
‘A character. Yeah, Fairbairn. Taught us a lot of tricks.’
‘He taught many of us the same tricks when he was at Arisaig.’ – The SOE again. Arisaig was SOE’s and SIS’s school in Scotland. The syllabus there and at Oshawa was almost identical, and both SOE and OSS trained at the latter.
‘Mr Newton.’ – The chairman, whipping things back into line again. ‘Your comrade in arms, Dollhiem – wasn’t he in your batch at the Camp?’
‘Nat Dollhiem? Yes. Yes, he was there.’
‘Were you particular friends? Close at all?’
‘I knew Nat. I think we were paired up in some night exercise while we were there. Blowing up a railroad line or something – ’
The SIS officer broke in. ‘We’re particularly interested in Dollhiem, Mr Newton. You see, he’s never been accounted for. A couple of days after you left the pig farm – after Romarin – the local SS rolled up Tarot. We’ve accounted for everyone concerned except the two girls you knew as Dédé and Maxine – and Dollhiem. Mind you, the man called Felix has only recently been found, so anything could still happen. But Dollhiem was not pulled in with the others. Nor was he executed.’
One of the lawyers spoke. ‘He flatly refused to leave with you, Mr Newton? Leave the pig farm where the French took you?’
‘It wasn’t really like that. We didn’t argue or anything. He just said he’d rather not come along. He wanted to stay at the farm.’
‘But he was fit enough to leave?’