Secret Army

by Robert Muchamore

  Ten WAAFs slept in the hut, but there were only three present. Luckily they included the teenager called Iris who Rosie had been hoping to find.

  ‘How’s it going, lass?’ Iris asked, in a north-east accent so thick that you had to concentrate to understand what she was saying.

  Paul felt embarrassed as he walked deeper into the hut behind his sister. It was a girls’ world. Underwear hung out to dry and he caught wafts of talcum powder and perfume, mixed with wet shoe leather and armpits.

  ‘I thought you’d be here at this time of day,’ Rosie said, lowering her voice as she approached the bed. Neither of the other girls seemed remotely interested.

  ‘Nowhere else to bloody well go, is there?’ Iris said, making it sound as if this was somehow Rosie’s fault. ‘I don’t mind if we lose the war. Then I can marry some nice big German and get out of this bunghole.’

  Paul was shocked, but Rosie was clearly used to it. ‘This is my brother, Paul.’

  ‘Aye-up, mate!’ Iris said noisily. ‘And there I was thinking you was her bleedin’ pet monkey.’

  Iris thought this was hysterically funny and broke into a high-pitched laugh. Paul had only known Iris for a minute, but had already decided that she was the most irritating person he’d ever met.

  ‘Good to see you’re better though, lad,’ Iris said. ‘Your sister was really worried about you the other night.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Paul said awkwardly.

  ‘Anyway,’ Rosie said, as she pointed at Paul. ‘This silly sod’s gone and left his parachute helmet in hut P, and you know what those instructors are like. Parris will yell at him.’

  ‘Oh you wouldn’t want that,’ Iris laughed. ‘Would we, sweetie-chops?’

  Iris grabbed Paul’s cheek with four porky fingers and shook his head back and forth. ‘He looks like a nice boy,’ she grinned. ‘Sort of delicate. Not like my brothers, they’re right little bastards. You know what, Rosie? Last time I went home on leave the eight-year-old pissed in me suitcase the night before I left. I’m putting his head through the wall next time I set eyes on him.’

  ‘Deserves it,’ Rosie agreed. ‘So have you got keys? Like, for when you do the cleaning.’

  ‘Nah, but she ’as over there.’ Iris shouted. ‘Julia, can you give this lass your keys? She’ll only be a tick.’

  Julia was pretty, and her willowy body almost seemed to float above her bed as she sat on its corner filing her nails. She eyed Rosie with suspicion, but apparently had no stomach for an argument with Iris and threw the keys to Rosie.

  ‘Thanks, girls,’ Rosie said happily, as she dragged Paul towards the doors. ‘You’re lifesavers. I’ll be five minutes, ten maximum.’

  ‘Eww,’ Paul said, shuddering as they walked on towards the classroom. ‘That girl’s voice is like chalk squeaking on a blackboard.’

  Rosie laughed. ‘I thought she fancied you, sweetie-chops.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Paul said. ‘Her nails were all bitten and her fingers smelled like tobacco.’

  ‘She’s a genuine horror,’ Rosie agreed. ‘I was in the toilet next to her the other day and she was shouting at the top of her voice about how she’d got in an argument with one of the officers and tipped an ashtray over his head.’

  ‘The girl is clearly mad,’ Paul said.

  Rosie mimicked Iris’ accent. ‘I told him, you put me on a charge and I’ll tell your missus that I did it ’cos you put me in the family way. That bleedin’ well shut the pompous git up, and no mistake.’

  Paul snorted with laughter. ‘It’s that big German she’s gonna marry who I feel sorry for. Fancy winning the war and ending up with her.’

  By this time they’d reached the classroom. Rosie checked that nobody was around before jangling the keys in front of PT.

  ‘Nice work,’ PT said eagerly, as he kissed Rosie on the cheek. ‘I snooped around the other huts for a bit. Walker’s sitting in the officers’ mess, drinking whisky and showing no sign of moving any time soon. His driver’s playing dice with one of the dog handlers.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Paul said.

  ‘Rosie, you act as lookout,’ PT said, as he tried reading the labels attached to the keys in the darkness. ‘Knock on the hut three times if you see anyone coming and hold ’em off as long as you can by flirting, or whatever. I need Paul inside, he knows which bags are which.’

  PT had the correct key by the time they reached the door of the hut and the two boys rushed inside.

  ‘It’s these five bags here, by the door,’ Paul said.

  PT pulled down the blackout curtains. To be on the safe side, he turned on the small light above the blackboard rather than the main lamps hanging from the ceiling.

  Parachutists need their arms free during a jump and have a chute strapped on like a backpack. As a result the equipment satchels were long tubes that buckled around your thigh.

  ‘Look at this,’ Paul said, as he opened up a satchel that had been destined for one of the other kids. ‘Broken compass. Army knife as blunt as can be and there’s all sand and oil or something in here.’

  PT opened a satchel that was earmarked for one of the four Norwegian women. ‘You’re right,’ he said, as he tipped the satchel up to show Paul the contents.

  This satchel contained double the amount of stuff, including high-energy chocolate, a fire-starting kit, waterproof maps and a compact torch.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ Paul asked. ‘We could take the different bags to the base commander and lodge a complaint.’

  ‘And prove what?’ PT asked. ‘You overheard them saying that these bags were for us, but you’ve got no proof. It’s your word against an Air Vice Marshal. All we can do is make the best of it by swapping some of the equipment around. But …’

  PT stopped talking as Rosie dived into the classroom. ‘RAF police,’ she said anxiously as she locked the door behind herself. ‘They must have seen us.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Paul and Rosie dived under the tables closest to the windows, while PT charged between the wooden desks and flicked out the light over the blackboard. They crouched in the dark, breathing anxiously as the wall clock ticked out twenty seconds.

  ‘Maybe he walked by,’ Paul said.

  But a key turned in the lock as the words left his mouth. Paul felt doomed as the RAF policeman stepped inside. Luc had already got in trouble and the base commander – who seemed friendly with Air Vice Marshal Walker – had threatened to kick all the kids off his base if there was a second incident.

  The lanky policeman switched on the light and peered about cautiously. Sweat poured down Paul’s brow as the policeman approached one of the satchels and began undoing the buckle that held the cover in place.

  Paul found this odd, but surprise was replaced by horror when PT sprang out from beneath the teacher’s desk at the opposite end of the room.

  ‘Boo!’ PT shouted, as he placed his hands on the officer’s shoulder.

  Paul thought PT had gone insane, but as the policeman turned so that Paul could see his face, he saw that it was the Polish trainee, Tomaszewski.

  Tomaszewski gasped and stumbled back towards the wall. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, as Paul and Rosie clambered out from under the desks.

  ‘Same as you, I reckon,’ PT smiled. ‘The uniform is a nice touch. How’d you get hold of it?’

  ‘Bribed a laundress,’ Tomaszewski explained. ‘So what have you found out so far?’

  ‘Ahh,’ PT said, as he pointed towards the airfield. ‘Out there on the airfield we’re trainees. But for all we know we’re going to be competing against each other in this exercise.’

  The Pole broke into a tense smile, PT gave the same smile back and Rosie went back outside to resume her role as lookout.

  ‘All I want are our instructions,’ the Pole said. ‘Have you seen any documentation in Polish?’

  Paul pointed into the corner of the room. ‘There’s two sets of four bags over there by the window,’ he said. ‘There’s only four of
you lot, so it must be one of those.’

  Tomaszewski looked happy enough as he crossed the room and opened one of the satchels. ‘Polish,’ he said triumphantly, before ripping a map out of a satchel.

  Meantime, Paul and PT had begun swapping some of the broken equipment in their satchels with newer equipment that had been given to the Frenchmen.

  Tomaszewski seemed content to take a set of documents and leave, but the kids made him suspicious. ‘Why are you messing around with the packs? Have you touched ours?’

  ‘Air Vice Marshal Walker hates the idea of us kids working undercover. Look at the crap he’s given us to work with,’ PT explained, as he held up a compass that was so rusty the needle hand was frozen into place.

  Tomaszewski smiled. ‘So you boys really are training to work undercover?’

  PT had admitted something he shouldn’t have and reacted defensively. ‘Well, did you think we were learning to jump out of aeroplanes so that we could go back to our mommies?’

  Tomaszewski pondered for a few seconds, then took a close look at the broken compass. ‘People will be much less suspicious of children,’ Tomaszewski smiled. ‘Used in the right way, you could be valuable. You don’t deserve this sabotage by Walker. But you leave my team’s stuff alone.’

  Paul pointed towards the five bags they were stealing from. ‘We’re only taking stuff from the French soldiers.’

  Tomaszewski nodded. ‘I don’t know how this exercise of Walker’s works,’ he said. ‘But I hope I don’t end up scrapping with those buggers.’

  PT looked up at the Pole and smiled. ‘If they make you nervous, how do you think we feel? Paul here is injured and isn’t coming with us, but Marc and Joel aren’t much bigger than him and Rosie’s only a girl.’

  The Pole tucked his documents inside his tunic and reached out formally to shake PT’s hand. ‘Good luck.’

  ‘Same to you,’ PT smiled. ‘Whatever happens tonight I’m sure it won’t be boring.’

  Rosie leaned in the doorway and sounded cross. ‘Will you stop waffling and get on with it,’ she hissed. ‘I told Iris I’d be back with the keys in ten minutes.’

  As Tomaszewski headed out, Paul and PT finished swapping the equipment from the Frenchmen’s bags. Walker or one of his assistants might look in a bag and the boys didn’t want to make it too obvious that they’d swapped things over. So they left a lot of tatty stuff on top, but made sure that they had two good compasses, working torches, waterproof maps and at least one good example of every piece of equipment.

  PT smacked Paul on the back as they headed out into the cold. ‘We’d never have got far with the junk Walker gave us. You might be staying behind with Takada, but if we pull this off it’ll be down to you as much as anyone.’

  Paul appreciated the compliment from the older boy and smiled proudly as they set off back towards their hut. Rosie locked the classroom before jogging off towards the WAAFs. Mercifully, Iris had gone walkabout and Julia didn’t bat an eye as Rosie returned the keys.

  ‘Did you get a look in the satchels?’ Julia asked, speaking quietly with an accent straight out of a posh country boarding school. She couldn’t have been more different to Iris if she’d tried.

  Rosie froze with shock. ‘Satchels?’ she said, trying to sound innocent as she flushed bright red.

  ‘Whenever Walker arrives there’s someone wants to get in that classroom,’ Julia smiled. ‘Usually we say no, but you seemed like a good sort. A few weeks back we even had a Belgian who claimed to be a count and offered us a cheque for two hundred pounds.’

  Rosie laughed. ‘Did you take it?’

  ‘We told him we only took cash. It’s pretty bleak up here and trainees asking us for keys is one of the few bits of fun we get. We even had the extra set cut in town, so we didn’t get into trouble if one of you ran off with them.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Julia,’ Rosie said politely. ‘You’ve no idea how helpful you’ve been.’

  The last of the sun had disappeared during their little classroom escapade and Rosie buried her hands in coat pockets as she headed back to the accommodation hut. As she got closer she could hear people cheering and broke into a run when she realised that their marks had been handed out.

  Between the next two huts Rosie saw Poles trying to knock down a Frenchman who’d climbed on to the roof of their hut and was kicking down sheets of snow, while another bunch were engaged in a snowball fight with the Norwegians.

  When she got up to her own hut, the door flew open and the five boys rushed out, pelting her with snowballs. Rosie yelped as snow hit her in the face. She tripped on the edge of the footpath and wound up with her bum in a puddle of freezing water.

  ‘You’re all dead!’ she yelled, as she scrambled to her feet. ‘I just changed out of my other trousers. Now both pairs are soaked!’

  ‘You got twenty-six out of thirty,’ PT told her. ‘Me and Luc twenty-eight, Marc twenty-seven, Joel twenty-five. But the main thing is we all passed.’

  ‘Oh that’s brilliant,’ Rosie said, her mood somersaulting as she moved in to give PT a kiss. ‘What about Takada?’

  ‘Thirty out of thirty,’ PT said. ‘Which is just showing off if you ask me.’

  Their embrace ended abruptly as a snowball hit Rosie in the head. She looked across and saw that it was Marc.

  ‘You think you’re getting away with that?’ Rosie roared, as she bent forwards, scooped up a handful of snow and yelled after Marc as he sprinted off into the darkness. ‘Yeah, you’d better run.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘Hurry up, move, move, move!’ Corporal Tweed shouted, as he stood in the doorway of the accommodation hut. ‘Briefing in classroom P. Put on some clothes and get out into that lovely snow.’

  It was half one in the morning. After lacing his boots, Marc grabbed a hunting knife and a packet of boiled sweets.

  ‘May as well leave ’em,’ Tweed said. ‘Trainees are only allowed the clothes on their backs and the equipment you’re given in the briefing room.’

  While the five healthy trainees scrambled around getting dressed, Paul sat up in bed, bleary-eyed, shivering from the wind blasting through the open doorway and glad that he could go back to sleep once the commotion was out of the way.

  ‘Good luck,’ he told Rosie, as she walked past his bed.

  Takada had also been woken by the noise. He stood at the doorway of his little room in his vest and pyjama bottoms. ‘Take plenty warm clothes,’ Takada advised. ‘Two jumpers. Warm gloves. If you have too many, throw them away, but too few and you’ll freeze!’

  Luc heeded Takada’s advice and turned back to grab an extra pullover. He looked at Paul with uncharacteristic friendliness. ‘You did good with all that sneaking around earlier,’ he said. But as always with Luc there was a sting in the tail. ‘Little stick-man like you though, it’s probably best that you’re not coming on the exercise.’

  Paul shrugged it off. ‘Try not to fight with the others,’ he sighed.

  Luc was last to reach the door and Tweed bawled him out in the doorway. ‘When I say move, you move. You don’t go back to your bed and start putting extra clothes on. Now shift it, double bastard time!’

  With the last trainee out of the door, Takada pushed it shut and wandered between the beds towards Paul. As he walked, he picked scattered belongings from where the kids had dressed in a hurry.

  ‘They won’t be back here,’ Takada said, as he took one of Luc’s plimsolls and flung it towards the suitcase on his bed. ‘We’ll pack everything up first thing tomorrow. McAfferty’s sending a truck up to collect everything and take us back to campus.’

  ‘I hope the others do OK on the exercise,’ Paul said, as Takada sat down on the next bed. ‘Whatever it involves.’

  ‘I’ll second that,’ Takada nodded. ‘If our unit shuts down, I’ll be back in an internment camp.’

  Hearing that made Paul wonder if he should have confided in Takada earlier in the day, but it was too late now.

  ‘Gl
ad I’m not doing the exercise in a way though,’ Paul admitted, as he glanced towards the blacked-out window behind him. ‘It must be one of the coldest nights I’ve ever known.’

  *

  Hut P hummed with nerves. Marc, Luc, PT, Joel and Rosie had been told to sit by their equipment packs near the door at the back of the room. PT peeked inside and was relieved to find things the way he’d left them, with the Frenchmen’s good compass and the chocolate rations he’d stolen from the Norwegians.

  Everyone shot to their feet as Air Vice Marshal Walker came in. He clutched a wad of briefing notes while his red face suggested slightly too much to drink.

  ‘Sit,’ Walker said firmly, as he stopped in front of a blackboard and turned to face the crowd. He continued once the chairs had finished grating across the floor. ‘I want you to listen carefully. I am only going to say things once. I will not take questions at the end. I couldn’t give a damn if you didn’t hear or if you don’t speak English.

  ‘You’ve all spent between three and six months at various training campuses within Great Britain. Now each team must prove its worth in a realistic field exercise. You’ve all been directed towards your equipment packs.

  ‘Each team will be dropped at a separate location in the north of England. The French team will parachute first, followed immediately by the Norwegians. You’ll then fly onwards for approximately fifteen minutes to the second target zone, where we’ll drop the kids, and almost immediately afterwards the Poles. This is your objective.’

  Walker pointed towards his assistant, Jamieson, who unfurled a picture of a large gun, mounted on a rotating plinth.

  ‘This is a twenty-millimetre anti-aircraft gun. These cannons have been fitted on sensitive military and industrial sites throughout Britain to prevent low-level German bombing. We will provide each team with maps, listing three locations where one or more of these guns are installed. Your task is to remove such a gun from its mounting and steal it. Once you have the gun, you must transport it to London’s King’s Cross station and present it at the lost property office alongside platform three.