by Terry Deary
This was the risky time. Aimee threw open the door as the French agents ran to the plane and Brigit passed the precious equipment to them silently. There was a small ladder below the plane’s side door and Brigit scrambled down it, followed by her mother.
The French helpers looked nervous. If a German patrol went past now there would be no escape. No excuses of ‘Sorry, officer, I was just walking down the Bray road at midnight and I saw this plane land’.
The two women ran to the east end of the field and lit their torches so the pilot could see how far he could go before he ran into the hedge at the end of the field. The two men carried the cases and hurried Aimee and Brigit to the gate on to the road.
The engine on the Lysander raced and the plane began to speed towards the torches. It was another time of great risk as the engine noise could be heard in Bray. The plane lifted into the starry sky and in the light of the moon Brigit was sure the pilot waggled its wings in a farewell wave. It had all taken less than three minutes.
The torches were turned off and the women hurried across the field to join the others. They didn’t need lights as they knew these paths across the fields well. Staying on the roads would have been easier but a German army patrol car could have come along so quickly they’d have had no time to get through a gateway in a field to hide. They’d be trapped like a hare in the lantern light of a poacher. And their end would have been the same. Shot dead.
When they were clear of the road they spoke for the first time. The tall, elderly woman wrapped an arm round the girl’s shoulder. ‘Hello, Brigit. You’ve grown since I last saw you.’
‘Hello, Grand-maman,’ she said.
‘I still say it’s wrong to bring a child,’ the larger of the men grumbled. His worn clothes were stretched over his body that had the muscles of an ox.
‘This is Charles Legrande – but everyone calls him Blacksmith Legrande.’
‘You weren’t here in the last war,’ the other French woman said. ‘Aimee was a child then, but she did as much as anyone to help us win, isn’t that right, Aimee?’
‘Thank you,’ Aimee said as they reached a stile in the fence between two fields and climbed over. ‘You must be Madame Marie Marcel… the teacher.’
‘I am… and the other joker in our pack is Henri Caron, a newspaper reporter.’
‘I remember Henri,’ Aimee said. ‘We were at Bray School together. Good to see you again, Henri.’
‘And you,’ the small man said. ‘Come back to save France – again,’ he said, and Brigit thought she heard a slight sneer in his voice. Aimee must have heard it too because she replied, ‘No, I’m just here to help the brave French people save themselves. Brave French people like you, Henri.’
‘And me,’ Blacksmith Legrande said as he puffed and wheezed up the slope of the fields that climbed from the river.
Then he stopped. And the rest of the Resistance workers froze as they heard the sound of a motorcycle whine down the road from Bray, followed by the louder rumble of a troop lorry trying to keep up with it.
‘The army. They heard the Lysander take off and they’re looking for the agents that landed.’
‘They are too slow then,’ Henri Caron said with a sniff.
‘They might start checking houses, to see who’s missing from their beds. We’d better get home as quickly as we can,’ Madame Marcel said. ‘Let’s meet at Colette’s farmhouse tomorrow, an hour after dark.’
Her schoolteacher voice got no argument from the others, who hurried off in the shadows of the hedgerows to the safety of their own homes. ‘Come along,’ Colette Fletcher said. ‘Our farmhouse is just at the end of this track.’ She picked up one of the cases and led the way.
The excitement of the flight and the race from the airfield had kept Brigit awake. Now she suddenly felt tired to the marrow of her bones. She followed her grandmother and mother up the dusty track, desperate for a warm bed and a long sleep.
Berlin, Germany
General Fischer stretched his weary legs. A Gestapo officer in a black uniform stood at the other side of his desk. ‘Time for my bed, Colonel Roth.’
‘Just one more report, sir,’ the thin-faced Roth replied.
‘Can it wait until tomorrow?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Have we won the war yet?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then it can wait until tomorrow. Goodnight, Colonel.’
The general rose to his feet and wandered out of his room to find the best restaurant in Berlin.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘We aren’t fools, but we need help’
Tuesday, 3 June 1941: Bray-on-Somme
The first meeting of the Bray Resistance group was as cold and wild as a winter storm from the Ural Mountains.
Colette had a table laid with home-baked bread along with golden butter and cheese made from the milk of her own cows. Brigit drank milk while Blacksmith Legrande supped wine from a half-litre tankard. Henri Caron, the reporter, arrived next: his narrow pointed nose seemed to sniff the farmhouse air with a little disgust. He picked at a little bread and cheese as if it were poisoned rat bait.
But when schoolteacher Marie Marcel arrived, the storm turned to thunder. She ignored the food on the table and sat heavily on the bench. ‘So, Aimee Fletcher…’ she began.
‘Aimee Furst,’ Brigit’s mother said.
‘Ah yes, I am forgetting you married one of the enemy.’
Aimee nodded wearily. ‘One of the enemy who came back here after the war to be a doctor.’
‘Then the people of Bray refused to go to his surgery. They spat at him on the street and drove you to Britain,’ Henri Caron said with a touch of joyful spite in his whining voice. Brigit decided she didn’t like the little reporter.
‘I understand what you are saying,’ Aimee said calmly. ‘But he hates the new Germany – Hitler’s Germany – as much as we do.’
‘I doubt it,’ Marie Marcel snorted.
‘But that’s not the point,’ Henri Caron put in. ‘The point is, we asked the British Secret Service for weapons to fight the Germans. And what did they send us?’
‘A woman and a child,’ Blacksmith Legrande said with a slow nod of his brown-bear head.
Brigit could see the anger in her mother’s eyes. ‘No. A trained agent and a helper that no Gestapo officer would ever suspect,’ Aimee replied.
‘We don’t need a trained agent,’ the schoolteacher hissed. ‘Henri Caron goes around asking questions – he is a reporter, so no one can guess he is gathering secrets. I am a teacher and I do the planning as carefully as one of my lesson plans. Blacksmith Legrande here has the muscle. Last week he dragged a huge tree trunk on to the railway line to Amiens and stopped the German troop trains for six hours.’
Aimee closed her eyes and tried to keep her temper. ‘But if you’d blown up a locomotive – or a stretch of track – you’d have done much more damage,’ she said.
Marie Marcel slapped a hand on the table. ‘Exactly. That’s why we need bombs and weapons, not agents and their brat children.’
Before Brigit could answer, Aimee said quietly, ‘Then the first victims of the bombs would be you. You aren’t trained to use them. I need to show you how they work, or you will kill yourself or innocent French people.’
‘We aren’t fools,’ Henri Caron said.
‘No. We aren’t fools, but we need help,’ Brigit’s grand-maman put in.
‘I need no help to spy on German troops,’ the reporter insisted. ‘I have vital information that will help the British bombers target the railheads and the troop camps, the weapon factories and the launch pads for the new rockets they are making. Rockets that can’t be stopped when they start raining down on London. Vital information.’
‘Useless information,’ Brigit said.
The adults turned to look at her. Marie Marcel’s eyes burned with anger. ‘How dare you!’ Henri Caron raged.
‘Let me explain,’ Brigit said. ‘You have all of this informati
on. But it is only precious when it is in the hands of the British. Now, let me tell you what will happen when you try to send it. The Germans have radio detectors working all the time. They will track down your radio. Where do you send your messages from?’
‘My office, of course,’ Henri said with a shrug.
‘So they track you down to your office and shoot you,’ Brigit explained.
‘Only after they’ve tortured him to betray Marie and Blacksmith Legrande, your grand-maman, you and me,’ Aimee reminded her. She looked at Henri. ‘To be safe you need to send messages – in our SOE codes – from the open. You send the message quickly so the Germans can’t track it. Then you move away in case they did get a bearing on your hiding place.’
‘I did it before,’ Henri sniffed. ‘I sent the message asking for help from the SOE.’
‘Yes, I talked to the radio people in Britain. It wasn’t in code and the experts said it took you nearly ten minutes to send a simple message.’
‘The Germans didn’t track him,’ Blacksmith Legrande said with a frown that wrinkled his wide, low forehead.
‘He was lucky. They weren’t expecting to find saboteurs in Bray, so they weren’t checking for radio calls then. That tree on the line will change all that. Their trackers are getting better all the time. If Henri tries to send a ten-minute radio message again they will catch him,’ Aimee explained.
‘So how do we send messages safely?’ Colette asked.
‘With a trained operator – I am quick, but Brigit is like lightning. At a set time every week, but from a different place – a wood to the east one week, a field to the west the next.’
Henri Caron showed a pained face. ‘And how do you get electric to the middle of a wood?’ he asked and sat back, happy that he had defeated Aimee.
‘Our radios work off batteries. They are small enough to carry in a suitcase and powerful enough for the messages to reach England.’
‘Oh,’ the little reporter said, and the smugness slid from his face.
Colette leaned forward. ‘The British need us,’ she said. ‘But we need the help of people like Aimee and Brigit.’
‘You would say that. They’re your family,’ Marie Marcel put in bitterly.
Brigit threw up her hands. ‘We’re all here to fight the Germans. But here we are, fighting each other. You’re supposed to be grown-ups. So, grow up.’
There was a shamed silence in the farmhouse kitchen. So quiet they could hear the marching of boots up to the front door. They looked fearful. Then came the heavy knock and the voice shouting, ‘Anyone at home?’ The man spoke in French. French with a strong German accent.
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘I’m afraid to open the door in the dark’
The French saboteurs rose to their feet in panic. ‘Quickly,’ Colette hissed. ‘Into the attic.’
‘No, Maman,’ Aimee moaned. ‘There is no way out from there.’
‘If they search the house, you’ll be trapped,’ Brigit said, remembering the lessons the SOE agents had been taught in the camp.
‘We were trained to hide in a place with another way out,’ her mother said. ‘Go out of the back door and into the barn. Brigit, you stay here. Marie, Charles and Henri, follow me.’
They hurried across the stone floor as quietly as their boots would allow, while Colette went to the door. She looked back and her eyes went wide in horror. There were six cups and plates on the table. ‘Get rid of four,’ she whispered to Brigit who understood at once.
Colette turned back to the door that was being hammered on again. ‘Who’s there?’ she demanded.
‘Corporal Rudolf Muller of the Gestapo,’ came the reply.
Brigit was still racing round the table and putting the dirty plates in the sink, rinsing them and drying them. She would need another minute.
‘I’m an old lady… alone here except for my young granddaughter. Can’t you come back in the daylight? I’m afraid to open the door in the dark.’
‘I don’t mean you any harm,’ Corporal Rudolf said.
‘You’re the Gestapo.’
‘Not tonight,’ he replied.
‘But you said you were,’ Colette reminded him. Brigit was drying the plates and tankards with a cloth and putting them back on the dresser.
‘I am, but tonight I am off duty. I don’t even have a gun with me. Open the door and see.’
Brigit nodded to her grand-maman to show she’d finished and threw herself on to one of the benches at the table as Colette opened the door. The soldier was almost as old as Colette and his watery eyes squinted into the kitchen.
‘What do you want?’ Colette asked.
‘Let me in and I’ll explain.’
Colette threw open the door and the man shuffled inside. He glanced at the table and he stopped. ‘Oh, madame, that looks tasty.’
‘All home-made,’ Colette said. ‘I am Colette Fletcher, and this is my granddaughter, Brigit.’
‘A pleasure to meet you,’ the man said and removed his cap. His eyes stayed fixed on the table.
‘Would you like a little wine, cheese and bread?’ Colette asked. ‘There’s a little too much for Brigit and me.’
‘There’s a little too much for half a dozen people,’ Corporal Rudolf chuckled.
Brigit chewed her lip, annoyed. That had been careless. Colette spoke slowly, thinking of her explanation as she spoke it. ‘It was meant to be supper for the farm workers,’ she began.
‘But one of them had an accident with a hay fork,’ Brigit put in.
‘By the time we’d bandaged his foot it was getting dark,’ her grand-maman said.
‘And the Gestapo don’t allow French people out after dark – you have a curfew – so they had to run off to their homes before it got too late and you shot them,’ Brigit finished.
The old man sniffed a wet drop from his nose. ‘Back in the last war we had the Turnip Winter. In 1916 our bread was made with potatoes. Horrible. But that year we had a potato famine. So in the winter of 1917 our bread was made with turnips. Black turnip bread. Even worse. Our coffee was made from finest tree bark and acorns. Tastes disgusting, but it’s all we’ve had. That’s why we lost the war. It wasn’t losing the battles. It was being starved till we gave in.’
Colette knew all about the turnip winter and the suffering German soldiers but said nothing except, ‘So would you like some of my bread and cheese?’
‘Yes, please,’ the old man said and hurried to sit next to Brigit, who cut him a slice and buttered it.
‘You seem a bit old for the ruthless Gestapo,’ she said.
Corporal Rudolf chewed greedily and spoke through a shower of crumbs. ‘The best troops are guarding the important places and the places where the French Resistance are active – trying to spy and wreck our factories. Bray was such a quiet place they just need someone like me to keep an eye on the town. Me and my boss, Major Strauss.’
‘I’m sure you are worth ten ordinary soldiers anyway,’ Brigit said.
‘I am. But all that’s about to change. Some French clown put a tree across the rail tracks and stopped a train. The Resistance are moving into Bray. I think we’re about to receive a full brigade of Gestapo. The ruthless ones. Putting that tree on the track was a careless mistake. The Resistance will be crushed within a month.’
‘And you?’ Colette asked.
‘Probably sent back to my job in Hanover. I’m a postman, you know?’
‘So,’ Brigit said carefully, remembering the facts, ‘the Gestapo in Bray consists of an old soldier and a major… at the moment?’
‘Plus a regular army unit of fifty men,’ the old man added helpfully. Then he laughed. ‘You should have seen the panic at the camp when they had reports of an enemy plane landing at the old airfield last night. Racing around like cats with tin cans tied to their tails.’
‘Goodness,’ Colette cried and held a hand to her mouth. ‘Enemy agents, landed in Bray? We are so lucky we have you to protect us… except you don’t have a
gun.’
‘The army are searching. The Gestapo will deal with them when they’re caught.’
‘Of course,’ Brigit said. ‘So why are you here – in Grand-maman’s farmhouse?’
‘Ah. That’s personal. You see, in the last war I spent some time here. I fell sick with the influenza in 1918. They brought me here to recover and be treated by a wonderful doctor and his helper.’
‘Doctor Weger and young Marius Furst,’ Colette said.
Corporal Rudolf looked surprised, then slapped his forehead. ‘Of course, you’d have been here at the time. But they were wonderful to me. I just wanted to come back and see how the old place was getting on.’
‘Better than the last war. We aren’t in the middle of the war zone this time,’ Colette explained. ‘No troops and lorries and tanks and guns rolling through Bray – no shells dropping on the town. So now you’ve seen it, and been well fed, you can go back happy?’
‘Ah, no. I was hoping to see just one more thing.’
‘Come back in the daylight and I’ll show you around,’ Colette offered.
‘I don’t want to trouble you. But before I get sent back I’d like one last look at the place where Doctor Weger saved my life.’
‘Where was that?’ Brigit asked.
‘I’d like to look in the barn,’ Corporal Rudolf Muller said.
And Brigit gave a silent groan.
Berlin
General Fischer was fat. His smart black uniform was cut from the finest cloth and the wide leather belt tried its best to hold in his bulging belly. But he was fat and his eyes looked out like little coals through folds of lard. He tapped on the map in his office.
‘Colonel Roth,’ he said to the pale-faced, hawk-nosed officer beside him. ‘I had a phone call from the Gestapo message centre. It seems a train came off the tracks near this little town of Bray last week. What do we know about it?’