The Last Letter from Juliet

by Melanie Hudson

  ‘To sway you, clearly. Because I have a feeling that although you won’t do this for King and country, you’ll do it for Edward. And I need someone to go and get him, but I want it to be someone wholly unconnected with any aspect of the operation so far. Edward is in great danger. We have a mole and I can’t trace it. Could be anyone.’

  I took a deep breath but I did not smile.

  ‘When do I start?’

  I started immediately. My training took six weeks. It began with escape and evasion training and how to cope under torture if captured. It wasn’t fun, but it was necessary. I was taught how to kill silently with a knife, how to make Molotov Cocktails and work a luger pistol. I also became a dab hand with a grenade.

  I hated it.

  Then I was shipped to an airfield in mid-Devon and joined a small team of male pilots who cared not one jot that I was a woman, which was refreshing. Our particular arm of the organisation was so secret that most of the military had no notion of its existence. I took a couple of days getting back up to speed in the cockpit before being kitted out with a selection of French personal items – clothing, cigarettes, shoes, jewellery and, most importantly, a new identity. My first name remained the same, but spelled Juliette, and my surname, already French but no matter, had to change.

  My new identity was that of a milliner from Brittany. My parents had been chicken farmers. They were both dead. I now lived with an Aunt on a farm, in Plouvein. Wilkins had done his research well. This was the place of my mother’s ancestry and I knew it well. I was given the address of my fictional aunt’s farm and told to make my way there if I ever had to bail or abandon the aircraft on the ground. It was my safe house.

  And then the flying began in earnest, mainly to Brittany. I did not fly frequently, but when I did fly the preparation was thorough and the pressure immense.

  Edward did not return home that month, or for several months and I realised how easily I had been duped, but by the time I realised this, I was in too deep. After just a couple of trips to France I realised the importance of the work and was awed by the bravery of the many men and women (parcels, we called them) who I either dropped or collected.

  A few months into my new job, Wilkins took me into his office for a private chat. Edward was injured and holed up in a safe house. They needed to get him back – tonight. The weather conditions were not ideal, but Edward’s safety, even in his safe house, could not be guaranteed. And then he told me the truth about Edward Nancarrow–Felix Gruber. Before the war, Edward had worked for a major oil company and was well-travelled and multi-lingual. He was trained in guerrilla warfare and had begun the war by rounding up German spies in the South West of England, spies who were on the Class A list. As the war progressed, he had travelled often to France working with the resistance against the Nazis and to destabilise the Vichy regime.

  But there was more. Wilkins was certain that Edward had discovered the secret locations of the V1/V2 rockets, but the information was so sensitive it was kept only in his head. But now, word was out that he was injured and Wilkins wanted me to fly to France, tonight, to bring him home. I only flew during a two-week period in any month, in line with the moon, a much necessary navigational aid when flying at night without instruments. The moon was waning on this particular night, on the very cusp of when I – or any of the other Black Squadron RAF pilots – would wish to fly such a sortie.

  Any pilot will tell you that some flights – some days – feel uncomfortable from the off. Even during the planning stage, the sense of unnerved apprehension cannot be shed. Yes, I always felt apprehensive before flying any of my missions to France, but this was something else. I had felt the same way before flying on the day my Anna died as I felt it now. The route, the weather, the moon phase, were all far from ideal. Then there was an unserviceability for the aircraft engine on start-up and it all felt wrong. And yet, blinkered by my desperation to bring Edward home, I was determined to go.

  I spent the afternoon memorising maps and the latest intelligence on coastal flak defences. I prepared my kit and waited for the all-clear to be sent from France to Wilkins to confirm that the pick-up was a ‘go’. I also studied photographs of the field the agent who was escorting Edward had planned for my landing. I knew the time for the RV and number of passengers – one.

  I was ready.

  After a far from relaxed dinner, I sat quietly and attempted to gather my thoughts. Wilkins appeared at ten p.m. to give me the special code that would be flashed by the resistance agent from his position in the field prior to my landing. Together we waited for a message come through from France to say whether tonight was a ‘go’ or a ‘no go’.

  It was a ‘go’.

  Wilkins immediately contacted the BBC for a message to be passed during their French Language broadcast. This was our way of letting the agents, who listened to this broadcast via secretly stashed wirelesses – usually while hiding in an attic or a barn – that the pick-up was on. My code name, invented by Wilkins, was ‘The Angel’ and the message for Edward simply said, ‘The angel is coming.’

  At midnight, with my fake French papers stashed down my bra, my escape and evasion kit (French money, concentrated food tablets, beret, women’s shoes), thrown into the hold, a map of Brittany printed on silk and a cyanide capsule kept inside a purple velvet pouch sewn into the lining of Anna’s flying jacket, my pistol in its holster and my father’s compass in my pocket for luck, I said my goodbyes to Wilkins, put on my flying helmet, jumped into the Lysander and slid the glass canopy shut. I went through pre-take-off checks, primed the engine and started her up. While allowing the engine to tick over until the oil temperature was 5 degrees centigrade, I tested the flying controls and brakes and chocks, opened her up to 1,800rpm, changed the propeller to course pitch before returning it to fine pitch and checked the magneto switches. Checks complete, I taxied to the grass strip that had been prepared for me at the back of Lanyon, waved my final farewell to Wilkins from the cockpit, let out the throttle, raced her down the field to 80mph, pulled back on the stick, lifted the Lysander away from the airfield and headed out over the Channel.

  With only the sliver of a moon and my father’s compass for company, I tried to ignore the fact that a vast and lonely sea (and German fighter aircraft) were only six thousand feet away from the belly of the aircraft and brushed my fingers over the compass now and again for courage and for luck. With no radio aids to fall back on I was flying purely by eye, dead reckoning and fixing my position using airspeed and heading while taking wind variation into account. I set a straight and steady course across the channel, heading for my first check point on the French coast and all the while keeping a lookout for German fighter patrols.

  It wasn’t romantic, or adventurous, or any of those things one might associate with war and covert operations. It was, quite simply, petrifying hell.

  Despite the blackout in France, I could just about make out the darker shade of grey of the land from the lighter shade of the sea. I had been given sufficient intelligence by Wilkins to plan the best route into France to evade enemy flak and on previous trips I had successfully evaded any enemy contact, but tonight, just inside the French coast, a coloured tracer curved up towards me, then curved away. I kept my course and somehow kept my nerve. The flak petered out and I felt my shoulders relax a little. Thankfully, the moon gave enough light to mark out towns and woodland and knew from my planning that it was time to descend and turn to a higher definition map to navigate precisely to the rendezvous field.

  The procedure for landing was this. The agent on the ground would set up an L shape of lights on the field. The lights were nothing more than pocket torches attached to sticks. The agent would turn one light on at first. As I approached, I would flash a code with my landing light, pick up a reciprocal prearranged flash from the agent’s torch (indicating once more that it was safe for me to land), then the remaining torches would be turned on. If no Morse signal was sent from the ground (or if the signal was corrupt) then
I would not land, but turn tail and fly home. On landing I was to keep the rotor running and spend no more than three minutes on the ground. The agents had been trained to find suitable fields and describe them by wireless ahead of time. The pilot had to simply trust that field would be suitable for landing – no ditches, low walls or trees.

  At eight hundred feet, just as had happened with my previous flights into France, I saw the light. At that moment, the fact that the passenger waiting anxiously in the field for our rendezvous was Edward, was not relevant.

  I surged my engine, flashed the bright landing light and, while nearing ever closer to the ground, waited for the secret code to be flashed back at me. It came, the remaining lights of the L-shape came on and I made final preparations for landing.

  But the landing itself was where my luck ran its course. The field was rough, full of drainage ditches and completely unsuitable for landing, but in the dark it was impossible to see just how unsuitable the field was. The aircraft was fitted with a super-strengthened undercarriage, but even my wonderful Lysander could not possibly withstand the brutality of such deep ditches. I had slowed on the ground to about 20 mph when the aircraft stopped abruptly as the nose pitched forwards into a ditch, tipping the aircraft to an angle of about forty-five degrees with the tail in the air.

  I was too stunned to move at first but then survival instinct kicked in. I slid back the canopy and scrambled out. My poor aircraft was trashed, disgraced and dishonoured.

  A man dashed towards me as I jumped down onto the grass. I ripped off my helmet and shook my head.

  ‘You fool!’ I shouted in French, forgetting momentarily the need for silence. ‘How could this field ever have been suitable for a safe landing.’ I turned towards the Lysander. ‘And look at my aircraft! Look! Look at it!’

  The man did not answer immediately, but stared at me. I had seen this look before. It was the confused gaze of a man trying to understand how it could be that a woman would be flying such an aircraft. He came to his senses.

  ‘I checked the field this morning,’ he said. ‘The farmer must have ploughed the ditches this afternoon. I’m sorry.’

  I put my hand to my head and felt something wet. I was bleeding. But I had others concerns right now. I needed to grab my survival bag, torch the aircraft and run. Two men approached. One was holding the other, helping him to walk as they struggled across the field. The weaker man, I saw as they approached, was Edward.

  ‘Juliet?’ he whispered, still leaning on the other man. ‘But … how?’

  ‘I came for you, but … I’m so sorry. The field … the ditches …?’

  The man who had approached me first spoke directly to Edward in a rushed whisper.

  ‘We need to get you out of here.’ He turned to the other man. ‘Julien, take Edward to the next safe house. She’s right, we need to torch the aircraft. I’ll stay here and see it’s done.’

  Edward spoke. His voice was weak.

  ‘But, Juliet? No, I can’t leave her.’

  My resilience rallied.

  ‘Go, Edward. I know this area. I’m strong. You know I am. Please …’

  Edward was simply too injured, too frail, to argue. He held me close and whispered into my ear.

  ‘We’ve been compromised. Run alone and evade in the opposite direction before heading to safety. Tell the agent you’ve been told to head to Spain, to try for a boat out of Santander. Don’t trust him. Make sure you’re not followed to the farm.’

  He turned and disappeared into the darkness. I grabbed my survival bag and threw it in a hedge, away from the aircraft.

  ‘You know how to torch an aircraft?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘You’ll have to shoot the fuel tank. Do you have a silencer on your gun?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Get on with it.’

  No dog barked and no church bell sounded to pierce through the silence. As my poor Lysander began to burn, we ran to the hedge where I had stowed my survival bag. I took out my French overcoat, beret and shoes. The man turned to me.

  ‘The Germans will be here soon. Give me your jacket and boots,’ he said. ‘And your helmet, too. They need to burn with the aircraft.’

  My boots were my ATA flying boots. They had been with me through so many adventures, Anna had even worn them. And my jacket … it was Anna’s and Pa’s compass was in the pocket. I handed everything over except the jacket.

  ‘Not this,’ I said.

  He threw up his hands but I was adamant. I would bury it away from the aircraft, but I wouldn’t tell this man that.

  ‘I’ll go with you,’ he said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘I’m better alone. I’ll head to Spain.’

  ‘To Spain?! But …’

  I trusted no one and all I could think was, what if this man was the mole, the double agent? What if he was working with the Germans and knew about the ditches all along? No agent worth his salt would have picked this field for a landing. No, I did not want him to know the location of my safe house. I’d planned my initial escape heading away from the field that afternoon with minute accuracy (due west for two and a half miles, reach a farmhouse, then north west). It would not be a problem to find my way there alone, even in the dark.

  We shook hands.

  ‘Bon nuit,’ I said, shaking hands one final time.

  ‘Bon nuit, Madam. And may God be with you.’

  ‘And with you.’

  I did not head straight for the farm, but headed in the opposite direction before circling behind a beech hedge, only to begin again in the right direction once I was sure that the agent had gone. There was a copse at the end of the hedge with the diggings of an abandoned fox den or a badger lair beneath it. I kissed my father’s compass, stuffed it into the inside pocket of Anna’s jacket, forced the whole thing firmly into the den, turned tail and making sure I kept low, close to the hedgerows and trees, ran.

  It was dawn when I knocked on the door of Ferme de Bray, which lay just a few miles from the crash site. A woman in her sixties answered almost immediately, her expression blank.

  ‘Madam Bisset?’ I asked.

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘Bonjour, Madam. Je suis, Juliette.’

  She nodded, opened the door wider and stepped aside.

  ‘Entrez, ma nièce.’

  I was led into the kitchen and immediately introduced to Monsieur Bisset – a calm and carefully spoken man with a spectacular bushy beard and hands like dinner plates. There was no time for refreshment or pleasantries. After being shown to my room – set up with photos of my fake family, a reading book with a page turned at the corner and a few clothes – Madame Bisset, now Aunt Cecille, took my muddy, soiled trousers and handed me stockings and a skirt to wear. Monsieur Bisset, Uncle Paul, cleaned my shoes.

  I was shown to a room in the farmhouse – my milliner’s workshop – and after gratefully feeding on a simple breakfast, was briefed on the workings of the farm, on my new family’s history and invited, finally, to sleep. The Germans may come, they said. But they were optimistic. My Breton accent was second to none, my papers were perfect and my fake family history watertight. I had taken the identity of a woman – their niece – who really had been forced to leave her parent’s chicken farm and had come to Ferme de Bray to work as a milliner. The real Juliette – who had just lost her parents and was niece to the Bissets, had, in fact, recently escaped to England on a boat via Falmouth to work for the Free French under De Gaulle in London, not that the Germans knew any of that.

  And so, for all the world to see, I was simply a young French woman, living on her uncle’s farm in a remote part of Brittany. But the Germans did not come. If my suspicions were correct and the agent on the ground had tipped them off, they were looking in a different location entirely. I did not mention Edward to my hosts and they asked me no questions. I stayed a month, working on the farm, only ever speaking French and playing the part of the loving niece. Monsieur Bisse
t would walk into the village from time to time, but no one came to visit and I stayed at home.

  Then, one evening, Monsieur Bisset pulled a dresser away from the back wall and unscrewed two floorboards. He delved into the recess and retrieved a hessian sack. The sack contained the component parts of a wireless radio. Madame Bisset built the radio and tuned into the BBC French service. As the service closed the newsreader said, ‘Les roses fleuriront cette année’ – ‘the roses will bloom well this year’. Madame Bisset shook her head when she heard this.

  ‘Tonight? No.’

  Monsieur Bisset nodded. I saw tears rise in her eyes. ‘But how? Where is she to go? She is safe here, no?’

  The wireless was put away with haste before anyone spoke further.

  ‘Prepare yourself, Juliet,’ he said, pushing the heavy dresser back to its place against the wall. ‘You are leaving tonight. Soon, in fact.’

  Monsieur Bisset rested a reassuring hand on his wife’s shoulder and spoke over her head, looking at me directly across the table.

  ‘You are going home. An aircraft will come for you, shortly after one a.m.’

  He opened a curtain and glanced out of the window.

  ‘There is a good moon and clear skies, but we must pray the mist does not gather in the valley.’

  Madame Bisset stood. ‘Come,’ she said, her body sagged with weariness. ‘Let’s get you ready.’

  I rose and followed Cecille up the stairs to my room.

  I said the word over in my head – home.

  On the one hand I was delighted, but there was still the matter of Edward. Where was he? I thought of our brief meeting on the night of the crash and recalled my suspicions about the agent who had chosen the fated field that night, thereby sealing the death of the Lysander. If I was ever to ask a question about Edward, it was now.

  ‘Cecille,’ I said, ‘I wonder, do you know if the parcel I was supposed to pick up on the night I landed is still in France? I was worried, you see, that the pick-up had been sabotaged by the agent … because the field was not at all suitable …’