An Eagle in the Snow

by Michael Morpurgo

  Even in the evenings he would be working away at his sketchbook in the village café, puffing on his pipe, drinking his beer. His sketchbook was full of drawings of the mountains, of the villagers, of the snow-covered houses, of the church, of the deer he had seen, the hares, the eagles. The local people were friendly enough – some of them even gave him a drink from time to time. They seemed intrigued by his drawings – the village policeman once. They were obviously delighted when they recognised this house or that, particularly if it was their own house; or this villager or that, especially when it was themselves or one of the family. Many of them were openly admiring of his work, and would try out their broken English on him. But always from the wall of the café the picture of Adolf Hitler looked down on him. Every time Billy looked up at it – and he tried not to – he felt recognition passing between them.

  Every day now Billy would go out walking further in the snow, every day a little closer to the Berghof, but still always, if anyone saw him, he’d be sitting there on his stool in the snow and drawing. There were often eagles wheeling about the sky, their cries shrill and clear on the air, so he always had something to draw, and something to show the villagers in the evening on his return.

  But now as he looked and drew, he was also searching out the best place to do what he had come to do, spending long cold hours on the edge of the forest, a mile or so across the valley from the Berghof, perched there high on the side of the hill. The house was bigger, grander, more imposing than Billy had imagined from the photographs he had seen of it. And there were more guards too, in black uniforms mostly. He saw all the comings and goings on the road – the cars, the trucks, the soldiers. But of Hitler himself there was no sign. If he was there, he was not going out for his walks.

  All the time, as Billy was watching the eagles and drawing them, he was asking himself how he would do it when the time came, and wondering how long he would have to wait, whether Hitler would ever come. Every evening as he sat there sketching in the bar he would be eavesdropping, listening for any mention of the Führer. He understood a little German – from prisoners in the last war – not much, but enough to get the gist of things, enough to say thank you and please, danke, bitte, bitte schön. There were often mentions of Adolf Hitler – he was much talked about.

  Then one evening, after a week or so, it seemed as if everyone in the village café was talking about ‘der Führer’. They were pointing to his picture on the wall, trying to tell Billy. There was high excitement in their voices, a new excitement. Something was up. He was there, Billy was sure of it. The man he had been waiting for had arrived. His moment had come. It was time.”

  “So for the first time the next day, when he went out walking, Billy took his sketchbook and his stool as usual, but he also took the pistol with him inside his jacket. He waited for hours hidden in the trees, longing for Hitler to take his walk, willing him to do it.

  He didn’t come. All that came were the clouds, rolling up the valley, giant clouds that soon shrouded the trees, the house, the mountains.

  Day after day, Billy waited. Hitler never came. But despite how thick the clouds, how hard it snowed, or how cold he was, he only became more determined to stick it out, no matter what. He wasn’t going to give up now. He never once in all this time doubted this was the right thing to do. He only doubted whether Hitler would come at all, whether he would ever have the opportunity to do what he had come for. He found if he concentrated hard on drawing the eagles, it helped pass the time, forget the cold, helped soften the disappointment.

  Then one afternoon Hitler did come, and when he did, Billy wasn’t ready for him.

  The eagle he had been drawing, which had been circling high over the peaks, went into a sudden stoop, swooping down, closer, closer, his talons open, ready for the kill. Billy hadn’t even noticed the hare, until the eagle was on him, landing in the open snow, only yards away from the trees where Billy was sitting. He had never in his life been this close to an eagle, and once he had recovered from the surprise, he drew fast, not wanting to miss the moment.

  Then, somewhere, a dog started barking. The eagle lifted off, lumbering into the air, the hare limp in his talons. A dog was bounding bounding down through the snow towards the eagle, towards Billy, hackles up. It was a huge Alsatian, his bark and his growl fearsome, intimidating.

  That was when Billy looked up, and saw Hitler, in his peaked cap and his long black coat. He was still some way away. He was strolling down the road, and there were six or seven other men, all of them in black uniforms, two of them readying their rifles. Everything was happening so fast and not at all as Billy had expected it. But he kept his head. The dog would not stop him. The sight of the raised rifles would not stop him. He was going to do it. He had to. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for all this time.

  He stepped calmly out of the trees and stood there on the snow-covered hillside, his pistol held behind his back, ready. There he waited. At his feet there was a spattering of blood on the snow, where the eagle had made his kill. Hitler was still a hundred yards off, with his soldiers, some of them running now down the road towards Billy. Billy waited, waited. It had to be close, as close as possible. He must not miss.

  But the dog was coming closer all the while, barking wildly, snarling. Billy had waited too long.

  The dog was on him before he knew it, leaping up and knocking him to the ground.

  He was flat on his back in the snow, the dog astride him, not biting him at all, as Billy had expected, but licking his face all over. He still had the pistol in his hand. He gripped it. He could still do it, if only the dog would get off him. But the soldiers were already all around him. Too late, too late. At the last moment, he plunged the pistol into the snow, thrust it down deep, as deep as it would go. Then they were pulling the dog off him, and hauling him roughly to his feet.

  Moments later, Adolf Hitler was standing there, right in front of him, looking him in the eye. Billy knew at once that Hitler recognised him. Neither spoke a word, but for a few moments both stood there, knowing one another, remembering. Billy could feel the hardness of his pistol in the snow under his foot.

  The two soldiers had Billy by the arms, gripping him tight. Hitler waved them away. Then he simply nodded, turned and walked off. The dog was sniffing round Billy’s feet, more interested now in the blood of the hare than anything else. Billy stayed where he was, the pistol under his foot, until they called the dog off. Then he found himself alone on the hillside, watching Hitler walk away, just as he had done twenty years before, and knowing in his heart of hearts as he stood there, that he could no more have shot him this time than he had before.”

  The stranger paused then for a few moments, and cleared his throat.

  “Well, that’s about it, almost,” he went on. “Billy came home to Christine, and told no one, except her, where he had been nor what he had tried to do. She said he had tried to do the right thing, but that it would have been the wrong thing had he done it. And he knew she was right about that.”

  “So how do you know then if he didn’t tell anyone except her?” I asked him.

  “Ah well, that’d be telling, wouldn’t it?” he said, mysteriously. “He’s a sharp one, your boy, missus. Just like Billy. And you’re a Mulberry Street lad just like we were. S’why I told you, all about it son. Like I said, no one else knows the story, just three of us, and Billy, of course. And he wouldn’t mind you knowing. In fact, I reckon he’d want you to know. S’how we live on, in our stories, right?”

  “All down to that ruddy dog,” Ma said. “I can’t believe it. If he hadn’t knocked that Billy over, then Hitler might be dead and the whole war might never have happened. Never did like dogs, specially not Alsatians. They’s wolves, more’n dogs.”

  “Let’s all get a bit of shut-eye, shall we?” said the stranger in the darkness. “Only one more match left. Better not waste it, eh? Still, you’ll manage without it now, I reckon. Be out of here soon enough.”

  �
�Good story, mister,” I said. He never replied. We went to sleep then, all of us. I don’t know for how long.

  The train jolted us awake, and a moment or two later it was on the move. Then we were out of the tunnel altogether, the train driver taking it slowly, I thought, just in case, and I was peering up out of the window looking to see if there were any more fighters up there. There weren’t. The clouds were gone too. It was a clear blue sky.

  Then Ma said suddenly: “Where’s he gone then?”

  The stranger wasn’t there. There was no one in the seat opposite. Ma and I looked at one another. “Must’ve gone to the lav,” she said. But the stranger never came back. A minute or so after this, the guard opened the carriage door.

  “Going to be a little late into London,” he said. “You all right in here?”

  “That man that was in here with us,” Ma said. “You seen him?”

  “What man?” said the guard. “There was just the two of you when I came in before. Weren’t no man.”

  I remembered the hat then that the stranger had put up in the luggage rack by our case. I looked up. It wasn’t there.

  “He was here,” Ma insisted. “He was, wasn’t he, Billy?”

  “Course,” I said. “Course he was.”

  The guard raised his eyebrows at us as if we were mad. “If you say so, madam, if you say so. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got a job to do.” And he went out, sliding the door closed behind him.

  Ma and I looked at one another. “He told us that story, didn’t he?” I began. “About Hitler, about not killing him in the war when he could have, when he should have, and then about going over to Germany with his pistol to shoot him in the mountains, and the eagle and all that. He told us, didn’t he? Weren’t just a dream, were it, Ma?”

  Ma reached down then, and picked up something lying at her feet. It was the box of Swan Vestas matches. She opened it. Inside were four used matches, one still unused, and that wasn’t all. There was a small black pebble, and a spent cartridge. She struck the match. “Real matches,” she said. “Everything was real. No dream, Barney. No dream.”

  Ma and I could talk of nothing else all the way to London, then all the way to Cornwall. It really was as if we had both dreamed the same dream, every last detail of it. But we knew, both of us, that it hadn’t been a dream at all, that it couldn’t have been. We had the evidence in the Swan Vestas matchbox.

  When we arrived in Mevagissey late that night, we had to tell Aunty Mavis at once all about the stranger on the train and the amazing story he had told us. We just had to tell someone. We showed her the matchbox, showed her the lucky black pebble from Bridlington, and the spent cartridge. Aunty Mavis was never the best of listeners, but she listened right through to the very end, her eyes growing wider and wider.

  When we had finished she said nothing; she just got up and went to the kitchen dresser. She brought back a newspaper and smoothed it out on the table in front of us. “This morning’s paper,” she said. “Look.”

  The headline read: “First World War hero dies in Coventry Blitz.” And there was the face of the stranger in the train, staring up at us out of the photograph underneath.

  Ma read it out, her voice a whisper. “William (Billy) Byron, VC, MM, DCM, one of the most decorated Private soldiers of the Great War, was amongst those killed in the recent Luftwaffe blitz on Coventry. His wife, Christine, a teacher in a local council school, was also killed. Mr Byron, who was serving in the Civil Defence Force, having been out on duty all night and day, rescuing people from the remnants of their homes, came home to find his own house destroyed. He was killed by falling masonry whilst trying to find his wife in the ruins of their house. Mr Byron worked at the Standard Car Factory in Coventry. He was forty-five years of age.”

  Henry Tandey is, rightly, remembered as an exceptional soldier of the First World War. But his heroism is embroidered by a story that, if true, is one of the great ‘what if’ events of history – moments in time so pivotal that one different decision forever changes the course of history.

  Henry, born in 1891, was the son of a stonemason and a laundress. The family appears to have fallen on hard times after Henry’s father, James, quarrelled with his own prosperous father. James is said to have had an evil temper, perhaps influenced by drink. We know Henry spent some time in an orphanage, but we do not know why.

  As an adult Henry was only eight and a half stone, and five feet five inches tall. He joined the army in 1910, perhaps to escape his family situation, or the backbreaking, tedious work of a boiler stoker in a Leamington hotel, or perhaps inspired by a sense of adventure. We do not know because Henry kept no diary. If he wrote letters home, none of them survived. Our knowledge of him comes from newspaper interviews, despatches and his medal record.

  Nicknamed ‘Napper’, he was initially a Private in the Green Howard regiment, which fought in the Battle of Ypres in October 1914. When the Regiment was relieved on 20th October, 700 of 1000 men were dead or badly injured. Meanwhile Henry had rescued some wounded from buildings under shellfire, commenting only: “We were lucky. We managed to get all the wounded back without a casualty.”

  By late summer 1918 Henry had been wounded three times and mentioned in army despatches. Then, in an unparalleled burst of heroics by a single soldier, Henry Tandey won the three highest awards for bravery in separate actions in a six-week period.

  First he received the Distinguished Conduct Medal. He had been in charge of a reserve bombing party. When soldiers in front of him were held up by German fire, he led two volunteers across open ground to the rear of the enemy. They rushed a machine-gun post, and took twenty prisoners. Next he earned the Military Medal for ‘exhibiting great heroism and devotion to duty’. He ‘went out under most heavy shellfire and carried back a badly wounded man on his back’ and saved three others. The next day he volunteered to lead an attack on a trench.

  A German officer ‘shot at him at point-blank and missed. Private Tandey, quite regardless of danger’ drove the enemy away.

  On 28th September 1918, Henry earned the highest British military decoration awarded for valour ‘in the face of the enemy’ – the Victoria Cross. Nearly 9 million British and Commonwealth people served at some stage in the First World War. Only 628 VCs were awarded, mainly to officers. His platoon came under machine-gun attack when attempting to cross a wooden bridge over a canal. Henry crawled forward, replaced broken planks under fire, and led the way across to silence the gun. Later, surrounded and outnumbered, he led eight men in a bayonet charge, driving thirty-seven Germans into the hands of other British troops.

  He had earned his three gallantry awards with his new battalion in the Duke of Wellington’s regiment. One senior officer wryly told Henry that his bravery could not adequately be rewarded because he had already won all the gallantry medals available!

  After the war Henry stayed on in the army. The only thing of note we know of his post-war service is that he was promoted to Acting Lance Corporal, but reverted to Private within a year at his own request. We don’t know why.

  In 1926 he moved back to Leamington, living an undistinguished civilian life. For the next thirty-eight years he was Commissionaire at the Standard Motor Company. But during the Second World War he acted as a part-time Recruiting Officer for the army and as a Fire Warden in Coventry. He married but had no children. He died in December 1977.

  Did Henry Tandey have the wounded Adolf Hitler in his rifle sights on the Western Front in the First World War? We will never know for sure. Henry recalled: “I took aim but couldn’t shoot a wounded man, so I let him go.”

  Hitler is known to have owned a copy of a painting by Fortunino Matania, commissioned by the Green Howards in 1923. Henry appears in it with an injured comrade over his shoulder.

  In 1938 Hitler told British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain why he had the picture depicting Henry: “That man came so near to killing me that I thought I should never see Germany again. Providence saved me from such devilishly
accurate fire as those boys were aiming at us.” Hitler asked Chamberlain to convey his thanks to Henry. Henry’s reaction was: “According to them, I’ve met Adolf Hitler. Maybe they’re right, but I can’t remember him.”

  In 1940, after the Germans firebombed Coventry, Henry worked to rescue people from the rubble. He was quoted in the Press: “I didn’t like to shoot a wounded man, but if I’d known who this Corporal would turn out to be, I’d give ten years now to have five minutes’ clairvoyance then.”

  Some have questioned whether Hitler would really recognise his ‘saviour’, probably mud-spattered, from a distance. Is it credible that he would remember his face twenty years later? But if a British Tommy did spare Hitler’s life when he lay wounded, who better, from Hitler’s point of view, to be fate’s instrument than the most decorated British Private?

  The story has been repeated as truth, and denied as often, but Private Henry Tandey will forever be linked with the tag ‘The soldier who didn’t shoot Hitler’.

  Discover more unforgettable books from the nation’s favourite storyteller.

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  Also by Michael Morpurgo

  Listen to the Moon

  A Medal for Leroy

  Little Manfred

  An Elephant in the Garden

  Shadow

  Kaspar – Prince of Cats

  Running Wild

  The Amazing Story of Adolphus Tips

  Private Peaceful

  Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea

  Born to Run

  Sparrow

  Outlaw

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