by Alan Holmes
To have my scapular medal blessed and validated, we returned to the priest who had confessed me. He explained to me that as long as I had the medal on my person, I would never die in a state of sin. I now viewed the medal as an insurance policy against dying. Since I was obviously in mortal danger during the interval of time between a full confession and my next commission of a sin, I resolved to leave a sin or two (venial sins, of course, such as white lies) permanently unconfessed to avoid the danger of dying.
On the day of my departure, Father and Mother, Brenda and I—and of course, little Jock—drove to Boulogne, a busy fishing harbor as well as the port where we would board the ferry to England. The atmosphere in the car was tense. No one said a word. Mother had acceded to Father’s decision under protest and was utterly miserable.
As we approached the docks in Boulogne, I made an effort to break the silence, which was only adding to my gloom, by announcing that I really liked the smell of fresh fish that was now permeating the car.
To this, Brenda unexpectedly said, “I suppose you would like your wife to wear fish perfume on your wedding day!” It was so unlike Brenda. I was often guilty of teasing her, but she had never teased me—and she had chosen the wrong time to start. I turned and punched her in the arm, not hard enough to really hurt but hard enough to shock her and start her crying. I immediately felt ashamed of what I had done and put my arm around her, trying to console her, and myself, for I suddenly realized that Brenda was also very much a part of the familiar world I held so dear. Tears began rolling down my cheeks.
All this crying came to a stop at the sound of air raid sirens, which started blaring as we arrived at quayside. Father told us to go inside the harbor terminal building that was made of concrete and might therefore pass for an air raid shelter, at least against shrapnel from nearby bomb hits. Then he drove the car well away from the waiting steamer and the dock, assuming these were the most likely bombing targets.
When Father rejoined us, he told us that the steamer’s departure would be delayed until after the all clear, so we went to a restaurant inside the terminal for lunch. They were serving five-course meals even though we were officially still in the middle of an air raid. Jock was with us; in France they usually allow dogs to accompany their masters into restaurants as long as the dog remains sitting or lying and behaves and makes no noise. Of course, Jock met these requirements with ease.
As we emerged from the building after lunch, a good hour-and-a-half later, we found a crowd of people outside, all looking skyward. A single Heinkel bomber, high in the sky but not directly over us, was dropping what looked like little white eggs. They were mere specks, but they grew in size as they descended. Then one of these capsules popped apart while it was still high above the ground, and a shower of leaflets scattered across the sky. One by one, about a dozen of these capsules burst open in this fashion. Soon, a snowstorm of leaflets was drifting down over Boulogne. The wind blew them towards the main part of town, away from us, so we were never able to see what the leaflets had to say. Father declared that they must be German propaganda. After circling a few more times and dropping more eggs, the Heinkel bomber finally flew away, and the all clear sounded.
I kissed Brenda and Mother goodbye and gave Jock a hug and an ear scratching. Then Father and I boarded the steamer, which left the dock without delay because it was running behind schedule. The image of Brenda and Mother standing on the dock with little Jock sitting between them is still clear in my mind’s eye. Mother was alternating between waving a handkerchief and using it to wipe her eyes.
As the boat steamed out of the harbor, Brenda and Mother became tiny specks, and Father started a concerted effort to cheer me up by taking my hand and walking around the decks, explaining how various things worked. He even obtained permission to take me to the captain’s bridge. Later, he took me down to the engine room where the engineer in charge gave us a grand tour of the boilers and the huge steam pistons. I was fascinated. In those less crowded days, people in such positions took the time to do friendly things, easily and without fear of consequences.
I had never known Father to be so solicitous of my well-being or so interested in talking to me. I suddenly felt privileged and honored. He was doing a great job of keeping my mind off the distant specks on the dock. I asked a lot of questions about the things he was showing me, and he answered them patiently, in a way that I found intriguing and easy to follow.
This tour of the steamer was my awakening into the realm of engineering. Until then, I had only been interested in the architecture, the shape and the layout of things, and how the various parts related to their use. I believe it was on this journey that how and why things worked first captured my attention in a major way.
Halfway across the Channel, the ship’s engines shut down, and we slowed almost to a stop about a hundred yards from a floating sea mine. A sailor in uniform appeared on deck with a rifle and took aim. On the very first shot, the mine exploded, making a deafening noise and sending up a mountain of white foamy water as high as the ship itself.
As we steamed forward once more, the sailor with the rifle told the gathered passengers that it was a German mine, dropped into the sea by a plane. “It wasn’t supposed to float,” he said. “Instead, it’s supposed to lie in wait about ten feet below the surface of the water for a passing ship. We’re lucky it was floating and visible.”
About half an hour later, we slowed again, and a second mine was shot into oblivion. “They must have dropped a bad lot of them,” said the sailor this time. “They seldom float up like these two. In the last month, we’ve had two ships sunk to mines in this stretch of water, and sunk very quick, they did.”
Our ship was taking a secret zigzag course through our own elaborate array of mines, which had been placed with the intent of preventing German ships from heading for the open Atlantic by way of the Channel. Father asked the sailor how the captain knew exactly where to zig and where to zag.
The sailor replied that our course was based solely on dead reckoning. Father explained to me that this meant keeping track of speed, direction, and the time traveled on each leg of the course, while making allowances for wind and currents.
At that point, the sailor who had been listening attentively to Father, chimed in cheerfully, saying, “That’s right, Sir! And if your dead reckoning is wrong, I reckon you’re dead!” None of the passengers standing nearby thought he was funny.
Father declared that we would henceforth travel by plane, if at all possible. In the meantime, he instructed me that I wasn’t to say a thing to Mother about the mines we had seen. “She would be worried sick if she ever found out about them.”
This being a British ship, it was teatime, so we went to the saloon (restaurant-bar), and Father ordered a plate of buttered Hovis bread slices, some preserves, and a pot of tea. He explained this would have to be my supper. Our delayed departure, our zigzag course, and stopping for the mines meant that we would not reach Folkestone until after six in the evening, he calculated. There, after going through customs, we would be hustled onto the boat train to London without time for a meal in the station restaurant, as originally planned.
The butter they served turned out to be margarine, which considerably irritated Father. “Agh! First it was those blasted mines, and now this!” he exclaimed in disgust, waving at the plate of “margarined” Hovis bread. “It all means this war is hotting up! In peacetime, margarine is not something they would serve in a first class passenger saloon!” he added by way of an explanation. Still sounding unhappy, but trying to put on a positive note for my benefit, he commented that the tea was quite good.
I proposed to Father that he might find the royal slice of bread (without butter but with margarine) quite tasty if the marmalade was very thickly spread. This was a bowdlerized reference to “The King’s Breakfast”, a poem that Father read to me every time he opened A.A Milne’s When We Were
Very Young. It was his favorite poem in that book. I had never joshed Father before, and he was a bit taken aback, but he quickly recovered and chortled with delight. He seemed to forget his peeve, and we both enjoyed our Hovis thickly spread with marmalade. At least I know I did.
The tea revived us both, for our spirits had been rather dragged down by all this talk of mines and the prospect of the journey extending into darkness as we steamed through mine-strewn waters. For good reason, the ship had been scheduled to make the trip in daylight. It didn’t take much imagination to realize that at night, without benefit of searchlights to spot floating German mines, our situation was far more precarious than in daylight.
After tea, Father and I went back on deck where, side-by-side, we leaned on the ship’s rail, watching an incredible sunset. We stood silently for some time, listening to the churning and frothing of the wake, the swish of the passing sea, and the quiet throb of the ship’s engines. To the west, we saw the red ball of the sun end its journey through a patchwork of orange and yellow clouds and descend behind a powdery-blue horizon.
Behind the ship, in a deeper blue haze, was the coast of France, and beyond that lay dusky Condette where Mother and Brenda would soon be sitting down to supper. Homesickness crept over me along with the encroaching darkness.
I thought of Mother and Brenda, of Raimond and Françoise, and even of little Jock. One after another, they passed through my mind, and I saw them in a remembered moment of pleasure or laughter. All of a sudden I was grievously aware that the carefree, playful existence I had known was almost certainly gone forever, and it seemed brutally unfair that my schooling couldn’t continue in France, near my family and surrounded by a world I was starting to understand and that I loved.
In the presence of Mother, Father had promised that I
would come home to France for the Christmas holidays. This promise was all that stood between me and unrestrained despair. I struggled to repress the urge to cry but couldn’t withhold a few silent tears, which I didn’t want Father to see. Mother had told me that difficult times like these would be easier to endure if I were brave and strong, and if I didn’t cry. That was easy to say, but I didn’t seem to have much control over the matter.
Father must have sensed the turmoil churning within me. He put his arm around me and said, “Everything will be all right, Sonny. Don’t you worry.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Holmes was born in Paris in 1930, and lived there for ten years. He was educated in France, England, Canada, and at Yale University where he earned his bachelor’s and master’s in civil engineering. Alan became a US citizen while serving in the army during the Korean War. His multifaceted career includes working as a test engineer for the US army, field engineer for a construction firm, structural engineer at a major architectural firm and, for many years, as a staff scientist at an aerospace company. Alan specialized in the structural analysis of unusual structures and, in the 1950s, performed the structural design and analysis for the Air Force Academy Chapel and for several freestanding spiral staircases found at the Academy. He designed, then built, his own adobe house and a sailboat, and enjoys photography. Alan took up writing when he retired and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.