Over and Out

by Michael Gilbert

It was as he reached the other end that he heard the rumble of the train in the distance.

  Don’t make a fool of yourself now. Extract yourself neatly and give yourself a quick brush down.

  A hundred yards to the station. No reason he shouldn’t break into a dignified trot. Natural enough for someone hearing their train approaching.

  The collector on the gate, who had been too busy with horse manoeuvres to see Luke depart, clearly did not recognise him, but scanned the ticket and waved Luke to the rear carriage. He regretted that there was no first-class accommodation on this particular train. Luke accepted his apologies and climbed into the carriage.

  Here he found three other passengers, farmers he guessed. It was evident that they took Luke, from his clothes and his capacious briefcase, to be a black-marketeer. As soon as the train got under way one of them attempted to interest him in the purchase of a tonne of potatoes.

  ‘First-class produce,’ he said. ‘I myself guarantee it. Grew it in my own garden. And if I tell you the price you wouldn’t believe it.’

  Hurrying to divert Luke from such a feeble project – who cares about potatoes! Pig food – the second farmer had something more interesting to offer. What did Luke say to a side of bacon?

  Luke managed to look inscrutable.

  ‘Of course, you’d have to pay for it with money, and the surrender of ration books. But I can’t think this would be an obstacle in your case.’

  Luke accepted the implication that he was supposed to be not only a black-market king, but also a forger of ration books. When he had indicated that neither of the projects interested him, they concluded that he was too shrewd a bargainer for them, and to Luke’s relief returned to the important matter they had been discussing when he arrived; the exactions of the Germans.

  ‘Looting,’ said the first farmer, ‘not buying or bargaining, but simple looting. No other word for it.’

  Luke was glad to agree that the Germans, as a nation, were without honour or principles.

  The men got out at stations between Auden-le-Roman and Moyeuvre. When the train reached Metz a number of other passengers got in. For the most part, he judged they were businessmen, making their way out of the city to their houses. Most of them knew each other, and most of their conversation was about money. By the time they reached Albestroff, the carriage was once more empty.

  Luke sank back in his seat and closed his eyes. Anyone watching him might have supposed that he was dozing, but he had no desire to sleep. He was well aware that the more difficult and more dangerous part of his escape route lay ahead.

  On previous occasions the whole trip – in and out by air – had run so smoothly that he had had little occasion to consider the possibility of failure. Now it had become a very real possibility and there was scant comfort in thinking about it.

  If, on previous occasions, the thought had crossed his mind, he would have dismissed it, telling himself that the life he had chosen to lead compared very favourably with the life of an infantry soldier in the line. Had not one of his sporting friends calculated that the odds on a subaltern surviving three months in the trenches were roughly the same as the odds on picking the winner of the Grand National?

  What he had not troubled to think about before was what would happen to him if he was caught, in civilian clothes, with forged papers, in enemy territory. No doubt about it: he would face a firing squad. If you fell in battle it was an honourable death, with a place for your name on your village war memorial. But to be shot as a spy? Nothing glorious about that.

  At this point he decided that it would be more sensible to stop worrying about what might happen in the future and think about the immediate present.

  Johnnie Hanover, who seemed to spend more time on the German than on the British side of the line, had given him exact directions which he had memorised. He had also spent some time studying the largest scale maps available.

  Basel, which stood at the point where the frontiers of France, Germany and Switzerland came together, was the most important junction in the complex tangle of railways that he was fast approaching. From it, apart from two local spur lines, one main line ran north to Strasbourg, a second main line ran south-east to Lucerne in Switzerland, and a third, east to Schaffhausen in Germany.

  To the Germans, alerted by Madame Delavigne and deducing his plan of escape, an obvious counter measure would have been to block the railway. But, however quickly and however efficiently they acted – and he did not underestimate German efficiency – it would have been a mammoth task, in the time available, to put a guard on every station in the area between Lille, Namur, Basel and Verdun.

  He intended to leave the train at Altkirch, two stops before Basel. From the map he judged it to be a place of no great size or importance. Once clear of it he had a five-mile walk, by minor roads through Feldbach and Deux Ferrettes, and a further two miles would take him to the frontier.

  He had to dismiss the uncomfortable thought that all station masters might have been warned by telephone to be on the look-out, and when the train reached Altkirch he was happy to see half-a-dozen men and women alight. He joined them, and keeping as close to them as he could, made his way to the barrier and proffered his ticket.

  Night was closing down now, and the war-time lighting of the station was so inefficient that the official at the barrier could hardly have been able to read his much-used ticket.

  However, he was so impressed by it that he dismissed the locals with a wave of his gloved hand and took it over to his cabin to examine it by the light of the single oil lamp that hung there. He seemed to be worried.

  ‘If you are hoping, sir,’ he said, ‘to reach Lucerne tonight, you should have remained in the train at least until it reached Basel. We have no further train tonight.’

  ‘I am making for Lucerne,’ agreed Luke, ‘but was not planning to get there tonight. I am spending the night with a friend at Feldbach.’

  ‘You require a conveyance?’

  ‘Three kilometres,’ said Luke with a smile. ‘I think my legs will take me there and back again.’

  ‘So. Then I will look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning. There is a train that leaves at ten minutes after eight.’

  ‘Which will suit me very well,’ said Luke. ‘I will wish you good night.’

  He recovered his ticket, now in a sad state through much handling, and marched off down the road. The station master stood looking after him. He was evidently unused to first class passengers who were prepared to face a six-kilometre walk.

  As he walked clear of the station, Luke could hear the telephone in the station-master’s cabin ringing. He hoped that the message was nothing to do with him and quickened his pace until he was through the village and had started down the road which was signposted to Feldbach.

  As he walked he was considering alternative courses of action.

  To be safe he ought to leave the road and take to the fields. The disadvantage, as he knew from past experience, was that it was only too easy to get entangled in hop lines and other obstacles, to say nothing of the fact that he could have half-a-dozen hedges or fences to climb or force his way through. On balance, for speed and simplicity, stick to the road.

  As he reached this decision he saw, and heard, a car coming and dived for cover. The car roared past without stopping. It was the only vehicle he encountered before entering Feldbach.

  Here, also, he opted for simplicity, and walked straight down the main street. For the most part, with the onset of night, doors were shut and curtains were drawn. Two men, who were standing outside one of the shops arguing, interrupted their exchanges and looked at Luke curiously, but made no move to stop him.

  So far, so good. Only two miles more to Deux Ferrettes.

  In the outskirts of this village, full of confidence by now, he was only just in time to avoid real trouble.

  He had been keeping on the alert for the sound of cars or vans, but had forgotten that there was another user of the road who proceeded silent
ly. At the very last moment, as he turned into the main street, he saw the lights ahead of him, and was just in time to get down a side turning as two bicyclists swished past.

  The riders were cloaked, and had the looks of policemen. Summoned on the telephone, maybe, by the station master at Altkirch?

  Luke did not retrace his steps, but kept on down the side turning, a muddy and evil-smelling tunnel. At the end of it he found a slightly better track, which took him back to the main road at the point where it left the village.

  Now he had to remember just what it was Johnnie Hanover had told him.

  Keep your eyes open for a frontier sign beside the road. That’s all there is to show you that you’ve reached Swiss territory. The police control post and customs barrier, neither of them very impressive outfits, are a further half-mile down the road. So, as soon as you’re past the post, get off the road. Set a compass course due west. From that point it will be a cross-country journey.

  Luke had no compass, but he had the stars to guide him.

  He could see the Greater Bear and the Lesser Bear, old friends, and he was now so full of confidence that he fell into a deep ditch, fortunately dry. After that he kept one eye on the stars and the other on the way ahead.

  And what were the guiding marks he had been told to look for?

  After a couple of miles, maybe a little more, you will notice, on the right, a compact square of woodland. Follow the southern, or left-hand side of this until you reach an open flattish piece of ground with – watch out! – a large, flooded clay pit in the middle of it. If you fall into that you won’t get out in a hurry.

  Yes. He could see through the mist that was starting to rise out of it, the flat, black, evil stretch of water.

  From there, for a further two miles, the ground rises steadily. When you’re at the top you should be able to see two small hummocks, like a woman’s breasts. Pass between them. From that point the frontier is a mile, perhaps a little more, straight ahead. Five lines of barbed wire, but not difficult for a man to slip through. Seemingly erected more to keep cattle from straying than to keep people out.

  Luke had followed these instructions carefully, and very slowly, because he was getting tired. The events of the day had drained him, mentally and physically.

  On his knees, at the top of the rise, he thought he could just make out the two hummocks that Johnnie Hanover had mentioned, but the mist, which he had first noted on the clay pit, seemed to be spreading and thickening. Don’t mind it. Just go on. Put one foot in front of the other and you’ll get somewhere in the end.

  He located the hummocks, and struck what seemed to be a well-used path between them.

  Now he started to count his steps.

  By the time he reached 800, though the mist was much thicker, surely, there, right ahead, must be the frontier fence.

  Also, he realised with a sickening jerk of his heart, two men. Dim figures patrolling slowly across his front.

  God’s blood, he thought, to have come so far and to fall at the last.

  The two ghostly figures, having crossed his path, had turned round and were coming back. They did not appear to have seen him. So, wait until they were a little further away, before they turned again, and if he was quick he could surely get through, or over, or under the wire. Once he was on French soil the Swiss authorities would not dare to touch him.

  He went forward in a stumbling run, lifting one leaden leg after the other, tripped on a root and fell flat on his face.

  The two men loomed over him.

  ‘What are you playing at, Lukey boy?’

  ‘Joe!’

  ‘That’s me. On my left, young Hanover.’

  ‘How the hell did you get here?’

  ‘No problem. Johnnie knew the place, and I was able to calculate how long you’d take to get here. Have you hurt yourself?’

  ‘I don’t think anything’s broken, but I seem to have buggered up my ankle.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Joe, ‘it’s just as well we brought a truck with us. It’s behind these trees.’

  Chapter Four

  Colonel Macdonogh had started his army service in the Royal Artillery, from which he had soon been transferred to the first of the many staff jobs for which his outstanding qualities fitted him. But he had been with the gunners long enough to learn from them a fundamental truth.

  It appeared to him in this form.

  When you are being trained as a gunner you concentrate on the business of landing your shells on the indicated target, both to satisfy your own feelings and to impress your instructors, but as soon as you go on active service your priorities change.

  You have one paramount and overriding responsibility, which is to help the infantry or armour to do their job.

  You no longer fire off your guns to make a comfortable noise, or even to kill a random number of the enemy. Before loosing off a single round you work out carefully, with the arm you are supporting, what is likely to help them.

  A single smoke-screen, laid down at the right place and the right time, might win a battle.

  When he was transferred to Intelligence, Macdonogh found that the same rules applied. Particularly when he had reached the top of that particular tree. As Director of Military Intelligence he was supplied with information from many sources and by many routes; by aerial and photographic reconnaissance; by the train-watching organisations that he had set up; by the Foreign Office, through its corps of military attaches; from the agents of M.I.6. who operated in enemy territory; from prisoners, if they could be interrogated before they got their breath back; from a painstaking study of the enemy Press; from deserters and from listening posts in the front line. Of all these sources he put the dull, routine job of train-watching first, and the romantic exploits of spies last.

  It was arguable that, in the opening months of the war, when the battle was fluid and most of the movement was by road, aerial observation was the vital factor. But when both sides settled down to trench warfare the movement of the enemy’s reinforcements of men and materiel switched to the strategic railways which lay, so conveniently, behind the German lines. It was here that the great watching organisations, the Dame Blanche in France and Lux in Belgium, supplemented by the unspectacular efforts of hundreds of civilian helpers, painted the intelligence picture and foretold the future.

  But, as Macdonogh’s analytical mind told him, all this information was sterile and useless, until it had been passed on, without delay, to the people who were actually fighting the war; which meant to army headquarters at Montreuil, where the GOC, Sir Douglas Haig, devised his plans and issued his orders to the five armies under his hand.

  And it was here that a real difficulty presented itself.

  Information could not, in the accepted order of things, be transmitted to Haig direct It had to go through his intelligence chief, Brigadier Charteris, a curious character in whom nobody except Haig himself placed much confidence. Senior staff officers spoke of him as a confirmed optimist who twisted and coloured all the information he passed on in such a way as to please Haig and improve his own standing.

  Junior officers called him a bum sucker.

  One of the fictions that Charteris had implanted in Haig’s mind was that the Germans were near to exhaustion. Their reserves were all committed and had been used up. One more decisive blow, just one, and they would crack. Such was the reasoning which had led to many of the pointless bloodstained operations of the past two years.

  However, Macdonogh was nothing if not a realist. This was the situation. No use fretting about it, it had to be accepted. As far as he could, he kept in friendly touch with Charteris, coming out to Montreuil as often as possible and preaching to him the realities of war as he saw them.

  ‘The Navy,’ he said, ‘has told us more than once lately, that we are losing the war at sea. I take that with a pinch of salt. I think they enjoy alarming us.’

  Charteris agreed. He had little use for the Naval Intelligence Division, or for Admiral
Hall, who headed it.

  ‘However, in my view, and I am not alone in this, there is one part of the war in which we are being comprehensively defeated.’

  Charteris looked at him with evident displeasure. The word ‘defeat’ had no place in his vocabulary.

  ‘Explain what you mean. In which particular part of the war are we suffering defeat?’

  ‘In the war of words. The battle of propaganda.’

  Charteris was drawing breath to demolish such a defeatist notion, but before he could speak Macdonogh continued patiently with his theme.

  He said, ‘You must have noticed from the Press that our alarmists on the home front—the peace-at-any-price boys—have been increasingly vocal lately’

  ‘A rabble of disorganised scaremongers.’

  ‘Scaremongers, yes. But I should hesitate to describe them as disorganised. Collated, rather, into small but powerful groups.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, to name only the most prominent of them, the Union for Democratic Control, the Non-Conscription Fellowship, the National Council for Civil Liberties, the Soldiers’, Sailors’ and Airmen’s Union, the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Socialist Labour League, the Stop the War Committee, and, most recently, the ones that call themselves the S.O.B.H., the Send-Our-Boys-Home brigade.’

  If Charteris seemed temporarily impressed by this powerful salvo, he rallied gamely.

  ‘So tell me this: when all’s said and done, what can they really achieve? They can make a lot of noise, but when they come out into the open—organise a public meeting—the only result is the speakers being ducked in the nearest pond.’

  ‘Exactly. And from this our enemies have learned their lesson. Public activity is self-defeating. So they have switched to a different track. And that is what I wanted to discuss with you. Have you seen this list?’ It was the list that he had shown Luke.

  Charteris looked at it indifferently. He said, ‘I believe I’ve seen it. Yes.’

  ‘And did it not strike you as significant?’

  Charteris paused before answering. He disliked Macdonogh, but he knew that the DMI had powerful friends in Whitehall and at the top of the government. And he had a suspicion that his own throne might not be entirely safe. Co-operation, not obstruction, was the order of the day.