by John Harris
‘He spoke French. I thought he was Alsatian.’
‘He’s a German agent, whatever nationality he is. And the Germans are after Montrouge because he can give us information and they’re desperate to prevent that.’
‘I understand.’
‘Where is Montrouge now?’
‘In Paris.’
‘You have the address?’
She nodded.
‘Will you take me to him?’
She nodded again, tiredly, and he straightened up briskly.
‘Right, I’m going to take this filth to the police. Lock the doors after me. I’ll be back–’
‘No!’ The cry was almost a scream. ‘No! Don’t leave me here! Please! Let me come with you.’
He paused. ‘Very well. Collect anything you’re likely to need. We may not come back.’
He was surprised to see it was growing light as they pushed the injured man into the car. There had been a brief inquisition in the living room before they had helped him outside. He had said his name was Wiart, Alois Wiart, but refused to admit he worked for the Germans.
‘Who sent you here?’ Woodyatt demanded.
‘Nobody.’
Woodyatt hit him hard across the face. He made no sound so Woodyatt grabbed at his injured arm. This time he screamed. ‘No!’
‘I’ll break the other. Who sent you?’
‘Zamerski.’
‘Full name?’
His eyes wild, his face damp with sweat from the pain, Wiart moaned. ‘Hanno Zamerski.’
‘What’s he want?’
‘I don’t know. I was told to get an address, that’s all.’
‘Why?’
Wiart explained between sobs and gasps that Montrouge had been described as a wealthy man. With things as they were along the frontier, he had been persuaded it was a good time in the confusion to put pressure on him for money.
‘I don’t believe a word of it. Who’s Zamerski? Is he a German agent?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why does he want Montrouge’s address?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.’
‘What’s he look like?’
‘Tall, fair.’
‘Was he in Metz?’
‘Yes. Yes.’
Dominique strapped the injured limb to Wiart’s chest. She showed no emotion, not even when he moaned in anguish. As they helped him into the car he cried out again. But Woodyatt had no time to waste. He gave Wiart’s gun to Dominique and told her to watch him. ‘If he tries anything,’ he said, ‘shoot him. Could you?’
‘Yes.’
As they passed the cathedral on the way to the police station, she asked him to stop. ‘I want to say a little prayer. I wish to thank God for my deliverance.’
It seemed to Woodyatt that God had had far less to do with her deliverance than James Woodyatt but he didn’t argue.
He waited in the car in a fury of impatience, listening to the moans of Wiart from the rear seat. When she returned she asked if he never went to church.
‘No,’ he said.
The police station was busy when they entered.
‘Look after this,’ Woodyatt said, indicating Wiart. ‘He’s a spy.’
The police brigadier seemed to think he was panicking. ‘Everybody’s telling us about spies,’ he said. ‘What’s he done?’
‘He burned me,’ Dominique said.
‘Why?’
‘For information.’
‘You’re Dominique Sardier. I know you. You’re a teacher. What information can you have? And how do we know he burned you?’
‘Do you want me to strip and show you the marks?’
The policeman looked startled but Dominique’s expression didn’t alter. Woodyatt had a feeling that her loathing for Wiart was such that she would have done just that if asked. But they got nowhere and in the end Woodyatt pushed Wiart back in the car.
‘That man’s injured,’ the brigadier said.
‘I know,’ Woodyatt agreed, ‘I injured him.’
‘He should go to hospital.’
‘He’s going to prison first. And if you won’t accept him I’ll find someone who will.’
As they took the Paris road, they passed an RAF airfield. It was small and the machines were all on the ground. The men sprawled round them looked exhausted, as if they’d been flying for days. They weren’t interested in Wiart.
‘Sorry old boy,’ one of them said. ‘We’ve got quite enough with Jerry. We’re expecting to be off again at any moment. They’ve bombed Joinville, St Dizier and Châlons.’
Even as he spoke a telephone bell went. Someone shouted and they all started running for the aircraft.
Woodyatt watched the planes leave the ground, then he buttonholed a sergeant who was passing on a bicycle. ‘Where’s your guardroom?’ he asked.
‘We haven’t got one,’ the sergeant said. ‘We’ve only just arrived here and we haven’t had time to arrange one.’
‘What do you do with your prisoners?’
‘We haven’t got any.’
Woodyatt was growing angry. ‘Suppose you shot down a Dornier and the crew survived? What would you do with them?’
‘Send them to headquarters.’
‘Suppose you hadn’t time? Surely to Christ you’d lock ’em up!’
‘Well, there’s a shed over there. We could stick ’em in there. There’s a key in the door.’
Woodyatt drove to the shed, the sergeant following because he was curious to know what was going on.
As Wiart was dragged from the car, he yelled out – making the sergeant even more curious. ‘That feller’s hurt,’ he said. ‘He ought to see the MO.’
‘Save the MO for your own casualties.’ Woodyatt shoved Wiart into the shed and slammed the door. ‘Do what you like with him,’ he said. ‘But don’t let him go.’ Taking the heavy key from the lock, he threw it as far as he could into the next field.
‘You can’t do that!’ the sergeant was indignant. ‘Suppose we have to leave in a hurry? We shan’t be able to get him out.’
‘You could always set fire to the shed,’ Woodyatt suggested heading for the car.
Seven
As Woodyatt headed for Paris with Dominique, they began to hear news of what was happening in the East. After making their first strike round the northern end of the Maginot line through Belgium, the Germans had directed a second blow through the Ardennes that had caught the French army completely off-balance.
Already the situation shown on the maps in the newspapers was beginning to look disquieting. The campaign in Holland had almost ended and the fate of Belgium seemed to be all but sealed. Glider-borne troops had captured modern fortresses and bridges over the Albert Canal. The Belgian air force, with its outdated planes, was helpless. The RAF had taken over the attempt to destroy the Maastricht bridges and its bomber force had shrunk to almost nothing. The front already seemed to be crumbling in a welter of indecision.
News sheets were announcing parachutists everywhere and everybody was expecting Mussolini to join in with an attack in the South.
Queen Wilhelmina of Holland had had to bolt for Britain and whenever Woodyatt stopped the car, they found people asking what would happen if the French Army turned out to be as useless against the German panzers as the vaunted Polish cavalry, the flooding of Holland and the Albert Canal had proved to be.
‘I shall shoot myself rather than live under the Germans,’ they heard one old man say. ‘I had to suffer them from 1914 to 1918. But not again.’
The British front seemed to be holding but the BEF was being ordered to withdraw to the River Escaut because the French front on their right had been broken. Woodyatt, who had been brought up to believe that the French generals were the best strategists in the world, began to wonder if somebody had got it wrong. It was also beginning to look as if the Chamberlain government in England had been totally incompetent. The soldiers he spoke to were hoping that Churchill, who had taken Chamberlain’s place, would stuff his cab
inet with a lot of crooks.
‘The honest men don’t seem to have done much good,’ a tired-looking RASC officer said. He was angry because something had gone wrong with the communications system. ‘Either that,’ he guessed, ‘or the bloody Germans have got into it. Troop carriers aren’t turning up and lorries are going astray. We’re going to have to retreat and it looks as if we’re going to have to do it on our own two feet.’
Dominique was bewildered by what was happening around them. She was still unable to appreciate Montrouge’s involvement.
‘But what did he do?’ she asked.
‘He went over to the Germans. He gave them military secrets.’
She seemed unable to believe him. ‘But why?’
The need to explain was interrupted by a halt to identify themselves to a group of young British soldiers manning a barricade. The tommies had received reports of parachutists seen coming down with unexplained streaks of light. The streaks had turned out to be tracer bullets and no parachutes had been found but the alarm had affected everybody and they were all on edge. During the halt, a flood of refugees arrived. They came in cars and buses and on bicycles, carrying blankets tied with string.
The confusion was unbelievable and there were enormous crowds of Belgian soldiers evacuating with far greater purposefulness than the civilians. By this time, the quiet skies of the first days of May had vanished and aircraft were constantly heard overhead. Several times Woodyatt’s car was showered by spent cartridges fired by the fighters.
The full extent of the catastrophe was not yet known, however, because the newspapers were vague. When the wireless worked it seemed only able to repeat ad nauseam the prepared reports that indicated that all was going well, when quite obviously it wasn’t. One thing that was certain was that the Germans were across the Meuse at Sedan and running wild behind the French lines. No one knew exactly where they were, only that the French Ninth Army had been routed.
‘For Christ’s sake, keep your eyes peeled, sir,’ a British sergeant told Woodyatt. ‘The bastards could turn up any time.’
There seemed to be French deserters everywhere, dirty in their ill-fitting greatcoats and crested blue steel helmets. Most of them were without rifles, just the long ugly, sword-bayonets hanging from their belts. They were reservists, middle-aged men out of condition, overweight and pallid under their grime. Some had even removed their boots. Among them were Algerian or Senegalese colonial troops, including a whole crowd of them who watched a white NCO, unshaven and with bloodshot eyes, trying to drag a horse to its feet. As Woodyatt and his passenger passed, the horse lifted its head and let it fall back with a thump that seemed to shake the earth.
Occasionally they saw groups of senior French officers. They seemed bewildered and demoralised and there were wild rumours of subalterns and NCOs, who had tried to stop the rot, being shot by their own men. The deserters had stories of thousands of German tanks and paratroopers everywhere behind them.
The few British they met seemed to have lost all confidence in their French allies. There were no flowers to be seen now, and the sullen populace were too engrossed in their own problems to be interested in the BEF. While whole villages were deserted by all but cats and dogs and frightening in their stillness, the roads leading to the coast grew more choked with every hour. At a village called Marchain, they stopped at a café because Dominique craved a coffee but the waitress was just wheeling out a bicycle. ‘No service,’ she said. She looked at Woodyatt’s uniform. ‘In case you don’t know, the Boches are due here at any moment.’
Despite the fact that Amiens was so close to Paris, they were on the road for two days. They managed by bribery to obtain a room for Dominique the first night, while Woodyatt slept in the car. The following day they were just passing as a bomber crashed among nearby trees and two French Bloc fighters came in to land in a field alongside. The traffic had come to a stop and one of the fighters halted close to the boundary fence. They watched as the soldiers lifted the pilot out, his head like a mop of blood.
By this time they were among British line-of-communication troops who, having collected every comfort they could to make the bitter winter easy, had been told to pull back and who could be seen carrying radios, football boots and tennis rackets.
When they bumped into British officers of any seniority, however, Woodyatt was pleased to see how efficient they seemed to be.
‘It’s no longer “On ne passe pas,”’ one of them observed dryly. ‘It’s now a case of “Mon Dieu, already?”’
At this Dominique gave an angry look, but said nothing. She was tougher than she looked and seemed to have recovered from the shock of what Wiart had done to her. She was calm and willing to be helpful, though Woodyatt had a feeling she still didn’t trust him.
Near a village called Wassigne-en-Bois, Woodyatt was driving almost automatically. He seemed to have been driving forever and he was just looking forward to a halt when Dominique snatched at his arm. ‘Stop!’
He was about to ask why when just ahead he saw a tank. Instinctively he knew it was German because he had never seen a British tank of that size. Looking round desperately, he saw a side road on his left and swung the car into it. It led to another small village and they stopped at the end of the street to investigate.
There was no sign of life but there were bicycles parked outside a bar. Peering through the window, Woodyatt was horrified to find himself staring at Germans. They wore helmets and tunics with their sleeves rolled up, and the tables were piled with their weapons. Behind the bar, the owner, his eyes like saucers, was placing bottles on the counter.
Creeping away, Woodyatt found Dominique nervously waiting by the car. ‘Get in,’ he snapped.
Turning the vehicle round, he headed out of the village only to run into a group of French cavalrymen who blocked the road with their horses. To pass them, Woodyatt drove the car with its near wheels on a steep bank so that it leaned over at an incredible angle. Dominique stood up in her seat.
‘Les Allemands’ she screamed, pointing.
As they drove free of the bank, they became aware of the cavalrymen swinging their horses round in confusion and the clattering of hooves as they smashed their way through the hedge into the neighbouring field. As the car neared the main road again, Dominique shrieked.
‘There’s another!’ she yelled and Woodyatt saw the turret and gun of what could only be a second German tank.
‘In here!’ she panicked.
They were passing the open gate to a farmyard and, without arguing, Woodyatt swung the car through it. The farm was deserted and the house was burned down and still smoking. A line of craters stretched into the field beyond, where the cavalrymen had disappeared, and the dusty surface of the yard was scattered with dead chickens, feathers and a dead dog. There was an open barn at the other side and, still moving at speed, Woodyatt swung the car into it – past the craters with their charred, pulverised earth. Without either of them questioning what they were doing, they leapt from the car and dragged the barn doors shut. The one on Woodyatt’s side had sagged on its hinges and it took all his strength. Dominique appeared alongside him, adding her weight, her breath coming in pants. As the door finally slammed shut, they dived behind the hay stacked at the end of the barn and lay silent, clutched in each other’s arms.
They listened as the tank drew nearer. It appeared to stop outside the farmyard and they heard German voices.
‘They must be right across our path,’ Woodyatt said, awed at the speed with which the Germans had advanced.
‘Sssh!’ She signed him to silence. ‘They’re saying they must move north.’
They then heard the clatter and screech of the tank’s tracks and the rumble of its powerful engine, but eventually the noise died away. Cautiously, they approached the barn door and peered through the gaps in the planks. Blue exhaust smoke still hung in the air.
‘I think they’ve gone,’ Woodyatt said. ‘Stay here.’
‘No!’ Dominique snatche
d at his sleeve. ‘You stay here. I’ll go. You’re in uniform.’ And she walked slowly across the yard to the road, peered along it and returned to announce, ‘They’ve gone!’
Together they studied the map and decided to head south. The Germans appeared to be swinging towards the coast to cut off the BEF. Reversing the car out of the barn, Woodyatt headed warily down the road. There was no sign of any more danger. ‘I think we’ve lost them,’ he said, jamming his foot hard on the accelerator.
After a while they came across a British unit sheltering in a little copse and Woodyatt drove in among the foliage and stopped the car. An officer told him he couldn’t stay but Woodyatt produced Pullinger’s famous papers – the papers he had sworn would produce help from anybody. The officer stared at them, frowning. ‘It’s a lot of bloody cock,’ he said angrily. ‘How do I know they’re genuine?’
He had a point and even when Woodyatt pointed out that the signatures were not faked he was still not believed. However, the officer withdrew his objections and they stayed where they were. They also passed on the information about the German tanks and troops at Wassigne, and the officer noted them on his map.
‘The buggers pop up like mushrooms,’ he agreed.
They managed to beg a loaf, a few slices of meat and a bottle of wine and were about to settle down to eat and drink when Woodyatt happened to look up and saw a small Storch reconnaissance machine circling just to the East. Glancing round at the soldiers, he saw fires lit and smoke rising. Immediately, he swept up the food and wine and bustled Dominique to the car.
‘Why?’ she said. ‘We’re safe among the trees.’
‘The safest place to be,’ he pointed out, ‘is in the middle of an open field. This wood’s marked on the map and I’ll bet that Storch is pinpointing it already.’
Shouting to the officer, he indicated the aeroplane. Where upon the sergeants started yelling and the soldiers began to run to their vehicles. As they did so, there was a whirr and a tremendous crack as a shrapnel shell burst overhead. Woodyatt grabbed the girl and pushed her to the car.
‘Underneath!’ he snapped.