by Alex Gerlis
It took a few seconds for her and most of the others in the column to realise that the cracking sound a hundred yards or so ahead of them had been a gun shot. Maybe it was the shock of the strange metallic noise that seemed to echo in such an undulating manner in every direction, more likely was the fact that it was the first time most of them had ever heard a gunshot. In a split second, she reassembled in her mind what she had just seen and heard. Moments earlier, the tall figure of Marcel had been remonstrating with the German officer. She could barely make out what he was saying, although she did hear the word ‘civilians’ more than once, as he pointed in their direction with his walking stick. Then there was the cracking noise and now Marcel was still on the ground, the dusty light grey surface of the road turning a dark colour beneath him.
A wave of fear rolled through the small group that had been held up beyond the makeshift German checkpoint where the shooting had taken place. I know the area, Marcel had told them. I can handle the Germans.
Apart from the woman with four children and three elderly couples, the group was mainly women on their own. All fools, she thought. All allowing themselves to be herded like cattle. All part of the reason why France had become what it was.
She knew that she had made a terrible mistake. She could have headed in any direction, other than east. That would have been suicide. When she looked at where she had ended up now, she may as well have gone east. She realised now that, of course, south would have been best. Due west would have been safe too, not as safe as the south, but better. But to have come north was a disaster.
It was not as if she had been following the crowds. Half of France had been on the move and each person seemed to be heading in a different direction. She had made up her mind when she left home that she would head north and it wasn’t in her nature to change her mind. She had tried it a few weeks ago and this was why she was in so much trouble now. It was crazy though. They had passed through Abbeville when she was a girl on the way to the coast for the only happy family holiday that she could remember. It had been an idyllic day, no more than a few hours respite on a long journey, but for some reason this was where she had decided to head.
The German officer walked over to the man on the ground, the pistol still in his hand. With his boot he rolled the body over onto its back and then nodded to two of his men. They picked a leg each and dragged the corpse to the ditch by the side of the road. A long red smear appeared on it where his body had been. The officer inspected his boot and wiped it clean on the grass verge.
One of the soldiers had come over to the group and spoke to them slowly in bad French. They were to come forward one by one, he shouted. They were to show their identity cards to the officer who had shot the man and after they had been searched, they would be allowed to carry on into the town.
The light had not started to fade yet and beyond the checkpoint she could see the outskirts of the town quite clearly. Plumes of dark smoke hung all over the town, all of them remarkably straight and narrow, as if the town lay beneath a forest of pine trees.
She couldn’t risk the checkpoint. Not with this identity card. The first Germans they had encountered had not paid much attention to people’s identities. They had seemed more intent on finding what loot they could lay their hands on. This checkpoint seemed to be more thorough. She had known that she would have to find another identity and assumed she would get the opportunity in the town. She had not counted on coming across the Germans so early, no one had. The last news she had heard was that they had not yet reached Calais. That is what Marcel had told them and now his feet were sticking out of the ditch in front of them, his blood now turning black on the surface of the road.
She edged towards the rear of the column, looking around her as she did so. She spotted her opportunity. The soldiers were distracted by dealing with the mother and her four children, all of whom were crying. No one was watching the group. She leaned over to Sylvie, who still clutching her by the waist and whispered that she was going to the toilet in the field. She would be back in a minute. The little girl’s eyes filled with tears. Reluctantly, she reached in her pocket and took out the bar of chocolate. It was the last of the bars that had filled her coat pockets and it was all she had left to eat. She pressed it into Sylvie’s palm, noticing that it was soft and had begun to melt.
‘If you are a good girl and keep very quiet, you can have all of this!’ She was trying hard to sound as gentle of possible. She looked around. No one was looking at her. Towards the front of the column she saw the smartly dressed lady in her mid-thirties who had told her she was a lawyer from Paris, heading for the family home in Normandy.
‘You see that nice lady there? The one with the smart brown coat? She will look after you. But don’t worry, I will be back soon.’
Still crouching down, she edged towards the ditch and then through a narrow gap in the hedge. The corn was high in the field and not far away, as if expertly painted onto the landscape, was a large wood which seemed to taper as it spread towards the town. She waited for a moment. She was certain that the Germans had not counted how many there were in their group so hopefully would not realise that one person had crept away. If they did come and look for her now, she was near enough to the hedge to be able to persuade them that she was just relieving herself.
It looked as if she had landed in an Impressionist painting: the golden yellow of the corn, the blue of the sky unbroken by cloud and ahead the dark green of the wood. A timely breeze had picked up and the corn was swaying slowly. It would disguise her moving through it to the wood. If she could make it there she would have a good chance of reaching the town under the cover of the trees and the fading light.
ooo000ooo
CHAPTER TWO
Abbeville, Northern France
May 1940
It is what comes in the wake of an invading army that is the true measure of a conquest.
The tanks and crack troops of the Panzer Group that entered the small town of Abbeville in the last week of May 1940 were quickly followed by the Wehrmacht, the regular troops in their grey uniforms and a sense of mild inferiority which they happily took out on their new subjects. And then came the camp followers: the cooks, the medics, the prostitutes and the officials. Especially the officials. It was if the German Reich had been meticulously collecting minor officials for years and storing them in a cellar in Bavaria in the expectation that come the conquest of Europe, they would have an army of them to promote beyond their natural station and help ensure the efficiency of any occupation.
And it was one of these minor officials, who now clearly regarded himself as anything but minor, who was to be her undoing.
She had entered the town the night before, waiting for a black blanket to drape over the Picardy countryside before she felt it was safe enough to leave the cover of the wood and crawl into the first row of ruins. From there she had worked her way through the outskirts, crossing debris strewn roads and hurrying down streets where no building had been left unscathed. As a church bell struck ten, she had climbed into the attic above a row of abandoned shops and found a room where the window was more or less intact and there was large, dusty sofa. As the adrenaline of the escape from the checkpoint ebbed away she realised how hungry she was. Her last proper meal had been in a farmhouse the other side of Arras and since then she managed on overpriced bread, and fruit she had taken from obliging orchards. She had been saving the bar of chocolate for an emergency. The price of keeping the little girl quiet had been that emergency.
In the corner of the room was a filthy sink, with a long crack running diagonally through it. The single tap, high above the sink, was stiff to turn and when she managed to release it there was a shudder and a hiss, but no water. She had last drunk water in one of the villages they had passed through the day before. Now, her throat was dry and she felt light-headed. Not long before they arrived at the checkpoint outside Abbeville they had walked through a small forest, dotted with étangs. Marcel warned people a
gainst drinking the water and she knew that he was right: the surface of the little lake was still and scummy, but the old man who had given her the last of his water the night before insisted on drinking from an étang. They had barely walked for another five minutes before he became violently sick.
His face appeared in her dreams that night, but only fleetingly although she couldn’t get his last words out of her mind: ‘This victory will be your greatest defeat.’
She dreaded to think what she must have said in her sleep to cause him to say that, but it was a good thing that he had decided to drink from the étang.
It was a series of confused dreams that all seemed to end with her trying to catch a train or a bus that was always pulling away just as she reached it. In the final dream she found herself hiding in a warm bakery, the smell of freshly baked baguettes overwhelming.
She woke to find two boys standing in the doorway staring at her. She had no idea how old they were: certainly not teenagers, yet not so young that they could be described as children. But what mattered was what they had in their arms: baguettes, two each. The smell of them of had already filled the room.
‘What do you want?’ she asked sharply.
‘Somewhere to stay.’ It was the older boy, probably thirteen now that she thought about it, thinking back to her days on the children’s ward. He was trying to sound confident, but he was trembling. ‘Is this your place?’
Outside she could hear the sound of the shop doors being wrenched open and then slammed shut, followed by shouting in German. ‘They’ve gone, they’re not around here,’ one of the soldiers was saying.
‘Are they after you?’
The younger boy nodded. He looked terrified. ‘We took some food. A patrol spotted us so we ran away. They didn’t see us come in here. I promise you.’
‘You can stay,’ she said, ‘but let me see what food you’ve got.’
They laid it out on the filthy table in the middle of the room. The two baguettes, a large round cheese with a thick yellow rind and not much of an aroma and a long, thick smoked sausage.
‘Do you have anything to drink?’
The younger boy glanced nervously at the older one who nodded. He pulled a flask from an inside coat pocket and handed it to her.
‘It’s water,’ he said, ‘it’s all we have left’, grudgingly handing the flask over to her.
She drank all of the water in the flask in one go and then looked at the two boys.
‘I’ll take a baguette and half of the cheese and sausage. Then you can stay. It’s your rent. Keep quiet and stay away from the windows. Understand?’
The boys nodded. They had risked their lives for this food and now had given half of it away, but they had no alternative. Crouched on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, they sat in silence, eating while sunlight swept into the room, picking out the dust and the cobwebs. The boys were exhausted and by noon had fallen asleep.
She stayed on the sofa, the remains of the bread and her share of the cheese and the sausage carefully stashed in her bag, which she clutched to her chest. By early afternoon, she had a plan. She would head for the hospital. It was the natural place for her to go. They would probably welcome her and, apart from anything else, there she would have a good chance of finding a new identity.
She left the boys asleep. She thought about taking the remains of the sausage that was poking out of the older boy’s side pocket, but he was stirring and she thought better of it.
There were plenty of grey uniformed Germans in the streets, but they weren’t stopping anyone, as far as she could tell. In the distance, there was the muffled sound of artillery fire and the occasional roar of aircraft. Outside a bombed church she noticed a queue forming, which she instinctively joined. She still had some cash and if this was a chance to buy something while her money was worth anything she did not want to let it pass. The people in the queue were talking quietly. The Allies were trying to retake the town, she heard someone say. An attack was imminent. God would save them. It was only when she reached the front of the queue that she realised she had been wasting her time. A young priest was sitting on a chair in the porch of the church taking confession, his cassock gently blowing around his shoulders in the wind. She turned to leave, but thought that would only bring unwanted attention, so she allowed him to bless her and mutter a prayer she didn’t bother to listen to.
As she moved away there was a roar of artillery, much nearer now. Two old men were discussing it: ‘it’s coming in this direction,’ said one. The other shook his head: ‘No, it’s being fired from the town.’ It hardly seemed to matter as far as she was concerned. She had no idea of which side she was meant to be on anyway.
She headed towards the centre of the town. The first bridge that she came to was intact and she joined the throng of people hurrying across the Somme. It was only when she was halfway over the bridge that she found she had been sucked into a queue with German soldiers marshalling people into rows. This was nothing like the checkpoint outside the town, manned by just one or two easily distracted soldiers. This was a proper checkpoint. The civilians were being funnelled into one of four rows, each row guarded by half a dozen soldiers with their machine guns drawn. At the end of each row was a trestle table, with a black-uniformed SS officer sat alongside a Wehrmacht officer. Behind the trestle tables was another row of tables, laden with paper work and manned by anxious officials. The officers at the first table were passing the identity cards they were checking to the men at the second row of tables.
There was nothing she could do. She had walked into a trap and there was simply no prospect of her being able to slip away from it. She edged along the queue, taking care to breathe slowly and look calm and, above all, avoid drawing attention to herself.
After all, why would they be interested in her, she tried to reassure herself. She had a good cover story: I am a nurse, heading for the hospital, ready to volunteer my services. Why was she in this part of the country, so far from home? She would smile, she would always smile. Her best smile. I was frightened. Isn’t everyone? I joined other people escaping the fighting and thought I would head for somewhere quiet. I made a mistake. Then she would smile again.
She realised she was being ridiculous anyway. She was worrying far too much. It was hard to imagine that with everything they had on their minds, the Germans would remember anything about her. A foolish promise she had made in a rash and impetuous moment. It had been an exciting proposal they had made two years ago in Paris and one that was not hard to agree to after the wine, the flattery and the charm. The training in Bavaria. ‘Go home and wait there,’ they had told her. ‘We’ll come and find you when we need you. Lead a normal life. Go to work, go home, and don’t talk about politics to anyone. Just make sure you are where we know you are.’ She was not important. In the great scheme of things, she was barely even a pawn. Surely it would be weeks, months even before they remembered about her and by then she would be beyond their grasp.
‘Carte d’identité ... Carte d’identité!’
The soldier next to the SS man behind the trestle table was shouting at her and a sentry was pushing her roughly in the side. She had reached the front of the queue.
She fumbled in her bag and found her identity card, only just remembering to smile as she placed it carefully on the rough wooden surface. The SS man looked at the card and handed it to the soldier next to him, who spoke to her in hesitant French.
‘Where are you heading?’
‘The hospital. You can see that I’m a nurse. I’m going to volunteer to ...’
He cut her short. ‘Why are you in this town? You have travelled a long way.’
She shrugged and smiled again. ‘I used to come to this area for my holidays when I was a child. I thought it would be safe. I didn’t realise ...’
The SS officer looked carefully at her and then at her identity card. He was turning it slowly. She noticed that his fingers were immaculately manicured, his nails quite perfect. He looked once m
ore at the card and passed it to the table behind him.
It was then that she noticed that the men in civilian clothes behind that table were checking the cards against lists. What if her name was on one of the lists? She was being ridiculous again, but it did make her realise that getting a new identity was an absolute priority. By whatever means, she would make sure ...
Something was wrong.
She sensed it before she saw it.
She could not tell which of the officials had been looking at her card, but one of them had called over a man in a long raincoat who was standing behind the table and together they were looking at an identity card and checking it against the list. Another man dressed in a long raincoat was called over and he too looked at the card and then at the list. The three men nodded and she was sure that at least one of them had glanced in her direction. She tried to look as relaxed as possible, but her heart was crashing against her chest. She turned round, but it was impossible. There were soldiers every side of her. Maybe if she pretended to faint, or to ...
‘Please ...’ One of the men in long raincoats had appeared at her side and was holding her firmly by the elbow.
‘We need to do some more checks. Please come with me.’
ooo000ooo
‘You are sure that you have told me everything?’
The Gestapo officer who had brought her to the Hôtel de Ville from the checkpoint had stopped circling her chair and was now stood directly in front of her, his arms folded tight against his chest and looking genuinely confused. He had removed his raincoat and his hat and looked no more than thirty. His French was excellent, so she abandoned her attempts at speaking in her much less fluent German.
‘I told you. I was recruited in Paris two years ago. I have been trained. My instructions were to stay where I was, but I left a week ago when the police became suspicious of me.’
‘In what way?’
‘What do you mean?’