by Jana Petken
“Run!” Paul screamed at Amelia above the noise.
“This way!”
Paul heard Kurt’s booming voice and stormed towards it until the impact of a bullet hitting him in the back of his shoulder took the legs from him.
In agony, and face down on the ground with his arm raised and hand still clutching Amelia’s, Paul couldn’t breathe, think or move. He gasped as he lost Amelia’s hand, and in its place, he felt rougher hands dragging him across the street.
Like a pliant doll, he was pulled to his feet and pushed into a line. Amelia stood next to him, and he clutched her hand again as he met her bright, terror-filled eyes. German soldiers swarmed the street, and he now saw the full line-up of six Polish fighters and civilians.
SS men armed with pistols faced the captives. Dazed, Paul cast his eyes to the sky. It wasn’t peaceful or blue but crowded with Stukas and dark with gathering rainclouds. He blocked out the terror overwhelming him and flicked his eyes to Amelia. Her beautiful face, dirty with sewer water and streaked with tears, was all he wanted to see. When the man at the far end of the line was shot, Paul squeezed Amelia’s hand tighter and continued to hold her loving gaze until she faced front. He had fought his war and his conscience with equal passion. He had loved Amelia, and she had loved him back. He was a father; he had enjoyed a brief but rich life.
“I love you, my darling,” he said, as the bullet slammed between her eyes.
******
“No – no!” Kurt screamed.
Kurt, Bogdan, and Romek crouched behind a destroyed Renault car. Cut off from their battalion’s main units and without enough ammunition to defend or strike back at the advancing Germans, they watched helplessly as the SS shot and killed every man and woman in the line-up, including Paul and Amelia.
Distraught and gripped with a rage that consumed him, Kurt screamed obscenities at the Germans in his mother tongue. He started to rise with his rifle raised, his irrational determination to kill every SS soldier involved in Paul’s execution unwavering until Romek and Bogdan pulled him down, pinned him to the ground and clamped his mouth shut with their hands.
Seconds later, Polish reinforcements blasted their way along the street using flamethrowers and grenades, rifles and handguns, stones, and whatever other projectiles they had found along the way. Hundreds came into the open whilst other fighters took up positions on buildings’ upper floors with sub-machine guns.
Enmeshed in grief and shock, but free of Romek and Bogdan, Kurt lurched to his feet and started running towards Paul’s dead body. The fighting intensified further, with most of the Polish soldiers using remnants of previous barricades and bodies for cover as they fought to clear the Germans from the street.
Kurt, thrown to the ground beside a dead German, picked up a Mauser rifle and fired from a lying position using the corpse as cover base. Launched from behind his position, a mortar flew over his head, exploding on the German line and killing the Wehrmacht and SS soldiers beginning to flee. Taking advantage of the smoke-filled air and confusion, Kurt and the Poles moved forward again, shooting mercilessly at the enemy, who had finally lost control of the street.
Eventually, Kurt reached Paul and Amelia’s bodies. He dropped to his knees and fingered Paul’s neck where the pulse should be. He knew he wouldn’t find one. The bullet hole in Paul’s forehead was vivid, and the bullet had gone all the way through and out the back of his skull. Cursing, weeping, and furious as reality sank in, Kurt thumped his fist against the hard, unyielding ground and let loose his rage with a torrent of expletives.
A barrage of sub-machine gun fire, some twenty metres behind Kurt, shot over his head and hit the German soldiers who were trying to counterattack. Flat on the ground, he raised his eyes to Paul, who looked strangely peaceful in the mayhem. His eyes were closed, his mouth set in a soft line as if he had prepared mentally for the shot that had killed him.
Kurt rose and re-joined the fight, during which he spent every bullet from every weapon he had picked up in the street. The area was now clear of German soldiers, but they had left plenty of corpses in their wake. He picked up Paul’s rucksack and threw it over his shoulder. Poles were taking advantage of their gains, and as more arrived, they moved forward to chase the Germans further and further from the city centre. He picked up another German rifle and joined the fray. He would return for Paul and Amelia’s bodies when the Germans were pushed all the way back. He would not leave his only family in the street…
******
That night, Kurt and Romek sat behind the walls of a burnt-out building on the Western suburbs. As planned, the two men had returned for Paul and Amelia’s bodies; however, when they got there, the Polish dead had already been moved. They had no idea where the remains had been taken.
Kurt carried Paul’s belongings to a more secluded spot. He didn’t want to speak to anyone, not even to Romek or Anatol, who were both visibly upset by Paul and Amelia’s deaths. When he was alone, Kurt slipped his hand into the green rucksack and found photographs of Erika, the daughter Paul had never met, socks, undershorts, a shirt, medical and surgical instruments, bandages, one vial of morphine, a photograph of Amelia, taken weeks earlier by a Polish journalist documenting the uprising for the Home Army, and another of Laura and Dieter, which he must have been carrying with him since the war began. Finally, Kurt’s fingers stroked Paul’s leather-bound journal. In it were poems that Paul had written whilst being surrounded by the dead, the dying, and deafening gunfire that sometimes destroyed all rational thought.
When he flicked to the last page with writing on it, Kurt noted the date. It was significant; a record of Paul’s final thoughts. Would Paul want me to see what had been in his heart two days ago? Or was this an invasion of privacy? Kurt pondered the question for only a moment. He wanted … no … he needed to read his friend’s final words. Paul wouldn’t mind.
28 August 1944
The licentious character of man still shocks me, even after years of witnessing its cruelty. Today, Amelia asked me why we fought so very hard when our deaths at the hands of the Germans were inevitable. She was terribly depressed by seeing the numerous corpses of women and children outside the hospital this morning, and I had no idea how to lift her spirits. I realise now that I should have been more committed to an answer, but at the time, I too was utterly dejected and could find nothing suitable to say to her.
Why do we fight? she had asked me for a second time.
In retrospect, I should have said that in our hopelessness, we have taken a futile and desperate step that will probably end badly, but what of that? Our bellies are empty, our hearts are in our boots. We are tired and hungry. We have no choice.
It seems to me that some mystifying force has fused our emotions and borne us aloft, even knowing that with tremulous wings, we shall be brought down to earth again with an almighty thud, but what of that? Optimism and faith are what drive us.
I should have told her that we fight today so that tomorrow men can be free to love whomever they choose, worship whatever Godly presence sustains them through their darkest days, and walk untethered by religious labels, badges, or racial stigma. We fight so we can wake one day to a brighter dawn.
I should have told her that it is now, in these hellish times, that I have learnt the true meaning of Polish pride and recklessly brave rebellion – I should have told her all this and more!
Chapter Fifty-Four
Dieter Vogel
London 4 September 1944
Heller lifted the telephone off the cradle, covered the mouthpiece with his hand, and said to Dieter, “Give me a second, will you? This is important.”
As Heller spoke on the telephone to someone called Tony, Dieter gazed out of the office window. He hadn’t been told the reason for this unscheduled meeting yet. He had a pile of work concerning Operation Ultra still to get through at Bletchley Park. He and his team were still involved with Obelisk, who had left Cairo for the not-so-nice French battlegrounds, and his section was also ov
erseeing an ongoing operation taking place in Holland. It was not a good day to be ordered to drop everything and get to London.
The sky was grey today. According to the meteorologists, it was going to be a cooler-than-normal September with above-average rainfall. Ach, well, rain, shine, sleet or snow, it is all the same to me, Dieter thought, with one ear on Heller’s telephone conversation.
“…you’ve no idea how grateful I am, Tony – yes, of course, I will. I owe you dinner – and I’m looking forward to seeing you as well – yes, I will have all the paperwork ready. Goodbye for now.” Then Heller hung up.
“It’s not often I hear you grovelling like that. You must be asking a huge favour, Jonathan?” Dieter teased, raising an eyebrow.
“I know. I prefer being the one who is owed the favour.” Heller went into his drawer, brought out a file, and pushed it across the desk to Dieter. “I have a mission for you.”
“I’m a bit long in the tooth for missions, am I not?” Dieter laughed at the joke.
“Yes, but I have a feeling you will like this one. I want you to represent me at a meeting in Paris with Jacques Chaban-Delmas, from the National Council of the Resistance, and Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, from the Communist-led FFI. You are leaving this afternoon. This is your brief on the meeting.”
Dieter’s rod-straight back tensed in the chair as stirrings of excitement washed over him. He took the file and asked, “You could send one of your own men from here. What specifically are you after from this meeting?”
Heller tittered. “Yes, there’s more to it than what’s written in that file, Dieter, and you have an uncanny knack of reading between the lines. I’ll get to why I chose you in a moment. General de Gaulle is uneasy about the Communist partisans gaining political strength, and if he’s worried, then we should be, too. The last thing we need in France is upheaval in the new government.”
“Have we not done enough for the French? I would have thought this was the one thing they could sort out for themselves.” Dieter sniggered to himself. He had yet to forgive the Vichy government’s armistice with Germany and their part in sending Jews to their deaths. “Sorry, Jonathan … you were saying?”
“When the German commander, General von Choltitz, arranged the truce through the offices of the Swedish Consul-General, he travelled from his headquarters at the Hôtel Meurice to the Montparnasse train station, the headquarters of General Leclerc. He and Leclerc signed a surrender, but Chaban-Dalmas and Rol-Tanguy, the communist leaders of the FFI, were also present, and they suggested that Rol-Tanguy should also sign the surrender document. To cut a long story short, Leclerc dictated a new version and put the name of the FFI leader ahead of his own, and when De Gaulle arrived in Paris two hours later and saw the surrender, he was furious about the communists getting their names in at the top. What is said in this meeting is vitally important, Dieter. I need you to extract as much information as you can from the communists without giving in to their demands regarding intelligence sharing. Understood?”
“I understand. You think they might use it against the new government.” Dieter drew his eyebrows in thoughtfully. “Why are you not going? It’s not like you to miss an opportunity to get out of the office.”
“I’m off somewhere else for a few days – need to know basis, so don’t ask.”
Dieter raised his hand and chuckled. “Far be it for me to interrogate you, boss,” he said playfully. “I must admit, I’m looking forward to finally coming out of the shadows. The dead Dieter Vogel rises again. It’s quite thrilling.”
Heller handed Dieter an official-looking document with his and Stuart Menzies’ signatures on it. Dieter began to read it, and from deep inside his chest, a rasping sob escaped him. He drew in a deep breath and unapologetically wiped his eyes. “Laura is going to be ecstatic, not to mention how Judith will feel. I know we’ve spoken about this, Jonathan, but you can’t imagine the worry we’ve all been going through.”
“I understand, Dieter. That’s why we’re authorising you to bring your boy home. We would have gone for him sooner had he been fit enough to travel.”
Dieter lit a cigarette with a Zippo lighter that shook in his fingers. “To be honest, I was half expecting to meet him off a hospital ship in Southampton.”
“No. Max went to France as my agent, and I am determined to bring him back on one of my planes. I should never have sent him on that damn Sussex mission.” Heller’s eyes were full of sympathy. “You and Laura must be going through hell, what with having no word of Paul, and knowing Wilmot is across the Atlantic. You need this win.”
“How true. We’ve come to terms with Wilmot’s incarceration. Truth be told, I’m happier knowing he’s a prisoner of war than thinking of him in Europe with the Wehrmacht. It’s Paul we’re most worried about. You will keep trying to get news of him, won’t you?”
“If I hear anything from Poland, you will be my first phone call.”
Dieter nodded and cleared his throat, “Thank you. Now, what else about Max?”
“He’s in the 203rd General Hospital unit in the Parisian suburb of Garches. It’s an American Army medical establishment. Our doctor is going with you. He has the necessary paperwork to get Max released from there.” Heller stared pensively at Dieter. “I want to be clear, Dieter. Paris has been liberated, but the Germans let off a V-1 rocket last night, and it won’t be their last. Be careful over there.”
******
Paris, France.
Max sat up in a bed that had been wheeled out to the shady part of the garden behind the hospital building. He was sore and aching from the waist down, but he’d been in pain for so long he could hardly remember a time when he was pain-free. He’d gone through two surgical procedures that had successfully removed bone fragments from his hip and around his pelvic area, and he felt much better now that they’d been removed. His recovery was going to be long and painful, he knew, but the prodding and probing had been worth it; according to the American surgeon, he was going to be able to walk again, albeit with the aid of two walking sticks for the foreseeable future.
He shifted his eyes from the book he was reading to glance up at the French doors and patio at the building’s back entrance. He sucked in his breath. Tears unashamedly sprang from his eyes, and his stomach did an airy dance as he raised his hand and shouted, “Father!”
Dieter looked in Max’s direction, said something to the nurse he was with, then strode onto the lawn, his face beaming.
After the two men had hugged and shaken hands, Dieter pulled over a wrought-iron garden chair, sat beside Max’s bed, and sniffed with emotion. “I feel happier than I have for months, Son. Your mother and I have been worried sick about you.”
“Father, what are you doing in Paris?” Max asked, still trying to calm down.
“I’ve come to take you home. Doctor Colbert from our section has come with me, and as soon as he speaks to your surgeons and gets their all-clear for you to travel, we will take you to Queen Alexandra’s Military Hospital in London for further surgical assessment and to continue your treatment. Afterwards, you will convalesce at home with your wife and mother at your beck and call.”
Max grinned, lifted his face to the sun, and let out a long luxurious sigh. “Thank God. I never thought I’d live to see this day. There was a time I wanted to die, and another time I wanted to live but thought I would die. Thank you, Father.”
“Thank the people who saved you and be proud of the fortitude you have shown. Will you tell me about the night it happened, Son?”
“Yes, but you go first. How is my Judith? How’s the family? Any news from Paul and Wilmot, and what about Frank? Is he still in Scotland?”
For a while, Dieter got Max up to speed with what was going on with the Vogels. They had received letters from Wilmot, which had raised Laura’s spirits no end, but they hadn’t heard a word from Paul since the Warsaw uprising began on 31 July. Frank was in France, somewhere, and Hannah was beside herself with worry.
Like his par
ents, Max was most concerned about Paul’s situation, but his emotions were all over the place with the news he was going back to Britain, and he didn’t know where to begin his story.
“Tell me, Son, what happened to you and your team?” Dieter asked, taking the decision about where to start out of Max’s hands.
Even thinking about the Sussex mission evoked tumultuous emotions in Max. At times, he shook so badly he could hardly hold a cup. When he was handed over to the Americans, he had claimed his mission was top secret, thus avoiding having to speak of it. He would face a long, in-depth debriefing upon his return to London. He was prepared for it, but he dreaded having to relive the events that had almost obliterated his team and left him lying in a bed counting the minutes until his next morphine syrette would be delivered.
He accepted a cigarette from his father, his fingers trembling as he took it. After he’d lit it, he wiggled his backside to a better angle in his bed to find a more comfortable spot. “Papa, please don’t ask me to go into the details with you. I can’t … I don’t want to. The most important thing about that night is that one of my men, and the Resistance fighters who came to our aid, saved my life. I don’t remember much about the days after I was wounded, and even the event itself is blurred because I was beaten before the first shots were fired. To be honest, I don’t even know who fired first. The Germans had rifles; we had pistols. It was as dark as hell, and according to Hugo – the Frenchman who came back for me – I killed three of the Germans. I don’t remember doing that, either.”
“I take it the scar on your forehead is from the beating you took?”
“Yes … probably … at least, it wasn’t there before that night. When I came around in the town of Villiers-sur-Loire a few days after the ambush, the doctor told me he had removed some bullet and bone fragments from my hip. In fact, he operated on me while the Resistance was battling to take the nearby town of Vendôme from the German military police and the two platoons that had remained there after the bulk of their forces went up to Normandy.”