My Friend the Enemy

by Dan Smith

  2 Palmer Street, Frome, Somerset BA11 1DS

  www.doublecluck.com.

  For Anisha and Ashwin

  Contents

  Timeline

  Chapter 1: Crash

  Chapter 2: Aftermath

  Chapter 3: Kim

  Chapter 4: Letters

  Chapter 5: Shapes in the Moonlight

  Chapter 6: Bodies

  Chapter 7: Gun

  Chapter 8: The Souvenir

  Chapter 9: The Best Hiding Place Ever

  Chapter 10: A Knock at the Door

  Chapter 11: Lieutenant Whatshisname

  Chapter 12: Reconnaissance

  Chapter 13: Not Much of a German

  Chapter 14: Broken Bone

  Chapter 15: Dad’s Shed

  Chapter 16: Air Raid

  Chapter 17: Sledgehammer

  Chapter 18: Rabbit

  Chapter 19: The Soldiers Come

  Chapter 20: Snap

  Chapter 21: Spy

  Chapter 22: Dunkirk

  Chapter 23: A Different Kind of Destruction

  Chapter 24: The Phantom Airman

  Chapter 25: The Telegram

  Chapter 26: Over

  Chapter 27: Kim

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  SEPTEMBER 1939

  Nazi Germany invades Poland. France and Britain declare war on Germany. The British Expeditionary Force is deployed to Belgium.

  JANUARY 1940

  Rationing begins in Britain.

  MAY 1940

  Winston Churchill becomes Prime Minister. Nazi forces invade Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and France. Operation Dynamo begins and the British Expeditionary Force evacuates at Dunkirk in Northern France. They retreat to the south coast of England under heavy Nazi bombardment. Over 80,000 people from both sides are killed or injured during the evacuation.

  JUNE 1940

  Nazi forces occupy France.

  JULY 1940

  The Battle of Britain begins. London is bombed intensively during a period known as the Blitz. Nazi bombers also attack other major cities in Britain. Civilians and industry are targeted.

  By October 1941 the Battle of Britain was over and the concentrated bombing of Britain had ended, but sporadic raids continued throughout the war.

  Only in 1945 did the bombs finally stop falling.

  ‘When war came and then the fall of Dunkirk,

  that narrow belt of land across northern England was a danger point of invasion. Then it was we

  saw the stuff of the people.’

  JACK LAWSON, A Man’s Life

  SUMMER 1941

  North-East England

  CRASH

  I was in the far corner of the woods, setting snares, when the siren started.

  I stopped.

  Crouched low with my arms out, my fingers laying the wire in the right position, I stopped dead.

  I was quite far from the village – over the fields and deep in the trees – but that terrible noise reached right across to me. As if it was looking for me. Just me. It started as a single tone, a sound so frightening it almost made my heart freeze. Then it grew louder as it warmed up, the tone falling and rising. Falling and rising. A second siren joined it a few moments later, then a third, so all the village sirens were screaming at the sky.

  This was the signal for us to run for our shelters.

  To run for our lives.

  I’d never been caught out like this before. The warning had never sounded during the afternoon. The Germans liked to come on clear nights, filling the air with the buzz and groan of their planes, like angry monsters coming to turn everything to dust. And then it was a fast and scary rush to the Anderson shelter, to sit in the half-dark, waiting for a bomb to land on top of you and blow you into a million pieces.

  All the way out here, though, I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know if I could make it home across the fields to Hawthorn Lodge, to the tin shelter at the bottom of our garden. Or maybe I didn’t need to. Maybe I was already in the safest place, right there in the trees.

  But I didn’t want to be on my own. I wanted to be with Mam. I wanted to know she was safe, and she’d want to know I was safe. I imagined her sick with worry, wondering where I was. She wouldn’t know whether to run out and call for me or take cover in the shelter. Her heart would be thumping just like mine was. Thump, thump, thump. Her mouth would be dry. Her muscles tingling and shaking. She’d be standing in the garden as the planes came over; wave after wave of them, raining their bombs on her, all because she was out looking for me.

  I shook my head once and squeezed my eyes, straining to get rid of the images. Then I stood and began to run.

  Sprinting past the pheasant pens, I hardly noticed the stinging brush of the nettles that caught my bare knees. The twigs crunched and snapped under my feet. The tops of my wellies paddled against my bruised shins. I jumped fallen logs and scraped my legs against brambles. I splashed through the burn and weaved around the trees, throwing myself to the ground when I came to the barbed wire fence and scrambling through the low gap that was made just for me. The skin tore on my knees as I crawled on the dry soil, but I ignored the pain.

  I was moving as quickly as I could, clambering from all fours back onto my feet, rushing through the final line of the woods before I burst out into the field. I ran out into the early evening just as another sound broke from behind the terrible cry of the sirens. It was as if this noise smashed through the solid wall, cutting through and drowning it out. And this sound was worse. Much worse.

  It was the angry buzz of German bombers filling the sky.

  Panic swelled in my chest. I had to get home. I had to find Mam.

  I sprinted further out into the field, wishing I could make one great big jump and be there. I wished my feet would move faster. I wished our house was closer. I wished there was no war. I wished . . . I wished so many things.

  But for that moment, it felt like there was nothing else in the world except for me, my need to get home, and the planes. That noise. The sound of engines was so loud, as if the planes were following me, chasing me, whining and coughing like dirty giants. My head was filled with their growling, my whole body shook. I could feel their breath on my neck. Smell their darkness.

  But then they stuttered.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Three times.

  The engine caught and died, caught and died, and then cut out completely. No more droning, no more coughing, no more stuttering. All I could hear was the scream of the siren in the village and the rush of air behind me, as if an enormous bird of prey was arcing down to take me. In those seconds I knew how a rabbit must feel at that last moment by the hedgerow, when the hawk swoops down to carry it away.

  And that’s when I risked a look back. Stumbling on the loose soil of the furrowed field, I turned to look over my shoulder and saw the plane coming towards me.

  Not a mob of hungry giants, but a single plane. Just one.

  A giant metal beast falling, gliding, faster and faster, coming right at me.

  I saw the gunner sitting in the glazed front section. He was staring dead ahead, seeing nothing. His eyes were so wide I could see the whites. Both hands were gripped around the machine gun’s handle as if it would save him. The gun barrel was sticking out from the plane’s glass nose cap, pointing to the exact place where the plane was going to crash.

  Behind and above him, I could just about make out the top of the pilot’s head, and then I ducked as it went over, no more than thirty feet above me, the wind in its wake ruffling my hair.

  I heard the metallic rattle of its parts as it went. I saw the pale grey underbelly of the monster. And then I turned to watch it smash int
o Mr Bennett’s field.

  The ground shook when the German bomber hit the soil. It went down nose first, the glazed nose cap shattering into a thousand pieces, filling the air with splinters of glass. The gunner was crushed in his seat as the nose crumpled, forcing him up and back into the pilot, squashing the two bodies together, mashing them into a mess of blood and bone.

  With a deafening screech of metal, both propellers were ripped from the wings. They spun off to either side, slamming into the field several feet from the plane, bouncing away at different angles. Twirling blades of destruction, they tore through the potato plants, throwing thick clouds of dry dirt into the air as they went. If anybody had been in their way, they would have been shredded.

  The plane gouged an ugly furrow through the field, ploughing the soil in front of it, lifting into the air so it was standing on its nose for a moment. It hung like that for a split second, and I saw the size of the monster, raised up, the tail section painted with the symbol we’d been taught to fear and hate. The Nazi swastika.

  Then the plane twisted, its whole weight moving to one side, shearing the right wing with a horrible squeal of tearing metal that was followed by an instant of silence – barely the blink of an eye – and then a tremendous explosion as the first of the fuel tanks erupted with deafening fury.

  An orangey-yellow fireball burst from the right side of the plane, belching outwards and upwards. It spat across the field, reached up to the sky, ripped the wing away and blew the fuselage in two. Shards of glowing metal spewed into the air, pattering on the soil like heavy raindrops, and then a second explosion broke the larger pieces apart and hurled them aside as if they weighed nothing.

  The blast raced at me over the field as a solid wall of sound and heat and stink. It hit me like a demonic fist, forcing me backwards, slamming me down into the soil and knocking my breath away. Oven-hot air raced around me, thick with the smell of burning fuel and rubber.

  And then everything went dark.

  I had an odd light-headed feeling, like I had sometimes when I stood up too quickly. My head spun, my thoughts were muddled. Then it was as if someone reached down, dragged me out of my body and threw me up into the air. Everything felt numb and I wondered if I was dead. I was far above myself, looking down at my small twelve-year-old body lying in the dirt among the dark green leaves of the potato plants. I was bathed in thick smoke and surrounded by a hundred tiny fires in the places where shrapnel and splashes of fuel burnt. But then sounds began to creep in and the smell filled my nostrils. My mouth was thick with the bitter taste of burning. The orange light behind my eyelids darkened and brightened.

  When I opened my eyes, I stayed as I was, lying on my back. The smoke circled overhead like a living thing and I stared at it, but I didn’t watch it because my mind could hardly concentrate as things slowly came back into focus.

  I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but when I sat up, coughing and shaking my head to rid it of the awful sound that rang in my ears, I saw the plane, a hundred feet away, swallowed by an angry fireball. Black smoke was streaming into the sky, blocking the evening sun, and all around me, small fires flickered among the furrows.

  For a moment I thought I heard cries of pain, maybe the death throes of the crew as they burnt inside the wreckage, but the explosion was still singing in my ears and the sounds were drowned by the crackling of flames. I tried to stand, but was disorientated, and I looked around, seeing movement from somewhere to the right of the main crash site.

  Something caught my eye, making me look up and back towards the trees. The breeze shifted and black smoke swirled, but somewhere through the foul-smelling clouds, I saw the bright white of a silk parachute beyond the woods. It was small. A long way off and no bigger than the size of a marble. Then the smoke thickened as it rose and circled over the treetops, blocking everything from sight.

  It was the summer of 1941 and the weather was good over Northumberland, but it felt as if the world was dying. So many things were coming to an end. That day, though, something was just beginning.

  AFTERMATH

  For what seemed like a long time, I sat in the soil and stared at the burning plane, trying to clear my head. And as some sense came back to me, I looked down and saw how dirty I was. There were streaks of muck all down my shirt, and that was almost worse than being nearly blown up; it had been clean on this morning and Mam would be fuming, because I wasn’t supposed to get dirty. Soap powder was rationed and we had to wear things for as long as we could before washing them. And, she always told me, the more we washed our clothes, the quicker they would wear out.

  ‘Hell’s bells, there you are!’ The voice sounded as if it was coming from a long way off. ‘I was so . . . Oh, Lord, are you all right? Peter? Peter? Say something!’

  I turned to look up at the hill, seeing Mam coming down towards me. She was still wearing her apron and the old slippers she wore in the house. The look on her face was a mixture of terror and relief.

  She rushed down, falling to her knees and putting her hands on my cheeks. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said as she turned my face this way and that. ‘Are you hurt? Did you get hurt, Peter?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, still dazed. ‘Sorry, Mam. I’m dirty.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dirty.’

  ‘Never mind about that. Are you hurt?’ She didn’t even look at the burning plane.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure?’ She continued to inspect me, checking my head and neck. ‘I was so worried.’ Her breath was coming in great gasps between each word and her eyes were almost as wide as the German gunner’s had been. ‘Where were you?’ Her hands were shaking as she lifted my arms, ran her fingers over my legs. ‘Your knees,’ she said. ‘You’re bleedin’.’

  ‘Just grazes.’

  ‘Can you stand up?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She sat back and stared at me. ‘I was scared witless.’ Then she leant forward again and put her arms around me, pulling me right against her chest and squeezing me tight. ‘I thought something had happened to you. When I saw you sittin’ there, I . . .’

  ‘I’m all right, Mam.’ I hugged her back. ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘In the woods.’

  ‘The woods? I thought I told you not to go that far this late in the day. How many times have I told you to stay close to home? Imagine if somethin’ happened to you. What would I do if . . .’ And then she did something that took me by surprise. Her hand darted out and she slapped my left cheek. ‘Don’t ever do that again,’ she said. ‘And look at the state of you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mam.’ I fought back the tears. It hadn’t hurt, but I knew I’d done something terrible. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Mam nodded. ‘I know.’ She put her arms round me again. ‘I’m sorry ’n’ all. Come on, let’s get you home.’

  But before we could stand, we heard voices, and when we looked back, there were children reaching the crest of the hill behind us.

  Our house wasn’t in the main part of the village, it was just on the other side of the hill, so it hadn’t taken Mam long to get here. She probably started running just after she heard the sirens and realised she couldn’t find me. But now everyone else was coming. The all-clear would have been sounded and everyone would have come out from their shelters and seen the smoke over the field. Now the whole village was rushing to see it.

  Standing silhouetted at the top of the hill, they stopped and watched the flames, the black smoke, afraid to come closer. Then the adults came, passing the children, their pace slowing as they descended the hill. There were men carrying sticks and shovels and pitchforks. There were men from the Home Guard, too. They weren’t in uniform, but they’d brought their Ross rifles and were holding them to their shoulders, training their sights on the burning aircraft.

  And then there were the soldiers who had taken over Bennett Hall and the farm close to the beach. A whole truckload of them was arrivin
g now, following a jeep that drove out into the field and skidded to a halt close by.

  A soldier jumped out from the vehicle shouting, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ He was a short, stocky man with a thin nose and a mouth that opened more on one side than the other when he shouted. The three stripes on his left arm told me he was a sergeant.

  ‘Get them away from here,’ he yelled, and two other soldiers leapt from the back of the jeep and hurried past the sergeant towards us.

  One of them dragged me to my feet while the other grabbed Mam and, as the sergeant continued to bark orders, the soldiers took us back to where the crowd had gathered, and the people parted as they took us through.

  ‘Need a medic over here,’ the soldier said, leading me up the hill. His grip was firm on my wrist.

  When we reached the top, he told me to sit down, and within a few seconds Mam was crouching beside me. A few of the children circled around us to see what was going on, but it didn’t take them long to realise that watching the burning plane was more exciting.

  Doctor Jacobs came over, wearing a jacket with patched elbows, taking a white medical bag from over his shoulder. ‘I’ll see to him,’ he said. ‘I know Peter.’

  The soldier looked him up and down.

  ‘I’m Doctor Jacobs,’ the older man said, holding up his medical bag, displaying the red cross on it. ‘I picked this up on the way over, just in case . . .’ Then he seemed to remember he wasn’t in uniform and that the soldier wouldn’t know who he was, so he stood to attention and saluted. ‘Private Jacobs,’ he said. ‘Home Guard.’

  The soldier considered him for a moment longer, looking back at the wreck as if he couldn’t make his mind up what to do. The real soldiers didn’t take the Home Guard very seriously because some of them were quite old and, at first, they didn’t have any supplies so they had to pretend they had rifles when they practised on the green. People used to watch them and laugh, but the soldier who had pulled me up the hill probably just wanted to get back to where the excitement was, so he sighed and waved a hand at Doctor Jacobs. ‘All right then. Get on with it.’ And, with that, he went back down the hill.