by Alan Hlad
Ollie looked up from his empty cup and saw Madeleine staring at him. His mind raced. Did Duchess make it home to Susan? Would Boar shoot me for releasing the pigeon? Ollie gripped the table and said, “About the pigeon—”
“Would you like more coffee, Flight Lieutenant?” Madeleine interrupted.
Boar nodded.
Ollie appreciated Madeleine’s attempt to delay the fact that he had released Duchess. But sooner or later, he’d have to tell the lieutenant. And when he did, he’d likely have hell to pay.
“Where will you go?” Madeleine asked, refilling Boar’s cup. She placed the pot in the center of the table. Steam rose from the spout.
“I’ll figure it out.” Boar sipped his coffee.
Ollie looked at the lieutenant. In the air, Boar had no doubt been a fearless flying ace. But now he was grounded, without a squadron to lead into battle and, for the moment, blind. Strangely, the battered pilot appeared both formidable and harmless, like a king cobra with its fangs clipped.
“The only unoccupied area is zone libre, far to the south,” Madeleine said. “Unless you plan to steal a plane or swim the Channel.”
“Then we’ll go to zone libre,” Ollie said.
Boar rubbed the edge of his cup with his thumb. “Who’s going to help us get there, the French Army?” He looked in Ollie’s direction. “In case you haven’t heard, they’ve been wiped out.”
Ollie glanced at Madeleine. The woman’s shoulders slumped. Her eyes turned glossy. Ollie’s face turned hot. Before he could stop himself, he reached over the table and grabbed the lieutenant’s jacket.
Boar jerked, but Ollie’s grip held firm.
“Madeleine lost her sons in this war.” Ollie loosened his grip, then lowered his hand. “And her husband has been missing since the invasion.”
Boar straightened his jacket and looked in Madeleine’s direction. “If I had known, Madeleine, I wouldn’t have made such a remark.” He gripped his pistol holster. “You touch me again, Yank, and you’ll wish the Nazis had found you.”
“Enough.” Madeleine inhaled her cigarette and blew smoke over the table, creating a cloud barrier between Ollie and the lieutenant. “We have much planning to do, if you want any chance of returning home.”
“Madeleine,” Boar said, “with all due respect, there’s little chance of us getting back to Britain. Once my eyes are healed, I plan to use my bullets on the Wehrmacht, assuming I don’t use them on this Yank.”
“You’re of more use as a pilot to fight the Luftwaffe. Yes?”
“Perhaps.” Boar drank the last of his coffee and looked in Madeleine’s direction. “My condolences.”
“Merci,” she said.
Boar’s words surprised Ollie. He had believed the pilot to be an insensitive bastard and wondered if the shake he had given him had temporarily unveiled a trace of human consciousness, buried under thick layers of war calluses.
Madeleine cleared her throat, then placed her cigarette in Boar’s hand.
As Madeleine and the lieutenant shared another cigarette, Louis trotted to the door. He sniffed and scratched his hooves over the floor. Madeleine began to get up and stopped when Ollie placed his hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll let him out,” Ollie said. “Thanks for breakfast.”
Madeleine smiled.
Ollie looked forward to spending a brief moment outside. After all, it appeared quite clear that he’d be spending his days, at least until his body recovered, breathing stagnant crawl-space air and burnt tobacco. As he opened the door, a bird shot over his head. He ducked. The hog squealed. The lieutenant jumped and ripped out his pistol.
Ollie looked up and saw the bird flutter to the counter.
“What the hell is it?” Boar said, gripping his pistol.
“Pigeon,” Madeleine said, placing a hand on Boar’s arm.
Boar gave a heavy exhale, then returned his pistol to its holster. “Keep that bloody bird locked in its cage, Yank.”
At first, Ollie thought his eyes had failed him. It can’t be Duchess. I sent her home. She flew away.
The bird perked its head, then ruffled its luminescent feathers.
Ollie plucked Duchess from the counter.
The pigeon cooed.
The first thing Ollie noticed was that her feathers were cold. Then he noticed that her canister was missing.
CHAPTER 32
EPPING, ENGLAND
Susan scanned the loft. Empty cubbies. Of the 500 pigeons dropped into France, only 104 had returned, barely one in five. And only two had returned this morning. Neither was Duchess. Why had she flown away? Shell shock? Deep down, Susan wished she could fly away herself. Go someplace safe. A land where food was plentiful and not acquired through ration books. A place without sirens and bombs. But she couldn’t leave Bertie, her pigeons, and the belief that Ollie would someday come home.
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out the note. She’d read it countless times, each glimpse with a pang of guilt in her chest. And now Ollie was a casualty of Source Columba, dropped like one of her pigeons into war.
She slipped the note back into her pocket, tended to the remaining lofts, and went inside. She saw Bertie, a paleness in his face, hanging up the phone. “What’s wrong?”
“I made you tea,” Bertie said, dodging her question. He took a seat at the kitchen table and tapped the chair beside him.
She sat. A wave of anxiety turned her skin warm. “Who was it?”
He slid a cup of tea to her. “National Pigeon Service. Order for five hundred more pigeons.”
“When?”
“A week.”
Susan shook her head. “We only have three hundred ready.”
“We’ll have to prepare more.” Bertie sighed. “And if necessary, use the pigeons that have just returned.”
“It’s not enough time.”
“We don’t have a choice, my dear.”
“Tell them to call another farm.”
“Susan,” Bertie said, “the military has specifically asked for our pigeons.”
She clasped her cup. Lukewarm tea spilled over her fingers. “Why?”
“They must have returned something important; otherwise, they would have simply requisitioned pigeons from the next farm on the list.” Bertie grinned. “They’re doing it, my dear. Our pigeons are carrying French intelligence. And they’re bloody well informing our military where Hitler is moving his forces.”
Susan tried to smile, but she had already lost far too much. It’s what she had wanted, for Source Columba to be a success. But not at Ollie’s expense. She stood from her chair.
“Where are you going?” Bertie asked.
She retrieved her coat. “I have five hundred pigeons to prepare.”
“I’ll help.” Bertie stood, hobbled toward the door, and grabbed his jacket from the coatrack.
The cracking of Bertie’s knees caused Susan to stop. “You should rest.”
“I’ll holiday when we defeat that barbaric German führer,” Bertie said. “Until then, I’ll be even more relentless than his Luftwaffe.”
Susan took her grandfather’s arm and helped him to the lofts. They began packing pigeons into baskets to prepare for a training flight. As she loaded baskets into the bed of the truck, she noticed her grandfather hobble over to one of the soldiers, standing outside of his tent smoking a cigarette.
“Could you help us?” Bertie asked.
“We have our orders, sir. And you have yours.” The soldier flicked his cigarette and returned to his tent.
“Plonker,” Bertie said, returning to Susan. “They squat on our land, even eat our food, but they won’t lift a finger to help us.”
Susan noticed Bertie’s cheeks had turned red.
“Orders, my arse,” Bertie said. “They just sit in their tent, waiting for the bloody bells to sound. I can tell you this, my dear. In the Great War, our military were not such lazy sods.”
Susan watched Bertie pick up a basket and hobble to the tr
uck. The fact that the soldiers were sitting in their tent, likely playing cards or napping, made her furious. An old man, one who could barely walk, was laboring right under their noses. And they did nothing. So before she lost her nerve, she marched to the tent and threw open the canvas door.
A soldier, reading a magazine, slapped the cover shut. His comrade shot up from lying on a cot.
“Get off your bahookies!” Susan’s pulse pounded in her ears.
Their faces flushed, as if a woman had just stepped into their shower room.
“Outside and help!” She pointed. “Otherwise, I will call your commander and report that you are sleeping on the job.”
The soldier, the one who had been reading the magazine, said, “You’ll do no such thing.”
“Yes, I will.” Susan placed her hands on her hips. “Or would you prefer me to make a call to Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park?”
The soldier’s jaws dropped. They glanced to each other, then scuttled outside.
Bertie, carrying a basket of pigeons, stopped and grinned. He watched the soldiers pick up baskets and walk toward the truck. “Nicely done,” he said, stepping to Susan.
“Can’t believe I did that.” She pulled in a lungful of air, attempting to calm her racing heart.
“The name-dropping was a nice touch, something I should have done. But I think it was your cussing that got the blokes moving.”
Susan’s shoulders relaxed. “Heard Granny use it once, or twice.”
“Always worked on me.” He smiled at Susan and returned to work. “Bahookie,” he chuckled to himself.
For the remainder of the morning, she and Bertie placed pigeons into baskets, while the soldiers, muttering occasional profanities, loaded them onto the truck. While the assembly line worked efficiently, Susan knew that the training runs would be the least of her worries. The big problem was the quota of an additional 500 pigeons. Inside the lofts, she selected every bird that was old enough and strong enough to fly the Channel, even though many of them had limited training. So, to ensure their guidance on the training run, she mixed in thirty or so veteran birds, fatigued from their return from France. By the time she was finished, the lofts were left with nothing but squabs and nesting mothers.
She insisted that Bertie stay behind to keep an eye out for returning pigeons. He argued, but finally relented when she pointed out that the soldiers, hunkered back inside their tent, were now in a foul mood and that someone should stay behind to ensure things went smoothly. Before leaving, he packed her a lunch, a piece of bread toasted to hide its staleness and a bit of cheese. As she drove away, she noticed Bertie sitting on the porch waiting for another pigeon to emerge on the horizon.
The drive through Essex was uneventful; there were few cars on the road and fewer people outside. It seemed as if all of England was hunkered inside, preparing for a long winter or another round of bombing, until she neared Clacton-on-Sea. On the side of the road, she noticed three members of the Home Guard, volunteers too old or physically unable to join the fight, digging out a signpost. Their coats covered most of their uniforms but were easily recognizable by their olive-green military caps. Their weapons—an assortment of old hunting rifles—were propped like kindling wood against a beech tree. She slowed to a stop and rolled down her window.
“What are you doing?” Susan asked.
A gray-mustached man with swollen jowls, like a chipmunk hiding acorns, dropped his shovel and stepped to the truck. “Preparing for the invasion.”
Susan’s knuckles turned white as she gripped the steering wheel.
The man adjusted his cap and placed his hands, covered with soil, on the door. “What’s your business?”
“National Pigeon Service.” She hesitated, then retrieved an NPS badge, a metallic pin that she preferred to keep inside her purse rather than wear on a lapel, and handed it to him.
He looked at the badge, then to the pigeons in the back of the truck.
Susan noticed the man’s eyes soften.
“My son, Andrew, when he was a wee lad, loved to feed pigeons in the park.” He cleared his throat and returned the badge. “He was fond of giving them the crust from his sandwiches.”
Susan smiled and placed the badge back into her purse.
The man exhaled, his breath forming a mist in the cold air. “Andrew hasn’t returned from Calais.”
His words surprised her. But Susan knew, from what she and Bertie had read in the papers, that a few thousand British soldiers in Calais had held their ground against the German invasion. They fought to the end, creating time to evacuate troops from France. In all, over 300,000 soldiers had fled Dunkirk Harbor on an argosy of military vessels and rickety fishing boats. It was the miracle at Dunkirk. And the men in Calais were gone. They were what Bertie had believed to be sacrificial lambs.
“He’d be proud of his father, working hard to protect his home.” She made eye contact with the man. “I’ll add Andrew to our prayer board.”
“Thank you.” The man sniffed, then straightened his back. “I suggest you finish your business and go home. They’ve been coming early the past few nights.”
Susan nodded and pulled away, humbled that the sight of a pigeon could resurrect fond memories for the man. And saddened by the cost of so many young men, with likely many more to follow.
Along the route, she noticed more Home Guard and soon realized that they were blacking out what appeared to be every road sign on the peninsula. The signs, too sturdy to rip out with mere garden tools, were painted over. The Essex coast was a labyrinth of winding roads, and it appeared that the military, or at least the Home Guard, didn’t want to make it easy for the Germans to find their way. Would creating a few wrong turns really slow Hitler’s army?
She arrived at the coast by afternoon. It had changed or, more accurately, had been transformed into a military outpost since her last visit. Instead of unloading or taking a moment to eat the lunch that Bertie had packed for her, she was compelled by her curiosity to see what had been done. So she parked the truck on the side of the road and stepped outside.
The ridge above the shoreline was littered with pillboxes, reinforced concrete structures with rectangular slits for windows. The once-pristine beach was now covered in what appeared to be miles of concertina wire, large coils covered in razors. Huge guns, their barrels angled to the sky, had been erected on the cliffs above the shoreline. Soldiers, one stationed by each of the pillboxes, stood vigil over the Channel.
The reality that the invasion was coming made her legs quiver. Britain was preparing for war on its shores. And somewhere, far across those slate-gray waters, was Ollie. She clasped her hands and prayed that he’d somehow make it home. But home to what? A German-occupied Britain?
She had expected to hear military commanders barking orders, soldiers moving shells and boxes of ammunition. But the peninsula was eerily quiet. A calm before the Nazi storm, she thought. Just crying gulls, floating like kites over crashing waves. Glancing at a pillbox, she noticed the soldier hadn’t moved. Disciplined. Stoic. Doing his duty. But seconds later, a gull, apparently tired from coasting the winds, glided over and landed on the man’s helmet.
She expected the soldier to shoo away the bird, but he remained at attention, staring toward the sea. Hairs prickled the back of her neck. “Hello,” Susan called, her voice seemingly drowned by the surf. The soldier remained steadfast. She shouted again. But neither the soldier nor the others made any effort to acknowledge her.
She gathered her courage and crept to the pillbox. As she approached, the gull flew off, causing the man’s helmet to tilt awkwardly on his head. The soldier, unruffled, continued his watch over the Channel. A few steps farther and she realized that the soldier—if one could call him that—was nothing more than a mannequin dressed in a military uniform. The helmet was specked with gull droppings. A shock shuddered her body. On closer inspection, she found not just a mannequin, but a dummy pillbox constructed of loose brick, painted in dove-colored paint. The gun
s, erected to protect the coast, were drainpipes, their barrels doing nothing more than collecting rainwater. The entire beach fortification was a deception. All of the pillboxes, guns, and soldiers were fake. The only thing that was real, it appeared, was the razor wire. God help us, she thought.
Where was the British military? The Germans needed nothing more than a cheap pair of wire cutters and they’d run through Essex. The Home Guard, armed with hunting rifles, knives strapped to poles as bayonets, and Molotov cocktails, would barely slow them down. They’d march through Epping, then take London. Susan wanted to cry. Give up. Instead, she forced herself to return to the truck.
Daunted by the fictitious fortification, it took her more than an hour to unload the pigeons. As she placed the last basket in the dormant grass, the pigeons, sensing the start of their journey, began to rustle. One by one, Susan flipped open the doors. Pigeons flapped into the sky. As they circled the perimeter, a wave of sadness caused her shoulders to droop, realizing that it was their last training flight. And considering the survival rate of the mission, the last time she would see them fly as a flock again.
Susan packed up the empty baskets and drove away. A few miles down the road, she missed the turn, due to either the absent road sign or the fact that she was distracted by the British Army resorting to recruiting mannequins. Regardless, she found herself at the far end of the peninsula before realizing what she had done.
The sun was sinking over the trees. It had taken far too long, and she’d be lucky to make it back before dark. So she whipped the truck around. The sandwich Bertie had packed for her spilled to the floor. She slammed the accelerator. The engine roared. Wind whistled through the empty cages. Trying to save time, she decided to take what she believed to be a shortcut and got lost again. She’d been to Clacton-on-Sea dozens of times, but without the road signs, everything looked different, yet the same; it was like being dropped into a garden maze. She struggled to find her way out. Unfortunately, it was dark by the time she reached the main road out of Clacton-on-Sea.
Adhering to the blackout, she kept the headlights off. The road, barely visible, required her to drive slowly. The countryside was barren. Everyone, it appeared to Susan, was hunkered into shelters. Before she reached Epping, sirens howled. Dozens of searchlights near North Weald Airfield scanned the atmosphere. White beams crisscrossed the clouds. She gripped the wheel. Within moments, the antiaircraft guns fired. Concussive blasts pounded her ears. Flashes of aerial explosions lit up the sky. She drove faster, struggling to keep the truck on the road.