Simple Faith

by Anna Schmidt

  But it was Daniel who held her attention. He stood straight and tall facing the soldier. He was wearing the clothes he wore to school every day—wool pants, a shirt with threadbare collar and cuffs, and over that a heavy sweater that Ailsa had knitted for him. On his head he was wearing the beret that Mikel had given him.

  “Halt!” a voice growled. The man guarding her family swiveled to point his weapon at her. Another soldier stepped out of the shadows behind her. He was also pointing a gun at her. She stepped off her bike and raised her hands.

  “Mama!” Daniel ran to her, wrapping his arms around her waist. Both soldiers lowered their weapons. They exchanged a look, and then one of them herded her and Daniel back into the spotlight while the other one picked up her bike and rummaged through her bag. When he found the orange, he grinned and held it up as a trophy for the other soldier to see.

  “That belongs to my son,” Anja said in perfect German.

  The soldier hesitated, no doubt startled by her command of his language.

  “Give it to the boy,” a man said, stepping into the light. He was clearly in charge. He wore the uniform of a Gestapo agent, complete with shiny black boots and a holstered handgun strapped to his side. He waited for his order to be obeyed then turned his attention to Anja.

  “Fräulein,” he said politely. Then he began to speak to her in German. She knew that he was testing her, trying to determine just how well she spoke his language—and why. She answered his questions as truthfully as possible.

  “I lived for a time in Munich.”

  “I am Danish by birth.”

  “These are my grandparents. My parents are dead.”

  “I work for the Friends War Victims Relief Committee in Brussels.”

  The officer studied her for a long moment. “This is your son?”

  “Ja.”

  “Where is your husband?”

  She met his gaze directly but said nothing.

  He frowned. “You have a husband and yet you carry the name of your grandparents?”

  “In Denmark it is a common name.”

  “Your husband then is a soldier?”

  “We are of the Freunde Societe—we do not believe in your war.”

  Did he need to know that her husband had been a Jew? Did he need to know that he had died in the street outside a synagogue? Did he need to know one more detail of her life?

  The officer smiled. “It is hardly my war, Frau Jensen.”

  “And yet you fight,” she replied quietly, her eyes never wavering from his.

  His smile dissolved into a scowl, and he turned on his heel and approached the house, barking out orders to the soldier at the entrance. Within seconds the soldiers ransacking the house came running out. At the same time, those who had been searching the outbuildings emerged and ran double time to the canvas-covered truck. They climbed in the back—the last being the soldiers guarding Anja and her family.

  The officer climbed into the passenger seat next to the driver and said something to him. Seconds later the taillights of the truck could be seen fading into the distance.

  For the first time, Anja turned to look directly at her grandfather. He shook his head once, signaling that indeed there were no Americans hiding on the property. Then he followed his wife to the house and began picking up the overturned furniture while she swept up the shards of glass. Anja wrapped her arm around Daniel’s shoulders. “Put the bicycle away and then come help,” she said.

  “Mama,” Daniel said in a whisper, casting a glance toward the house. “I know where one of them is hiding, and he is hurt. You must come.” He tugged at her arm.

  “No Daniel, you—”

  “I saw the plane come down, and I saw the man fall into our field. He hid his parachute in one of the haystacks, and I hid him in the ditch by the stream. We should bring a blanket and some way to carry him. He cannot walk.”

  A rumble of more trucks on the road made Anja tremble with fear. What if someone had seen Daniel hiding the airman? What if the officer had known that a local boy had been seen dragging something across a field? What if—

  “Mama? Come now. He must be cold and hungry, and I think he was in such pain.”

  “Go help Momse and send Moffee out to me.” She was deliberate in her use of the terms of endearment for her grandparents. She hoped it would calm Daniel. “Tell Moffee to wear his jacket and gloves.”

  “But—”

  “Do as I say,” she snapped, her fear for what her son had done without a thought for his own safety making her irritable. Then she grabbed him and hugged him hard. “You did the right thing,” she told him, kissing his forehead. “Just never ever do something like that again. Promise me.”

  “They did not see me, Mama. I was so very careful.”

  He would not promise—he was that much like his father. And Anja understood that even as young as he was, the loss of his father and his sister made him want to—need to—do something.

  “Go,” she said giving him a little push. And while she waited for her grandfather to join her, she tried to think about how they might move a full-grown man who was injured—possibly badly burned. And where were they going to hide him until she could arrange for him to be moved down the escape line and hopefully back to England?

  Then she remembered the body hanging from the tree. What if the Nazis got to this man her son had found before she could?

  CHAPTER 2

  Mikel Sabarte had his own reasons for helping downed Allied airmen move from place to place until they were once again safe. He had his reasons for visiting Daniel every chance he got at either the farmhouse or the orphanage. He had his reasons for loving Anja.

  And he kept every one of those reasons to himself. He had been born to a life in the shadows, and now he chose to live that way.

  He was Basque and as such knew all about what it felt like to be behind enemy lines even in his own country, what it felt like to grow up in a world that labeled him “different,” what it meant to put his own life on the line to make sure that his only child had a chance at a better life than the one he had known—as Anja did every day.

  Anja’s Quaker faith made her more of an optimist. She believed there was good—or what she called the Light—in every human being. How she could believe such nonsense after witnessing the death of her daughter and husband was a mystery to Mikel. But it was one of the traits of her character that had drawn him to her. She had hope when he had long since abandoned any notion that there was more good than evil in this world.

  On this night, he had waited for her train to arrive, knowing that a plane was down near her grandparents’ farm, knowing that this meant the Germans would be searching every house and outbuilding for miles around the wreckage, knowing that her instinct would be to find any American crew member or evader still hiding out and get him to safety. He could only hope that the fact that her son, Daniel, was spending the weekend at the farm would keep her from taking too many risks. She knew the dangers as well as anyone—better than most.

  As the train pulled into the station, he’d seen her sitting next to a window, her head resting against the glass. He hoped she had managed to get some sleep on the ride from Brussels, for the likelihood was that she would not get much sleep once she reached the farm. He had information for her to pass on to the baker. The Nazis had discovered and raided one of their safe houses. One of her main jobs with the escape line that ran out of Brussels and the surrounding countryside was locating places where the evaders could stay for a few hours or perhaps a few days. Moving these men from one safe house to another—often right under the noses of the Nazis—was perhaps the most dangerous part of their work. But Anja insisted that as a nurse she had the perfect cover for going in and out of houses and visiting farms in the region.

  Once the train came to a stop, he had waited for her to disembark and then started pushing the luggage trolley down the platform close to where she was walking. He had pressed the note that contained the address of the raide
d safe house into her palm without a word. All of this had been done in the blink of an eye. They had been two strangers passing in the growing darkness of a late November night. But for Mikel that single moment of contact and the news of the plane down near the farm formed the foundation of hours they might spend together in the coming weeks. For the Allied crew that had fallen from the sky would need help, and he and Anja would become their lifeline to freedom.

  Peter was shivering so hard that he could barely keep himself from emitting low moans. At the same time, he felt as if he had a raging fever. He fought to stay conscious, to listen for sounds of anyone coming. Not that he was capable of doing anything but surrender should the enemy discover his hiding place. Truth was, they would probably shoot him without asking any questions, or worse, they might accidentally kill him by probing the stuff covering him with their bayonets.

  Focus, Trent.

  He tried to remember as much as possible about the terrain he’d been able to see from the plane and then again as the boy helped him drag himself across the field to the ditch. There had been smoke rising. Was that from the downed plane or a house? And what about the rest of the crew?

  Mentally he tried to reason out their fates. Haversole was definitely dead. Walker—the pilot—would probably have not had time to bail out before the plane hit and exploded. Peter knew that the man wouldn’t think twice about trading his life for the safety of innocents living in the area. Peter was sure that he’d heard a burst of machine-gun fire coming from the direction of the trees where Simpson had landed. There were four other crew members he couldn’t account for. He hoped they’d managed to land safely and get to a hiding place. Focusing his attention in the direction of the road where he’d seen the military trucks passing, he heard more traffic. The wind carried the smell of burning oil and gas from the smoldering plane in his direction. He closed his eyes.

  So tired. So very …

  A sound nearby brought him immediately alert. Judging by the darkness, time had passed. Minutes? Hours? Instinctively he tried to flatten himself farther into the ditch. The action sent a shot of pain burning its way the length of his leg. He bit down hard on his lower lip and waited.

  “Ici,” a woman whispered to someone with her in what he thought was French. If a woman had come, then she must be local and perhaps he might not be shot.

  He felt the branches and straw that covered him being cleared away and heard the rustle of silk. A man’s voice—deep and husky—gave directions also in French or some dialect close to French. He and the rest of the crew had been told that Belgium was a multilingual society—French, Dutch, and German were all common. They had joked that the only language they hoped to hear was English.

  Buying precious seconds to assess his situation, Peter remained as motionless as possible. Of course, now that he was fully exposed to the wind and cold, it was hard not to shiver. Someone touched his shoulder, startling him, and he jerked away. Having revealed that he was alive, he tried to push himself to a sitting position.

  “Lie still,” the female said now, speaking in English. “We will roll you onto the parachute. Just be very still, all right?”

  He grunted as he noticed the man folding the parachute into layers and placing it next to him. The man’s movements were those of an old person—stiff and slow. The woman moved quickly, and she was very small—surely no more than a teenager. Perhaps she was the man’s granddaughter and the sister of the boy who had found him. How she and the old man were going to move him, he had no idea. Then he saw the cart—a rustic old wooden wheelbarrow-type, but deeper.

  “Which leg is hurt?” she asked.

  “Left,” he replied, wondering how she knew. The boy of course. He had sent them. He had kept his promise to go for help. “I was hit—wounded.” He realized that he could no longer feel his leg.

  It was so dark that he could not read her expression, but he saw the way she glanced at the man, who shrugged as the two of them knelt on the ends of the parachute to keep it from blowing and together slowly rolled him out of the ditch and onto the smooth, cold fabric. The morphine was wearing off but still had some value. At least he was able to remain mostly silent as they moved him.

  Next she instructed him to make himself as small as possible, and in spite of the pain, he eased his knees closer to his chest and tucked his arms close to his body. The old man brought the cart closer and tilted it, dumping out a pile of straw while the girl wrapped the chute tightly around Peter. Then the two of them bent and lifted him into the cart, dropping him like a sack of potatoes.

  He could not swallow a yelp.

  “Shhh,” she ordered and then began quickly covering him with straw that she and the old man scooped up with both hands.

  “Let’s go,” the girl said, her voice betraying her nervousness. She led the way while the old man pushed the cart. The ride was bumpy, and twice the cart almost turned over. But after what seemed like a very long time, Peter saw the glow of a lamp through the mat of straw that covered his face. Then he saw a woman standing in the doorway of a small house, her arms around a boy.

  The boy broke away and ran to meet them. He blurted out a question in French. Peter’s French was of the high school variety, but he understood the word mort. The kid was asking if he was dead.

  “Non.”

  Well, that was good news. He had begun to wonder if all of this was some kind of delirium—a dream that would precede him freezing to death. The way his head was swimming and his eyes refused to focus, he wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  Instead of wheeling the cart up to the door, the old man headed around the side of the house toward a dark outbuilding, and once the girl had pulled the door open against a drift of snow blocking it, he rolled the cart inside. Using the slickness of the parachute for leverage, the man and girl turned Peter until he was facing backward, and as the man tipped up the cart, Peter slid out and onto a pile of fresh and fragrant hay.

  The woman from the house was now standing in the doorway of the shed with a lantern, and the last thing Peter saw before he passed out was the face of the girl as she knelt next to him and gently unwrapped him. She was quite beautiful, and when the boy bent to help her, calling her Mama, Peter realized that this was not his sister—this was the boy’s mother.

  The man was heavy, but Anja was more concerned about his height. She was already thinking ahead, making a mental checklist of what they would need to do to move him along to the next stop on the escape line. His height meant that he would stand out even in disguise. Americans tended to be taller than most Europeans with a lanky build that was in direct contrast to the bulkier physique of even the most athletic males in Europe. But she was getting ahead of herself. Before they could get him moving on the escape route, he would have to be able to walk—to hike long distances over rough terrain. She stood over him, hands on her hips, as she reasoned out what they needed to do over the next few hours.

  He had finally lost consciousness—whether from loss of blood, sheer exhaustion, or a combination was hard to say. His dog tags identified him as Trent, Peter S. Numbers were stamped under his name and what she assumed was his blood type—O+. In the lower right corner was the letter P to indicate that he was Protestant. She wondered if he was a religious man or had simply indicated the faith he’d been raised in as a boy.

  Did it matter? In her experience it did. If the man died, she hoped he would do so having felt himself held in the Light—or whatever version of God’s Spirit that would bring him peace in his final hours.

  But he wasn’t dead—at least not yet. So in spite of her own weariness, she pushed herself into action. Her grandfather had tied up the horse that usually occupied this stall outside. Daniel had brought extra blankets from the house. And Ailsa had brought some broth and a bottle of iodine. Anja suspected the man was seriously dehydrated. Hours had passed since Daniel first found him, and who knew how long before that it had been since he’d taken in any liquids or nourishment. She worried that he might a
lso be suffering from hypothermia, but her first concern had to be that leg.

  With the experience of having hidden dozens of Allied airmen trapped behind enemy lines, she cut away the leg of his uniform and held up the lantern to examine the wound. The bullet had done more than graze him; it was embedded. The area was also covered with dried blood as well as dirt and debris. She cleaned it as best she could then doused the whole area with the iodine and bandaged it. For now she had done all she could, so she covered him and arranged the hay so that he was invisible in the corner of the stall. Extinguishing the lantern and working without light, she settled herself next to him and cradled his head in her arm. She wondered if he was married—if he had a wife and children back in America who were unknowingly depending on her and the others to bring him back to them. Surely, even if he were single, he had parents and siblings, not to mention friends.

  Using an eyedropper that her grandmother had brought rather than a spoon, she placed a tiny amount of the broth between his lips. Instantly his tongue came out to capture the liquid, but he did not wake. She repeated the process a half dozen times, thinking as she did so that this was so very like the way her late husband had fed a sparrow they had found in the park when Daniel was just a baby. The little bird’s wing had been broken. Her husband—her Benjamin—had nursed that little bird back to health and set it free. She wondered if Peter Trent would be so blessed—if he would ever fly again.

  As she waited for him to wake and take more of the liquid, she stroked his dark sandy hair. It was thick and at the moment matted with sweat from his ordeal, and he was definitely running a fever. When she had held the lantern over him, she had noticed a bruise on his cheek and a variety of minor cuts and abrasions on his face and hands. She suspected that there would be more injuries, but her primary concern had to be infection. By now her grandfather would have sent word for Josef to come as soon as possible, but when Josef would arrive remained anyone’s guess. No doubt the Nazis had set up extra roadblocks and checkpoints throughout the area. It was perfectly normal for Josef to come to the farm during the day. He came to buy eggs and milk for the café. But it would not be light for hours yet, and for Josef to travel before dawn would raise suspicion.