A Packhorse Called Rachel
Page 14
“No-one else …?”
I say: “They’re dead”. My words frighten me. I pray for some continuity, look intently at the two men to blot out the image of death. Brian Marsh turns to the controls showing no emotion. The Lysander takes off after a short, bumpy run on the ground, just missing the line of trees at the edge of the field.
Raboullet, my friend, can you see us taking off ? Can you see me? Are you still sitting at the foot of that tree? Will you take care of Clément and Francis until my return? Please, do not abandon them to an anonymous collector of bodies. Stay sober! Hang on! Do the right thing for them, I beg you! The navigator, David Smythe - my own age we were soon to find out - gives me a cloth to clean up my face and wipe the mud off my garments.
He laughs. He opens a flask of hot tea. We drink out of the flask’s cup, David gets off his seat to put a blanket over my shaking knees. I’m so moved by this that my bag of tears bursts open. David puts an arm round me and whispers words I cannot understand because of the engine noise. Our plane cleaves the low cloud. It lifts slowly, very slowly …
I am clamouring for a miracle. I speculate: what happened was not real, I applaud with the spectators, the dead bodies left lying behind the curtains are now getting up to take their bows before going off to the wings.
The higher the plane is taking us (never high enough for me but, as Brian explains, a Lysander is a small reconnaissance plane meant to fly only at night because it cannot fly at great height) the more painful my shame at having been spared.
David returns to his seat. He’s reading his map to help Brian steer westward towards Brittany and the Channel. Both men are concentrating on the hazards of flying low over hostile territory. I envy such single-mindedness. Me, I experience failure. I am hurt by the discovery of that unutterable failure. I close my eyes, plan ways of redeeming myself, tell myself that the only solution left me is to return. Yes. Tomorrow. Or the next day. I fall asleep.
Nearer the coast the German Ack-ack is trying to shoot us down. David’s light aircraft moves up and down and sideways, I wake in terror. David shouts “ Don’t worry, it’s OK!” We are dancing on the stage in the air, a ballet of terror for me, taking me with it, me unrehearsed…
The ordeal lasts only a few minutes. David turns and grins, gives the V sign. Brian, meanwhile, is talking (in brusque, military fashion) to his plane which responds by giving all it can give, and more. A smell of burnt rubber tells of the strain on the Lysander.
Out of the danger zone it now glides ( as if the engine had been cut but of course hadn’t) Brian invites me to look through the muddy window. “The Channel” he says. Below us the sea gradually takes on its familiar light grey, light green, dark shadows running over its surface with the clouds, small waves bursting to silvery froth. And in the distance, north-east, the white transparent glow of the sun evaporating the early mists while we watch.
“Beautiful, what?” Brian says, “And clear of the Jerries…Bloody luck!”..
The proximity of the English coast, not yet in view, excites all three of us. David sings. Half an hour later, a yell of triumph comes from Brian’s throat, followed by David’s. The rugged coastline of England! Our hands join. We congratulate each other and thank our “ship” by gently knocking our fists against its carcass.
It responds by descending nose first and on full throttle onto an airfield in Bedfordshire.
Epilogue.
The Maurice de St Pré trial.
The excitement in the town was indescribable; at the door of the Palais de Justice people were fighting to gain access to the court. They were demanding that the accused be put to death without trial.
The trial lasted three days. In the dock the torturer St Pré was a shadow of his former self. His hands were covered with crêpe bandages stained with pus and blood. Soldiers of the Libération had made him dig his own grave with his bare hands. During the first two days the victims of the accused gave evidence, called by the prosecution. We saw a procession of young women whose nipples had been burnt with cigarettes, then four men and two women just out of Auschwitz who looked even thinner and emaciated than the accused. They described in a whisper but with unconcealed emotion the physical and moral tortures inflicted on them in the camps - to which many of their comrades and colleagues had succumbed - and the fate of those who perished in the gas chambers. With the exception of Blanchard and Weiss, none of the students arrested during the 2nd of February raid had been spared.
On the third day of the trial the lawyer for the defence could not make himself heard. The noise was such that Monsieur le Juge ordered the court to be cleared. However, the speech revealed three main facts: first, that although he had performed brilliantly in the entrance exam to the military academy of St Cyr, he broke out into cold sweat when ever he had to ride a horse - a reason he had to leave the academy. Second, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at Clermont. A brilliant student, ‘though depraved, he had gained his degree in Law with honours and begun to study for his doctorate. Third, he had organised a resistance group which was reported in all newspapers.
The defence lawyer recalled the circumstances which led Maurice de St Pré, a member of the Resistance from the beginning of the war, to betray his comrades and the staff. He had been arrested, he said, by the Gestapo in l943 having been denounced by persons unknown. The Gestapo had in its possession a dossier on St Pré that was damning. It stated that as a young member of the Resistance his job was to prepare false papers for staff and students at the University who for sectarian or political reasons had to escape to England or America. Quite a few had managed to leave the country in this way.’ Would Monsieur le Juge consider this fact as a circonstance atténuante asked the defence?
Following which, it was reported, Monsieur le Juge turned into a figure of stone, his lips tightly closed.
The Lawyer for the defence, rose to his feet again and by now shaking like a leaf (he was a very old man and probably retired). The Gestapo decided that Maurice de St Pré would be more useful alive than dead - in view of the physical weakness revealed in his dossier- and began to torture him to make him talk. Unable to endure pain of any sort, he agreed to all their demands. To ensure he would not be tempted to become a double agent (something he intended at first to do said the lawyer) he was given morphine. In a few days he became an addict and the Gestapo were able to count on his total collaboration.
The accused wept.
Maurice de St Pré was shot at dawn by the soldiers of the Libération in front of the grave they had made him dig.
About Marcelle
Marcelle Kellermann, a Parisian, interrupted her studies at the university in Clermont-Ferrand in France's Auvergne in her early twenties and joined the Resistance in 1942.
After the war she married the physicist Walter Kellermann in Manchester with whom she had three children. She completed her studies in England and eventually became a Senior Education Adviser in Yorkshire. She developed new ways of teaching foreign languages and published two books on the subject.
She now lives in Hampstead, London.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank first and foremost my husband Walter for his indefatigable support throughout the writing of this book. Also I would like to express my profound gratitude to my friend Aileen Ireland for her brilliant editing, to my friend Fay Weldon for her invaluable support and advice, to Barbara, Judith and Clive, my children for their blind faith in my endeavours, finally to Matt Campbell and all the wonderful people who contributed so unflinchingly to the birth of my 'Packhorse'.
Images of the Resistance by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum/Google Image Bank.
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ISBN 978-1-906658-02-1