by John Harris
ARMY OF SHADOWS
John Harris
To
our good friends of many years,
Christian and Maryelle Risoud, and
their friends in Paris and Burgundy,
who have become our friends
©John Harris 1977
Author’s Note
Though many of the events described in this book actually took place, it is nevertheless a work of fiction. The Resistance in the Cote d’Or region of Burgundy managed to show its defiance of the Germans in its own way and without the personal assistance of members of the British forces. The Plateau de Langres is an actual place, but most of the names in the maps will not be found in the Guide Michelin.
I am indebted to Frenchmen who described to me what it was like to live under the Occupation, and to the writings of those British agents who operated in France - in particular to S.O.E. in France, by M. R. D. Foot (HMSO, 1966), for its coverage of the whole Resistance scene, to Maquis, by George Millar (Heinemann, 1945), for its view of the last days of the Occupation in Burgundy, and to Accidental Agent, by John Goldsmith (Leo Cooper, 1971), for its description of Resistance tactics.
Part 1: DARKNESS
Les temps heroiques sont passés.
Leon Gambetta
1
‘Fighter!’ Urquhart shouted. ‘Right astern, skipper! Below and closing fast!’
The German plane was still no more than a swiftly moving shadow and it had obviously been stalking them for some time hidden against the black patches of forest below, but now as it began to climb, Urquhart, with his sharp, experienced eyes, had picked it up at once from the rear turret of the Lancaster.
They had all been in that pleasant euphoric state with the job well done and, even if not relaxed, had begun to feel they were reasonably safe. It had been a long flight down to the butt end of Europe, wearying and different but not too arduous and certainly nothing like as dangerous as Berlin or the Ruhr, the best defended targets in Europe.
Urquhart was still peering downwards to his left, watching intensely, as Crombie’s voice came back in answer to his warning. Quite steady, Crombie was always unflappable. He was a Regular like Urquhart, a thin, ascetic, reserved type none of them had ever got to know well. ‘Keep an eye on him, rear gunner,’ he said. ‘He’s bound to sniff around a bit to see if we’re awake.’
‘Right.’ Urquhart answered equally steadily, then his voice rose in a sudden yell of alarm. ‘Not this one.’ he screamed.
‘This one’s a nut! He’s not even stopping to look! He’s -coming - straight in!’
The fighter came snarling up to the slower bomber in a long curve, seeking a position underneath and astern of the starboard wing - a black, deadly, evil thing - and Urquhart yelled again into the intercom,
‘Now, skipper! Corkscrew now!’
Even as the fighter’s weapons system spat long curving lines of tracer at them like coloured slots on rails, Urquhart’s guns also began to hammer and the Lancaster twisted to the right, its speed cut dramatically as Crombie snatched at the throttles. The fighter, a Messerschmitt 110, Urquhart saw now, flew straight into the stream of bullets and the four Brownings jumped and clattered again as he fired in short deadly bursts between which he could actually hear the empty cartridge cases rattling in the chutes. Most of the German’s shots had gone wide, he knew, and for a moment as the Lancaster picked up its course and speed again he thought they had missed it altogether.
His mouth twisted in a grin that was more a grimace at the thought that anyone should be bold enough to try consequences with Crombie who was a squadron-leader with the D.S.O, and two D.F.C.s and, picking the best tradesmen in the squadron to fly with him, had the best shot in the group looking after his rear end. It was because Crombie was so good that they also had on board the journalist doing a war correspondent stint for his newspaper and the wing-commander from Air Ministry who wished to see the flak in the south for himself.
‘Got the bastard,’ Urquhart said into his microphone as he leaned forward to watch the Messerschmitt swing away on one wing-tip and begin to curve downwards, trailing a streaming tail of fire. ‘He’ll not bother us any more.’ But then he realized the Lancaster must have been hit, too. Through the excitement and the roar of his own guns, he remembered hearing the thump and crack of explosions behind him and someone’s yell of fear or pain in the intercom, and he now waited quietly for instructions to come from forward about what to do, confident that what Crombie ordered would be right, as it had been right in every other emergency they’d been through together.
The silence from the front of the aircraft continued and Urquhart grew uneasy, wondering what had happened. They had expected the trip to be to the Ruhr and the tension in the briefing room had been thick enough to cut with a knife as they’d waited for the gen, with everyone in his own little oasis of loneliness, doubt and fear. The news that it was to be Genoa, not the Happy Valley, had put them all in a good humour, with Crombie’s crew of experts listening idly while the newcomers took their copious notes, hoping they were spinning the charm that would bring them safely home, Crombie’s crew had been to Genoa several times before and they knew that, though reinforcements had moved south to protect the Italian cities, compared with Hamburg or Berlin or Essen, there was still nothing much to worry about.
Until now.
Two minutes before, Urquhart had been enjoying himself. The weather was gin-clear and they’d seen the Alps in full moonlight, with every snow-covered peak gleaming white. They’d used the lights of Switzerland as an aid to navigation and Urquhart had even identified Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn. It had been a piece of cake. Even the flight north, well behind the rest of the squadron because of the extra circles Crombie had made round the target so his passengers could see what was going on below, had been a piece of cake. Then, shortly after turning for home, they had run into an electrical storm over the mountains which, if an interesting experience, had also been slightly eerie. The heaped cumulonimbus had glowed and flared with internal lights and for the first time Urquhart had seen that phenomenon remembered from school books, St Elmo’s fire, brilliant electric-blue sparks between his gun muzzles, the propellers four iridescent rings, the aerial wires running with glowing globules like fluorescent raindrops.
There were still no orders from forward and suddenly the silence worried him.
‘Hello, skipper! Rear gunner here. Everything all right?’
There was another long silence. Down below he could see France in full moonlight with a curiously reassuring clarity, especially where snow sprinkled the high ground, and he could pick out towns, cottages, chateaux in wooded parks, and small lakes like jewels. The moon made every tree, every hedgerow, every house stand out sharply in the crystal clearness of the night. Then a window opened and he saw a silhouetted figure looking up, and someone quicker-witted than the rest swung his door to and fro so that the light behind it gave him the V-sign.
There was still no sign of life from forward. His thoughts had occupied a mere matter of seconds since the attack and now an unexpected thin flick of fear came, icy against his flesh.
‘Hello, skipper. Rear gunner here -‘
Tucked away down at the stern of the huge aircraft, it was hard to tell without leaving the turret what had occurred but he guessed now that they had been badly hurt. In fact, because the German pilot had not been an Experter, most of his shots had gone wide, but four of them had done tremendous damage. One of them had exploded behind the Lancaster’s cockpit, slightly wounding Crombie and killing Arnold, the flight engineer. The second had mortally wounded the newspaperman, the wing-commander from Air Ministry and Stone, the bomb aimer, who just happened to have moved aft to the navigator’s position. The third had explod
ed against the frame of the mid-upper turret, removing an arm from Udell, the gunner, and sending a splinter of steel through his throat. The fourth had hit the inside of the starboard inner engine, blowing off the cowling, peeling back steel, severing pipes and causing a colossal hole just aft of the navigator’s table. Like the Messerschmitt, the Lancaster was also dying.
Urquhart was growing anxious now. For the first time he discerned a different note in the beat of the engines and saw that the ground was nearer than it had been before he’d seen the Messerschmitt. Since they hadn’t been going to Happy Valley, they’d been trying an experiment and had flown low right across France, climbed to bombing height near Genoa, then dropped down again for the return trip. ‘With the invasion expected any time now,’ the group-captain had told them at the briefing, ‘we’re trying to show the French people that they’re not forgotten, and a few Lanes thundering low over their homes will let them know what we’ve got when the time comes.’ It had sounded fine, but no one had warned them to expect a German night fighter in an area where they didn’t normally operate.
Suddenly Urquhart began to wonder if he were the only man alive in a flying Mary Celeste peopled by ghosts and he flicked the switch of his intercom again.
‘Skipper -’ he began, but then Crombie’s voice came at last. It seemed quite steady and Urquhart’s thumping heart quietened at once.
‘Bit of a shambles up here,’ the voice said. ‘We’d better count noses, I think. Answer, everybody, so we can see who’s still around.’
‘Rear gunner here, sir,’ Urquhart said thankfully. I’m okay.’
There was a long pause, because the order was usually that the mid-upper gunner answered next, then Neville answered, his voice a little shaky. ‘Navigator here, sir. I’m okay.’
There was another long pause and Urquhart was shocked to hear no more answering voices. Crombie’s voice came. Still steady. He was a stiff, unsmiling man, unapproachable to all of them save Urquhart who was the oldest member of the crew and, like Crombie, had been in the war long before the others had even thought of joining up.
‘Rear gunner,’ Crombie said, formal as ever, the procedure as correct as if the A.O.C. were listening. ‘Make sure there aren’t any more fighters about, then come forward and see what’s happened. Navigator, come up to the cockpit. I think I need a little help.’
Urquhart peered round him then centred his turret and opened the door to climb back into the body of the machine. Immediately he was aware of a roaring gale funnelling down the dark shaft of the fuselage, scattering papers and setting something that had been blown loose flapping with a wild clanking noise.
‘Christ,’ he said. Stumbling forward, he stopped by the mid-upper turret. ‘Uddy,’ he called. ‘You all right?’
Then by the light of the torch in his hand, he saw the whole interior of the aircraft was covered with blood mixed with oil from the hydraulics.
‘Uddy!’
Udell was huddled over his guns and, seeing the shreds of his right arm and the blood on his face, Urquhart came to the not unnatural conclusion that he was dead. In fact, at that moment, he was still alive but he had no more than seconds to live. Collins, the radio operator, was huddled over the ruins of his sets. His helmet was torn and there was blood on his face but he seemed to be still alive, and Urquhart got him out of his seat and lying down. The blood on his face appeared to be from a minor scalp wound; but there was more on his chest and it was impossible to tell where it came from, so that Urquhart could only make him as comfortable as possible and move further forward to see what other damage had been done.
The aircraft suddenly began to shudder and he became aware of torn metal clappering in the slipstream. There were flames inside the fuselage but he found an extinguisher and managed to put them out, working with difficulty in the heavy clothing he had to wear for the icy rear turret Just in front of him there was a gaping hole, and between the flapping struts and stringers that set up a high-pitched whirring noise among the clattering he could see the ground passing backwards beneath them and the moon on a winding river.
Neville, a tall, good-looking, dark youngster with the thin intelligent face of a student, was bending over Stone, the bomb aimer, trying to drag him out of the way. ‘He’s had it,’ he said, his voice uncertain with the knowledge that it might be his own turn next. ‘I’d better get forward.’
The newspaperman was still breathing but the wingco from Air Ministry, an armchair boffin without wings who’d been generous with his cigarettes, seemed to have had it, too. Arnold, the flight engineer, was lying behind Crombie’s seat, obviously dead, and there was blood on Crombie’s face though he didn’t seem too badly hurt and was struggling with the controls. When Urquhart arrived. Neville had already joined him.
As Urquhart reported, Crombie raised his eyes and it was Urquhart he spoke to, not Neville.
‘What about the others?’ be asked.
‘They seem to have had it, sir. Except Collins and the newspaperman. They’ve both been hit, though; I think, badly. How about you?’
Crombie turned his head. I’m all right. I don’t think it was much. Most of the blood came from Arnold. He fell on top of me.’
Crombie seemed to consider the situation. He was still wrestling with the control column and Urquhart saw the airspeed was already down and still falling in irregular jerks on the dial. The altimeter showed three thousand feet with the needle still sinking.
‘I can’t get her up,’ Crombie said. ‘Or down, I don’t think we’re going to make it.’
Although they knew that what he said was correct, the announcement came as a shock. Because the attack had been unexpected, there had been no thought in their minds but that they’d get back to England, land safely and eventually finish their tour and go off on a long leave with the prospect of safety when it was over. Now, within seconds, six of the men who’d been in the plane had been killed or mortally wounded and the chances of life for the other three were slender.
Crombie spoke over his shoulder. ‘You’d better bale out.’ he said.
Neville glanced at Urquhart. He was a newcomer to the crew, having just taken the place of a navigator who’d broken his wrist in a mess-night binge and, with Crombie as his captain, he was still a little nervous. The thought of leaving the bomber, crippled as it was, obviously shook him. Despite the shuddering and the whirr of metal, the shattered bomber still somehow represented safety.
‘How about you, sir?’ he managed.
‘Never mind about me,’ Crombie said. ‘I can see some pretty wide-open spaces down there and, if I can, I’m going to drop her down in one.’
‘Why can’t we all try it?’ Neville asked, unwilling to think of jumping.
Crombie’s head turned. ‘Because I’m telling you to bale out,’ he rapped. That’s why. I know what I’m doing. It might not have occurred to you yet, but there are two extra people in this aircraft and if you bale out and the Germans don’t see you, they’ll assume the aircraft had its normal complement. You’ll have a chance to bolt for Switzerland. We’re not so far away from it here. Head for Pontarlier.’
‘Pontarlier.’ Neville repeated, like a hiker asking the way.
The border’s not far from there. I’ll follow you if I make it.’
Urquhart glanced at the air speed indicator again. The speed was still dropping. Very soon, since they couldn’t put the nose down, the Lancaster would stall and that would be that. The machine was already wallowing and right wing low as though it was going to slide off to starboard at any minute. The loose metal was clappering more loudly now and the air coming in through the hole in the nose was icy. Crombie was hanging on to the control column like grim death, his feet jammed against the rudder bar. He was obviously in pain because his face was twisted and covered with sweat.
The shuddering became worse, as though something had fallen off one of the engines and set up a vibration which was throwing everything out of synchronization. It was violent enough to shake
the entire aircraft, setting loose things jangling and making their teeth rattle in their heads. Crombie’s whole frame was shaking with the motion but Neville clearly still couldn’t manage to think of diving into the empty air when, despite the shuddering and the roaring gale howling down the fuselage from the enormous hole near the navigator’s table, he still had his feet on something reassuringly solid.
‘We might be able to help, sir,’ he urged.
‘Don’t be a fool!’ Crombie snapped. ‘Can you get the injured out, Urquhart?’
‘We can try, sir.’
‘Right, do that. And make sure everybody else is beyond help. Let me know when you’re going and then I’ll go myself through the hole behind me. It’s big enough.’
They didn’t argue. Urquhart knew that Crombie was preparing if necessary to sacrifice his life to give them a chance. It was the sort of thing he’d do without thinking. An officer’s first job was to see his men comfortable. He didn’t eat until they’d eaten and he didn’t bed down until he knew they’d bedded down. In the same way, he didn’t run for safety until he was sure all his men were safe, and he didn’t jump out of a crippled aircraft until his men had gone. Regular officers were sometimes snotty bastards but as often as not they came from a line of Regulars, and honour was bred in the bone. Crombie was far from being a lovable man but he knew exactly where his duty lay.
Leaving him to his battle with the controls, they struggled aft but had only just bent over the wireless operator when the machine seemed to hesitate. It was as if a heart-beat had been missed. The clappering of torn metal was violent now and to it was added a new and ominous clanking noise. It was obvious they were never going to make it and they had just clipped on their parachutes when they felt the aircraft lurch. Then the nose dropped violently, flinging the two of them with Collins and the newspaperman and the bodies of Stone and the wingco into a heap. In a second, the Lancaster was going down in a twisting dive which pinned them to the floor. Fighting with clenched teeth to separate themselves, they dragged themselves free.