by Allan Jones
Carter was waiting in the sergeants’ mess, glasses already filled, and then they sat drinking whilst one or other of the sergeants regaled them with yet more pearls of wisdom.
Gradually, the mess filled with other returnees and the evening turned into a full-scale party. One or two of the officers joined them, along with most of the civilian secretaries. The drink flowed and the air soon became thick with tobacco smoke; they danced, they sang and they rid themselves of the tension from the night’s exercise. Paul and Amelia slipped away at midnight and, unusually, contented themselves with a lingering kiss goodnight and went to their separate rooms, each in dire need of sleep.
Carter organised them into teams for weapons practice and unarmed combat, setting one team against another. Usually they used blank ammunition, but on one occasion they used live rounds. Amelia’s star shone as she was impressive in all areas: guns, knives, garrotes and especially so in close-quarter unarmed. Paul was also adept, but on two occasions she had bested him, using his superior strength against him. Her speed and agility were awesome and once she even came very close to defeating Carter, the acknowledged master of the trade!
Weeks passed till they had finally learned all that there was to be learned, and, after a farewell party and tearful choking goodbyes to the sergeants, they were dispatched south, near Manchester, for parachute training. First, they jumped from a tower on wires, learning how to land, then from a balloon, then, finally, the real thing, burdened down with the kit they would usually be carrying when they were sent for real.
Amelia was terrified as she sat on the lip of the hole in the bottom of the plane, her legs dangling. Paul was to jump next and he joked with her and chivvied her up until, though she had gone white, she blew him a kiss, raised her arms over her head and was gone. Paul jumped next and, as soon as he could, he looked for her. She was some distance below him and he tried to steer himself closer, but was unable to do so. He landed within twenty yards of her, and, as he furled his ’chute, he heard her whooping with delight and laughing. She was so excited she hurried him along, back to the hanger to get ready for the next jump, all her fear dismissed.
Paul had been forced to admit that he too had been scared, heights were never his thing, and she took some private comfort from this; despite her façade, she was indeed still very scared! The more they jumped, the better they became, till it turned into a game for them as to who could land nearer the target marker. Paul usually won, but both of them improved their skills.
There were more soldiers here than in the other place: a parachute brigade was being trained in response to the German successes with airborne troops which had contributed to Belgium being so swiftly defeated at the start of the war. The regular troops were wary of the civilian “funnies” and kept to themselves. The civilians in turn avoided them in line with their training and were apt to remain distant and taciturn if any of the soldiers tried to be friendly.
Then they were sent still further south, to a country estate in Hampshire, the “finishing school”, to learn more sedate but equally effective skills to use against the enemy. The work was more classroom-oriented, so they established a routine of working out the classroom stiffness by using the gym or going for a run in the evenings. Their bodies became harder and firmer; much to Amelia’s delight, she had never been so fit and toned. In the evenings she took great pleasure in turning naked this way and that in front of the mirror, enduring Paul’s jocular sarcasm.
The work was intensive, comprising of modules such as interrogation, how to do it and how to resist it; how to best go about contacting strangers; and identifying contacts from descriptions. They learned the art of disguise, how to subtly alter their appearance quickly, how to reconnoitre and break into houses, dockyards and other military establishments.
A “professional” burglar, on licensed release from Barlinnie prison, instructed them in safecracking, the use of explosives to blow a safe and other “criminal skills” such as forgery; the use of blackmail, deception and even the disposal of corpses were on the agenda!
Use of codes and code-breaking, secret inks, shadowing exercises, throwing off “tails”, how to recruit and establish a network of sub-agents, how to divide them into separate cells, separating the parachute pick-up teams who hid the goods for another team to retrieve and cache. The list was endless! Their recruits needed to be drawn from people who were able to move about more easily than others. Doctors, postmen, railway workers, drivers of all types were all good material.
Couriers had to be kept separate from saboteurs. Sabotage itself was best if it was unattributable, to avoid the inevitable reprisals. Only if unavoidable was overt sabotage to be deployed, and even then the saboteurs should be drawn from outside of the area of the operation, thus minimising the risk of local recognition and potential betrayal. They were taught to be meticulously tidy, so that any tampering with their possessions would be noticed. How to lay traps, such as hairs across doors, use of talcum powder or small scraps of paper in drawer runners. How to lay warning signals to ward off approaching persons that a house was no longer safe; curtains or blinds pulled in a certain way, flowers placed in a window, doormats left askew.
The best hiding places in a room, if one really had to commit the cardinal sin of putting something onpaper, was given close attention. They were warned off the more obvious places, and, instead, they were encouraged to be more devious and selective. Insides of electrical appliances, with risk of electric shock to the searcher, insides of old mortice locks, inside the metal rails of a wardrobe or small holes drilled in the top of doors were some of the suggestions that were meant to encourage them to think more inventively.
After six weeks or so they “graduated” from the course and had to move their belongings into another of the houses in the estate’s grounds, there to await final deployment. They were told to stay as far away as possible from other, newer recruits and spend their time practicing and honing their new-found skills. They shared the house with the admin personnel of the establishment, and a few of the tutors. They soon found their linguistic skills being called upon; often they helped to make sense of the hurried signals coming in from nervous radio operators already on the continent. They had good cause to be nervous, as the average life expectancy before being caught was very short, owing to the Germans’ formidable signals detection technology.
The CO’s secretary, Pru Perkins, became a close friend of Amelia’s, and indeed of everyone. In her early forties, she was a fount of knowledge and had an air of bustling efficiency about her. She was a confidante to them all, a mother figure, a best friend, and she did her best to see that her charges were given as tranquil a time as possible in their last few days before they were sent into danger. Whenever news came of a capture or a killing, she would go quiet for a while, remembering; then, before long, she would bounce back to her usual self. She felt every loss as a personal one, but she was not one to show it, at least to everyone, but she shared her sorrow with Amelia, and if he happened to be present, with Paul.
Paul was asked to run a class in German language and idiom, including military strategy, passing on his insights into the German psyche as a whole. To the students his class was voluntary, but proved very popular and was well attended. Amelia often attended herself; sitting, looking very serious at the back of the class, she avoided eye contact with him as much as she could, but when he did catch her eye she stuck out her tongue or made a funny face at him, trying to put him off. She never succeeded!
When they were together, whilst off duty, they would alternately speak only in French or German; if anyone spoke to them in English, they would reply in one or other of these languages, correcting any replies meticulously. They visited the “wardrobe” department together and compiled several outfits. The clothes had mostly been “donated” by refugees and returnees from the continent, though some were very skilful copies made by Jewish tailors from the East End. They went for the more shabby and worn items. Like everything else, c
loth for civilian use was at a premium on the continent.
Paul grabbed a few German uniforms taken from captives, a couple of double-breasted suits, some shirts frayed at collar and cuffs and some more sturdy casual clothes, and battered but still-wearable shoes.
They helped each other to minutely examine the clothes for anything wrong and potentially incriminating, but found nothing. Their evenings they spent in the makeshift bar in the house, relaxing and enjoying each other’s company, talking of nothing in particular. Sometimes, Pru joined them with her latest “companion” and they would ply her for titbits of gossip. Pru knew everything there was to know, being the CO’s secretary; she never let slip anything of importance, but kept them entertained nevertheless with comic stories and tales of the gaffes some of the students had made… some of them were legendary. She could do reasonable impersonations of some of the more flamboyant staff, reducing her audience to fits of uncontrollable laughter.
Paul and Amelia had overtly moved into her room together – surprisingly, no eyebrows were raised − and would finish off each evening listening to the radio and hungrily making love till they were exhausted enough to sleep.
They felt like a married couple already!
CHAPTER 8
Paul was first back to their room after his day’s classes and was surprised that he had not seen Amelia since breakfast: they usually crossed paths a few times each day since they had fallen into this new routine. He stood at the window looking out at the falling rain and thought of that day when he had looked out of a similar window in Poland all that time ago. Images he had seen then flashed into his mind and he closed his eyes and willed them away. That fateful day had influenced the train of events that had brought him here, to this place, to watch others being sent into the fray, while he was living probably the best times of his life. He felt guilty and a little ashamed that he was here in complete safety and yet so very glad to be here, and that Amelia was with him. He was pondering the situation when she came in and closed the door. He turned and straightaway knew that something was wrong: she was just standing there, looking at him. He strode to her and put his arms about her waist.
“What is it?” he asked softly.
She put her palms against his chest and looked into his eyes. “I’m going over,” she said.
His heart skipped. “When, where?” he gasped.
“Tomorrow night,” she said calmly, “to France, of course; I’m not supposed to say where.”
“Oh, come on,” he said, suddenly angry, as he held her apart from him, “this is me.”
She thought for a while, then said, “Somewhere in Brittany.”
“Of course you will. Can you tell me much about it?”
“I shouldn’t, but sod it, if I can’t tell you I’d burst for sure.” The mission was to organise and train an already-established network, get it up and running more efficiently within three months, and then get back to England for debriefing. There would be a rest spell, then she would be sent back to another area to do it all over again. She spoke in a quiet voice as she told him the location and the details. She felt a little guilty about telling him, after having promised total secrecy to her controller, but he of all people had the right to know. Besides, if he knew what she was really doing, he wouldn’t be imagining worse. She was to keep her code-name, ‘Pumpkin”; her cover was close to the truth, that she had been resident in Marseilles, her real childhood home, where there would be records of her. Her “husband” had been killed at Dunkirk, so she was moving to the area of operations to live with her bereaved, widowed mother-in-law to help her run her café. This “mother-in-law” had really had a married son who hadn’t brought his wife home to introduce to her before he had been killed, thus Amelia would be unknown in the area and would be able to fit easily into the role.
“When do you go?” he asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.
“The day after tomorrow, when it gets dark. I’ll be jumping for real this time.”
“Are you scared?”
“No, not really; not yet anyway. It’s the training, I suppose, and if they think I’m ready I guess I must be, eh?”
Though her face was a mask of sadness and resignation, he could see the wild glint in her eyes that he loved so much. “Are you ready to kill, then, do you think?”
She thought for a while, then said, “Is anyone, ever?”
“Some are; they relish it.”
“And it’s them we’re fighting, isn’t it? You have to get them before they get you, don’t you? Carter said not to think about it, get it done, leave the thinking for after; just get in first, first usually wins, fighting or killing, remember?”
“Good advice, make sure you remember it; but get the hell away from there as soon as you can and as far as you can.”
“And always make sure,” she repeated another of Carter’s maxims.
“Yes, always make sure,” he said grimly.
They sat in silence for a while, holding each other, then Paul got up and pulled her to her feet. “Well, this won’t do. Come on, got to get you ready, get your bags packed.”
Amelia was suddenly shocked; it sounded so final, but she forced herself to join in the charade. “Yes, let’s get it all done, then the rest of the time is ours. I must go to the armoury tomorrow; will you come with me? I haven’t a clue what to take; you’ll know better than me.”
“Of course I will. Did they say what you were allowed?”
“Yes, and there’ll be a canister dropped with me for the local resistance: guns and explosives and things.”
“I’ll find only the very best,” he promised. “Nothing but the best.”
“There’ll be briefings between now and then, but the rest of the time, let’s make the most of it, shall we?”
He reached for her and kissed her, then, laying her back on the bed, he said softly, “We will, most certainly we will.”
And they did. At every opportunity, Paul was at her side, helping and advising. The mounting excitement and desperation was reflected in their frequent lovemaking, as they tried to cram a lifetime into the few short hours that they had left. On the night before her departure, they slipped away into the nearest town and went dancing, returning in the early hours to tear each other’s clothes off and fall into bed, desperate for each other.
The day finally dawned and they slept till early afternoon. She would have her final briefing at 7pm that night; then she would be driven to the nearby airfield and that would be it… she would be gone! She woke first and watched him sleeping, thinking that he looked like a little boy, so at peace: his hair all tousled, a ruddy glow in his cheeks. A sense of gloom washed over her and, to dispel it, she kissed him softly on his forehead. He came awake, confused for an instant, then smiled at her; her gloom vanished instantly and she kissed him again. They lay together just looking into each other’s eyes.
Presently Paul spoke. “Let’s go get something to eat, I’m famished.”
She punched him playfully on his shoulder. “You! Is that all you can think of, your stomach?”
“A man needs to keep up his strength, especially for a little vixen like you!”
He rolled on top of her and kissed her; but, before she could respond, he rolled off the other side and got out of bed. “Tease!” she spluttered.
He reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet. He gave her a gentle slap on her bottom and said, “I promise I’ll ravish you later, but for now, food.”
“Swine!” she said. “OK, food first, then it’s me that’ll do the ravishing if any is to be done.”
Pulling on his trousers, he grinned. “I’ll hold you to that!”
She smiled back. “And you’d better be ready, mister.”
“Slut!” he said wickedly.
She threw a pillow at him, narrowly missing. “Hah! Look who’s talking, you filthy beast.”
He laughed as he reached for her and they kissed once more; then she began to pull him back to the bed. He resiste
d, then disengaged himself with difficulty. “Come on, you shameless woman, food!”
She reached for her clothes and hitched her dress over her head and rummaged for some knickers and selected a pair; then, looking at him mischievously, she tossed them over her shoulder, saying as she did so, “Don’t think I’ll be needing these.” He slowly shook his head as he finished dressing and smiled at her, a gleam in his eyes.
She watched his reflection in the mirror as she brushed her hair, aware now of how much she adored him, how happy she was at this moment. She filed the thought away, lovingly, amongst the others, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before she retrieved them.
Paul accompanied her to the airfield and helped her carry her kit into the Nissen hut from which she would make her final departure when the plane was ready. They had chatted animatedly about trivial things all the way here, as if he was only seeing her off on a short journey to a normal place. Once inside the hut, they became more businesslike. He helped her into her jump overalls, first fitting her into the shoulder holster, which held the silenced automatic pistol he had chosen for her. He had spent a couple of hours with her as she familiarised herself with it. They had taken it to the firing range, and he had timed her as she changed magazines. She had practiced clearing jams and stripped and cleaned it, then re-assembled it until he was satisfied, impressed with her dexterity as well as her marksmanship.
He strapped the sheathed dagger to her right ankle, outside of the overall for quick access, then he helped her on with her jump helmet. The compact rucksack, which would be worn on her front for the jump, they kept for later; it would have to be under the parachute which she would don on the plane. Finally, she was ready and the wait began.
Her controller came in and Paul was asked to step outside until he had performed the final briefing. It seemed an age to Paul − he was getting angrily impatient − but finally the man emerged, and, with a nod to Paul, was gone. She was sitting on a bench taking deep breaths when he came in. Paul sat next to her and put his arm round her.