Celine nodded. ‘Where is he – exactly?’ she asked.
‘I can’t really tell you,’ Dawson said, ‘because I don’t know this area, but I can find my way back to him.’
Despite her apparent friendliness, Dawson was very conscious the girl was still holding the shotgun, and might simply be trying to identify Watson’s position so she could send the police or troops after him.
‘I understand,’ Celine said and then, as if reading Dawson’s mind, she lowered the hammers on the weapon and leant it against the wall beside the door.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘Germans I hate. Arrogant bastards. Right, you stay for a few minutes. I will get food and water and medical supplies, and then we go and find your friend.’
Without another word, Celine left the wash-house and walked across the yard to the house. The moment she opened the house door, Dawson walked across and retrieved the Mauser bayonet, then picked up the shotgun. It was obviously old but perfectly serviceable. He opened the weapon and extracted the two shells – both were filled with buckshot. At the range Celine had been standing, they’d have blown him apart if she’d fired. Dawson nodded, slid them back into the breech and replaced the weapon by the door.
About five minutes later Celine walked back across to the wash-house, a large woven fabric basket in her hand. She was now dressed in a checked blouse and blue farmer’s overalls tucked into heavy boots, but somehow managed to make even this unpromising outfit look as if it was the latest fashion.
Now she was no longer standing in silhouette, Dawson could fully appreciate her natural beauty for the first time – full red lips, brilliant blue eyes, golden hair and a figure he knew he was going to dream about for months to come. If he survived, of course.
‘Ready?’ she asked, and Dawson nodded. ‘You carry the gun,’ she said. ‘You are a better shot than I, I am sure.’
‘With two loads of buckshot, you don’t need to be that good a shot.’
Celine grinned at him, and Dawson’s heart performed a strange manoeuvre in his chest.
‘You checked. I thought you would,’ she said. ‘Now, which way?’
Dawson pointed towards the track that led into the forest. ‘I came down there,’ he said, ‘and I marked one of the trees so I’d be able to find my way back again.’
Ten minutes after leaving the farmhouse, Dawson stopped at the side of the track and looked at the trees that lined it. ‘It’s somewhere near here,’ he said, scanning the trunks. Then he spotted it – a vertical line he’d cut into the bark of one tree at about chest-height.
‘That’s it,’ Dawson said. ‘Now we start heading east. I had the rising sun behind me all the way as I walked over to this track.’
Once they were in the forest, Dawson moved quickly, eager to get back to their hiding place and do what they could for Dave Watson.
‘He’s over there,’ he said at last, pointing at the two trees and patch of undergrowth he remembered.
With Celine beside him, Dawson strode across to the spot and slid through the gap in the bushes.
It was much more gloomy in the shelter of the undergrowth. For a moment Dawson couldn’t even see Watson. When he did, for a few seconds he thought his friend was dead. Watson lay unmoving, flat on his back in the hollow between the two trees, his right hand pressing a bulge under the left hand side of his shirt, a shirt now liberally soaked in blood.
‘Dave?’ Dawson called out. He stepped quickly across to where the man lay and bent over him.
Watson’s eyes flickered open. ‘You’ve been a long time, mate,’ he said, his voice strained and weak. Then his eyes widened in surprise as he caught sight of Celine standing behind Dawson. ‘Is she why you’ve been a long time?’ he asked, a smile forming despite the pain he had to be suffering. ‘You jammy sod.’
Dawson shook his head. ‘We’ve brought you some food and something to drink. Can you sit up?’
‘If there’s beer and chips in that woman’s bag, I can even stand up.’
Celine smiled slightly and shook her head. ‘Chips I have not, but I bring you a bottle of beer.’
‘If that isn’t a bad joke, I may have to marry you,’ Watson muttered.
With Dawson’s help, he levered himself into a sitting position and leant back against the trunk of one of the trees.
‘Are you still hurting?’ Dawson asked.
‘What the hell do you think?’ Watson snapped.
‘Yes, that is a stupid question, Eddie,’ Celine said, then stepped over to the wounded man. She took a bottle of clear liquid out of her bag and offered it to him.
‘What’s that?’
‘Water. I have beer, but for now take a few sips of this. Now, Dave – I may call you Dave? – let me look at your shoulder.’
She gently undid the buttons on his shirt, eased the material away from the wound on his shoulder and then lifted off the makeshift pad Watson had been holding there.
He cried out in pain as the pad came free – some of the blood had congealed and the very act of removing the material caused it to grab and tug at the wound itself.
Celine peered at it closely. ‘It is a nasty wound. Very ragged edges,’ she said. ‘I need to clean it.’
‘Are you a doctor?’ Watson asked hopefully, taking another drink.
‘No, but I treat animals on our farm, so I know about wounds.’
‘Wonderful,’ Watson muttered. ‘Bloody man takes hours to find anyone, and then comes back here with a vet.’
‘A vet with beer in her bag,’ Celine pointed out. ‘If I was real doctor, I would say no alcohol. So shut up and let me fix you.’
Behind Celine, Dawson smiled slightly when he caught Watson’s eye.
She took another bottle of water and a pad of some kind of white wadded material from the bag. ‘This will hurt, I’m sorry, but I must see if there is anything in the wound – any pieces of shrapnel. Then I will bandage you. I’m sorry, but that is the way it must be.’
‘Go ahead, doc,’ Watson muttered. ‘I’ll just sit here and think of the beer I’ll enjoy when you’ve finished.’
Celine was quick and thorough, and as gentle as she could be, but Watson still shouted with the pain a couple of times. When she’d finished, he lay back, white and sweating. She also checked his head injury, where the swelling was by now beginning to subside, though it was still very tender to the touch.
‘There is nothing in the shoulder wound,’ she said to Dawson, ‘and no sign of infection. Now I will bandage it up and, with luck, it will heal over a few days.’
It took her only a couple of minutes, and at the end of it she rummaged around in her bag again, took out a bottle of beer, opened it and handed it to Watson. ‘I promised,’ she said. ‘Enjoy and have some of this too.’
She pulled out a loaf of bread, and a packet of dried sausage and thick, juicy slices of ham, passed him a selection and then offered Dawson a similar feast.
The two men ate hungrily – they were both famished – while Celine sat watching them with a slight smile on her face. When they’d finished, she produced two more bottles of beer for them.
‘This is just like the pale ale we get at home, Eddie,’ Watson murmured, holding up the bottle to inspect the contents more closely.
‘It is local beer,’ Celine said. ‘And now we must decide what to do.’
‘Now we’re here in Luxembourg,’ Dawson replied, ‘we hoped we could just walk south until we reach the French border. After all, now we’re safe from the Germans.’
Celine nodded. ‘Yes, you are, but not completely. You are not safe yet. When I saw you in our wash-house, I guessed who you are before you even spoke to me. Very early this morning, the police came outside the house, looking for two British criminals who came from Germany across the Moselle, and who killed many civilians as they got away.’
Dawson shook his head. ‘We’re not criminals, and we didn’t see a single civilian the whole time we were in Germany.’
‘But we did kill a f
ew people, Eddie,’ Watson commented.
‘Yes, but no civilians,’ Dawson insisted.
‘I understand,’ Celine said. ‘It is not difficult to understand. I heard an explosion over to the east after midnight – it woke me – and a few hours after that the police came. The Germans must have guessed you came into Luxembourg and asked the police here to arrest you and give you over to them. Germany is powerful neighbour, so the police must appear to help. But they only visited the outlying farms, not the forest, which is obvious to do if they were serious to track you down.’
‘So if we are caught,’ Dawson asked, ‘what will happen to us?’
‘If police catch you, they will give you to the Germans. There is nothing else they can do. But I think they are not searching hard to find you.’
‘So we have to keep out of sight?’ Watson asked. He looked and sounded a hell of a lot better now he’d had something to eat and drink.
‘Exactly. Now, we are only six kilometres from France, but you cannot walk that far – not until you are stronger. So the best thing is for you and me, Eddie, to go back to farm. We have a cart there, and a horse to pull it. We can bring it to the track. If Dave can walk then to the cart, I can take you both south. I can take you to somewhere a kilometre from France.’
Dawson nodded his thanks but asked the obvious question. ‘Why, Celine? Why are you doing this? Don’t get me wrong – without your help, Dave here would be in a pretty bad way, and I’d probably be living on a diet of roots and berries, so we’re really grateful. But you could have just given us food and drink and then walked away and left us to our own devices.’
Celine shrugged. ‘For the same reason I look after sick animals, I think. You are both hurt, hungry and thirsty. I cannot turn away from you. Also,’ she added, ‘to help you two get away will make the Germans very angry!’
‘Well, we really appreciate it. Do you want to go back to the farm now?’
‘Yes, we must.’ Celine walked across and handed Watson another bottle of water. ‘We will be back before an hour. Just stay here and do not move your arm too much. It will bleed again.’
‘Whatever you say, doc.’ Watson sounded almost chirpy. The food and drink had definitely revived his spirits.
Dawson led the way through the undergrowth and out of their hiding place, the old shotgun held ready in his hands, but the woods appeared to be deserted.
In a few minutes they were walking back down the track that led towards the farmhouse.
‘Is it your farm, then?’ Dawson asked.
Celine shook her head. ‘No, not yet, anyway. My mother and father have it. I have it when they pass away. In fact, land we own is not big, only a farmhouse and outbuildings and two fields near house. We rent the rest.’
‘Is it reasonably profitable?’
‘No, not really. It gives us a living, but no more.’
Dawson stopped suddenly and grabbed Celine by the arm. ‘Hear that?’ he said urgently.
‘What?’
‘That sounded like a truck engine, a diesel engine, and I think it was heading this way.’
‘Could be anything,’ Celine murmured.
‘I know, but it could be the police or somebody out in the woods looking for us. Let’s get off this track, just in case.’
Silently, they stepped aside, melting into the scrubby undergrowth and into the shelter of the trees.
‘I heard it for a few seconds, but I hear nothing now,’ Celine said. ‘You?’
‘No.’ Dawson shook his head. ‘I think it’s stopped. But maybe we should stay off that track, just in case.’
Moving through the wood slowed them down, but it still seemed to both of them to be a safer option than walking along in the open, just in case Dawson’s guess was correct, and the noise had been caused by a lorry delivering a group of the local police to start a search of the woods for the two fugitives.
They were nearly at the clearing where the farmhouse was located when they both heard another sound, quite unmistakable and infinitely more sinister than a truck’s diesel engine.
Chapter 43
16 September 1939
‘That was a shot,’ Dawson said, stating the blindingly obvious, ‘and it sounded pretty close to us.’
Celine nodded. ‘I think a rifle or a pistol,’ she said, ‘but not a shotgun. And that is strange. Most farmers here have shotguns, but few rifles in this area, and I know no one who has pistol.’
‘Let’s get moving, find out what’s going on.’
They walked faster now, covering the remaining 100 yards or so to the clearing as quickly as they could, but still keeping within the shelter of the trees.
When they reached the final bend in the track that led to the farmhouse, they came to a stop about ten feet from the edge of the forest and stared at the scene in front of them. Parked outside the property was an army truck, and the grey-green uniforms of the soldiers milling around it left them in no doubt of their nationality.
‘Those are Germans,’ Celine hissed, the intensity of her anger and hatred unmistakable. ‘What are they doing here in Luxembourg? How did they get into the country?’
The front door of the farmhouse was open, and, even from the distance they were standing, Dawson and Celine could see that the lock had been blown apart, presumably by the bullet they’d heard being fired a few moments earlier. And then, in a matter of seconds, what had clearly been a bad situation turned infinitely worse.
The front door of the farmhouse suddenly crashed back on its hinges, and two German soldiers stepped out, dragging a struggling woman behind them.
Beside Dawson, Celine tensed. ‘Oh, God. My mother,’ she moaned.
Moments later, another two soldiers emerged from the house, this time hauling out a middle-aged man. Dawson really didn’t need Celine’s whispered confirmation to know that this unfortunate civilian was her father.
The Germans slammed the man and woman against the wall of the house and held them there, as if waiting for someone.
‘I must to do something,’ Celine hissed. ‘Give me the shotgun.’
Dawson shifted the weapon to his other hand, away from her. He absolutely understood her fear and emotion, but he also realized the odds they were facing. He just hoped the Germans would have to be cautious in their actions, simply because of where they were. He assumed they’d managed to talk their way into Luxembourg on the pretext of being in hot pursuit of the ‘British criminals’, but he didn’t expect them to be violent towards any of the people they were questioning.
‘No, Celine,’ he said. ‘Right now, there’s nothing we can do. If we run out there now brandishing that shotgun, they’d cut us down before we’d covered ten yards. And I don’t think the Germans will hurt your parents, because they shouldn’t even be here in Luxembourg.’
‘But what they want? Why are they here? They still hunt you?’
For a moment, Dawson didn’t reply, because he’d just spotted the man he’d hoped he’d never see again. The high-peaked cap with the Totenkopf emblem made him stand out from the other men, and the SS runes on his lapel only confirmed the identification.
‘Oh, shit,’ he muttered.
‘What is it?’ Celine asked.
‘That man over there, the one wearing the officer’s uniform. He’s SS – in fact, they’re probably all SS – and it’s him and his squad of men who’ve been chasing us ever since we busted out of the barn back in Kesslingen. He nearly caught us a couple of times. He’s really sharp.’
The German soldiers moved aside as the SS officer stepped forward, their deference towards him quite obvious. He crossed to where the four soldiers had pinioned the man and woman against the wall of the farmhouse, stopped directly in front of Celine’s father, just a foot or two away, stared at him for a few seconds and then barked something, some question, but the wind whipped his words away, and Celine couldn’t hear what he was saying.
The old man shook his head. The SS officer stepped even closer and prodded him in
the chest and shouted something else at him.
‘What do they want?’ Celine asked again.
‘Us, at a guess,’ Dawson said shortly. ‘Watson and me. We didn’t kill any civilians – in fact, we didn’t even see any – but we had quite a few encounters with German soldiers and each time we came off best. Until now, that is,’ he added. ‘I don’t think that SS bastard is ever going to give up chasing us.’
Celine seemed to relax slightly. ‘Well, my parents cannot tell them anything about you. They know nothing. They did not wake up when the police arrived last night and they were still sleep when I saw you go into the wash-house this morning.’
‘So with any luck, they should just give up and move off in a few minutes,’ Dawson suggested, never taking his eyes off the SS officer.
And that looked as if it was going to happen. The officer stepped across to Celine’s mother and presumably asked her the same question or questions, with exactly the same result – she just shook her head.
The officer moved away and barked orders at the soldiers, some of whom started heading back towards the lorry they’d obviously arrived in.
But then there was another shout, and a soldier pushed his way hurriedly through a group of his comrades towards the officer.
‘What happens now?’ Celine asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Dawson replied, apprehension colouring his voice.
The soldier stopped beside the SS officer and handed him something, some small object, and pointed back across the yard towards the wash-house.
A sudden jolt of fear coursed through Dawson’s veins, and he reached down to his right boot.
‘Oh, fuck,’ he muttered. ‘I think they’ve found my trench knife.’
‘What?’
‘My trench knife. When you found me in the wash-house, you made me kick the bayonet and the knife over towards you, so you could have a look at them. And then you kicked them away from you. I remember I grabbed the bayonet – I’ve got it in my belt right now – but the trench knife must have slid under something in the wash-house, because I don’t remember picking it up again.’
To Do or Die Page 27