by David Gilman
He scrambled for his life. His clothes were smouldering. The acrid taste of cordite, burning rubber and electrical wiring caught his throat. The aircraft yawed across the sky. The engines spluttered, only two of them still operating, as it tried to defy gravity. Another violent lurch and he was thrown across the plane, the motion cracking his head. He almost fell into space. He tried to fix the parachute’s static line’s hook on to the stanchion which was the nearest strong point in reach. But the aircraft rolled and threw his attempt wide. He was sliding now with no means of stopping himself. The thirty-pound parachute on his back made it impossible for him to roll clear. Sweat stung his eyes and soaked his back. His hands shook as he desperately tried to attach the clasp on to anything that would secure the static line. His legs fell out of the aircraft. He cried out, forcing strength into his arms as he desperately clung to the floor of the dying plane. He had to reach something. He lunged at a stanchion. And missed. Wires snapped and whined as they whiplashed through the fuselage. The slipstream tugged at his legs. He cried out and with extraordinary effort reached for the stanchion again and snapped the static cord’s clasp on to it. And then gravity and the slipstream took him. He was sucked out of the aircraft. As he fell into blackness the plane rose up defiantly, fire raging where moments before Mitchell had been.
*
Less than four hundred feet below a poacher with four dead rabbits laid on the ground next to him was about to clear another from a snare when he heard the aircraft. The blazing aeroplane appeared from the clouds more than a mile away, wallowed across the sky at five hundred feet and banked as it eased earthwards, a dying comet trailing fire until it disappeared from view to crash unseen miles away. The sudden noise intruding into the silence of the countryside left the poacher dumbstruck, but when it died away a hushed rustling reached him as air whispered across parachute silk. He stumbled a few steps backwards and stood, jaw gaping, as the parachute descended into view out of the night sky. A man dangled in the harness. Dead or unconscious, he could not tell.
The parachute webbing bit deep into Mitchell’s flesh. The twisted risers behind his head spun his body as the parachute unfurled itself. Blood covered his face from a gash on his scalp. Pain from his wound dragged him briefly back to partial consciousness. A confused blur of ground rushed up at him and suddenly he hit solid ground, hard. More pain shot through him. And then the night claimed him.
With a fearful look around, the poacher ran towards where the parachute landed. The silk canopy billowed and then settled, tugging at the man who lay still beneath its shroud.
9
The poacher tapped at the back door of a dark house. It was the home of a man who had died for the glory of France leading his soldiers as a rearguard for Dunkirk. His sacrifice had split the village. There were those who saw his death as a futile act in the face of the juggernaut of German aggression, but others who had learnt to respect him over the years before his death were inspired by his example to join the few who were determined to harass their enemy by any means. The poacher was one such.
After a minute a woman peered through the curtain, checking who was demanding entry so early in the morning, then quickly opened the kitchen door.
‘Chaval?’
‘A parachutist. He’s hurt.’
‘Come, here, into the kitchen,’ she instructed. ‘Quietly. I don’t want to wake Simone.’
She made sure the curtains were tightly closed, then raised the wick on an oil lamp, its warm glow suffusing the room. The big man eased the burden down from his shoulders on to the kitchen table.
‘I heard the plane, but I thought I was dreaming,’ she said, lighting another lamp.
Mitchell tried to raise himself, barely conscious but fighting the rising tide of confusion that threatened to plunge him back into the darkness. He could hear muted voices but they made little sense and the glow in the room caused his vision to blur. He didn’t have the strength to lift himself. His head turned and he saw a bearded man standing next to him, a calloused hand resting lightly on his shoulder. Beyond him, a woman, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders and nightdress, was closing shutters. She said something to the bearded giant who stepped away to a stove and poured steaming water from a simmering kettle into a bowl. And then the woman leant over Mitchell, brushing aside his matted hair. Her lips moved. She was asking him something. Fractured thoughts raced through his mind – of the terror of the burning plane, the descent into darkness and the pain – as he gazed at the woman. She was in her forties, attractive. Her brown hair was tied back, revealing her features. She pressed against him as she put her ear to his lips. He tried to say something, but his words were confused: a dazed mixture of enquiry as to where he was and an overwhelming desire to tell the woman that she was as beautiful as an angel. He shook his head. He wasn’t making any sense. The bearded giant looked down at him again, said something to the woman, who nodded. The man lifted Mitchell’s shoulders and stripped off his torn and singed overcoat. Mitchell’s hand instinctively reached for the gun in his pocket.
Chaval eased free Mitchell’s hand and tugged out the automatic. Mitchell gritted his teeth, determined not to lose consciousness again. ‘You won’t need that,’ he heard the man say in French as he placed the .45 out of reach on the table.
‘The plane came down out of the clouds. I don’t know where it crashed. Somewhere towards Voville,’ said Chaval.
The woman squeezed out a cloth from the hot water and began cleaning the wound on Mitchell’s scalp. His arm raised feebly towards her as the water stung the cut. Chaval gently pressed the arm down.
‘Are there any more survivors? Any more parachutes?’ she asked.
‘No. I hid his in a ditch but I have to go back and bury it. There’ll be patrols out.’ He looked at the automatic. ‘Be careful of him – he might be dangerous.’
She nodded and turned Mitchell to find the wound that had soaked his shirt with blood. ‘It will be light soon. Bury his parachute and then fetch Dr Bernard.’
Chaval hesitated. She nodded. ‘Go. I’ll be fine. He’s barely conscious. He’s no threat.’
Chaval stepped behind the curtain and made sure no light escaped into the night. She heard the door close with a gentle click of its latch. For a moment she looked at the wounded man who lay before her. His eyes fluttered and his lips moved again, but he was too weak for any words to reach her. She wrung out another cloth. At least when the village doctor arrived the wounds would be as clean as she could make them. She reached for the gun to move it away from the table. Mitchell’s bloody hand lunged and seized the weapon, but his attempt to keep close the only protection he had was in vain. Juliet Bonnier did not flinch, covering his own hand with hers she eased the pistol free. Mitchell slipped helplessly into unconsciousness.
*
As the grey morning light spread across the sky, fifteen-year-old Lucien Tissard eased his bicycle down a lane, watching a plume of smoke in a field up ahead rising above the trees and hedgerows. The overgrown lane dog-legged ahead and as he dismounted to push the bike across the rutted track he saw the back of a German lorry tucked into the side of the lane. The village gendarme, Marin, stood watching the soldiers search the field. The middle-aged gendarme glanced back, saw Lucien and with a shake of his head and a small dismissive gesture sent the boy on his way. Lucien backtracked and then pushed through the hedgerow. He saw the remains of what could have been a bomber. It was just a chunk of charred metal, still smouldering, and a dozen ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers were trying to sift through it all while their comrades spread out across the field to search the area.
Lucien felt the tinge of excitement prickle his neck. To see a destroyed aircraft in this part of the world was an event. Such privilege conferred status. Especially with the girls. One in particular.
*
Juliet Bonnier’s house was the most notable in the village. Her late husband had been a successful businessman before the war and, although her circumstances were diminished, sh
e was determined never to abandon the family home he had provided. Heating, however, was always a problem, for the chill settled in the rooms with their high ceilings and bare floorboards despite the scattered rugs, even in the cooler summer months. So, after his death, she had closed off all the bedrooms except for two, her own and the other for her young teenage daughter, Simone. The kitchen stove gave that room sufficient warmth for comfort and during the harsh winter of 1943 when the east wind blew with talons as ferocious as the invaders she and Simone had dragged mattress and blankets on to the kitchen floor.
Spring had so far delivered little by way of real warmth, despite the blossom on the trees. Her breath plumed as she stood with the village doctor at Mitchell’s bedside in the attic room. Chaval had returned and carried the unconscious man up the three flights of stairs once Jean Bernard had stitched and dressed his wounds. They had waited, whispering in the kitchen about the man who had fallen from the sky and who must, surely, have been on his way to one of the Resistance groups. There had been no notification sent from London for their local group. By the time Chaval beckoned them upstairs their curiosity had become concern. The Germans would soon be searching for survivors.
Mitchell’s shirt had been removed and his side bandaged. A blanket and eiderdown smothered his torso but he pushed the coverings aside and painfully eased himself into a sitting position. Chaval draped the blanket across Mitchell’s bare shoulders. He nodded his thanks.
‘You’re not wearing a uniform. You’re not aircrew. You’re English? Your identity card says you are French. Pascal Garon,’ said the doctor.
Mitchell took in his surroundings. A woman hugged herself into a woollen cardigan as the big man who looked to be a farm labourer stepped to her side. The man who was questioning him had to be the village doctor, he reasoned. The small black bag was his badge of office and his corduroy trousers and woollen jacket constituted a uniform. Similar in age to Mitchell, he would have status and authority in a small community and, given Mitchell’s last sight of the darkened countryside before he hit the ground, he presumed that that was exactly where he was. In a village or small commune. In the middle of where? He glanced at the bedside table. His automatic pistol had been placed there within easy reach. A gesture of trust?
‘It’s not loaded,’ said the farm labourer, who was watching the injured man closely.
Mitchell smiled. These people were sensible enough not to take unnecessary risks. The woman stepped towards him and handed him a money belt.
‘We had to remove it before the doctor could stitch the wound on your back.’
He nodded his thanks.
‘It wasn’t shrapnel, it was a clean cut,’ said Bernard.
‘I caught my back when I jumped... the plane was badly shot up by then. Did it crash near here?’
‘We don’t know where it went down exactly. Most likely it is several miles away. We will soon know,’ said the doctor. ‘But the Germans will be looking for survivors. And that places us all in danger.’
Mitchell reached for the carafe of water, but the movement pulled at the bandaged wound. He winced and Juliet poured the water for him.
‘Were you coming to this area?’ she asked.
Mitchell glanced from the woman to the men. These people might have helped him but Major Knight’s words still rang true. Trust no one.
‘Where am I?’
‘You’re in the village of Saint-Just in what was the Unoccupied Zone.’ Mitchell kept the glass of water to his lips to hide his concern. The Germans had seized back control from the Vichy government the previous year.
By all accounts, he was still hundreds of miles south of Paris. The aircraft must have been at it furthest leg when it was attacked.
The doctor voiced his impatience. ‘You seek proof of our intentions?’ He glanced at the bearded man. ‘That is Chaval, the man who brought you here. This house is owned by Madame Juliet Bonnier. She has a young daughter in a room below. If the Germans come we will all be shot. We share your risk.’
‘I was supposed to parachute into Norvé and make my way into Paris,’ said Mitchell.
‘My God, that’s nowhere near here. Norvé have a Resistance cell operating already. Were you going to help them?’ said Juliet.
‘I can’t tell you anything else. I’m sorry. But the aircraft coming here was on another mission.’
‘There are men in the hills a few kilometres from here, near Saint-Audière... they’re fugitives from the forced labour camps. There are less than a dozen of them. Most are untrained. They like to think of themselves as Resistance fighters but they’re just frightened men hiding out,’ said Juliet. ‘Still, they might help you.’
‘You know a lot about them,’ said Mitchell.
The doctor and Juliet hesitated warily. Juliet nodded to Bernard.
‘I am the local co-ordinator for the men around here and Saint-Audière. The parachute drop was for us,’ he said.
‘They were sending you a radio operator,’ Mitchell said, remembering the young man smiling in the aircraft.
‘To help us organize,’ said Juliet.
‘If I give you a coded message can you get it transmitted to London?’
‘Yes. Norvé has a transmitter. I drive there for my instructions,’ said Bernard.
‘Is that safe?’ asked Mitchell. Any unusual movement by locals could be spotted by German patrols.
‘He’s the doctor, he’s allowed out after curfew,’ Chaval said from the far side of the room.
‘All right. We’ll organize another drop for you and get you another wireless operator. Do you trust me to do that?’ Mitchell told them.
The doctor and Juliet nodded.
Mitchell extended his hand to Juliet.
The warmth of her firm grasp was a reassuring comfort.
10
Spring in Paris promised much when it eventually arrived in its full glory, but it could be as fickle as those women who had once professed fidelity to France. A seasonal change had swept the city when the Germans had marched through their streets three years ago. Some stayed true, but survival meant different things to different people.
To Dominique Lesaux it meant enjoying the comfort and charming company of the German who now faced her across the net, lithe and agile in his tennis whites. She knew the risks she took being with him, she thought to herself as she tossed her hair back over her shoulder, but what woman, high born or low, would not grasp the opportunity that had come her way? Her well-connected family had history on their side; through the ages they had known how to make the most of connections to powerful men, how to do much more than just survive.
She had arrived in Paris four years earlier and soon entered Parisian society once it became known that her ancestry could be traced back to the court of King Jean II, even though she admitted lightly in conversation that hers was an illegitimate line from a lowly courtier. A mixture of shock and amusement had trickled through society. People, realizing that she loved to tease, were unsure whether she was simply trying to shock them. Dominique was well aware that gossip and snobbery had burnished the legend but was quite happy to leave them uncertain: in reality, she had long ago buried the truth about her background and the reviled race she had been born into, and keeping such secrets had become second nature. She knew women who had converted to Catholicism to escape wearing the yellow star – surely no worse than those who bowed the knee before the altar of Nazi philosophy to keep their lives of privilege intact.
Whatever they believed about her, Parisian salons embraced her as one of their own and sympathy and understanding followed once it was known that her family were trapped in Switzerland, unable to return to France, and that her allowance had been stopped by the Swiss authorities because sending money into the Occupied Zone was deemed to be breaking their strict rule of neutrality – blatant hypocrisy given that Swiss banks did business with the German Reichsbank. It was a harsh lesson, learning to live without work or money.
She had experienced savag
e hunger during the severe winter of December 1939, a bleak and bitter time that only eased the following March. Food had become scarce even for her. It was a brief and frightening peek into the reality of war far from the front line. It had proved more than close enough. She vowed never to want for anything as basic as bread ever again. Thankfully, Occupation brought with it opportunity. She had long abandoned travelling on the Métro where even a common soldier had priority over her for a seat. Now she travelled in a chauffeured car. Her lipsticked mouth did not want for food, or fine wine for that matter: rationing was something for others to be concerned about.
Rain had spoilt her tennis match yesterday but today the sun shone with the temptation of an early spring on the small château a few miles south-east of the city, which was cool enough in summer to escape the oppressive heat, yet close enough to be only streets away from the very centre. It was once home to the royal hunting grounds and now reserved for her German officer. SS-Standartenführer Heinrich Stolz, it was rumoured, was destined for great things.
Dominique dashed back and forth across the court as they volleyed to and fro, but couldn’t make the final ball that he slammed her way.
‘Heinrich! Not fair,’ she complained as the ball sped past her. He could turn on the power of his shots as surely as he could his charm. She knew both concealed a ruthless streak that could make a grown man tremble in fear and a city beg for his goodwill. What little there was. And what little there was, she took.
‘But now you serve to win the match. It was out.’
‘It was?’
‘You didn’t look. It went over the line.’
She laughed, retrieved a ball and steadied her nerves. She was as calculating as him. And she had learnt that he appreciated her cunning. She got what she wanted most of the time; sometimes he knew she had manipulated him and other times he did not. And when he did not, she kept her ear to the ground and learnt vital information that could help those less fortunate, but who one day might turn on her and call her a whore and collaborator. It was a trade-off whose threat she had not yet reconciled.