by neetha Napew
"Nor I," Embry agreed. "I'd not have minded carrying one of those bloody big bombs when we flew over Cologne, either. So long as it was us or the Nazis— but the Lizards complicate everything."
"Too right they do." Bagnall cast a wary eye to the sky, as if to watch for a Lizard plane. Not that seeing one would do any good, if it had on board a superbomb like the one that hit Berlin. If the papers were to be believed— always a risky business in France, and all the more so after 1940— one single bomb had leveled an area miles across. You couldn't even run from a bomb like that, let alone hide. What point in watching the skies, then?
As Bagnall brought his gaze back to earth, it settled on a faded, tattered propaganda poster
from the Vichy government; though it had never held sway in the German-occupied parts of France, this was not the first such poster he'd seen. In big, tri-color letters, it proclaimed, LABOURAGE ET PÂTURAGE SONT LES DEUX MAMELLES DE LA FRANCE. Underneath, someone had neatly chalked a comment: Merde.
The flight engineer ignored the editorial remark. He stared in wonder and fascination at the slogan, marveling that anyone could have written it in the first place, let alone committed it to print and spread it broadcast. But there it was, in letters four inches high, all tricked out and made to look patriotic. Quite unable to help himself, he broke out in great, braying guffaws.
"What's so bleeding funny?" asked Joe Simpkin, the Lane's rear gunner.
Bagnall still could not speak. He simply pointed at the Vichy poster. Their attention drawn to it, Embry and Alf Whyte started laughing, too.
Simpkin didn't. He really had no French, though he'd picked up a few words, not all of them printable, since the bomber had to land. The edifying sentiment of the poster still remained beyond him, however. He scowled and asked, "What's it say?"
Something like Work and farming are France's two tits Bagnall answered between wheezes. Translating it into English set him off again, and everyone else with him. A thin Frenchman in a ragged jacket and a black beret frowned at the spectacle of seven obvious foreigners falling to pieces in the middle of the street. Because there were seven of them, he didn't do anything more than frown.
"Tits, is it?" Simpkin said. He was from Gloucester, and spoke with a western accent. "France has better tits'n those, and legs, too."
As if to prove him right, a pretty girl rode by on a rattling bicycle that was probably older than she was. Her skirt showed a lot of tanned leg. Bagnall could hear every click of the bicycle chain as it traveled over the sprocket. He could hear other bicycles, around the corner and out of sight. He could hear horses' hooves, and the rattle of iron tyres on cobblestones as a horsedrawn wagon made its slow way along the street. He could hear someone working a hand-powered sewing machine, and an old woman calling her cat, whose name was Claude and who was, she said, a very naughty fellow. He felt as though he could hear the whole city.
"Paris isn't Paris without a horde of motorcars, all trying to run you down at once," he said.
"No, but it's cleaner than it used to be because the cars are gone," Embry said. "Smell how fresh the air is. We might as well still be out in the country. Last time I was here, the petrol fumes were bad as London."
"No petrol fumes to worry about now," Bagnall agreed. "No petrol to worry about, either— the Jerries have taken it all for their planes and tanks."
Footsteps from around the corner told of someone approaching. The footsteps rang, as if even the fellow's shoes were imbued with a sense of his importance. When he appeared a few seconds later, he proved better fed and much better dressed than most of the Frenchmen Bagnall had seen. Something gleamed silver on his lapel. As he drew near, Bagnall saw what it was: a little pin in the shape of a double-headed ax— the francisque, symbol of Vichy and collaboration.
The man started to walk on by, but the sight of men in unfamiliar uniforms, even ones as dirty and ragged as those of the Lane's crew had become, roused his curiosity. "Pardonnez-moi, messieurs, mais— etes-vous allemands?"he asked, then switched languages: "Sind Sie deutsche?"
"Non, monsieur nous sommes anglais," Bagnall answered.
The Frenchman's eyes opened wide. Of itself, his left hand twitched toward that lapel pin, as if to hide the francisque. Bagnall wondered what was going through his head, how be felt, having accommodated himself to the German yoke, on meeting men from a country which refused to wear it.
He spoke English, too. "All the world today is a part of humanity." With a nod, he edged past the Englishmen and hurried away,
looking back once over his shoulder.
"Slimy beggar," Alf Whyte muttered. "All the world, my left one. I'd like to give him my boot up his backside."
"So would I," Bagnall said. "But the devil of it is, he's right, or how long d'you think we'd last here traipsing about in RAF blue? It'd be a Stalag for us faster than you can say, 'Hands up!'"
"Maybe so, but I don't much care to count blighters like that as part of humanity," Whyte said. "If it was Lizards in Paris, he'd be sucking up to them instead of the Germans."
The navigator didn't bother keeping his voice down. The Frenchman jerked as if stung by a bee and walked even faster. Now his footfalls sounded like those of a mere mortal, not of one who was lord of all he surveyed.
Ken Embry clicked his tongue between his teeth. "We should count our blessings. We haven't had to live under Jerry's thumb the last two years. I daresay if Hitler had invaded and won, he'd have found his share of English collaborators, and plenty more who'd, do what they had to to stay alive."
"I don't mind the second sort," Bagnall said. "You have to live and that means you have to get on about your job and all But I'm damned if I can see any of us sporting a silver jackboot or whatever the Mosley maniacs use. There's a difference between getting along and sucking up. Nobody makes you wear the francisque you do it because you want to."
The rest of the aircrew nodded. They walked deeper into Paris. The nearly empty streets were not all that made it feel strange to Bagnall. When he'd been here before, the Depression still held sway; one of the things he'd never forgotten was the spectacle of
men, many of them well dressed, suddenly stooping to pluck a cigarette butt out of the gutter. But well-dressed men in London were doing the same thing then. Somehow the Frenchmen managed to invest even scrounging with panache.
"That's what's gone," Bagnall exclaimed, as pleased at his discovery as if he were a physicist playing with radium. His comrades turned to look at him. He went on, "What did we always used to think of when we thought of Paris?"
"The Folies-Bergere," Embry answered at once. "What's her name, the Negro wench— Josephine Baker— prancing about wearing a few bananas and damn all else. All the girls behind her wearing even less. The orchestra sawing away down in the pit and no one paying it any mind."
"Sounds good to me," Joe Simpkin said. "How
do we get there from here?"
Not without effort, Bagnall ignored the gunner's interruption. "Not quite what I meant, Ken, but close enough. Paris stood for good times— Gay Paree and all that. You always had the feeling everybody who lived here knew how to enjoy himself better than you did. Lord knows whether it was really true, but you always thought so. You don't, now."
"Hard to be gay when you're hungry and occupied," Alf Whyte said.
"Occupied, yes," Ken Embry said softly. "Straighten up, lads, here comes Jerry himself. Let's look like soldiers for him, shall
we?"
The German infantry of propaganda photographs looked more machined than born of man and woman: all lines and angles; all motions completely identical; hard,
expressionless faces under coalscuttle helmets that added a final intimidating touch. The squad ambling up the street toward the aircrew fell a good ways short of Herr Goebbels' ideal. A couple of them were fat; one wore a mustache that had more gray than brown in it. Several had the top, buttons of their tunics undone, something a Goebbels soldier would sooner have been shot than imagine. Some
were missing buttons altogether; most had boots that wanted polishing.
Third-line troops. Bagnall realized, maybe fourth-. The real German army, the past year, was locked in battle with the Russians or grinding now forward, now back across the Sahara. Beaten France got the dregs of German manpower. Bagnall wondered how happy these Occupation warriors were at the prospect of holding back the Lizards, a worse enemy than the Red Army ever dreamed of being.
He also wondered, rather more to the point, if the tacit Anglo-German truce held on the ground as well as in the air. The Germans up ahead might be overage and overweight, but they all carried Mauser rifles, which made the aircrew's pistols seem like toys by comparison.
The Feldwebel in charge of the German squad owned a belly that made him look as if he were in a family way. He held up a hand to rein in his men, then approached the British fliers alone. He had three chins and his eyes were pouchy, but they were also very shrewd; Bagnall would not have wanted to sit down at a card table with him.
"Sprechen Sie deutsch?"[e sergeant asked.
The Englishmen looked at one another. They all shook their heads. Ken Embry asked, "Do any of your men speak English? Or par/ez-
vous frangais?"
The Felwebel shook his head; his flabby flesh wobbled. But, as Bagnall had suspected, he was a resourceful fellow. He went back to his squad, growled at his men. They hurried into shops on the boulevard. In less than a minute, one of the soldiers emerged with a thin, frightened-looking Frenchman whose enormous ears looked ready to sail him away on the slightest breeze.
That, however, was not why the soldier had grabbed him. He proved to speak not only French but also fluent German. The Feldwebel spoke through him: "There is a Soldatenheim, a military canteen, at the Cafe Wepler, Place Clichy. That is where English fliers are being dealt with. You will please come with us."
"Are we prisoners?" Bagnall asked.
The Frenchman relayed the question to the German sergeant. He was more at ease now that he saw be was to serve as interpreter rather than, say, hostage. The sergeant answered, "No, you are not prisoners. You are guests. But this is not your country, and you will come with us."
It did not sound like a request. In English, Embry said, "Shall I point out it's not his bloody country, either?" With the rest of the aircrew, Bagnall considered that. The Germans had his comrades outnumbered and outgunned. No one said anything. The pilot sighed and returned to French: "Tell the sergeant we will go with him."
"Gut, gut," the Feldwebel said expansively, cradling that vast belly of his as if it were indeed a child. He also ordered the Frenchman to come along so he could keep on interpreting. The fellow cast a longing glance back at his little luggage store, but had
no choice save to obey.
It was a long walk the Soldatenheim lay on the right bank of the Seine, north and east of the Arc de Triomphe. The Germans and the English had both respected the monuments of Paris. The Lizards knew no such compunctions; a chunk had been torn out of the Arc, like a cavity in a rotting tooth. The Eiffel Tower still stood, but Bagnall wondered how many days more it would dominate the Paris skyline.
In the end, though, what lay longest in the flight engineer's memory about the journey to the canteen was a small thing: an old man with a bushy white mustache walking slowly along the street. At first glance, he looked like Marshal Petain, or anyone's favorite grandfather. He carried a stick, and wore a homburg and an elegant, double-breasted pinstripe suit with knife-sharp creases. On the left breast pocket of that suit was sewn a
yellow six-pointed star with one word: Juif
Bagnall looked from the old Jew with his badge of shame to the fat Feldwebel to the French interpreter. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. What could he possibly say that would not make matters worse both for himself and, all too likely, for the Jew as well? He found nothing, but silence was bitter as wormwood to him.
German military signs, white wooden arrows with angular black letters, had sprouted like mushrooms on every Paris streetcorner. The British aircrew probably could have found the military canteen through them without an escort, but Bagnall supposed he could not blame the sergeant for taking charge of them. If not exactly enemies, they were not exactly friends, either.
The canteen had a big sign, again white on black, that announced what it was:
Soldatenheim Kommandantur Gross-Paris. On another panel of the sign was a black cross in a circle. Men in field gray came in and out below. Those who recognized the fliers' RAF uniforms stopped to stare. No one did anything more than stare, for which Bagnall was duly grateful.
The Feldwebel turned the interpreter loose just outside the doorway without even a tip. The fellow hadn't translated more than half a dozen sentences, most of them banal, in the hour and a half it had taken to get here. Now he faced an equally long walk back. But he left without a backward glance or a word of complaint, as if escaping without trouble was payment enough. For a man in his shoes, perhaps it was.
Not far inside the entrance, a table with a sign lettered in both German and English had been set up. The English section read, for british military seeking repatriation from france.
Behind the table sat an officer with steel-rimmed spectacles; the single gold pip on his embroidered shoulder straps proclaimed him a lieutenant colonel.
The German sergeant saluted, spoke for a couple of minutes in his own language. The officer nodded, asked a few questions, nodded again, dismissed the Feldwebel with a few offhand words. Then he turned to the Englishmen. "Tell me how you came to Paris, gentlemen." His English was precise and almost accent-free. "I am Lieutenant Colonel Maximilian Mocker, if knowing my name puts you more at ease."
As pilot, Ken Embry spoke for the aircrew. He told the tale of the attack on the Lizard installation in considerable detail, though Bagnall noted that he did not name the base from which the Lancaster had set out. If Mocker also noted that— and he probably did; he looked sharp as all get-out— he let it pass.
His gray eyes widened slightly when Embry described the forced landing on the French road. "You were very fortunate, Flight Lieutenant, and no doubt very skillful as well."
"Thank you, sir." Embry took up the tale again, omitting the names of the Frenchmen who had helped the aircrew along the way. They'd learned only a couple of those, and then just Christian names. Even so, Embry did not mention them. Again, Mocker declined to press him. The pilot finished, "Then your sergeant found us, sir, and brought us here. By the sign in front of you, you don't intend to hold us prisoner, so I hope you'll not take it amiss if I ask you how we go about getting home."
"By no means." The German officer's smile did not quite reach his eyes— or maybe it was a trick of the light reflecting off his spectacle lenses. He sounded affable enough as he continued: "We can put you on a train for
Calais this evening. God and the Lizards permitting, you will be on British soil tomorrow."
"It can't be as simple as that," Bagnall blurted. After going on three years of war with the Nazis— and after seeing the old Jew wearing the yellow star— he was not inclined to take anything German on trust.
"Very nearly." Mocker plucked seven copies of a form off the table in front of him, gave them to Embry to pass out to his crew. "You have but to sign this and we shall send you on your way."
The form, hastily printed on the cheapest of paper, was headed parole. It had parallel columns of text, one German, the other English, The English version was florid legalese made worse by some remaining Germanic word order, but what it boiled down to was a promise not to fight Germany so long
as either London or— no, not Berlin, but the country of which it had been the capital— remained at war with the Lizards.
"What happens if we don't sign it?" Bagnall asked.
If the smile had got to Lieutenant Colonel Mocker's eyes, it vanished from them now. "Then you will also go on a train this evening, but not one bound for Calais."
Embry said, "What happens if we do sign an
d then end up flying against you anyhow?"
"Under those circumstances, you would be well-advised to avoid capture." Mocker's face was too round and mild to make him fit the film cliche of a German officer; he seemed more Bavarian peasant than Prussian aristocrat. But he packed enough menace into his voice for any three cinematic Huns.
"Have you received any communication from the RAF or His Majesty's government permitting us to sign such a document?" Embry asked.
"I have not," Hocker's said. "Formally, we are still at war. I give you my word of honor, however, that I have learned of no punishment given to any who have so signed."
"Please be so good as to put that assurance in writing, for us to present to our superiors. If it should prove false, we shall consider ourselves at liberty to deem our paroles null and void, nor should sanctions be applied against us in the event we are captured in arms against your country."