Spook's Gold

by Andrew Wood

  Close to the steaming engine the passengers were directed left, away from the train. They traversed the edge of the field bordering the train track; fortunately the ground was dry and hard and easy to walk on and after a hundred metres they emerged through a gap in a hedge onto a road, where they were directed to turn right. Fifty metres further on the road became a bridge spanning the Seine and as they crossed the reason for the stop was revealed: the rail bridge had been entirely destroyed. All that remained of the bridge were the jagged stumps of the concrete support pillars and between them a tangle of twisted metal and iron-laced concrete half immersed in the wide muddy river. Marner judged that that this was aerial bombing, not explosives laid under rails by the Resistance.

  “Is the front this close?” asked Lemele in disbelief as she stumbled over the rubble on the road. The bridge that they were walking on had also been partly damaged, possibly by debris thrown from the destroyed rail bridge. At least it was sufficiently intact for them to cross on foot.

  “No. The enemy are systematically destroying key bridges and junction points to prevent us moving our reinforcements and armour up to the Front. Bridges over large natural obstacles like this river are a high priority target for them.”

  She considered disputing his use of the terms ‘them’ and ‘us’, but let it go. At the other end of the bridge they were forced to walk another half a kilometre along the road. There were residential buildings here on the roadside and in the garden of the first house, closest to the river, was a jagged lump of concrete approximately a metre long and deep in size. It could only be a piece of the destroyed bridge that had been thrown here by the force of the bombs, where it had felled a tree in the garden, the shredded trunk testimony to the immense inertia and force that the projectile had carried. Incredibly the structure of the house was untouched and it seemed that only the tree had prevented the concrete missile from tumbling on into the side of the dwelling. All of the windows in the house were shattered and this was also true for many of the other dwellings as they trudged on along the road, away from the river.

  At the end of the row of houses they were directed onto a side road to the right that led them back towards the train track. After a hundred metres they could see a column of people coming towards them and the origin of this group soon became clear: a train headed towards Paris that had been forced to stop for the same reason as theirs. As they drew close and passed the group, they saw that most of them were wounded soldiers, bloody bandages wrapped around heads, upper torsos, arms, a few struggling along on crutches. The soldiers with Marner and Lemele fell silent except for a few who called encouragement to the shattered and defeated injured, “Did you give them hell?”, “We’ll pay them back for you.” But all they received in response were a few shaken heads.

  Then a worse sight: the more critically wounded on stretchers were being offloaded from the train and laid upon the ground along the trackside. A few nurses moved back and forth supervising those doing the offloading, chiding them to be more gentle and careful with the injured, who were being induced to new heights of pain or agony by the buffeting. It was not clear if those entirely still and silent on their litters were unconscious or dead, such was the dreadful pale colour of most of them. Lemele was inured to the sight of wrecked human flesh, but this mass-suffering of so many young people, amputees amongst them, sickened her and she looked away.

  Whilst they waited for the train to be completely unloaded, an argument broke out amongst the nurses and the military personnel trying to organise something out of this chaos. One of the younger nurses, perhaps only eighteen years old, made the point clear, “We do not have enough able bodies to carry the wounded. So tell me how you plan to get all of these,” she made a sweeping gesture along the line of stretchers that had now grown to perhaps fifty, “to the other train?”

  The adjutant whom she had singled out for her wrath did not consider himself to be responsible for this situation or the logistics. He stated that he was simply charged with the safe passage and return of the military transport. He could only propose the possibility of sending someone into town to find trucks or ambulances, an idea that the nurse just laughed at derisively.

  “You have plenty of able young men here,” observed Lemele. Everyone turned to look at her and she took a half step back, startled to find that she had become the centre of attention, surprised to find that her mouth had spoken the words without consideration or approval by her brain. However, she was now committed and spoke up with conviction, “There are enough men here to carry these injured.” She pointed to the soldiers who were now clambering aboard the vacated train.

  “Exactly!” exclaimed the nurse, and turned back to the adjutant. “Come on, get them organised.”

  “But...but this train needs to get moving. We need to get it back to Caen before nightfall,” he retorted, turning to make it clear to Lemele with his frosty look that he did not approve of her butting into the subject. “And who are you anyway? What business is it of yours?”

  “We are on military business,” interjected Marner. He stepped forward between Lemele and the adjutant who, while not intimidated by Marner’s uniform, recognised his superior rank. Marner continued, “If you are responsible for this ‘military transport’ as you call it, then you are responsible for the delivery of its military cargo to its destination. Is that not so?”

  “Well, if you put it like that, then. . . . yes.”

  “Good. So this train goes nowhere with its new military cargo until you have despatched your full duty regarding the delivery of the current one.”

  The adjutant nodded. This minor administrator could relate to logic when it was couched in such bureaucratic terminology. He turned towards the nearest of the officers who was getting his men loaded into the carriages and explained the situation. The officer tried to object but the adjutant had now made up his mind and stated that he could not allow this train to move until the wounded had been delivered to the other one. The officer clearly felt some empathy for the victims and so agreed, organising his men into groups to start gathering up the stretchers.

  The nurse thanked Lemele for her support and then turned to move amongst the wounded now being lifted, urging the bearers to go carefully, with minimum shock or sudden movement. The number of soldiers meant that they could muster four to each stretcher, and two to each wounded man who was ambulatory but required support to stagger along. And so they set off at a reasonable pace along the road, a bizarre sight accompanied by a constant background noise of men groaning in pain, interspersed with terrible shouts and screams.

  Marner and Lemele joined those not involved, a few civilians and senior officers travelling alone, to get aboard the train and find the best places possible. The conditions in the carriages were truly squalid; puddles of unidentified fluids, blood, discarded soiled bandages, the interior of the train buzzing with flies. Eventually they found a compartment that was in reasonable condition. Marner and the other officers threw out the bags deposited by the soldiers who had boarded earlier and settled themselves gingerly into their seats, avoiding as best they could the stains and damp patches.

  ----

  It was thirty minutes before the soldiers returned to the train and by the time that they were aboard and settled they were once again calling and joking with one another.

  “Incredible,” muttered Lemele.

  “What is?”

  “That men can be so stupid. They have just seen that sight and they are going into the same battle and perhaps to an even worse fate, yet they joke and laugh as if it is some game. Are you men just stupid, or does testosterone and desire for war render you blind?”

  “I think that the simple truth is that they are scared stupid. But they cannot show it and they cannot do anything about it. Like the majority of men in uniform, they do not believe in the point of war in general or this one in particular. But the system has power of life and death over them. This is to say, if those soldiers do what is truly logical and
so refuse to go into battle, the only certainty is a firing squad. Therefore they do what they need to do to bolster up their bravado, to keep moving forward, whilst hoping and praying that they will be spared.”

  Lemele looked into his eyes and saw that he was being open and honest with her. She relaxed, having been prepared for an argument. “As I told you, my father is a doctor and he served during the Great War. He saw first-hand the battles, the men going forward into machine guns. He never spoke much about it, but he said one thing that I remember; that on some days and some battles the injury rate was nearly a hundred percent. At least those going to the firing squad could be certain of a quick death.”

  “My father also fought in that,” replied Marner. “He never spoke about it. Ever. No matter how many times people asked or cajoled him. Oddly though, he supported this war and the Nazi party. I wonder what he thinks now, with my brother dead and Berlin being bombed.” He stared out of the window and into the distance. Lemele was simply too fatigued to reply and left him in peace with his thoughts.

  ----

  Marner was startled when the train lurched to halt and jerked him awake. It was dark, and he could hear whistles and voices outside the train, also dogs barking. Where they at Caen?

  “We’ve arrived at a station, a town called Evreux,” Lemele informed him. “It seems as though we might be stopping here. Look, the soldiers are getting out.”

  The other officers with whom they had claimed possession of this carriage were also confused and when the guard strode past the door, one of them leapt up and called him back. “What’s going on? How much longer until we reach Caen?”

  “The train is stopping here for the night. We cannot continue due to the risk of running into damaged track. Night time is when they come out and blow up the track, sir.”

  “So what do we do?” yelled the indignant officer.

  “You can sleep on the train if you like, though it’ll be pulled out of the station and into the tunnel back there for protection. Or you can go and find a hotel, there are a few close to the station.”

  The officer turned back to his fellow travellers and threw up his arms in exasperation, but there was nothing that they could say or do to change the situation. Whilst the others got down from the train and onto the platform, Marner hung back slightly, wanting to see if there were opportunities to get off the train without being seen. The platform that they were supposed to step out onto was guarded at each end by soldiers with dogs, and the platform on the opposite side of train was also patrolled. This left no possibility of jumping down from the other side of the train and melting away into the darkness of the rail yards. Cornered, they had no option but to follow the other passengers onto the platform and be funnelled with them out through the station hall.

  They were both dismayed to see a group of SD officers blocking the exit through the main hall. The troop of soldiers who had been on the train was waved through in marching ranks with their officers. The individual travellers were held back until last on the platform, under the watchful eye of the soldiers with dogs, and then finally allowed through to the security check.

  When it was their turn to present their papers, he was ready for the obvious questions: “What is your business and where is your travel pass or orders?”

  “We have urgent orders to get to Caen. There was no time to wait for them to be typed up and so they are due to be waiting for us at Caen.”

  “And her?” asked the officer, suspiciously eyeing Lemele’s police identity card.

  “A translator. Even I do not know the exact nature of what she is required for, I am just required to deliver her to SD in Caen,” responded Marner, raising his eyebrows in a conspiratorial manner, as if to insinuate that it must be something very out of the ordinary.

  “A translator, eh?” smirked the officer, eyeing Lemele up and down and nudging his companion to join in the joke, “Is that what we are calling them now?”

  Marner stiffened and made to respond but was cut off by the icy voice of the officer, who continued speaking in German but spoke down to Lemele’s papers so that it was not obvious that he was addressing her, “So what exactly is it that you translate, mein fraulein?”

  “Whatever I am told to,” she snapped in her perfect German. “I just go where my bureau sends me. I was instructed to go with this officer to Caen, so that’s where I am going. They have not told me what for, but that is not unusual. ‘Need to know’ is what I think you military people call it.”

  The officer raised his eyes not to Lemele, but to Marner. “A real translator! Very good, Herr Lieutenant. I wish you a pleasant evening.”

  Marner was on the verge of demanding an apology, since he had effectively been accused of being a liar by a subordinate rank. Just as he was about to open his mouth, however, Lemele stepped behind and past him and gave him a surreptitious but firm nudge in the back with her elbow. She was right; they were through and there was no point in pushing their luck, no sense in aggravating the officer sufficiently that he decided to look further into their lack of travel permits. Fuming, he took back their papers and followed her out into the still warm evening air beyond the station entrance.

  Chapter Thirty

  On the opposite side of the road were two hostelries. The windows were darkened by black-out curtains and they both noted the tape across the glass panes, a sight that was seldom seen now in central Paris where the quiet years of occupation had led to relaxation against such precautions. In front of the hotels all seemed perfectly normal and peaceable; the tables were full of soldiers, eating and drinking by lamp light. Fortunately, the large troop of soldiers who had been on their train were not stopping in the hotels; the tail end of their marching crocodile was disappearing into the gloom along the road, so presumably they were heading off to billeting somewhere in the town.

  As they were about to cross the road, the owner of a horse and cart parked in the turning space in front of the station informed them that the hotels were full. He stepped away from where he was leaning against the side of the cart and approached. “They are always the first to fill up. They emptied out for a few days when the Panzers moved north, but now they are busy again with the number of military passing up and down the line. There are some guesthouses nearby that have spaces. I can take you to one of those if you like,” and with that he turned and went to lean against his cart again, without waiting for their response and seemingly uninterested in whether they accepted his offer or not.

  “We need to eat,” called Marner. “Do you know of one that will provide food, or that is close to a restaurant?”

  The man nodded affirmatively but proffered no details; he simply climbed onto the bench in front and sat waiting expectantly for them. They clambered up into the rear of the buggy and sat down on the hardwood benches. It took three increasingly hard flicks of the reins for the man to coax his tired old horse into motion. When finally it did, it seemed to them that they could have walked at a much faster pace and also have saved the poor horse the trouble. As they clanked onto the road, Marner asked about the Panzers that the man had mentioned. Their driver explained that there had been two divisions of them stationed in the town for months. The tanks and support equipment had been permanently loaded onto train carriages in sidings close to the station, ready to roll out to whichever part of the coast the invasion landed on.

  “So you knew that there was going to be an invasion?” asked Lemele.

  “It seemed to be an open secret. The Boche, err...sorry, the Germans knew it; they were building up their forces here for months. We had plenty of Allied planes flying over, so we were worried that they were going to bomb the station and area along the track. Lots of people living near the sidings where the Panzer trains were parked moved out of their houses, they were so scared. But in the end the trains moved off after the Allies landed and no attacks came. Mind you, we were pleased when they left because the soldiers were getting pretty bored, drinking and raising hell in the town.”


  The cart moved slowly along an ascending road leading away from the station, running parallel to the track which was gradually falling away below them. After five hundred metres they turned right and crossed a bridge over the top of the track. Marner and Lemele both looked at each other in amazement when their driver reined the horse to a standstill after just fifty metres more and jumped down; they had reached their destination. They truly could have walked; from up here on this elevated position they could easily see the dark outline of the station roof just a short distance away.

  Nothing indicated that this non-descript semi-detached house in a residential road was a guest-house, or even that anybody was inside behind the closed heavy drapes covering the windows. The driver walked up to the door, thumped on it twice and within seconds it opened to reveal a smiling homely woman, introduced as Madame Pinault, who beckoned them in. As they passed through the narrow front yard of weeds encircled by iron railings, the driver stood to one side with his cap in one hand and the other held palm up for payment. Marner had no clue what the rate was, so he handed over a couple of low denomination notes which the man pocketed without even looking at it. “Thank you Sir, Madame,” he bowed as they stepped inside and their host closed the door behind them.

  Madame Pinault enquired without any sign of embarrassment as to whether they required one room or two. Lemele assured her that it was two single rooms that were needed and they were led up a creaking staircase to the third floor and assigned bedrooms on opposite sides of the landing, with a shared bathroom at the end of it. Marner’s room was far too chintzy for his taste but it was spotlessly clean. Whilst Lemele was shown the workings of the hot water system, of which he could hear the clanking and banging pipes from his room, he tested the bed and was engulfed in a mass of flowery quilted bedspread covering a lumpy mattress filled with exhausted springs.