Return to the Field

by Alexander Fullerton

  ‘What I was saying – exactly—’

  ‘As I said, Zoé – it was fouled up through le Guen. I’d probably have come to regret it sooner or later even if I’d had nothing to do with this business of yours – should have known better than to take him on in the first place. One can’t afford weak links… Another point you might take into account is that operations do often go wrong. It’s the nature of the business, has to be. OK, so there are the other kind too – for instance, weren’t there some successful parachutages a week ago?’

  ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘My job, to hear things. Zoé, you’ll live to fight another day. It’s not over yet – nothing like. All right, we aren’t out yet—’

  ‘Not quite, are we…’

  Just short of Pleyben, they were stopped. Having crossed the Aulne at Pont-Coblant, three kilometres up the road the way to Pleyben was a right turn at what was effectively a T-junction; turning left would have taken them to Châteaulin. But a motorcycle combination was parked in the centre of their road – the Briec road – with one helmeted soldier straddling the bike and the other in the middle of the road signalling them to stop – moving a torch horizontally to and fro with its beam aimed at the car’s windscreen.

  ’Here we go…’

  Braking, with that pumping action. He’d been driving fast, hadn’t planned on having to slow much for the turn.

  Rosie’s hand was on the pistol in her pocket, her thumb exercising the safety-catch; and Prigent, having brought the Citroën to a rocking halt, slid his right hand inside his unbuttoned coat. He had a Luger in there somewhere.

  ‘Open the windows, d’you think?’

  He grunted agreement: she was already winding hers down. Save delay or having to shoot through glass. After which you probably wouldn’t get far – but still had to try. Obviously: like second nature, you’d try. The soldier who’d stopped them had turned his back, about five metres in front of the car, its masked headlights illuminating his boots and breeches. He was looking to the left, and the one on the motorbike – other side of the east-west road, on the grass verge – was looking back that way too, over his shoulder.

  ‘Something coming from Châteaulin. Zoé – I’ll do any talking.’

  ‘How’s your German?’

  ‘Not bad. But I’m not pretending to be German.’

  ‘No. OK…’

  * * *

  Prigent’s later account of this incident ran as follows:

  They were ambulances that passed, I think naval ones so they may have come from Brest – or some naval hospital in the coastal area. It would be pleasant to believe they were being rushed to Trevarez to help cope with casualties from the bombing, but if this is the case they’d have had to have been extremely quick off the mark. I do not know. They came into sight very suddenly, three of them, travelling at about 80 kph, and as soon as they had passed the soldier who had stopped us ran into the road and jumped into his side-car, the bike already moving off the verge by then and its rider waving at me to carry on. Which we did. It was less than half a kilometre into Pleyben: the ambulances and their escort had whisked on through eastward – on the Châteauneuf road – and I took it for granted that our intended route northward would be as clear and empty as all other roads had been up to this point. I therefore continued at a fair but not excessive speed through the centre and out on that leftward curve of the exit road, and there in front of me at very close range was a road-block – a truck on the left facing into the village, black-and-white pole across two trestles in the middle, three or four troopers dashing for cover as I came skidding round with the tyres screaming and not much hope of stopping short of the barrier. In fact I did not try – I saw there was a gap on the other side – the left, well beyond the parked truck by then – and dragged the wheel over, maintaining speed – i.e. no longer braking – and hit that end of the pole and sent it flying, but anyway we were through. In an attempt to confuse the issue I screamed out of the window in German, “Ich habe keine Geduld—” expressing exasperation at their having endangered us in this way. It might have worked – at any rate no shots were fired after us…

  He’d heard her laugh: at his shout, he supposed: that damn cheek. But any sense of fun was extremely brief. His account continues:

  It seemed possible that the patrol manning that checkpoint might believe we were arrogant SD or somesuch, a type they would know well enough: that they would do nothing, therefore. It was conceivable. Alternatively, they might phone ahead – to Morlaix seemed the most likely – 45 or 50 k ahead of us, while my hope was to get within about 10 k of it before turning off west and northwest.

  It did not occur to me they might have colleagues in Brasparts, a middling-small village just up the road from where we were at that moment. But I think they must have: and a telephone link too. Either that, or what followed was just by chance.

  * * *

  ‘Christ.’

  Rosie had wriggled up on to the seat again: having ducked down out of sight when they’d looked like smashing into that barrier.

  He glanced at her. ‘You got a laugh out of it.’

  ‘Well – better than screaming…’

  ‘Oh – every time… Sorry, anyway. But if I’d stopped – we’d have hit it anyway, wouldn’t then have been in exactly the most advantageous situation—’

  ‘Damn right. Presence of mind – congratulations. I could use a smoke – could you?’

  ‘What a good idea.’

  ‘But d’you think we should divert now?’

  ‘Maybe… But if we’ve got away with it – might have—’ holding up a hand with fingers crossed – ‘well, we’d be losing time – and anyway, divert where? Just plunging off into the lanes – when we’re only a third of the way, so far?’

  He was right, she thought – lighting both cigarettes at once, and thinking of that tangle of little lanes… This was home territory, more or less, with St Michel-du-Faou only a few kilometres eastward – via Quinquis-Yven, Marthe Peucat’s village and allegedly safe house. She didn’t mention it, didn’t actually consider it for a moment as any possible solution to current problems; she’d imperilled those people enough already, she felt. She agreed: ‘I think you’re right. Let’s stay on this road.’

  ‘Great minds.’ He took the cigarette from her. ‘Thanks.’

  From his account, again:

  I was thinking we might have got away with it. Also what a splendid girl this was: so self-possessed, although she knew the score as well as I did – that we had at best a fifty-per cent chance, and what being stopped and arrested would mean. Anyway – about one cigarette later, I’d guess 6 or 7 kilometres north of Pleyben – there it was, our come-uppance: a truck in the middle of the road, its lights brighter than most and shining on yet another horizontal black-and-white pole – which could not have been smashed through or brushed aside, with the truck’s bonnet practically in contact with it and soldiers in helmets both sides of the road. Zoé had been relaxing with her head back, maybe her eyes shut, and it was only my jamming the brakes on that woke her up to this. The thing was, I had just passed a road-junction, a road leading off to the right, eastward. I slammed the car into reverse and had it whizzing back – oh, and I switched our lights off – telling her, ‘There’s a road off to the right back here—’

  ’Yes – I know it.’ She squirmed round on her seat, telling me – as calmly as ever – ‘It goes to – Lannédern and Loqueffret—’ Then: ‘Oh. Lights behind us, Michel.’

  She had seen them, I had not, I was looking for this side-road. Zoé added, ‘Coming up quite fast.’ We were where we needed to be, by this time: I span us into the side-road – gears grating and engine screaming – all in just seconds, which was all we had. I believe that crowd ahead could not have known there was a turning here. If any shots were fired at us while we were still on the main road, I neither saw nor heard them. And on the side road I was getting up speed, but still managing without lights, é watching back f
or any sight of Boches and telling me from her local knowledge that if we could stay ahead of them for about 6 k to Loqueffret, a left turn after the village would take us north so we could then get back to our main route well up towards Morlaix. I thought it was too much to hope for: sooner or later I was going to need the lights – the moon was still helping a bit but not all that much because of the tall hedges – they would not be far behind us and if they realized we were aiming to return to the Morlaix road there would be others waiting for us up ahead. The point being that I felt I had to turn off before that – before they got on our tail, and as it happened I spotted a narrow turn-off coming up on the left, and at about the same moment Zoé saw lights behind us again. They would not have seen us though, at that range and with no lights, or seen us turn either. I shouted to Zoé to hold tight, yanked the wheel over, hit the verge with the left-hand wheels, jumped and careered around for a second or two but got hold of it again, at the same time seeing – vaguely – that for about the next hundred and fifty metres the lane snaked this way and that, then curved sharply right. I am not at all certain what happened – except I bungled it. We went into a slide, hit the bank again, bounced off skidding and rounding the bend more or less sideways. There may have been slurry or other spillage on the road. Still did not have lights on. And what there definitely was was this stone wall, which we hit head-on before I even saw it. It was a hell of an impact and Zoé’s head went through the windscreen. I got nothing but some cracked ribs and a lot of bruising. I suppose through being larger and a lot heavier. But I thought she was dead. In fact at that stage I had no doubt of it. In the faint haze of moonlight her entire upper body as well as her head was black with blood, her forehead felt squashy and I could detect no heartbeat. I got her back across the front seats and set about removing such items as it seemed to me were better not left for the Germans to find. I took her gun from her coat pocket, and, a spare clip for it. Her papers too, which were in an inside pocket of the coat, and the valise which she had with her. It contained a jumble of stuff which I did not have time to examine: could have included codes, anything of that sort. (In fact when I did later on look through it, prior to disposing of it, I found a large sum of money in French banknotes – which of course I brought on with me.) As can be imagined, I had been working as fast as possible, but before leaving I tried again for pulse and heart and this time I found she was still alive, although the pulse was so faint that with a continuing loss of blood I guessed her chances of survival were very small indeed. In any case there was nothing I could do for her; I certainly could not have carried her with me, with something like 80 kilometres to go, and as a fugitive as well. My own chances did not seem to be very good, in fact, at that point.

  I took Zoé’s tip about the northward-leading road after Loqueffret. Headed eastward through fields parallel to the road from which we had turned off – having heard the Boche car belt on past soon after we had crashed and when I was preoccupied with poor Zoé, and not seen or heard it again. It was obviously essential to put distance behind me as fast as possible, as the wreck of the car would surely be found after daylight, if not before. Progress was slower than I would have liked, but after about 6 km – as she had estimated – and skirting around a second village which had to be Loqueffret – there was one before that, which she had mentioned – I followed this other road north until daybreak, spent a hungry and rather painful day lying-up in woodland – where I buried the valise – and pushed on again after sunset.

  Chapter 17

  Ben reached to the telephone, checking the time simultaneously, realizing the operator might have sugared off home by now. When she did pack up – at about this time – she connected the outside world to the Duty Officer’s line. He himself didn’t have the duty tonight, thank God.

  ‘Yes, Commander?’

  Still there. And that ‘Commander’ was what might be called greatly accelerated promotion. Saved her enunciating three syllables, anyway. He asked her, ‘See if you can get Second Officer Stuart at “F” Section for me, Hilda?’

  Waiting, he eyed the paperwork he’d dealt with this afternoon, and shifted a few stray items into the ‘out’ basket. Nothing had been left undone, he thought. The secret of getting rid of bumph as soon as it hit your desk was to hate it so profoundly that you couldn’t stand seeing it lying around.

  ‘Commander?’

  ‘Yes, Hilda.’

  ‘Second Officer Stuart’s not in the building, they say.’

  ‘You and I ought to get jobs there, Hilda. They don’t even come to work.’

  ‘Well – that’d be nice!’

  ‘Anyway – I’m off now. Goodnight.’

  It did seem that Marilyn never was in that bloody building. Not at any rate if she knew it was him calling: and it was impossible to get through without identifying oneself. It could have been paranoia that told him she was avoiding all communication with him, but if it was as it seemed, her consistency and obduracy suggested there’d have to be something more than just reluctance to tell him once again: ‘No, Ben – sorry. Nothing…’

  May 29 today – Monday. He’d been in the job a month exactly, and spoken to her only once, since the day he’d gone along to meet Hallowell. The last time had been about a fortnight ago – no, less than that – May 19, the day after the moonless period, the motor gunboats’ last crossings. Between May 14 and 18 there’d been several deliveries on the Brittany coast and two pick-ups, one of some shot-down Americans from ‘Bonaparte’ beach and the other of three agents and a Spitfire pilot from Grac’h Zu. Both of which pinpoints were of still comparatively recent memory, to MGB 600’s former navigator. ‘Bonaparte’ was the nearest, in the Bay of St Brieuc, more specifically l’Anse de Cochat, and Grac’h Zu was several stages further west, a little beach enclosed between jagged rock defences which made for a tricky navigational approach. He could still see it in all its threatening detail: the rock called Meau Nevez for instance which was an essential marker on the run in. Not easy, especially in the high white winter seas as it often had been, and of course pitch darkness – a sine qua non, with German coastal defence posts within spitting distance of any of those pinpoints. Anyway – of the three agents brought out on May 18 one had been categorized as SIS, male, and the other two as SOE, one male, one female, and Ben had had his crazy, short-lived dream – despite knowing it couldn’t be her, not this soon. He’d asked Marilyn on May 19, ‘Couldn’t have been my girl, could it?’ and she’d told him patiently, ‘No, Ben. Heavens, no.’ She’d added, ‘If it had been, you’d have heard from me before this.’

  ‘Heavens no’, because otherwise it would have meant something had gone badly wrong, from SOE’s point of view. And in any case when she did come out – touch wood – it was more likely to be by Lysander, he guessed, than by sea. Or over the Pyrenees, for that matter. One thought of the Brittany-coast route because it had been – and still was, though less directly – one’s own business, but for all he knew she could be hundreds of miles from that coast. While another factor in his worrying – which he thought he might mention when or if he finally did get to talking to Marilyn, was that as she hadn’t agreed to give him bad news as well as good, he couldn’t ever rely on no news being good news.

  News today incidentally – announced by Churchill in the Commons – was that 47 RAF officers had been shot by the Gestapo: having tunnelled out of a POW camp in Silesia and later been recaptured. If the report was accurate, it was cold-blooded murder. The Swiss government had been asked to investigate, Winston had told the House. But you could take it as read, Ben thought. It was how the Master Race displayed its superiority über alles.

  And Rosie had been in those bastards’ hands once. It amazed as well as appalled him that she could have been through such an experience and have suffered since in the way he knew she had – knowing it through the nightmares, fits of terror in the small hours, Rosie a small frightened animal clinging to him, soaking wet and whimpering – and still, by her own delibera
te choice, gone back.

  It had had a lot to do with the SOE work she’d been doing here, preparing other agents and packing them off to take their chances and asking herself, Why her, not me? In her rare attempts to explain it to him, that had been most of it, and up to a point was understandable. The point – his – being that having done it twice already and both times got out only by a whisker she might have been satisfied to leave it at that. Although another element in it that he’d sensed – found hard to define but knew was there – was an assertion of her own Frenchness, combined with respect for the memory of her dead father.

  As if it was something she owed him.

  Ben checked that his safe was locked, locked the door of the office and took the key along to the colleague who had the night’s duty, went down to the street and limped up to Piccadilly. Might have a drink in Hachette’s, he thought, before getting on a bus. Thinking about Marilyn Stuart again, whether she was deliberately avoiding contact with him. SOE had several training establishments in different parts of the country, and as she was involved in the training programmes she obviously would be out of London much of the time. On the other hand, surely the message he’d left eight or nine days ago would have got to her and elicited some response? He’d told the girl he’d spoken to, ‘I’d like her to give me a ring so we can fix a lunch date, tell her’, and she’d said she would.

  Leave it in her court, now? Bite on the bloody bullet?

  Barrage balloons floated silver in the fading light. The last heavy raids had been three months ago – in February, when there’d been a week of it, the worst since May of ’41. In reprisal, it was said, against RAF and USAF raids on German cities including Berlin, where the Allies had been getting some of their own back, of late. In that same month, extraordinarily enough – February, when Ben had been in hospital – there’d been protests in the House of Lords against the bombing offensive. It had astonished all of them in his ward: remembering the Luftwaffe’s onslaught in ’40 and ’41, the shattering of Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester, Hull, Liverpool, Sheffield, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton, Belfast – and of course London. On one night in May of ’41 seven acres of the capital had gone up in flames, 1400 civilians had been killed. After those protests in the Lords, one of Ben’s fellow patients had expressed the view that the Germans were lucky they weren’t being carpet-bombed continually from frontier to frontier; and not even the nurses had disagreed.