Return to the Field

by Alexander Fullerton

  ‘Attention!’

  The captain. Pistol still in its holster, she noted. Stick in hand – it was more swagger-stick than whip, but you could bet he’d use it for hitting people when he felt so inclined. Soldiers faced them, and the train was at their backs: she met Lise’s glance again and slightly shook her head: whatever they were going to do they’d hardly do it here, in the open and right beside the tracks. The German began: A train is – how to say this—’

  ‘Captain,’ Edna broke in, in German, offering to translate.

  He’d glared at her, angry at being interrupted, but now nodded. ‘Good.’ Edna, Rosie thought, might survive Ravensbrück, making herself useful as an interpreter. Unless they already had as many as they needed. She was looking to her right, seeing the tail-end of the column of people from the cattle-trucks diminishing in that direction, with the blaze of sunset at their backs.

  It truly did not look propitious. Except that logic suggested they’d hardly slaughter them in open countryside.

  ‘He says—’ Edna, interpreting – ‘the line’s blocked and we’ve got to transfer to another train. Something’s happened to a train ahead of this one and they’ve brought another that’s waiting up there beyond it. Sounds like it might have been bombed. Blocking both lines, apparently. Bombing might spread it around a bit, I suppose. Anyway, we’ve got to hoof it – pronto, while it’s still light.’

  Rosie put the gist of it into French for the Belgians. The German pointed his stick at Edna and told her something else: she translated, ‘Anyone attempting escape, he says, will be shot dead.’

  Rosie translated that too. The woman queried peevishly, ‘Escape, like this?’ She clanked off, shrugging, in the wake of the SS man and with her daughter hanging on to her. In the irons you couldn’t cover the ground easily even when you’d got used to them, and the German wasn’t waiting, was leaving it to the soldiers to bring them along. It must have been at about this moment, in a very quick assessment of the situation in which this left them all that Rosie made her decision. Lise saw her standing absolutely still – noticeably so, as the others began to straggle off – gazing out across darkening grassland at the belt of trees – or a wood, it might have been, an edge of forest. Lise called to her – quietly, no note of urgency or concern, not wanting to draw the Germans’ attention to what seemed like a show of independence, knowing the Boche tendency in such circumstances to use rifle-butts – and Rosie looked round at her – hesitantly, was Lise’s impression – before moving to join her. The nearer of two soldiers on the field side of the prisoners did look round for her – may have counted the others first – saw she was on her way to tag on beside Lise – also that another guard was not far behind and catching up – and was satisfied with that. The formation as they all moved off was thus the Belgian and her child leading, Edna close behind them, Maureen and Daphne together behind Edna, then Lise with Rosie closing in on her left. The SS captain was well ahead, passing the now empty cattle-trucks whose doors some recently detached soldaten had been slamming shut, and here there were four left guarding them – two on the outside, more or less abreast of the Belgians and Edna, one on the inside – ahead, frequently looking back over his shoulder – and the fourth now only a few paces behind Lise. Behind Rosie’s right shoulder, therefore.

  ‘Lise.’

  She turned her head. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Don’t faint or scream, but – I’m going to make a break for it.’

  A hiss: ‘You’d be crazy—’

  ‘– going to run for those trees—’

  ‘Two hundred metres—’ a glance that way, then back at her – ‘at least—’

  ‘I’ll dodge like mad. I’m up to it, been resting all day. No – hush… When they start after me – well, shooting – the one behind us now ’ll rush out to the left – there. Only way he can go – get a clear field of fire. That’ll leave you on your own, and they’ll all be looking that way, Lise—’

  ‘You won’t get ten metres – not a chance—’

  ‘There’s a good chance – for you. Only way it can be – they took my chains off, not yours, so I do the running. Lise dear – under the train – crawl under – and into the river. Stay till it’s dark and they’ve gone. They’ll have to go on – have to. God knows what then – get to a house, farm, offer them money. Tell them fifty thousand francs, Baker Street’ll pay. Lise, this is a chance, Ravensbrück’s no chance, you know it. Good luck, God bless…’

  ‘Rosie—’

  She’d ducked away, was sprinting, manacled hands up against her body. The man behind Lise shouted, started after her. As she’d known he would. In front the nearer one whipped round, lifting the rifle to his shoulder, swivelling back then to bring his sights on her. Daphne’s voice in a scream – ‘Oh, Christ!’ And bedlam. Lise heard the first shot as she hit the ground, crawled and rolled into darkness under the train, jacking herself over the rails with her forearms in the clinker, knees drawn up, toppling herself over: there was a lot of shooting, German shouts, women’s screams. She was out from under the train then, off the clinker under a wire-and-timber barrier into grass with a down-gradient towards the river. Gasping, sobbing, still telling Rosie no, no, Rosie – hearing a shout like an echo of her own plea, Edna’s shriek of, ‘Oh, God, no-o-o!’ One single shot, then. She was rolling: legs together, forearms together too, pressed close to her chest: the shine of water darkened by the train’s shadow gleamed close sooner than she’d expected, with a drop of three or four feet into its shallow muddy edge.

  Chapter 22

  Ben had his elbows on the table, face in his hands and a cigarette between his fingers. August 1, close on noon. The US 1st Army, the BBC had said this morning, had broken through at or near St-Lô. Marilyn Stuart had telephoned him at his digs when he’d been listening to that early bulletin and asked him if he’d meet her here in the SOE building in Baker Street at eleven. She had no good news for him at all, she’d warned, only confirmation of what had been guessable since June 10 when she’d given him the last update.

  Progress of the war in France had seemed slow, in these weeks. Around the beachheads the weather hadn’t helped, while the doodlebugs had been bumbling across the Channel from launch sites in the Pas de Calais and Belgium to kill women and children in the streets and in their homes. It might not be long – please God – before those launch sites were over-run. The Germans’ retreat had been cut off now in Normandy: roads were jammed with their retreating columns and Allied air forces were giving them no peace. Avranches had fallen: Canadians and British were attacking down the Falaise road. From Avranches, some divisions of General Patton’s 3rd Army had swung west into Brittany. It was the U-boat bases the enemy would be most desperate to hang on to: U-boats with their new homing torpedoes were still taking a heavy toll of Atlantic shipping. Those bases would be the Yanks’ targets – Brest, St Nazaire, Lorient, La Rochelle. While throughout Brittany 30,000 Résistants had come out of the shadows now, were fighting in the open.

  Rosie, who according to Marilyn Stuart had helped to arm them, seeing none of it.

  He took his hands away from his face, in the process fingering moisture from his eyes. Flicking a length of ash from the cigarette, inhaling smoke. He’d known it: had known it with increasing, sickening certainty for the past – what, six, eight weeks… Telling himself there still was hope – because they’d had to be. He’d seen Marilyn once, in that time – met her by chance in this building, and seen in her face that she had no illusions either: they’d said hello Ben, hello Marilyn – nothing else.

  Nothing else to say.

  Until now. Forcing himself to it, the words shaping themselves darkly in his brain: Rosie’s dead.

  No point kidding oneself any more. The loss was total and permanent. He took another drag at his cigarette; looking across the table at Elise. Elise Krilov: she had a name now, this hitherto shadowy, almost mythical creature. An hour ago when Marilyn had introduced them, before starting to read a transcript of some
of her de-briefing, it hadn’t been easy to merge her into his image of the girl on the Guenioc beach of whom Rosie had said once, ‘That girl’s me, Ben’ – when she’d been trying to explain the dichotomy of a compulsion to return to the field and a clear recognition – and horror – of what was entailed in doing so.

  Not Elise, though – Lise. She’d told him this, after Marilyn had introduced her as Elise. She was tall, slim, with short dark hair and wide, rather slanted eyes. They were green, he thought. Marilyn hadn’t turned any lights on; after all, it was mid-summer and near-enough midday – but this briefing room wasn’t well lit and there was a grey sky out there. Earlier there’d been some drizzle.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I’m very sorry about – not sure I got the name, was it Noally?’

  ‘Alain Noally, yes.’

  Looking down at her hands, frowning. Then a shrug… ‘You and he would have got on well. Rosie thought you would. She liked him very much. The four of us were going to be great friends – so she and I both hoped.’

  ‘That’s it, then. We would’ve. But—’ he looked at Marilyn – ‘going back to this escape – if you have the time to hear about it—’

  ‘You’d like to. Well—’

  ‘What river did you say it was?’

  ‘The Meurthe.’

  Lise had put that in, saving Marilyn from having to look it up in the transcript. Ben hadn’t ever heard of it. He said, ‘From there to getting signals out via your bloke in Nancy – sounds easy the way you have it there, but—’

  ‘With one bound.’ Lise smiled. Her French accent was attractive. Asking Marilyn, ‘Like me to tell him?’

  ‘Well, why not.’ Checking her watch. ‘I must look back into my own office – return a call or two, and—’

  ‘Never returned mine, far as I remember?’

  ‘Well, Ben—’

  ‘I know. Don’t worry. Forgave you long ago.’

  ‘You’re a kind man, Ben.’ She was gathering the stuff into her briefcase. Having read the story somewhat selectively to this point, he’d realized – skipping the odd line or paragraph, doubtless to spare his feelings. She hadn’t been exactly unmoved herself; she and Rosie had been close colleagues for quite a long time. But bare facts as transcribed from recordings in any case reduced the emotional content, to which either or both of them might have succumbed. He had, to some extent. And she’d left out the bit he wanted now because all that directly concerned him was the fact and manner of Rosie’s death, and the circumstances leading to it: so from there she’d skipped to Lise having somehow established contact with the SOE’s chef de réseau in Nancy and through him passed to London vital information which Rosie had confided to her. In other words, Rosie had been doing her job right up to the last minute – had effectively passed the ball to Lise, before giving her a chance of running with it.

  Then there’d been a pick-up arranged – a Hudson of the Special Duties Squadron from Tempsford in Hertfordshire.

  The door closed behind Marilyn. Ben prompted Lise: ‘You went into the river, with chains on your wrists and ankles – and obviously not in exactly tip-top condition?’

  ‘That was even more so in Rosie’s case. How she made that run… She’d said earlier she felt as weak as a rat. Those were her words. I even had to laugh. Some little rat – eh?’

  He nodded. Looking down again, fiddling with his lighter. Lise went on, ‘Anyway – I lay there for maybe an hour. I knew if I moved I might be seen – ripples in the water reflecting light, you know…’

  He offered her a cigarette, and lit it for her. Seeing it all happen, then, as she described it. Lights flashing around for some while up where the train still stood: she’d guessed they’d have been expecting to find her under it. The river was as still as glass and she was invisible to them in the lee of the low bank; from up there it would have looked as if the water just lapped the grass slope, with no vertical bank at all. A trick of the light, maybe, but she hadn’t known there was a bank until she’d rolled over it. She’d been prepared to drown herself, she said, if it had looked like they were going to find her. The chain’s weight anchored her legs to the mud, and she’d reckoned she’d be able to pass the handcuffs over her head so that the chain linking them would rest across the back of her neck and hold her face down in the water. She didn’t experiment with it because she didn’t want to make a ripple or any sound, after the disturbance of her splashing in had settled.

  ‘After some time the train backed away. It would have had to go all the way to Nancy, I think, to get to – is it called points?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And the guards must have all have gone on with the prisoners… You don’t – wouldn’t understand if I told this in French, I suppose?’

  ‘Not very well. But maybe – if you spoke slowly—’

  ‘No, it’s OK. Just I’m lazy.’

  ‘Hell, it’s me that’s—’

  ‘I heard the other train go. Rosie had been right, they couldn’t stay for ever. My poor friends, I thought of, maybe in a cattle truck now instead of a carriage… Two things then – no, three. One, I’m weak, hungry, cold, didn’t have much strength to waste. Two, must all the same get away from there as far as possible while it’s dark. Three, with the chains on me, and resembling a – well, a drowned rat – I better try to be out of sight before daylight. OK, four – I must have shelter and food, or I’m – kaput. You understand, Ben – Rosie did not do what she did just for me – although I am sure she would have – it was also so the truth would get back about some other things. I was thinking about that, a lot. And in the first light, the dawn, I am just sort of trudging along the river bank – I think wandering in my mind a bit – I hear a sound that is coming closer, and it is oars. And these fishermen show up. Little boat, two old men. I mean, quite old. I call, splash in, it is not deep, I can wade out to them. They are scared, and when they see the chains one of them starts shouting, even tries to hit me with the oar – it’s crazy for a minute, but thank God the other one shut him up. I tell you about them – what I learn in the following hours. The one who owns the boat does go fishing, but this trip they are really scavenging, with the friend along to help, he’s going to where he’s heard is the wrecked train. His name is Patrice, he grows vegetables for market and catches fish, not much else. The other one, who is related to him some way, is a builder – you say handyman? From the wrecked train perhaps they find materials, they think – seats, anything. But it’s not legal, they should not be there, he’s scared and after that one’s calmed down I’m not getting any trouble from them.’

  ‘Took you into the boat, did they?’

  ‘Some luck, eh? I call it Fate. Not always so kind, unfortunately… Anyway – I lay in the bottom of their boat, and they rowed back to the home of the one who owns it. I promise them a lot of money – and this persuaded his wife too, when we get there – his wife and a daughter-in-law, their son’s in Germany on forced labour. They have almost no money, twenty thousand francs sounds like a fortune to them. Five thousand for his friend, twenty for them if they hide me in their house and feed me, and to make contact for me with local Resistance. It’s what happened – easier than it might have been of course because they all know the Boches are going to lose, it’s only a matter of time – only dangerous for them for a short time, therefore. The old man and the daughter-in-law filed off the handcuffs, then left it to me to file the leg-irons. Very hard work – but OK, I have nothing else to do, except eat and sleep. The mother meanwhile goes into Blâmont – it’s a town not far away – and talks to some person they know, a Résistant – a railwayman, as it happens – and that’s the ball rolling, after only two, three days the SOE chef de réseau in Nancy has been in touch with – here, Baker Street, and my identity is confirmed, from then on I am safe. Any doubt of it, they’d have killed me, but it’s OK. They send the other information for me then, and – oh, just a few more days, they send an airplane from Tempsford to pick up me and some others from a place be
tween Nancy and Metz. SOE have agreed, by the way, they will pay those people what I promised. I think there are many such debts, for payment soon.’

  ‘You still make it sound easy, Lise.’

  ‘Made it short – you don’t want to listen to me all day, eh?’

  ‘Well – might listen to you over lunch – if you’d care to join me?’

  ‘Oh – I’m sorry—’

  ‘Some other time, then.’

  ‘It’s sweet of you, Ben. I’d like it, too – please, some other time – if you want to ask me—’

  ‘No if about it. But – you’ve been in England – about three weeks?’

  ‘Just over two weeks. There’s been de-briefing – a lot happened in Rennes before any of this, you see – a lot of de-briefing… Also letting my hair grow – long way to go yet, of course—’

  ‘Grow it long, will you?’

  ‘Longer than it is now, sure!’

  ‘And what else? I mean the future, what—’

  ‘There’s still work. Maybe trials of persons named in my report and Rosie’s – one especially, I can testify to what she told me… And a man who betrayed Alain. Could become complicated soon, with Gaullists taking over – well, please God—’

  ‘D’you have any family?’

  ‘My father and mother are in Switzerland – since the war started. Before that we lived in Paris. I will see them, some time, but – no hurry. Well – can’t hurry.’

  Her eyes were green. An almost oriental slant to them. Very calm in her manner, very – composed, he thought. After what she’d been through – what they’d been through… He asked her – giving himself another cigarette – ‘You don’t mind being asked all these questions, I hope?’