Waiting For the Day
Page 36
He picked up Paget’s single case but made no comment about the empty sleeve of his air force tunic, if he saw it at all.
Paget was about to climb into the taxi when he saw Margaret waiting amid the deepest shadows of the horse chestnut trees. He stood still, almost transfixed, in the afternoon sunshine. The train hooted a cloud of steam and began to pull away.
He saw her smile as she stepped carefully towards him. She was wearing a summer dress, green and white. ‘Your mother told me which train you’d be on,’ she said.
Now they were face to face. ‘Thanks for coming,’ he said inadequately. They kissed lightly and she fell against him, crying on to his uniform. ‘Oh, Martin,’ she said. Then: ‘Put your arm round me.’
He held her with his one arm and felt how much she was trembling. ‘It’s all finished now,’ she said. ‘The bloody lot’
‘It’s all done,’ he replied.
Wilks, showing no surprise, opened the rear door and they climbed into the taxi. They held on to each other.
‘You been busy, I expect, sir,’ Wilks said as he got into the driving seat. The ancient leather squeaked. He looked very old now. Even his fine grey hair was almost gone.
‘Quite busy,’ agreed Paget. ‘Everybody has.’
‘It’s quiet here,’ said Wilks. ‘Nothing much ever seems to happen.’
The old handbrake creaked as he released it. Paget sat back, touching with his hand the linen of Margaret’s sleeve. The taxi went forward, out of the empty station yard and along the village road towards his home.
As they neared, he saw his father clipping the privet hedge.
What Happened to …
Martin Paget and Margaret Carne married in 1947. They had a son and daughter to add to the two sons from Margaret’s first marriage. Paget continued as an estate and land agent until 1952 when the couple bought a hotel in France, at St Vaast-la-Hougue, Normandy, which they ran for thirty years. In 1982 they retired and returned to England.
Harris took his squad right through Europe in late 1944 and early 1945. Both Blackie and Warren were wounded in Germany, and May died of illness. But the rest of the squad returned home to demobilisation when hostilities ended. After the war, Harris remained in the army as a regular soldier. Enid had their baby girl and continued to enjoy life in Southampton. Harris died of wounds at the Battle of the Imjin River in Korea in 1951. Enid remarried the following year.
Fred and Gino’s dream of a restaurant in Jersey was never realised. Fred became a chef in Düsseldorf, and Gino returned to London to work at the Dorchester. They exchanged Christmas cards for many years but never met again.
Acknowledgements
My thanks are due to Lt.-Col. (Retd.) C. D. Darroch, Honorary Archivist of the Royal Hampshire Regiment, Winchester; the Imperial War Museum; the Daily Mail; the Southampton Daily Echo; to Michael Mellor and Michael Schanze, both of Munich (although they are strangers to each other). Also to my cousin Major (Retd.) Alan Graham who, as a nineteen-year-old, parachuted into France on the night before D-Day. To Denis Donovan, former BBC television newsman, for his great assistance in research; to my friend Andrew Millington for sharing his knowledge of pre-war cars; and to Sheila Perrett of Lymington who not only word-processed the manuscript (many times!) but also added her own small but astute input to the story.
Thanks must also go to my publishers Andy McKillop of William Heinemann, and Susan Sandon of Arrow, who gave me great encouragement; and to Mary Chamberlain who, once again, edited my manuscript.
Finally, as always, thanks to my wife Diana who read the story as it grew and came up with her own advice, suggestions and judgement.
*
Waiting for the Day is fiction set against the background of real events. Some of these events have been taken slightly out of context in order to fit the story, and I have changed other aspects of the six months leading to D-Day on 6 June 1944 but not, I hope, to the extent of distorting what happened in those astonishing times.
Much has been written in the past sixty years on the unfolding of the invasion of Europe. I am indebted to the following sources:
Chester Wilmot, The Struggle for Europe (Collins, 1952)
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (William Heinemann, 1948)
Max Hastings, Overlord (Michael Joseph, 1984)
M. R. D. Foot, SOE in France (HM Stationery Office, 1966)
Norman Longmate, The G.I.s: The Americans in Britain 1942–45 (Hutchinson, 1975)
Neil Barber, The Day the Devils Dropped In (Leo Cooper, 2002)
Angus Calder, The People’s War 1939–45 (Cape, 1969)
John Strawson, Gentlemen in Khaki: The British Army 1890–1990 (Secker & Warburg, 1989)
Charles Cruikshank/Imperial War Museum, The German Occupation of the Channel Islands (Oxford University Press, 1975)
Philip Ziegler, London at War 1939–1945 (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995)
N. D. G. James, Plain Soldiering (The Hobnob Press, Salisbury, 1987)
George Forty, U.S. Army Handbook 1939–1945 (Ian Allan Ltd, 1979)
Robert Goralski, World War II Almanac 1931–1945 (Hamish Hamilton, 1981)
Stephen Badsey, D-Day (Tiger Books International, 1993)
Norman Longmate, How We Lived Then (Hutchinson, 1971)
Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains: The German Occupation of France 1940–45 (Macmillan, 2002)
David Scott Daniell, The Royal Hampshire Regiment in World War II (Gale and Polden, 1955)
Henry Stanhope, The Soldiers: An Anatomy of the British Army (Hamish Hamilton, 1979)
David Chandler, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (Oxford University Press, 1994)
Leslie Thomas
Lymington, Hampshire
June 2003
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First published in Great Britain in 2003 by William Heinemann
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