by Thomas Wood
It had been a long day; a full working day just like any other employee, only we were going to be putting in some rather serious overtime.
I looked at the faces around me, to take in the expressions of the men that would be my safety net for the rest of the evening. Five of us in total; three Brits, two Frenchmen. But, our outward appearance, so far, showed one of unity and shared experience.
Uncharacteristically, Mike looked the most apprehensive, his bottom lip disappearing inside his mouth as he chewed away at the dry and cracked skin that had formed on the surface. There had been no time to source some water for any of us in the last few hours and, even if we had, the nerves were enough to make even the moistest of throats bone dry.
Without saying another word Cluzet, the foreman who had given us a tour around the facilities a week or so ago, led our onslaught against the tide of greasy-faced men, as we fought against them to get back into the factory.
His slightly generous proportions meant that he waddled rather than walked, a limp on one side making him seem rather comical. Nevertheless, he had been as serious as anything when it had come down to planning the intricacies of our op.
He had been the one to convince us that working the full day on the factory floor, rather than resting up, would be far more beneficial to us. The Germans, unsurprisingly, were more wary of those coming in later on in the day than those that had been there since morning.
Besides, it gave us another opportunity to get up close and personal to the machines that were causing so much havoc in the way of engine building, and to learn the layout of some of the passageways and corridors without the threat of German interference.
We had spent hours with Cluzet, going over everything that might have been a stumbling block to us, including whether or not there would be other workers around at that time of night.
“There are always people working in that factory,” he had said rather confidently. “But they won’t get in your way. They hate anyone who makes them work those kinds of hours. And they will only be too happy to help those who want to put a stop to them.”
It didn’t sit perfectly with me, as all it would take would be one disgruntled worker, who valued his wages more than he did scoring against the Germans and the whole thing would come tumbling down around us.
“We wait here,” Cluzet announced, lighting up a cigarette and leaning against the wall, surveying the scene as the final few remnants began to drip from the factory and trudge home.
“How was Christopher?” Andrew said, wriggling over to me and putting a foot up on the wall behind him.
“Fine,” I answered, thinking of the little man as he sat outside the café. “He seemed quite alright actually. All smiles and waves.”
Andrew scoffed at the thought, but with an element of frustration that he knew that I was telling the truth. Christopher had helped us tremendously by talking to Peintre, but other than that, he had not been much help at all.
He had been placed in the café, across from the main entrance to the factory and he was no doubt sipping at a cup of coffee as he watched the men stream from the main gate, as we had just seen them go a few minutes before.
It was his job to wait outside, armed with nothing but a Sten gun hidden under his long jacket, and the courage that I hoped was somewhere in his blood.
“I only hope we don’t need him. He’s a terrible shot.”
“As long as he doesn’t somehow hit us, I don’t care where he fires the thing.”
It was just as well that Christopher’s job was not marksmanship, but chaos making, kicking out a magazine of nine millimetre the second that he suspected something was going awry inside.
I was pleased also with the fact that he was not with us on the inside of the perimeter, as he had not filled me with the greatest confidence in what I had seen of him so far.
“Tell me, is he good at anything?” I asked, leaning into Andrew.
“He makes a blinding beef wellington,” he said, mockingly. “Not a lot of hope of you seeing one of those. I haven’t seen a cow in weeks.”
I scoffed, as the courtyard began to empty, and the large barn style door about ten yards away became more visible. It was there that we would start our little adventure, all we needed to do was bide our time a little bit more. The Germans were doing their last sweep of the day, to make sure that nothing was missing from the factory floor and in a worker’s pocket instead.
I recalled the look on Christopher’s face upon hearing the news that he was a new father to a tiny child, and I could not but feel happy for the man who had caused me so much anxiety. There was something about the tears in his eyes, the pure joy etched onto his skin that made it impossible not to be.
But it was that happiness that was causing me great discomfort, as it would mean that his judgement would have been even more clouded than before. That on top of the small fact that he was a conscientious objector.
For his sake, as well as my own, I hoped earnestly that his interference would not come into play tonight, and that the next half an hour or so would play out smoothly, and he would be able to return back to the safehouse and begin to prepare for our exfiltration.
At the thought of the carnage that could ensue as we tried to enter the factory properly, I felt for my own weapon.
We could not risk having something like a Sten gun on our person, despite its ease of concealment, and instead had an ugly looking thing that disguised itself as a Webley self-loading pistol.
I had fired them once or twice before, reliably informed by an instructor that it was a pistol used by the Royal Navy.
“Famous for using their sidearms,” one chipper voice had chimed in sarcastically at the time.
But now, I found myself relying heavily on it for my life, its loud echoing report and its huge recoil the only thing that could stand between success and failure. If all else went south, then I would have to press it into my own mouth, something that I had reluctantly practiced doing the night before.
I thought of Georges, as we waited for the seconds to tick by and for the Germans to emerge from the barn door, and what it was he was doing right at that moment. He was with an auntie of some description, and I could only hope that he kept his small infant mouth closed, not breathing a word about the strange men that had been in his home for several weeks.
I had no other option but to trust the small boy, as I had done with so many other people in a far better position to betray us. But I could not help but feel the awesome weight of responsibility on my shoulders as I thought of the prospect of an air-raid free life for the child.
He had already seen enough of them for his little eyes.
Gently, and without wanting to alert any of the others to my actions, I began to feel each of my pockets, one by one, gripping hard on the solid outlines as they sat in the lining of my trousers, and one in my breast pocket.
Undoing the button on it, I felt around the cold casing of one of the mines that would hopefully bring an end to the misery of the inhabitants of Besançon.
All I needed to do now was live long enough to plant it.
21
We all tried to ignore the three German soldiers as they emerged from the factory floor, allowing Cluzet to take control and do the looking for us. But it was difficult, and, on more than one occasion, my wandering eyes stared at them as they stalked across the courtyard, their field caps neatly on their heads.
“Right then, seeing as you all want to get going. It looks like we’re clear,” Cluzet muttered, his youthful eyes glinting as he spoke to us all. He seemed like a relaxed man, but he looked at us all in turn, with such solemnity that I felt the weight of responsibility slap me in the face.
“I must thank you for doing this. We have been hoping for a moment like this for a very long time. Good luck to you all.”
“Thank you, Cluzet,” Mike mumbled back. “Good luck to you too.”
“Shall we get a move on then?” I interjected, before the two of them could sh
ake hands and embrace. We had worked so hard to remain undetected that to falter now would be a travesty.
Suddenly my heart began to pound, and I could feel every ounce of my hot blood surging around my veins, my neck throbbing with excitement. My limbs trembled, in a good way, as my body started preparing itself for what was about to happen.
I felt ready to go, to run and leap over the nine-foot wall that surrounded the courtyard, completely unaided. If things went wrong, I was sure that I could outrun the Germans, all the way to the Swiss border.
I was fired up.
It was a sensation that panicked me as much as it did excite. I was pleased that I felt the way I did, and not cowering in some corner somewhere anxiously awaiting all the things that could go wrong. It made a change to how I normally felt.
But, equally, I was concerned that in my dynamism and eagerness, I would do something that would plunge the entire operation into doubt. It was in this kind of state of mind that people did things wrong, getting themselves killed, or even worse, the rest of the team.
It was that possibility of living, while everyone else perished, that filled me with an overwhelming guilt before anything had even happened. Hoping desperately that the fear of letting everyone down would dampen my enthusiasm, I nodded to Mike so that he knew I was ready.
It was not a normal experience of war, a war that very few people had been through in all the millennia of conflict.
For centuries, warriors and soldiers had charged into battle with blood surging and hearts pumping, in much the same way that mine was as we stood in the courtyard. But, for our war, the opposite was necessary for success.
We needed to remain calm, level-headed and able to make rational decisions in the heat of the moment. To do so would allow for a greater chance of success and for better odds of not being noticed by the enemy, who were everywhere.
I thought back to a calmer, quieter place, to return to some sort of docility that would assist in my endeavour.
Before long, I was stretched out in a cool, flowing stream in the heart of Cornwall, hiding beneath the canopy of autumnal leaves that had only just started to crisp and brown. It had seemed so long ago now that I could hardly remember names, but faces still lingered for a moment or two.
As we staggered towards the large door, I could see the outline of the old Victorian farmhouse, that had become my sanctuary shortly after I had seen the lifeless bodies of my infant son and wife.
The sudden diversion in my thoughts caused me to cut away and focus on keeping one foot in front of the other, following the bobbing heads of my fellow saboteurs.
Everything was going swimmingly, I thought, as I managed to complete six or seven steps without falling flat on my face.
Out of the blue, a short, sharp bark ruptured the pitter-patter of footsteps and we all ground to a halt, like a well-rehearsed drill team.
There was no opportunity to breathe and my heart ached as it held on to its urgency to beat one last time. Everything stopped in our world as we waited to see what the next instruction would be.
Despite the fact that we had already stopped in the exact spot we had been told, the voice called out for a second time.
“Stop!”
I turned, the others backing me up by doing the exact same. I could feel more than one person feeling around in their pockets for their weapons. It was not unheard of, Cluzet had said, for the Germans to suddenly search anyone they liked. It particularly happened when they were bored or frustrated.
If they were to do that to us, we were going to need to call on Christopher and his Sten gun, after all.
Diehl was standing on the other side of the courtyard to us, not all that far away from the entrance gate that we had passed through earlier in the day.
He swayed ever so slightly, as if there was a gentle breeze on that side of the factory, and he brushed shoulders gently with two of the soldiers who stood either side of them. Two more sidled up alongside them, until they formed one mass of hideous German soldier.
“What’s he got in his hands?” Mike breathed amongst us.
“Which one?” Cluzet muttered back.
“I’m hardly going to point at him, am I Cluzet? Obviously the one holding that thing in his arms.”
“I don’t know,” Cluzet replied, unperturbed by the aggression that had hissed from Mike’s lips.
“Just be grateful it isn’t weapons. All their rifles are still on their shoulders.”
“That’s something.”
“Fußball!” Diehl screamed at the top of his lungs, as the man next to him dropped a shadow, before volleying it towards us. As the football sailed through the air, Diehl guffawed and screamed again. “Ein Spiel!”
We stood in dumbfounded silence for a moment, not one of us wanting to be the first to move and make some kind of fatal error.
“A football match?” Andrew said, disbelief apparent.
“Five of them. Five of us. The numbers work,” Jules added in, before Mike almost snapped his neck in two to look round at us.
“He’s joking, right? Tell me he’s joking, please.”
I didn’t know whether Mike was aiming his jibe at Diehl, or at Jules, but either way I couldn’t really provide him with the answer that he wanted. I raised my eyebrows in what I hoped resembled a shrug, before stepping towards the Germans with the rest of the group.
“I suppose it’s my turn to make you look stupid, eh Michel?” I jibed, his face crestfallen and stunned.
“We’re not actually playing?” he said, jogging to catch up with the rest of us.
The Germans had already removed their tunics, placing them a few yards apart to create a goal on the ground. They chucked two more towards us and Cluzet, as happy as anything, gaily ran to the other end of the courtyard to complete the pitch.
Not one of us took our boiler suits off, nor even tied the top half around our waist, petrified that a German might trip and find one of the plethora of explosives that we had hidden about our person.
I shrugged again towards Mike, “Scared that I’m going to show you up?”
His face burned orange as he berated us all under his breath for being so stupid and happily joining the enemy.
“What choice do we have, Mike?” I whispered once he had finally caught up with me. “They’ll think it odd that five Frenchmen don’t want to skive off work for at least a few minutes.”
He mulled it all over in his mind for a few seconds, his bottom lip disappearing inside his mouth again as he bit down on it, hard. He knew that if he was to leave now, not only would it put the operation in more danger than it already was, he would put the match at risk too.
Diehl laughed and hooted as he realised that he was about to play what was the biggest game of his life. He jogged over to us and tried shaking our hands, but his own were quivering too much to grip hold of us for too long.
“Oh, this is excellent. Simply excellent,” he began muttering, switching between his own German tongue and that of the land that he was occupying.
“France against Germany! Again, after so many years!”
“If only he knew who he was really up against,” Andrew breathed as he stood alongside me.
“1937 I think you’ll find was the last match between these two great nations.” He emphasised the ‘great’ and bowed his head ever so slightly as he did so. “We beat you, of course. Four goals to nil. March it was, in Stuttgart. Of course, I was there. Wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
The other soldiers around us began to jog and kick the ball between themselves, while Diehl was still in his own little world in 1937. The rest of my team simply watched him curiously, not preparing themselves for the match in the slightest.
“Stuttgart. Is that where you’re from?” I asked, cutting into his daydream.
“Yes…well, just outside. Have you ever been?”
I looked at him and scoffed. Even if he had known that I was an Englishman, the answer would still have been the same.
He shuffled his feet as his face turned a brighter shade of pink, “No, of course. Sorry.”
“Is it a nice place?” I asked, trying to coax him back out of his shell again.
“Stuttgart?” No, not really. But we have the nicest cars, the best in the whole world. Luxury, real fine living.”
I caught the sight of Mike peering over Diehl’s shoulder, giving a disapproving glare that told me that I should cut off my interaction immediately. I defied the order.
The German continued to talk about Stuttgart, his home, his mother, anything he could think of and some things that he couldn’t, tripping and stumbling on his words as he tried earnestly to recall aspects of his life he could no longer remember.
As I listened, I found myself breathless with disbelief. I was an Englishman, in France, talking to a German, about to engage in a game of football. My experience of war could not have been further away from that experienced by the warriors throughout the centuries.
Frustrated that he could not remember the name of the street that he had grown up on, Diehl reached into his tunic. I felt my muscles tighten as I thought a weapon of some description was going to be drawn, but relaxed myself so much when it wasn’t, that I almost lost control of my bowels.
He held the small flask up to his lips and knocked his head backwards sharply, letting out a large sigh as the liquid slipped down his neck.
Mike hovered around his side so much, keeping a suspicious eye on the two of us, that he soon found the flask dangling underneath his nostrils.
“You would like some?” Diehl asked, as Mike leant in to sniff it.
“No. I do not drink.”
Diehl retracted the flask quickly, in case Mike changed his mind, before wafting it under my nose.
“What about you? Please tell me you don’t drink also,” he chuckled, his hand tremoring and letting the liquid catch the light of the sunset.
I swallowed hard as I thought about my decision, before taking the flask and lifting it to my lips.
Mike glared at me the entire time I held it in my grasp, as I reasoned with myself that two teetotal factory workers was an irregularity that even a drunk German would have been able to spot.