by Thomas Wood
No one said a word, there was just the sound of a crusty old piece of bread being tossed and turned inside Jules’ mouth. We all sat down in silence, thinking through the impossible situation that we had found ourselves in.
Not only had we just played a football match with the Germans, but we now faced the possibility of trying to blow up a factory at exactly the same time that sixty or seventy bombers were trying to do the exact same thing.
To my surprise, it was Christopher who spoke first.
“Well, we have to do it, don’t we? We have no choice but to go again tomorrow night. If the bombers come, let them come.”
There was a nodding of heads and a smattering of agreements that went around the room one by one. I felt excited, but there was just one thing that was holding me back; I didn’t want to make an even bigger mistake than I had done tonight.
Knocking his drink back in expert fashion, Mike suddenly got up from his chair, slapping his thighs.
“Right, well I’m glad that’s sorted. I’m off to bed. With any luck, we won’t be getting much sleep tomorrow night.”
“You said that last night,” Andrew mumbled into his knuckle.
“Yeah, well, unless the Germans want a second leg then I don’t think I’ll be saying it again.”
He chuckled, but quickly cut it short at the thought that a rematch was a very real possibility, especially if they saw the same team back together again.
I let him leave the room, before getting up myself and announcing that I too would be going to get my head down.
Closing the door behind me, I grabbed Mike’s shoulder just as he reached the top of the stairs.
“Mike.”
“Johnny?”
“Why didn’t you tell them…about the, you know. The Clam.”
I thought back to what an incompetent fool I had been in leaving my breast pocket open and flapping in the wind.
“Why would I?”
“Because Christopher asked what happened. It happened, didn’t it?”
He shrugged, his face pulling itself into an ugly expression that looked as though he had smelled something rotten.
“It would have got me nowhere, Johnny. What would I have gained by getting angry at you for something like that? I could have damn well nearly done the same thing. Besides, it wasn’t the reason why we were back here, was it? That’s what he really wanted to know.”
“Wasn’t it? My nerves were shot to bits, I’m sure Jules’ were too. I would say it was the whole reason why we lost our bottle tonight.”
He continued as if he hadn’t heard a word I’d said.
“Look, you didn’t tell anyone about my little friend back in Tours. So, it’s hardly going to be difficult for me to keep that sort of thing from Christopher. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“What happened with you and that girl in Tours was completely different, Mike.”
His face fell as he thought back to our time in Tours, as did my own mind, and how much I had started to miss Suzanne. She had barely featured in my thoughts for days, which was probably a good thing. She was too much of a distraction.
“It wasn’t any different Johnny. Both were mistakes. Both could have got us killed.”
He stared at me for a moment, his deep, set-back eye sockets disappearing in the darkness as we shared a moment of peace, just the two of us, for the first time in months. This was how I had pictured it all, just the two of us, against the whole of the German army. No one else to get in our way or to distract our thoughts.
He snorted, before his lips widened to reveal his warm smile. I couldn’t help but follow his example and, within seconds, we were sharing a hearty laughter that had to be suppressed, for fear of waking little Georges up.
“Keep your chin up, Johnny. This war won’t go on forever.”
“I should hope not.”
He slapped me on the arm, “Good night, old fruit.”
“Good night, Mike.”
I turned away from him, feeling readier than ever to get my head down onto a pillow and sleep. My mind was abuzz with the thoughts of the evening, as well as the excitement and enthusiasm of wanting the day to pass me by quickly.
The feeling of fire in my belly was slowly being stoked, and I could feel the desire to get my teeth stuck into the Germans once more.
I readied myself for bed, as best I could. But, as I pressed my head into the pillow, Mike’s snores already echoing down the hallway, my mind was filled with a thousand and one other things that were preventing me from sleeping.
Never mind, I thought to myself, at least it would keep the nightmares at bay.
24
So far, so good.
I knew I shouldn’t have thought it the second that it came to my mind, but I was sure that I hadn’t been the only one to allow the confidence to enter my consciousness.
Getting past the sentries had been the easy part, Diehl had been on duty and, apart from one or two remarks about the football match, we had passed through without any hindrances.
We were lighter too as, apart from our pistols and revolvers, we had no weapons on us whatsoever. It had been far easier to dump them in the factory and retrieve them later on.
A few men still milled around in the factory, paying next to no attention to us whatsoever. Despite the Germans taking over his factory, Peintre’s pockets were still deeper than mine ever would be, and Cluzet had managed to persuade him to slide a few notes the way of those who were working that night.
I didn’t know how they were going to avoid being in the workshops when the explosives went off, but all I could hope for was that they managed to get out and stay out.
The cupboard, from what I could see, was stuffed to the rafters with everything that someone might need to scrub down a factory floor to within an inch of its life. There were several mops, with accompanying buckets, as well as filthened rags that had clearly been used to wipe down some of the machines. A strong stench wafted from the cupboard, a sickly smell that tried to mask the filth with an inadequate scent of freshness, but I couldn’t quite tell if the smell was from the cupboard, or from Cluzet.
Cluzet leant into the cupboard, his boiler suit tied around his waist and his shirt untucked, to reach in and bring out our toys like Aladdin’s cave. His trousers slipped as he grunted, his buttocks coming on show, giving rise to a simultaneous groan as we all turned our faces away.
“Oh, come on Cluzet. Your face was ugly enough.”
“Sorry,” he grunted, sniffing loudly but doing nothing to sort out his falling clothing.
It wasn’t a pretty sight, and the situation considerably worsened as he leant further and further into the cupboard, retrieving things from the depths of darkness.
“Take these then, come on. Come on.”
He grunted impatiently, passing two jute bags over his head and to the nearest man behind him.
Jules grabbed them, inspecting them.
“Cluzet, this bag is full of rags…this one old bolts and things.”
“Ah, right. Those must have been hiding the explosives. I’m sure they’re in here somewhere.”
I stepped away from the group, moving to one of the machines and running my hand over a piece of pre-fabricated steel. It was cool and smooth, and I marvelled at the way something so basic and calming could soon be turned into a weapon of war.
I turned and looked at the backs of the four other men that I was with. Pushing my hand into my pocket, I pulled the pistol into my palm, as I stared towards the door.
As we had stood there, all waiting for Cluzet to produce the weapons, I had grown increasingly paranoid that we had been found out. The Germans had found the explosives, moved them, and were now poised for the strike that caught the men in the act of retrieving them.
As selfish as it was, I was hoping that by being away from them, I could pass myself off as just another worker. Failing that, I could raise the alarm by firing a few rounds through my pocket.
“Cluzet man,
you haven’t even bothered to hide them,” Mike hissed, so loudly that some of the other employees turned their heads to the noise.
“I didn’t need to,” the Frenchman replied. “The Germans never come in here anyway.”
“But some of your lot do. How do you know you can trust all of them?”
“When your country is occupied, you’ll know how it feels. They’re all on our side.”
“Has he never heard of fifth columnists?” Mike breathed to me as he left the group also. I could feel the anger seeping out of him, the heat exuding from his reddened skin like a boiler. I snorted softly as he walked past, but I was worried about him.
A degree of anxiety and nerves was expected, in fact it was actively encouraged, it was what would keep us on our toes and consequently, alive. But Mike was allowing his nerves to manifest as impatience, frustration. That sort of thing would get him killed.
But it was a thought that I would rather have not entertained, and so I pushed it away by amusing myself with other things.
My feet were silent as I moved around the workshop, relocating tools and admiring pieces of pre-production, which I was sure would end up frustrating the other workers no end. But, if everything went well, in a few hours this workshop would be nothing more than a dusty bowl of rubble.
Bags were being fumbled from the cupboard now, with Cluzet practically naked as he refused to pull his boiler suit back up. The bags were visibly heavier than the few before, and so I was confident that the Germans had not simply replaced our explosives with sponges and other cleaning equipment. We were back on track.
The faces that had spoken of annoyance and paranoia slowly eased, and my confidence in each of them grew once again to levels that spoke of a degree of comfort.
Mike and Andrew were the two that I felt I could trust the most; they had, after all, received extensive training in how to rig up machines for demolition. Jules would come in close behind, receiving only a minimal amount of theoretical training in what to do. Cluzet on the other hand worried me greatly.
It was why Mike, Andrew and I had been given charge of the more important machines, in workshop one, three and four. That was where most of the production was done. The other two had slightly less important aims; to destroy the two assembly workshops.
They weren’t essential targets, but the more damage we could do, the more of the German’s pride we could dent.
Above all the others though, the one who made my heart flutter with an overwhelming anxiety was the man who had the least responsibility, but the one who could effectively end it all for us; Christopher.
He was back at the safe house, after seating himself in the very same café an hour or two before as we attempted entry into the factory again. After watching us in, it would be his job to return back to Jules’ home, and begin discarding anything and everything that could have possibly tied us to the area.
The blueprints that Peintre had supplied us with would have been thrown into the fire, along with any other documents that could have led back to us.
Slowly, I would find myself stripped of everything that I had; my possessions, my safe haven, my identity. If Christopher managed to do everything correctly, then I, along with Mike and Andrew, would become a grey man.
I would soon find myself with nothing, nothing to be proud of or show for. I had been in that position before, but I could not stop my mind from wandering to the thoughts of one night in particular that had stood out over all the others.
In the space of a single second, I had gone from having possessions, a home, a family, to nothing at all apart from a couple of cold corpses and a pile of smoking rubble. It had stolen everything that I had, including my sanity. It was why I had to make sure that we saw the factory destroyed.
Georges had been through the same thing as me, seeing his mother blown to pieces in much the same way that I had seen my wife. It had happened a hundred times over, right the way across the continent, and if I could stop it happening to a single other person, then I would go above and beyond to do it.
As if the world around me had been reading my thoughts, there was a sudden growl, low and consistent, a moan that I had heard a hundred times before.
The air raid siren continued to sound, as the panicked faces all around us suddenly became even more alarmed, none more so than Cluzet, who appeared to lose hope completely.
My thoughts more or less immediately turned to the boys who were in the air, the bombers full to bursting with bombs wriggling to fall from their bays.
I wondered about who was up there and whether they were as nervous as I was. I prayed to anyone that would listen that they hadn’t used their time off to do some target practice, and that no new device had been invented in the interim to make their bombs fall directly on our heads.
I had always felt so free and unrestricted when I was up in the air, but as I thought of the others who were slowly gaining on me, I had never felt so tied up and conflicted in all my life.
“We need this! Cover!” shouted Andrew, his voice full of hope and optimism, his face betraying his true emotions.
It was no stain on his character, as every face that stood there was one of absolute horror and terror, as everyone silently passed the baton of leadership to the next man.
“What now?” shouted Jules, the sirens and clamour from outside enough to make any man go deaf.
“We carry on as normal!” Mike replied, taking some of the Clams from the bag and stuffing them in his pockets, along with some plastic explosive.
“Wait!” Cluzet called, as he buried his hand in another bag and, for a moment, I thought he had discovered something in the bag that would change our lives forever. “We wait here. For a few minutes. Let the Germans man their posts and get to shelter. Then we’ll have free roam over the whole factory. They’ll be looking to the skies.”
We stood around in expectation for a minute or two, slowly taking our explosives and tucking them away in our pockets. I took one Clam and placed it in my breast pocket, making sure that the button was securely fastened, giving it a soft tug. Mike caught my eye and smiled wryly.
“Everyone clear on what they are doing?” I called; the men huddled around me deafened by my shouts. “Go over it again?” I suggested, lowering my tone so that I did not needlessly fill the now-empty hall.
One by one the men around me spoke, relaying the instructions that I had heard a thousand times already. It never did any harm to make sure that we were all singing from the same hymn sheet, especially when explosives were involved, men had lost fingers and sometimes more by not knowing what the plan was.
It got to my turn and, for a second, I froze, as I struggled to recall what it was I was doing. An elbow to the ribs from Mike quickly brought me back into the room.
“Workshop four. The two lathes, boring machine and that weird profiling machine that Cluzet loves so much. Then to clear out the workshop office of any documents.”
Cluzet went to defend his love of the profiling machine, but ultimately decided against it, leaving a silence to fill the void where men’s voices had been a moment ago.
The lack of noise was horrifying, as the sound of the sirens slowly gave up, and my ears strained to make out any noise at all.
“Well, good luck then. See you on the other side,” Andrew muttered, shaking hands with each of us. We all did likewise, wishing each other well and wondering what the ‘other side’ actually meant.
The sound of soft footsteps departing in their plimsolls was slowly trumped by a more ominous, sobering and alarming sound. There was a drone of bombers looming over us, four-engined ones. There was no doubt about that.
25
I stood still for a moment. I looked around me, my mind slowly filtering out all the noise of the outside world until there was nothing left but my breathing and the sound of blood pumping through my veins.
The cold, damp concrete walls stared back at me, the whole workshop void of any movement whatsoever, a stark contrast to how it
had been just a few hours before in daylight.
Tools had been laid down at a moment’s notice, and nothing that belonged to anyone, apart from a few old boiler suits hung up at the far end, seemed to remain in the room.
As I looked around, visualising all of my movements before I even actioned them, I felt powerful, as if the whole workshop was my own. In that moment, as the unforgiving drone of bombers drew closer and closer, I strangely felt in control. I had not often felt like that since being in this war. My fate had almost always been in the hands of someone else.
I had several options before me. One was to do the job that I had been sent there to do, the other was one that at best amounted to cowardice, at worst leaving my friends in the lurch.
I couldn’t abandon my efforts now, not after everything I had seen and done in the run-up. I had to thaw my feet out and get moving and forget the glaringly obvious chance of death as the bombers roared ever closer.
The floor was damp, and a few puddles still lingered, where the various machines had been cooled or the steel was needed urgently to be transported elsewhere. My feet sploshed in them as I padded across the workshop, but otherwise, the soles of my plimsoles, although impossibly thin, did a good job of keeping my movements as silent as possible.
I felt as though I was back in the cockpit of my Hurricane, strapped in and preparing to face the Germans down with nothing but a couple of canons and a silk parachute strapped to my back. That was the last time that I had felt properly in control, and not at the mercy of someone else.
If I was shot down by a Messerschmitt, it wasn’t because the other pilot had been better than me or his aircraft more advanced, but it was because I had messed up. I had flown too straight and level for too long, or had not been attentive enough to notice his advance.
It was the same as I drew up close to the first machine, its large drill hanging perilously over an untouched sheet of metal, ready to pierce holes into it as the operator demanded.