Bomber (18 page)

Sleep was hard to come by, but sometime in the night he dozed off and woke with the sun streaming through the rickety roof. His thirst had returned, and his hunger. There
were several hen hutches alongside one of the inner walls of the barn, and there, he was sure, he would find eggs.

It must be fairly early, and Harry supposed if he was quick he might be able to find an egg or two without anyone seeing him.

The hens started clucking as he approached the hutches. He rustled through hay bedding and found what he was looking for – a fresh egg, still slightly warm. Just as he removed it, he heard a small scream and turned to see a girl with a wicker basket just inside the barn. Before he could say anything she had run off, and a moment or two later returned with a man Harry assumed was her father. He had a shotgun, and pointed it straight at him.

Harry put his hands in the air and spoke rapidly. ‘
Américain! Américain!
’

The man lowered his gun and nodded. ‘
Attendez
,’ he said, and pointed his gun up to the top of the barn. That sounded like French, so Harry supposed France was where he had come down. Meekly making his way back to the spot where he had slept, he did just that – waited.

He toyed with the egg, wondering if he could eat it, and his hunger got the better of him. He’d had uncooked eggs before of course. Eggnog – whipped eggs with milk and sugar – was a Thanksgiving tradition. But a raw egg on its own … the idea revolted him. He cracked the egg and emptied both halves into his mouth, swallowing as quickly as he could, and willing it to stay down. The compulsion to retch quickly passed.

Harry was just wondering if he could steal another egg when he heard footsteps. This was the moment when he would discover if someone had come to arrest him or help him.

A gnarled old man in a flat cap, his skin brown and wrinkled, was standing at the entrance of the barn with the man he had seen earlier. They gestured for Harry to climb down.

‘
Bonjour, monsieur, je suis un américain
,’ he called quietly in his high-school French.

‘
Je sais
,’ said the man – I know – then he began to jabber incomprehensibly and Harry realised speaking in French had been a bad idea.

He shook his head. ‘
Pardon, monsieur, je parle seulement un petit peu de français
.’

‘
Je sais
,’ said the man again.

The two Frenchmen shook hands and then the new arrival grabbed Harry by the arm. ‘
Venez
,’ he said, and led him to a horse and cart piled with the last of the summer’s hay. ‘
Vite, monsieur, cachez-vous ici
.’

His meaning was clear. Hide in here. Harry couldn’t believe his luck and burrowed beneath the hay. The cart began to move a moment later. Harry could sense it trundling slowly up a hill, but as they reached the crest and began to head down he could hear voices he recognised as German – soldiers, almost certainly called out to investigate the debris from the downed aircraft. The cart stopped and they began to interrogate the Frenchman.

By the sound of them, the German soldiers were both young and neither of them spoke much French. The farmer did nothing to disguise his hostility. Harry could imagine them pointing their rifles at the cart and wondered if they were going to start shooting or stick their bayonets in the hay. He’d certainly be doing that if he was them. He wondered whether to leap out with his hands in the air before they gored him. But he knew he couldn’t do that. The man would be arrested for helping an American airman. They might shoot him, and Harry, on the spot. So Harry held his breath and tried not to sneeze. It had been building for a minute or two and this was the worst possible moment. He was itching terribly too, and aching to move a hand to scratch his leg.

The soldiers sounded bored. They couldn’t be bothered to stick their bayonets in the hay, but they tried to talk more to the farmer. It sounded as though his defiance had riled them. One of them spoke aggressively and Harry heard what sounded like a scuffle.

The other soldier spoke in a conciliatory way.

Harry heard the horse deposit a heap of dung on to the road. The farmer laughed, as if to say, ‘That’s what he thinks of you.’

Harry heard muttering and curses, but the voices were walking away, and a moment later the cart began to clip-clop onward.

The rest of the journey was just noises: the muffled trundle of wooden wheels on mud and grass, then the
rattle of cobblestones. He heard the farmer shout a greeting to someone and then the sound of gates being opened, then closed.

He felt his arm being shaken. ‘
Allez, allez
.’

In the brief moment between climbing out of the hay and being bustled inside again, Harry saw he was in the enclosed courtyard of another farm. He was bombarded with sensual delights. The warmth of the place was all enveloping, the smell of the wood-burning fire was delicious. And there were cooking smells too – baking bread and a meaty stew.

‘This way,’ said a female voice. A little Frenchwoman around the same age as the farmer quickly bundled him into a stairway down to the cellar. She introduced herself as Madame Laruelle. ‘Now, monsieur, be quiet and wait here, please.’

Another voice cried out in delight. ‘Harry Friedman! I thought you were dead.’ It was Stearley. He ran up to Harry and gave him a great hug, even lifting him off the ground. ‘I saw you falling. I lost you in the sky. I was hoping these guys would find you. They picked me up almost immediately.’

He slapped Harry’s back again. ‘Well some of us got out at least,’ he said, suddenly sober.

Harry thought about the other non-coms – Skaggs, Hill, Dalinsky and Corrales were all dead. He was the only one of his buddies who had made it.

‘Wonder where Bortz and LaFitte landed,’ Stearley continued. ‘Cain was badly wounded by flak – I think
he was still in the Fortress when it went down. Jesus, what a day.’

‘And Holberg?’ asked Harry.

Stearley shook his head.

‘He was determined to get
Macey May
back to England. That chewing out he got from Kittering about the ditching …’ He stopped. ‘Berg felt he ought to show the old bastard what he was made of by bringing a badly damaged Fortress back. Well, it cost him his life.’

The door at the top of the stairwell creaked open. A stern young man came down into the cellar and brusquely demanded to speak to each of them separately, telling Stearley to go upstairs and wait with the farmer and his wife.

Then he fired a series of questions at Harry, without even the hint of a smile.

‘Who is the other
américain
?’

‘Do you fly together?’

‘What is ’is job?’

‘Which plane do you fly?’

‘Where is your airbase?’

Harry answered some of the questions, but told the man he was not allowed to tell him about the airbase. It was against regulations. After all, Harry didn’t know who he was.

He thought this would make him angry, but he started to ask more personal questions instead.

‘Tell me where you are from.’

‘Where is the nearest public library to your ’ouse?’

‘What are you parents’ names?’

‘How many brothers and sisters do you ’ave?’

Harry was all right with those. He knew the answers without thinking and answered them quickly. But then the young man said, ‘Who’s the coach for the New York Giants?’

Harry didn’t know. He wasn’t interested in football.

‘Any true New Yorker would know the answer to that question.’

‘I am a true New Yorker and I haven’t got a clue,’ he replied indignantly. ‘We’re not all interested in football. My sport’s baseball. Ask me about the Brooklyn Dodgers, or the World Fair of 1939, and I’ll tell you about that.’

That threw him. ‘We ’ave to be careful. The Gestapo sometimes send us spies instead of real airmen. Now, you say you were in the bomber with this officer, so you ’ave known him several months?’

‘We trained together in the States,’ said Harry.

‘Then I will just ask ’im a few more questions.’

Harry understood. He was well aware of the danger the Resistance were in.

The young man vanished, and Stearley returned five minutes later. ‘Well, he was a charmer!’ he joked. ‘But I think they know we’re the real thing.’

They heard the door to the cellar open again and this time it was the elderly French woman who crept downstairs. ‘Are you angry?’ she said to them. ‘I am angry!’

Harry’s heart sank for a moment. What on earth had they done? ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Are we being too noisy?’

But she smiled. ‘No, no. Are you angry? I bring you something to eat, yes?’

Harry and Stearley burst out laughing and she looked puzzled and a little hurt.

‘Yes, yes, please, ma’am,’ said Harry. ‘
Je suis très faim
.’

She corrected him with a kindly smile. ‘J’ai
très faim
.’

It was the finest meal Harry had eaten since he had arrived in Europe, maybe even in his life. Madame Laruelle even brought a carafe of red wine and three little mustard jars for glasses. Then she sat with them while they ate, occasionally shushing them when their conversation grew boisterous. Harry didn’t like to drink much, but he loved that wine. Its rough edge complemented the rich stew to perfection.

Stearley proposed a toast ‘To Life’, and they clinked together their mustard jars.

At once Harry felt an overwhelming relief that he was still alive.

‘Tonight you rest, and maybe tomorrow too,’ said Madame Laruelle. She shrugged. ‘Maybe a week. Then we try to get you back to England.’

Stearley turned serious. ‘Please can you thank the gentleman who came to get me. It was a very dangerous thing to do.’

‘Yes, monsieur,’ she said, suddenly grave. ‘My husband, he is a brave man.
Les Boches
, they shoot people who help
the airmen. We saw your plane come down and we wondered if there were survivors. And lucky we got you before the
Boche
patrols. They don’t kill the airmen. But they might have beaten you a little. Then off to prison camp.’ She smiled ‘We need you back in England and ready to fight.’

There was a creaking at the top of the stairs. ‘
Ahhh, Gérard
,’ she said. ‘
Tu prends un verre de vin?
’

The farmer joined them with a shake of the hand and quickly knocked back a jar of the wine. He spoke to his wife, who turned to Harry and Stearley and said, ‘Do you have photographs?’

They did. Harry and Stearley handed over their little passport-sized photos.

Madame and Monsieur Laruelle immediately began a hurried conversation.

‘Is something wrong?’ asked Stearley in French.

‘
Je ne sais pas
,’ said Madame Laruelle. ‘These photographs – they are not quite right. The look is too bright, too smooth. We will leave them out in the weather and see if we can fade them. Then I visit a friend to get you some identity papers.’

‘Are you worried about helping us?’ asked Harry.

She gave him a warm smile. ‘A little. But Gérard and I are old now. If they shoot us, they just end a long life a little sooner … But better for us if they don’t.’ She picked up her glass and clinked it with theirs. ‘Still, to life, eh!’

At the end of the third day, Madame Laruelle came down with two identity papers. They were well done, she explained, and it was important that the two of them learned the details so they could answer any question from a suspicious guard without hesitation. That night Harry and Stearley spent at least an hour memorising their new identities.

How old were they?

When were they born?

What was their occupation?

And most importantly, what was their name?

Stearley spoke much better French than Harry and coached him on his accent and how to pronounce those essential details as realistically as possible. Harry was beginning to like Stearley a lot more and felt guilty about how he and the other non-coms had judged him in the past.

On the next day they were shaken awake before first light. Harry immediately wondered if something was wrong and opened his eyes terrified he would see the green uniform of a German soldier. Then he noticed the sweet
smell of baked bread and coffee. It was Madame Laruelle and she had brought them both a little breakfast.

‘Today you leave here,’ she said. ‘Exciting, no? I will bring hot water to wash.’

They both nodded.

‘We leave after one hour,’ she said.

Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, ‘Monsieur Laruelle has clothes for you. I bring
immédiatement
.’

Several of the clothes she bought were flecked in paint – perfect for their disguise as a couple of painters and decorators – Henri Leclerc and Louis Davout, according to their identity papers – on the way to Paris to do some work.

When they had washed and dressed in this assortment of cast-offs, the two airmen crept up the cellar stairs and knocked gingerly on the door. It opened to reveal an extraordinary sight.

Madame Laruelle was wearing an outlandish outfit that almost made Harry laugh out loud, but he realised at once this was a disguise. She had a flouncy peasant dress and a great straw hat with several feathers in it. She also carried a large shoulder bag with a half-drunk bottle of wine poking out of one corner.

‘
C’est pour la Milice ou les allemands
,’ her husband said.

‘Milice?’ said Harry to Stearley.

‘French guys – they’re Nazi sympathisers. Set up to fight the Resistance.’

Harry noticed the rank odour of sweat and unwashed clothes. Most of all, Madame Laruelle smelt of stale wine.

‘You have to show your passes, yes?’ she announced. ‘Well, when we reach a German checkpoint I’m going to distract the soldiers, so they let you both through without inspection.’

Harry wondered if this dressing-up would be enough to fox the Germans or collaborators, but there was something about Madame Laruelle that made him trust her. Whatever she was up to, she had done it before and it had worked.

‘So where are we going?’ Stearley asked.