Henderson's Boys: Eagle Day (18 page)

As the middle of the tank passed the crest of the ramp, it tilted forwards and slammed the hull. The entire barge slumped in the water, and a powerful half-metre wave sent the second half of the boarding party charging up the pebbles, seeking higher ground.

There were shouts of alarm, then the barge crew paused the loading procedure – the weight of the tank had brought the vessel dangerously close to grounding on the pebbles. Orders were yelled down to the stern, where a bemused Dutch captain stood in an open-backed wheelhouse.

He fired the two diesel engines and the craft began drifting backwards. But moving a coal barge designed for a river in a tidal sea was an imprecise business. Waves were already pushing the craft towards shore, so the captain had to briefly run the engines up at full power to move it backwards and prevent grounding.

Confusion reigned as the barge moved slowly away from shore. At first senior officers yelled at the last troops, making them wade out into waist-deep water with their heavy kits. Four made it up the ramp, but as the barge headed backwards the crew realised that the entire hull would flood if the ramp wasn’t raised before they got into choppier water.

The winch was engaged and the last soldier to board arrived head first, sliding down the ramp and taking his comrades down like nine pins. Soldiers in the water were knocked backwards by the wash created as the five-metre-wide ramp came out of the water. With heavy kits strapped on, several who lost their footing found themselves anchored to the seabed.

As the barge continued to drift out, troops on the beach threw down their kits and dived in to rescue the drowning men. Paul looked down towards the pier to see how the VIPs were reacting to the chaos. As he did so he noticed a vague hum high above – but this was nothing out of the usual, as the RAF and Luftwaffe had been dog fighting over the Channel for several days.

Reichsmarschall Goering faced the barge, first throbbing with anger, then turning and laughing to his bodyguards. An army general, flanked by two Obersts – including Ohlsen – was storming across the pebbles towards some nervous subordinates, including the slim officer for whom Paul had made the drawing.

The noise in the sky grew louder, but people had other things on their minds.

Paul spoke no German, but was rapidly developing familiarity with the ruder end of the language. All of the troops were out of the water and the barge floundered. Nobody seemed to know whether to try bringing it back to shore to finish the loading operation, or to complete the planned demonstration by backing a few hundred metres out to sea before landing the troops and weapons in a natural harbour on the opposite side of the pier.

As everyone concentrated on watching each other the sound overhead grew. Paul had drawn hundreds of aircraft and although it was the first example he’d seen in the flesh, Paul instantly recognised the four engines and square tailplane of a British Halifax bomber. A Hurricane fighter hovered off either side.

As the son of a British man Paul felt a certain pride, but he’d seen enough German bombs fall to know that explosions didn’t take sides. He sprang up from between the rocks and began running towards the road. By the time he’d made five steps the Germans had also recognised the threat and four hundred men, from teenaged grenadiers to the Reichsmarschall himself, were running for cover.

At over three hundred miles an hour, the Hurricane’s transition from a silhouette to a beast strafing the beach with machine-gun fire took less than twenty seconds. Paul had made it across the road and dived for cover in the trees beside his tin of jam. He looked up and saw the second Hurricane making its attack run.

From less than thirty metres, he could see the pilot’s moustache and read the side markings as it flew level with the reed tips on the clifftop. A few Germans fired handguns while others ran into the road or yelled for medics.

Paul thought about running deeper into the trees, but fear glued him down as the British bomber approached. He’d seen plenty of bombers on his route south, but the Germans had nothing even half the size of the four-engined Halifax.

Time crawled as he glanced up between the trees. His body felt like it was floating as the plane cruised forwards. Its height was less than a hundred metres and its bombing doors were open. A soldier rushed past, his trousers soaked in seawater and his huge boot barely missing Paul’s ankle.

The bomber dropped its load and Paul imagined death. He saw his parents’ faces as he shut his eyes – but there was no explosion, just German shouts and a rustling on the sea breeze. He looked up and discovered thousands of folded brochures catching sunlight. They pelted the cliffs and the road like a rainstorm. A few made it as far as the trees and Paul snatched one that jostled the branches above him.

The blue and red cover bore a cartoon drawing of a huge bulldog. It wore a Union-Jack waistcoat and carried Hitler in its mouth like a bone. The title was in German, but Paul flipped through and realised that it was a spoof guide, giving the Germans tips on how to invade Britain.

¹⁰
SS, or Schutzstaffel – the elite military division of the Nazi party. SS personnel were selected on grounds of racial purity and fanatical devotion to Hitler.

Paul got on OK with PT and Marc, but Dumont had a big mouth and liked throwing his weight around so Paul tried to avoid him. Today was an exception, because he wanted Marc to tell him what the leaflet said. He found the three older lads easily enough, just a few hundred metres from the house, checking rabbit traps they’d set the day before.

The leaflet had been prepared by the British Propaganda Ministry with the aim of demoralising German troops and was entitled:
A Guide to the Invasion of Britain
. The first section was an English phrasebook containing handy phrases such as ‘
Help me, I’m drowning,
’ and ‘
Please don’t bayonet me again, I wish to surrender
.’

There was also a section of jokes and Marc sat in the grass and read one aloud, pausing occasionally to translate the words.

‘Hitler recently set up a meeting with the Chief Rabbi of Berlin. He was desperate to cross the English Channel and threatened to demolish every synagogue in the city unless the rabbi told him the secret of how Moses parted the Red Sea. The rabbi replied that Moses’ magic wand was currently on display at the British Museum.’

Paul and PT laughed, but Dumont looked baffled. ‘I don’t get it.’

Marc tutted. ‘Hitler wants the wand,’ he explained. ‘But it’s in the British Museum, in London, where he can’t get it.’

Dumont scratched his head. ‘But if the British have this wand, why don’t use it?’
they

‘For god’s sake,’ PT said, as he thumped on the grass in distress. ‘Dumont, it’s a
joke
.’

‘Sometimes I think he’s putting it on,’ Marc said, grinning. ‘But then it turns out that he really is that thick.’

‘I’m smarter than ,’ Dumont said. ‘My mum says I’m practical, rather than being good with words and numbers.’
you

Paul couldn’t resist teasing, ‘And your mum’s bound to be totally unbiased …’

Dumont reared up. ‘Unless you want your head mashed into the nearest cow pat, I’d suggest you shut your weedy little mouth.’

Paul stepped back, but wasn’t too worried because he figured Marc and PT would stick up for him. The tension subsided a moment later when Marc turned to the centre of the invasion guide.

‘Phwoarr!’ he spluttered. ‘Now that’s rather nice.’

PT and Dumont zoomed in on the leaflet. Paul had already seen the image of two topless girls with , written beneath it.
Something for you to look at while other men are taking care of your wives and daughters back home

‘You guys are so dirty,’ Paul complained. ‘You’ll burn in hell for sure.’

‘Some things are worth going to hell for,’ PT said, smiling. ‘You said these leaflets were scattered all over the road?’

‘Are there any different ones?’ Marc asked excitedly, before Paul could answer. ‘Like, with different pictures of girls in them?’

‘Let’s go down there and find out,’ Dumont said.

The idea of Halifax bombers dropping topless pictures didn’t fit in with Paul’s image of how the RAF was supposed to behave, but the older boys’ reactions made him realise that a leaflet with topless girls in would get ten times the exposure of one without. He thought about going back to the house but tagged along behind the others.

An hour had passed since the raid and there was no sign of Germans except a gruesome spray of blood on the chalk cliffs. Orders had been given to clear the leaflets and the only ones in open sight were soggy examples that had washed ashore after the Germans left. The trees beyond the road proved a better hunting ground and Marc ripped off a branch and used it to knock down dozens of copies stuck in the canopy.

‘So what about that house I was telling you about?’ Dumont asked, once the boys were satisfied that there was only one version of the leaflet. ‘It’s a fair way, but the people who lived there were loaded. I’m telling you, we’ll bag heaps of stuff.’

Marc sighed. ‘You said that when we walked miles to that other place three days ago.’

‘We had fun catapulting all the old gramophone records, didn’t we?’ Dumont said. ‘And what else are we gonna do?’

Most of Dumont’s schemes hinged on this point. There wasn’t much to occupy the boys’ time, and even if Dumont’s promises of loot never materialised, it wasn’t as if there were any more exciting alternatives.

Marc looked at Paul. ‘You fancy it?’

Paul screwed his face up. He suspected he wouldn’t enjoy it, but was curious to know what the trio of older boys got up to when they disappeared for half the day.

‘I guess,’ he said warily.

It took an hour to reach the house, taking things slow and stopping to skim stones off a pond along the way. Dumont laid into Paul because he was useless at it and by the time they arrived Paul wished he was sitting on his own somewhere with his pencils.

The house they’d come to rob was double the size of the pink one they’d stayed at in Bordeaux. It was surrounded by unkempt fields of wheat, but the large front garden was immaculate.

‘That’s been mowed like ,’ Marc said. ‘There’s no way it’s empty.’
yesterday

‘Yes there is,’ Dumont said. ‘The old caretaker who lives here mows it. But he came staggering into our neighbour’s house last night and they put him on the back of a wagon and hauled him to the hospital in Calais after curfew. Burst appendix.’

‘We’re gonna rob a house while an old man’s sick?’ Paul asked.

‘It’s not his house, skinny,’ Dumont growled. ‘He’s the caretaker. The owners left for their poncy villa in Saint Raphael weeks before the invasion.’

PT recognised that this house was in a different league to the farm cottages Dumont had taken them to before and his appetite for thieving overruled his need to stay out of trouble.

‘OK.’ PT smiled. ‘I’m gonna show you amateurs a simple trick for checking whether the house you want to rob is occupied.’

The boys watched as PT walked up to the front door and rang the large brass bell hanging above it. He gave it a second go after half a minute, then waved the others up the drive.

‘What if they’d answered?’ Marc asked.

‘Just throw out some bull,’ PT said, making sure Dumont was out of earshot as he stepped on to the front lawn. ‘Ask if they want some gardening work done, ask for some random name and pretend that you’re at the wrong house. When my dad cased a joint he’d always put on a suit and pretend to be an encyclopaedia salesman. People expect salesmen to be crafty and thought nothing of it, even if he’d been sneaking around the side of a house and peeking through windows.’

Dumont was sizing up a large flower pot. ‘I could throw this through the front window, easy.’

PT backed away from the house. ‘You said the old caretaker staggered into the village with a burst appendix. I doubt he went around locking all the doors and windows first.’

Two ground-floor windows were open along the side, but Marc hit the jackpot when he turned the back door handle.

‘Nice one,’ PT said, as he followed Marc into a large kitchen. ‘Now we’ve
got
to be careful in a place like this because if the caretaker comes back he’ll call the gendarmes. They might dust for fingerprints. We haven’t got gloves, so pull the sleeve of your shirt over your hands or grab a piece of rag before you touch
anything
.’

Paul had never done anything like this before and couldn’t help thinking that it was stupid because it would attract attention. But he had no leverage over the older boys and knew he’d look a hopeless wimp if he complained. He swiped a doily from the hallway table and wrapped it over his hand before leading into the living room.

Dumont broke the silence by knocking a pair of china horses off the mantelpiece and crunching them under his boot.

‘Up yours, Mr LeConte.’

‘Who’s Mr LeConte?’ Marc asked.

‘The owner,’ Dumont said. ‘My dad hates his guts. He built this place with money he made ripping off my grandfather back in the day. I’m gonna do the biggest piss all over this joint.’

Marc started to laugh. ‘You’re like a tom cat! Why have you got to piss on everything?’

Dumont was too busy kicking over an occasional table and stamping down on its spindly legs to bother answering. Paul followed PT up the stairs.

‘Are you sure we should be doing this?’ Paul asked nervously.

‘I smell money here,’ PT replied, as he stopped by a table and picked up a small golden statuette of a mummy. ‘Feel the weight of that,’ he said as they passed it between cloth-covered hands.

‘Blimey,’ Paul said.

‘Solid gold,’ PT explained. ‘Egyptian, probably three to five thousand years old. Untraceable and probably worth more than two thousand dollars at a New York auction house. So how about we let the fat idiot have his fun downstairs, and you and I can make a little money?’

Paul still wasn’t comfortable, but he liked PT taking him into his confidence, especially after he’d brained him back in Bordeaux.