The FitzOsbornes at War (56 page)

I think I was knocked out for a minute or so. When I came to and rolled onto my hands and knees, I could see a boy running towards me across a field. I unhooked my parachute and started gathering it up, and he dashed around, helping me. He was about ten, a little freckled towhead – he reminded me of Henry. He kept saying ‘Deutscher’ and pointing over at the road, and I heard dogs barking in the distance. The Germans were looking for me – for
us
, I suppose, because I knew at least one other plane in my squadron had been shot down. We hid the parachute under a hedge, and the boy tugged me away from the road, towards some houses on the other side of the field. But as soon as I put some weight on my right leg, I realised I’d done something to my ankle. Just sprained, I hoped, rather than broken – anyway, I found a stick and limped after the boy as fast as I could. We finally reached a little shed behind a farmhouse, and I sat down and took off my boot and my scarf and bandaged my ankle as tightly as I could. The boy ran off and came back with his older sister, who said the Germans were doing a house-to-house search, so I had to move. There was a ditch running alongside the shed, half full of stagnant water, and she told me to get into it and follow it till I reached the barn on the other side of the field, then hide in there. She thought that might throw the dogs off the scent.

So I climbed down into the ditch and crawled all the way to the barn, and buried myself in a pile of hay in there. My ankle wasn’t looking too good by then and it hurt like hell, but then I remembered my brandy flask – you know, the one Henry gave me for my birthday. I’d been saving that brandy for an emergency, but I figured this qualified, so I drank the lot. Felt much better then. Just before it started to get dark, the boy arrived with an old shirt and some trousers, which was wonderful, because all my gear was wet through and reeked of ditchwater. He also said he’d found an RAF pilot lying dead outside the village, and showed me a silver charm and a letter he’d retrieved from the man’s pocket. Well, I didn’t need to read the letter – I recognised that four-leaf clover at once. God, poor old Alfie! He’d just got engaged, you know . . .

Anyway, the boy said the Germans had driven off with the body, and that someone from the Resistance would come and collect me soon, to take me to a safe house. He was such a brave little boy – and it was a stroke of luck his family spoke French. The next morning, I was picked up by a farmer in a pony cart. I’d landed somewhere near Zeebrugge, but I’m not sure which direction we travelled that day. I was starting to feel rather queasy. At the time, I thought it was all that brandy on an empty stomach, but it turned out I was coming down with something. Perhaps I’d swallowed some of the water in that ditch, or maybe it was sitting about for hours in wet clothes, I don’t know. The pony cart took a long, meandering route to avoid the main roads, and by the time we got to the safe house, I was shivering too hard to talk. Which didn’t exactly endear me to the poor people who lived there – they might have wanted to resist the Nazi occupation, but that didn’t mean they were willing to nurse some stranger through a bout of typhoid, or whatever I might turn out to have. They had a noisy argument about it in Flemish, while I sat in the attic, throwing up into a bucket. In the end, they decided to move me on.

I don’t even know how we got to the next house, but I woke up in a cellar. I had a fever and couldn’t keep any food down. At one stage, a nurse came and gave me some medicine and strapped up my ankle. I think I was there a week, and then I was moved again. By then I could eat, and sit up, and must have been showing some signs of intelligent life. A man from the Belgian Resistance came and asked me some questions – who I was, which squadron I was from, that sort of thing. He said they’d have to wait till I could walk properly before moving me along their escape line to France. I gave him my watch to sell, because I was feeling pretty bad about these people having to look after me for so long. That was the only thing I had left. I’d given my silver flask to the boy who’d found me, and of course, my uniform had been taken away and destroyed. I remember thinking I’d be in real trouble if I got picked up by the Nazis. They’re supposed to treat any Allied servicemen they find as prisoners of war, but they just shoot any locals they don’t like . . .

Well. I’d lost track of the date – it was June by then, I think – but I got moved again, to a farm outside Bruges. The stables had a hiding place under the floorboards, just big enough for a man to lie down in, but mostly I stayed in one of the stalls. The Germans had taken away all the horses. I practised walking up and down with a stick and I started to think I’d be on my way home soon. The Resistance people didn’t tell me any details of their plans and I never knew anyone’s real name – thank God – but I guessed this family was an important part of the escape line. There was a middle-aged man who’d been wounded in the last war, and two young women who I think were his daughters – one of them had a baby – and a nice old grandmother who brought me my food each morning.

I don’t know how it happened. Perhaps some neighbour had a grudge against them and turned informer. Anyway, the Germans came. One morning I heard some cars drive up, so I grabbed my water bottle and my empty plate and dived into the hiding place. I’d just pulled the cover over myself when someone ran into the stables. I could hear scuffling noises, as though they were kicking straw over the floorboards on top of me. Then they ran out, and there was a horrible long silence. I had no idea what was going on. After a while, I heard shouting – German, I thought, although it does sound a lot like Flemish – and a few minutes later, there were all these people stampeding overhead. I could hear a girl pleading and crying, and I thought, ‘I should give myself up. I’ll climb out, say that these people didn’t know anything, tell them I’d discovered this hiding place all by myself – then the Germans will leave them alone.’ But how likely was it that the soldiers would believe that? Maybe they had only vague suspicions that this family was part of the Resistance; maybe if I revealed myself now, I’d simply be signing the family’s death warrants. So I just lay there, paralysed with indecision, soaked in sweat, with all this crashing going on above my head. They were pulling the stables apart, it sounded like. Then, all at once, it was over. They stomped away and not long afterwards, I heard the cars start up and drive off.

Well, I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t know how many cars there’d been. They could have left a soldier guarding the doorway, for all I knew. So I stayed where I was, for hours and hours. It was like being buried alive in a very narrow coffin – totally black, except for a thin line of light down one side of the lid, and that grew dimmer and dimmer. A couple of times I fell asleep, then woke with a jolt, not certain if I was awake or asleep, dead or alive . . .

I still have nightmares about that.

It was early the next morning, just as it was starting to get light again, that I heard footsteps, then someone prising up the cover of my hiding place. I was so stiff by that stage that I couldn’t have run away or fought them off, if it had been the soldiers. But it was a man in those black robes that priests wear. He helped me out, then told me the Nazis had taken away the entire family, except the baby. No one knew where they’d gone or what was going to happen to them – whether they’d be shot or hanged, or imprisoned in Belgium, or sent off to a concentration camp in Germany. The Nazis never told anyone – friends or family or the Red Cross – what they did to the Resistance workers they caught. The poor people simply vanished.

I felt sick. So ashamed, so
guilty
. I realised I should have sat in that field with my parachute and waited for the German patrols to find me. When I thought of all the people who’d helped me so far . . . that little boy I’d put in danger . . . Well, I told the priest that he had to leave me alone now, and I’d walk as far as I could get from the farm and then turn myself in to the authorities.

He hit the roof. I didn’t know a priest
could
swear like that. He said they were all doing their duty as patriotic Belgians, and that
my
duty was to get back to England so I could rejoin my squadron and bomb the hell out of the Nazis. Then he dragged me outside to his battered little car and shoved me into the front seat, and we’d driven off before I knew what was happening. I never did find out if he was a real priest, but he was certainly a saint. He drove me to the outskirts of Brussels and then I was bundled into the back of a van that looked like some sort of official city vehicle. We drove straight past the German sentries, right into the middle of the city, and I was left with an elderly lady, who took me up to her apartment. I stayed there a couple of days because they were waiting for two more Allied airmen. In the meantime, the Resistance people took my photograph and organised false identification papers for all of us. When everything was ready, we caught a train to Tournai and then walked into the countryside, and over the border into France.

Oh – I forgot to say that there was a new set of guides for each stage of the journey, and it took a whole day and half a night to travel the thirty miles from Brussels to the border. I was starting to think half the Belgian population was working for the Resistance, and they were all so dedicated and diligent – but of course, terribly anxious. And little things were always going wrong. For instance, we ended up leaving Brussels later than planned because one set of documents didn’t look convincing enough. We had to keep changing trains, then getting out and walking for hours to avoid the German patrols. But eventually we got across the border in the middle of the night and were handed over to a young man waiting for us in the woods.

Of course, there was another snag then. There were supposed to be
two
people to take us to Lille, and then accompany us on the train to Paris. The new man – Jacques, he told us to call him – had an argument with the Belgian people. I couldn’t follow all of it, but I think Jacques was meant to collect three more evaders when we got to Lille, and the Belgians thought that was too many for one man to handle. They said we were bound to attract attention, but Jacques insisted it wouldn’t be a problem, he could do it. Then the Belgians said something about a difficulty with our French documents, but Jacques said, ‘No, no,
I
have them!’ And he took away our Belgian papers and handed us French identity cards, work permits and train tickets. ‘There won’t be any problem,’ he kept saying. ‘When have I ever been stopped?’ Then he said we had to leave right then, or we’d miss our train. So off we went to Lille.

The train to Paris was packed, but Jacques kept a close eye on all six of us airmen. I tried not to look at him, but whenever I glanced in his direction, he’d nod, as if to say everything was fine. And the more he did this, the more uneasy I felt, but I just told myself that things must be different in France. Perhaps the French Resistance didn’t
need
to worry as much as the Belgians. Jacques had obviously done this many times before – he looked very confident.

The trip took a few hours and when we reached Paris, we climbed down onto the platform and I realised we were at Gare du Nord. Well,
that
sent an icy shiver down my spine, I can tell you. I couldn’t help remembering the last time I’d seen it – when you, me, Veronica and Simon were on our way to Geneva with that German officer chasing us – and now the platform was crawling with uniformed Nazis, and probably a whole lot more of them in plain clothes. As we walked through the station, there was a sudden commotion to one side and I saw a Nazi soldier with a baton beating up a little Frenchman. Everyone else was stepping round them, as if it were a routine occurrence. It probably
was
. I was certain that at any second, it would all be up for us, but no, we walked straight out into the street and kept going. That seemed odd to me too, because I was used to having a new guide for each stage of our journey. But Jacques whispered, ‘Follow me and keep close, but don’t worry, everything is all right. We are going to the safe house.’

We walked and walked until we came to a residential area, with narrow streets and rows of apartment buildings. We were in a loose line, spread out so as not to look too suspicious, and I was at the end. Then I saw Jacques stop outside a building and light a cigarette, and one by one, the others drifted through the front door. I was just about to follow when I glanced further along the street and saw a car parked around the corner, a big black Mercedes. I could only see the front of it, but the man in the passenger seat was tall and blond, sitting up all stiff and straight.

And then I heard a voice say, very distinctly,
Gebhardt
.

Well. I still don’t know if it was
real
, whether someone in the car spoke out loud, or . . . Or maybe I was just spooked from seeing Gare du Nord full of Nazis and that’s why I remembered
you
saying that, Sophie, the way you did when you caught sight of him at Calais all those years ago. I don’t even know if it
was
him. I barely got a glimpse of him that time in Calais. But the men in the car were Nazi officers, obviously – who else would be driving a fancy car in Paris? The question was: had they just happened to park near this safe house, or were they waiting for us? Jacques was giving me impatient looks by then, so I stepped into the foyer of the building – with him following close behind – but all the hairs on the back of my neck were standing on end. It simply didn’t feel right. He was
too
confident. I tried to catch the eye of one of the other airmen, but they were already filing into the elevator after Jacques. So I edged backwards till they started to pull the gate across, then dashed off down the corridor, looking for the stairs. If I was wrong, no matter – I’d just say I got confused. But as I was closing the stairwell door behind me, I heard new voices in the foyer –
German
voices – and I peeked out and there were three Nazis, led by that tall blond one, walking in through the front door. So I ran down half a flight of stairs and out another door, into a little courtyard hung with damp laundry. I scrambled over the brick wall into the next yard, and then over a gate into a side alley. I was still standing there, pressed against the wall in the shadows, catching my breath, wondering if I’d just made a complete idiot of myself for nothing, when I heard someone shouting in German. And then, at the far end of the alley, I saw two of the airmen being led off in handcuffs down the street.