The Hornet's Sting (11 page)

A
S SOON AS HE’D AGREED the take-off time with Kjeld, Tommy visited his wife and child, who were now living with Else’s parents in Copenhagen. He knew there was a fair chance that he would never see them again. But he was also aware that if he told Else about his escape plan, she would protest and try to stop him. She would probably also tell her father, who might even alert the authorities. So Tommy concocted a cover story: ‘I’m leaving for Aalborg,’ he announced. ‘I’ve been given work to do at the airfield there.’

‘What kind of work? And when do we join you?’ Else was one of the few people who could tell when Tommy was lying.

‘Maybe not for a while,’ said her husband. ‘Things have to be properly assessed there first, before the precise nature of my work becomes clear.’

‘Well, don’t be too long,’ warned Else, clearly unconvinced. She gave Tommy his baby daughter, and he held her for a while in his arms. Lovely as she was, he knew he wasn’t cut out to watch the war from a cosy domestic setting. All over Europe, he told himself, other husbands were making the same sacrifice for their country by turning their backs on their families. The difference, perhaps, was that he doubted he would ever be able to fulfil the role of doting husband and father. It had all come too soon. The war—along with Mr Jensen—had been responsible for that.

Tommy kissed his wife and baby one last time, and left Else fighting back her tears. Much later, Tommy said: ‘I loved the baby and still had some feelings for Else, but the cause was more important to me at that time than family.’

Focusing on the steps he had to take before returning to his beloved plane, Sneum went to see his old friend Kaj Oxlund in the northern suburb of Soeborg. The happy, carefree days the two men had enjoyed with their girlfriends before the war were now just memories, and Tommy was in serious mood. ‘Don’t ask me anything about the reasons for this,’ he begged. ‘The less you know, the better. But if I’m absent for a while, just continue the good work we started together. And do me one last favor. This is a letter for Else. I want you to see she gets it.’

‘If we hear you’re dead?’ Oxlund was trying to be helpful.

‘On the contrary,’ replied Tommy with a grim smile. ‘Don’t bother giving it to her if you hear I’m dead. She won’t need to read it then. But if you’ve heard nothing in the next two or three weeks, post it to her. Make sure you’re in Denmark when you send it.’

Trying to fathom his friend’s intentions, Oxlund dutifully took the letter and assured Tommy he would comply with the request. They embraced briefly, with Sneum wishing he could say more.

Then it was time to move the precious Leica and Movikon films of the Fanoe radar installation to the hangar in Odense. They just fitted into two suitcases, which would look less suspicious, Tommy decided, if carried by two men. Posing a brothers visiting relatives in the countryside, Tommy and Kjeld set out on this vital journey on the night of Thursday 19 June. They reached the plane without incident. In addition to the films, the cans of petrol were loaded into the back of the cockpit, along with a length of hose, an axe and a broomstick, to which they had attached a huge white towel. Life jackets were tucked away in the hangar for now, and everything was as it should be.

After working all night, Sneum and Pedersen left the barn and, with the sun already quite high, crept up the track that led through Andersen’s fields to the main road. Suddenly, six German officers galloped up on horseback and surrounded them. By now, Tommy was adept at suppressing his fear, but this crisis almost got the better of him: ‘This was one of the few moments I was really scared because the plane was ready in the hangar,’ he revealed later. Just meters away, the Hornet Moth was loaded with secrets which, if discovered, would provide enough evidence to have both men shot.

‘Good morning!’ said Tommy cheerfully, hoping his inner terror wasn’t showing.

‘What are you doing here?’ This German officer in particular didn’t look happy.

‘We’re going home.’

‘Where’s home?’

‘Odense,’ explained Tommy, smiling.

The occupiers only had to demand to see their papers and Tommy and Kjeld would be finished. There was a tense silence as the Germans assessed the pair in front of them. Then, putting their pleasures before their duty, they decided to continue their morning ride. The Danish pilots were left to breathe in the dust kicked up by the horses’ hooves.

‘Keep walking,’ said Sneum. ‘Don’t even look relieved.’

Pedersen was too traumatized even to feel relieved, let alone look it.

After a long daytime sleep at separate hideouts, Tommy and Kjeld met at Valby railway station and returned to the hangar. First they warned Andersen of their intentions, so that the farmer could leave for the evening and make sure he was seen by lots of witnesses far away from his plane. Then they set about cutting a hole in the fuselage near the fuel tank, through which they hoped their hose would be able to fit when it mattered. They imagined this would be a simple process. But after each man had chipped away with a knife for a while Pedersen’s blade broke. Gently cursing his friend, Tommy continued more forcefully—and promptly broke his own knife. Now they had to claw and poke at the hole with their bare fingers. By the time they had created a large enough gap for the hose to pass through, twice the allocated time had elapsed and their hands were red raw.

It was already past midnight, and it might still take another three-quarters of an hour to pull the plane out of the hangar and make it ready for take-off. They wondered whether to continue that night. Once airborne, they would take a further hour and a half to cross Denmark to Jutland’s coast, where the greatest danger would come from German fighter aircraft. By then, the longest day of the summer would already have begun, making them sitting ducks in perfect visibility. Reluctantly, they decided it would be suicidal to go on. The escape attempt was postponed for twenty-four hours.

After their close shave with the occupying forces the previous morning, they decided that it would be wiser to leave the hangar under cover of darkness. As they crossed the fields and headed back towards Odense, however, they passed the drill-ground, where they were astonished to see an entire German company preparing for night exercises. The two Danish pilots crouched down in bushes and tried not to make a sound as the Germans trundled past noisily. With an expert eye, Sneum noticed in the gloom that the artillery men were pulling 37mm and 20mm anti-aircraft guns, either of which could bring down a plane before it reached an altitude of three thousand meters. He glanced at Pedersen and saw the same realization etched on his friend’s face. Had they tried to fly away in the Hornet Moth that night, they would almost certainly have been blasted to pieces. As it was, though, they were still in grave danger. If discovered breaking the curfew, they could expect to be arrested and questioned. So the pair sat motionless until the last of the heavy artillery cannons had rumbled away in the darkness. Once again, it appeared that they had survived a major crisis by the skin of their teeth.

‘We’re still leaving,’ insisted Sneum. ‘Tomorrow night.’

Pedersen wasn’t convinced. ‘What if the Germans are still here?’

‘They were here tonight. They won’t be doing manoeuvres in the same fields tomorrow.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I don’t, for sure,’ said Sneum, fixing his friend with a stare. ‘But I do know we have to get out of here.’

At 2.00 a.m. Sneum and Pedersen disturbed the night porter at the Grand Hotel in Odense. He took one look at their filthy poloneck sweaters and turned his nose up at them. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, not sounding sorry at all. ‘There are no rooms available tonight. We’re completely full.’

‘But I know for a fact there are rooms,’ said Tommy, bluffing.

‘You’ll have to leave,’ the porter said. ‘I’m afraid we can’t take people in your condition.’

‘Very well. I’ll have you out of your job by midday,’ said Sneum with all the authority he could muster.

The porter looked alarmed. ‘No, wait a minute, sir. Perhaps I was hasty. Please accept my apology.’

Sneum suppressed a smile. ‘Very well, since it’s late, let’s have an end to this. We’ll take one room between us to save you any further trouble.’

‘That’ll be forty kroner,’ said the porter.

Pedersen had just enough money to pay for the twin-bedded room, so while German troops launched exercises all around Elseminde, the two Danes took baths and then sank into a deep sleep until late morning.

When they woke, they devoured bacon and eggs in bed. Tommy phoned his brother Harald for a final weather report, which turned out to be favorable. The escape attempt was on for that night.

Sneum and Pedersen left the hotel with enough money to buy a packet of biscuits for the flight, some Tuborg squash, Carlsberg grape tonic, and two tickets for the Odense open-air swimming pool. They spent te afternoon splashing about in the sunshine in an attempt to wash away their fear. Somewhere in the back of their minds, however, they both entertained the thought that these might be the last hours of their short lives. The pilots treated themselves to some good coffee and Danish
wienerbroed
in the poolside cafeteria before heading back to Elseminde with only a five-krone coin left between them. Now they had to succeed: they were too broke to stay in Denmark.

Later that afternoon, having arrived at the farm, Sneum slipped out of the barn to post a message through Poul Andersen’s letterbox. He returned without confirmation that his note had been received. Finally, at 7.00 p.m., the farmer cycled over to the hangar. He greeted Tommy and Kjeld more warmly than before, as though he too suspected that he might be the last person they were ever likely to see. The three men sat outside in the evening sunshine and enjoyed a cigarette together, having safely distanced themselves from all the fuel in the hangar. They were alarmed to notice the large number of people out for a weekend walk in the countryside; but there was nothing they could do to change the longstanding customs of the locals.

As if the cumulative cost was already causing him pain, Andersen explained that he was about to take his entire family to an Odense restaurant called Skoven for the second evening in succession. He would have to come up with another reason for celebration, though he remained confident his alibi would put him beyond suspicion the next time the Germans came calling. Andersen would again ensure that his family were unusually noisy in Skoven to guarantee that their presence registered clearly with the staff. He would also insist that they all stay until very late. They all agreed that a second evening like this would infuriate the waiters enough for them to remember the entire family vividly.

As he shook hands with Tommy and Kjeld, something in Andersen’s eyes seemed to acknowledge the pilots’ bravery. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘It would be such a waste.’

‘I agree,’ said Sneum. ‘But we don’t intend to die.’

‘I’m not talking about you,’ said Andersen with a smile. ‘I’m talking about the plane. I’d quite like to have her back when this is all over.’ With that, the farmer waved one last farewell and cycled away.

Sneum and Pedersen loaded the last of their equipment into the plane and went over everything one last time. For two hours they turned the propeller to make sure no oil had been left in the cylinders. Then they prayed, but also put on their life jackets in case those prayers weren’t answered while they were over the North Sea.

At 11.00 p.m. they opened the hangar doors and pushed the plane to the entrance. But even in their folded position flush with the body of the plane, the wings would not fit through the narrow hangar doors.

Tommy explained later: ‘The barn had originally been adapted to house a German Klemm, Andersen’s first plane, which was even smaller than a Hornet Moth. Andersen had pranged his Klemm and replaced it with the Hornet Moth, which went in dismantled.

He had never mentioned any possible problem with the door: he thought the plane would just go through like the Klemm had. It wouldn’t. We couldn’t get it out. The plane jammed in the doorway.’

It’s easy to imagine the horror the men must have felthe ffter all their hard work, to discover that the plane was trapped inside its makeshift hangar. Tommy and Kjeld couldn’t remove the wings from the fuselage again; there simply wasn’t enough time. A rising sense of panic threatened to overwhelm them. Sneum recalled: