Authors: Paul Dowswell
The shelter lights flickered and they were plunged into darkness. But the lights came back on after a moment, casting their grudging glow over pale, frightened faces. Most of the people in here were women, with a smattering of older men. The rest, the children and the men, must be sheltering at work or in their schools.
Harry was surprised the sirens had gone off so late before the raid began. He’d always told himself they would get plenty of warning down below. But maybe the French weren’t expecting a raid on their city. Maybe they had thought the bomber stream was heading over to one of the industrial cities in northern Italy? Either way, he felt bad his own people were bombing a conquered nation. Then he felt doubly anxious. If anyone discovered they had a real-life American in their midst, they might want to lynch him.
The all-clear sounded soon after that.
‘Follow me,’ whispered Natalie in his ear. ‘Don’t lose me.’
They hurried down the street and it was difficult for Harry to keep her in sight with all the streams of citizens pouring out of shelters. Like everyone around him, Harry felt disoriented. Something utterly unnatural had happened, a catastrophe of biblical proportions. The people on the ground had been visited by a vengeful monster and evidence of its rage was all around. There was an awful smell of black smoke, and drains and gas, accompanied by the sounds of wailing and lamentation. Certainly everyone around him looked terribly anxious. They were probably wondering if they still had homes to go to and if their loved ones, away in school or at the factories or dockyard, were still alive.
Harry could still see Natalie, ahead in the crowd. Every now and then she would stop and tie a shoelace or rummage in her bag. After a while he realised she was doing this whenever she thought he was lagging too far behind. He quickened his pace and wondered what other horrors the day would hold.
They sat together on a bench in a small park on the edge of town to rest. There was no one else in the park and they were free to speak in hushed tones.
‘Why would we bomb Bordeaux?’ he said, as much to himself as to her.
‘Docks, factories … the usual reason you bomb anything.’ She sounded distant, distracted. She didn’t seem angry, just forlorn. Harry could see she was upset.
‘Forgive me, monsieur,’ she said, blinking away a tear from her eye. ‘This morning, it was bad news …’
‘Can you tell me what happened?’
‘Jean-Pierre, he … was my controller. He is the man who came to the apartment in Paris.’
Harry remembered him.
‘They shot him while he was talking to me on the phone this morning.’ She wiped away another tear.
Harry was appalled and did not really know what to say.
‘He had just enough time to tell me their house had been raided. Then they shot him.’
‘Did you think they would be coming for you too? Is that why we had to go immediately?’ asked Harry.
She nodded. ‘They know about that house where Jean-Pierre was,’ she said, ‘so they probably know about the safe house where we were hiding too. Someone betrayed us. And I think I know who it was.’ Then her face hardened. ‘I will kill him.’
Harry didn’t doubt it.
They sat in silence while she composed herself.
‘So won’t they know about the place where we’re going to?’ said Harry.
Natalie shook her head firmly. ‘Trust me. The English have a funny little expression,’ she said. ‘Belt and braces. You understand?’
Harry looked blankly at her.
‘Well, the house we’ve just been in is the belt. Now I will take you to the braces.’
Harry felt utterly puzzled but shrugged and decided to wait and see what would happen next.
They walked on, separate but in sight, stopping only to drink water straight from a fountain. The dust and smoke from the raid still hung in the air and created a terrible thirst.
After another half an hour of trudging around the outer suburbs of Bordeaux, Harry saw Natalie stop at a modern house. She knocked at the door and entered. Harry waited outside, hoping no one would come along and ask him
what he thought he was doing, skulking around the neighbourhood.
Five minutes later she came out, looked around and walked along a narrow path at the side of the house. Harry took that as his cue to follow. She caught his eye and with the smallest gesture beckoned him into the garden.
Here a stout-looking woman in her fifties ushered them both through the garden thick with untended vegetation to where concrete stairs led down to a cellar door.
The room was pitch black but there was shuffling, there was breathing and there was an unmistakable smell of unwashed humans and unwashed clothes. Harry went to light a match and as he struck sparks on the rough striking board an unmistakably English voice said, ‘Careful there. The stink down here is probably inflammable!’ There was a sniggering from somewhere else. As the match head blazed into flame he and Natalie found themselves surrounded by four dishevelled-looking men, all with several days’ growth of beard. They introduced themselves in the time it took for the flame to burn to Harry’s fingers. Two of them were English, two American.
‘This calls for the candle, I think,’ said one of the Englishmen. A small stub was lit and cast a dull glow around the cellar. ‘Can’t have it on for long, not for now anyway – we’re almost running out.’
All of the men looked at Natalie with surprise. ‘Well, bonjour, mademoiselle,’ said the younger Englishman.
The others smiled and nodded. The English airmen introduced themselves as Colin and Geoffrey.
One of the Americans was much older than the rest of them, serious and aloof, and lost no time telling them he was a colonel, and Harry instinctively saluted him.
‘Knock it off,’ he said curtly. ‘We’re done with that for now.’ His demeanour didn’t invite further conversation.
The other American was in his thirties and introduced himself as Walter. He was friendly and told them they’d been cooped up in the cellar for three days, mostly in darkness, since they could only light their candle when they ate. They were all bored to distraction and desperate to move on to a more comfortable hiding place. Anywhere, really, where you could see. Harry sensed that he and Natalie were a welcome distraction.
The Limeys were RAF guys – Lancaster crew – a radio op and bomb aimer from the same ‘kite’, they called it, which had come down close to Amiens, on the way back from Saarbrücken.
‘So are these people who are hiding us OK?’ asked Harry.
‘They keep us cooped up in here,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It’s been three days now, and you can barely see your pot to piss in – beg your pardon, mademoiselle – but the food’s good, first rate.’
‘We came mainly by train,’ said Harry, keen to distract himself. ‘So it’s been fairly rapid progress.’ Natalie kicked him hard.
‘Lucky you,’ said Colin. ‘We’ve been on bicycles for most of our trip. At night too. It’s been a right old pantomime. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve landed arse over tit when the bike hit a pothole.’
The candle flickered in its holder. ‘Better blow that out,’ said Walter. ‘We can talk in the dark.’
But they didn’t talk. Conversation petered out and soon the room was filled with the sound of snoring. There was little else to do but sleep.
Sometime that afternoon there was a noise at the top of the stairs. Harry woke with a start but relaxed when he saw the silhouette of the French woman who had met them in the garden. Natalie went to talk to her, then came down to translate what had been said.
‘The British gentlemen, you will go now with the colonel in a lorry with sheep and fodder for a farm close to the border. If you are lucky, you will be there late this afternoon.’
The British airmen went with heartfelt goodbyes, the colonel with a surly nod.
‘The colonel is in pretty hot water if he makes it back,’ Walter said after he’d gone. ‘He’s a real hero in my eyes. He told us his division commander had refused him permission to fly. Anyone who goes out over Germany with his men when he clearly doesn’t have to is one brave son of a bitch.’
Harry nodded. ‘I liked those British guys,’ he said. ‘They were lively company.’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry to see them go,’ said Walter. ‘You know, both those guys are wounded, but you don’t hear them complaining about it. That takes guts.’
As they sat there in the dark, Harry was consumed with thoughts of his dead friends. His final moments with John Hill ran through his mind, as if on a loop. He felt especially sad that he would never have the chance to meet John and his family back home in New York, and he resolved that he would look his parents up if he managed to get through this. Even when he dozed he would wake with a start, having dreamed he was back aboard his doomed Fortress, hearing machine-gun fire and not being able to see where it came from.
That evening, their host bought them a bean cassoulet and a carafe of red wine. She also announced she had a new candle, but this too needed to be used very carefully.
So they ate and drank by candlelight and then snuffed the flame out.
This time they did talk. Mainly about what they were going to do when they got home, although Natalie said not a word.
Walter said he was longing to see his family in Chicago. He hadn’t been home since February 1942. He had two little daughters he barely knew, the youngest being born just a month before he shipped out. Harry was keen to know what he was doing before he was shot down. ‘We flew Liberators out of Halesworth,’ he said. ‘But hey, I’m with your French girl. Careless talk and all that.’
Harry spent a restless night, tormented by the same dreams that had visited him during the afternoon. In his moments of wakefulness, his thoughts turned to Stearley. He wondered if he was sleeping in a hedgerow somewhere. Without Natalie his chances were almost non-existent, he realised now.
Harry could hear Natalie breathing and knew she was still awake. But he didn’t speak for fear of disturbing Walter. It was awful being cooped up in the dark, but at least he was still free and still alive.
They were roused early by the French couple who were hiding them. The woman talked rapidly to Natalie, and from the look of relief on her face Harry thought there would be good news.
‘Madame says we are going today,’ Natalie told them. ‘Walter, you will come with us. We go on bicycles as soon as it gets dark. Madame says she will bring a good breakfast for us all shortly.’ She said that they should sleep that day as they would be cycling all night. This final leg, Bordeaux to Bayonne, would take three or four days by bicycle, and then they would be on foot. Over the mountains and into Spain.
‘That will be the most difficult part of your journey,’ she said. She gave a brief, encouraging nod. ‘But it is exciting, yes? You are almost there.’
Harry wondered how many times she had accompanied Allied servicemen escaping on this route before. He knew so little about her, but admired her courage and how someone so young could put her life in so much danger for strangers. He dozed on and off throughout the daylight
hours and they were all asleep when their host arrived with fresh clothes and a thick lentil broth. They were directed up the stairs and Harry could see at once it was dark outside.
Before they left, Madame gave Harry a present – a black beret. She talked rapidly to Natalie, who said it was to hide Harry’s dark hair. The dye had worn off now and his own black roots were showing through.
A tall young man with wire glasses, barely more than twenty, was waiting for them outside the house. Harry guessed he was a student. Four bicycles stood against the wall. He spoke to Natalie and she turned to Harry and Walter to explain that he would be accompanying them down to the border and that they should maintain complete silence at all times. He would lead and it was imperative that they all keep up with each other. He would stay far enough ahead of them so if they were stopped it would not be obvious that he was travelling with them. If there was any sign of a patrol or even other passengers on the road, they should stop and hide. There was no curfew in this region of France, but being out at that time would still be regarded with suspicion. He was sure, continued Natalie, that there would be very few people out and about on the roads they would be taking.
The next few days passed in a blur. By night they cycled in almost pitch darkness beneath overcast skies. But a strong tailwind helped them keep a good speed and when they reached each day’s safe house close to dawn they would
collapse in exhaustion and sleep until mid-afternoon. Their guide was so aloof they did not even know his name, and the people who helped shelter them were similarly detached. Natalie said there had been several breaches in security recently and scores of arrests. It was much more difficult to find people willing to help the Resistance now. Harry thought it was no wonder that everywhere they stopped they were treated with suspicion.
But Harry was so exhausted by these night rides that he didn’t care. As long as he had a bed for the night, and something to put in his belly, that was all that mattered.
‘We must be close to the border by now, right?’ Walter asked Natalie on their second night, as they prepared to bed down on bare boards up in a dusty attic. ‘You know what this town is called?’
Natalie didn’t say the name, just that there would be a final stop before they tackled the mountainous border. Harry marvelled at how she maintained her guard, even with them. But he realised she was right not to say anything. He remembered Tilly’s joking complaints about ‘Careless talk costs lives’, but here in occupied France this was a deadly serious business. Harry knew in his heart that if he was captured and tortured as a spy, there was nothing that he wouldn’t confess.
He tried to settle, and fiddled nervously with his dog tags as he waited to fall asleep. He wanted to throw those wretched tin tabs away – they had an ‘H’ for Hebrew stamped on them. So the first thing the Krauts would find
out, when they captured him, was that he was a Jew. But he also remembered the warnings they had been given back in Kirkstead, about airmen without dog tags being shot as spies. On balance he supposed it was better to keep them.