If I cooperate with the propagandist I can have more time. If I tell the bleak truth – then no. And they’ll probably make the American broadcaster disappear too, and I’ll have that on my conscience.
The aspirin and kerosene are part of Operation Cinderella, a programme designed to transform me from a feverish, nit-infested, mentally unstable prison rat back into a detained Flight Officer of cool nerve and confidence, suitable for presentation to a radio interviewer. To add credibility to our story I have been given a sort of translation job copying Hauptsturmführer von Linden’s own notes from the past year here, with names (when he knows them) and dates and, ugh, some methods used, in addition to information extracted. Oh, mein Hauptsturmführer, you are an evil Jerry bastard. A copy is to be made in German for his C.O. (he has a Commanding Officer!) and another made in French for some other official purpose. I am doing the French one. Fräulein Engel is doing the German (she is back today). We are working together and using up all my ill-gotten recipe cards. We are both cross about that.
The job is both horrific and unbelievably tedious. And so deviously instructional it makes me want to put the man’s eyes out with my pencil. I am made to see into a small methodical corner of von Linden’s mind, not anything personal, but how he works. And also that he is good at it – unless of course it is all fabricated to intimidate me. I don’t actually think he is imaginative enough to do that – at least, not in the way I use my imagination, not to pretend anything, not to concoct a fake collection of half a dozen notebooks bound in calfskin and filled with tragic miniature portraits of a hundred and fifty doomed spies and Resistance fighters.
But he is creative in his own scientific way – a technician, an engineer, an analyst. (I’d love to know what his civilian credentials are.) His persuasive techniques are tailored to the individual as he gains understanding into the character of each. Those three weeks I spent starving in the dark, waiting for something to happen – he must have been watching me like a hawk, tallying my silences, my tantrums, my numerous half-successful attempts to clamber out of the transom window, the heating duct, the air vent, to pick the lock, garrotte and/or emasculate various guards, etc. Observing how I cower and weep and plead whenever the screaming starts in the next room. Observing how I frantically try to put my hair up whenever someone opens the door and sees me (not everyone is questioned in their dreadful undergarments – it is a special torment reserved for the modest and the vain. I am one of the latter).
It is comforting to discover that I am not, after all, the only Judas to have been interned behind these desecrated hôtel walls. I suppose von Linden would be sacked if his success rate were that dismal. And now I suspect, as well, that I am exposed to the stubborn ones on purpose to demoralise me, perhaps with the dual effect of humiliating them at their most vulnerable moments with an embarrassing and appreciative audience.
I am still quite presentable. They have always gone easy on my hands and face, so when I’m fully dressed, you’d never look at me and think I’d recently been skewered and barbecued – they’ve packed their partially dismantled wireless set into a smooth and pleasing case. Perhaps it has been v.L.’s intention all along to use me in his little propaganda exercise. And of course – I am willing to play. How did he know? How did he know from the start, even before I told him? That I am always willing to play, addicted to the Great Game?
Oh, mein Hauptsturmführer, you evil Jerry bastard, I am grateful for the eiderdown they have given me to replace the verminous blanket. Even if it is just part of the temporary scheme to rehabilitate me, it is bliss. Half the stuffing has come out and it smells like a root cellar full of damp, but still, an eiderdown – a silk eiderdown! It is embroidered ‘Cd B’ so it must be spoiling stock from this building’s former life as the Château de Bordeaux. I do sometimes wonder what happened to the hotel’s furnishings. Someone must have gone to a good deal of effort to empty all the guestrooms of their wardrobes and beds and vanity tables and to bolt bars across the window shutters. What did they do with everything – carpets, curtains, lamps, light bulbs? Certainly my little room has no Gallic charm to recommend it apart from its rather pretty parquet floor, which I can’t see most of the time (as with all the prisoners’ rooms my window has been boarded shut), and which is very cold and hard to sleep on.
I had better get to work – though I have bought my extra week, I now have only half as much time each day for writing. And my day is longer too.
I am getting tired.
I know, I know. Special Ops Exec. Write –
Ferry Pilot
Maddie went back to Oakway. There was now an Air Transport Auxiliary ferry pool there, and Oakway had also become the biggest parachute training centre in Britain. As an ATA pilot Maddie was demoted in rank and a civilian again, but she was able to live at home, and she was given a petrol allowance for her bike so she could get to the airfield, and she could trade in a day’s completed ferry chit for a two-ounce bar of Cadbury’s milk chocolate.
Maddie was in her element at last. No matter that the sky had changed – it was an obstacle course of balloon cables and restrictions and military aircraft and, often, dirty weather. Maddie was in her element, and her element was air.
They throw you through some aerobatics that you’ll never use, watch you take off and land something and, hey presto, you’re qualified to fly Class 3 aircraft (light twin engines) and all the Class 2s (heavy single engines) without ever having seen most of them. Maddie said they are supposed to do 30 long-distance training flights up and down the country to imprint it on their brains until they can fly without looking at a map, but she got signed off at 12 because it was taking too long to wait for decent weather and they wanted her working. There is an ATA pilot killed every week. They are not shot down by enemy fire. They fly without radio or navigation aids into weather that the bombers and fighters call ‘unflyable’.
So Maddie, first day on the job, walks into the hut that the Oakway ATA pilots laughingly call their ‘Mess Hall’.
‘There’s a Lysander chalked up here with your name on it,’ says her new Operations officer, pointing to the blackboard with its list of aircraft to be moved.
‘Has it really?’
Everyone laughs at her. But not meanly.
‘Never flown one, have you,’ says the Dutchman, a former KLM pilot who knows the north of England almost as well as Maddie does, having made regular passenger landings at Oakway from the time it opened.
‘Well,’ says Ops, ‘Tom and Dick are taking the Whitleys over to Newcastle. And Harry is taking the Hurricane. That leaves the taxi Anson and the Lysander for the ladies. And Jane’s got the Anson.’
‘Where’s the Lysander going?’
‘Elmtree, for repair. Faulty tailplane handwheel. It’s flyable, but you have to hold the control column right forward.’
‘I’ll do it,’ says Maddie.
Not a Safe Job
They gave her a very thorough navigation briefing beforehand, as the aircraft’s defect meant she couldn’t expect to fly hands-free. She wouldn’t be able to juggle maps en route. She sat studying the pilot’s notes for an hour (the detailed notes they give the operational pilots who’ll only ever fly one type of aircraft), then panicked about losing the weather. Now or never.
The ground crew was aghast at the idea of a girl flying the broken Lysander.
‘She won’t be strong enough. With the tail set for take-off yon slip of a lass won’t be able to hold the stick hard for’ard enough for landing. Don’t know if anyone could.’
‘Someone landed it here,’ Maddie pointed out. She’d already been given the chit for the job and wanted to leave while she could still see the Pennines. ‘Look, I’ll just set it neutral by hand before I get in. Easy peasy –’
– And she gently pushed the tail into place, stood back and dusted her hands on her slacks (navy, with an Air Force blue shirt and navy tunic and cap).
The mechanics were still frowning, but they’d stopped shaki
ng their heads.
‘It’ll be a pig to fly,’ Maddie said. ‘I’ll just keep the climb-out and landing nice and long and shallow. Come in fast, 85 knots, and the automatic flaps’ll stay up. It’s not too windy. Should be fine.’
At last one of the lads gave a slow, reluctant nod.
‘Tha’ll manage, lass,’ he said. ‘I can see tha’ll manage.’
That first ATA flight Maddie made was hard work. Not frightening; just hard work. It was hard, at first, to look past the gun sight sockets and camera fixing plates and rows and rows of bomb selector switches for bombs she wasn’t carrying, a Morsing key for a radio that wasn’t connected, etc.
Fly the plane, Maddie.
The six familiar, friendly faces of the flight instrument panel smiled at her behind the control column. One of the ground crew anxiously made sure she knew where to find the forced-landing flare release.
The weather cooperated for her, but the Lysander fought her for nearly two hours. When she tried to land at Elmtree, she misjudged the amount of runway she was going to need. Hands and wrists aching with the effort of keeping the control column far enough forward to land, Maddie took off again without touching down, and had to come in over the runway twice more before she got it right. But she landed safely at last.
I sound so authoritative! It must be the immediate effect of the aspirin. Imagine if you gave me Benzedrine. (And I still crave coffee.)
Maddie, also craving coffee, went to scrounge a sandwich from the workshop canteen, and found another ferry pilot there ahead of her – tall, square-faced, with dark brown hair shorter than Maddie’s, in uniform navy slacks and tunic with the double gold shoulder stripes of a First Officer. For a moment Maddie was confused, thinking that, like Queenie, she was seeing ghosts.
‘Lyons!’ Maddie exclaimed.
The pilot looked up, frowned and answered tentatively, ‘Brodatt?’
Then Maddie saw it wasn’t the vicar’s son who used to fly at Maidsend before being shot down and incinerated in flaming petrol over the South Downs last September, but someone who clearly must be his twin sister. Or an ordinary sister anyway. They stared at each other in bewilderment for a moment. They had never met.
The other girl beat her to the question. ‘But how do you know my name?’
‘You look exactly like your brother! I was a WAAF at Maidsend with him. We used to talk about maps – he wouldn’t ever dance!’
‘That was Kim,’ said the girl, smiling.
‘I liked him. I’m sorry.’
‘My name’s Theo.’ She offered Maddie her hand. ‘I’m in the women’s ferry pool at Stratfield.’
‘How do you know my name?’ Maddie asked.
‘It’s chalked up on the assignment board in the radio room,’ First Officer Lyons said. ‘We’re the only ATA pilots here today. They usually send girls in the Lysanders – the lads all want something faster. Have a sandwich. You look like you could use one.’
‘I’ve never flown a Lysander before,’ said Maddie, ‘and I wish I never would again. This one just about killed me.’
‘Oh, you brought in the faulty tailplane! It’s terribly unfair of them to give you a broken Lizzie on your first go. You must have another go immediately, flying one that works.’
Maddie took the offered half-sandwich – bully beef straight from the tin as usual. ‘Well, I have to, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to take one from here down to its normal base this afternoon. It’s not top priority, but it’s got one of those S chits, secrecy and a report required. It’s my first day on the job too.’
‘You lucky thing, that’s RAF Special Duties!’
‘RAF Special Duties?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. They’re sort of embedded in the normal RAF base that you fly in to, but after you’ve landed there two or three times you start to work it out – a little fleet of Lysanders camouflaged in black and dark green, all equipped with long-range fuel tanks, and the runway laid out with electric lamps. Night landings in short fields –’
She let that hang between them. France, Belgium, Resistance agents, refugees, wireless equipment and explosives smuggled into Nazi-occupied Europe – you didn’t dare talk about it. You just didn’t.
‘It’s brilliant fun landing a Lizzie in their training field. They have a mock flare path laid out, little yellow flags; you can play you’re a Special Duties pilot. Lysanders are wizard at short landings. You could land one in your granny’s garden.’
Maddie could scarcely believe that, having just managed to get her first Lizzie down only by using every available inch of runway.
Theo pulled her crust to pieces and arranged three crumbs in an inverted L-shape to imitate torches blazing in a dark French meadow. ‘Here’s what you do –’ She glanced quickly over each shoulder to make sure she wasn’t overheard. ‘They’re always a bit boggled when a girl leaps out of the cockpit afterwards.’
‘They were a bit boggled when I got in this morning!’
‘How’s your navigation? You’re not allowed to mark this airfield on your map. Takes a bit of studying before you leave, so you can find it yourself.’
‘I can manage that,’ Maddie said confidently, and truthfully, having earlier that day done almost exactly the same thing.
‘It’ll be fun,’ Theo repeated enthusiastically, encouraging her. ‘You couldn’t get better training if they gave you a course! Flying a broken plane for two hours then landing a fixed one in twenty yards in the same day – we might as well be operational.’
All right, this airfield, the Special Duties airfield. It is the same one Maddie and I took off from six weeks ago. The pilots who use it are called the Moon Squadron – they fly by moonlight and only by moonlight. The location of their airfield is one of our most closely guarded secrets and I thank God I don’t know its name or have any clue where it is. I really don’t – though I have been there at least five times I was always flown there from my own base outside Oxford, in the dark, sometimes via another aerodrome, and I don’t even know which direction we set off in to get there. They did that on purpose.
Their planes need a lot of maintenance as they tend to go through them quite rapidly, bashing the undercarriages in the dark and getting bits blown off by anti-aircraft guns on their way home. Later Maddie made that run several times ferrying damaged or mended aircraft in and out of the bigger aerodrome that surrounds them and hides them. More recently she served them as a taxi pilot delivering their rather special passengers. The dozen or so quite suicidally deranged pilots who are stationed there grew familiar with Maddie’s increasingly expert dead-stop accurate short-field landings, and by and by they knew when she’d arrived before she got out of the plane.
I am out of time again – hell. I was enjoying myself
Ormaie 18.XI.43 JB-S
Engel thinks I am translating von Linden’s horrid notes, but I am sneaking in a few recipe cards of my own because I have got ahead of her.
She can be a perfect fount of information when she’s in the mood. It is because of her nattering on at me while I was hard at work that she has fallen behind. She tells me that if I am lucky I will be sent to a place called Ravensbrück when they have finished with me here. It is a concentration camp solely for women, a labour camp and prison. Perhaps it is where the charwoman who stole the cabbages was sent. Basically it is a death sentence – they more or less starve you until you can’t work and then when you become too weak to shift any more rubble for replacing the roads blown up by our Allied bombers, they hang you. (I am ideally suited to shifting rubble, having previous experience on the runway at Maidsend.) If you are not put to work breaking rocks you get to incinerate the bodies of your companions after they have been hanged.
If I am not lucky, in other words if I do not produce a satisfactory report in the time allotted, I will be sent to a place called Natzweiler-Struthof. This is a smaller and more specialised concentration camp, the vanishing point for Nacht und Nebel prisoners, who are mostly men. Occas
ionally women are sent there as live specimens for medical experiments. I am not a man, but I am designated Nacht und Nebel.
God.
If I am very lucky – I mean if I am clever about it – I will get myself shot. Here, soon. Engel didn’t tell me this; I thought it out myself. I have given up hoping the RAF will blow this place to smithereens.
I want to update my list of ‘10 Things I Am Afraid Of.’
1) Cold. (I’ve replaced my fear of the dark with Maddie’s fear of being cold. I don’t mind dark now, especially if it’s quiet. Gets boring sometimes.)
2) Falling asleep while I’m working.
3) Bombs dropping on my favourite brother.
4) Kerosene. Just the word on its own is enough to reduce me to jelly, which everybody knows and makes use of to great effect.
5) SS-Hauptsturmführer Amadeus von Linden. Actually he should be at the top of this list, the man blinds me with fear, but I was taking the list in its original order and he has replaced the college porter.
6) Losing my pullover. I suppose that counts under cold. But it is something I worry about separately.
7) Being sent to Natzweiler-Struthof.
8) Being sent back to England and having to file a report on What I Did In France.
9) Not being able to finish my story.
10) Also of finishing it.
I am no longer afraid of getting old. Indeed I can’t believe I ever said anything so stupid. So childish. So offensive and arrogant.