Tom
St Helier, May 1943
The punch came from nowhere and slammed him into the wall of his cell. Without letting up, the burly guard kept bashing him, landing a barrage of blows that smashed into his face and body. With each blow, panting with exertion, the guard screamed, ‘Schweinehund! Just wait! You’ll get what’s coming to you!’
After a final vicious punch, he banged the door shut behind him, and the sound reverberated inside Tom’s head like cymbals clashing. Dizzy and doubled up in pain on the floor of the cell, blood pouring from his nose, he was in despair. Alone for the first time, he went over the horrific events of that night. Poor Frank drowned, all their plans of escape ruined, and he and Harry imprisoned, awaiting their fate.
Of course he had always known that they risked being caught, but now that he was at the mercy of his German captors, he realised that he had been living in a fantasy world where danger was a distant and abstract notion, disconnected from the reality of treacherous tides and vicious guards. The terrible fate of Francois Scornet, blindfolded and shot, now loomed before him. How idyllic his former life looked from the confines of his prison cell and the bleakness of his future. He swallowed hard to stop the tears. He would have given anything to be home again, in the safety of his comfortable bedroom instead of lying in pain in this tiny cold cell, terrified of what lay ahead.
You’ve made your bed, so you have to lie in it, he could hear his mother saying. It was one of her favourite put-downs. But he did not want to think about his mother. Lying there in the dark, his mind wandered back to the moment when the dinghy capsized and Frank fell into the water. None of it seemed real. Frank couldn’t be dead. He could see him now, laughing and joking as they raced down to the Slip, or arguing and pulling his left ear. How could he have drowned? It was hard to grasp that it all happened only a few hours ago. He could still see Frank’s panic-stricken face as his friend clutched him and kept pulling him underwater. He could feel the numbing coldness of the sea as he struggled to keep Frank afloat. But had he tried hard enough?
Now the self-recrimination began again. How could he have suggested taking their life jackets off and then failed to put them back on, when they had brought them in case of this very eventuality, especially as Frank couldn’t swim? His thoughts turned to Frank’s parents, especially his kind mother, and he covered his face with his hands and let out a long groan. They must be distraught. What must they think of him?
Tom tried sitting up and was almost grateful for the physical pain that distracted him from his thoughts. He saw it all now with horrible clarity. The whole disaster, every bit of it, from choosing Green Island, buying the defective boat, bringing the incriminating maps and album, discarding the life jackets, Frank drowning and now their captivity. It was all his fault.
His thoughts turned to Harry, who was locked up in the adjoining cell. He had lied to him by omission. He hadn’t told him how he had obtained the money for the dinghy because he’d known that Harry wouldn’t approve. He’d kept him in the dark about bringing the album with the photographs of the military fortifications as well. Harry, who had such strong principles, had become the victim of his misguided optimism and duplicity. The least he could do was to take responsibility for it all and convince the Krauts that Harry was innocent. Maybe if he could persuade them to release Harry, it would ease his conscience.
Outside his cell, he heard the harsh metallic sound of bolts being pushed back, doors opening and slamming shut, iron buckets clanging, and guttural German voices yelling abuse. Bloody Krauts. They always yelled. Aching all over, he felt as though he’d been run over by a truck. His nose throbbed, and as he tried to stem the flow of blood with his sleeve, it felt strange, and he was sure it was broken. Every movement made him wince and moan. But he hadn’t screamed while the brute was bashing him. At least he hadn’t given the sadist the satisfaction of knowing how much pain he had inflicted.
That made him feel a little less helpless, even a bit more hopeful. Perhaps tomorrow his parents would come to the prison and intercede for him. Maybe if they explained that he and Harry got lost while on a fishing trip, they’d be released.
Then he stopped daydreaming. It was his mother who had betrayed him, and obviously his father hadn’t stopped her.
But it was his father who was the biggest disappointment of his life. The hero he had idolised had feet of clay. So there was no point expecting help from either of them. The bitterness he felt was sharper than physical pain, and greater than the fear of what lay ahead.
It was hurtful, but not surprising, that his mother, whose behaviour was one of the main reasons he had been so desperate to escape, had informed on him to her cronies in the Water Police. She was responsible for his predicament. He clenched his fists.
‘I’ll never forgive her,’ he muttered through swollen lips. ‘Never.’
He must have dropped off to sleep because in his dream a huge wave was about to engulf him. He woke with a start, relieved until he looked up at the barred window and heard hateful German voices. It wasn’t a nightmare; it was grim reality.
A moment later, his door was unlocked, and another guard burst in and ordered him to get up. He staggered to his feet and hobbled along the passageway to the washroom while the guard kept shouting ‘Raus! Schnell!’ When he looked in the small cracked mirror above the metal basin, it took him a few seconds to realise that the image he saw was his own. His bruised and swollen face was covered in dried blood like an amateur boxer beaten to a pulp by a champion.
With his hands shackled behind his back, he was taken downstairs and hustled into a waiting car. As they drove along the streets of St Helier, dawn was breaking and the sky was the colour of fairy floss. He stared straight ahead, relieved that it was too early for anyone he knew to see him bloodied and handcuffed inside a police car.
The car stopped at Victoria College, which was the headquarters of the Feldkommandantur and the Gestapo. Tom took a deep breath to try and steady his nerves. His handcuffs were removed, and he was pushed into an interrogation room where two officers in plain clothes sat behind a large oak table smoking French cigarettes. Gestapo, probably. He swallowed hard and hoped they couldn’t tell how frightened he was.
The older of the two, a thin man with hollow cheeks, close-cropped iron grey hair and rimless spectacles, tamped out his cigarette in the metal ashtray, took off his glasses, and leaned forward. Without any preamble, he asked in English, ‘Tell me who was behind your escape.’
Tom shook his head. ‘But we weren’t trying to escape,’ he said, trying to look innocent. ‘We were on a fishing trip.’
At this, the plump face of the younger officer distorted with fury. Pushing his chair back so fast that it fell onto the cement floor, he loomed over Tom with a menacing expression. ‘Don’t talk nonsense. If you lie to us, it will be worse for you. Tell us at once who planned this escape and who told you to take those photographs for the English.’
Tom’s heart sank. So they had found the album. He had hoped it had been washed far away when the boat tipped over.
For several hours, they continued interrogating him, asking the same questions over and over. It was obvious that they didn’t believe that three teenage boys could have concocted and carried out this plan without any help from adults, and that gave Tom a feeling of perverse pride. He had achieved something beyond their vision of what British boys could do.
But as the questioning continued, their tone became more threatening, and his bravado abandoned him.
‘Stop wasting our time and admit that you were going to hand those photographs of German military fortifications and aeroplanes to the British. Tell us about the British army officers and spies who planned your escape,’ the younger officer shouted.
By now the ashtray was overflowing with cigarette butts, and the overpowering smell of nicotine made Tom feel sick, but the scenario that the police agent had described reminded him of the adventure stories he used to read. In those stories the brave British hero always triumphed over the evil enemy, but confronted by these Gestapo agents, Tom wondered if his courage would last. The notion that he was in league with British military spies was so far-fetched that in spite of the danger he was in, he gave an involuntary laugh.
Once again the younger interrogator sprang from his chair. He grabbed Tom’s collar so tightly that he almost lifted him from his seat, choking him.
‘You’ll be laughing on the other side of your face before long, because you’re in big trouble,’ he shouted. ‘You’ve committed treason, and that’s punishable by death. We have enough evidence to have you shot.’
Tom clenched his fists to conceal the trembling in his hands. Surely they wouldn’t shoot him? But maybe they would. He had to get out of this situation, but how? While these thoughts were spinning in his head, his interrogators switched to German. They assumed he couldn’t understand, but thanks to his mother’s insistence on German lessons, Tom could follow their conversation. However, it struck him that it might be smarter to pretend he couldn’t understand them.
It sounded as though the senior agent was inclined to believe his story but the younger one was convinced he was lying.
As soon as they turned their attention back to him, Tom said in a polite tone, ‘I swear to you no-one else was involved. It was just the three of us going out fishing. And we never met any English spies.’
‘You are still at school, so how come you had enough money to buy a boat?’ the older man asked. ‘Someone must have given you the money.’
‘No-one did, I swear,’ Tom replied. ‘I love fishing, so I was saving my pocket money, and I earned the rest running errands for my mother.’
He was on the point of mentioning that his mother was a good friend of the chief Water Police officer, but at the last moment he refrained. They probably knew that already, and he felt it would be demeaning to use her shameful behaviour in his defence.
Although he kept insisting that it was a fishing trip, the interrogation went on relentlessly. They kept repeating the same questions to trip him up but he stuck to his guns, hoping that they would give up and release him.
At the end of that long day he was driven back to the prison. The next morning, and the one after that, he was driven back to the Feldkommandantur for further questioning. At the end of the third day, the senior detective took off his glasses, held them up to the light, wiped them with a spotless white handkerchief and put them back on.
Sitting back in his chair, he said, ‘You don’t seem to realise that you are in big trouble and all these lies are making things worse for you. We know all about the map you marked with our military installations, and the photographs you took of the fortresses and bunkers and emplacements. There could only be one reason for bringing those things with you on the boat, and it wasn’t to help you catch fish.
‘You’re lucky that we are civilised people and don’t shoot schoolboys, because what you did would warrant putting you in front of the firing squad. Did you stop to think about the worry you’ve caused your poor mother? I feel sorry for her, having an irresponsible son like you.’
Tom could see that there was no point insisting on the fishing trip any longer, and he was wondering how to answer their questions when the interrogation ended as abruptly as it had begun. Without another word, the agents stood up, grabbed his arms, and pushed him towards the door. As they headed outside, towards the waiting car, the older one said in a menacing tone, ‘We’ll get the truth out of you before long.’
While a guard handcuffed him and bundled him into the police car, the younger agent sneered, ‘Pity you didn’t wait a few weeks, because soon you’ll be able to sail to England legally. In a matter of weeks, it will be part of the Reich!’
He could still hear them laughing as the car pulled away.
Back in his cell, Tom vacillated between hope and despair. He kept going over their questions, his answers, and their comments. They had said We don’t shoot schoolboys. Perhaps that meant they would dismiss the whole escapade as a schoolboy prank and send him and Harry home. If only he hadn’t brought that album. But he couldn’t get the agent’s threatening comment out of his mind.
He spent the next few days glued to the window that looked out onto a small yard where female prisoners exercised. He wondered whether Milly knew about his predicament, and whether she would come and visit him. But then he remembered her Kraut boyfriend. Even if she knew, she probably wouldn’t care.
Some nights he managed to communicate in whispers with Harry in the adjoining cell.
‘I don’t understand why my parents haven’t come to see me,’ Harry whispered back. ‘Maybe they’ve washed their hands of me.’
Knowing Harry’s parents, Tom didn’t believe that, but when he asked a guard why they hadn’t had any family visits, he was punched in the stomach and told to shut up because he had no right to see anyone. He knew that even convicted prisoners were entitled to family visits once a week. There had to be some reason why he and Harry were being isolated, but no-one would tell them why.
‘Listen,’ Tom whispered, ‘when they question you, just tell them you didn’t know anything about the escape, that it was all my idea.’
Harry’s reply was predictable. ‘I’m not going to lie,’ he said.
Several days later, they were both handcuffed and escorted from the prison by two Feldgendarms in metal breastplates with pistols in their holsters.
They were pushed into a black car that drove along Gloucester Street, and then turned into the Esplanade. At the sight of the Esplanade, Tom’s heart ached with memories of cycling, ice creams and Milly. For one crazy moment he thought perhaps they were going to be taken home. But at the weighbridge the car turned towards the dock where a cargo ship was berthed. They were ordered to climb down into the hold.
After an hour, the ship shuddered and the engines came to life. They were uncuffed and allowed to go up on deck but warned if they tried anything they’d be shot. They climbed up the iron ladder in time to see that they were rounding White Rock. Behind them, the spires and church towers of St Helier were becoming smaller, and their town was receding in the distance.
Tom turned to Harry, and his face was white. ‘We must be on our way to France,’ he said. He turned away so Harry couldn’t see the fear in his eyes. When would he see his island again?
They disembarked at Granville in Normandy and, escorted by the two Feldgendarms, they boarded a train for Paris. At the Gare Montparnasse, their escorts told them they had an urgent errand, but Tom knew from their conversation that they were going to a brothel. He and Harry were unshackled, given a bowl of tasteless soup, and left in the care of an armed German sailor.
When Tom told their guard that he needed to go to the toilet, the sailor pointed to a staircase at the far end of the platform, but to Tom’s surprise, he made no move to accompany him.
Running down the stairs to the platform below, Tom found himself in the midst of a crowd rushing to and from the trains. The station was full of French civilians and German soldiers, but no-one gave him a second glance. Ahead of him was an exit sign and a large iron gate that led to Boulevard Montparnasse. He stopped. He could just go through that large iron gate and keep running. By the time the sailor realised he hadn’t come back, he’d be far away. Free. He could speak French. Perhaps some kind person would help him? Somehow he’d survive till the war was over.
Then the fantasy vanished. With a sigh he turned on his heel and went back upstairs. He couldn’t abandon Harry.
The two Feldgendarms returned looking pleased with themselves. They handcuffed them again and dragged them down the stairs to a cobbled lane where a black Citroën was waiting.
The car sped through the outskirts of Paris and followed a sign to Domaine de Fresnes along an avenue lined with tall poplars. They drove through a massive gate and were handed over to a German army sergeant. Tom looked around. All he could see were barracks surrounding a massive central courtyard. They were in the huge military prison of Fresnes.
Harry saw Tom’s expression. ‘Buck up,’ he said. ‘Don’t let them get you down. We’ll get through this. Remember we’re British!’
Tom managed a smile. If Harry could put on a brave face, he could too.
But later, inside a cell that was no bigger than a broom cupboard, without either toilet or window, fear overwhelmed him. Throughout the night he heard screams, the sound of blows, and guttural German curses. He knew that they had left their familiar life far behind and entered one of the circles of hell.