Toby and Sergeant MacLeod were sitting in the smaller of the two conference rooms at RAF Harrington. The place was empty apart from Miss Sterling, the secretary, who sat at her desk at the far end of the room. The two men had been chatting about the recent air raids on London by what Germany was calling its ‘secret weapon’ – the V-1 flying bomb.
‘At least only four out of eleven of the damn things hit their targets,’ Toby said, pushing a clean ashtray across the desk.
‘Six dead, though,’ Sergeant MacLeod said gravely, casting a quick look over at Miss Sterling. They had been discussing the ‘doodlebugs’ over drinks last night. They had only just started to court and so were trying to keep their burgeoning romance under wraps for the time being.
‘Revenge for France,’ he added as he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
They were quiet for a moment.
‘What’s the total of SOE casualties so far?’ Toby asked.
‘There’s been at least a hundred and twenty-four either killed, wounded, missing or taken prisoner. At this stage, we’re not sure how many are actually dead and how many have been captured,’ Sergeant MacLeod informed him. He didn’t need to look up the figures; the growing number of those reported or presumed dead was imprinted on his mind.
‘I hope one day the sacrifices these men have made are honoured. They really are our unsung heroes,’ said Toby.
‘I cannae agree more, sir,’ Sergeant MacLeod said, again shooting Miss Sterling a quick look and giving her a sad smile. ‘Let’s hope when all this is over, people realise that sabotage can cripple an army.’
Toby nodded. ‘Albeit at a cost.’
The two men were again quiet for a moment. The stillness was broken only by Miss Sterling gently tapping on her typewriter.
‘Right, back to the job in hand,’ Toby said, getting up and walking over to the large map pasted on the back wall. He tapped his swagger stick on a place near to the French capital. ‘About these drops …’ He rubbed his jaw as he inspected the terrain around the city. The second front was pushing inland. More soldiers and supplies were needed.
Suddenly, the phone rang. It sounded loud due to the acoustics in the near-empty conference room.
‘It’s for you, sir!’ Miss Sterling called out across the half a dozen desks that separated her from the two men.
Toby walked back over to his desk and picked up the receiver. There was a click and the caller was connected.
‘Hello, Lieutenant Mitchell speaking.’ Toby tried to add a modicum of warmth to his tone, but failed. He was weary. This past week the deaths of his men had been weighing heavily on him.
He listened for a moment, stooped over the phone, his hand splayed out on the wooden desk, before suddenly standing up straight.
‘Sorry, old chap, say that again,’ he demanded, pressing the receiver to his ear, as though to make sure he was hearing correctly.
‘Are you sure? Absolutely sure?’ he asked, clenching his free hand. He wanted to punch the air but held back.
‘Well I never,’ he said, a wide smile spreading across his face. ‘Perhaps there is a God after all.’
Sergeant MacLeod and Miss Sterling were watching Toby intently.
‘What’s that?’ Toby asked the voice at the other end of the phone.
‘Yes, of course. His wife will be informed. Immediately.’
Toby listened.
‘King’s Cross Station?’
He grabbed a pen and a piece of paper.
‘When?’
Silence.
‘Tomorrow?’ He scribbled down the information, not that he needed to – every word of this phone call would be imprinted on his mind.
‘Time?’
More scribbling.
‘Yes, I will convey the message personally … Bloody brilliant news!’
Toby didn’t think he had felt this shocked or happy for a long time.
‘Tell him …’ He paused. ‘Tell him he’s a bloody lucky bastard!’
Toby banged the phone down and looked at Sergeant MacLeod, shaking his head in disbelief, an elated look on his face.
‘Well I never!’ he declared. ‘Agent Peter Miller of the Tempest circuit appears to have come back from the dead!’
Sergeant MacLeod looked over to Miss Sterling and cocked his head for her to join them.
‘How’s the lucky bugger managed that?’ Sergeant MacLeod’s smile now matched that of his Lieutenant, as Miss Sterling sat down on the chair next to him.
Toby pulled out the top drawer of his desk and retrieved the half-bottle of Scotch he kept there.
‘God only knows,’ he said, grabbing three mugs from the untouched tea tray perched at the end of his desk. ‘Sounds like he was buried alive. Some young French lad found him – or rather heard him.’ He sloshed a good measure of Scotch into each cup. ‘Stuck in the cellar under a load of rubble.’
‘And he’s all right?’ Miss Sterling asked, incredulously. They had all heard about Peter and the two Resistance fighters. Sergeant MacLeod had told her that it had hit Toby particularly hard.
‘Hardly a scratch on him,’ Toby said, again shaking his head in disbelief.
He handed them each a mug and they clinked porcelain.
‘We’re going to win this bloody war, we are!’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ Sergeant MacLeod said.
‘We bleedin’ well are, ’n all!’ Miss Sterling said, her cockney roots revealing themselves in her excitement. Toby’s mood was contagious.
They downed their drinks in one.
Toby looked at his watch and then back to Miss Sterling.
‘I’ll need a travel warrant drafted for Mrs Rosie Miller, whom I am going to take great pleasure telling is no longer a widow.’ He looked again at his watch. ‘And I need it as soon as possible, please, Miss Sterling.’
It took Toby an hour to pack an overnight bag and make sure that Sergeant MacLeod was briefed to cover for him for the next twenty-four hours. After picking up the travel warrant from his sergeant’s sweetheart, he ran round to the car park, jumped into his Austin 8 and started his journey up north.