part0004

This had been a comparatively simple departure for Barbara Bertram. Only one man to see off from the starkly moonlit driveway, one more with whom the words ‘au revoir ’ carried far more hope than certainty. She knew him only as Rémy and had no idea what kind of existence awaited him in France. She guessed he must be of particular value to ‘The Office’ as his escort from London had included another somewhat po-faced intelligence officer in addition to her husband Tony. But he was gallant too, for, despite the intense apprehension he would have been feeling for the journey ahead of him, he had still been able to express a charmingly Gallic appreciation of her efforts. Then, as he had walked towards the car, laden with belongings, he had turned back towards her and, with a smile, had lifted a hefty, rounded package by its string to shoulder height and bowed his head in apparent reverence. They had both laughed.

She imagined there would be little conversation during the short drive to the aerodrome at Tangmere. Rémy had taken the front seat of the black Chrysler, probably to savour the last few moments of proximity to the fragrant Jean, one of the indefatigably amiable FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) drivers who had brought the three men down from London. Before supper, she and Barbara had carried out the customary procedure of unpacking the Frenchman’s suitcase and checking every item for makers’ names or other signs of British origin. They had mirthfully admired some very fine pink silk pyjamas but, before Barbara could begin to rub away at the label with Milton fluid, Rémy had snatched them away, protesting that he had bought them in Paris before the occupation and he would not have them defaced in any way.

Now it was time to prepare for the return passengers. She expected them in about seven hours, which would be about four o’clock the next morning. She knew that with only one person flying out that night, it would be a single Lysander operation with no more than two French to feed and provide a bed for — that was if the whole operation hadn’t been cancelled and the same quartet returned. She would get the ‘reception pie’ prepared but saw no point in changing the sheets until the 3 a.m. call came about how many to expect.

‘Duff?’ she called. No dog came padding through to the hallway so she put her head round the door. A boy in pyjamas stood on a chair, his upper half hidden by a wide piece of plywood with a dartboard mounted at its centre, which was swung open on its hinges above a stove. As he looked round guiltily at his fast approaching mother, he clasped to his chest an assortment of articles including a toothbrush, soap, matches, Gauloises cigarettes, a penknife and a pair of compasses.

Having re-installed her six-year-old in bed alongside his now wakeful and inquisitive older brother, Barbara returned to the kitchen in a daze of bewildered self-chastisement. By an inexcusable lapse in her normally fastidious routine, she had failed to close up the secret store of specialist supplies which, apart from everyday utensils of apparently French origin, also contained maps of France printed on fine silk, fountain pens which released tear gas and cyanide tablets which, if they asked for them, she would sew into the cuffs of departing agents.

Flying Officer Guy Lockhart was bent over a green and mauve chart, oblivious to his neighbours’ conversation or anyone entering or leaving the room when Gilbert Renault, codename Rémy, was escorted into the dining quarters in ‘The Cottage’ outside the main gates of Tangmere RAF station. The serious and somewhat sad expression on the face of this slim, striking-featured pilot masked an impish, risk-taking streak which made him a very enthusiastic and successful poker player but which had also played havoc with his flying career. His brief peacetime commission with the RAF had ended in a court-martial after he had performed an over-exuberant low pass over the airfield, forcing the Air Officer Commanding to fall flat on his face.

The declaration of war had given Lockhart a second chance. The RAF needed all the skilful pilots it could muster and he was readmitted, first as a Flight Sergeant, but soon once again with a commission and an invitation to perform the very special duties demanded of 161 Squadron.

In a few moments, he would be embarking on only his second operation with the squadron and, as with many natural risk takers, he was putting in the work necessary to ensure that the odds did not get the better of him. The mission would take him into occupied France and involve a 400-mile round trip, during which he would have to find his own way in moonlight to a small patch of pasture a few miles south of the Loire, near Saumur. One ‘Joe’ was to be delivered, two to be brought back. He wanted to memorize as much of his route as possible. The weather was clear and unlikely to be a problem but his path was further to the west than that of his first mission when he had successfully collected two agents sixty miles south of Orléans. Tonight, he was going to have to pick his way past different flak defences and enemy aerodromes.

When one of his fellow officers tapped him on the shoulder to present Renault, Lockhart stood up, smiled, shook hands, introduced himself and then sat down again to finish his chart work, leaving his passenger to be entertained by the others around him. Then, indicating finally that he was ready, he folded up the chart and stood up to go. In his right hand, he clutched the laces of a tiny pair of child’s white suede shoes.

‘Hey, Guy, are you sure those are big enough for you?’ joked one of the officers who was nearby. Showing no reaction whatsoever, Lockhart walked out of the room and shut the door behind him. He did not hear the sharp rebuke aimed by another at the man who had just spoken, informing him that he had just lost his son and that he carried the shoes as a mascot.

With the single propeller a roaring transparent disc a few feet in front of him, Lockhart went through his pre-flight checks. He had just helped to install the rounded shape of Renault, somewhat comically encumbered by a fur-lined flying suit, a Mae West, a self-inflating rubber dinghy and a parachute, into the rear compartment of the fuselage. Now he was ready to taxi across the moonlit tarmac to the end of the runway. A female voice came over the radio as the Lysander trundled towards her point of departure:

Clearance was given for take-off and, after only a few seconds of full throttle, he levered the plane into the air. As they crossed the coastline, there was a final message from the homely-sounding Tangmere radio operator:

The plane climbed steadily over the silvery English Channel into the vastness of the night. The moon’s distorted reflection, their only companion, hurried along over the uneven surface of the sea beneath them.

Lockhart suddenly became aware of another voice in his headphones, although it was barely audible. It could only be his passenger who had an intercom link with him. He had been told to keep an eye out for any aircraft. When it became clear that it was just a friendly ‘hello’ from Renault, Lockhart brusquely informed him to make contact only if he saw something.

Visibility was extraordinarily clear as the Lysander plodded on at 3,000 feet over the Normandy countryside. It may have been night but anyone out and about on the ground could easily have picked out her dark silhouette against the paler sky. With no cloud to escape into, the sense of vulnerability was acute for both pilot and passenger.

A series of lights, some red, some green, passed below them. They were the signals of a railway line which Lockhart had been following as it led him conveniently towards his target. Eventually, ahead, a glistening ribbon appeared, snaking extravagantly into the distance both to the east and the west. They had reached the Loire and, even under a blackout, Saumur, with its two bridges and its château, was unmistakeable. Lockhart began his descent.

Then, over to his right, he was alarmed to see what appeared to be a small town lit up with hundreds of electric lights. If he was where he thought he was, there was nothing of that nature marked on his map. In any case, why on earth was it not blacked out? With a sudden crisis of confidence in his own navigation, he turned the aircraft through 180 degrees and retraced his route as far as Saumur. Reassured by the town’s landmarks, he turned again for his target and this time ignored the distracting patch of illumination (which, unbeknown to him, was a large German prison camp for gypsies, its perimeter fence floodlit in case of escape attempts).

Now the aircraft was low, circling a wide tract of farmland, and both pilot and passenger peered down at the ground. Both felt a surge of relief as a light pierced the darkness — two short flashes and a long one — the letter ‘U’, the one they were expecting. Lockhart immediately signalled back ‘S’ and, after a few seconds, three uninterrupted lights appeared marking out an inverted L-shape, denoting their rudimentary landing strip.

Lockhart learned just how rudimentary it was very soon after his plane touched down. At a safe taxiing speed, he turned right along the shorter length of the ‘L’ and then back towards the point where they had landed and where the passenger exchange would take place. The Lysander came suddenly to a jarring halt, throwing him painfully against his harness. He opened the throttle to a full bellow but the plane would not budge. He tried again, this time with a longer blast until the vibrations seemed to threaten the very integrity of the aircraft. Still there was no movement.

Renault took what seemed an age to struggle out of his safety gear and jumped from the plane. Shadowy figures were now running to join him. In a mixture of broken English and French, they shouted to Lockhart that his tail-wheel had disappeared into the mud. All seven men and Renault positioned themselves around the tail-plane and began to haul upwards. With the reluctance of a cork leaving a bottle, the wheel came slowly up out of the mud and the Lysander was able to move forward once more, apparently undamaged. Lockhart knew that these extra minutes on the ground would have added greatly to the risk of the whole mission, not just for him and his returning passengers but for Renault and his reception party who needed to be clear of the landing area as quickly as possible. The sound of the revving of the engine would have travelled miles on such a still night. Sensing the urgency, Christian Pineau, one of the two returning ‘Joes’, clambered aboard as soon as the aircraft had reached the take-off position, back at the top of the ‘L’.

Renault shouted at him to pass him his luggage which was still stashed in the cockpit. Then, as he and others were carrying it away from the plane, he turned and shouted again, realizing that there was still a package of his on board, extremely fragile and wrapped in paper and string.

Then the second man for the journey home ran up to the plane. This was François Faure, alias Paco. He stopped at the figure of Renault and threw his arms around him. They exchanged half a dozen words before he climbed swiftly up the ladder and into his seat beside Pineau.

Christian Pineau had much of the afternoon and the evening to kill in Paris before he was due for his rendezvous at the Gare d’Austerlitz whence he would be taking the night train to Tours. This was the city he had fled only a few weeks earlier, after the Gestapo had called at his apartment, fortunately while he was out. Then, he had managed to get away to Vichy in the free zone and his wife and children had been able to follow him there. Another from his resistance group, his good friend René Parodi, had not been so fortunate. He had been arrested in the same police operation and now he was dead, officially having hanged himself in his cell; in other words, he had died at the hands of his torturers.

Now, unbeknown to his family, Pineau was back among the Nazi uniforms, many of whose off-duty wearers sauntered along the grand boulevards of the capital, taking in the sights with a detached enjoyment no different from any peacetime tourist.

Pineau knew to avoid the Metro stations and cinemas, where random searches were most likely. Instead, he sat on a park bench under the chilly but clear March sky, close to the Eiffel Tower and thumbed a Paris newspaper with an air of some distaste. He wondered how many of his fellow citizens in the Occupied Zone were influenced by such blatant propaganda. Even the Vichy government was criticized for being too reactionary and for its over-tepid relations with the occupiers. It called for a united effort between the occupied and the occupiers to mount a crusade against communism, the only way Europe could be saved from Soviet subversion. There were condemnations of the British on nearly every page.

A couple sat down on the bench next to him; a young French girl and a German NCO. The girl pressed herself against the tall, blond soldier with a genuine look of love in her eyes. She was clearly not a prostitute and Pineau realized that if anyone had talked about treachery to her, she would have looked at them with wide-eyed amazement. To her, the German was simply a man she adored and there was nothing wrong in that. Pineau moved to a bench further away.

When, at last, the time came to go to the station, his meeting with François Faure, alias Paco, Renault’s right-hand man in the Confrérie de Notre Dame network, whom he had only met for the first time that morning in Pierre Brossolette’s bookshop basement, was very brief. One of the two young men accompanying Paco slipped Pineau a train ticket with the words:

Tours was only the first stage of the journey. From there, after spending much of the night in the waiting room, they took another train and, at Loudun, boarded a bus from which they disembarked after about half an hour at a remote crossroads on the road to Montreuil-Bellay. A man, who was a farmer if one were to judge by his clothes, was waiting for them and, after brief introductions, everyone using pseudonyms, he led them off along the road.

They reached his farmhouse after about fifteen minutes and were ushered into the main room with its smoke-blackened beams, where a very young man greeted them warmly. This was Robert Delattre, alias Bob, a radio operator in Faure’s network in charge of the landing operation, who was able to tell them that, as long as the weather held, the pick-up was on for that night, sometime between midnight and one o’clock. The nearest German unit, he assured them, was based at Saumur, about fifteen kilometres away, and they seldom sent patrols along the road past the farmhouse.

In spite of a night entirely without sleep, Pineau and his travelling companions felt far from tired. They were further enlivened by a sumptuous breakfast laid on by their host, Georges Geay, alias René, consisting of potted meats, saucisson, soft white bread and butter and real coffee — a far cry from the Vichy diet of carrots and chickpeas. After the meal, Geay took Pineau and Faure on a tour of his land. Neatly cultivated fields, where green shoots of corn were just beginning to show, stretched into the distance. Lines of denuded vines covered the hills, ready for their annual pruning — Geay’s next job, once he had his visitors safely on their way.

He proudly informed them that his wine came under the Saumur appellation and suggested they went back to the farmhouse to taste some. He did not want them out in the open for too long, in any case, because, although the landscape appeared empty of people, he knew the locals had eyes like hawks and gossip, however innocent, could be lethal.

Geay emerged from his cellar and deposited two bottles on the long oak table. Ignoring his guests’ protests at his generous pouring, he informed them that they were sampling his 1941 wine. Pineau found the new wine fruity, slightly acid and highly drinkable. The second bottle, a 1934, was spicier and mellower and altogether excellent. Geay assured him that there were even better growers in the region and promised the two men a taste of the Brézé and the Coteaux du Layon with their lunch. Relaxing under the early spring sunshine in a wicker armchair in the farm courtyard, Pineau found it difficult to believe that in only a few hours he was somehow to be spirited away from this beautiful but treacherous French countryside and would be feeling, instead, the safe soil of England under his feet.

The only thing to concern Mme Geay as she calmly laid a lavish lunch of fresh chicken and other meats, goats’ cheese and cream with chocolate before Pineau and Faure was how much they were enjoying it. She uttered not a word about why they were there. The promised white wine, followed by some red Champigny ’21, finally took its toll and the two men dropped thankfully into bed for the afternoon.

Geay woke them at 5 p.m. to find them looking somewhat groggy. He assured them that the only cure for white wine was white wine and that they were going to have to taste his 1904. Pineau could not refuse as that was the year he was born. They then found yet another meal set before them, after which it was time to listen to the BBC’s French language broadcast. First, distorted by German jamming but just decipherable, came the news; then came the reading of ‘personal messages’. A succession of random phrases wobbled across the airwaves, none eliciting any reaction from their host. Then, when they thought they had heard them all, came ‘le lion a deux têtes ’. Geay stood up, switched off the radio and, rubbing his hands, smiled at his two guests. It was on for that night.

In the cold, clear night, Pineau and Paco sat under a blanket in the shelter of a small thicket, while Delattre, Geay and their helpers took up their positions on the field, torches at the ready. The cloud that had appeared at sunset had now dissipated and moonlight probed every corner of the darkness. There was utter silence; any approaching plane would be audible miles away. The minutes ticked by. They had been ready at 11 p.m. Now it was midnight.

Suddenly Pineau felt himself being shaken. It was Faure, astonished that he needed to inform his fellow passenger that the plane had landed. The effect of the Geays’ hospitality had allowed Pineau to sleep through the entire episode of the Lysander’s arrival, immobilization and eventual release from the mud.

As Pineau ran up to the plane, Guy Lockhart shouted from the cockpit that he had never heard of someone sleeping through a landing before and urged them to get going. Pineau tried to adopt an air of modesty, hoping that his somnolent behaviour would be taken as a sign of extreme sangfroid rather than excessive consumption of white wine.

There was precious little space in the Lysander’s narrow fuselage for the two men, their belongings and all the packages of courier from their two networks bound for London. As the plane climbed northwards back over the Loire, Pineau found himself listening out for the sound of hostile aircraft, fully realizing that their own engine would drown out any other noise.

His watch told him eventually that nearly two hours had passed and that they must therefore be near the coast. At that moment, what looked like a rocket rose from the ground beneath them, just failing to reach their height. There was a thud, this time clearly discernible above the noise of the engine. Another streak of light shot towards them almost immediately, followed by another thud .

At last, after an apparent eternity, the English coastline came into view. Almost immediately, the engine changed its tune and they began to lose height. In the distance, three runway lights were visible. Within minutes, they were on the ground; not a rough field this time but a proper aerodrome with a long runway, hangars and the silhouette of several other aircraft.

They had no idea where they had landed but it felt extremely reassuring. Willing hands helped them from the plane and took care of their luggage. Moments later, they plunged into the dazzling light of an officers’ mess and were surrounded by friendly young men in blue uniforms, proffering glasses of whisky to celebrate their safe delivery to a free country.

Both men were speechless with joy and fatigue and could scarcely find answers to questions about the strength of the resistance in France and what conditions were like in the country they had come from. They were soon joined by a man in the uniform of an Army lieutenant colonel who introduced himself as the man charged with looking after them. He explained that they would be driving to London later that day but before then he would ensure that they got some sleep.

The atmosphere of welcome in the officers’ mess was so intoxicating to Pineau and Faure that they could not resist one more whisky in spite of their tiredness. Eventually, though, they were on the move again, this time in the back seat of a comfortable car, nosing its way past high hedges along narrow winding lanes and through a rolling landscape.

Moonlight still lit the seventeenth-century fascia of Bignor Manor as the two passengers, enchanted by its rustic beauty, stepped from the Chrysler onto the driveway. A man in civilian clothes was waiting for them on the doorstep and welcomed them in French without a trace of an accent. The Lt Colonel introduced him as Anthony Bertram and explained that he would be putting them up for what was left of the night. Bertram led them indoors, commenting that they must be starving and that there was some supper ready for them before bed.

Barbara Bertram, with some ceremony, placed a steaming casserole in front of the two men. They looked at each other and then back at the generous portions she had doled out to each of them. To her, they were starving French fugitives, deprived of all nutrition by the strictest rationing in a destitute country. She could not possibly have suspected that her largesse would have found such a formidable rival on the other side of the Channel. Pineau and Faure slunk off to bed pleading tiredness and over-excitement as the reason for scarcely touching their reception pie.