Chapter 22 #2
Ronnie instinctively raised his arms in the air in a calming gesture.
‘Ami,’ he said. One of the very few French words he knew.
Thank God Tilly had shown off about how many French words she knew.
Sometimes her competitiveness came in useful.
Ronnie smiled in the hope that this international form of language spoke to the boy.
He started to rise and the boy immediately took flight, shouting as he went.
Now he had raised the alarm, there was no point in Ronnie trying to hide.
They would either accept and help him, or drive him away. Ronnie’s fate was in their hands.
It was only a matter of minutes before two adults and a young teenage girl ran to the boy’s aid and the family all entered the barn together.
The man had a shotgun pointed in Ronnie’s direction.
For several minutes they all looked at each other.
The man passed the shotgun to his wife and indicated she should point it at Ronnie.
Then he came slowly forwards and demonstrated that Ronnie should hold his hands in the air.
He checked all over Ronnie’s body to see if he had any weapons secreted on him.
When he was satisfied, he poked Ronnie in the back and pushed him towards the door of the barn.
He took back the shotgun and marched Ronnie before them into the farm kitchen.
He indicated that he should sit in a wooden chair at the table.
They spoke to each other and sent the children to fetch some rope which they then used to tie Ronnie to the chair, but they let him keep his hands free.
Ronnie looked around the kitchen. It was not unlike the kitchen in Micklewell with a range and a dresser for holding crockery.
There was a deep butler sink and above his head, a rack laden with drying herbs.
The strong smell in the air Ronnie identified as garlic and, through an open pantry door, he could see rows of jars and preserves.
The woman and the girl moved around the kitchen and brought him some water.
The boy sat close to his father and just stared at him.
Ronnie thought him to be not much older than Anthony.
He had been clearly shaken by his encounter with a stranger.
The mother and daughter placed a plate of bread and a chunk of strange-smelling cheese in front of him.
They then produced a slice of boiled ham and some cold, cooked potatoes.
The food had been cut up into manageable pieces so that he could eat it with his fingers.
He wolfed the food down, all the time nodding and smiling at them and saying thank you.
The woman brewed some coffee and, when he’d finished eating, placed it on the table.
He lifted the cup. The coffee was black and bitter-tasting, but Ronnie did not want to seem ungrateful and drank it down.
He wondered what they were going to do with him.
The farmer tied Ronnie’s hands up and the family sat down and stared at him.
After a while, the farmer gave the shotgun back to his wife and spoke to the children.
He left the room and Ronnie heard an engine start up.
It seemed like an age that he was away. Ronnie’s bindings around his wrists were tight and his feet were beginning to get pins and needles.
He shifted a little in his chair and the woman immediately gripped the gun tighter.
Ronnie wasn’t sure if she knew how to use it properly and he didn’t want to scare her into firing it inadvertently.
He was getting desperate to urinate and hoped the farmer would get back soon from wherever he’d gone.
When the kitchen door finally opened, the farmer appeared with another man. The two men conversed and then the visitor walked towards Ronnie. He spoke to Ronnie in impressive English.
‘You are a pilot?’ the man asked, his moustache moving fluidly around his upper lip as he spoke.
‘Yes,’ Ronnie replied. ‘Spitfire pilot. Shot down . . . in the woods . . . not far from here. Please, thank the family for the food. Can you help me?’
The man looked at him sympathetically and Ronnie hoped the answer would be yes.
‘I was over Dunkirk, for the evacuation. You know? Dunkirk.’
‘We know,’ the man replied. ‘You English are leaving us.’
Ronnie sensed that the English were not going to be popular by abandoning them. Why should they help him when the English were running away?
‘Could I use the toilet?’ Ronnie said while he was waiting for a reply.
The visitor turned and said to the farmer, ‘Il a besion les toilettes.’
His bindings were untied and the farmer accompanied him outside to a wooden shed with a wide wooden toilet seat.
He closed the door and Ronnie felt a sense of relief as he urinated.
They returned to the kitchen, where he washed his hands and found the children preparing for bed.
The husband and wife talked with the visitor, and Ronnie tried to detect on their faces whether they were going to let him stay and help him or cast him out to fend for himself.
‘You can be here for one night, then you must go,’ the visitor said. ‘I can help. I’m with the Resistance. Tomorrow morning . . . at dawn.’ The visitor shook Ronnie’s hand and said, ‘Jean.’
‘Thank you, Jean. I am Ronnie. You are my guardian angel,’ Ronnie said, smiling.
Jean looked puzzled at this reply. ‘It means, I owe you my life,’ Ronnie added.
‘Not home safe, yet,’ Jean replied. ‘The journey back is hard.’
* * *
Just before dawn, they set out for the coast. They hadn’t gone very far when they could see a checkpoint in the distance. There was a well-armed German patrol checking the papers of those wishing to travel onwards.
‘This is as far as we go on the road. Simon will take the car back. We must go on foot. Here, take this pack, it holds food and water and you’ll need this,’ Jean said, passing Ronnie a revolver. ‘You know how to use one of these, don’t you?’ he asked.
‘I’ve fired one, if that’s what you mean but I’ve never had to use one on another human being,’ Ronnie replied.
‘There’s a first time for everything,’ Jean said.
They shouldered their rucksacks and moved into the woods out of sight. Luckily for them, the checkpoint guards were so busy brutally searching and assaulting the French travellers that they were not focused on what was happening behind them.
The path through the woods was not clear and there were times when they had to battle the brambles and dense undergrowth. Periodically they stopped and consulted their compass to ensure they were travelling in the right direction.
‘This is going to take longer than I thought,’ Jean said. ‘We have to avoid Ypres — too many patrols.’
The ground beneath their feet undulated. There were troughs and heaps of earth as if the ground had been disturbed long ago and never completely recovered. When they crossed fields where a crop was growing, Jean urged Ronnie to walk in the plough lines.
‘There are still unexploded mines here left from the first war,’ Jean said. ‘Farmers are still digging up shells too and . . . what’s left of bodies.’
Ronnie shuddered. They navigated open areas as quickly as they could and when they reached the next area of woodland, they stopped to rest.
‘What you said, about bodies,’ Ronnie said. ‘Imagine what it must be like for those families back at home. Somewhere under our feet, someone’s brother, son, father or husband lies, never to return home.’
Tears welled in Ronnie’s eyes as he imagined his mother watching the postman arrive on his bike.
All women dreaded the post and were relieved when it wasn’t the telegram that no one wanted to receive.
Suddenly and inexplicably, the tears started running down Ronnie’s face.
Why was he so moved by being in this place?
Jean looked at him. ‘Did your family lose someone in the first war?’ he asked. ‘This was a terrible battleground. The Battle of the Somme, Passchendaele. So many men slaughtered like cattle.’
Ronnie nodded. ‘I didn’t know him, though. I was born after he was killed in the Battle of the Somme. This is where he would have died. Perhaps on this very spot.’
Ronnie couldn’t explain why he was so upset.
Perhaps this was it. He was feeling the past. It was as if Fred was here beside him, helping him on his way.
Perhaps he had more than one guardian angel?
He felt some deep connection to the earth, to the French soil that he was walking on now.
It was if his blood was seeping down into it and joining with the blood spilled by so many young men.
He knew very little about the first war.
His father hadn’t talked about it. He had come home.
One of the few that had. Ronnie sat on a bank and moved his fingers through the damp grass.
If a shell was to land on them now, who would know?
His body would join all the unnamed others.
‘This is Ypres, you say?’ Ronnie asked.
‘Yes,’ Jean replied. ‘As I said, the Battle of the Somme was fought here. You would think that we would learn from the huge number of men who lost their lives fighting over this patch of land, but here we are again.
‘There is a female poet,’ he continued, ‘who explains the madness of war very well. Whenever I need reassuring that I am not the only one who has lost my sense of reason, I read her poetry. It has the power to lift my spirits and speaks from the heart. She is someone who is capable of seeing the reality of war and expresses it so wonderfully in words. Her name is Adrienne Blanc-Péridier. There is one poem of hers in particular that evokes the true power of war. I can’t remember it word for word, but she likens war to a seductress, tempting young men to follow her and go to their deaths.
They touch her toxic lips and abandon their girlfriends, to surrender to her fatal powers. ’
‘That certainly is brilliant writing, Jean. I can see why you admire her. She puts her finger right on the pulse of the intoxication young men feel before they sign up. I like to think that I remained level-headed. That I was clear about why I was joining, but now I see this war for the blood bath it is. The huge loss of life. The death of civilians and innocent children. I have become part of the slaughter. We all have.’
‘But what else could we have done?’ Jean asked. ‘Would you rather we stood by and watched while the Germans took over our sovereign nations? Could you, in all conscience, have refused to fight? I know I couldn’t.’
Ronnie was about to agree, when the air was full of the sound of guns.
The familiar ‘ack, ack, ack’ of machine guns stopped them both dead in their tracks.
Their bodies took over as if something immediately switched in their brains.
They shouldered their packs and without any particular plan, just clambered to their feet.
‘Follow me,’ Jean yelled.
Ronnie hardly had time to get going before a shell landed too close for comfort, leaving a ringing sound in his ears.
He looked to Jean for some guidance but Jean was swinging wildly, first in one direction and then another.
Each way they turned, they were met by another barrage.
Where could they hide? They seemed to be surrounded.
Jean was saying something, but Ronnie couldn’t make it out.
He just stumbled on blindly, pushing his way through the undergrowth, brambles whipping his face, mud dragging him down.
His only thought was to run and keep running until they could find some place to give them greater protection.
Jean was a faster runner and Ronnie had a sudden sick feeling in his stomach that he might end up abandoned here, alone, with no way home.
God save him from being taken as a prisoner of war.
In his panic he lost sight of Jean and stopped dead in his tracks. Then he noticed what looked like a woodman’s hut among the trees. Jean must have headed for that. It looked a bit broken-down but it was better than being in the open. He yanked open the door and threw himself over the threshold.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he shouted, when he saw Jean slumped in a corner.
‘Glad you made it. It’s every man for himself under fire. We’ll hole up here for a while. God knows who they’re really aiming at, but it means there must be a unit nearby. We’re on the right track,’ he said, gaining his breath.
‘Good to think I can rely on you in a crisis,’ Ronnie said.
He made light of the situation but for a while there, he had feared for his life.
Being a pilot didn’t prepare a man too well for combat.
He liked to think that, had it come to it, Jean wouldn’t have left him behind but would have fought with him, by his side.
They settled down for the wait until the bombardment stopped or the Germans moved on. Ronnie hoped it wouldn’t be too long.
While they waited and listened for the receding fire, Ronnie thought of home. He fixed the names of Ypres and Somme in his memory. He would ask Dot and his mother if there was some sort of family connection to this part of France. It was almost as if he was destined to be here.
After several hours of waiting, the guns finally stopped. There was still some light left in the sky.
‘Come on,’ said Jean, standing up and grabbing his pack. ‘Time to get out of here.’
‘Exactly where are we going?’ Ronnie asked. ‘You haven’t told me yet. Do you have a plan for me to get back to England?’
‘We can’t go into Dunkirk obviously — too many patrols,’ Jean replied. ‘I’m taking you to meet with members of the Resistance who have contacts with the British army. There are plans to evacuate more troops, the ones who got left behind like you.’
This sounded very vague to Ronnie. He was far from being safe, but he had no choice. He wondered where Tilly was now. Was she back home? He hoped so.