Philly #2
‘I liked that man in particular. He had a spirit that couldn’t be broken.
He told us his name was Ben. He didn’t tell us his surname, though.
I suppose it was best we didn’t know. He said he’d been a pilot, and so I asked him why he wasn’t wearing a uniform – or at least what was left of one – like the other military prisoners.
He told me he’d been involved in a special mission, so he’d worn civilian clothes in case he was captured.
Which he was. But that meant they didn’t believe he was just a pilot when they questioned him at the Gestapo headquarters in Poitiers.
They accused him of being a spy. When he tried to escape from the prison there, that only made them all the more convinced.
He said they’d given him what they called their special treatment, which definitely wouldn’t have met any of the codes of conduct governing prisoners of war. ’
I must have flinched then, imagining how Ben must have been tortured, because Philippe stops and says, ‘I’m sorry, Madame. Perhaps I’m telling you too much?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I want to know the truth. It’s very important. Please tell me everything you remember.’
‘He told me, too, that he had a wife and twin babies back home in England, a son and a daughter.
That his only wish was to escape and get back to them so he could also carry on doing his bit to bring the war to an end as quickly as possible.
I remember how determined he was. I had the sense that nothing the Germans could do to him would break his resolve.
No matter how heavy the baskets of salt he had to carry, he walked tall and held his head high.
‘One day, when the Germans had disappeared off to the blockhouse for another cigarette break, Ben asked my father and me whether we could help him. He had a plan to get away. It was autumn by then, the days growing shorter, and coming up to a full moon, so the tides were stronger. He wanted to take a small boat and use the tide to help carry him out to sea. He said he thought he could row to Spain, if the wind was in the right direction. We told him that plan was madness, he’d never make it, and the Germans would surely execute him for trying.
But then my father said we would help him, with a slightly different plan.
We’d get him the boat and he could use the tide to carry him out into the ocean under cover of darkness, but only as far as one of the marker buoys for the lobster pots.
The Germans allowed local fishermen to take their boats to sea, as long as they handed over their catch, just as we did our salt.
What they didn’t realise, though, was that out at sea under cover of darkness, the fishermen were running a line of communication for a Resistance network.
They’d rendezvous with Spanish boats and hand over messages and letters, to be delivered to the Allies.
My father said he could get word to his brother, who was one of the fishermen, and my uncle would pick Ben up, transferring him to a Spanish boat out at sea. ’
He pauses again, making sure we are still listening. Four pairs of eyes are fixed on him with complete concentration, and I think Finn is so intent on the story he’s almost forgotten to breathe.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘Tell us.’
‘We had a small rowing boat, which we used around the marshes, so the guards weren’t suspicious when we pulled it up into the dunes alongside the salt pans one day.
By then, the weather was turning. A cold wind began to blow from the north and the Germans grumbled even more about having to be on duty at the marsh.
We chose a day when the moon was just past fullness, when the tide would begin to go out in the late afternoon just as dusk was falling.
It was an overcast evening, too, dark clouds gathering, but that also suited our plan as the moonlight wouldn’t illuminate the little boat as it was carried out into the Atlantic.
We told Ben he’d be swept out beyond the lighthouse and there, once he was past the point, he’d find three creel floats, positioned in a triangle.
He should row to them and wait for the fishing boat to pick him up.
We knew it wouldn’t be easy. He’d have to row hard to fight the tide and the waves, and with the night overcast he’d have only the beam from the lighthouse to help pick out the buoys.
But if anyone could do it, it was him. We knew he had both the strength and the determination.
‘As the working day was ending, Ben slipped away. We knew the guards would do a quick headcount from the shelter of their blockhouse, so I took off my overalls – I was wearing some old clothes underneath them, the same bleached-out colour as Ben’s – and shouldered a basket of salt.
Once they’d made sure the men were accounted for, it would be easier for us to conceal the fact that one man was missing as we led the others and our donkeys into town to deliver the salt.
The Germans wouldn’t bother counting again until the baskets had been dropped off and the prisoners were re-entering the prison, by which time Ben would be long gone. ’
He stops again, swallowing hard, but this time he avoids my gaze, and his eyes fill with sadness.
‘There was a storm brewing, as there so often is in that ocean out there beyond the dunes. It arrived sooner than we’d thought.
My uncle still went out beyond the point in his fishing boat, but the conditions were wild.
When he reached the marker buoys, there was no sign of Ben and the rowing boat.
He waited as long as he could, then had to return to the harbour.
Two days later, one of our neighbours told us a body had washed up on the beach at Le Bois-Plage. ’
A great sob escapes from me then, a paroxysm of pain and grief released at last. I realise it’s been trapped somewhere deep within me for decades, ever since the day I heard Ben had gone missing.
The tears flow down my cheeks. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to cry like this before.
Kendra leans over and wraps her arms around me, supporting me, while the others sit in silence.
Once the squall of emotion has passed a little, Monsieur Bertaud reaches across the table to take my hand in his, before continuing.
‘We recognised Ben straight away. But because he was in civilian clothing, we persuaded the gendarmes that it wasn’t a matter for the Germans.
We knew, you see, that if les Boches discovered it was a prisoner who’d escaped, he wouldn’t have been given a proper burial.
He would just have been thrown into one of the pits they used to dispose of such bodies.
The man we’d got to know, who so wanted to get back to his wife and children, deserved better than that.
‘They’d have asked a lot of questions of us, too, if they discovered we had gathered so much information about the prisoners and played a part in his escape.
It wouldn’t have been good for us, and it might even have jeopardised the whole Resistance network, of which my uncle was a part.
Anonymity was safer and so we felt it was better to bury him as an unknown civilian.
He was interred here in our local graveyard, in that grave marked Inconnu , where we could remember him.
And where we could wait and hope for his family to come and find him some day. ’
The silence sits heavily in the room when Philippe stops talking.
Finn breaks it, saying, ‘There. I knew it was Ben. So, Philly, now do we have enough evidence? Can we ask the War Detectives to give him a proper burial, and you can have Closure?’
I take a deep breath, trying to take it all in, trying to make myself think clearly.
‘It’s certainly a strong case. But we would probably need something more, something to prove the man who’s buried in that grave is incontrovertibly Ben.
A body washed up on the beach ... it happened often here, especially after a storm. ’
Then Philippe gets to his feet and opens one of the kitchen cabinets, rummaging inside.
He brings out a tin, which rattles as he pulls off the lid, and empties something into his hand.
‘There was one more thing too, Madame. We took this from his body. He wore it beneath his shirt, tied around his neck on a length of cord.’
He holds out his closed fist and motions for me to open my own hand.
And into my outstretched palm he drops the signet ring I gave to Ben on the day we were married.
I hold it up to the dusty ray of light filtering in through the kitchen window and there are his initials.
BCD. Just the way he’d written them, time after time, in my ATA logbook.
And there, too, running along the inside of the band, are the words I’d had engraved for him: I’ll always be yours. P.
As I hold the ring, clutching it tightly now, the memories flood back in, wrapping their arms around me as if they are Ben’s arms, enfolding me again at last.
I remember the first time I saw him as he walked towards me outside an aircraft hangar, both of us rookies but determined to play our part in the war that had just begun.
I remember dancing with him at the club and our first kiss at a darkened railway station, then how he stood and watched as the train pulled out.
I remember Ben hanging on to my hand as if he’d never let it go again, in the back of an ambulance on the morning he brought me back from France, having flown all night to bring me home.
I remember a day in February when I walked up the path to the door of the church in Tangmere to be married to the man who waited for me inside at the altar, turning to smile at me as I entered, his eyes as blue as the winter sky outside.
I remember him holding Amy as a tiny baby, his face alight with wonder as he gazed down at her, while I stood next to him, holding Teddy, at their christening.
I remember the dark nights and long years without him, never giving up the search to try and find him.
Tears spill down my cheeks again, a manifestation of the bewildering mixture of emotions that overflow from my heart, too much for my body to contain.
The room is silent as I pull out a tissue and try to blot them away, but it is quickly soaked and still more tears come.
Kendra hands me a hanky and I look up. Now it’s my turn to be pinned beneath the scrutiny of four pairs of eyes.
It is Philippe Bertaud who breaks the silence this time. ‘I never forgot him, Madame. I tended his grave. And I kept the ring. Just in case his wife or his children ever came looking.’
I look from Philippe to Dan to Kendra. And then I look at Finn. For once, his eyes meet mine and he doesn’t flinch and drop his gaze.
I smile through my tears. And then I say, ‘Well, Finn. I think at last we have our evidence, don’t you?
’ I hold out my hand, unfurling my fingers, the ring gleaming softly in my palm.
‘You’ve done it. You and Monsieur Bertaud have given me the final, definitive proof that now – at last – we’ve found Ben. ’