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Authors: Jerrard Tickell

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BOOK: Moon Squadron
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The two sentries closed in. Pierre turned. Flanked on either side by his guards, he walked down the aisle. The door was opened. The little group st
epped into the gusty moonlight. Then, in the windy half-dark, Pierre heard a sound, the distant hum and surge of an aircraft's engine, fitful in the flurries. He looked up towards the sky. He took a half step forward and stopped. From right and left, there burst suddenly the shattering staccato of Sten gun bursts. He flung himself on the ground as one of the sentries crumpled and spun, clutching his stomach. Firing broke out ahead of him and, from the direction of the German roadblock, he heard the thump and explosion of hand-grenades. The voice of Xavier spoke in his ear.

"Nicole awaits you at the vestry door in a car. Run, son- in-law. I go to deal with the good Captain Greisenau. My compliments to the R.A.F."

 

Squadron-Leader Northcote saw the wing and flicker of three torches. They shone from what looked like the depths of a pine-forest. He circled once, whistling throu
gh his teeth the first bars of ‘Horsey, keep your tail up.’ Then he cut his engine speed, put his flaps down and went in. The Lysander touched down, bounced like a golf ball on asphalt, came down again and slewed its way drunkenly along the pitted path. Somewhere not far away it sounded as if a bloody great battle was going on, Sten guns, grenades, the lot. He braked hard, swung the Lysander round and bumped back to the extreme end of the strip, using the last inch of ground, pulling up and turning so that his tail was actually within the trees. There was a group of four people waiting. One of them was a woman. A man's arm was around her shoulders and, in the glimmer of the torch, Northcote could not fail to see that she was pregnant. She came forward slowly. Helped by the man, she got into the aircraft and Northcote said, "You'd better lie down there, Madam. There are blankets and a thermos of coffee." Gratefully, she lay down and one of the men crouched beside her, holding her hand. From the cockpit Northcote shouted to the other two:

"Either of you chaps speak English?" "Yes, I speak."

"Fine. How long is this strip?"

"Three 'undred and seventy metres." "Any obstructions?"

"No, only at the end-the pine trees." "I've seen 'em. What's the wind strength?" "Twenty-six, thirty metres an hour." "Right. Is the lady ill?"

"Ill,
no. But soon, very soon, she will 'ave a baby." "Crumbs ! How soon?"

The man shrugged in the torchlight.

"I think you 'ad better go very quick. The man with 'er, 'e is 'er 'usband."

Northcote revved up his engine. The Lysander shot forward like an arrow. The sounds of the distant battle were drowned in the roar of his engine. The aircraft was up and over the tops of the pines with inches to spare. Now came the fearful necessity of absolutely steady flying. This was a Lysander - not the delivery room of Queen Charlotte's...

 

Nicole's baby was born within a few hours of her parents' arrival at Tempsford. It was a girl and at her christening
, at which Squadron-Leader Northcote undertook the responsibilities of godfather, the child was named ‘Nicolette’. She was known, however, and still is known, by the affectionate name of ‘
Mademoiselle
Mitrailleuse

 

Chapter Twelve

MOUNTAINS AND STARS

 

It is not known how many died in the battle of Fleuris. The French
dead have been numbered but the German not. Compared, for example, with the battle on the plateau of Gliѐre in
Haute
Savoie
, it was relatively unimportant. But the action was fierce and deadly and, for many days after, the grave-diggers were busy in the cemetery on the hillside.

Xavier survived and marched at the head of the remnants of his Maquis while the bells of liberation chimed and the Mayor took the salute. He is today manager of a corn chandler's business, a little slower in his movements and putting on weight. He is a constant visitor at the farm of Pierre and Nicole. Nicolette

Mademoiselle
Mitrailleuse’
has been joined by two brothers and a baby sister. She is a plump, vivacious child with her mother's dark eyes, very proud of how well she can speak English. The
Curé
of the village, Father Jean, took to the hills after the battle. He died of pneumonia in the bitter Christmas weather of 1944 and was buried at the fringe of the pines. His grave is a place of pilgrimage for the villagers of Fleuris and is well tended by the children. Captain Greisenau of the Gestapo was one of the first to fall. Xavier saw personally to the matter, not only for his own satisfaction but also to make sure no report of the part played unwittingly by Major von Klingen should ever reach Berlin. The Major himself was wounded in the thigh and, after months in a German hospital, was discharged from the Army. He still walks with a limp. The little boy, he who had been Pierre's eyes and ears, stayed obediently in the cellar while the battle raged. The fact that he was a vital link in the chain of events that led to the battle was unknown to the Germans and he was not considered worthy of interrogation. He has recently been called up for military service and is very conscious of the corporal's stripes on his arm when he comes on leave. Squadron-Leader Northcote is now Mr. Northcote, Public Relations Officer to an oil company in London. Affectionate Christmas greetings are exchanged every year with his god daughter.

The Maquis who fought in the battle were typical of the patriots of France. They were
hill men but they marched by their brothers in the towns; the miners, the garage hands, the factory workers, the
cheminots
, the railwaymen. They were all of them fiercely resentful of the imprint of a German boot on their soil. They were brave to the extent of being foolhardy. They had the devil in their skins and death in their hands. They carried hand grenades in their pockets – hand grenades with the pins out, the spring held down and in place with a strip of insulating tape. This, to them, was the logical and practical way to carry hand grenades. In an emergency, there would be no time to pull the pin out. With their fingers, they would calmly strip the tape off and then whip the grenade out and throw it. Most of them carried revolvers, of different calibres, all of them loaded, a number of them with ‘Property of the United States’ on them. And no house was properly furnished without a Bren gun. It was a feature of the domestic scene as was the casserole or the coffee pot.

They took fantastic risks. One British pilot, shot down in the South, was hidden for weeks in the house of a gendarme and his wife. By virtue of his profession, this good policeman had of necessity to be abroad at nights on his beat. He used the hours of darkness to the best advantage. He was a highly-skilled saboteur and understood the workings of a time-penc
il to a nicety. One of his side-lines was anti-Hitler bill-posting and, while he waited at home for the sound of the explosion that would prove last night's sabotage to have been successful, he would write long, indignant reports about how very nearly he caught the mysterious and villainous bill-poster in the act. And there was Her Worship, the Mayoress of a town in the Bordeaux area.

Her Worship was the daughter of an English father and a French mother. Under the code name of Chloe, she was parachuted into France to work as a wireless operator with Achille, leader of the local resistance. To explain away her constant association with him, it was agreed that Chloe should pose as Achille's wife. So popular did the couple become, that, with the cordial approval of the Gestapo, Achille was elected Mayor. Here the years that Chloe had spent at an English public school stood her in good stead. To her duties as Mayoress, she brought all the dignity that she had acquired as a prefect at Roedean, playing the part of civic hostess as to the manner born. She dispensed cake and conversation to the entire satisfaction of the townspeople and of the Germans. It was sad when she had to go away for a fortnight into some unspecified place in the sunshine because of a persistent co
ugh. She returned, looking sunburned and much better. She reassumed her duties and a small party was given to celebrate her homecoming. An affecting speech was made by the chief of the Gestapo who was quite unaware that, during her absence, Her Worship the Mayoress had attended speech day at Roedean, caught a one-and-a-half-pound trout on the Test and replenished her make-up box in Dover Street, London, W.I.

The hatred of the French for their German conquerors was intense and unremitting. On one occasion it very nearly caused disastrous consequences for a British navigator.

A Halifax took off from Tempsford with a mixed cargo of arms, explosives, boots, printers' ink (for clandestine newspapers), chocolate and sardines. Over the target area in South-West France, the two port engines cut out. The pilot ordered ‘crash stations’ and the aircraft swung down in a permanent left-hand turn at an airspeed of a hundred and ten. It hit a house and burst into flames. Only one man was left alive, the navigator. He was looked after - the phrase comes up again and again, always meaning so much - by the reception committee. A month would have to pass before a pick-up could be arranged in the next moon period. During that time, he and those who were looking after him prospected quite openly for a suitable field. They did it with an official air, measuring the ground with a theodolite and coloured poles. They found a likely place and coded its map-reference to London. London agreed it and told the navigator to stand by for Lysander pick-up on the fifth night of the next moon. Now it was a question of waiting.

With time heavy on his hands, the navigator too
k to browsing in the local bookshops. One afternoon, while he was laboriously picking his way through an unexpurgated French edition of
The
Decameron
, the manager approached him and to his delight, tried to sell him a book entitled ‘The English -Are They Our Friends?’ Alas, he had no francs.

The fifth night of the moon came round. In the evening,
the pick-up was confirmed. Goodbyes were said, the last drinks drained and, with very little time to spare, the party set off in an elderly, battered motor car for the chosen field. It was here that real trouble began. Normally only Germans and their toadies had access to private cars. The road to the airstrip was reasonably wide and overtaking was easy. But not tonight. A huge lorry, driven by a patriotic and obstinate Frenchman, trundled slowly along the crown of the road and refused to give way. He saw no reason to move over to let a carload of
sales
Boches
pass and every reason for denying them the use of the road. He was deaf to the honking of their horn and effectively reduced their speed to his own. While the infuriated procession was still a good three kilometres from the field, the sound of the Lysander's engine was heard. More honkings and more suicidal attempts to pass. At long last, by lurching the car into the ditch, the two vehicles drew level. From the car came a stream of vituperation which quite unmistakably was spat off a true French tongue. The lorry driver swept off his beret in abject apology: “
Aoh
,
pardon
,
Messieurs
.
Je
m'excuse
.
Je
vous
prenais
pour
des
Boches
. . ."

The Lysander, meanwhile, had circled the field twice and, seeing no lights, had made off for less dangerous air.

To the infinite relief of those on the ground, he decided to come back and have one more look. The occupants of the car got the flare-path lights laid out in record time, the air craft made a perfect landing and, within minutes, the navigator was on his way to Tangmere.

Those pilots and crews of the Moon Squadrons who operated in France were apt to get a trifle parochial about things. They were apt to lose sight of the fact that France was only one of the countries with a resistance and that the same sort of thing, albeit with infinitely more danger, was being carried on elsewhere. But it is impossible to leave France without a word about one whose name and exploits are legendary among those who flew from Tempsford.

Colonel Philippe Livry-Level is approaching his sixtieth year. In uniform his chest resembles the High Priest's breastplate. In the First World War, he was awarded the
Croix
de
Guerre
with several citations. He is, of course, a
Chevalier
of the Legion of Honour. When France fell in the Second World War, he escaped and came to England. He told me about it, sitting in the Dorchester Hotel bar with a glass of orange-juice, a grizzled, upright fine figure of a man with humorous eyes.

"When you know that your enemies suspect you," he said, "there is only one thing to do
- to go away. It is useless and foolish to stay. Sooner or later, they will get you. So, when I became aware that the Gestapo were curious about me, I went away."

"By the Pyrenees?"

"Oh, no." The Colonel looked slightly shocked. "I am much too old a gentleman to go mountaineering. That is for the young and vigorous. I simply caught a train with a First Class sleeper to Lisbon. I had for a long time been prepared with the necessary papers. It was very pleasant and comfortable. That is the way to travel. Then I came to England to join the R.A.F.; I had to tell a lie, a little white lie, about my age and they let me in. Soon I became an officer. I did not enjoy much being an aircraftsman at my age." At his age!

As a navigator Colonel Livry-Level made a hundred and sixty-one sorties from Tempsford. He took part in the raid on Amiens prison in which Wing-Commander Pickard lost his life. In all, he spent more than seven hundred and fifty hours over enemy territory. By the end of the war, he had come by a number of additional decorations:
Companion
de
la
Liberation
; four ranks in the Legion of Honour;
Grande
Croix
(the only one to be awarded since Napoleon to a fighting soldier and officer);
Croix
de
Guerre
with a positive forest of palms; D.S.O., D.F.C. and Bar; American D.F.C.; Norwegian
Croix
de
Guerre
.

Nor was his family unconcerned in the war effort. The Colonel's lady was clapped into jail by the Germans. His second daughter was a British agent. She was caught, tried and condemned to death by the Gestapo. She managed, by use of her inherited wit and ingenuity, to escape whatever passport to eternity the Germans had devised for her. She lived-to match her father's Croix de Guerre with her own. From a host of reminiscences, Colonel Livry-Level chose this one. He told it with great zest, his eyes twinkling.

"I shall always remember one trip we made at the end of the summer of 1943. We landed very nicely ten miles below Macon." He sighed. "Macon is the birthplace of what can easily be, and frequently is, a memorable wine. Our job was to pick up a full aircraft load of people and to bring them back. When we landed, I saw at once that there was, amongst them, a rather little fellow with a beard and very simple clothes. There was little to distinguish him except himself. He had a fire about him which refused to be quenched. He asked me who I was." Colonel Livry-Level smiled. "I knew, of course, that he had only asked me that because he very much wanted to tell me who
he
was. So I asked him. One must be polite. He was General Dalattre de Tassigny. We were proud to bring him to where I had begun already to call home. And there was another man in the party who was terribly thin. He was all bones and skin, stretched so tightly as a drum. I asked of this man, of this human drum, why he was such a thin man. He related to me that he had been arrested by the Gestapo and that he had been in prison for four months with only cabbage soup to eat. No
filet
de
boeuf
, no
omelettes
aux
fines
herbes
, no
gigot
d'agneau
. That is why he was so thin, because of no real food - only cabbage soup. Four months of prison can draw a man down and so it was with this man. I asked of him how he had escaped from this hungry prison. He related to me that his guard was a man from Alsace. I understood. The Alsatians have a big sympathy for the French with whom they are one. On the part of the Germans, it is foolish, a
betise
, to employ an Alsatian to guard a Frenchman. There can be no security for them. But I was sorry for this guard who had helped the thin man to escape. When the Germans found out, it would be hard for him.

BOOK: Moon Squadron
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