A Farewell to Baker Street (13 page)

With the war in 1914, our lives were turned upside down and steadily we watched as increasing numbers of our friends and relatives went off to fight on the Western Front. I imagine your memories of that time are no less frightening. Working on the farm, Tom and I had plenty to keep us busy and I have to say that neither of us had any great desire to join the army - in any case, I was still too young.

From the early part of 1916, we faced a more immediate threat to our safety. Zeppelin airships began to attack the eastern coastline with frightening regularity, bombing coastal ports and towns and terrifying the local population. You will understand that we were not used to such attacks and were unprepared for the war to be brought to the doorsteps of our homes and farms. In fact, I am sure that the fear of those attacks was generally much worse than any actual damage the airships inflicted.

It was during one of those early airship raids that my story really begins.

I was woken in the early hours of 12
th
August, 1916 by the familiar sound of artillery guns further down the coast. Instinctively, I ran to my bedroom window and looking skyward saw a continuous tornado of shells being sent up against what I imagined to be a German raiding party. Searchlights from the ground were moving across the sky trying to locate the attackers and at one point I saw the lights catch and hold a Zeppelin in their grasp. I could hear the sound of the airship's engines droning high above. All the while, the guns continued to pound. For whatever reason, I decided to dress and go outside.

Out in the cold air, I watched as the Zeppelin continued across the sky, tracked by the searchlights, and visible in the growing dawn of the new day. I had made my way down through some woodland about a mile from our farmhouse and pulled myself up onto a wooden gate.
At this point, the guns fell silent and I could see the lights of three or four aircraft rising up to attack the airship that, by this time, had shut down its engines and appeared to be drifting out of control towards the coast. The aircraft began to attack the Zeppelin, the rapid bursts of their machine guns being clearly audible from where I sat.

As I watched the events unfold, I was startled to see and hear an explosion at the rear end of the airship. Bright orange flames began to appear above the tail of the craft, moving steadily forwards towards its nose. You might think that I would have felt some joy at seeing the destruction of this hostile invader, but I can say that I felt only horror at the thought of the airmen trapped aboard her flaming hulk. I could hardly bear to watch as the airship dipped at the rear and began to fall to earth. But it was then that my fears become more acute. Over the course of the next five minutes, I watched as the ship fell closer and closer towards our land.

As the Zeppelin fell, I could see a tall column of fire stretching up above her and a long trail of black smoke tracing out her descent.
Getting ever closer and nearing the ground, I watched as the stricken craft barely cleared the woods to my side and passed overhead, showering hot debris throughout the trees and across the open field ahead. I remained fixed to the gate, too terrified to move. At less than one hundred feet from the ground, I saw what I thought were black bombs being launched from the airship, but as I watched and waited for the explosions, I realised to my horror that these missiles were in fact the bodies of some of the crew jumping or falling into the field. At that point, the Zeppelin hit the ground with a tremendous bumping, grinding and twisting of metal and continued to travel across the ploughed soil before coming to an abrupt halt on the far side of the field. A large explosion followed and numerous fires across the site flared up and continued unabated.

I could go on at length to tell you about the aftermath of the crash and the efforts made by countless Englishmen to save the few crewmen that remained alive in the burning debris. To explain how the crash site attracted thrill-seekers from far and wide and to commiserate with you about the fact that in the end, all nineteen German airmen lost their lives in this tragic episode. No doubt you will know much of this, and I imagine you will already have guessed how you are linked to the story. But there is much, much more, to tell.

For the two hours immediately following the crash, most attention was focused on the field where the Zeppelin came to rest. All but one of the crew died there, having burned to death in the craft or having fallen from the airship before it crashed. The one crewmember not found there had jumped from his position in the rear engine car of the airship as it passed over the woods adjoining our farmland. He had been spared the agony of burning to death, but as he fell through the trees at speed had broken numerous bones in his body, including his neck. He lived for an hour after the crash before being found by an English Army doctor. I know this because I spent those last precious moments with him, comforting him as he passed away. You need to know this, because he was your father, Franz George Descartes.

I appreciate that it may be difficult for you to come to terms with all that I am about to tell you, but you must bear with me. Franz would have wanted it that way - he told me so.

I did not move from the wooden gate until the airship had hit the ground. At that point, I realised that I must get help. In fact, I need not have worried as within minutes people from the village began to arrive at the scene, running across the field towards the burning ship. As I jumped down from the gate intending to follow the others, I heard a voice from the woods nearby. I climbed back over the gate and proceeded into the trees, following the sound. I could catch only odd words as I stumbled through the semi-lit woodland, but recognised that those words were in German
.

When I finally reached Franz, he lay on his back as if sleeping. As I stood above him, unsure what to do next, he smiled up at me and said in perfect English, “Please do not be afraid, my friend, you can see that I am in no position to hurt you!”

I was surprised by the calmness in his voice, as I could already see that he was unable to move his limbs and must have been in tremendous pain. “Please, sit beside me,” he continued. “I may have only a short time to live and have much to say. What is your name? Please, do not worry about getting me any food or water, it will only waste time.”

I told him who I was and how I had watched the airship descend. He then asked me if any of the others had survived the crash and I told him that I thought it unlikely.
He appeared to be upset by this and fell silent for a few moments. I asked him where he came from in Germany and he told me that he lived in Hamburg with his wife Gretel and young son, Heinrich. He seemed pleased that I had asked him about his homeland and said that his family meant more to him than anything else in the world. It was for this reason that he needed to talk and he asked only that I listen to what he had to say. I was in no position to argue, and my only fear was that we would be discovered before he was able to finish what he had to say. I then sat beside him and listened intently to every word he uttered.

Let me begin by saying that Franz was an incredible narrator. Even in that final hour, suffering untold pain, he was able to tell his story with colour and vivacity. And in those passing moments, I think he recognised in me a yearning for adventure and an eagerness to hear all that he had to say about parts of the world I had yet to explore. I have never been a deeply religious man, but I have always thought that there was a degree of predetermination in the way that our lives were brought together that fateful morning
.

Franz explained that he had been born in France in 1880, the only son of Jean Descartes, a wealthy diamond merchant. His family moved around Europe at frequent intervals and by the time he was eight years of age, the young Franz could speak excellent English, German and Spanish, alongside his native French. However, as a result of his father's declining health, the family finally settled in a large house in the provincial French town of Albert during the summer of 1890. Franz loved the house, with its elegant blue façade and the line of topiary trees that stood in large pots along the front of the building. And he had fond memories of the countryside throughout the Picardie Region of Northern France.

Within six months his father died, leaving the family with some assets, but some even larger debts. Franz' grief-stricken mother, Karin - a German by birth - could not understand how the family could be left in such a position given Jean's lifetime of successful business dealings. But, in short, she was forced to accept the situation, selling the townhouse less than a year later to pay off their debts and moving with Franz back to her hometown of Mansell on the banks of Lake Constance in Southern Germany.

All of this was stressful enough to Franz, but on his sixteenth birthday he received a mysterious package from a firm of solicitors in France that Jean Descartes had always turned to for legal advice. On opening the package, he found that it contained a small key and a letter written to him by his father. Jean had written the letter on his deathbed, without the knowledge of Karin, and had arranged for it to be sent by the firm after his death. Urging Franz to ensure that the letter did not fall into anyone's hands but his own, he went on to explain that over the years he had accumulated a fortune in diamonds, which he always planned to live off in his old age and to pass on to his family. However, his health had worked against him and so he found himself in the position where he had to think only of the family he would leave behind. But herein lay a problem.

Jean had known for some time that Karin Descartes had a lover, the 28-year-old Mayor of the town. At first, he had ignored their liaisons, hoping that the relationship would not develop into anything serious. He explained to the stunned Franz that their marriage had been loveless for a number of years, so he had always feared a situation like this. Karin had not been prepared to give up her lover and the relationship had become public knowledge throughout the town, much to Jean's distress and contributing to his ill health. As a result, he determined that whilst Franz should inherit what was rightfully his, he would not leave more than an adequate amount to his widow. In any case, Jean knew that Karin's rich family back in Mansell would never see her fall on hard times.

Jean Descartes had struggled to think of a way of preserving Franz' birthright without involving Karin and avoiding a complex legal process. He felt certain that any legal resolution would be challenged by lawyers working for Karin's family. This he could not risk
. But he did, finally, engineer a solution. He explained that he had withdrawn from the security of numerous bank vaults, his full supply of diamonds and had placed them within a locked safe built into one of the interior walls of the French town house. This had been bricked over and the whole plan had been executed in secret when Karin and Franz had been away for a week in Paris. Franz now held the only key to that safe and Jean wished him every success and happiness in his life ahead.

Franz could barely take all of this in, as he read the letter in the drawing room of his new home in Mansell. Without his mother's assistance he had no way of getting back to France and even if he could, had no idea how he could locate the safe and liberate its contents. And, to make matters worse, Karin Descartes herself died in a boating accident in 1897. In her written will, Franz learned that she had left all of her wealth to her relatives in Mansell, as she had it “...on good authority that my late husband has provided for our son, Franz, in some manner which he has not seen fit to share with me.” Franz felt betrayed.

Penniless and estranged from his mother's family, Franz joined the Naval Reserve and began to train as an engineer in the Imperial shipyards in Kiel. Immersing himself in his work, he tried to forget about the diamonds and his parents. He enjoyed the work and was well regarded by his employers. In 1899, he married your mother, Nicole - a dark-haired, blue-eyed girl from Munich - and the pair moved to Hamburg. And, in April 1900, you were born to them, Heinrich.

Your father made it clear to me that you and your mother were always the primary focus of his life. But at intervals, he thought about the diamonds back in Albert and kept the small key to the safe within a specially fashioned locket around his neck. He even arranged for copies of the town's local newspaper to be sent to him in Germany, feeling certain that if the diamonds were ever discovered he would be able to find out and put in a claim for them. But he heard nothing.

The years passed steadily, but with the outbreak of war, Franz was drafted into the Naval Airship Division of the German Fleet Command and became a Stoker Petty Officer on board a Zeppelin airship. Seeing less and less of his family, and risking his life during every air raid over England, he promised himself that when the war was over he would travel to France and reclaim the diamonds for you all to enjoy.

Such was Franz' story, told to me that morning as he lay dying in an English wood, far from his family. He had told me the story because he needed to tell someone - anyone - before he died. “I am not sure why I have told you all of this, Peter,” he said, looking suddenly tired and weak, “but you are a good listener. I have only one further request of you, and that is that you get a message to my wife and son to say that I love them both and regret that I cannot be with them. Please tell Heinrich that his father was very proud of him.”

I was deeply moved by Franz' words as the life began to drain from him.
I had only known this man for less than an hour in the most surreal of circumstances, but I already knew that I felt closer to him than almost anyone I had ever met. “What about the diamonds?” I enquired, “...is there no way that Heinrich can claim them for himself?”