Winter of the World (106 page)

‘Smoking Joe,’ he said. ‘Get rid of the dead Germans. Throw them in the river.’

Joe dragged the three bodies out of the pillbox and disposed of them, then did the same with the two sentries.

‘Pete and Mack,’ Woody said. ‘Go over to the other pillbox and join Lefty. Make sure the three of you stay alert. We haven’t killed all the Germans in France yet. If you
see enemy troops approaching your position, don’t hesitate, don’t negotiate, just shoot them.’

The two men left the pillbox and walked briskly across the bridge to the far end.

There were now three Americans in the far pillbox. If the Germans tried to retake the bridge they would have a hard time of it, especially in the growing light.

Woody realized that the dead Americans on the bridge would forewarn any approaching enemy forces that the pillboxes had been captured. Otherwise he might retain an element of surprise.

That meant he had to get rid of the American corpses too.

He told the others what he was going to do, then stepped outside.

The morning air tasted fresh and clean.

He walked to the middle of the bridge. He checked each body for a pulse, but there was no doubt: they were all dead.

One by one, he picked up his comrades and dropped them over the parapet.

The last one was Ace Webber. As he hit the water, Woody said: ‘Rest in peace, buddies.’ He stood still for a minute with his head bent and his eyes closed.

When he turned around, the sun was coming up.

(vii)

The great fear of Allied planners was that the Germans would rapidly reinforce their troops in Normandy, and mount a powerful counter-attack that would drive the invaders
back into the sea, in a repeat of the Dunkirk disaster.

Lloyd Williams was one of the people trying to make sure that did not happen.

His job helping escaped prisoners get home had low priority after the invasion, and he was now working with the French Resistance.

At the end of May the BBC broadcast coded messages that triggered a campaign of sabotage in German-occupied France. During the first few days of June hundreds of telephone lines were cut,
usually in hard-to-find places. Fuel depots were set on fire, roads were blocked by trees, and tyres were slashed.

Lloyd was assisting the railwaymen, who were strongly Communist and called themselves
Resistance Fer.
For years they had maddened the Nazis with their sly subversion. German troop trains
somehow got diverted down obscure branch lines and sent many miles out of their way. Engines broke down unaccountably and carriages were derailed. It was so bad that the occupiers brought
railwaymen from Germany to run the system. But the disruption got worse. In the spring of 1944 the railwaymen began to damage their own network. They blew up tracks and sabotaged the heavy lifting
cranes required for moving crashed trains.

The Nazis did not take this lying down. Hundreds of railwaymen were executed, and thousands deported to camps. But the campaign escalated, and by D-Day rail traffic in some parts of France had
come to a halt.

Now, on D-Day plus one, Lloyd lay at the summit of an embankment beside the main line to Rouen, capital city of Normandy, at a point where the track entered a tunnel. From his vantage point he
could see approaching trains a mile away.

With Lloyd were two others, codenamed Legionnaire and Cigare. Legionnaire was leader of the Resistance in this neighbourhood. Cigare was a railwayman. Lloyd had brought the dynamite. Supplying
weaponry was the main role played by the British in the French Resistance.

The three men were half hidden by long grass dotted with wild flowers. It was the kind of place to bring a girl on a fine day such as this, Lloyd thought. Daisy would like it.

A train appeared in the distance. Cigare scrutinized it as it came nearer. He was about sixty, wiry and small, with the lined face of a heavy smoker. When the train was still a quarter of a mile
away he shook his head in negation. This was not the one they were waiting for. The engine passed them, puffing smoke, and entered the tunnel. It was hauling four passenger coaches, all full,
carrying a mixture of civilians and uniformed men. Lloyd had more important prey in his sights.

Legionnaire looked at his watch. He had dark skin and a black moustache, and Lloyd guessed he might have a North African somewhere in his ancestry. Now he was jumpy. They were exposed here, in
the open air and in daylight. The longer they stayed, the higher the chance they would be spotted. ‘How much longer?’ he said worriedly.

Cigare shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’

Lloyd said in French: ‘You can leave now, if you wish. Everything is set.’

Legionnaire did not reply. He was not going to miss the action. For the sake of his prestige and authority he had to be able to say: ‘I was there.’

Cigare tensed, peering into the distance, the skin around his eyes creasing with the effort. ‘So,’ he said cryptically. He raised himself to his knees.

Lloyd could hardly see the train, let alone identify it, but Cigare was alert. It was moving a lot faster than the previous one, Lloyd could tell. As it came closer he observed that it was
longer, too: twenty-four carriages or more, he thought.

‘This is it,’ said Cigare.

Lloyd’s pulse quickened. If Cigare was right, this was a German troop train carrying more than a thousand officers and men to the Normandy battlefield – perhaps the first of many
such trains. It was Lloyd’s job to make sure neither this train nor any following passed through the tunnel.

Then he saw something else. A plane was tracking the train. As he watched, the aircraft matched course with the train and began to lose height.

The plane was British.

Lloyd recognized it as a Hawker Typhoon, nicknamed a Tiffy, a one-man fighter-bomber. Tiffies were often given the dangerous mission of penetrating deep behind enemy lines to harass
communications. There was a brave man at the controls, Lloyd thought.

But this formed no part of Lloyd’s plan. He did not want the train to be wrecked before it reached the tunnel.

‘Shit,’ he said.

The Tiffy fired a machine-gun burst at the carriages.

Legionnaire said: ‘But what is this?’

Lloyd replied in English: ‘Fucked if I know.’

He could see now that the engine was hauling a mixture of passenger coaches and cattle trucks. However, the cattle trucks probably also contained men.

The plane, travelling faster, strafed the carriages as it overhauled the train. It had four belt-fed 20mm cannon, and they made a fearsome rattling sound that could be heard over the roar of the
plane’s engine and the energetic puffing of the train. Lloyd could not help feeling sorry for the trapped soldiers, unable to get out of the way of the lethal hail of bullets. He wondered why
the pilot did not fire his rockets. They were highly destructive against trains or cars, though difficult to fire accurately. Perhaps they had been used up in an earlier encounter.

Some of the Germans bravely put their heads out of the windows and fired pistols and rifles at the plane, with no effect.

But Lloyd now saw a light anti-aircraft battery emplaced on a flatbed car immediately behind the engine. Two gunners were hastily deploying the big gun. It swivelled on its base and the barrel
lifted to aim at the British plane.

The pilot did not appear to have seen it, for he held his course, rounds from his cannon tearing through the roofs of the carriages as he overhauled them.

The big gun fired and missed.

Lloyd wondered if he knew the flyer. There were only about five thousand pilots on active service in the UK at any one time. Quite a lot of them had been to Daisy’s parties. Lloyd thought
of Hubert St John, a brilliant Cambridge graduate with whom he had been reminiscing about student days a few weeks ago; of Dennis Chaucer, a West Indian from Trinidad who complained bitterly about
tasteless English food, especially the mashed potatoes that seemed to be served with every meal; and of Brian Mantel, an amiable Australian he had brought across the Pyrenees on his last trip. The
brave man in the Tiffy could easily be someone Lloyd had met.

The anti-aircraft gun fired again, and missed again.

Either the pilot still had not seen the gun, or he felt it could not hit him; for he took no evasive action, but continued to fly dangerously low and wreak carnage on the troop train.

The engine was just a few seconds from the tunnel when the plane was hit.

Flame flared from the plane’s engine, and black smoke billowed. Too late, the pilot veered away from the railway track.

The train entered the tunnel, and the carriages flashed past Lloyd’s position. He saw that every one was packed full with dozens, hundreds of German soldiers.

The Tiffy flew directly at Lloyd. For a moment he thought it would crash where he lay. He was already flat on the ground, but he stupidly put his hands over his head, as if that could protect
him.

The Tiffy roared by a hundred feet above him.

Then Legionnaire pressed the plunger of the detonator.

There was a roar like thunder inside the tunnel as the track blew up, followed by a terrible screeching of tortured steel as the train crashed.

At first the carriages full of soldiers continued to flash by, but a second later their charge was arrested. The ends of two linked carriages rose in the air, forming an inverted V. Lloyd heard
the men inside screaming. All the carriages came off the rails and tumbled like dropped matchsticks around the dark O of the tunnel’s mouth. Iron crumpled like paper, and broken glass rained
on the three saboteurs watching from the top of the embankment. They were in danger of being killed by their own explosion, and without a word they all leaped to their feet and ran.

By the time they had reached a safe distance it was all over. Smoke was billowing out of the tunnel: in the unlikely event that any men in there had survived the crash, they would burn to
death.

Lloyd’s plan was a success. Not only had he killed hundreds of enemy troops and wrecked a train, he had also blocked a main railway line. Crashes in tunnels took weeks to clear. He had
made it much more difficult for the Germans to reinforce their defences in Normandy.

He was horrified.

He had seen death and destruction in Spain, but nothing like this. And he had caused it.

There was another crash, and when he looked in the direction of the sound he saw that the Tiffy had hit the ground. It was burning, but the fuselage had not broken up. The pilot might be
alive.

He ran towards the plane, and Cigare and Legionnaire followed.

The downed aircraft lay on its belly. One wing had snapped in half. Smoke came from the single engine. The perspex dome was blackened by soot and Lloyd could not see the pilot.

He stepped on the wing and unfastened the hood catch. Cigare did the same on the other side. Together, they slid the dome back on its rails.

The pilot was unconscious. He wore a helmet and goggles, and an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. Lloyd could not tell whether it was someone he knew.

He wondered where the oxygen tank was, and whether it had yet burst.

Legionnaire had a similar thought. ‘We have to get him out before the plane blows up,’ he said.

Lloyd reached inside and unfastened the safety harness. Then he put his hands under the pilot’s arms and pulled. The man was completely limp. Lloyd had no way of knowing what his injuries
might be. He was not even sure the man was alive.

He dragged the pilot out of the cockpit, then got him over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift and carried him a safe distance from the burning wreckage. As gently as he could, he laid the
man on the ground face up.

He heard a noise that was a cross between a whoosh and a thump, and looked back to see that the whole plane was ablaze.

He bent over the pilot and carefully removed the goggles and the oxygen mask, revealing a face that was shockingly familiar.

The pilot was Boy Fitzherbert.

And he was breathing.

Lloyd wiped blood from Boy’s nose and mouth.

Boy opened his eyes. At first there seemed no intelligence behind them. Then, after a minute, his expression altered and he said: ‘You.’

‘We blew up the train,’ Lloyd said.

Boy seemed unable to move anything but his eyes and mouth. ‘Small world,’ he said.

‘Isn’t it?’

Cigare said: ‘Who is he?’

Lloyd hesitated, then said: ‘My brother.’

‘My God.’

Boy’s eyes closed.

Lloyd said to Legionnaire: ‘We have to bring a doctor.’

Legionnaire shook his head. ‘We must get out of here. The Germans will be coming to investigate the train crash within minutes.’

Lloyd knew he was right. ‘We’ll have to take him with us.’

Boy opened his eyes and said: ‘Williams.’

‘What is it, Boy?’

Boy seemed to grin. ‘You can marry the bitch now,’ he said.

Then he died.

(viii)

Daisy cried when she heard. Boy had been a rotter, and treated her badly, but she had loved him once, and he had taught her a lot about sex; and she felt sad that he had
been killed.

His brother, Andy, was now a viscount and heir to the earldom; Andy’s wife, May, was a viscountess; and Daisy’s name, according to the elaborate rules of the aristocracy, was the
Dowager Viscountess Aberowen – until she married Lloyd, when she would be relieved to become plain Mrs Williams.

However, that might be a long time coming, even now. Over the summer, hopes of a quick end to the war came to nothing. A plot by German army officers to kill Hitler on 20 July failed. The
Germany army was in full retreat on the Eastern Front, and the Allies took Paris in August, but Hitler was determined to fight on to the terrible end. Daisy had no idea when she would see Lloyd,
let alone marry him.

One Wednesday in September, when she went to spend the evening in Aldgate, she was greeted by a jubilant Eth Leckwith. ‘Great news!’ Ethel said when Daisy walked into the kitchen.
‘Lloyd has been selected as Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Hoxton!’