Code Name Verity(71)

‘Won’t be able to use this field again,’ he said. ‘Pity. However –’

They’d shot a German sentry.

I really ought not to be writing this.

I don’t care. I’ll burn it later. Can’t think straight unless I write it.

They’d shot a German sentry. He had come along on his bicycle at the wrong moment, while they were laying out the flare path. He’d stood for a while watching and, as it turned out, taking notes – when they spotted him, he pedalled off as fast as he could go and they couldn’t chase him on foot or get to their own bicycles in time to catch up with him, so the English agent shot him. Just like that. They were pleased to have bagged a bicycle, but horrified that they had a body to dispose of.

The wrecked Lizzie, with living pilot, was a godsend. They would have had to destroy the plane anyway, to make it look like a crash rather than a planned landing. So they installed the dead patrolman in the pilot’s cockpit dressed in my ATA tunic and slacks, believe it or not. They had to slit the trousers right down the side seams to get them on the poor chap and even then couldn’t fasten them, he was so much wider than me. It all took a while and I didn’t help much, sitting quite dazed on the edge of the field wearing only vest and knickers under a borrowed jumper and overcoat. Mitraillette, who gave me her pullover, must have been freezing with only that frilly blouse under her coat. They also took my boots – I’m broken-hearted about my boots! But apart from my flight bag, all my British pilot’s gear had to be destroyed, helmet and parachute and all. Even my gas mask. Won’t miss that. All it ever did was take up space, dangling uselessly over my shoulder in its haversack like a wingless khaki albatross for the past four years. Don’t think I ever put it on except for drills.

Wish I’d taken that typist’s course now – could do with knowing shorthand. I have managed to fit this in 3 pages of my Pilot’s Notes in the titchiest print ever. It’s not a bad thing if it’s impossible to read.

Getting the plane ready to blow to blazes took a long time – and a lot of running around in the moonlight. Suppose they’re organised, but I hadn’t much clue what was going on and was neither useful nor necessary at this point. Was also developing a splitting headache, anxious about Julie, and wondering why they didn’t just set the dratted plane on fire and get it over with. Turns out they had quite a lot of equipment they wanted to get rid of, in addition to the damning corpse – half a dozen useless wireless sets they’d stripped for parts, plus a couple of obsolete ones nobody wanted any more – they sent someone to fetch them out of hiding, headed off on bicycles and returned with wheelbarrows. The barn they’d used to hide this stuff is where I am hiding now. The farmer who owns it threw in an old gramophone missing its horn and a broken typewriter in a cardboard suitcase, and a chick incubator full of bits of wire too short to connect to anything, to make it look like the plane had been carrying a full load of wireless sets! Mitraillette, the farmer’s elder daughter who was the only other girl there besides me, was very jolly about filling the plane with rubbish.

‘Onze radios!’ she kept muttering to herself and giggling. ‘Onze radios!’ Eleven wireless sets. It is a joke because it is so unlikely we would send eleven sets at once. Each set is linked to its operator, and each operator is equipped with distinct code and crystals and frequencies.

It will puzzle the Germans when they examine the wreckage.

The 500 pounds of Explosive 808 was dragged away on a horse-drawn wagon. It took time to find it all as a few of the boxes had fallen out of the damaged fuselage and the rear cockpit, which Julie had left open of course. She’d done a jolly good job of tying most of the cargo down. It was all done by moonlight because nobody dared use any lights – there is an early curfew so everybody was growing extremely nervous – I’d landed after 1.00 a.m. and it took about an hour to organise the destruction of the Lizzie.

Can’t say I feel entirely safe in the hands of the Resistance, but they are certainly resourceful. Once the radios and mock radios were piled up, and the dead German fixed in place, they simply opened the fuel tanks – of course the plane was nearly vertical and the fuel came pouring out – and used a bit of the explosive and detonating wire to light it. Easy peasy. It made a very jolly bonfire.

It must have been nearly 3 in the morning by the time we raced away from the field as Peter’s Lysander went up in flames. Had to ride in one of the wheelbarrows as I now had neither trousers nor shoes – they hid me under the same sacking they’d used to hide the radios, stinking of onion and cows. Then handed me up a series of makeshift ladders into a loft above another loft in the barn where I am now. It is a hidden space just below the peak of the roof. Can just manage to sit up if I wedge myself right below the peak. I’ve not started feeling claustrophobic yet, I suppose I do spend most of my life strapped into tiny cramped spaces. There is plenty of room to stretch out if I lie down. Pretend it’s the back of a Fox Moth – it’s just as cold. Most awkward for washing and things, all water and soiled pans have to be handed up and down the ladders.