Code Name Verity(95)

Three prisoners in a line. The soldier in command gave an order, and the guard who’d been holding Julie down took aim at the younger of the captive men and with one bullet maimed him low between his legs.

The lad shrieked and collapsed and they fired at him again, first blowing apart one elbow and then the other, and then they hauled him to his feet again, still shrieking, and made him walk to the lorry and climb in and then they turned to the next man and fired on him low in the groin also.

Mitraillette and I both knelt wheezing with horror, side by side under cover of the undergrowth and darkness. Julie stood cowering, white as paper in the harsh glare of the floodlight, staring straight ahead of her at nothing. She was next. She knew it. We all knew it. But they weren’t finished with their second victim yet.

When they shot him in one elbow and then again rapidly in the same place to shatter it, my not-very-reliable control just went and I burst into tears. I couldn’t help it, something snapped, like when we went to help the gunner at Maidsend and found the dead boys. I burst into loud, gulping sobs, bawling like a baby.

Her face – Julie’s face – her face suddenly lit up like a sunrise. Joy and relief and hope all there at once and she was instantly lovely again, herself, beautiful. She heard me. Recognised my fear-of-gunfire blubbing. She didn’t dare call out to me, didn’t dare give me away, Ormaie’s most desperate fugitive.

They fired at the second man again, destroying his other arm, and he fainted dead away. They had to drag him to the lorry.

Julie was next.

Suddenly she laughed wildly and gave a shaking yell, her voice high and desperate.

‘KISS ME, HARDY! Kiss me, QUICK!’

Turned her face away from me to make it easier.

And I shot her.

I saw her body’s flinch – the blows knocked her head aside as though she’d been thumped in the face. Then she was gone.

Gone. One moment flying in green sunlight, then the sky suddenly grey and dark. Out like a candle. Here, then gone.





I’ll just keep writing, shall I? Because that wasn’t the end. It wasn’t even a pause.

The officer pulled another woman up from the ground to take Julie’s place. This doomed girl screamed at us in French: ‘ALLEZ! ALLEZ!’ Go! Go! ‘Résistance idiots sales, vous nous MASSACREZ TOUS!’

FILTHY RESISTANCE IDIOTS, YOU’RE KILLING US ALL

I knew what she was saying even with my rubbish schoolgirl French. And she was right.

We ran. They fired at our backs and came after us. Paul and his men fired at THEIR backs, swarming over the bridge walls, and they turned to face this rear attack. Carnage. CARNAGE. Half of us, Paul with them, were torn to bits on the bridge. The rest of us made it back to the boats and set off down the river with the five fugitives we’d managed to save.

When we were away from the bank and someone else was rowing and there was nothing more for me to do, I bent over with my head on my knees, my heart in pieces. It is still in pieces. I think it will be in pieces forever.

Mitraillette gently unlocked my fingers from the Colt .32 and made me put it away. She whispered, ‘C’était la Vérité?’ Was that Verity?

Or perhaps she just meant, Was that the truth? Was it true? Did any of it really happen? Were the last three hours real?

‘Yes,’ I whispered back. ‘Oui. C’était la vérité.’

—

Don’t know how I kept going. You just do. You have to, so you do.

The original idea, when we hoped we’d have 24 extra people to move and hide, was to ferry them to the opposite bank where we’d divide them into smaller groups of 2 or 3. Then we were going to split up our own team to guide them cross-country towards various sheds and cow byres for the night before the more complicated task of smuggling them safely out of France across the Pyrenees or the English Channel. But now we only had 5 fugitives to hide and there were only 7 of us left so there was room for everybody to make a single trip back to the riverside villa. Mitraillette made the decision to keep us together. Don’t think I’d ever noticed – so absorbed in my own fears and worries – but she was Paul’s second in command.

Not sure we’d have pulled it off without her either. We were all just so dazed. But she drove us like a demon. ‘Vite! Vite!’ Quickly! Orders whispered sharp and quiet – boats hauled back on to their racks, oars put away, all of it carefully dried off with dust sheets which we hid beneath the floorboards afterwards. You can work in a daze. If someone gives you a mindless job to do you can do it automatically, even if your heart is in pieces. Mitraillette thought of everything – perhaps she’s done it before? We brushed the oars and hulls lightly with handfuls of ancient straw from the stables, leaving a fine layer of dust over everything. The 5 men from the prison bus worked silently and willingly alongside us, anxious to help. The boathouse was perfect when we left – looked like it hadn’t been used in years.