Rose Under Fire (Code Name Verity, #2)(17)

Even if there is no way for you to turn back time or find out what really happened that morning in September, it means a great deal to all of us to know that Rose had such a devoted friend so far from home.

Thank you also for the photograph from your wedding. It is the last picture we have got of Rose. You all look so excited and happy, and the ivy-covered church nestled in the heather is an idyllic setting for a wartime marriage – my boys noticed your husband has got a football tucked under his arm! It is hard to believe you were only temporarily ‘between bombs’.

I never imagined – never could have imagined – even flying over the hell of no man’s land myself in the last war – that less than thirty years later, another war would cost me a daughter.

On behalf of myself and Rose’s mother Grace Mae, and Rose’s young brothers Karl and Kurt, thank you for being Rose’s friend.

Yours sincerely,



Jack Justice





Krefeld, Germany



10 March 1945

My bonny Maddie-lass,

I am flying Hudsons now, transport and parachutists – dropping madmen deep into Germany on God knows what missions. I only fly one night in four. Mostly I sit around all day smoking or go on schnapps hunts with other idle airmen.

I look for your Rose everywhere I go. I think I am really looking for our Julie, who I know is dead. If I could just win one damned personal victory, you know? We are into Germany, but still not across the Rhine, and all I feel is grief and horror. I cannot describe to you the horror of this war, Maddie. I do not want to. I think the biggest surprise is that I don’t have more friends and big brothers and little sisters who are dead. The destruction we are heaping upon the German cities is unimaginable – it is shameful. It makes me feel ashamed to be one of the victors. And then we come across a row of railway wagons abandoned on a siding under the snow and packed with hundreds of frozen, emaciated bodies – hundreds of them, unexplained, some of them children – and I know that we must be the victors. Whatever the shame – whatever the cost.

I look for your Rose in every face, dead and living. But there are so many, and all of them are ravaged by hunger and grief and loss, even the faces of the enemy. I swear, it’s sometimes hard to tell which faces do belong to the so-called ‘enemy’. Deserters hide as civilians to avoid capture, not only by us, but also by their own army, and civilians surprise you with hospitality and gratitude. I met a group of four displaced men travelling together – two had escaped from a German prison camp, and the other two were shot-down German airmen trying to get back to their base. All we did was trade cigarettes. Strip men of uniforms and badges and they are just men.

A year and a half ago, when we first lost track of Julie, I remember you described the way people disappear into the Nazi death machine like an unlucky lapwing hitting the propeller of a Lancaster bomber – nothing left but feathers blowing away in the aircraft’s wake, as if those warm wings and beating heart had never existed. It has happened to tens of thousands of people. Maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions. They are gone. They have vanished without leaving even a vapour trail. Everywhere I go I meet people who are hunting for husbands, mothers, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, lovers, and they are all gone.

Your friend Rose has evaporated with them. I don’t know what else to tell you, Maddie.

What a miserable letter! And your last one to me was so full of encouragement and flying stories. I am afraid you will cry when you read this one. I wish I hadn’t mentioned the frozen children. But you know I would never be anything less than wholly honest with you.

Here is better news to end with – surprising, but positive at least. The Boy Nick has got married. I think it was partly a way for him to cope with losing Rose, but partly, it is true, he has found another lovely girl. His new bride is also American, a Red Cross worker who does counselling and social work for the troops. She is not made of the same strong stuff your Rose was, but to tell the truth the Boy Nick isn’t either. Maybe it’s as well they didn’t tie the knot last summer.

I am desperate for it to be over now, and to see you again and to be with you always.

Thine ain true

Jamie





This pretty book is all that’s left of Rose and her poetry. She’s written my name in the front – ‘A present from Maddie Brodatt’. The army nurses she was staying with at Camp Los Angeles found it in her camp bed. I should have sent it to her mother and father, I suppose, but I haven’t got the heart. I remember when I gave it to her, to write Celia’s accident report in.

Oh, Rose, Rose. Bloody, bloody hell.

I’ve lost you – lost another friend – ‘as if those warm wings and beating heart had never existed’. This war has taken my best friend and my bridesmaid from me in the space of a year. IT ISN’T FAIR.

Oh, Rose – when the US Air Force transport pilot from Camp Los Angeles dropped your notebook off at Operations in Hamble last September, for a long time I still hoped you’d turn up and I could give it back to you. I know it’s possible to crash-land in occupied Europe and make it out alive. I know.

So I find it impossible to ‘close the book’ – to accept that you’re not coming back. And just in case I’m right, I am going to leave your notebook and my letters for you to collect at the American Embassy in Paris. I think you’re as likely to end up there as anywhere, if you’re still alive. Your Uncle Roger is in on my plot and has already filled a safe-deposit box there with a little money for you and a letter from your family. He’s told the Embassy to put you up at the Ritz Paris until other arrangements are made for you. What it’s like to have relatives in high places! Not that it makes much difference to you now.