J. Janes - Hunting Ground

There were, and still are, lots of little restaurants and cafés on the fringes, some even in secluded bits of woods. We never used any of them, but with the worsening of the Russian campaign, that feeling of emptiness grew because men and materiel were steadily being withdrawn to the east. The Nazis had also increased their demands for forced labour. Though the Service du Travail Obligatoire, the much-hated STO, didn’t officially come into being until February 1943, any man between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five could find life precarious. As a result, some took to the woods, and when we could, we helped those who wished to join the maquis , who were beginning to form in the mountains of the Auvergne and other places.

Tommy and Nicki were constantly on the move. I don’t think they ever stayed anywhere for long. A night, a few hours, no more.

Using the potting shed, Dmitry did, however, end up with me, and I came to like him less and less, for he tried hard to pump the location of the artwork out of me. I knew he must be working for Moscow, yet I couldn’t get word of this to Tommy and the others.

Of Dupuis, I saw little, of Schiller, nothing. It was as if the lieutenant had vanished. Occasionally, Nini brought word of Jules and the Vuittons, as did Simone and André, so it was, for me, mainly a time of summer, of working in my gardens and fields. That first arms drop was, however, a total bust since the aircraft never even showed up, but then it happened, right out there on that plain among the farms and fields. Clateau had given me a lift in his van with three others. The Feldkommandant in Barbizon had a taste for horsemeat, and Clateau had talked him into providing the necessary papers for being out after curfew. Tobacco smoke filled the cab, but I was hooked on cigarettes anyway and had brought some I’d filched from my boarders, cognac, too, and of course I was just as excited as everyone else. Scared, too, who wouldn’t have been, but I liked the company of these simple men. It felt good to be with them. And when we got to the drop site, everyone listened intently and craned their necks to search the darkened skies until, finally, the engines of a Whitley were heard and that drone increased with a slowness that was agonizing, for we all knew the Boche could also be listening.

Clateau flashed his torch on and off in sequences of three but no one could have seen it from up there, yet when the chutes started coming down, everyone started running after them. Step-ins, slips, a chemise, and a blouse were on my mind, for they were of such beautiful silk, those first chutes, and we had such luck that night. There were six canisters, but it wasn’t until we got them to the Poulins’ that they were opened. Mills grenades, blasting caps, sticks of Nobel 808, fuse, wires, and pistols, too: Webley.45s with fifty rounds each.

Tucked in amongst everything else were chocolate bars, cigarettes, even tea and a fifth of brandy. Every space had been used, and we knew that the British didn’t have much themselves.

A fortnight later, we met in the forester’s hut that nestles among the boulders on a rocky ledge not far below me. Even with the Germans insisting on the French constantly logging the forest, this hut had remained empty for years, just like the other one.

There’s still no sign of Dupuis and Schiller nearby, but far out on that plain, a small dark car is parked at the side of the road and the glint from a pair of binoculars is clear enough, for even as I have remembered the location of this hut, so have they.

Satisfied, I begin to pick my way down. The boards are weathered grey and someone has left the door slightly ajar, but are there trip wires?

Feeling around it, I search. The latch is but a simple hook and eye. My fingers move up some more, reaching out a little now, for the roof’s low, but there’s still nothing. Have I been wrong about their having anticipated me and having been here recently? Have they not remembered that we also used this hut?

Below me, the gully opens in ledges of rock, spills of boulders, and clumps of brush. Sparrows and finches are after seeds. I walk away, find a boulder, heft it as a cricketer might, and toss it at that door, knowing there won’t be time to duck, but nothing happens.

With the muzzle of the Schmeisser, I ease it open since I need to get in there, to remember how it was. The table’s still here-there’s a ruin of splintered chairs. Bullet holes are everywhere, the one little window completely obliterated, but as if God had willed it, the soot-clouded glass of the lantern is perfect even though glass was really what it was all about on that first night we met here. Broken glass, and Schiller will know this.

Paul Tessier lovingly held one of the time pencils. That badly disfigured face paused to search out each of us. ‘You crush the right colour, eh? It releases the measured amount of fulminate of mercury, which begins to eat its way through the wire. Thin for a fast delay; thick for a slow one, and very thick for much longer.’

About one-third of the time pencil was colour-coded. Tiny phials of fulminate-the acid-encircled the wire whose thickness varied with the colour and its length. ‘Red means a delay of four-and-a-half hours. Violet …’ He traced the length of the stem. ‘Violet, mes amis , gives one of five-and-a-half days. Orange, yellow, green, and blue provide delays that are in between, so you squeeze the woman of your choice, break the cherry, let the acid flood out to contact the wire, and voilà! it eats its way through. The striker pin is then released and the detonator struck.’

I ignored the chauvinistic inference. No one stirred. There was not a murmur. All eyes were riveted to those hands until a finger was held up. ‘But beware,’ he said. ‘These things are sensitive to heat and sudden shock. The glass is so thin you could easily kill yourselves, so I’m recommending you carry them like this.’

He took off his beret and shoved the time pencil between the Croix de Guerre and the material beneath it. ‘Mind you don’t become too hotheaded, though. Heat speeds up the rate of reaction.’

‘Aren’t there shorter delays?’ asked one of the railwaymen from Melun.

Paul was all gestures. ‘We’ll get them next time perhaps.’***

‘And the “plastic,”’ asked another.

Tessier was firm with us. ‘For now, it’s the Nobel 808 and a much stronger stench of bitter almond, so don’t breathe in the fumes too long or your head will split.’

The map was unrolled. Roads, towns, villages became clear in miniature. The Forest of Fontainebleau was like a green stain. Railways were simple lines of black with tiny crossing lines spaced at regular intervals. Two for a single; four for a double.

‘The line from Paris,’ said Nicki. ‘London wants us to hit it close to the city where it will hurt the most.’ He was now totally committed to the offensive. What fools we were. Every person who was in this hut that night is dead except for myself.

London would only have shrugged at the loss, or shaken their heads and said, ‘What a pity.’

More likely, still, they would have blamed our lack of security, not realizing that we took what precautions we could.

‘Villeneuve-Saint-Georges,’ said the taller of the two railwaymen. ‘The Port Courcel and the bridge, the roundhouse and the marshalling yards along the river.’

These were just downstream of the town, but it was the little guy who objected. ‘That bridge is so heavily guarded they open up if you fart ten kilometres from it.’

‘So fart then. We simply shoot them,’ said the bigger one.

It was Tommy who reminded them, ‘The whole idea is to do the job in secret and get away, that’s why the time pencils. We let the sabotage happen when they least expect it.’