Under Dark Skies Chapter 2

Part 2 (Part 1 can be found here)

British Expeditionary Force
Saturday, May 11th, 1940
Rouvres, Thionville

             Bill lay on his bunk for the better part of an hour. He should have fallen back asleep, but his mind was racing. He finally got up quietly, dressed and went by the mess which had breakfast underway. One of the cooks made him a quick plate of eggs and bacon and he ate it alone in the dark tent with a hot cup of tea.

The bike shed loomed grey out of the pre-sunrise mist. A quick wipe down of the dew and the Norton he’d been on yesterday cleaned up well. The military blue paint was in good shape, only the stenciled registration and British Expeditionary Force markings gave it away as a military bike. Bill spent a few minutes with a brush and painted over the white stenciled paint. It wouldn’t hold up to scrutiny, but from a distance it was just another old Norton.

By the time the sun rose, the squadron was in top gear. Temporary structures where being broken down and packed into a convoy of lorries that had shown up from Reims. The squadron had passed through there on their way to Rouvres and were currently the most easterly operational allied airfield closest to the German border. Behind the incredible fortifications the French had built along the Maginot Line, they were safe from ground attack, but Seventy-Three’s forward location had already taken a hammering as the wrecks of two German bombers and three Hurricanes in the surrounding fields attested. With their location known, today was likely to see a never-ending stream of German bombers, it was time to move.

Still early morning air was broken by the bellow of a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine as a Hurricane readied for takeoff. They used to wait and take off as a wing, but things had become frantic in the past two days and getting planes up now happened on a case-by-case basis. They formed up once airborne. This Hurricane looked in good shape. The twin bladed prop spun up, sending a wash of air rippling across the wet grass. The plane spun to its right with surprising agility and began picking up speed. In moments it pulled cleanly into the morning air, its wheels folding up neatly. Another of the massive V-12 aero-engines barked to life, ready to follow their flight leader into another day of uncertainty in the sky.

The orders for the Reims move come in at 5am, but by then Bill had the van loaded with four Nortons along with his spares and tools. That left another six to get to Reims. A waved down MP returned with a list of six men who were available to pick up the remaining bikes and ride them to their new home. Bill fueled everything and looked them over, but they were ready for action.

“Corporal, I’m here to ride one of the motorbikes to Reims,” Jenkins, the new fellow from the guard hut appeared.

“Do you know the way?” Bill asked.

“I was told to follow the convoy,” Jenkins replied.

“They’ll be taking the main road, but there are some nice back roads that’ll get you there faster. I’ll make you a map,” which he did on the workbench.

“All the heavy gear will be on the A4 heading west,” Bill began, pointing to the map. “There are some good country roads north and it would be handy for me to hear if there is any traffic on them. We’re on the edge of the Ardennes here, so you get forested hills and valleys the further north you go. If you get lost just cut south until you hit the A4 and head west.”

Jenkins nodded and took the map.

“Do you have something for your head?” Bill asked. Most of the riders went out bare headed, but Bill found he could ride longer if he wore one of the leather aviator caps and goggles.

Jenkins shook his head.

“Look in the bucket over there.”

Jenkins peered in and saw several well-worn pilot hats. Trying a couple on he found one that fit.

“Hang on to that, they do a good job of keeping your head warm.”

Jenkins took one last look at the map and then kicked a 16H over. It started after he tickled the carbs and gave it a second kick.

By 9am all the working planes were airborne and would land at the big base in Reims rather than return to their farmer’s field in Rouvres. The burnt hulk of one Hurricane was left behind, and another salvageable one was placed on a flatbed transport. Seventy-Three had spent their time in northern France moving about and had become dab hands at picking up and moving. This wasn’t even their first trip to Reims; the squadron had been based out of there twice already.

The experienced members of the squadron had the fresh faces working hard to remove any traces of their time in Rouvres. As the last heavy vehicles began to move into convoy, Bill started the Citroën TUB van and followed them to the now empty gate.

Loaded down with bikes and spares, the Citroën TUB was much more manageable, though it still felt odd sitting in a vehicle with no engine in front of you. Bill drove it off the field and onto the road, following the last of the convoy west. It was a partially overcast morning and cooler than the day before. He wound the window down to let some air through. He’d miss Rouvres, it was a lovely bit of France.

As the convoy moved through Étain, Bill took a right turn east toward the German border. The partial overcast meant a less clear view from people on high who might want to kill him, though being in a French civilian vehicle was the best protection of all. The road to Louis Jeannin’s shop on Rue de la République in Knutange was empty until he got closer to Thionville. French military vehicles were out in force, and the roads to the Maginot fort were busy. Bill took the less travelled country roads north and came into Knutange from the northeast. Rue de la République was the main thoroughfares and was easily found. The shop was also evident as there were a number of motorbikes parked out front, including a new Triumph Speed Twin.

Bill pulled the TUB up in front of the shop and stepped out. He was wearing regulation turtleneck and fatigue trousers, which were uniform but looked less like it as they had no insignia on them. His black hair was combed back and oiled. The shop was closed but the big door to their service area was ajar, and the sound of mechanical work emanated from within. Bill stuck his head in the open door and saw a middle-aged man disassembling the back end of what looked like a grand prix motorcycle.

“Excuse me,” Bill began. “Do you speak English?”

The man looked up. Bill recognized him from magazine articles, this was Louis Jeanin, the 1932 Grand Prix champion.

“I speak English,” he replied warily.

“I’ve been given orders to meet you today,” Bill replied.

“Ah, you are Corporal Morris?” he brightened.

Bill nodded and stepped through the door.

“I know of you. I read an article about you on the Scottish Six Days Trial. It was impressive that you medalled on such an old machine, and after riding it the length of Bretagne.”

“Thank you!” Bill blurted, feeling his colour rise. He’d caught all sorts of stick at home for taking a week off work to ride up to Scotland and attempt the event but having a grand prix racer compliment you on it made it all go away.

“Your Miss Downey is a very convincing woman. She is also well funded,” Jeanin stood up and wiped his hands on a rag.

“I’m sorry Monsieur Jeanin, well funded?”

“She said you’d be along today and that I should provide you with a civilian moto. They wired cash. I think we have just what you need.”

“I’m getting a motorbike?” Bill asked, struggling to catch up.

“Oui!” Jeanin smiled. “Downey said for you to leave whatever you can’t fit behind. We’ll find a use for it.”

Jeanin was getting on in age but was still fit.  He stepped to the back of the shop floor and rolled a new Triumph Tiger out from behind a storage rack, it had obviously been fettled. The stock fenders had been cut short and the bike looked like it had been prepared for a trial with all the heavy stock bits either gone or replaced by something simpler and lighter. The gleaming silver paint Bill had seen on these new models in magazines was gone, replaced by a dull grey, though even that minimalist paint couldn’t hide the purposeful stance of the thing. It was called a T100 because it could do 100mph. All Bill could think of was how jealous his sister would be when he sent her a photograph.

“You’ve prepared this for racing?” Bill asked, excitement slipping into his voice.

“Oui!” Louis laughed. “These Tigres are quick, but now it is plus rapide, eh? We have taken cinq kilos of weight from it, and the engine has higher compression pistons. Do you use the essence d'aviation?”

Bill gave him a quizzical look.

“The, um, petrol for the aeroplanes?”

“Ah, oui!”

“Tres bien! This will use it well. I had it well beyond cent huit kilomètres par heure, um, one-hundred and eighty K.P.H.”

Bill’s eyebrows shot up. He’d never been that fast on a bike before.

“You should take it out for a ride,” Louis had a gleam in his eye as he gestured for Bill to take the Tiger in hand.

The bike was shockingly lighter than the old Norton, which itself was based on a twenty-year-old design. This Tiger was new in every way and it managed to look both simpler and more complex all at once; it was like looking into the future.

Bill rolled it to the entrance as Louis pushed the door wider.

“It has racing fuel in it, but that will be similar to your aviation petrol, yes?”

“I think so, yes,” Bill replied, throwing a leg over the machine. “Any trick to starting it?”

“Non, it is a unité fiable, um, dependable moto. Tickle the carb, choke, and kick.”

The Tiger barked to life immediately. These were not stock pipes and while it was quiet at idle, when he cracked the throttle, the big twin blew dust back into the shop.

“Fantastique!” Bill shouted over the engine. Louis gave him a thumbs up and ushered him out onto the road.

“The road to Fontoy and back is a bien, return and we shall have café!”

Bill kicked the bike into gear and let the clutch out slowly. The Tiger was remarkably tractable considering how high strung it sounded. He rolled through town keeping the revs low. The road northwest out of the village followed a small river as it twisted and turned through the valley it had cut. Once clear of the houses, Bill opened it up and in a blur of curves suddenly found himself four miles up the road in Fontoy, grinning like an idiot. Standing up on the pegs he turned across the empty road and thundered back to Knutange, crouched low behind a smaller custom headlamp with a blackout grill over it. The grey Tiger rolled to a stop in front of the shop.

“What a thing!” Bill exclaimed breathlessly as he cut the ignition.

“I am happy to help the cause,” Louis said, handing Bill a mug of strong coffee.

Bill glanced up and down the empty main street.

“Is it usually this quiet on a Saturday?”

“Ah, non, the people are worried and staying in their homes. Something wicked this way comes, eh?”

Bill nodded through the steam of the hot coffee. Both men sipped their coffee quietly on the empty street, wondering about what was to come. The Tiger ticking and popping as it cooled down.

Louis finally broke the silence, “I have some équipement pour vous.”

“Right,” Bill replied, pulling the bike up onto its stand and finally stepping off it. “Lead on!”

Louis had collected oil, a tire patch kit, inner tubes, tires and a toolbox together in a pile inside the door. It was all new and still packaged. Bill gave him a questioning look.

“Dans la prix… in the price, I thought you might need some spares.”

“Thank you, Louis,” Bill replied, grinning. It all looked like stuff he sold out of the shop anyway, but it’d be handy to have.

Bill opened the back of the TUB and Louis saw the old Nortons packed in there.

“Ah, bien! The 16H, spécification militaire! A dependable old hack,” he looked them over. “Considering current events, perhaps the one without RAF markings would be the one to leave behind?”

Bill’s go-to all-blue Norton was the last one he’d wheeled in, so getting it out was easy. He had a pang of regret, but the lusty Tiger sitting on the pavement made it easy to get over. With a bit of wiggling, the nameless Norton was rolled out of the back of the van and into the shop.

“This has been a dependable bike,” he said, giving it a pat.

“I imagine one of my mechanics will be happy to have it,” Louis smiled, looking it over. “Do you maintain them toi même, um, yourself?”

“Always have,” Bill replied.

“Oui,” Louis replied, “the Scottish Six Day story Downey shares tells the story of your riding over two thousand kilometres in ten days and medalling too!  In French we say, indomptable.”

Bill smiled, “indomitable! I like that!”

They wheeled the Tiger into the van and Louis invited Bill back to the office. Rows of trophies lined the wall. The 1932 grand prix championship had a place of honour. Bill looked closely at it.

“That was an indomptable year for me,” Louis smiled, tapping the trophy.

“I read about it in Motorcycling, the British magazine. Your Jonghi was a French bike, wasn’t it?”

“Oui,” Louis smiled wistfully. “We were not a big factory, but it was a tres belle machine.”

A young mechanic’s apprentice appeared in the doorway with a basket.

“Please eat with me,” Louis gestured to the office desk.

Bill sat down and talked bikes with the former grand prix champion. Working for Downey had its perks. He got a few questions in about riding the grand prix circuit on the continent, but Jeanine had a fixation about the Scottish Six Days and wanted all the details from Bill’s brief time in the highlands.

 

By early afternoon Bill was heading east towards Reims amongst a lot of military traffic. It was then that he discovered just how useful his new identification card was. Driving a civilian vehicle, it didn’t take long for an angry MP to wave him over. He was British Expeditionary Force army and surprisingly officious for an Australian. When he demanded to know why Bill wasn’t giving right of way to the military traffic Bill was tempted to pretend to be French but thought better of it when he couldn’t think of any French words. Instead, he handed the irate, red-faced Aussie his ID without saying anything.

The MP’s face drained as he looked the card.

“Right, Corporal. Sorry to bother, the unmarked civi-vehicle and all...” he trailed off, handing back the card. Suddenly Bill was on his way again.

The BEF shared the Reims Aerodrome with the French Air Force, and it wasn’t really in Reims, but north of the ancient cathedral city in Bétheny. The roads south into Reims were a zoo. Bill knew the logistics types would have everyone on the shortest route on the biggest roads, so he turned north at Sainte-Menehould onto empty country tracks. His farm van was invisible in this environment, the perfect camouflage. French farming villages came and went until he got to Savigny-sur-Aisne where a just crashed Dornier 17 was burning in a field. Bill pulled the van to the verge and shut it off.

He’d seen his share of crashes in the on again off again aerial battles of the early spring. There were seldom survivors, but if the plane wasn’t engulfed in flames, it might provide some valuable information. This Do17 had its wings shot off. Dorniers had wing fuel tanks that seldom let them down, and this one’s missing wings meant the fuel wasn’t where the fuselage came down.

Bill approached the wreck cautiously. It had a long, thin fuselage designed for speed more than raw carrying capacity and was remarkably intact considering how it had come down. The glass nose was cracked and broken open, so Bill had a look inside. It was a horrific mess, with blood everywhere. The impact must have meant instantaneous death for the crew.

Moving the forward gunner’s torso to the side, Bill climbed into the smoking ruin. The pilot was above, still strapped into his seat, though his head hung at a terrible angle. Bill moved quickly, trying to breathe through his mouth. The cockpit reeked of charred flesh and blood, and thin smoke filled the cabin. Climbing up to the pilot he rummaged through his flight suit and found a notepad with handwritten scrawl in German. Pocketing that, Bill moved over to the FuG radio set, which had come clear of the fuselage where it was mounted. He was able to lift it, so he heaved it up to the broken nose and dropped it out into the farm field.

While down in the nose he had a look around the bombardier’s station and found another notepad along with a targeting map on it. That would be useful – Grimes always sparked up when he was able to bring them evidence of how the Germans were seeing allied troop movements.

The bombardier also had a strange bit of personal kit on him. Most of the bomber crews didn’t carry personal firearms, but he had a Luger in a holster. It wasn’t a new model though, and it had German naval insignia on it. Bill unclipped the holster and took the gun. Smoke was starting to fill the cabin, so he clambered back out of the wreck and picked up the radio laying in the mud, it was heavy but manageable. One of the benefits of working in coal delivery before the war was that Bill had physical strength most people couldn’t imagine.

With the radio on the passenger seat and the documents stuffed underneath so they wouldn’t blow away, Bill fired up the Citroën and made a note of the Dornier’s location before pressing on. It was another twenty miles going the north route, but as he pulled into the Reim’s-Champagne Aerodrome in late afternoon he discovered that even with his side trip to see Louis, he’d still arrived ahead of most of Seventy-Three’s heavy gear.

Showing his papers at the gate to a jumpy French MP, Bill was told to park at the north end of the airfield where the RAF Advanced Striking Force squadrons were operating. Seventy-Three was joining One squadron and Bill noticed Hurricanes from the Five-Oh-One as well. Having lost several planes the day before, seventy-three was re-kitting its remaining planes and bringing new ones up to operation in the late afternoon sun, though they were having to rely on other squadron’s ground crews to help them get sorted.

The Advanced Air Striking Force was spread across northern France, but they had a big station in Reims. Seventy-three had passed through here before moving out to Rouvres, so Bill was familiar with the place, though last time he was here he was driving fuel bowsers rather than a Citroën full of motorbikes.

Flight Sergeant Grimes would have set up a temporary office in one of the storage hangars, and Bill found him in the middle of doing exactly that.

“Beat the slow movers back, eh Morris?” he said, eying the beaten-up radio at Bill’s feet. “Bag yourself some German electronics, did you?”

“Yes Flight, there is a Dornier down southeast of the D21/31 intersection in Sainte-Marie, visible from the road. I got there right after it came down and was able to get some useful bits out of it.”

Bill put the radio down on a chair, removing the maps and notepads from his trouser pockets before handing them to Grimes who opened them up and began reading the German.

“Very good corporal! This isn’t just information on their last mission, but everything they’ve flown in the past week. These’ll find their way up to command right quick,” Grimes then unfolded the maps and looked them over. “They were targeting the main roads between forts on the Maginot Line, that’s interesting. I know people who will want to see these too. What do you think about the radio?”

Bill looked at the unit. Considering the shock of the impact it was in surprisingly intact, “If we can get it going it might be handy to listen to what German bombers are saying to each other.”

“Indeed. Run that over to the repair bench and see if they can sort it out,” Grimes turned back to the maps, so Bill picked up the radio and walked it over to a workbench in the same hangar where a couple of airmen in overalls were working on a machine gun assembly.

“Hey boys,” Bill said, putting the radio on the bench. “Fancy a change in work for a bit?”

“’Ello,” the older man replied, looking at the radio with interest. “Where’d you get that?”

“Out of a Dornier that came down about 20 miles west of here. I’m Corporal Morris,” Bill offered a hand, and both men quickly wiped theirs before shaking.

“’Oim Riggles ‘n ‘ees Dumfry,” the older fellow said, but both only had eyes for the radio.

“Nice to meet you Riggles and Dumfry, think you can get this thing chattering again? Might be interesting to hear what the Germans were saying.”

Both men’s eyes lit up and they immediately went to work. The radio was steel framed in an aluminum box. The cover was dented but intact. Riggles flipped the unit on its side revealing flat bolts on the bottom. In seconds, the cover was off revealing neat wiring.

“There’s the power in,” Riggles muttered, nudging a bunch of cords that came out of an opening at the back of the unit. He quickly traced the wiring and discovered one of the grounds had been broken where it bolted to the unit frame. “Let’s try and hook it up to a battery and see what happens. They’re direct current, like ours.”

Dumfry left and returned wheeling a cart with a big lead acid battery on it, the top still wet from being refilled. He sparked the two ends together and then handed Riggles the positive before clipping the ground to the large black wire. A similarly thick white wire was separated and clipped to the power, the moment it did the radio lit up and all three men grinned.

“We’ve got a loudspeaker, hang on!” Dumfry turned and darted out of view, returning with a gutted RCA radio with wires hanging out of it.

“Wish we ‘ad the headset,” Riggles said, eying the input jack.

“I might!” Bill replied, turning on his heel and running out of the hangar. He returned moments later with the bloody headset. “It was smashed in the crash but was still attached to the radio, so I just grabbed it all.”

Dumfry looked at the mangled headset with a green face.

“You just need the plug, though, right?” Bill asked, holding up the end.

Dumfry nodded and removed the end by cutting the wire with a knife. He split the insulation and separated the wires inside. In moments he had them connected to the speaker in the civilian radio. The sound of static filled the room.

“We’re in business!” Bill laughed, patting Dumfry on the back.

“Let’s see who’s chatting,” Riggles began moving the knobs.

German voices emerged through the crackling static.

“Keep listening, boys. If you hear any place names make a note!” Bill turned and pelted across the hanger to find Grimes.

“Flight! You’re going to want to hear this,” Bill said, interrupting a phone call.

Grimes signed off immediately and followed him back. Dumfry held up a scrawled and oily piece of paper with ‘Verdun and Metz’ written on it. The staticky, distant German voices had been cleared up a bit as Riggles continued to fiddle with the unit. Bill didn’t say anything but turned to look at Grimes.  After listening for a moment, the Flight Sergeant nodded abruptly.

“Outstanding work, gentlemen!” He paused to listen for a moment. “These are Dorniers currently over northwestern France. They’re not being very coy; they believe their radios to be secure. I’ve got to get people in on this right quick, we don’t know how long this will work.”

Within ten minutes half a dozen people had arrived in the hangar, bringing with them folding camp seats and clipboards, pencils and paper. Two of them were in French uniform. They quickly set up, taking the greasy note from Dumfry and began making notes of their own. Grimes waved the three over to the entrance away from the hive of activity.

“I imagine they’ll change their frequencies when these missions are over, but perhaps not. In the meantime, we need to keep that radio chattering. What do you need to do that?”

Bill looked to Riggles, who was already working it out.

“If I kept the battery charged from the mains, it would it all running, Flight,” he replied. “Other than that, we just need to make sure it isn’t leaking too much and stays topped up with water.”

“Right, see to it airman!” Grimes replied. “And excellent work. Let me know your immediate superior and I’ll put in a good word for you.”

Bill followed Grimes out of the hangar where the shadows were growing long. The airfield was buzzing with returning allied planes, some of them trailing smoke. Seventy-three’s crews were finally arriving and had started pitching up in the empty fields behind the permanent buildings.

“I’m not sure how you keep managing to bring this sort of information in, but keep doing it, Corporal,” Grimes said. “Get yourself squared away in one of the temporary hangars and then hit the canteen, you’ve had a busy day.”

 

Returning to Reims meant access to the standing mess hall which was always in full production. The room wasn’t busy as most of the RAF crews were working into the evening getting their planes sorted out and food had been run out to them. Bill was sitting at a table alone, working his way through a pile of mash with a tiny pork chop on the side when he was surprised to see a dashing, middle aged man walk into the mess wearing an SS uniform. The man had a bemused look on his face as he looked at the half empty room of exhausted airmen staring at him in enemy uniform.

“Hello gentlemen!” he said loudly with a Scottish brogue. “Sorry for the attire, my uniform got blood on it.”

A few of the men smiled, but most still looked confused.

“Go back to your pork chops, gentlemen. I’m with the DMI. I was never here.”

With a gallic shrug, everyone went back to eating their dinner. A Scottish SS officer walking into the mess wasn’t the strangest thing many of them had seen in the past couple of days. He collected a tray from the empty counter and made a beeline for Bill.

“Corporal Morris?” the man asked as he approached. “Mind if I join you?”

“Certainly, Gruppenführer,” Bill said, pointing to the seat across from him with his fork.

“How does an RAF lorry driver know SS ranks?” the man asked, sitting across from Bill and placing his peaked SS cap on the table before tucking in.

“Probably the same way you’re wearing an SS uniform,” Bill replied.

“How’s that?”

“I ran into some SS fellows yesterday, so I made a point of looking up who’s what. The fellow running things yesterday at the Luxembourg border was a Hauptsturmführer, but I didn’t know the badges then.”

“That’s why I’m here, actually.”

Bill put his fork of pork down and sat back. His intuition was prickling. Fellows like this were good at getting other people killed. The man took a mouthful of mashed potatoes and made a face.

“We’re not going to win a war feeding people this!”

Bill waited, watching the man with mounting suspicion.

“We have a little job to do and I’m hoping you can help.”

“Is it voluntary?”

“What is these days, eh?” the man smiled, cutting off a piece of stringy pork.

“What’s the little job?”

“Ah, that’s the trick. I can’t tell you unless you’re in. I was having lunch with Miss Downey in Paris when your name came up, so here I am.”

“It’s starting to sound more like a command,” Bill said, finally shovelling the pork into his face.

“Right, that’s the spirit!” The man grinned, sitting back, and pushing the tray away.

“We’ve gotten our hands on a German communique. It has the schedule of a major fuel shipment by train into Belgium. Do you know Fort Eben-Emael?”

“Isn’t that up near the Dutch?”

“Indeed, it is. The Nazis have taken it with paratroopers, so their mechanized ground troops are moving quickly into Belgium. They need fuel to do this. The rail line from Cologne to Maastricht in the Netherlands is how they’re going to, and tonight is when it happens. There is only one operating rail bridge over the Meusse River into Belgium from The Netherlands. I intend to blow it up.”

“It’s a long way into Belgium.”

“I’ve got Belgians at the border ready to assist. If we left by ten and take a northern route through Namur, we could be in Bassenge well before sunrise. We then pop over to the river, blow the bridge and get out before anyone knows we were there.”

“Couldn’t we just bomb it?”

“Germans have piled up anti-aircraft defences around it, but they’ll be looking up instead of sideways. In any case, our bombs don’t find their targets very often.”

Bill considered the energy this man was putting into convincing him. His crazy idea was sounding plausible, which made it even more crazy.

“Why do you need an RAF lorry driver? Bill asked.

“Ah, but you’re not just a lorry driver, are you?” the man had an infectious smile. “It’s your other talents that might come in handy. Have you ever ridden a BMW?”

“They don’t come my way very often,” Bill said, an involuntary grin creeping onto his face.

“We’ve gotten our hands on some Nazi kit. I’ve selected a driver for our staff car, along with another couple of handy fellows who are fluent in German to sit in it with me, but the motorbike is sitting empty. We were going to leave it behind, but Miss Downey suggested you might be up for it. I can’t honestly order you to do something like this. It works better with volunteers in any case. Are you up for it, corporal?”

“Yes, sir.  I am.” Bill paused, the man still hadn’t given his name or rank. “Are you a sir?”

“Let’s not worry about all that rank malarkey,” he smiled. “Just call me Biffy for now. Once we’ve gotten everyone assembled and dressed up, we’ll work out German names on our way north. Do you Sprichst du Deutsch?”

“Only enough to get shot at,” Bill replied.

“If you’re an enlisted escort you won’t be doing much talking. I’ll have one of the fellows teach you some basic phrases. Are you about done with that lovely dinner?”

Bill nodded, and both men stood up. Every eye in the place was on them.

“You’re making lots of friends with that uniform,” Bill noted.

“Thought it might pique your interest,” Biffy replied, putting on his officers’ hat. “Never hurts for the men to know we’re playing every angle to win this thing though.”

Bill shrugged and followed the SS officer out of the mess. A Rolls Royce was parked out front and the driver, seeing them appear, ran around to open the door for them to get in.

“Do I need to get any kit?” Bill asked, hesitating before stepping into the car.

“All will be provided! You’ll not need any RAF issue on this trip.”

The inside of the car was opulent. Bill felt a bit filthy sitting in it but tried to lean back and relax. The driver ran around to the driver’s door and jumped in. He handed Biffy some scrawled notes on office paper. The bottom paper was typed and had ‘eyes only’ stamped on it in red ink.

Biffy glanced up from the papers, “do you know MI6?”

“Military intelligence?” Bill guessed.

“Indeed,” Biffy replied. “We usually focus on gathering intelligence, but we sometimes act on it. You boys are busy dealing with Hitler’s blitzkrieg, so we thought we’d hop in and give you a hand. If we can stop this fuel shipment it means our pilots see a lot less of their pilots in the sky for the next few days.”

“How do we get from France to the Dutch border in German vehicles?” Bill asked when Biffy finally put down the notes. The Rolls Royce was making quick time on dark French country roads heading due north toward the Belgian border.

“The French and Belgians are helping with that. Here’s our stop.”

The Rolls pulled up into a field on the side of the road. In the shadow of the trees that lined the side a heavy lorry was parked. A big Mercedes Benz staff car with German military markings was parked behind the lorry, and next to that the motorbike.

“Get familiar with that R12. Once everyone gets here, I’ll do introductions,” Biffy said before walking off to the front of the lorry.

The BMW was a big old thing. Throwing a leg over it, Bill was reminded of the Norton, but this machine was modern in ways the Norton couldn’t imagine. The first thing that struck Bill was the telescopic front forks. This thing would handle on rough ground, even though it did weigh a ton. Bill hopped off it and had a look at the back end. Heavy duty framing held panniers over the massive rear wheel. Compared to the kinds of motorcycles Bill was familiar with, this was more a bomber than a fighter.

The final bit of technical wizardry was to be found on the back wheel. The bike had no chain or belt drive, only an industrial looking closed unit, a shaft drive. Bill had read about them in trade publications but had never ridden one. They were sturdy things that made a bike heavier but more dependable. On the upside, the BMW was comfortable to sit on and looked like it would ride forever. He could see why the German military was full of them. He could also see why he would be able to stay well ahead of them, especially on that Tiger.

Bill threw a leg back over and pulled the bike forward off its stand. For something as heavy as it was it held its weight low making it easy to manage. The bizarre boxer engine layout meant a piston was poking out of each side of the bike in front of his shins. It really did feel like foreign technology unlike any he was familiar with.

“Can you manage it?” Biffy asked, appearing out of the dark.

“It’s bulky but it feels lighter than it should,” Bill replied.

“Take it for a spin around the field. Radio says we have about twenty minutes until our team gets here.”

Bill located the kickstart on the wrong side of the bike and stepped on it awkwardly with the wrong foot. The big motor fired immediately before dropping into a rocking idle where you could feel each cylinder pumping. He kicked it into gear and let out the clutch. The bike pulled away with ease. In moments Bill was standing on the pegs and weaving around the trees. Pulling it out onto the road he goosed it, causing a spray of gravel, and started kicking it up through the gears. The big twin handled astonishingly well, especially once it got going. He did a hundred- and eighty-degree turn, noting how much steering lock it offered, and then thumped back down the road to the lorry parked in the shadows.

“That’s managed,” Biffy laughed, as Bill slid to a stop in front of him. “I was worried the German technology would make it difficult to operate.”

“It’s not my kind of motorbike,” Bill said, killing the ignition. “But it’s interesting.”

At that moment, the dim, slitted lights of a military vehicle came into view.

“Here are our compatriots, time to get dressed!” Biffy waved Bill back to the lorry.

The approaching vehicle was a French officers’ saloon. It was painted grey with black military markings. Four men got out of it once it came to a stop in the field next to the lorry. One was in British army fatigues, the other three were wearing French uniforms. Biffy walked over and shook hands with all four. Bill put the BMW on its stand and joined them.

“… on our way shortly,” Biffy finish as he approached the group. “Gentlemen, this is Corporal Morris, but for the duration of the evening he is Scharführer Wilhelm Meyer. He’s handy on two wheels and will be operating our borrowed BMW. Bill, these gentlemen will all be wearing officer ranks and will do the talking. We’re pressed for time, so we’re going to get kitted up and make some miles.”

A red light was switched on in the back of the lorry and a variety of German uniforms could be seen hanging inside. Biffy jumped up into the vehicle and handed Bill an enlisted man’s SS uniform.

“Congratulations on the promotion,” he laughed.

Scharführer Meyer was a bigger man than Bill and the clothes were too large, but it was a cool night and Bill elected to put on the German kit over top of his RAF fatigues, which made the uniform a closer fit. The other men were busy changing into officer uniforms like Biffy’s.

“We want to make sure we’re up that way well before dawn, so have a coffee,” Biffy pointed to a carafe that had materialized next to the lorry in the dark. Mugs were passed around and everyone filled up. It was scalding and black, but bracing, though Bill found his adrenaline was doing an excellent job on its own. What was he doing here with these men?

“Gentlemen, we’ll make proper introductions later. As of now I’m Gruppenführer Schmidt. Pierre here speaks the best German, so he’s Hauptsturmführer Müller and will do most of the talking. You other two are more likely to kill people than start a conversation with them, so you’re both junior officers Wagner and Becker in the front of the car. The key to this is to look like we’re supposed to be doing what we’re doing, so look confident and do what you’re told. With any luck, we’ll be in and out without needing to chat with anyone.”

The German staff car had a retractable roof so the two killers, who certainly looked the part, were pulling it up against the cool night air. Bill had no such luck on the BMW, but with goggles, the big German helmet, and a scarf, he was well muffled for the long, dark ride ahead.

“Stay close, we’ll be moving quickly,” Biffy said, taking a last hit of coffee. “We have an escort to the border and then the Belgians will escort us north quickly and quietly. After we’ve done the business, we’ll be on our way back here for a late breakfast.

Part 3 can be found here.

Under Dark Skies Chapter 1

During COVID I wrote a novel to keep myself sane as the education system in Ontario unravelled. I'd wake up every morning at 4am and put a couple of hours in before getting the hope beaten out of me at school.

My escape was to imagine my granddad's time in France in 1940 as Nazis swept through all of the allied defences. He was still supporting his RAF squadron when Dunkirk happened and found himself still on the wrong side of the channel in the collapsing French republic six weeks later, looking for a way out.

This is a fictionalized account based on Bill's war record, with some Steve McQueen-esque motorcycling in there. Inglorious Basterds was another inspiration.

Author’s Note:

In 1939 and 1940 Britain and the Commonwealth sent hundreds of thousands of troops to France to help defend against an impending invasion. The Phoney War was what they called that first winter as Hitler and Nazi Germany looked east and north, invading Poland and Scandinavia, but on May 10^th, 1940 the Blitzkrieg tactics they’d honed over the winter were turned on Belgium, The Netherlands and France. All of allied mainland Europe was under Nazi control by the end of May.

The battles of the Low Countries and France are often seen as a national embarrassment and ignored historically. Under Dark Skies is a fictionalized account of these forgotten soldiers and civilians under the looming threat of Nazi control.

British Expeditionary Force
Friday, May 10th, 1940
France-Luxembourg Border

 

Bill kicked the too-blue RAF Norton into neutral and let his momentum carry him to the top of the hill, where he killed the engine and glided to a stop.

“You could do worse than France in the springtime,” he thought as he looked out over the recently turned fields, the odd tree poking through the golden morning mist.

He still felt like he was getting away with something every time he left the busy airfield to go on these rides, but the higher ups found value in them or wouldn’t have encouraged it. The new uniform with its stiff new corporal stripes still felt too big and Bill wasn’t comfortable with the boys he’d come over with, most of them newly minted adults, having to come to attention for him now.

He felt the need to squirm in the uniform again, but instead kicked the Norton over, grinning to himself as it started on the first kick. A handful of throttle and they were gone in a shower of gravel, following the winding road right up to the border. There were a couple of bottles of British beer in the saddlebags, the Luxembourg border guards at this post had a soft spot for English stouts. Intelligence gathering often looked a lot like hospitality.

Bill pulled the Norton up onto its stand in the clearing at the border and took the bottles carefully out of the saddle bag. The sun had broken the mist and it promised to be a beautiful spring day. Thomas and Gabriel stepped out of their guard hut, their crisp uniforms a bit crumpled after a cold night in the hut.

“Morning gentlemen,” Bill said, holding up the bag, “I bring gifts!”

“Is it stout?” Gabe asked excitedly, reaching for the bottles. His face broke into a wide smile as he held up one of the bottles for Thomas to see.

“Thank you, my friend!” Thomas grinned, shaking Bill’s hand enthusiastically.

Bill didn’t have much of an ear for languages, and both men’s accented English sounded French to him, but others had told him there is a distinctness to Luxembourg French that Bill’s Norfolk County ears couldn’t hear. He shook off his dewy topcoat and lay it over the saddle. Thomas had turned back to the hut carrying the clinking bottles. The smell of eggs and bacon wafted out of the doorway.

“Come, William! We have fresh eggs this morning!”

Twenty minutes later the three of them were standing around the motorcycle with mostly empty plates. Bill had been explaining parts on the bike to them. Tom and Gabe, both of whom spoke a baffling number of languages compared to unilingual Bill, were focused on building their technical English vocabulary.

“Carburetor is similar to French carburateur and the Dutch is the same as English, but German and Luxembourgian use vergaser,” Thomas explained.

Bill liked their breakfasts. Tom was nineteen, same age as he was, and Gabe was the ‘old man’ at twenty-three. They’d managed to meet up at least once a week since he’d first met them on a ride in March. Bill was encouraged to document these meetings and collect intelligence on what was going on in Luxembourg, who were neutral in this war that wasn’t really happening. Bill, with his country accent and lack of guile, was the perfect intelligence operative. The fact that he enjoyed the job, and it got him out of a lot of heavy lifting while refueling Hurricanes was besides the point.

“Do you ride bikes as part of your job?” Bill asked around the last of his eggs.

“Yah,” Gabe replied around his bacon, “but we always seem to get the car. Probably because we’re furthest from the depot.”

“I prefer motorbikes to cars,” Bill said, patting the Norton’s tank, “much more exciting!”

Gabe laughed as he collected the metal camp plates and returned them to the hut. Thomas was crouching down looking at the Norton’s single cylinder engine.

“Zis is a four-hundred, um, verplaatsing?”

“Don’t know verplaatsing, mate.” Bill laughed.

Thomas’s face screwed up in concentration, “zee engine size is verplaatsing. Um, zee space in zee engine?”

“Displacement!” Bill laughed, “that’s what you call the space inside an engine, the displacement.”

“Dis-place-ment,” Thomas tried it out, “like the French, déplacement.”
“Right,” Bill grinned, this is almost thirty cubic inches in displacement.”
Thomas looked at him blankly, “cubic inches?”

“Ah, right, you’re metric. It’s four hundred and ninety cubic centimeters.”

“Is it fast?”

“Not as fast as it should be.”
“Why is that so?”

“It’s an old engine– side valve, and it’s a heavy old thing. My last bike at home was one hundred CCs smaller, made more power and weighed much less. This’ll still do sixty mile-an-hour though – that’s one hundred kilometres per hour… if you duck down.”

“Wat ass e Side Ventil?” Thomas asked Gabe who had returned from cleaning up.

“In English, it is side-valve. The valves are mounted on the side rather than the top. William is correct, this is an old engine design,” Gabe replied, looking at the motor with interest.

Bill leaned down and tickled the carb, and a bit of fuel dripped down, “Want to give it a go?”

Thomas glanced at Gabe, his eyes widening, “Yah!”

“Hop on,” Bill laughed, pulling the bike forward off its stand.

Thomas threw a leg over the Norton. “My first English bike ride!” he grinned.

Tom looked like he knew what he was doing and had already pulled the kick start out with his foot, he had obviously ridden before.

“What do you usually ride?” Bill asked, stepping back as Thomas prepared to kick it over.

“There are Motobécane, um, side-car? That we ride.” Gabe replied, eying Thomas with some jealousy as he stepped on the kick starter. The Norton thumped to life first kick.

Thomas kicked it into gear before easing away. He rode past the guard hut into Luxembourg, which Bill supposed might have caused problems had he been the one riding it. In a moment he disappeared around a bend up the road.

“He knows how to ride a bike,” Bill said to Gabe.

“I hope he doesn’t go far,” Gabe replied with a wrinkled brow. “Riding around Luxembourg on a Royal Air Force motorbike will get him in trouble.”

“As long as he brings it back, no worries!” Bill laughed.

Thomas came back about ten minutes later. As he pulled the bike up onto its stand, he tried to straighten his unruly blond hair.

“That is an interesting motorbike!”

“Back home they call it ‘the poor man’s Norton’,” Bill replied, “it’s old but easy to work on and dependable, but not very exciting.”

“What is the exciting English motorbike?” Thomas asked.

“My sister got a Triumph Speed Twin last year,” Bill replied, seeing the shiny silver bike in his mind’s eye. “That’s an exciting motorbike! Much lighter, twice the power.”

“My cousin in Germany has a BMW R17,” Thomas replied, “a very exciting motorcycle!”

“Flat twin engine?” Bill asked?

“Yah, very fast. We did one hundred kilometres per hour with two!”

“That’s amazing!” Bill replied. “I’ve never heard of a bike that can do that!”

“Yah, but he won’t let me drive it,” Thomas’s face fell, then brightened. “This one is better because you did!”

A deep hum began to fill the air, seeming to come up through the grass they were standing on. Instinctively, the three looked up.

Bill’s skin was prickling. He knew from briefings that things had been heating up. In the past couple of weeks, the hangar had been kept busy repairing several hit and runs. This hum felt different though, bigger. The three men kept scanning the broken clouds above until Gabe yelped and pointed. From the still rising sun in the east, glimmers from a large formation, very high up.

“That’s not good,” Bill muttered, reaching for his long coat.

“They are flying over Luxembourg!” Gabe said under his breath. “They never fly over Luxembourg…”

“You boys look after yourself,” Bill said, pulling on the leather gloves he’d been given by one of the pilots. “It looks like things are about to get messy.”

“Yah, messy,” Thomas said absently, the colour draining from his face.

Bill kicked the bike over and gunned the motor before spinning the bike in a perfect arc on the damp grass. Thomas’s eyebrows shot up.

“I hope we get a chance to meet again,” Bill gave them both a tight-lipped smile before he shot off down the road, past the unmanned French border station. Someone might want to look into that.

“Rufft dëst un,” Gabriel said to Thomas, bringing the barrier down across the road. Thomas stepped into the guard hut and reached for the telephone.

The ride back to Rouvres was the opposite of the cool, calm ride to the border. Bill didn’t hang about and had the Norton doing things that would have given its designers hysterics. He kept half an eye on the bomber formation, now well south and west of him. Best guess was they were headed to the big aerodrome in Reims. Seventy-Three Squadron was supposed to be moving back there to shorten supply lines, but they had been delayed by a lack of lorries to move the heavy equipment. Perhaps this was their lucky day, being a small Hurricane fighter squadron parked in a farmer’s field meant they weren’t on anyone’s to-do list.

The Norton didn’t miss a beat all the way back which Bill found very satisfying as it had been a right pain in the ass before he rebuilt the carb. He normally waved to the guard as he pulled in, but had to stop because the gate was down.

“Corporal,” Sergeant Mills said, checking his name off a list. “Flight Grimes wants to see you in the tower.”

“Right-oh sergeant,” Bill nodded, kicking the bike into gear and ducking under the gate as it was being lifted.

He leaned the Norton up against the side of the tower and walked hurriedly around to the door. The Flight Sergeant frowned on running, he said it looked panicky rather than efficient, so Bill walked quickly, as did everyone else within sight of the senior NCO. The office was in chaos. Radios were chirping and the telephone was ringing, and while no one was running, it was clear that panic was setting in. Grimes saw Bill’s sweaty face in the doorway and waved him over.

“What do you know, Corporal?”

“I was at the Luxembourg border on the D59 talking to my contacts when we noted a large bomber formation at high altitude. Couldn’t determine plane type, but I counted over forty in the formation. First visual contact was at oh-eight-ten, coming from the east over Luxembourg, which the guard said hasn’t happened before. The formation made a turn south, I think they’re aiming at Reims, Flight.”

“They’ve hit Reims. Everything we have is scrambled and we’re mobilizing. Find a local farmer with something you can load up your bike kit into and commandeer it. Get back here and be ready to move. I have a feeling we aren’t staying in Rouves. Any other news?”

“Luxembourg has closed their border; I didn’t see any of the unusual traffic on the roads.”

“Carry on,” Grimes turned away to deal with three others waiting to speak to him.

Bill stepped back out into the morning sun, a bead of sweat hanging from the tip of his nose. In the back of his mind, he was already working through a list of vehicles he’d seen that might work for carrying their little motorcycle collection. Going to French authorities was pointless and would only result in an argument and insults, but many of the local farmers had recently moved away from horses, and he knew of at least two who spoke English and might be willing to make a swap.

Jean Audun rode a beautiful Peugeot P515 that Bill had stopped to admire on more than one occasion, and his farm was only twenty minutes away. Bill jumped back onto the still hot Norton and bounced over the empty airfield towards the main gate; all the Hurricanes were up, the only planes left on the ground were unairworthy.

Sergeant Mills waggled the phone he was talking on at Bill and waved him through. The roads remained strangely empty as Bill quickly made his way into the village of Étain just south of the base. A hive of activity on most weekday mornings, Étain was a ghost town this morning. Bill quietly thumped past shuttered windows and turned south toward La Vignette before taking a right onto the dirt track that led to Jean’s farm. Down the hill with the Orne River in the background, Bill thought the farm looked like a postcard, even more so today with the last of the fog lifting from the river.

Jean stepped out of his doorway as Bill pulled up and killed the ignition, he looked tense. The two men had first met when Jean had ridden by the base on his lovely Peugeot, which had prompted Bill, who had been chatting with the guard on duty, to give chase. Jean had retired into farming, but in a previous life he’d worked in the French Foreign Service and could speak English fluently.

“Bonjour, Jean,” Bill said, stepping off the bike. “Have you heard?”

“Oui, Bill, Reims is burning from German bombs. It has begun, no?”

“The whole squadron’s up in the air. Never seen that before. I think you’re right; it’s kicked off.”

Jean nodded tersely and lifted his pipe. He was usually a mellow fellow, but this morning he looked like he’d slept on nails.

“What do you think will happen,” Jean finally asked through the cloud he’d just exhaled.

Bill had been told to be cautious when talking to civilians, but Jean was the kind of man you found yourself trusting. Maybe a trick from the diplomatic corps. In any case, things were about to become obvious to everyone and in the absence of direct orders Bill always preferred to tell the truth.

“I was up at the border this morning when I saw the bomber formations. They came in over Luxembourg, which they haven’t done before. You’re just behind the Maginot Line so you’ll be protected… but not from bombs, I suppose.”

Jean gave Bill a cynical look over his pipe. “Do you think the Maginot Line will hold?”

“I can’t see how the Germans could just walk through it, but it can’t do much about the aerial attacks.”

Jean nodded in resignation, “What can I help you with?”

“I’ve been tasked with finding civilian transportation, and I was hoping we might be able to come to an arrangement for one of your vehicles.”

“That’s not very reassuring,” Jean laughed, tapping out his pipe on the doorframe.

Bill smiled back tightly. “It isn’t for me either.”

Jean considered the request. “I don’t have enough petrol for the vehicles I do have. Could we arrange a trade? You fill up my tank, and I’ll give you my old TUB.”

            Jean had three of the Citroën utility vans for delivering produce locally. The TUB was a very strange bit of French engineering, like a cube on wheels, but Bill had seen them all over the area and knew them to be dependable.

“I’ll be back with a bowser if they give me the say so,” Bill held out his hand and Jean shook it.

Bill jumped back on the Norton and kicked it over.

“Thanks, Jean. I hope I can return the van when things settle down again.”

Jean smiled grimly and turned back into his house.

 

Bill was back at the airfield gate in less than twenty minutes. It was easy to make time on empty roads. Mills waved him through, and Bill left the Norton ticking hot against the side of the tower and went to find Grimes. Things hadn’t settled down since Bill’s last visit and everyone was moving in three directions at once.

“Morris?” Grimes waved him over. “What do you know?”

“Jean Audun in La Vignette has a French utility van he’s willing to trade for petrol. Do we have any, Flight?”

Grimes nodded. “We topped everything up from Reims last night. We can’t expect more fuel any time soon, but we’re brimmed and if we end up moving, we can’t take it all with us. Find a driver and get a bowser over to the big tank and fill up, how much do you need?”

“It’s a big tank, Flight, maybe a thousand gallons?”

“Fill a bowser and make the trade on my authority, off you go.” Grimes turned away.

Bill found Sheckles sitting in the mess drinking tea. He’d worked with Sheck on a number of fueling assignments before the motorbiking happened.

“Want to go for a drive?” Bill sat down across from him with his own brew.

“Are we driving back home?” Sheck asked hopefully, his youthful freckled face showing mock hope, the only kind available.

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Bill replied, sipping the hot tea. “Grimes asked me to do a fuel run to Jean Audun’s farm in La Vignette. It’s not far and I’ve got to drive one of those mad French cube vans he’s got back in exchange.”

Sheck gave him a shrewd look over the tea. “Why you picking up civilian vehicles?”

“Not enough room for the bikes on what we’ve got here, and everyone will be busying driving something else? Grimes doesn’t want to leave them behind? I dunno, why you asking me? I don’t make the decisions.”

“Fair enough. Finish the tea and go?”

“I’m not leaving the tea unfinished.”

 

It was getting on for lunch but they both grabbed a sandwich when they left the mess and were now munching on them as the fuel bowser filled up from the holding tank. The pump was loud, but returning Hurricanes made it impossible to talk, so the two kicked a deflated football back and forth and juggled lunch as the tank filled. They stopped to watch Hurricanes in various states of disrepair bounce down the grass runway. As the last of the squadron pulled up a hundred yards away and killed its Merlin engine, bird song returned to the field.

“I wonder how many we got,” Sheck said, eying the smoke rising from several of the planes.

Ground crews were on the wounded fighters, putting out fires. The undamaged planes were already refueling and rearming for an immediate return to murderous skies.

“More of them than us, I hope,” Bill replied around his sandwich. “Cobber ‘n Fanny’ll get their share.”

 “Cobber” Kain and “Fanny” Orton had both made ace already and had been featured in papers back home. The squadron was proud of both, and many of the enlisted men liked them because they weren’t career types with airs and graces; each had joined to fly. Both aces had picked up Bill’s motorbike training at Lieutenant Scoular’s urging and Cobber in particular had taken to it. He’d often sign out a Norton when given leave rather than taking a car.

            The fuel bowser’s wheels were pressing into the grass, a sure sign it was near full. Sheck hit the lever and stopped the pump. When he pulled the connector off both men could see petrol just below the filler.

“That’ll make Farmer Audun happy,” Bill said, peering into the tank.

“Let’s get it over to him,” Sheck replied, doing the cap up tight and stuffing his terrible football under the tank.

Sheck navigated the bowser across the still dewy grass toward the gate. The surviving Hurricanes were refueled and spinning up again, filling the air with Merlin thunder. There were gaps in the formation though. One wouldn’t start and another had bullet damage to its flight controls, making Bill wonder how the pilot had managed to land it in the first place.

Sheck pulled the lorry up to the gate and Mills gave him the eye.

“Where do ya think you’re going with that?”

“Wherever he tells me to go,” Sheck jerked a thumb at Bill.

“Sergeant, I’m bringing back a civilian utility vehicle as per Flight’s orders,” Bill leaned over to speak over Sheck. “Is there anything needs doing to it before I bring it on base?”

“Best we look it over to make sure it’s not got anything bomb-like on it,” Mills replied. “Off you go. Keep an eye on Sheck, he tends to wander.”

“Sar-junt!” Sheck replied with mock formality as he shifted the heavy bowser into gear and eased it into motion. Mills stepped back into the guard hut shaking his head.

Sheck made driving the heavily loaded bowser easy, but Bill knew otherwise. Improperly timed gear changes would shred the gearbox with a load like this, but Sheck got them moving through Étain and on to Jean’s farm without incident. The roads remained deserted and there was little farm activity happening, neither of which was typical.

“Pull up to the gate and let’s walk in to see how best to do this,” Bill said, opening the door.

Both men jumped out of the bowser and opened the gate. Jean was already walking up the pathway.

“Gentlemen,” he said, poker faced. “My tank is next to the barn, this way.”

Jean’s meticulously run farm had a dirt track that looped around his barn, allowing him to fill vehicles from raised fuel tank. It was an older but well-maintained system, and there was nothing about the road up to it that would pose a problem for the bowser, so Sheck went back to get it.

Jean pushed back one of the sliding doors on his barn, revealing his three parked utility vehicles.

“The Traction Utilitaire Basse is what I will trade for a full tank,” Jean said, pointing to the older of the three. You should be able to carry four bikes with spares in that.”

Bill eyed the thing with curiosity. It was bizarrely minimalist with no engine that he could see on the front. It looked like an upturned bathtub on wheels, which is where it got its nickname.

“Where’s the motor?” Bill asked looking around the van.

“At the front, under the floor.”

“Anything else I should know?”

“Be careful driving it empty, it’s a handful, but loaded it drives normally – and save some of your petrol for it, all three of these are empty. It has been sitting in here for a while so we might have to bump it. I’ll steer, you push it out to the front.”

Jean stepped up into the driver’s seat, leaving the door open, shifted into neutral and gave Bill a wave. It was remarkably light for its size and Bill was easily able to roll it down the incline out of the barn and into the late morning sun. The van was covered in a fine layer of dust from lack of fuel.

Sheck parked uphill from the tank and made quick work of running the hose into it. Fuel was rapidly filling the tank, filling the air with the tangy smell of petrol. While that was going on Bill and Jean looked over the TUB, Jean pointing out how to get to the motor and checking that it still cranked, which it did.

Within minutes the bowser had filled the ground tank but still had fuel in it.

“This has a vehicle filler on it,” Sheck shouted from the side of the barn. “Want to fill up the other vehicles? No point in taking it back half full.”

Jean looked at Bill and nodded vigorously. They pushed the TUB to the side of the barn as Sheck let the bowser roll backwards down the road until it poked into the courtyard. He then undid a smaller coiled hose and began filling the TUB. Bill helped Jean roll the other two empty vans out of the barn. After filling all three, Sheck tied the hoses up for the drive back.

“If I’m able, I’ll return this to you when we don’t need it anymore,” Bill said, patting the van.

“I hope so, but I fear I won’t be seeing you again any time soon,” Jean replied with gallic shrug.

Bill stepped into the bizarre French van and fired it up. Compared to the big diesel motors he’d been driving, the tiny petrol engine in the TUB barely made any noise and the transmission was silent. Bill followed Sheck up the hill but could only hear the heavy gears and motor of the bowser groaning up the incline. The TUB bounced about alarmingly, at one point feeling like it would tip over on the uneven ground, but once on the road it felt a bit more manageable. It was strange looking out the front and seeing no bonnet.

Up the road into Étain, Bill was starting to get a feel for driving the van but at the first corner he started to doubt the wisdom of the trade as the little van went up on two wheels and scared the daylights out of him.

“A handful when empty?” Bill muttered, “that’s some French understatement.”

By the time the two arrived back at the airfield gate Bill was sweaty and mildly terrified of the TUB. Mills waved Sheck through and then stepped up to the little van as Bill pulled up.

“What on earth is that?” he asked, eyeing the alien looking thing.

“The most terrifying thing I’ve ever driven, Sergeant,” Bill replied, peeling his fingers from the steering wheel. “It better drive straight when it’s loaded or I’m parking it up!”

“Where’s the motor?” Mills asked, opening doors, and doing a routine inspection.

“Under my feet,” Bill stamped on the vibrating floor, “it makes it quite tippy.”

“What will they think of next, eh?”

“Not more like this, I hope.”

“Flight’s calling a meeting for all staff at fourteen hundred. Grab a bite and make sure you’re there on time.”

“Yes, sergeant.”

Bill put the TUB in gear and drove it around back of the hangar where he kept the brace of Nortons under a home-made metal roof. A crude workbench had been knocked up for him by a couple of the mechanics so that he could do maintenance on them, but the Nortons hadn’t required much. The bike shed was where everyone on the base came to sign out a bike, and, thanks to a stormy winter with many flightless days, the majority of the squadron had had a go on them.

Opening the van, Bill eyed the cargo hold. He might be able to squeeze four bikes into the thing if he was cunning about it. With three in it’d have space for spares and tools. The row of bikes was parked with military precision. If they had to move, the majority of them could be ridden to the next location.

Just then the air raid claxon chirped letting everyone know it was two o’clock and meeting time. Bill headed toward the parade grounds but hesitated when he saw no one moving in that direction. One of the mechanics was cleaning up by the hangar.

“It’s in here, Bill,” he shouted with a familiar East Anglian accent, jerking an oily thumb back into the hangar, “Flight doesn’t want us offering ourselves up as a target from above.”

The hangar wasn’t a proper one, just a metal frame with canvas pulled over it. It kept the rain off but little else; it was still bloody cold in there in the winter when the openings at either end let a steady wind through it. Bill walked in to see most of the squadron forming a knot around the Flight Sergeant. Sheck was at the back leaning against a crate, his unruly hair sticking up now that he’d taken his cap off.

“Manage to get that parked without tipping it over,” he laughed as Bill joined him.

“It’s mad!” Bill replied. “Jean said it’d feel better loaded. It’d better be!”

“Drives the front wheels, eh?” Sheck noted.

“You can’t tell from driving. It feels normal when it isn’t trying to roll over.”

A few other stragglers were making their way into the hangar but pretty much everyone who wasn’t up in a plane was there so the Flight Sergeant held up his hand for quiet.

“If you’ve been wondering when this was going to kick off, you don’t need to wonder anymore. Hitler has crossed the border into the low countries. As of now Seventy-Three Squadron is on high alert which means two things: no one is off duty as of now, and everyone’s first job is to ensure the fighting readiness of our aircraft. If you’re on flight crew you’re going to be very busy, so others are going to have to step up. The fuel depots at Reims have been hit. Alternatives will be set up on a day-to-day basis. If you’re driving petrol, keep an eye on these changes.”

Grimes paused for a moment, eying the group of worried young faces.  Grimes himself was only in his late twenties, but he was the old man here. He had their full attention, he just needed to focus their anxiety on the job at hand.

“Expect to see rotating sorties all day every day. There will also be a lot of traffic passing through as we are one of the few forward airfields that didn’t get bombed. Let’s keep it that way. Any time you’ve got gear on the ground that might give us away, stow it or throw a tarp over it.”

“We also need to tighten up security. All military police meet with me after dismissal for a briefing,” Grimes paused and took a deep breath. “Look lads, we’ve been dicing with Jerry since the weather improved and we knew this was coming. France has their Maginot Line and we’re behind it. What we can do is help them keep the air threat from unhinging things, and we can do that by giving our boys up in the sky the best Hurricanes we can. Do your duty. If you have any problems, see me and I’ll clear the way for you. Off you go, dismissed.”

The large group around the Flight Sergeant surged off in many directions at once. They’d been in France all winter, and everyone knew what they were doing and proceeded to do it. Bill hung back with the other security types. Sergeant Mills kept glancing out the front of the hangar toward the guard hut with a worried look on his face.

“Base security, gentlemen. It has been lax, we need to tighten it up,” Grimes began, looking down a list on a clipboard. “We need details walking the fence line and checking for any gaps and closing them. Sergeant Mills?”

“Flight!” Mills replied, snapping to.

“Select your details and give me names. I expect to see signed off inspections by sunset,” Grimes flipped a page on his clipboard. “We have a pair of anti-aircraft guns coming. Should be here tomorrow. We need to find bunks for their crews. We’re also getting other new personnel in. A senior man will always be on duty with a novice until we’ve established that they know what they’re doing. We don’t have time for breaking them in with the usual nonsense so stow the hazing. If any of them are incompetent come have a word with me. Expect to see them arrive in the next day or two. We run a tight ship here, let’s tighten it up a bit more.”

The men around the flight sergeant stiffed perceptibly. It wasn’t a proper parade on the drill square but the reflex to snap to attention was still there.

“Communicate your needs clearly. If you see anything that could be improved, tell your superior. Dismissed!”

Everyone leapt to it, dispersing quickly. Bill was about to head back to the bike shed when Grimes caught his eye and waved him over.

“Corporal Morris, I’ve been given some specific instructions for you,” Grimes began, his moustache bristling. “Your ground intelligence this morning caught the eye of the Major. He asked if I could spare you to head back out and see what you can see, but that doesn’t mean taking unnecessary risks. Collect what information you can and return with it by sunset. Don’t be chatting with strangers, only known locals. Clear?”

“Clear, Flight Sergeant,” Bill replied, his mind already racing with ideas about where he might go.

“Lock up the motorbikes,” Grimes added. “If anyone needs access to them, they need permission from me.”

 

Bill found a lock and chain in the hanger and ran it through the front wheels of the line of bikes before looping it to the padlock. He left the Norton he’d been riding that morning out as it had just been serviced and was working a treat. With the bikes locked, he fueled up the free Norton and put a can of oil and the smallest can of petrol he had in the saddlebags, and then cleaned up. His heavy coat was left behind as the sun was beating down on a warm, May day. The Norton fired at first kick. He stood on the pegs as he navigated the rutted field on the fuel heavy bike back to the guard hut where Sergeant Mills was arranging fence duties.

“On yer bike, Corporal Morris!” he called, swinging the gate up and waving Bill through.

Bill waved back and pulled down his googles before powering off down the dirt track that led to the airfield. Rouvres was up in the top right ‘corner’ of France. About 25 miles to the north was the Luxembourg border, and to the west the Moselle River flowed north across the border into Germany itself. If he was crafty and stayed on back roads, he’d avoid the Maginot Line’s fortifications and the officious French military that took great pleasure in stopping him there.

Pulling up to the main road that ran north across the top of the airfield, Bill paused for a moment to adjust his googles. With the Norton quietly idling he could hear an approaching drone he’d missed while in motion. Over the treeline in front of him two Hurricanes blasted overhead, no landing gear out and their engines howling; they weren’t about to land[1] ! A moment later Bill got his first close up look at a Messerschmidt BF109 as the smaller, square winged killer screamed overhead at full throttle. It got hair-raisingly louder as it opened up its machine guns on the retreating Hurricanes, one of which was trailing smoke.

Shell casings from the 109 rained down along the dirt road behind where Bill was gawping. The Hurricanes broke in opposite directions over the airfield where sporadic ground fire had erupted. The Messerschmidt immediately went after the smoking Hurricane, sensing an easier kill.

Bill watched the smoking Hurricane climb as the Messerschmidt fell in behind it, both of them losing speed as they shot into the sky. The other Hurricane had looped back hard and was falling in behind the invader. This violent ballet had stopped Bill dead, but his orders floated back up into his mind and he suddenly felt guilty for stopping. Reluctantly, he kicked the Norton into gear and headed northeast towards Audun-le-Tiche near the Luxembourg border. After having a look around there he’d pass close enough to Gabriel and Thomas on the D59 that he might drop in again, depending on who was on the French side. The real trick was going to be avoiding French authorities on a bright blue bike with RAF stencils all over it. Maybe some camouflage paint was in order.

The ride north was strangely quiet with few vehicles on the road that weren’t military. As Bill approached the border, he had to stop to record aerial activity on his notepad. By the time he turned east toward the tiny village of Ottange on the road that led to G&T’s border crossing, he had three pages of notes; the skies were busy.

 

The French side of the border crossing, often unmanned, had three military vehicles parked at it, so Bill pulled over under a large oak tree and shut down the Norton to ponder the situation. From his vantage point up a slight hill and from under the shade of the tree, Bill was all but invisible. Barriers were down which meant he’d have to stop and talk to the French, who were unlikely to wave him through. A hundred yards down the little country road, Gabriel and Thomas’s guard hut sat in the sun in front of a corpse of pine trees. Their barrier was uncharacteristically down too.

The border area had few farms and was mostly unspoilt woodlands which kept two-tracked vehicles to the roads, but not so much a motorbike. Bill pushed the Norton around and rolled back down the incline away from the eyes of the French border station. He soon found what he was looking for: a game path snaking into the woods to the west. He quietly rolled onto the dirt path and then kicked the Norton over. Stepping up on the pegs he motored quietly into the woods.

The path wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before in hare scrambles back home in Norfolk, but doing it on the heavy, underpowered Norton made it interesting. He stopped when the trail got rough and removed his panniers to keep the bike as light as possible. He then followed the path down into a valley where it crossed a stream. By this point Bill guessed he was about parallel to the French border station, so he kept following the trail as it followed the little stream through the woods. Estimating he was past G&T’s hut, he looked for smaller branches of the trail that might lead him back to the road. When nothing obvious presented itself, he picked a thin section of trees and started weaving his way through them, keeping the throttle as light as he could.

His front wheel poked clear, and he realized he’d found the road again. Killing the engine, he let the Norton roll back into the foliage and leaned it against a tree. Quietly dismounting, Bill ducked under the leaves and saw that he was about a hundred feet into Luxembourg from G&T’s guard hut. Did that mean he’d technically just invaded the place? Ensuring the road was clear, he crept across the road into the pines behind the boarder station and made his way forward.

Thomas was sitting in the hut, his face framed by the window. Bill waited at the edge of the pines behind the guard hut and waved whenever Thomas looked up, finally catching his eye, which caused his mouth to fall open. He said something and Gabriel quickly walked out of the hut to where Bill was standing in the pines.

“William! What are you doing?” Gabriel cried. “I did not expect to see you again so soon!”

Bill made frantic quieting gestures and ushered Gabriel over.

“Things are serious, Gabe,” Bill said urgently. “I wanted to make sure you were alright, but I also thought maybe we could share information.”

Gabriel gave Bill a sharp glance. He was no fool and knew Bill hadn’t been visiting them just to be neighbourly. Gabriel himself had been relaying intelligence Bill had shared back to his superiors who had encouraged more interaction with the RAF corporal.

“I don’t know how much longer Luxembourg will be Luxembourg,” Gabriel replied after a moment of thought. “The German army crossed our eastern border this morning.”

Bill’s eyebrows shot up. This was the first he’d heard of that, there was nothing on the big map back at the tower that suggested ground invasion, though their reconnaissance flights had been replaced by more violent sorties so they were operating blind. Bill made a quick decision and pulled out his aircraft listings gleaned on the ride over and handed it to Gabriel.

“Want to copy this?”

“Yes!” Gabriel replied when he realized what he was looking at. “Have a sit on the bench and I’ll bring a pen and paper. Let me see if Thomas can make some coffee.”

Bill moved over to the wooden bench attached to the back of the hut and sat down. Gabriel returned a few moments later with a pad of paper and a pencil and started transcribing the listings of number and type of aircraft, altitude, and time.

“Any chance of stopping their advance?” Bill asked, as Gabriel continued to transcribe the notes.

“We don’t have a standing army, and the militias aren’t mechanized,” Gabriel said, head down writing.

Bill nodded, that lined up with his understanding of Luxembourg’s readiness.

“What will you do?”

Gabriel stopped writing for a moment and looked up, “hold our post and see what happens.”

“You and me both,” Bill replied, stretching his legs out and smelling the pines.

Thomas came around and sat next to him, handing him one of three mugs of coffee.

“We had Stuka fly over very low this morning,” Thomas began. “It was taking photos, but it had bombs also.”

“A Messerschmitt chased two of our Hurricanes right over our airfield!” Bill replied.

“Were they firing guns?

“The 109 was,” Bill said, remembering the mechanical howl of its machine guns and dust on the road erupting as hot shell casings rained down from the sky.

“I wonder where all those bullets go,” Thomas’s philosophical side was never far from the surface.

“I was surprised by all the shell casings,” Bill said. “They covered the road behind me like hail.”

Thomas’s eyes widened, “was it loud?”

“Incredibly loud. The engines and then the guns even more so.”

Gabriel had finished transcribing the notes.

“What will you do now?” he asked, taking the last cup from the bench where Thomas had left it.

“Toward Thionville and the Maginot fortifications there and see what the French are up to, then it’s back to my airfield to report. You?”

“We’ve been told to hold this post until relieved, so here’s where we’ll be. How did you get here, around the French?”

“There is an animal path that follows the stream to the west in that wooded valley. I followed it.”

“Good to know,” Thomas laughed, “but you did this all on foot?”

“No,” Bill smiled, “on the bike.”

“You are a good rider!” Thomas replied enthusiastically, thumping Bill on the shoulder.

Bill stretched his growing legs and sipped the mug of coffee; it was just what he needed to keep him going. A light breeze ruffled the pines. With all the trees around this wasn’t a great location for aircraft spotting, but that might be its saving grace. The chance of it being singled out from the air was remote.

“Did they give you any directions for if the Germans come through,” Bill asked Gabriel.

“Hold our post.”

“You must feel frustrated.”

Gabriel paused, staring into his mug, “It is upsetting to know our borders aren’t being recognized, but we are a small country surrounded by giants. When they start throwing boulders, the best we can do is duck, but to answer your question, yes, I am frustrated.”

Thomas nodded in agreement, “We will still be here when they leave again.”

Bill smiled at them both, “I like your optimism! I’m far from home and worried that I’ll never see it again. Being buried in foreign soil is a fear many of us share, but I don’t think Hitler will stop until he runs the whole show, so I’ll fight here if needs be.”

Gabriel gave Bill a speculative look, “I never thought about what being one of those giants asks of its people. I can’t imagine a situation where Luxembourg would ask me to go and die in a foreign land.”

The three fell into silence. Birds sang and trees rustled in the warm spring breeze. The hum of insects in the air was slowly replaced by that of an engine approaching. All three men stood up at once. Bill handed Thomas his mug and tucked his notebook back into his pocket.

“The mug and the notes you just transcribed…” Bill began.

“Yah,” Gabriel replied, his English slipping as panic set in.

Bill double checked and saw nothing else left behind, then ducked back into the thick pines. Moments later a strange, squared off vehicle pulled up next to the hut and four men stepped out. Three in German uniform, one in border guard attire similar to G & T’s, though with more finery on it. As the engine was cut, other motors could be heard, motorbike motors. A BMW sidecar rig (Bill had seen photographs) pulled up with two stormtroopers on it.

The older man in the Luxembourgian uniform stepped up to G & T, both of whom saluted sharply. He proceeded to speak rapidly in German, gesturing back to the German officers now standing by the car. The two soldiers on the bike had stepped off and were pacing around the front of the hut toward the French station down the road. They looked like wolves on the hunt.

Bill’s heart was thumping in his chest and his first instinct was to be elsewhere, but he checked himself and controlled his breathing, hunkering down under the pines. From near ground level and on his stomach, he watched the exchange from the shadows. If they found the man in RAF gear with an RAF bike in the woods only a hundred feet away, it wouldn’t end well.

The Luxembourg official was introducing Gabriel to the German officers in a round of handshakes. Thomas, the younger of the two, was standing back, pale faced and nodding awkwardly when asked anything.  One of the German soldiers pushed the sidecar rig over to the side of the hut and parked it next to the wall, this wasn’t looking like a short visit.

They were now touring the hut and the blocked road. The German officers were looking down the road at the French border station through binoculars. Three French guards stood outside looking back up the road at them. One turned and got into his Citroën, spun up the wheels and turned quickly before disappearing down the road. The invaders didn’t seem to care, that or they’d come here on purpose to be seen.

The officers gave the hut a cursory glance but were much more interested in what lie to the south. Orders were being given and salutes went around. Gabriel was walking the officers and Luxembourg official back to the car while Thomas was shaking hands with the German soldiers, who were pulling gear off the bike. Bill knew he’d be asking them about the BMW’s top speed.

The officers stepped back into the little square car painted camouflage green. A final round of salutes and they disappeared back up the road into Luxembourg. As they left, Gabriel glanced anxiously at the pine trees, and then turned and walked over to where Thomas was pestering the Germans about their rig.

Bill got the hint. With the soldiers just arrived and Thomas all over them, they’d be distracted, so he edged his way back into the pines to where he’d initially crossed the road. With the afternoon sun throwing longer shadows, he nipped across and disappeared into the woods where the Norton lay in wait. His last view was of Thomas and Gabriel chatting with the two machine-gun totting soldiers.

The Norton was leaning against a tree where he’d left it. Seeing the blue white and red RAF roundel provided strange relief after all of the red and black swastikas. Bill threw a leg over set it into neutral, rolling quietly back down the hill. In a small clearing he made a tight turn and got facing the right way, and then rolled the rest of the way back to the stream in near silence. Now hundreds of yards away through thick trees, he estimated it safe enough and tickled the carbs before kicking over the bike, which settled into a steady throb. In gear, he eased his way through the woods, keeping the revs as low as he could.

 

It had been about twenty minutes since the Germans left and that French border guard had driven away in a panic. Considering how far he had to go to report, and then how long they’d take bringing military up there, Bill figured he had maybe an hour to get back down the single road to the border and disappear into the French countryside. A Royal Air Force airman riding away from a border where first ground contact with the enemy had just happened would cause complications, so best be quick.

Bill followed his own tracks back up from the stream and, after pausing to pick up his panniers, poked a wheel out onto the road before leaning forward and looking each way. The French border station was just over the hill to the north, all was quiet otherwise. Letting out the clutch he eased the Norton south onto the road and back towards Ottange, where he slipped through town like a shadow. There were so few people about that he suspected the French authorities had ordered people to lay low.

Volmerange-les-Mines was another French ghost town. His initial plan was to head up toward the German border at Schengen, but things seemed to be moving a bit too quickly for that overly optimistic plan. In Sœtrich he instead headed south, toward Thionville where the French had a major fortification on the Maginot Line. As he approached the small city he kept to the east and out of the properly industrialized areas where there was still traffic.

Bill was thinking about how he might do this reconnaissance lark without drawing so much attention. There was a time to wave the flag, but it generally wasn’t when you were trying to quietly gather intelligence. There were cans of paint in the hangar that he could apply to this Norton. He’d see if the Flight Sergeant was willing to let him do it when he returned.

On a hill just east of Thionville, Bill leaned the bike up against a tree on the side of the road and got off to stretch. He then pulled out his notepad and made notes on as many details as he could remember. The fear enhanced images of Nazis standing around the border post were startlingly clear in his mind’s eye, so many details, including the markings on the military car were all committed to paper. He drew the car and sidecar combination and any uniform insignia he could remember too.

To the east Thionville lay in its river valley. The Mosselle River glinted in the late afternoon sun; French military forces were surging around the fort. He’d seen a line of vehicles heading northwest towards Sœtrich, likely on their way to the occupied border crossing. He made a note of that too.

A cup of lukewarm tea from the thermos and a top up of the Norton from the fuel can and he was ready for the twenty-odd-mile ride back to Rouvres. The late afternoon sun cast his own shadow out before him as he made quick time down the empty roads. It would have been a lovely ride had his mind not been buzzing with anxiety so much.

 

Someone had swept up all the bullet casings on the road into the base. Bill pulled up to an unfamiliar face at the guard hut.

“Corporal Morris returning from ground reconnaissance,” he said, eyeing the nervous young man holding his clipboard upside down.

“Yeh-um, yes, Corporal,” the young airman stammered, turning the clipboard around when he couldn’t make sense of it. “You’re checked back in.”

“Thanks, Jenkins is it? Anything else?” Bill had turned nineteen over the winter in France and was now a weathered veteran. Jenkins looked a very inexperienced eighteen.  Most of the squadron were in their late teens or early twenties.

“Oh! Yes, Corporal! Sergeant Mills said that Flight Sergeant Grimes wants to see you when you get in.”

“I’ll head right over. Don’t hesitate if you’ve got a question,” Bill grinned through his mud and road spattered face.

“Um, that’s a Norton 16H?”

“It is.”

“I used to own one.”

“Are you handy with them? Riding and mechanics?”

“Yes, Corporal.”

“When you’re off duty drop by the Bike Shed, it’s behind the fuel depot beyond the hangar.”

“Yes, Corporal!”

Bill kicked the Norton into gear and rolled around the edge of the airfield. Most of the Hurricanes were parked up near the tree line where they’d be harder to spot from the air. Only two thirds of the squadron was in the lineup though.

He left the Norton leaning against the Citroën TUB and walked briskly over to the tower. Everyone was in the mess except the Flight Sergeant, who ate at his desk which is where Bill found him.

“Have a seat Morris, you must be exhausted,” Grimes noted the sun and wind burn on Bill’s face. “Give me a quick summary and I’ll pass it on tonight.”

Bill sat down causing the dust from his clothes and hair to form a cloud around him. Grimes poured a second cup of tea and pushed it across to him.

“Nazis are already at the Luxembourg border,” Bill began as he accepted the tea. “I stopped at the post where I know the guards and had to nip into the trees when a German staff car and motorbike turned up.”

Grimes’ eyebrows shot up. He picked up a pencil and started making notes.

“From the trees I watched a senior Luxembourg official introduce three German soldiers. Two younger, lower ranked officers and a senior officer who had more jewellery on. They walked up to the border gate and had a good look at the French position down the road. They left the two soldiers there with the Luxembourg guards I’ve been chatting with. Neither of them told the Germans I was in the trees. When the officers left, I got out of there.”

“So much for avoiding dangerous situations,” Grimes glanced up at Bill. “Anything else?”

“Gabe, the senior man on duty there, told me that the Germans had already moved into Luxembourg from the east and that they had no way of stopping them. He was resigned to letting them in, though no one looked happy about it.”

Grimes made more notes, nodding as Bill talked.

“This is a list of air formations I saw with type of aircraft, times, location and direction,” Bill continued, passing his notepad over to Grimes who started transcribing it. “The French are aware of the border situation at Ottange. One of them left in a staff car when the Germans put on their display. Maybe it was an intentional, to draw them out of their Maginot fortifications. When I later passed by the big fort in Thionville, I saw half a dozen military vehicles, four armoured cars and two motorbikes heading in the direction of the border. Thionville itself is very busy with military traffic. Dozens of lorries and tracked vehicles are in motion. That was about two hours ago.”

Grimes nodded as he finished taking notes. The office was getting darker as the sun set so he turned on his desk lamp. “Good work, Corporal. I’ll run this up the ladder and see what they want to do. Anything else?”

“Flight, riding around isn’t a problem, but advertising that I’m RAF isn’t ideal. Might it be possible for me to paint one of the bikes? And perhaps use civilian clothing if I’m out and about again?”

Grimes gave Bill a shrewd glance, “you’ve attracted interested parties with your work. People higher up in intelligence gathering. I suspect they’ll send someone down if what you’ve got here is useful to them. That officer would be the one to decide if you can modify military issued gear. In the meantime, grab something hot from the mess and clean up. Again, good work, Corporal.”

 

Unsurprisingly after the day he’d just had, Bill fell immediately asleep after cleaning up and feeding himself. The room he shared with the other junior NCOs was smaller than the barracks room for the airmen, but it still contained a dozen bunks, and everyone in them had survived a harrowing day.

A touch on the shoulder brought Bill up from a dream he had quite a lot from a moment on the Scottish Six Day Trial where he was stuck in a bog, but instead of being angry or frustrated, he just stood there taking in the highlands.

“Corporal,” the night duty NCO whispered, trying not wake the others. “You’re needed in the tower.”

Ground fog wreathed the aerodrome as Bill walked through the cold night air. Only the red nightlight was on, otherwise all was dark. A civilian MGA was parked under the lone light. The dream kept tugging at Bill making the scene feel even more surreal.

The tower’s main office was dark but for the lamp on a Grimes’ desk. The Flight Sergeant waved Bill over and gestured to the empty seat. Another figure had its back to him. Bill took the seat and glanced over at the stranger and was surprised to see a middle-aged woman with greying hair tied back in a bun, she was looking at him closely.

“Corporal Morris, this is Miss Downey of the, um, Home Office,” Grimes said, gesturing to the woman. “She’d like to have a word with you.”

Bill stared at them both blankly. What the hell was going on?

“Corporal,” Downey had a posh accent. “I’ve been reviewing your intelligence gathering. I think this is something we could develop. I’ve been given permission to support your work more directly.”

She pulled an envelope from her handbag and passed it to Bill who took it wordlessly.

“Not very chatty, is he?” she said to Grimes, who just leaned back in his chair watching.

Bill opened the sealed envelope. A typed letter and a card with his name on it were inside. The letter was on RAF letterhead and was signed by both Seventy-Three Squadron’s Flight Lieutenant and the Major. It ordered Bill to report directly to Miss Downey while keeping Bill attached to the squadron. The card was his designation kept on file with the squadron. Where it had said, ‘Military Policing and Logistics’ before, it now said, ‘special operations’.

“What does special operations mean, ma’am?” Bill finally asked.

“He speaks!” Downey smiled for the first time. “It means you’ll be tasked with specific intelligence requests, and you’ll do your best, with your unique talents, to get the intelligence we need to win this war.”

Grimes leaned in, “I know you’ve been busy today, but do you have some sense of what’s been happening?”

“There are a lot more German planes than ours in the sky,” Bill replied. “And from what I can see in the hangar, we’ve lost a third of our fighting capacity.”

“We’re doing better than most,” Grimes replied. “If we’re going to keep France French we need to come at this problem from many sides. That’s Miss Downey’s specialty.”

“Yes, Flight. Hard to believe I’m your best choice though,” Bill said sheepishly.

“You’re the closest any of our people have been to German ground troops, Corporal,” Downey said. “Everyone is doing their best, no doubt, but you seem to find ways to make things happen that shouldn’t. That’s worth cultivating.”

“Thank-you, Ma’am.” Bill still felt like he might be in a dream but decided to go with it.

“Flight Sergeant Grimes will be my liaison with you here in at the squadron. You’ll be getting orders to pull back to Reims in the morning. You’re too isolated out here and we need your Hurricanes in support of bombing missions,” Downey began. Grimes’ eyebrows raised at this; it was news to him. “While the squadron is mobilizing, I’d like you to sort out your machinery. That civilian van you commandeered is a credible and subtle transport choice. The next step is to get you out uniform and off an RAF liveried motorbike. Do you know who Louis Jeannin is?”

Bill thought for a moment, “the French motorbike racer?”

“The very same. He lives near Thionville and does not like Hitler’s politics. He’s also well connected in French industry. We reached out to him yesterday; he’ll be looking for you at noon today. 18 Rue de la République in Knutange, southwest of Thionville. Do you know it?”

“I’ve ridden through there.”

“Of course you have. I think this is going to work out well, Flight Sergeant,” Downey smiled, collecting her gloves and bag, and picking up a leather aviator helmet with goggles Bill hadn’t seen previously from the desk. “Regular reports gentlemen, with prompt resolution of mission objectives and all will be well.”

Bill hadn’t realized how tall she was until she stood up. Both men quickly stood with her. Bill saluted, not entirely sure why but feeling like it was the right move, Grimes did also. With that Downey turned on her heel and walked out into the foggy night. A moment later the MG started up and the sound of the motor receded into the fog.

Grimes looked at Bill with a resigned expression and gestured for him to sit again.

“I can’t imagine what you’re thinking,” Grimes began. “That was the strangest meeting I’ve had in twenty years in the service.”

“Flight, why is this happening?” Bill asked.

“Your reports were getting regular uptake and our new Flight Lieutenant didn’t sit on them like the previous CO. People in London were using your reports as actionable intelligence. At some point your reports must have been corroborated by other intelligence types and you were marked a dependable source. That’s when I started getting phone calls asking about you.”

The look of astonishment on Bill’s face made the Flight Sergeant smile.

“What does this mean? I mean in terms of tomorrow, what should I be doing?”

“You’ve got latitude to move now. You don’t have to wait for RAF orders, and you’ll be operating directly with BEF intelligence, though still out of 73. You’d asked about painting the bike and moving about in civilian clothes. You just got that kind of agency. I want to go back to sleep, so if there is nothing else…”

Chapter 2 can be found here.