The Farmer's Daughter (10 page)

He didn't remember much about being shot down, but he did remember seeing the long queues waiting on the beaches at Dunkirk to be taken off by a fleet of little ships and the Stukas bombing them. He had joined in the fight, ferociously angry that the helpless men were being subjected to such horror. He had been watching his petrol gauge and, knowing he could not stay in the air much longer, had gone for a German bomber with his guns blazing. He recalled being hit and the sheer terror of knowing he was going to crash. After that he remembered nothing until he came round in a French hospital taken over by the German army.

It was a miracle he had survived, he was told through an interpreter. He had somehow managed to belly flop his Spitfire in a field before he passed out. ‘You were trapped by your left leg,' the doctor told him when a nurse alerted him that their patient
was awake. ‘It was badly mangled. We had to cut you out of the wreckage. I am afraid we could not save your leg.'

It had taken some seconds for the news to penetrate his befuddled brain. He had simply stared at the doctor, unable or unwilling to comprehend his words. ‘The good news is that you still have your knee,' the doctor went on. ‘We will try and obtain a false limb for you, but in the meantime you must try and move about on crutches.'

He had been cast so low by this he was unaware of anything going on around him. What sort of future could he expect? He was a strong, active man, he told himself, a farmer, meant to take over from his father when he retired, someone who needed to walk, drive a tractor, follow the plough, to dance with Rosemary. Would she want a man with only one leg? It would have been better if he had died. The doctor and nurses did all they could for him; he had no complaints about his treatment. They could afford to be magnanimous, the war was going their way; Hitler's forces seemed unstoppable.
He
could do nothing to stop them. He had lain in his bed and wallowed in misery and pain. He would never have believed how much pain a missing limb could produce.

‘We will have you out of bed today,' the doctor had said one morning a week later. ‘You must exercise your good leg and keep that strong. A physiotherapist will bring you some crutches and help you to use them.'

‘Then what?'

‘You will be sent to a
Durchganglager
. That is a transit camp for prisoners of war. They will decide where you go from there.'

‘When?'

‘As soon as you are fit to travel. We have many casualties of our own to treat and there is little more we can do for you here.'

He was only given a few days to get used to his crutches. It
was not difficult to manage them but they made his arms and shoulders ache. Everything ached: his stump, his good leg and his spine, even the missing limb.

When they deemed he could manage, he was taken by lorry to a
Dulag
near Frankfurt where he found hundreds of other British prisoners, some wounded, but most hale if not hearty. At least he was able to join in the conversation, which he had not been able to do in the hospital, and here he learnt that the expected invasion of Britain had not materialised, but the airfields were being bombed and the air force was taking a pasting but fighting back. ‘They won't defeat us while we've got an air force,' someone said.

‘They won't defeat us, full stop,' said another.

Gordon did not know whether to be heartened by this or miserable that he was no longer a part of it. He had heard about Douglas Bader who was still flying and fighting in spite of having lost both his legs. Leglessness was not a barrier. The biggest obstacle was the fact that he was a prisoner of war and, as yet, had no artificial limb.

His turn had come to be interrogated. He knew that he was not required to give more than his name, rank and serial number and he stuck to that, though he was asked a whole stream of other questions, much of it about morale at home. He had no idea what morale was like at home; if it was anything like his own, it was pretty low, but he simply repeated the mantra of name, rank and number, and they sent him back to his comrades.

Prisoners came and went all the time, some came by train, others after days of marching, and some had come on barges up the river. Someone said the barges had been intended for the invasion of England but were no longer needed for that. Whether that was true or not he had no way of knowing. Unable to walk very far, he was sent on a train to a more permanent camp, although he had
to hobble under guard from the station while others marched. It was somewhere in Poland, he was not sure exactly where, but it had a superb hospital run by the prisoners themselves. Here he was given more treatment for an infected stump and then more physiotherapy, but no new leg. He was there when news filtered through that the Americans had entered the war. The secret wireless sets kept the prisoners informed and this good news was soon followed by bad: Singapore had fallen to the Japanese.

Soon after that he had been sent to another camp. Prisoner-of-war camps were springing up all over Germany and Poland, now firmly under German occupation, and he must have been in a good number of them. It seemed they did not know quite what to do with him and others like him who had lost a limb but were otherwise strong and healthy and no longer needed to be in hospital. At every one he enquired about the artificial leg they had promised him but at all of them he had been fobbed off.

He had arrived at this
Stalag
early in 1943. It was a well-run camp, enclosed as they all were by barbed wire with lookout towers at intervals round the perimeter manned by armed guards. They also operated the searchlights which swept the camp after dark. There was a single strand of wire a few feet from the outer fence over which the prisoners were forbidden, on pain of death, to step.

They lived in huts with bunks two tiers high. Food was scarce and very poor quality, but it was supplemented by Red Cross parcels which were shared out between everyone. They contained canned meat, powdered milk, margarine, perhaps some cheese or coffee, and best of all cigarettes and chocolate. The cigarettes were the accepted camp currency and could be used to barter for anything they needed. A great many had gone towards obtaining documents from the goons to be copied for the escapees.

The men were left to make their own entertainment and ways
of keeping fit, which they did enthusiastically. Gordon, hobbling about on his crutches could not take part in these activities and that added to his frustration.

‘If I had a suitable piece of wood and some webbing I could make you a leg,' Flying Officer Stanislaw Fallowski said to him one day when one of his crutches broke and he fell down in the compound coming back from his ablutions. He was trying to get up using the remaining crutch and Stan had run over to help him.

‘Could you?'

‘Don't see why not. I'm good at whittling. I was a carpenter before the war.'

‘I'd be eternally grateful, if you could, but it would have to fit my stump.' Using one crutch was more difficult than two, he decided as he hopped his way slowly back to his hut.

‘Of course. I'll ask the commandant if he will authorise some materials and tools for me.'

The result was that Stan was given permission to construct a leg and provided with a block of wood and some hand tools which he was required to return when the job was finished. It was a slow process because the tools were not as sharp as they could have been. Another impediment to its progress was that the tools were often borrowed by other prisoners for jobs they were doing which happened more and more often as the tunnel project progressed. Stan himself was also kept busy because every yard of the tunnel had to be shored up with wooden props made from bed boards and he was one of the carpenters making them. Many a prisoner had fallen through his bed when he had been left with only a couple of boards. Some of them had resorted to making hammock-like contraptions to sleep on.

‘It won't be as light as a tin leg,' Stan warned him one day when Gordon sat watching him at work.

‘Never mind. I can't have everything.' He was beginning to suspect the job was being deliberately stretched out in order to keep the tools on site for as long as possible.

‘And I can't make a foot. I tried, but it just wouldn't work. It'll have to be a peg leg, I'm afraid.'

This was disappointing, but if it enabled him to walk about that, at least, would be an improvement. ‘As for moulding the top for the stump that will have to be trial and error, a bit at a time. We'll have to make a harness and adjust it to fit, but that will be relatively simple, once I get my hands on some webbing.'

It was agony on his stump as Stan shaved off a little bit here and a little bit there trying to make the peg leg fit, and when it was deemed he could not improve it any more, it was lined with a pad of cotton and the harness made and fitted.

He soon discovered it was not as easy to get about as he had hoped and sometimes his stump was rubbed raw and he had to leave the leg off to let it heal and go back to the crutch. What drove him on to persevere was the thought that one day, please God, he would return home and if he hadn't been given a proper tin leg by that time, the RAF would make sure he had one and he would be able to adjust to it without the torture he was experiencing now because his stump would already be hardened. Others might laughingly call him ‘Peggy' and he might grin ruefully in return, but he had not laughed properly for a long time.

He was at his usual station by the window one day when they noticed unusual activity between the perimeter fence and the trees. Everyone stopped what they were doing and gathered near the fence to see what was going on. ‘Do you reckon they've found the tunnel?' he queried.

‘Don't think so,' Alex said, as workmen began chopping down the trees.

‘There goes our bloody cover,' Jeremy put in furiously. The tunnel was intended to come up in the shelter of the trees. ‘What'll we do now?'

While they were talking loads of building materials were brought in and a new perimeter fence put up. It was becoming obvious that their captors were extending the camp and where the tunnel should have ended, would be the middle of a new compound. Alex hurried away to consult the rest of the escape committee.

Even though he would not have been one of those to use the tunnel, Gordon had a proprietorial interest in it. The decision to discontinue it was a bitter blow after all the hard work that had gone into it.

‘We are obviously going to concentrate on the other two,' Alex told everyone in the hut that night. ‘All is not lost. The goons haven't found it so we can still put it to good use as a storeroom for our escape stuff and a place to dump unwanted soil. It means people will still be coming and going into this hut, so, Peggy, we'll need you as much as ever.'

‘It's nice to be wanted,' Gordon said wryly.

They were all in bed when the siren went. ‘Not another bloody air raid,' someone said in the darkness.

‘Leave off grumbling,' came from somewhere on the other side of the hut. ‘They are doing their bit to shorten this war. I don't care if they flatten the place. Wouldn't that be jolly? We could all run out and cause mayhem while Jerry tries to round us all up again.'

Gordon, listening to their banter and their fantasies about escaping, groaned inwardly. If only he had two good legs …

Jean was in the sheep enclosure, clipping the wool away from round the ewe's tails ready for tupping, when Karl found her the next morning. ‘How is your father?' he asked.

‘A few bruises but otherwise none the worse, thank goodness. What about you?' The huge bruise on the side of his face had turned a nasty shade of purple.

‘It's nothing.' He worked his jaw to prove it. ‘It will be gone in a day or two. The worst of it was the teasing I had to endure from my compatriots.'

‘I suppose they thought you'd been in a fight.'

‘Yes. Some thought I had been hit trying to escape.'

‘We, in the village, have been assured that's not possible.'

He didn't reply to that. Instead he asked, ‘Did you win?'

‘No, second in my class.'

‘I thought you ought to win.'

‘That's kind of you but I am content with second. If I'd won, it would have looked like favouritism. Bill won his class and was the overall winner.'

‘Good for him.'

‘Can you go back to the farm and fetch the raddle for the rams? It's on the shelf in the shed. I forgot it.'

‘Raddle?'

‘Red dye.' The rams' bellies were painted so that a splash of colour was left on the ewe after he had serviced her. It was a way of keeping track of pregnancies.

‘Oh, I see. Do you want me to apply it?'

‘Yes, please.'

He was on his way back with the tin of dye, when he saw Otto, walking down the lane towards him. ‘Where are you off to?'

‘Home. Arnsberg.'

‘Arnsberg! You mean the
Lagerführer
has given permission?'

‘No, but I'm not waiting for it. Schultz can go to hell for all I care. It's our duty to escape and he has no right to try and stop us.'

‘You didn't say anything before we left this morning.'

‘I didn't have a chance. Roll call took so long, your transport came before I could catch you. I reckon something's up.'

‘Otto, I'm not coming today. I'm not prepared.'

‘I cannot believe you said that, Karl Muller. What's the matter with you? Don't you want to go home?'

‘Of course I do. When I'm ready.'

‘I think perhaps you will never be ready. I'll go without you.'

Karl shrugged. ‘If you must.'

‘I must, but I need clothes, money and food.'

‘I'm sorry. I can't help you, not today.'

‘You are a coward, you know that, don't you? A coward and a traitor and I hope you get what you deserve.' He strode off down the lane, calling over his shoulder. ‘And if you raise the alarm, I shall make sure everyone knows who it was that betrayed me.'

Karl had no intention of raising the alarm. Unless the English
were incredibly stupid he didn't think Otto would get very far before he was caught. But it left him wondering about his own motives. He could have abandoned the raddle and the sheep and gone with Otto if he had been determined enough. He could have stolen coats and money; even if he were recaptured, he would never be sent back to Briar Rose Farm to face Jean over it. But he could not help picturing her sorrow and disappointment when she realised what he had done. She, who had been kind and generous to him, did not deserve that. Did that make him a traitor?

Otto was furious. He had counted on Karl coming with him and the idiot had let him down, and all because of a handful of sheep, not to mention a woman, and an enemy one at that. Now what was he to do? He had run off from the work the builder had given him and could not go back. In any case, he had no intention of going back. It was notoriously difficult, if not impossible, to get off the island, but he had been sure that with Karl, whose English was almost faultless, they could have done it. He had been relying on his friend to steal clothes, and money too, and now he had to find another way of equipping himself.

He strode off down the lane, kicking at loose stones and muttering curses. Could he break into the farm and steal the things for himself? Karl would be blamed and it would serve him right. Was the house ever left empty? He stopped suddenly. He was outside the old lady's cottage, the one whose window he had repaired. He turned and went up the path to knock on the door.

‘Oh, it's you,' she said. ‘Why are you back? Where is Mr Gould?'

He pushed past her into the house, ignoring her protests. He had seen a shotgun propped in a corner of the hall when he had been there before. He went straight for it and pointed it at her. ‘Clothes,' he said. ‘Food.'

‘It isn't loaded.' She indicated the gun. ‘It's empty.'

He fired at the ceiling but there was nothing but a click. He laughed and turned it round in his hands so that he was holding the barrel and could use the butt as a weapon. ‘Food. Clothes,' he repeated.

‘I haven't got any.'

He was becoming impatient. He grabbed her by the arm and propelled her ahead of him up the narrow stairs to the bedroom. Here he flung her on the bed. ‘
Halten Sie still sonst
…' He lifted the gun in a threat. Ignoring her cries, he went to the wardrobe and began pulling out clothes flinging them on the floor. They were all female garments, for a small woman at that. He should have known. He turned back to her. ‘Clothes for man.'

‘I have no man.' She was sitting up on the bed rubbing her arm. ‘I am a widow.'

He pulled her roughly to her feet and dragged her downstairs again. There was a big overcoat hanging on a peg in the hall. He put the gun down and shrugged himself into it. She pushed past him and made a dart for the door. He grabbed her back. ‘Food. Money.' Picking up the gun again he forced her into the kitchen where he raided her larder for anything edible he could carry away which he put into a canvas bag he found on a hook. She was obviously not going to help him, so he began systematically emptying cupboards and drawers looking for cash.

‘If you are looking for money you will be unlucky,' she said.

He marvelled at the old girl's courage, while wishing she would be more cooperative. If she had given him what he wanted, he could have been well on his way by now. There was nothing for it, he would have to rough her up a bit. He grabbed hold of both her arms and shook her violently.
‘Geld! Geld!'
he shouted. Still holding her with one hand, he slapped her face hard and watched
in satisfaction as tears filled her eyes. ‘Money. Where is money?'

‘I haven't got any. I'm only a poor widow.'

It was then they heard the dog barking and the door opened. Donald, Terry and Lily, accompanied by Laddie, tumbled into the cottage. ‘Gran, we came to …' Don stopped suddenly when he saw the man holding his grandmother in front of him, waving his grandfather's old shotgun at them. He was wearing Grandad's old coat which was unfastened and revealed the German prisoner's uniform.

All three children stood and gaped, frozen by fear. But the dog had no such inhibitions, he began to bark and kept on barking.
‘Halt deine klapper,'
Otto yelled lifting the gun and bringing it down on the dog's nose. Laddie yelped but instead of cowering, he bounded at the German who overbalanced and fell on top of the old lady. Don grabbed the gun and brought it down on the German's head as hard as he could. It knocked the man out and Elizabeth was able to scramble out from under him.

‘I've killed him,' Don said in awe, dropping the gun.

‘Don't matter if you have,' Terry said. ‘He's only a German.'

Elizabeth sat on the sofa and pulled the tearful Lily onto her lap. ‘Sh, sh, it's all right, Lily. Don't be afraid.' To Don, she said, ‘You haven't killed him, he's just knocked out, but we had better tie him up before he comes round. There's some rope hanging on a hook in the shed. Terry, run and fetch it quickly.'

Terry sped off, leaving Elizabeth and Don to watch the German for signs of returning consciousness. She knew that if he came round before the boy returned she would have to hit him again. She picked up the discarded gun. The man was just beginning to stir and groan when Terry returned and the boys set about trussing him up. He was fully conscious by the time they finished. He began swearing and shouting in German. Laddie, who hadn't
forgotten the biff on his nose, circled menacingly round him as he lay on the floor.

‘Now what?' Donald queried.

Elizabeth, ignoring a pain in her shoulder and the bruises coming up on her cheek and upper arms, smiled. ‘Good boys. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come along, but it's not finished yet. Terry, you run and find Jean. Tell her to bring the pickup. Take Lily with you. Don and I will watch over him while you're gone, but be quick.'

Taking Lily's hand, Terry sped away, leaving Elizabeth and Don staring down at the writhing German. Now the danger had passed, she was feeling decidedly shaky and collapsed into a chair.

‘Gran, are you OK?' Don asked, looking at her bruised face.

‘Yes, I'll be all right, just a bit shaken up. Make me a cup of tea, will you, son? I'll keep my eye on this fellow here.'

It was some moments before Jean could make head or tail of what the breathless Terry was saying. Lily had run sobbing into Doris's arms as soon as they came in the door and was incoherent. ‘A German prisoner of war, you say?' Jean queried.

‘Yes. Come quickly before he escapes. Mrs Sanderson said to bring the truck.'

She ran to the open-fronted outhouse that did duty as a garage, just as Karl came out of the shed where he had been putting away the clippers and tin of dye. ‘Stay here,' she told him. ‘Don't leave the farm whatever you do.'

‘Why? What has happened?'

‘Can't stop to explain. Go and ask my mother.' With that she climbed into the truck and was off.

The sight of her grandmother drinking tea with a shotgun in her lap and a huge bruise on her face and the man trussed up like
a turkey for the oven would have been laughable if it hadn't been so serious. ‘Gran, are you all right?' She fell to her knees beside her chair and gently removed the gun. ‘What happened?'

‘He pushed his way in here demanding food, clothes and money. It's the one who did my window. I didn't like him at the time, for all the excuses Sergeant Muller made for him.'

‘Then what?'

Shaky as she was, Elizabeth managed to recount what had happened. ‘If it hadn't been for the children, he might have killed me. And just look at the mess.' She gazed round at the contents of drawers and cupboards strewn over the floor. ‘He was looking for money. It's the same upstairs.'

‘Gran was ever so brave,' Donald put in. ‘He hurt her. It made me angry. I hit him as hard as I could when Laddie went for him. I thought I'd killed him.'

‘He'll have a headache, I'll be bound,' her grandmother said.

‘Serves him right,' Don added.

‘I'll have to take him to the police station in the truck,' Jean said. ‘I can't carry him. I'm going to have to loosen the bonds on his legs so he can walk.' She handed the gun to Don. ‘Watch him while I do it.'

‘It's not loaded,' her grandmother said.

‘Thank goodness for that.' She began undoing the rope that tied Otto's legs together, while Don stood with the gun poised. ‘Get up,' she told the prisoner when she had finished, leaving his hands securely tied behind him.

He did as he was told but not without a string of invective. She took the gun from Don and urged him outside to the truck. ‘Don, help Gran to tidy up. I'll be back as soon as I've handed him over to Constable Worth.'

‘What if he turns nasty?' Elizabeth said. ‘He could have you both
in the ditch. Put him in the back and let Don keep an eye on him.'

‘I can't leave you here alone. There might be others …'

‘Then I'll come too. I can tidy up here later. I'm not letting you take that … that monster on your own.'

‘All right, we'll all go. Make sure the house is locked.'

Elizabeth laughed. ‘Locks won't keep out a determined man, if there are more of them roaming the countryside.'

‘No, but we'll have to risk it. Come on, I shan't feel easy until he's safely behind bars.'

Otto was made to get in the back of the truck and Don climbed in after him, carrying the gun which was useless except as a club. With Gran in the passenger seat and Jean driving they set off for the village and the police station, which was only a room in the police house where Constable Worth lived.

He did not have anything secure enough to hold a man intent on escape. ‘We'd best take him straight back to the camp and let Colonel Williamson deal with him,' he said, looking over the side of the truck at the furious German. ‘That's what you get for being friendly with a mad dog. It always turns on you in the end.'

‘This man is not the one we have working on our farm,' Jean told him. ‘He's at work. My mother is keeping an eye on him, but he's no trouble at all.'

‘Well, I hope you're right. Shouldn't be surprised if they don't all get punished for this.'

‘That wouldn't be fair. And I need Sergeant Muller.'

‘Well, you'll have to talk to Colonel Williamson about it. It's out of my hands.'

He climbed in the back with the German and Jean drove to the camp, where Otto was marched away and she, her grandmother and the constable were shown into the Colonel's office to report on what had happened. Several of the prisoners came up to the
wire and stared at Don. Some spat at him, others swore, more just stared with blank expressions.

He was decidedly relieved when Jean and his grandmother returned. ‘It was creepy sitting there with all those men watching and shouting at me,' he said. ‘Let's go home.'

All three squeezed in the front. ‘What's going to happen to him?' he asked.