We Fought for Ardnish Read online

  Chapter 7

  All too soon it was time to leave. We travelled in Luigi’s van to Étroubles, an hour away, leaving at dusk. Luigi’s wife drove, and the three of us sat in the back, going over our plans with hushed voices. We were dropped off in a wood. By then it was nearly dark and the town was silent.

  ‘We should go further up the road, I think,’ said Luigi. ‘If anyone comes we’ll see their lights and can hide in time.’

  I prayed he was right. With our heavy packs crammed with detonators, our skis and snow shoes, we would struggle to explain ourselves to the Alpini. We strapped on our skis, shouldered our packs and quietly swooshed away into the gloaming. I was carrying only a pistol that Claude had given me; the others had rifles. I was not prepared to rely upon the Italians’ fabled reputation for mercy if I were caught.

  The road up to the col had been dug into a cliff, with a thousand-foot drop on one side. I knew that if I got the blast right, it would be a huge, time-consuming job to rebuild it. We busied ourselves placing the explosives on the bridge – a short, centrally-arched construction. Apart from the dramatic location it was a standard demolition job.

  But the diversion of the river would be far from standard. There was a solid rock wall keeping the torrent in a set path, and on the other side was a major gulley that veered off to the west. My job was to destroy the rock wall, creating an easier path for the water to flow, which would then pour in torrents down to where it would wash away the base of the gravel road.

  I found a fissure, put in a pencil detonator set at five-and-a-half hours’ delay, then packed the remaining space with plastic explosives. I had some left over, so I decided to set another explosive to go off two hours later, under a small drain on the road nearby. There was a chance this might catch any soldiers investigating the first explosion.

  I was satisfied with my work. Dawn was breaking. When the explosions went off mid-morning I would be heading at full speed towards my pick-up point and Luigi would be sound asleep in his bed.

  My companions were far faster skiers than me, despite their age. I kept up as best I could, but by the time we neared the village they were a good three hundred yards ahead. Suddenly I heard shouting ahead. Shots rang out. I threw myself off the path into the wood, my heart pounding. An ambush.

  I took off my skis, dropped to my belly and inched forwards. Luigi and Antonio lay face-down on the ground. Four Alpini stood over them on the path, brandishing their guns, looking delighted. They would be overjoyed to have killed members of the Resistance. Later, of course, there would be astonishment that these local men had the equipment and expertise to blow up the bridge. I knew I had to get away while they were unaware of my presence. I fought the urge to shoot at them with my pistol but chose discretion over possible valour and slipped off.

  My poor comrades. I crossed myself instinctively, strapped on my skis, and set off through the trees to the bottom of the snow line. I thought of Luigi’s wife waiting anxiously in her van. She must have heard the shots. I prayed she would escape.

  When I reached the snow line I hid my skis and snowshoes in some bushes and set off on foot. I had about twenty miles to cover and, without Luigi’s help, had no liaison with Resistance or help with transport. I was going to have to go it alone. I knew I needed to find somewhere to hole up for the day and then head down the valley during the night. I had no access to a Morse transmitter, but if the weather held I ought to have enough time to cover the distance and make my pick-up point as planned. The alternative was a long walk to the safety of Switzerland and likely internment.

  I found a quiet spot in a wooded area and dozed in the sun. I had a long way to go, I had barely slept the previous night, and I had no food. I felt sorry for Luigi and Jean’s families. Until recently the Resistance had been fighting bravely, despite having few weapons and no military training, but infiltrators were causing havoc. These brave men and women took risks that seemed extraordinary to me.

  Through the SOE I’d met some remarkable men and women, and had been promoted through the ranks at a pace that would never have happened in peacetime or in a normal regiment. Who would have thought a lad from a village of half a dozen people, miles from anywhere, would have danced with the Queen or been on good terms with David Niven, Lord Lovat and Michael Gubbins’ father? And even performed explosives demonstrations in front of Winston Churchill himself? Sometimes I found it hard to believe my own life.

  *

  One of the other instructors at Arisaig House had been a man called Gavin Maxwell. Despite his shyness and love of solitude, we became firm friends and would often go on expeditions together, bonding over our love of wildlife. Very few of the other staff were Highlanders, or indeed Scots, and of those, none shared the interests that my grandmother had kindled in me. Once, we climbed up to an eagle’s nest above the big house and peered at the chicks. We often saw basking sharks and he told me of his plans to build a shark fishery on the island of Soay after the war.

  He taught weaponry to the trainees and was an obsessive collector of foreign guns. He liked to shock the students, when wearing his kilt, by slowly stubbing his cigarette out on his bare knee – nothing compared to being tortured, he said.

  His mother was the daughter of the Duke of Northumberland, though he claimed he could never envisage living in the south again, or indeed anywhere apart from the west coast of Scotland. I found him very easy to talk to, and we often discussed the aristocracy and their presence in this part of the world. Lord Lovat and the Stirling brothers, who were with me at Inverailort, owned huge tracts of Scotland, as did the French Prince Michel of Bourbon-Parma and Fitzroy Maclean – all ‘toffs’, as I put it to him. Not to mention many of the students and other guards officers, who accepted demotion to the ranks in order to join the SOE.

  His response was illuminating. He told me that these men were taken away from their mothers aged six and despatched to boarding school, where they were bullied, beaten and told cold baths were good for them. They hunted in pouring rain for amusement, thinking it all ‘jolly good fun’. I could have listened to Gavin all day, with his Cambridge drawl and his love of a good gossip.

  Chapter 8

  I woke with a start, freezing cold and ravenous, at sunset. I needed to reach the field to the east of Aosta by dawn and get a fire going to the north of the landing site – my signal to the pilot that it was safe to land. I stuck to back roads, jogging at a steady pace until my boots started to chafe and gave me painful blisters.

  My hunger got the better of me at one point, and I crept into a henhouse, grabbed the first bird I could see, and rushed out with the farmer in pursuit, shouting and shaking his fist at me. I hurriedly stuffed the bird into my ruck-sack and limped off as quickly as I could.

  I was worried about finding the pick-up point, but when I eventually arrived it was exactly as described; a line of poplars along a riverbank and about three hundred yards of flat field in front. I found a concealed spot in the undergrowth where I killed, plucked and cooked the chicken, skewered on a branch, over a fire. It was delicious – my first proper meal since Luigi’s bread the previous morning. I thought about the brothers as I ate. Proud men, a family of bakers. They had been way past the age of retirement and had many children and grandchildren. It moved me deeply that they were prepared to sacrifice their lives for the war effort. Young Italian men had been conscripted by Mussolini and would be fighting the very people their parents were supporting. After the war there would be so many conflicts between families. And the thought of Luigi’s poor widow – how she would struggle now.

  To my consternation, I could sense the weather changing; there were clouds scudding over the mountain peaks and a stiff wind was picking up. I sensed snow was coming. At eleven in the morning my fire was raging. I’d heaped grass on top to create more smoke. I was anxious that my fire would alert the authorities or the plane wouldn’t come now – it might have been diverted to another mission or cancelled because of the weather. But with great del
ight, I soon spotted the tiny Lysander, rocking in the wind, finally drift in to land.

  Minutes later, we were off, although I had no idea of our destination. The baby-faced pilot told me it was Gibraltar. He chatted away about how the war was going and where he had been flying. He reckoned I was to have three days’ rest in the naval mess on the island. Then I was to hitch a lift on a convoy that was stopping to refuel before heading back to Portsmouth. I would be glad of a break, though I knew my thoughts would be taken up with Françoise.

  *

  I hadn’t been in London for months and was always delighted to visit. The buzz of the crowds, the pretty girls, the feeling that you were in the heart of things was stimulating, although it was always counterbalanced by the filthy smog and the constant apprehension that German bombing might start again. I read, just before I returned, that one hundred and seventy-three people had been crushed to death in a mass panic at Bethnal Green tube station.

  But now, the leaves were just coming out, the parks were full of children and young lovers, and spring was in the air. The war was being won and people were smiling once more.

  I was staying with the Gubbinses at their elegant Chelsea townhouse; they had welcomed me warmly and put me up in the most comfortable room I had ever slept in. I knew the colonel’s help in getting information about Françoise would be invaluable. He put me in touch with a woman called Joan Bright at HQ, telling me that her connections would give me access to all the right departments, and so I made my way to her the morning after my arrival.

  I knew that not knowing Françoise’s real name would be a problem, but, to my surprise, the Canadian SOE agent gave it to me after I explained my role to him, swearing me to secrecy. Sophie Lacroix. I repeated the name over and over to myself. It was going to take a while for me to get used to.

  The Canadian agent was also looking for her. He understood that she had been in the Italian garrison in Sallanches for a week and then transferred, perhaps to another prison or a concentration camp. It was believed that she was still being treated as a French woman, suspected of being a member of the Maquis. If this were true, I reasoned, it was most likely because she hadn’t cracked under interrogation.

  ‘We have all your details,’ the agent assured me. ‘I assure you that we’re making strenuous efforts to find her. We’ll do everything we can.’

  My next stop was the Red Cross, which tracked which Allied personnel had been interred and where. But I was disappointed to discover that there was nothing in their files about Françoise. I couldn’t disclose her real name, but I doubted whether that would have helped anyway.

  The Red Cross clerk took pity on me. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it could be that she is known to them as an agent, in which case they don’t ever tell us they have them. Or, if what you think is true and they believe she is French, then we won’t hear either.’ She leaned towards me conspiratorially. ‘Tell you what, leave me an address and we’ll treat you as her next of kin in the UK. The Canadians will liaise with her parents, no doubt.’

  I was touched by her kindness, but the assurance brought little comfort. I knew the Red Cross organised letter and parcel deliveries to prisons, but if she was masquerading as a French woman why on earth would she receive post from England?

  I had to believe Sophie was alive. Sophie. I found I couldn’t use her real name, not yet. I would think of her as Françoise until I knew she was safe.

  Walking back down the King’s Road to the Gubbinses’ house, I wondered just how much her parents knew. Were they even remotely aware that she had one of the most dangerous roles in wartime, that she may be dead, or in a concentration camp in Germany? What did the Canadian authorities do in these instances? A knock on the door and a telegram with the heartbreaking words, ‘Missing in action, presumed dead’? I had to believe she was alive.

  I could never reveal her terrible assignation with Kaufmann. But I was desperate to reach out to her family. Should I write to them? And of course, if I did write, would it be as a man with a personal – perhaps romantic – interest in their daughter, or as a military colleague? It would have to be the former.

  I was in a quandary about her real feelings towards me, too. Was she the delightful, chatty, seductive Françoise I had fallen for, or the hard, focused agent who wouldn’t acknowledge my farewell?

  I talked to the Gubbinses the next morning over breakfast and asked for their advice. The colonel, clearly sensing my anxiety, took me for a game of golf to distract me, even though I’d never played before.

  As I hacked away at the manicured greens of the Wentworth Golf Club I realised that my skills with a shinty caman and ball on the beaches and pitch of Arisaig did not translate to prowess with a golf club. After a short while, I contented myself acting as the colonel’s caddy as we made our way amiably around the course, talking all the time. I steered the conversation round to Françoise.

  ‘It could take at least two months for reliable information to come back,’ he told me gently. ‘If I were you I should involve myself in your work and simply pray like mad. There’s nothing else for it.’

  That news was hard to take. ‘Should I write to her parents?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘There would be no benefit, and probable harm, I’m afraid. Keep your powder dry, and let the Canadians deal with her family.’

  In exchange, he pumped me for information about how I felt the SOE was going, the quality of the munitions and equipment, morale, that kind of thing. I was happy to tell him what I knew: that the early energy and spirit was no longer there and that it was now a big organisation with all the bureaucracy that you would expect. That said, I assured him that I knew the agents could never go back to a traditional army unit; they still loved the challenge and excitement of sabotage.

  The colonel loved to talk about Scotland. He told me there was nothing he liked more than tramping about the lochs and hills with his fishing rod or gun. He had many landowning friends and was always cadging invitations.

  We discussed a climbing course run out of Lochailort that I was desperate to go on. Having been properly shown up by Françoise in France, I wanted to improve my skills. The course was a month long and involved tackling the challenging Cuillin Ridge in Skye, as well as Glencoe. I felt that if I was going back to the Alps, it would be invaluable.

  The colonel agreed, and later that day I met with my section leader at Baker Street. He said I could go on the course, but it would use up outstanding leave. I was happy to agree. Afterwards I was to take an advanced French-language course to gain more confidence, then visit both Brickendonbury Manor and Stodham Park for briefings on weaponry advances. Only after all this was completed would I return to the routine of visiting the various training centres in my role as an instructor.

  I was positioning myself to go back to France. There were rumours that the Lovat Scouts were going to be trained for winter warfare so that they could be involved in the relief of Norway, and I was pleased when my section leader confirmed that I could do so. My list of tasks would include two weeks with the Norwegian Special Operations Group who had requested munitions instruction. I was greatly looking forward to helping them.

  Now a well-paid sergeant, able to plan my own itinerary, do a job I relished and spend a lot of my time where I wanted to be – in the Highlands – I should have been the happiest man in the army. But thoughts of Françoise haunted me.

  A week later I returned to Lochailort to discover that Major Wedderburn, the chief climbing instructor, was away on business. I grabbed the opportunity to slip back home for a couple of days. I had last spent time in Peanmeanach the best part of a year ago and I longed to see everyone.

  I commandeered one of the navy canoes for the trip. It was a glorious spring day. With the tide going out, I paddled down the loch, clinging to the Ardnish shoreline so that I could report on the wildlife to my grandmother. She always quizzed me on what I had seen. I noted a pair of eider duck, a heron and a handful of seals with their adorable pups tha
t I got within a few feet of, before they slipped into the water. I trailed a line of nylon with baited hooks behind and was certain of arriving with a haul of sea trout and mackerel. I could feel weeks of tension melting away as I powered happily homewards.

  I kept my eyes out for the sheep, too. The lambing was finished and I was heartened to see a good number of twins. I had noticed in the south or abroad how ugly their lambs were compared to our pretty Blackface ones and I took great pleasure watching them gambol in the sunshine.

  En route I dropped into the farmhouse at Laggan and had a wander around. Grandmother must have stayed there a fair bit during the lambing. It was just as I remembered, well-maintained and comfortable, though I noticed that some improvements could be made. I couldn’t help but think it would be the ideal place to be married with a family. In fact I could think of nothing better. But the pleasure was bittersweet. My hopes for Françoise were fading.

  I wandered inside the farmhouse, imagining what she might do to the place to make it a home for us. Would she even like it? I smiled, despite myself. Of course she would. Everyone loved it here; it had a special magic that was impossible to describe unless you had seen and felt it for yourself. I imagined myself leading her from room to room, telling her she could do as she pleased to make it her own. The silence, the cracks in the windowpanes and the threadbare curtains seemed to mock me as I indulged in my fantasy of Françoise and our children at home here. Sadly I headed back to the canoe on the foreshore.