Code Name Verity by Elizabeth E. Wein
We are puzzling over how to do it. Mitraillette is not allowed to speak directly to Julie’s Verity’s contact, so she has to find someone else to take the message. They keep their tasks and names very carefully separated. And we don’t want to hand over Verity’s ‘Katharina Habicht’ papers to anyone but Verity, i.e. ‘Katharina’ herself. Mitraillette is going to try to arrange for V to pick them up from one of the Resistance ‘cachettes’, their secret letterboxes. That means we have to pass word along somehow.
I say ‘we’ as though I were going to do something dramatic to help, other than sit here blowing on my fingers to keep them warm and hoping no one finds me!
The operation is to go ahead as planned – they’ve got the equipment, they’ve got Verity, the contacts are all in place. With a little care and planning it’ll be the Ormaie Gestapo HQ that goes up like Vesuvius, and not this barn. If only Käthe Habicht weren’t operating ‘behind enemy lines’, as it were, with Kittyhawk’s British identity papers!
I am beginning to think it was one of her less clever ideas to call herself Kitty Hawk in German. Terribly sweet, but not very practical. Though to be fair she wasn’t expecting me to come along.
Have taken Paul’s revolver apart and put it back together 7 times. It is not as interesting as a radial engine.
Another Lysander has come down.
Unbelievable but true. This one made it past the antiaircraft guns and came in just as planned, easy peasy, about 70 miles north of here, on Mon. 18 Oct. Unfortunately the landing field had become a sea of mud because there has been nothing but rain, rain, rain for the past week, all over France I think. The reception committee at the field up there spent five hours trying to haul the plane out of the mud – they hitched a pair of bulls to it, as it was too muddy even to drive a tractor on to the field, but finally had to give up as it was about to get light. So they have destroyed another aircraft and there is another Special Duties pilot stuck here.
I say another, but of course I am not really Special Duties. There’s some small comfort in not being the only one – mean and piggish of me, I know, but I can’t help it.
There had been talk of trying to get me out of here on that plane. They were going to try to squeeze me in with the two people I was supposed to have airlifted back to England in the first place – I’d have had to sit on the floor, but SOE and ATA are rather frantic about me at home and want me out of here. It hasn’t happened. Any number of things need to be arranged, then rearranged, then go wrong at the last minute. Every message to London has to be laboriously encoded and delivered on a bicycle to a hidden wireless set ten miles from here. The message perhaps doesn’t get sent straight away because someone has disturbed the leaf in the keyhole or the eyelash folded in the note left for the courier, and then they have to wait three days to make sure they are not being watched. The rain has been dreadful, with cloud at 1000 feet and visibility next to nothing in the river valleys where the mist hangs – no one could land here anyway. No field closer than Tours, 50 miles away, to replace the one I ruined.
They call a ruined field ‘brûlé’, burnt. Which mine is.
They will have to send a Hudson to collect us all, as there just isn’t the room in a Lysander. And that will mean waiting for the mud to dry out.
Ugh! I have never been so damp and miserable for such a long time – it is like living in a tent, no light, no heat. They pile the goosefeather quilts and sheepskin in with me, but the rain is constant – grey, heavy, autumnal rain that stops you doing anything, even if you weren’t trapped in a crawl space under the eaves. I have been down a few times – they try to give me a meal in the farmhouse each day to warm me up and break the monotony. Haven’t written anything here for a week, as my fingers are starting to get chilblained – so dead cold always. I need those mittens I made out of the pattern book Gran gave me, with the flaps that flip back so you can use your fingers. Essentials for the Forces that book was called. If I’d known how essential those mittens would be now I’d never have taken them out of my flight bag – except to wear them. Not like the flipping gas mask.
I wish I was a writer – I wish I had the words to describe the rich mixture of fear and boredom that I have lived with for the past ten days, and which putters on indefinitely ahead of me. It must be a little like being in prison. Waiting to be sentenced – not waiting for execution, as I’m not without hope. But the possibility that it will end in death is there. And real.
In the mean time my days are duller than a lifetime as a mill girl endlessly loading shuttles – nothing to do but suck on my cold fingers, like Jamie in the North Sea, and worry. I am not used to it. I am always doing, always at work on something. I don’t know how to occupy my mind without my whole self being busy. The other girls at Maidsend all lay snoring or knitting or doing their nails when the rain was tipping it down in such grotty visibility no one could fly. Knitting was never enough, got so bored with it, can’t concentrate on anything bigger than socks or gloves. I always ended up scrounging bicycles to go exploring.
Remember the Bicycle Adventure when I told Julie all my fears – they seem so trivial now. The quick, sudden terror of exploding bombs is not the same as the never-ending, bone-sapping fear of discovery and capture. It never goes away. There isn’t ever any relief, never the possibility of an ‘All Clear’ siren. You always feel a little bit sick inside, knowing the worst might happen at any moment.
I said I was afraid of cold. It’s true cold is uncomfortable, but . . . not really something to be afraid of, is it? What are ten things I am afraid of now?
1) FIRE.
Not cold or dark. There is still a great pile of Explosive 808 hidden under the hay bales on the floor of this barn. The smell is overwhelming sometimes. It’s like marzipan. Just can’t forget it’s there. If a German sentry poked his nose in here I don’t know how he’d not notice it.
It makes me dream I’m eternally rolling icing for fruit cakes, believe it or not.
2) Bombs dropping on my gran and granddad. That hasn’t changed.
3) Bombs dropping on Jamie. In fact I worry about Jamie a good deal more now that I’ve experienced a little of what he’s up against.
4) New to this list: the Nazi concentration camps. Don’t know any of their names, don’t know where they are – I suppose I haven’t been paying attention. They were never very real. Granddad roaring about ominous stories in the Guardian didn’t make them real. But knowing I may very likely end up in one is more frightening than any news story could ever be. If they catch me and they do not shoot me straight away, they will slap a yellow star on me and ship me out to one of these dreadful places and no one will ever know what happened to me.
5) COURT MARTIAL.
I’m trying to remember what else I told Julie I was afraid of. Most of those ‘fears’ we talked about that first day, in the canteen, were just so stupid. Getting old! It embarrasses me to think about it. The things I told her on our bicycle adventure were better. Dogs. Hah – that reminds me.
6) Paul. I had to chase him out of here at gunpoint – it was of course his own gun, the one he gave me and taught me to use. Perhaps I was overly dramatic to pull the gun on him. But he had actually come up into my loft, on his own in broad daylight, without any of the family knowing he was here, which is dead alarming of itself. They are so careful about keeping track of who comes and goes, and they need to trust him. I suppose all he wanted was a kiss and a cuddle. He backed off looking deeply injured and left me feeling guilty and dirty and prudish all at once.
It frightened me terribly, more afterwards when I thought about it than at the time. If he – or anyone – tried to force himself on me, I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t call for help. I’d have to endure it without a fight, and in silence, or risk giving myself up to the Nazis.
I lay awake in a funk nearly all night with Paul’s dratted gun in my hand, my ear pressed to the trapdoor listening, expecting him to come back and try again under cover of darkness. As if he hasn’t
When Mitraillette turned up to bring me my breakfast ration of bread and onions and their dreadful pretend coffee, I blurted out the whole sordid story. In English of course. I finished by bursting into tears. She was sympathetic but confused, not sure how much she understood and don’t think there’s anything she can do about it anyway.
‘In English of course’ leads me to Fear Number 7 – being English. I think I told Julie I was afraid of getting my uniform wrong and people laughing at my accent, and I suppose in a sense I am still worried about these things – with better reason. My clothes! Mitraillette’s don’t fit me in the waist and hips, have to wear a frock belonging to her mum – outmoded and severe, a thing no self-respecting girl of my generation would be caught dead in. Mitraillette’s pullover does fit and I have a many-times patched-over wool jacket that once belonged to her brother, but the combination of these warm outer garments and the dowdy frock looks dead weird. The outfit is completed with wooden clogs – just like Gran’s gardener wears at home. There is no hope of better equipping me unless we use Julie’s clothing coupons. I don’t mind not being stylish, but I am obviously wearing an odd collection of cast-offs and if I am seen, people will wonder.
And my ‘accent’! Well.
Mitraillette says she can tell by the WAY I WALK that I am not from Ormaie. If I walked to the corner shop dressed in the height of fashion and didn’t breathe a word to anyone, I would still betray myself and everyone around me. I am so afraid of letting them down.
Oh, yes, letting people down. Is this next lot fear or guilt? It feels like a lump of granite stuck in the gears of my brain and stripping them raw. Letting people down. A great circular list of failure and worry. What if I’m caught and give away the location of the RAF Moon Squadron? I’ve already let down every one of those Lysander pilots – who liked and encouraged me so much they were daft enough to let me take one of their planes to France. Special Operations Executive trusted me too, not to mention the refugees I was supposed to pick up here. I’m a colossal failure as far as my own ATA ferry pool is concerned, done a bunk and AWOL indefinitely, and I dread betraying my hosts by accident – by being found on their property – or by being caught and giving them away under pressure. Don’t really believe I could keep anything from the Gestapo if they got to work on me. Oh help – here I am again, back to the location of the Moon Squadron and the Gestapo.
Everything leads to the Ormaie Gestapo. Well, they can be Fear Number 9. The Nazi secret police, something else it makes me sick to think about. I am fairly certain the Ormaie Gestapo HQ will be my first stop on my way to whatever prison I end up in.
Unless the Ormaie Gestapo HQ is blown to bits first. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon. It is ten days since we got here. Part of the reason I’ve not written since last week is because I don’t want to put to paper what I am about to write, don’t want to give any kind of reality to this ugly ‘perhaps’. Also, if I’d let myself write this week I’d have just wasted half my paper listing possibilities and wondering. It’s been too long. It is torment, pure torment, waiting for news – for anything.
Julie has vanished.
It’s true she made her first meeting – Tues. 12 Oct., the day after we got here, but then she simply disappeared as if she’d never been in France. Today’s the 21st. She’s been missing over a week.
I understand now why her mother plays Mrs Darling and leaves the windows open in her children’s bedrooms when they’re away. As long as you can pretend they might come back there’s hope. I don’t think there can be anything worse in the world than not knowing what’s happened to your child – not ever knowing.
Here, it happens all the time. It happens ALL THE TIME – people just disappear, entire families sometimes. No one ever hears of them again. They vanish. Shot-down pilots of course, torpedoed sailors of course, you expect that. But here in France it happens to ordinary people too. The house next door just turns up empty one morning, or the post office clerk doesn’t show up for work, or your friend or your teacher doesn’t come to school. I suppose there was a time, a couple of years ago, when there was a chance they’d run away to Spain or Switzerland. And even now there is a narrow hope that Julie has gone to ground until some unknown danger passes. But more often than not the missing face has been sucked into the engines of the Nazi death machine, like an unlucky lapwing hitting the propeller of a Lancaster bomber – nothing left but feathers blowing away in the aircraft’s wake, as if those warm wings and beating heart had never existed.
There is no public record of the arrests. They happen every day. Often people look the other way if there is a fight in the street, to avoid getting in trouble themselves.
Julie has vanished.
It shocks me to write it, to see it here in the margin of my ATA Pilot’s Notes alongside ‘De Havilland Mosquito – Engine Failure After Take-Off ’. But it’s true. She has vanished. She may already be dead.
I’m afraid I will be caught. I’m afraid Julie is dead. But of all the things I’m afraid of, there’s nothing that frightens me so much as the likelihood – the near certainty – that Julie is a prisoner of the Ormaie Gestapo.
It made my spine crawl as I wrote it down and it makes me shiver again to read the words I just wrote.
Must stop. This ink is amazing, it really doesn’t smear even when you cry on it.
Verity, Verity, must remember to call her Verity. Bother.
They can’t move forward – no inside contacts yet. With Julie out of the picture, everything’s stalled. She’s supposed to be the central link in this operation, the informer, the German-speaking translator moving between the town hall and the Gestapo HQ. Mitraillette can’t do it – she’s local, too suspicious. Now the whole Damask Circuit is on edge, afraid that Julie’s capture will betray them.
I mean, that Julie will betray them herself. By giving them away under pressure. The longer the silence the more certain it is that she’s been caught.
Meanwhile, they’re still trying to do something about me. It’s been over two weeks – nothing’s changed.
Had my photograph taken. It will be a while before the exposures are developed. Difficult setting me up with the trusted photographer, who’s busy on many fronts. Most of the negotiating didn’t involve me, again they’ve gone to a good deal of effort on my behalf – could tell how nervous Mitraillette’s Maman was about having me and the photographer and Paul all gathered in her sitting room.
The idea is to do over Verity’s false carte d’identité to turn Kittyhawk – I mean me – into Käthe, I mean Katharina Habicht. I would become the family’s quiet and not-too-bright cousin from Alsace, whose parents have been bombed out and who has come here to be looked after and help with the farm. It’s a risk for countless reasons, the worst being that there’s always a possibility that if Julie has been caught she may have already compromised the name. We’ve talked and talked about it – Mitraillette, Maman and Papa, me as chief consultant and Paul as translator. If the Nazis have got Julie, Verity I mean, we’ve to assume 1) they’ve also got Margaret Brodatt’s pilot’s licence and National Registration card and already know MY real name, and 2) Julie’s told them her own real name because as an enlisted officer under the Geneva Convention that’s what she’s supposed to do and it’s her best chance of being treated decently as a prisoner of war. We don’t think she’ll tell them the name on the forged Katharina Habicht carte d’identité. Paul doesn’t think they’re likely to ask, and even if they did she could tell them anything and they wouldn’t know the difference. She could make up a name – she would too. Or perhaps give them Eva Seiler.
But the r
The photographer works ‘for the enemy’ too. Proper British airmen flying over the European Continent carry a couple of photographs in their emergency kit, just in case they’re shot down and need fake ID. But my photographs are being taken by an official Gestapo-employed French photographer! One of his other jobs is developing enlarged pictures of my crash – he brought some of the prints to show us. Impossible to describe the dual thrill and dread in watching him undo the string fastener of his cardboard folder, then slide free the glossy paper – paper destined for the desk of the Gestapo captain in Ormaie. Like feeling the buffet of the first shadow fingers of cool air touch your wings, as the storm cloud you’ve been trying to outrun begins to catch up with you. This is how close I am to the Ormaie Gestapo – the photographer could hand me over with the pictures.
He warned me in English, ‘Not nice to look at.’
The most disturbing thing was knowing it was meant to be me. That terrible charred corpse was wearing my clothes, bone and leather fused into the shattered cockpit in my place. ATA wings still tracing a pale outline on the sunken wreck of the breastbone. There was a blown-up detail of the ghostly wings, just the wings – you couldn’t tell it was an ATA crest in particular.
I didn’t like it. Why focus on the pilot’s badge – just . . . Why?
‘What is this for?’ I asked. I could just about manage the French. ‘What will they do with these photographs?’
‘There is an English airman being held in Ormaie,’ the photographer explained. ‘They want to show him these pictures, ask him questions about them.’