CHAPTER TEN
HAZEL
ENGLAND
EARLY 1944
Hazel’s heart hammered so loudly she wondered if it was about to leap clean from her chest. This was the moment she’d been anxiously waiting for. She was beyond excited that she was finally going to be doing something, yet terrified that she’d be caught by the enemy the moment she landed.
She walked through the airfield beside her contact from the Air Liaison Section, Eddie, and gave him a tight smile when she noticed he was watching her.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Scared,’ Hazel replied honestly. ‘But I’ll be fine. I know what to do, I’m just not fond of heights.’
When he stopped at an aircraft hangar she took the chance to sit down, her knees knocking. It was time to run through everything again, and she was looking forward to doing so; it would give her the clarity and focus she needed. The more times she went through all the details, the more in control she felt.
She watched him as he carefully took out a map and leaned in closer to her.
‘This is your dropping point,’ he said. ‘I want you to familiarise yourself again with where you’ll be landing.’
Hazel stared at him, committing to memory what he was showing her. She blew out a breath. She knew she was joining a man and woman, that they’d be waiting for her in an old shed near her landing coordinates, and that she was being dropped in as their radio operator. But all the facts in the world weren’t going to prepare her for the real thing and she knew it.
‘There is one thing I want to talk to you about,’ Eddie said, sitting down beside her.
‘What is it?’ she asked, curious.
‘There are two tablets that every SOE agent must carry with them at all times. I have your two here for you.’
Hazel gulped. It felt like there were rocks in her throat. Why did she not already know this?
‘What are they?’
‘This,’ he said, ‘is Benzedrine. It will keep you awake if you need it to.’
‘And the other?’ she asked.
He nodded, holding up a small rubber something. She realised then it was a cover of some sort.
‘This is an L tablet. It’s lethal and you must keep it in this cover. Basically it’s a death pill, and if you bite down on it, you’ll be dead within two minutes.’
‘It kills you that quickly?’
‘I’m afraid so. Think of it as another weapon, something you have as a safety net if you’re ever, well, if you’re ever in the type of situation that desperately requires it.’
‘Thank you,’ Hazel said, taking the pills from him. She almost didn’t want to touch the L tablet, hating the idea of being in a situation so dire she’d have to use it or even think about using it.
‘I’ll go through your equipment once more, but other than that you’ll be in the air in no time,’ Eddie told her. ‘I’ll give you a hot toddy before we drop you, so that’s something to look forward to, I suppose.’
Hazel smiled her thanks. ‘I hope it comes with a generous dollop of rum. I’ll need it to steel my nerves.’
‘Don’t worry, love, it’ll have enough rum in it to put hairs on your chest.’
She was nervous as a person could be, but his silly joke made her laugh. She took a deep breath as she looked out at the planes. There were some agents returning, the lucky ones who’d managed to stay alive in France and make it home, and a handful being sent out. She had less than an hour before she left the safety of England, and then her fate was entirely in her own hands.
All she had to do now was put her parachute overalls on and get ready to go.
The plane was vibrating so much that Hazel was certain her entire body was buzzing, her hands shaking, her stomach flipping so violently she was on the verge of being sick. Being so high in the air, knowing what was about to happen, what she was about to do to herself – it was beyond awful.
She knew they were close, that it wouldn’t be long before she had to drop, but until then she was holding on tight.
‘Here!’
She took the hot toddy that was being passed to her from the dispatcher when she heard his shout, willing her hands to stop shaking so she could hold it without spilling it all over herself. Hazel drank it down, hoping it gave her the courage she so desperately needed.
‘See this?’ he shouted, and if she hadn’t been staring at him she probably wouldn’t even have known he was speaking. The roaring of the plane’s engines was so loud in her ears that she doubted she’d ever forget the noise.
She nodded and watched as he made a big fuss out of checking the line to show her how sturdy it was and then giving the hook they’d be using a few mighty pulls. The thought of free-falling and finding her parachute didn’t work or wasn’t properly attached had certainly crossed her mind. Then again, she knew her chances of surviving the parachute drop were significantly greater than surviving her time in France.
Something felt different then, the engine slowing or something, she didn’t know, and when she passed the cup back to her dispatcher, she wished she hadn’t drunk the entire toddy now that it was sloshing around in her belly.
She stared at the lights, watched as the dispatcher took a call from the pilot on the intercom. This was it. She knew this was the moment. She’d worried about her fiancé not coming home from war, but she suddenly realised that perhaps she had less chance of coming home now than he did.
Her dispatcher got up and took hold of the static line on her parachute, attaching it to the hook on the plane. Then he glanced at her before opening a hole in the floor of the fuselage. Hazel knew the drill, had gone over it many times so she knew what to expect and not to make a mistake, but everything seemed to be happening so fast now.
The red light came on, her signal to move, and she carefully sat, legs dangling over the edge of the hole. She didn’t look down, kept her gaze up. Her stomach was churning now, diving and flipping, the anticipation almost too much to bear, but she never took her eyes off the light. It was still red. It was red. It was . . .
Green.
Everything changed then. The noise that had rumbled in her ears like never-ending thunder abruptly ended as the engines cut to slow the plane. She gasped, her lungs suddenly empty as she clenched her fingers and dropped out of the plane and into nothingness.
She’d had to move fast to avoid the slipstream, and as much as she wanted to scream as the cool air engulfed her, she stayed deathly quiet, eyes shut tight. And then she opened them, forcing herself to look around, to enjoy the once in a lifetime experience of falling from the sky. Hazel lost her breath, couldn’t inhale as the impact of what she was doing caught up to her, and then suddenly, just like that, she felt free. She laughed, smiling so hard her cheeks hurt. This was it, this was what she’d been trained to do, and finally, finally she was here.
Hazel had never imagined anything like the rush of falling, then the static line pulled taut, jolting her back to reality as she thanked God that her chute had opened, keeping her from crashing into the ground.
She kept floating, like a bubble being passed gently through the air, and she thought about being a bird. About flying every day, seeing the world pass you by from above, and for the first time in her life she felt envious of the little winged creatures that she so often watched in the sky.
The descent was slow and magical, like nothing she’d ever felt, until she looked down and suddenly the ground seemed to be coming towards her at a rapid pace. The euphoria lifted then, disappearing like it had never existed.
She wasn’t going to stop. She was going to crash. Oh God, she was going to break every bone in her body!
Hazel shut her eyes tight before quickly popping them open again. She was in charge, she was the one attached to this damn thing and she knew what she was supposed to do. As the ground seemed to open up, ready to engulf her, she realised she was doing fine. She was going the correct speed, was going to be all right so long as she didn’t tangle in the nearby trees.
Oomph.
She hit the ground. Hazel scrambled to find her feet, everything she’d learned during her training coming back to her in a rush as though she’d done this all before. Of course she had, in training, only then she’d had backup and she hadn’t been landing in a territory occupied by Germans. There was a chance they’d seen her already, which was why the quicker she found her contacts, the faster she’d get to safety.
Hazel struggled to release herself, the panic rising inside her, bile filling her throat as she thought about who could be watching her, what a bullet would feel like entering her body, a knife to her throat, a . . . She blocked her fears out, remembering her parachute protocol and moving quickly. Her contacts would be here soon, if they weren’t already running towards her.
‘Over here!’
She spun around, the urgent whisper surprising her. Hazel braced herself, then placed a hand on her weapon, ready to fight if she needed to, ready to use the knife that she’d had combat training to learn how to use. She knew not to trust anybody, couldn’t believe this stranger just because she was another woman.
‘Quickly!’
Hazel knew she had no choice but to confront the person calling her. She went to move, tried to look unflappable, and the woman darted out, surprising her with how fast she was. There was supposed to be two people, a man and a woman.
‘Your contacts were captured barely an hour ago. We have to move now!’ the woman said in rapid French.
Hazel quickly took off her parachute overalls, knowing now why they were often laughingly called ‘striptease overalls’ for how fast they had to be removed, and pulled out the little shovel she’d been given to hide her parachute with. The other woman stood guard but didn’t offer to help as Hazel buried all evidence of her landing.
‘Hurry.’
‘Who are you?’ she asked, still unsure if she was doing the right thing in trusting her. But they couldn’t stand arguing all day when they could so easily be discovered, and she’d rather this woman than a German.
‘Sophia,’ she said quickly. She made a whistling noise, and within seconds another woman emerged.
Oh my God. It took only a second for Hazel to realise who was running towards her.
‘What . . . ?’ she whispered, dumbfounded.
Rose threw her arms around her in a quick hug before seizing her hand. Hazel grabbed the things she’d landed with, her suitcase containing the radio and her small bag.
‘What are you doing here?’ Hazel gasped.
‘It’s so good to see you!’ Rose said, her voice low but her smile wide.
Hazel clutched her hand tight and ran fast alongside the two women. Now she knew who’d recommended her, and she couldn’t believe she was in France, undercover, with the one person who’d taught her almost everything there was to know about the country in the first place. She was with Rose!
‘We’re posing as French students, same as you. Use the cover story you’ve been given and keep anything you don’t know as close to the truth as possible,’ Rose whispered. ‘We’ve known each other for years, yet you two have only just met, that type of thing. Only lie when you absolutely have to.’
Hazel nodded, she knew all that already but she’d still listened carefully, and the enormity of what she was doing hit her like she’d walked smack bang into a solid wall. A lump formed in her throat and she thought of home; a warm fire, the sound of her mother humming as she sat down to knit, her father’s laughter. Hazel pushed the thoughts away. There was no point wishing for home. She was here, and there would be no home to go back to if they didn’t stop the Germans in their tracks.
She pushed herself to run faster, easily keeping up with the other two. This was what she’d trained for, this was what she’d wanted, and going home was no longer an option.