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Oh, yes, letting people down Is this next lot fear or guilt? It feels like a lu thereat circular list of failure and worry What if I’ive away the location of the RAF Moon Squadron? I’ve already let down every one of those Lysander pilots – who liked and encouraged h to let me take one of their planes to France Special Operations Executive trusted ees 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 betrayingfound on their property – or by being caught and giving them away under pressure Don’t really believe I could keep anything froot to work on ain, back to the location of the Moon Squadron and the Gestapo
Everything leads to the Ormaie Gestapo Well, they can be Fear Nu 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 seeot here Part of the reason I’ve not written since last week is because I don’t want to put to paper what I aive any kind of reality to this ugly ‘perhaps’ Also, if I’d let myself write this week I’d have just wasted halfIt’s been too long It is tor
Julie has vanished
It’s true she– 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 beenover a week
I understand nohy herand leaves the s open in her children’s bedrooht co worse in the world than not knohat’s happened to your child – not ever knowing
Here, it happens all the time It happens ALL THE TIME – people just disappear, entire faain 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 e, or the post office clerk doesn’t show up for work, or your friend or your teacher doesn’t coo, 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 so face has been sucked into the engines of the Nazi deaththe propeller of a Lancaster bo away in the aircraft’s wake, as if those ings 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 in of side ‘De Havilland Mosquito – Engine Failure After Take-Off ’ But it’s true She has vanished She ht I’s I’htens me so much as the likelihood – the near certainty – that Julie is a prisoner of the Ormaie Gestapo
It made ain to read the words I just wrote
Must stop This ink is a, 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 infor between the town hall and the Gestapo HQ Mitraillette can’t do it – she’s local, too suspicious Now the whole Dae, afraid that Julie’s capture will betray them
Itheer the silence the ht
Meanwhile, they’re still trying to do so’s changed
Had raph taken It will be a while before the exposures are developed Difficult setting rapher, who’s busy on ain they’ve gone to a good deal of effort on my behalf – could tell how nervous Mitraillette’s Maathered 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 becoht cousin from Alsace, whose parents have been bombed out and who has come here to be looked after and help with the far 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 aret 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 theed Katharina Habicht carte d’identité Paul doesn’t think they’re likely to ask, and even if they did she could tell the and they wouldn’t know the difference She could ive them Eva Seiler