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Mitraillette and Amélie and I stood like the witches in Macbeth over the ironing board, holding our breath – I was so worried I’d ruin it, burn the scarf, but I didn’t – and after a an to appear in scratchy brown print arey paisley, in the corner opposite the ink stain

You don’t need to be trained by the Special Operations Executive to kno to use invisible ink You don’t even need to be a chemist Me and Beryl learned how to do it in Girl Guides We used to write secret el used, but she wrote in French, so I don’t remember her exact words She’s either tipped us off or betrayed us, won’t knohich till later tonight Mitraillette has sent for Paul – they use his courier as the go-between – we don’t actually knohere he stays

This evening there are 19 prisoners fro transported to a concentration ca by Ormaie and pick up 5 more prisoners here Julie will be with them

If I make it like an Accident Report –

Don’t think I can possibly ot to write so – I’ll have to remember – there et it right while I remember

Mitraillette tried to dose o – 30 minutes to oblivion But this time I’m wise to her and I want to write Perhaps I’ll take it after

I think I will When I’m finished I won’t want to think any e of Poitou River Bridge on Tours- Poitiers Road, with intention of stopping Ger 24 French and Allied prisoners – Wed 1 Dec 1943

Well, we did stop thee too, that’ll keep the anybody via the railway station at Tours for a while

I HATE THEM

I HATE THEM

--

Must remember Paul – Paul, who I also hated

He was marvellous I have to say it He planned it all on the fly, e wasn’t his fault Mustered an army of a dozen men and 2 women in about an hour We left all the bikes and the car hidden – it is the same Citroën Rosalie I don’t kno thehis car impounded, and I think he is too old for this kind of job anyway We hid the car in a garage, believe it or not, belonging to a lovely and heroic old woman who lives by herself in a riverside villa on the Tours side of the Poitou She is the rose-grower the circuit is named for We left our car parked behind her car, which is conveniently a newer and bigger model Rosalie, so it looked like ours had been her previous car, and we hid it under a dust sheet as well The bikes were hidden in her abandoned stables beneath 20-year-old hay

Then we borrowed her boats One beautiful, teak, nineteenth-century rowing boat and two chestnut Canadian canoes Much too good for us The bridge is upstream from the house – they’ve disrupted traffic here before, soo, and for a while the lady was under strict surveillance Hope she won’t be in too ot aith it this time We were careful

Godless as I aot aith it It’s like ripples in a pond, isn’t it? It doesn’t stop in one place

Anye loaded up our fireworks in the boats – don’t think I can give details on the explosives as I wasn’t responsible and didn’t pay attention, and ed up to the bridge in the dark Took about an hour with muffled oars You read about muffled oars in pirate stories – I’m sure there’s a bit in Peter Pan where they use lish summer and the school holidays seem dead far away now It was hard to see – the river was full of fog But we e and waited

What rong?

I don’t know, I honestly don’t know It wasn’t a trap We weren’t outnuher stakes than the Geruessed they’d be uess? We were pretty ruthless

What rong – perhaps it was just too dark, night and fog both The fog was good as well as bad because it hid us, but it was just so hard to see There should have been a quarter moon, for what that’s worth, but the sky was overcast, and ere blind until the prison bus turned up with its headlights blazing

That bit ell – within a hly disabled it We were pretty well cale ofand alder and poplar full ofus, and the fog too Our se and the bus The radiator grille got blown out, but the blast hts and the battery ht that Paul and the owner of the Rosalie soh three of the tyres

The driver got out Then a guard got out They had electric torches – boththe da

Paul picked theun While that was going on I was curled uselessly in a ball with my arms over my head and my teeth clenched, so I missed a bit of the action Born to be a soldier, my foot A raid is actually quite a lot like a battle It is war It’s war in uards came out of the bus and fired random shots into the bushes at us in the dark Mitraillette had to sit onour cover, I was in such a flap Finally Paul gave rip on yourself, Kittyhawk,’ he hissed ‘We need you You’re a crack shot, but no one’s expecting you to kill anybody Focus on tools, all right? They’ll start trying to fix things in a ulped and nodded Don’t know if he saw , but he shifted back to his own position beneath the gently rustling herb and heuard