“No, no, look!” She held a young soldier back from jumping into the sea. “Take it off, or you will snap your neck,” she said to him.
A large group of women with children then came out on the deck as she turned. “Oh dear God,” she said as the frantic passengers started to fly over the railing. From the deck above, a lifeboat fell halfway from the davits, pointing straight down to the sea.
“Come along,” the Belgian boy said, holding his dog. He could see the water pouring over the bow of the ship from near the bridge. “They say the stern always goes down last,” he said to his sister as they walked aft past the chrome bicycle.
Allen stumbled to his feet. He looked around, trying to gain his focus in the dark. His head felt empty and his ears rang so loud, he could barely hear anything outside. He started to stumble down past bodies laid out dead in every direction. He caught a light down the hallway as it started to fill with water.
Marc, making his way to the stairwell, was caught up in a huge crowed of men pouring out from passageways and cabins. The gear they carried with them added to the confusion and congestion.
Marc reached the staircase and heard a cracking sound from above.
Snap … snap, snap … crack …snap
. He looked up and saw that a part of the staircase was separating from the upper landing. Another part of the staircase had already snapped, causing the stairs to sag. The sheer number of soldiers and their gear was causing the stairs to fail.
Marc became sick with panic on how he could climb the stairs before they fully disconnected. A long, loud grinding sound could be heard from above, within the next round of stairs, and was followed by a very loud snap muffled by the sound of falling men and duty bags, shouts and hollers, as the stairs began to collapse.
Another soldier, as Marc hesitated to climb the stairs, pulled him back to cut in front of him. Just as the separation from the upper landing became complete, the stairs crashed down on the man in front of Marc. Marc fell backwards into the soldiers behind him in the foyer as men and gear poured down from above.
Marc pulled himself up off the deck and scooted away from the stairs.
“Is there another staircase?” one soldier said, frantic.
“Rope! Anyone have a rope up there?” another called above the yelling.
Out of the corner of his eye, Marc caught a glimpse of a man followed by another crewmember as they passed through a small hatchway. Marc went for the hatch, and was followed by another man. He entered a remarkably small crew stairway leading up from the engine room.
Marc turned on the stairway about four times until he came to an open hatch door that landed on the promenade deck on the starboard side of the ship. A group of guns stood in a stack on the deck right outside the main foyer landing. Just as another group of soldiers came out of the main foyer doors to the deck, the guns came entirely loose and started sliding across the deck while discharging, hitting one unlucky fellow square in the head as he fell back dead into the crowd trying to escape the ship.
Marc stumbled against the bulkhead and looked down the deck as a lifeboat slid down the side of the ship.
“Everyone to the port side,” came over the ship’s intercom. The ship started to lurch heavy to port, and Marc’s eyes widened with fear as the view of the sky now became a view of the sea. Men, women, and children who had gathered around the boats lost their footing and fell into the sea in front of him.
Marc fought his way back through the ship’s rooms to the other side, along with men desperately looking for a way to get out.
Marc came out on the other side of the promenade deck, acutely aware of the growing tilt of the ship as his weight pressed against the bulkhead.
“She is going over! She is going over!” a young soldier yelled in terror. Marc knew he needed to act quickly and so, before the deck became so slanted he couldn’t climb it, he made it to the railing just next to the chrome bicycle.
As he reached the railing, he pulled himself over and turned back and saw several soldiers trying to reach the side. He held out his hand to help pull them up and over the railing. About five or six made it up and over this way.
Each one grabbed the bike handles to pull themselves over, and as they did, they’d accidently pull the bike’s bell. “
Bling-ging, bling-ging, bling-ging
,” went the bell each time a soldier climbed over the rail onto the side of the ship’s plates. The sound of its cheerful, childlike tone made Marc think of what a delightful afternoon it would be for a bike ride on the side of a ship.
A
llen struggled to keep his balance inside the dark room as he waited to get through the porthole.
“Get back!” the man yelled.
Just then, the light went out through the porthole and water began to rush inside.
Sister Clayton made her way aft, coming upon a man stripping out of his trousers and shirt, dropping his drawers as he prepared to jump over the side of the ship. He turned and looked at her with embarrassment.
“This is no time for modesty,” she said as she started to pull off her hat. The ship then lurched, throwing both of them against the rail. They floated away from the rail as the ocean came up and over it.
On the side of the ship, Marc could see a group of lifeboats that had made it free. Around the ship, he saw bobbing heads of men, and sometimes women, in the sea. “Who would lash a life vest on a dead man?” Marc pondered.
In the distance, Marc saw the cruiser that earlier had been ferrying troops as it approached the now-overturned
Lancastria
. But, just then, another plane dived down upon the swimmers and fired into the sea. The plane dropped some kind of bomb on the struggling soldiers.
Marc looked down the plates of the hull, toward a large crack. Through the gaping hole, oil spilled from the ship. He scanned how far the oil slick extended over the sea, and then saw that some of this oil had caught on fire. Marc watched as one man swam through the oil, trying to get out of it, as his hair caught fire. He screamed before disappearing into the black sea.
“Hand … hand…” he heard to his right. Marc looked and no one was there.
“Down here,” he heard. He looked and there was a man in porthole calling for his hand. He helped him up and out. Another man was behind the first.
“Hurry!” he said. “Hurry!” The man he’d just helped from the porthole yelled down inside the ship, as he tried to help his buddy escape. Marc saw the water now rising up from the ship’s submerged bow. He started to walk backwards along the side of the plates and then turned toward the aft. The propellers jetted out of the sea. Marc could see men climbing over the railings near the aft section, and up on the now-jutting propeller shaft.
“Do you want to live?” a British officer asked Marc. He snapped out of what felt like a heavy state of sleep.
“Yes,” Marc pulled the words out of himself.
“Then strip out of those clothes. They are just going to pull you down,” the officer barked to him, and pointed to others just behind Marc. Marc felt like the words had passed through him, as he struggled to focus amidst the panic.
All along the side of the ship, men busted through portholes and called for help to climb out. When the water reached the open portholes, Marc heard the shouts and screams of men inside the ship.
Marc took off his boots, shirt and trousers. The officer in front of him now stood fully naked. Others were stripping down, some naked, and some just no trousers on. Other men appeared like they expected to walk off the ship and across the ocean on some magical bridge. They were in full dress, and with heavy kitbags on their backs. Somehow they seemed unable to save their own lives; the idea of letting go of equipment was grounds for court martial.
The ocean continued to climb the side of the ship. The cruiser had moved away a bit from the scene to avoid the planes diving from above.
Marc slipped out of his underwear and got done folding his clothing. He stacked it neatly on the side of the ship, as if he were just going for a swim and was going to come back later to dress for dinner.
“Are you ready?” the officer called over the yelling to Marc.
“For what?” Marc thought the words first and then had to force himself to say them.
“To jump into the sea. We need to get away from the ship so it does not pull us down,” the officer yelled.
Just then, across the sea of broken bodies, lifeboats, and shouting men, coming from within busted-out portholes came a chorus of rowdy British men singing out “Roll out the Barrel.” They perched themselves along the protruding starboard side propeller shaft. The voices seemed to be disconnected from the scene. Marc looked out upon a dark sea of oil mixed with swimmers, bodies, smoke, and broken lifeboats.
“There will always be an England,” came ringing out from a single voice of a steward. He sat along the outside part of the railing near the aft of the ship.
The water surged along the ship’s side. Marc saw men climbing out from various portholes. Just ten feet from him, the glass snapped as another person deep inside the ship attempted to break free. There was a man, not thirty feet away, who could not get out of the porthole. He was stuck. Another soldier hit him on the head to knock him out so he would not suffer as he drowned.
“Do you want to live, son?” the officer asked again in a sharp tone.
Shots rang out behind them to the aft. Two officers had taken out their revolvers and then shot each other. Both Marc and the officer looked in the direction of the gunfire. Marc’s eye caught another soldier who appeared to be a high-ranking officer. He perched himself near the propeller and stood as calm as could be, smoking a cigarette and looking out over the ocean as if he were at the beach for the day.
Marc looked back at the naked man in front of him and away from the scene all around him. He took a deep breath and focused his mind, trying to block it all out.
“Yes, ready,” he said, as if he were speaking through a wall of glass.
“Let’s go, then,” the officer said as he dived into the sea.
Marc walked to the side, just on the edge of the keel, and decided to jump instead of dive. As he leaped from the ship, Marc plunged into the cold, oily water and, as it caved over his head, an odd thought occurred to him.
That rabbit doesn’t stand a chance.
Spring, 1942
Paris, France
T
orquette arranged the drapes in just the right way. She had done this so often, it was natural. Her faced wore heavy the signs of age for being relatively young. The teakettle screamed in the kitchen. She removed the kettle from the stove and there came a knock at the door.
“Bonjour, R,” she said with a welcome smile in her voice. R removed his coat and hung it near the door.
“Bonjour. You look well today,” he responded. “Do you need any help?” He towered over her, but was not quite as tall as her husband. His face was unreadable and his head was full of thick, black hair.
“Can you set up the table?” she asked, and returned to the kitchen.
“But, of course.” He got out the chairs and the deck of cards. Beside each of the four chairs, he placed a small pad and pencil.
Dr. Jackson came through the door in silence. He put his jacket up straight away and retreated to a back bedroom.
“Where is Philip?” he asked.
“He is out with his friends.”
“Later I need to speak with him.” The clock chimed four, and a few minutes later came another knock on the door.
“Bonjour, Marc,” Torquette answered the door in a very warm, inviting voice.
“Bonjour, my sweet. How are you today?” Marc said. He hung his jacket and put down his bag. She brought out the cups and poured into each of them some tea, and then placed in the center of the table a modest bowl of blueberries. The men then sat and Marc passed out the cards to each of them as they waited for the tea to cool.
R spoke next. “Someday I will learn this game,” he smirked.
“Don’t you think you’re being a little optimistic there?” Torquette glanced toward Dr. Jackson.
“I hope never to learn this game. It reminds me how little I can remember,” Dr. Jackson said with a grumpy tone.
“I have made this game as simple as I can for you. You don’t have to play. You just keep score and I tell you the numbers and place the pegs in the holes,” Marc proclaimed as he passed out the cards. “What more can I do?”
“We appreciate you, Marc, for all you do. Without you, we would have no mystery in our lives, such as watching a game of cribbage, where supposedly we are winning but have no idea how or why,” Torquette responded with a smile.
“It would be rather funny if we should ever need this game,” R said, laughing quietly.
“How is that?” Dr. Jackson asked.
“They will spend six months trying to figure out our code. They will pore over this board and convince themselves that each peg and every hole are a part of a greater sum,” R elaborated as he popped two blueberries into his mouth.
“You’re right, R. Marc, where is the railing from the ship?” Dr. Jackson asked.
“I nearly forgot the board,” Marc then reached into his bag and pulled out the hand-carved wooden cribbage board and placed it on the table.
June 17, 1940
Saint-Nazaire, France
After a few seconds, Marc made his way to the surface and, due to the oil, was careful about opening his eyes. His body cringed in the cold water. All around him, men swam in every direction, but he lost sight of the officer.
“Over here!” Marc heard, turned and saw the officer swimming toward him. “We need to move out of here! We are too close.”
Behind them, Marc could still hear the chorus of voices near the aft starboard propeller shaft. “Roll out the barrel and we’ll have a barrel of fun! Roll out the barrel, the barrel … and we will …”
“Lifebelt! I need a lifebelt!” called another soldier.
“The planes are coming back!” another voice called out in pain.