Page 33 of Hearts of Resistance
A rumble indicated the train was on its way; it was impossible to miss the deep noise as it started to come closer.
‘You can do more to help us if you’re gone. Make your way to France,’ Horse said quickly. ‘Move!’
He darted out of the bushes, and at the same time an entire group of men appeared from nowhere.
‘What’s happening?’ Alex asked, clasping her hand tight.
Sophia moved quickly, pulling him with her. ‘They’ve already bribed the conductor and train workers, but they can’t stop the train for long,’ she hissed. ‘We have to hurry.’
When the train halted, it was an impressive sight. Even more impressive were the men rushing to open crates of furniture inside a boxcar. Sophia’s heart skipped a beat when she saw the young man she’d helped only nights earlier, with no idea at the time that she’d be fleeing her country shoulder to shoulder with him.
She waited for the small group of Jews to board first, helping to seal the crate back up. And then it was her and Alex’s turn. She hoped and prayed that no one had followed them, that dogs wouldn’t be on the trail and come for the brave men who were helping them once they’d gone. When the train pulled away, those men would be hurrying to burn the furniture they’d emptied from the crates, then making their way back to their daytime lives, not letting anyone know what they did under the cover of darkness to help those most in need.
Sophia huddled close to Alex. It was just the two of them in the second crate, and she guessed at least six people were sitting silently side by side in the first.
‘When we get to Sweden, if we make it there alive, I can’t stay with you,’ she whispered to him, dropping her head to his shoulder. ‘I have to keep helping, I can’t sit by and just—’
‘I know,’ he whispered, not letting her finish. ‘Just promise me that when the war is over, we’ll be married. Promise me you’ll come looking for me.’ He let out a deep, pained sigh. ‘I would do anything to come with you, to help, but without speaking French or English...’ His words faded.
Tears welled in her eyes but she refused to let them fall. It was heartbreaking that he felt so hopeless.
‘Once the war is over, for two months, I’ll wait every day at twelve noon outside that little church we could see from my apartment window. Promise you’ll do the same?’ she asked. ‘If we’re alive, that way we’ll find each other.’
Alex squeezed her hand. ‘I promise.’
As the train lurched and started to rumble forward, Sophia shut her eyes tight and prayed that they’d make it to Sweden alive. No matter how hard it would be to walk away from Alex, she would do it. She had to make her way to France, had to honour her mother and fight against Hitler.
Thank you, Mama,she silently whispered, thinking of all the lessons her mother had insisted upon, making sure her French was perfect. Her mother had liked Sophia to speak French with her, to remind her of her family, to make sure Sophia knew that she was as much French as she was German. Sophia couldn’t possibly have known it at the time, but it was her mother’s language that would make it possible for her to join the Resistance in France.
There she could honour her mother’s homeland. Do what she knew in her heart was right. And the Resistance movement, full of women working underground to help fight the war, would be crazy not to take her on. She was a German woman with a French-born mother, had an intimate knowledge of the Nazis, could speak fluent French and had already proven she had the guts to stand up for what was right.
She was going to join the underground movement there, and she wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HAZEL
SCOTLAND
1943
They were stationed at Arisaig House now, in Scotland, and Hazel’s exhaustion was like a persistent chill to her bones. The weather was cooler than she’d expected, and given the conditions the instructors kept putting them out in, she was surprised she hadn’t frozen. Today they’d been stripped of their coats and anything warm to wear, and she’d been outside training all day with nothing to eat. She’d never been so tired or hungry, so close to collapsing. But she’d seen what happened to others who hadn’t dug deep into themselves and kept going, and there was no way she was going to face the same fate after getting so far. She was determined to succeed and get to France.
She hauled herself into bed, reaching for a blanket and quickly wrapping it around herself. A bath would have been heavenly, even a few handfuls of warm water to splash against her face, but her legs wouldn’t carry her any further. It was time for bed. It had been six weeks since she’d left home, and her initial four weeks at Wanborough Manor had been a walk in the park compared to what she’d faced in her time here. But it was almost over. It had to be.
Hazel shut her eyes, the burn beneath her lids starting to ease as she shut everything else out. She needed sleep. Deep down, she knew her superiors needed to be this hard on her, because if she couldn’t withstand it here, then she’d never succeed in the field. But that knowledge didn’t make coping with such long, tiresome days any easier.
She drifted into slumber, her body melting into the mattress. It was the best thing she’d ever felt, dropping into a deep, peaceful sleep.
‘Get up!’
Hazel woke abruptly, stifling a scream as a man’s rough hands shook her by the shoulders. She had no idea if she’d been asleep two minutes or two hours, and the hands didn’t stop, fingers digging into her skin, pulling her so violently that she thought she was going to break.
A torch was pointed at her face, blinding her as she was thrown back down on to the bed.
‘Get up!’
It was only then that she realised the man was speaking in German. She pulled herself up, blinking as the lights came on. She was shaking from exhaustion and fear, but she tried to assess the situation. A woman had started to scream, the men were still yelling, and...she blinked again, wondering if her eyes were playing tricks on her, if this could be a dream.
