PRISONERS

of a

SHADOW WORLD

by

Eric Johns
CONTENTS

PART 1 The Refugee

May 1940
1 Invasion! 7
2 Escape 11
3 Panzers 15
4 Stuka 22
5 Target Practice 26
6 No-Man's-Land 30
7 Sapper 35
8 Dunkirk 45

PART 2 Spy School

June 1940 - March 1941
9 Blighty 52
10 Colonel Mason 56
11 Back To School 65
12 Colonel Mason's Test 91
13 The Agent's First Disobedience 95

PART 3 Louis-Philippe's War

April - May 1941
14 Forbidden Knowledge 98
15 Home 103
16 Monsieur Lvy 110
17 Back to School Again 113
18 The Gestapo Recruit 117
19 The Gardener's Boy 121
20 Maman the Spy 124
21 The Gestapo Raid 132
22 The Widows of Verdun 137
23 The Messenger 142
24 Escape Line 149
25 The Traitors 155
26 Death is Always Waiting 167

PART 4 Madeleine's Nightmare

July 1942
27 Yellow Stars 174
28 Outcasts 180
29 The Betrayal 188
30 Cattle Trucks 192
 31 The Cuckoos 199
32 The Faceless Girl 204
33 Drancy 208
34 The Boys From The Eleventh 218
35 The Way to Pitchipoi 225

PART 5 Prisoner of the Gestapo

August 1942
36 Gestapo Ambush 240
37 Revenge 248
38 Flight to England 256

PART 6 Madeleine's War Diary

August - November 1942 269
June 1944 294
January 1945 297
May - September 1945 311
PART 1 The Refugee
May 1940

1 Invasion!

At first he did not know that something world-shattering had happened.

He was looking through the hotel window at the forest-covered hills.
They belonged to a baron who hunted there. He wondered what it
would be like to be a baron, to own a forest, but he couldn't do things
like that - imagine what other people felt. He knew that made him
different.
"Louis-Philippe," his maman's voice penetrated his thoughts. "You
must escape."
It was the note of alarm that brought him back to the hotel room
not the words.
He checked what had been said while he was in his private world.
Somehow he heard even when he wasn't listening.
Belgium - Invasion - Panzers: German tanks had come through the
Ardennes Mountains.
But everyone knew that was impossible. Tanks could not penetrate
the forest. It was too dense. There could be no panzer blitzkrieg here
like the one which had torn Poland apart last year.
His father was on the telephone but using English. He
concentrated on what was happening. At home they spoke English so
that he would learn it. His maman was French, papa English. But for
business, on the telephone, papa always used French. Or German. So
why was he speaking English now?
"I'm telling you they have," he was saying quite loudly.
"Commandos have knocked out the border posts. Bridges have been
seized. Panzer columns are driving through Belgium."
Belgium, he thought. His friends at school had laughed when he'd
told them he was going there on holiday. They looked down on the
Belgians, the country was a joke. They asked him: Why don't Belgians
go water-skiing? Answer: Because they can't find any lakes that slope
downhill! But water doesn't slope, he'd said. He never got jokes. His
friends teased him about it, but one boy, Daniel, had kept on laughing
at him as if he was the joke. His friends had told him that he would
never stop until he fought him. So he'd hit him and kept on hitting him
until his friends pulled him off and told him that would be enough. And
it was.
Well, no one would laugh now. He was in the middle of an
invasion.
"Will you pass on the information?" his father was demanding. He
sounded impatient with whoever was at the other end. He always
expected to be obeyed immediately. "The Germans are invading
France. Columns of armour miles long are attacking through Belgium.
Have you got that? They are circling round the end of the Maginot
Line. The French forts are useless. As of now there are no defences in
the path of the German advance."
Suddenly, he understood what was happening. France and England
had been at war with Germany for eight months, but there hadn't been
any fighting. The newspapers called it the 'phoney war'. Now the real
war had started.
"Hallo? Hallo, hallo?" His father rattled the phone. "Dead," he
said. "The lines have been cut."
"What will you do?" his mother asked.
"Go to the meeting as arranged," his father said. "You must go
back to Paris. Leave immediately. Keep ahead of the German columns."
"Will we see the panzers?" Louis-Philippe asked. He'd watched
them on the newsreels at the cinema. They had raced across Poland
accompanied by military music and explosions. He'd admired the
German army. That was when the phoney war started. France and
England had told Germany to get out of Poland or else. Now it was or-
else time. Except it seemed to be the Germans who were attacking
which was the wrong way round.
"You are going to England," his maman told him. "You'll be safe
there."
"I want to stay with you." He felt a sudden chill.
She took his face in her hands. "Listen to me, Louis-Philippe. You
don't understand what it's like to be invaded. I was your age the last
time the Germans came. The Great War: it was a nightmare for
civilians."
"You were all right, weren't you?"
 "It's all arranged," his papa said flatly. "Monsieur Barras is coming
to take you to Calais. He will put you on a boat for England. You're
nearly twelve. In a war you have to grow up quickly."
He saw his parents exchange a glance but was not sure what it
meant.
The thought of being sent to England on his own made his stomach
clench. He was half English, but it felt like a foreign country.
"What about you?" he asked his mother.
"I will follow you as soon as I can. I have things to clear up in
Paris before I leave."
What things? He stared at her, unblinking. She had short curly hair,
a pointed chin, a bow-shaped mouth and brown eyes which suddenly
seemed to have grown lines at the corners. She was small, like him. He
felt lost already. He didn't understand the world.
His father was searching through papers in his briefcase.
"Won't the Germans invade England as well?" he asked.
"They might try," his papa said, "but the Royal Navy will stop any
invasion fleet the Germans can send. You'll have time to learn what you
need there." He spoke as though they wouldn't be with him. He took a
map out of his briefcase and wrote down figures on a piece of paper.
Why was he being sent with Monsieur Barras? He worked for the
same company as papa. They were engineers. Their factory made parts
for planes.
"Are you listening?" his maman asked, shaking his shoulders.
"Yes, maman," Louis-Philippe said automatically.
"What did papa say?"
He checked the recording in his head.
"I am going to Calais with Monsieur Barras to catch a ferry to
England. When I get there I must phone Colonel Mason on 503991 or
495760..." For the first time he heard what he was saying. "Why don't I
go to Aunt Marigold's?"
"Colonel Mason is your legal guardian in England," his papa told
him, impatient at having to explain. "He'll arrange for you to go to a
special school. Go on."
"If I can't contact him by phone I am to go to London and find him
in Caxton Street."
"That's right." His father sighed.
"How does he do it?" his mother asked.
She knew he'd been born with a photographic memory so why did
she ask? It was nothing he'd done. He didn't understand himself. He
was both clever and stupid. He could remember anything but never
understood why people asked questions like that.
 He saw that his father had taken a drawing out of his briefcase. It
looked like one of the engineering plans he used. It was on blue
draughtsman's paper, but the plan was not of a plane. It was a strange
object. The underneath part seemed to be a bomb but with wings like a
plane. While fixed on top was what looked like an aircraft engine but
without a propeller.
When his father saw him staring at it he quickly folded it and
replaced it in his briefcase. Louis-Philippe had the feeling that his
father had wanted him to see it. But why would he hide it if he wanted
him to see it? It did not make sense. People did not make sense.
"Will you remember when you get to England?" his maman asked.
"What?" he blinked, coming back to the hotel room. Did she mean
the plan?
His mother shook her head as though she wanted to scream.
"Louis-Philippe, you're like a visitor who sometimes comes out of
his private world to see what the rest of us are doing," she told him.
"The numbers, the street, what you've got to do when you get to
England. Will you remember?"
"Of course."
She knew he would, so why did she keep asking?
But he didn't know then what war was like. He'd only seen it on the
cinema newsreels. He did not know that it could destroy him.