‘Oh no you don’t, son.’ Arthur grabbed one of his arms, with Stanley taking the other to hold him back.
‘Get off me, can you? They’re prisoners, for God’s sake!’
‘They’re spies for t’ Führer.’ Stan nodded to the smoking fuselage. ‘That’s one of ours, that plane is. They’re in RAF uniforms and flying one of our bombers. Spies aren’t protected under no convention. They’re to be executed.’
Charlie scoffed. ‘But not by you, Stan Henderson.’
The two men were both farmers, burly and strong, but Charlie was used to wrestling meaty animals in his work and he had some muscle too. He made another bid for freedom and succeeded in shaking the older men off.
‘If tha helps that Jerry bastard, folk’ll know of it,’ Arthur warned him in a low voice. ‘Does tha want ’em saying tha’s a traitor, eh, Charlie?’
‘Don’t be absurd. No one’s going to call me a traitor for saving a man’s life. No one I give a damn about anyhow.’
Bobby, who was still crouching on the ground by the gunner’s turret, turned around when she felt something touch her. The injured man had put his hand on her arm.
‘Wait,’ she said to Stanley and Arthur, who looked like they were about to make another attempt to keep Charlie restrained. ‘This one’s coming out of it, I think. He wants to tell me something.’
‘Jolka,’ the man whispered, pressing his fingers into her arm.
‘You said that before. I’m sorry, I can’t understand you.’ She tried to remember any simple German that might allow her to communicate with the delirious man. ‘Um.Non sprechen Deutsche.’
‘Yolker. That’s German for spy, that is,’ Stanley announced knowledgeably. ‘Remember it from army days. See, he’s confessing.’
‘Oh, do be quiet,’ Bobby said impatiently. ‘I can’t hear what he’s saying.’
‘Nie. Nie niemiecki,’ the man whispered. ‘Polski. Polski.’
‘I can’t understand, I’m sorry,’ she said again.
Charlie cast a glance at his antagonists. ‘Forgive me, gentlemen, but wouldn’t your really top-notch German spies usually be able to speak English?’
‘Nie niemiecki. Polski,’ the man said again, looking at Charlie. With a great effort, since he looked like he was about to faint, he summoned a few more words. ‘Polish. We… are… Polish.’
‘Polish!’ Charlie shot Norman and Stan a look of triumph. ‘They’re Free Polish airmen, you bloody fools. They’re on our side. Now are you going to stand aside and let me do my job? We’ve lost enough time as it is.’
Stanley rubbed his neck. ‘Polish, are they? Is tha sure? Sounded a hell of a lot like German to me.’
‘Sort of thing a spy would say, I reckon,’ Arthur muttered, but he sounded like a man whose pride wasn’t yet willing to let him admit that he’d been wrong. Charlie pushed them aside to examine the men, who were both now unconscious.
‘High fever,’ he said, holding one hand against the forehead of the man sitting up against the fuselage and then doing the same for his comrade. ‘This one sitting up has broken both his legs and has a concussion, and his friend’s taken some metal shards to the stomach – nasty wound, as well as the burns to his face and a broken arm. The rain’s done us a service keeping the wound clean and cooling those burns, at least. I’ll bind the broken limbs with a splint before we take them down. Aspirin ought to bring the fever down a little, but what they really need is for us to get them to a doctor as fast as we can.’ He glanced at the man stretched out on the ground. ‘This chap’s barely clinging on.’
‘And… in the plane?’ Bobby said, unable to bring herself to look at it.
‘No hope for them, I suppose. But you’re right, we have to be sure.’
Charlie squared his shoulders and stood up, his jaw setting at the thought of the gruesome task ahead of him.
Arthur Egerton glanced at Stanley, who nodded.
‘Tha had best stay here and see to these two, lad,’ he said quietly to Charlie, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘We’ll go.’
‘Could you do it?’
‘We were in t’ trenches, weren’t we? Do thy job and let two old soldiers do theirs. There’s lives at stake.’
Charlie hesitated, then nodded. The two farmers went to explore the wreckage of the plane while he administered aspirin to the unconscious men.
Gil squinted down the hill. ‘There’s men coming up: three on ’em. They’ve got another stretcher.’
