A Schoolmaster's War by Jonathan Ree

Author:Jonathan Ree
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300245660
Publisher: Yale University Press

We had another six-hour train journey the next day. We were in the dining car when the Germans came in and examined our identity cards, but the officer who took mine just looked at it and handed it back, and I said thank you. We passed through Tarbes, the town where I’d landed by parachute a year before, and out of the train window I could see the snow-covered chain of the Pyrenees looking like a picture postcard. We got off at a little station a few stops before Bayonne and walked up through a sleepy village to a whitewashed house, spotless inside and out. The owner, who was a farmer as well as a pub-keeper, spoke Basque to my companion in the mac, and it was explained to me that the next day I should go by bike to a little village at the foot of the Pyrenees where it was market day, so I wouldn’t be noticed among the crowds.

I was wearing an old blue suit and a beret, and some strong shoes I’d bought in Switzerland. The only luggage I had was an old black briefcase I’d bought second-hand in Geneva. I’ve still got it now. The pub-keeper who spoke Basque evidently took a fancy to my shoes, and he strongly advised me not to wear them the next day, but to use the rope-soled canvas espadrilles which everyone in the region wore. He got out a new pair, which he sold me. It seemed a good gesture to leave my own shoes with him as a souvenir: he was after all taking a big risk in putting me up, and leather shoes were quite unobtainable in France. I wasn’t so pleased about it the next night.

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