From One Hell to Another

Liz Cowley

Description

From Fascist Spain, to war again After a gruelling escape through the Pyrenees snow from the horrors of the Spanish civil war, Carmen and her Spanish family settle in the apparent peace of southern France. But relief is short-lived. Within months, France, too, is plunged into war - and, worse, a rapid defeat.Under the control of Hitler's puppet Vichy regime, the region is plagued by starvation, restrictions and atrocities, especially against Jews, propelling Carmen to join the Spanish - now bolstering the French resistance. With the help of the British S.O.E, and against huge odds, they win a spectacular victory over the Germans.Based on true but largely untold events, this sweeping adventure is a heady mix of romance, horror, betrayal and warfare.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 05 avril 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781838599133
• Langue: English

Extrait

ALSO BY THE AUTHORS
* * *
Liz Cowley

A Red Dress
What am I doing here?
And guess who he was with?
Outside in my dressing gown
We all have our moments
Pass the Prosecco, Darling!
Green Fingers
Little Horrors
The table that talked
Serial Damage (with Donough O’Brien)
Testosterone (with Donough O’Brien)


Donough O’Brien

Fringe Benefits
Fame by chance
Banana Skins
In the heat of battle
Numeroids
WHO? The most remarkable people you’ve never heard of
Peace breaks out (with Robin Hardy)
Serial Damage (with Liz Cowley)
Testosterone (with Liz Cowley )


Copyright © 2019 Liz Cowley & Donough O’Brien

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.


Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.


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ISBN 978 1838599 133

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover design: www.mousematdesign.com

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

For the people of Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort
and all résistants everywhere
THANK YOU
* * *
While some of the personalities in this book are fictional, it is based on many real people, places and events.
We would like to thank the following for their memories, input, advice and help:

Otilia Garré (Casales)
Carmen Ouari
Joaquin Garcia, Président d’Association des Anciens Guérilléros FFI du Gard
Anne Marie Garcia
Eloi Martinez Monegal, Président d’ASEREF (Association pour le souvenir de l’exil Républicain Espagnol en France)
Francis Chirat
André Teissier du Cros
Jean-Jacques Bertrand
Alan Ogden
Derek Richardson
Roger Stanton and The WW2 Escape Lines Memorial Society
Les Amis de Clio/Roland Castanet
Bruno Olivieri, Mayor, Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort
Librairie Coularou, Saint-Hippolyte-du-Fort
John Akeroyd
Major-General Sir Robert Corbett
Sarah Shaw
Luis Duran Rodriguez-Ibañez
Murrough O’Brien
CONTENTS
* * *
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
PERSONALITIES
FACTS

* * *
August, 1944
She lay flat in the grass behind the bushes on the railway embankment, shuffling her position a little. It was already too warm and not very comfortable. And she was terrified.
Behind her the sun was rising above Nîmes, and would be right in the eyes of anyone coming down the road from the west towards her.
But it would be much later, with the sun high in the sky, before Sebastian, her Number Two, tapped her shoulder. She nodded to him, indicating that she had already heard the noise. A motorcycle and sidecar, coming very slowly. The machine-gunner in the sidecar wore dark glasses as he stared around him. She carefully pulled back the Bren gun’s cocking handle. Of course, they couldn’t hear it above the noise of their engine, but she was still very nervous.
They puttered past under the railway bridge and the silent watchers on the embankment let them go, knowing that ‘Carlo’ would deal with them two hundred metres behind them.
It was the convoy they wanted. They had heard the distant firing at noon in Durfort and she knew the Germans would have probably broken through the several Maquis ambushes in the streets of Saint-Hippolyte and were now on their way.
Garrison troops from Toulouse or the coast around Bordeaux, the Germans had been content enough sitting in comfortable France – anything but the bloodbath of Russia. Now they were fleeing east, scrambling to escape the Allies, and not just those that were breaking out from Normandy, but now the Americans who had landed behind them in the south. They might not be crack troops, but the British had told the Maquis often enough never to under-estimate any German troops in a tight spot.
More engine noise. A Kübelwagen jeep drove slowly into view, leading a huge, long column of trucks and other vehicles. She knew her little group must be completely outnumbered. She shivered.
The Kübelwagen will have the officers, and you should always shoot the officers first.
We’ve all come a very long way.
Carmen gently eased off the safety catch, and waited for the signal.
ONE
* * *
January, 1939
Carmen Casales had not been born in Igualada, but in Teruel much further to the south of Spain, in Aragón. But she had lived in the town nearly all her life, and used to love it, with its narrow little streets, the remains of an old fortress and its pleasant waterside scenery. The family house looked out over the River Anoia, whose water had once been so useful to the leather tanning and textile industries, and walking its banks had once been one of her greatest pleasures along with family trips by train every few months to the exciting and bustling city of Barcelona.
But now, Igualada – like everywhere else in Spain – had been plunged into the horrors of a Civil War, and the once bustling and prosperous town was a completely changed place. The streets were swarming with frightened and desperate refugees, food was running dangerously short, and even a teenage girl could not ignore the rising feeling of dread as the news grew rapidly worse.
She was one of three girls in the family. Carmen was now sixteen, while Otilia was twelve and Juanita only seven . All of them were going to be pretty, but Carmen was already tall and beautiful, and her mother Maria had become a little worried about the way men and boys were beginning to look at her. But these days that was the least of her concerns. Now, in early 1939, with her husband Pedro rarely at home, it was far harder to cope with everyday life or even to know what was going on in the war, being totally illiterate and unable to read the news. All she could do was struggle on and try to keep things as normal as possible.
Pedro had once been a farmer, but in late 1936 the Republican forces had forcibly recruited him into the army – and for some unexplained reason, as an officer. Most regular Spanish army officers had joined the other side – the Nationalist forces of Franco, so the Republic had to make do with any reasonably intelligent man who had not been purged – shot perhaps for being rich, or aristocratic or Catholic. But Pedro had wryly pointed out to his family that the same rather haphazard way of choosing officers had occurred in that other terrible civil war, in America. ‘I heard they even grabbed teachers and made them Colonels.’
He had been wounded twice, first at Jarama and then again in the bitter fighting on the Ebro, but had gone back and doggedly fought on, for what was rapidly beginning to look like a lost cause.
Alone with her three daughters, Maria longed for Pedro to be with them.
* * *
MOSCA! MOSCA!
Early one morning, they were woken by little Juanita excitedly shouting at the top of her piping voice.
She was jumping up and down on her bed looking at a plane suddenly banking past the window. Her mother pushed her out of the way and stared outside. At once she knew that it was not one of their few surviving little Russian Polikarpov fighters, the ones they all affectionately called ‘moscas’, or ‘flies’. No, this one sounded and looked very different. It didn’t have a stubby front, it was much slimmer and there were no familiar red markings – instead, black and white ones.
‘GET DOWN!’ she suddenly screamed at her daughters.
And, sure enough, the plane came round again and roared over their house, and two deafening explosions came from the nearby town hall. The plane then banked away, climbed and droned off into the hard blue sky.
People started to run past the house towards the smoke and sounds of screaming, desperate to help.
Maria got up cautiously. ‘Carmen, you come with me! You two stay where you are. Don’t move! And if another plane comes, get under the bed. Est á claro ?’
Maria and Carmen now hurried nervously up the narrow street towards where the bombs had struck.
There in the plaza in front of the Town Hall was a nightmare scene of utter chaos. Bloodied bodies were lying everywhere – some moving but mostly still, the women’s rumpled clothes making them look like bundles of discarded laundry.
And there was one unimaginable horror.