Hugo stared at the ground, red to the ears.

  Colin forgot his own sadness, enthralled for the moment by this small but fierce woman who dared drop the cheerful façade the rest of the grown-ups had taken pains all day, at every stop, to maintain.

  Nearby, twin girls—hardly five years old—clutched one another, sobbing, unwilling to acknowledge the insistent urgings of two different women, each prepared to house only one child.

  “There, there. It’s a small village,” offered one woman, all business and ready to end the whimpering. “You’ll see one another at school and at church. It’s time now, my girl. You’ll see your sis soon enough. Here. Let me take your things.”

  Their sobs grew louder and more hysterical as they pleaded for their mum—their real mum—and for their home, for Marty, the family pup they loved and missed, even as the aspiring adoptive mothers worked to pry them apart.

  “We’re off to a good start then, aren’t we?” one of the women sighed as the vicar approached.

  “Problem, ladies?” he asked over escalating howls.

  “They’re not budging,” said the first woman. “I can take one child, but not both. I’m sorry. We’ve a newborn at home. That’s the best we can do.”

  “Can you shelter them at the vicarage, perhaps?” asked the second. “Just for the foreseeable. Surely, we’ll be sending them back to their homes in no time. You and Mrs. Dowd can play grandparents for now.”

  The vicar paused, face still and serious, as he considered the request. His parishioners bore hardship better when they believed the vicar had it worse than anybody. But two little girls? His own children were grown, he was 68 and doing his utmost to convey calm and surety to congregants who had already sent husbands and brothers and sons off to war. Truth be told, he was weary. He was worried. There were so many reasons for him not to take this on. Little tiny girls! Two of them!

  “We had planned to take an older girl,” the vicar stuttered, “so, well, perhaps…” He paused, mouth working as he tried to get his words out. “Well, wouldn’t you know, the words of St. Paul seem to have foisted themselves upon me in this very moment, ladies—‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’ Isn’t that just the way things work? For the fact I’ve preached those words countless times, it seems, now, I must trust them. Let me find Dorothy and discuss this. Grant me just a moment.”

  But the prospect of being taken off by this bearded, vest-wearing man with the booming voice, with the huge eyebrows and gray sprays of wiry hair springing from his ears, prompted fresh howls, cries so full of distress that Hugo was drawn out of his recent shame, transfixed on a situation far more dramatic.

  “Mummy,” he said. “Those little ones. They’re trying to send them to different houses. Can we go see, please?”

  The tenuous and newly formed family of Colin, Hugo, and Ivy made its way toward the wailing twins, their own disappointments momentarily forgotten. Ivy smiled at the two women.

  “Afternoon, Muriel, Rowena. Quite a day, yes?”

  The twins quieted at Ivy’s greeting, the melody in her voice drawing their interest. Ivy knelt to speak with them.

  “Hello, girls. Welcome to Elsworth. I’m Ivy Hughes and this is Hugo. He’s nine. And this is our new friend, Colin, who is ten and was on the train with you. Do you have names then? What are you called, each of you?”

  A staring contest ensued. Ivy waited. The girls, gripping one another’s tiny hand to stave off any separation, exchanged a glance, one telegraphing to the other to proceed.

  “Margaret,” one of them whispered. “She’s Patricia, but mummy calls her Patsy. We are four and half and we have a dog called Marty, but we couldn’t bring ‘im.”

  “You share a name with Princess Margaret—now what about that! And Patsy—such a modern name, isn’t it? Please to meet you.” Ivy stood, then called for the vicar to return to the little group. “I can take them—both of them,” she said. “They’ll settle in better if they have one another.”

  “But Ivy, can you manage?” asked the vicar. “With William gone? Perhaps we can place the boy with someone else.”

  “No,” insisted Hugo, his attitude fully reformed. “He’s comin’ with us. Two and two. Two a them and two a us. Boys and girls.”

  “Well, what about that?” said the vicar, allowing himself a small smile of relief.

  “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, eh, Vicar Dowd?” laughed one of the women, prompting him to speak a quick prayer of thanksgiving for Ivy’s generosity.

  “That’s that, then,” smiled Ivy, after the vicar’s amen. “Girls, you’re coming with us and you’re coming together. Alright? No need for tears. It’s all right. We’ve a kitten who’s needed some younger friends to play with while Hugo’s at school.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The day of individual happiness has passed.

  –Adolf Hitler

  France—as the Occupation begins

  Lieutenant Gordon Clarke knelt, back erect, fingers laced behind his head, and stared at the Unteroffizier who trained his machine gun on the remnants of the Allied force in France. The German lifted his chin, jaw muscles grinding, his finger tapping astride the trigger. The circles under his eyes betrayed a deadening fatigue that Gordon understood all too well, one that would surely seep into the very bones of every soldier arrayed across the Continent over the coming days, if this war couldn’t be settled soon.

  The soldiers garrisoned in Calais felt both terror and relief: the dive bombers and Panzers had turned toward Dunkirk and while blasts still resounded down the French coast, they were no longer tearing through stone and flesh in this ancient citadel, in what had become the soldiers’ last refuge. Gordon was proud of his battalion’s stand but they’d never had a chance, overrun by an enemy well-armed and well-trained, whose might and speed introduced them to a war unlike anything their fathers had known; the weapons the Allies brandished seemed like those of children compared to the German arsenal. With their gas masks and entrenching tools, the English high command had prepared them for the last war, not this one.

  Gordon resolved not to dwell on what might await them in enemy hands. He and the others needed to focus only on surviving this day, then the next. Water. Food. Sleep, perhaps. The men he commanded were barely twenty years old, after all, conscripted into a war that had been vague and ill-formed in their imaginations; they had expected an ennobling adventure that ended in victory. They believed this most especially because their side had won the last time. And now they knelt, subdued and still, watching the tongue of a German soldier play over his chapped lips as if he were looking for just the right target to shoot.

  The German advance, Gordon feared, would continue until Paris itself fell. Europe would be fundamentally reshaped, but perhaps that would mean their captivity would be brief. They’d be released once some sort of quid pro quo could be struck—Germany getting something to add to the Sudetenland or whatever it was they felt they were entitled to—and then Hitler’s bloody plan to reverse the terms of the Treaty of Versailles would reach its denouement. Poland and Austria had been annexed into the German empire and perhaps there was some argument for this. A few refinements to several more boundaries, then, Gordon hoped, order would return to the continent. He and his men could return home. He could live in peace with Beryl and Colin.

  The German commanding officer approached, bellowing specific orders to his staff assistant, who nodded officiously and directed the Allied soldiers to stand. They were moving out.

  The officer smiled, surveyed the enemy fighters, and then gave a sharp nod. He turned to his assistant. “Prepare them to march. Some water beforehand. But that’s all.” He turned back to face the men of the tattered battalion.

  “Vas du das Krieg est uber,” he announced, his glee hardly contained.

  For you, the war is over.

  As they stood, a British private maneuvered closer to Gordon.

  “Sir, where are we going? Can you ask them to keep us here? Can the colonel just tell them we could bunk here and wait?”

  Gordon turned to the soldier, a teenager, really, his face covered in soot, blood crusted under his ear.

  “It’s not up to us, Fletcher. Keep your head down and follow directions. Don’t give them a reason to shoot.”

  And with that, a line of Allied soldiers departed from the citadel they’d failed to defend, to begin the journey eastward, across France and deep into the Reich.

  . . .

  For miles, they marched, French, Belgian, and Dutch among the captives, each looking for a familiar face, or at least a familiar uniform to march alongside. They re-sorted themselves as they went, hoping their captors didn’t catch on, inching closer to men who spoke their own language and might have an idea of how to get out of this mess.

  Over days, two dozen of Gordon’s troops managed to maneuver closer to him, a makeshift platoon prepared to follow his lead. They spoke in low tones, caps drawn low over their brows, their quiet alarm intensifying with every step that took them farther from home and freedom. Their route traversed northern France, through acres of wheat belonging to astonished farmers whose rural isolation had to this point kept news of France’s late misfortune from them. German machine guns and rifles, whether slung over a shoulder or casually aimed in their direction—at their children, their livestock—quickly convinced the farmers to cooperate with German requests to feed the captives.

  But who had the stores to feed the thousands of POWs who just kept coming over the rise, their boots flattening seedling crops that had just gained purchase in their fields? Farm women prepared soups and stews using everything at hand and in their storehouses—onions, potatoes and other root vegetables, greens from dandelions that had just begun to appear in the grazing pasture. But there was never enough.

  The German officers overseeing the massive prisoner relocation fared better. Should a host not offer a menu that was suitably hearty—they had many more miles to travel after all and were on duty every minute of the day—one of the many sharpshooters in the ranks simply drew his weapon and fired. One German officer raved about the outstanding blanquette de veau he’d enjoyed outside Lille, thanks to a straggler calf, the last in a cluster of cattle heading out to graze. The farmer who owned him was incensed and demanded compensation: his son, he said, had bottle-fed the calf through many difficult months to ensure she thrived and brought a good price at market. The officer responded that indeed the farmer had received his recompense: had he not heard the satisfied belches of the German officers at the table?

  At night, Gordon and his fellow prisoners dropped where they stood, their bodies and boot prints ensuring these fields would not yield healthy crops this growing season or next. They fashioned pillows from stalks and dried grasses, grateful when a cooling breeze crossed their filthy faces, for the gift of sleeping under a clear sky. A few sought out what shelter they could in barns and shacks along the route, but most preferred the safety of the larger group. No sense drawing unneeded attention.

  After Lille, they continued through Belgium, cutting south of Brussels. They arrived at a sugar beet farm belonging to an old man and his frightened wife, who days earlier had learned their land had been appropriated as a staging area for POWs headed east and German units headed to France. A spring-fed stream ran through the property and the Germans directed small groups of prisoners to make their way to the stream bank should they wish to bathe or rinse some of their belongings. June was giving way to July: they’d been on the move for more than a month and the men were hungry, smelly, and, in many cases, ill-tempered with worry. But here, at least, they had a moment to rest.

  Gordon removed his jacket first, then his boots, socks, pants, underclothes and laid them aside the stream. Wading naked into the water, still startling cold for early summer, he dropped gingerly on the stones at the stream bottom, letting his arms go limp in the water, watching the filth float away from his skin as the stream did its work. He exhaled, feeling he’d been holding his breath since the fight was lost at Calais. The water, so clear and purposeful as it moved downstream, the sun highlighting the eddies as they swirled and jumped around rocks in their path, proved restorative. He lay back in the stream and let it cover his head, rubbing his face and neck to remove the grime, pretending for a moment that he was outside London, swimming in the lake with Beryl at her family’s home.

  “Genug jetzt!” shouted a guard, signaling for the men in the stream to finish so others could undertake their ablutions. Gordon knee-walked to the bank, a familiar hand extending to pull him from the water.

  “Here we go, sir,” said Private Fletcher, cutting his eyes toward the German guard.

  “I appreciate it, Fletcher,” said Gordon.

  “Hughes is off, sir,” the soldier breathed, continuing his move past Gordon into the stream.

  Gordon didn’t directly respond. But as he sat to dry himself and began to dress, his eyes met the soldier’s and he gave a wink of acknowledgement. Hughes had fled, then, sometime around their crossing into Belgium. It was what many hoped to do, now that it was clear the hostilities would not be resolved quickly. Many men had slipped away, soundlessly, taking advantage of a guard more asleep than awake, or one who stepped a few feet off the road, forced to attend to the urgent demand of bowels that had not responded well to the inconsistent diet and physical rigors of the march. The Belgians and the French had the advantage: those able to drift out of the lines could melt into a familiar countryside. They knew where to head for safety to quickly secure the jackets and caps that instantly transformed them from soldiers to villagers. For the British and the Dutch, it was more perilous. Their unfamiliarity with the terrain and the language meant they had to proceed more slowly, relying on strangers who might or might not turn them in. Gordon knew of three Brits no longer in the ranks and two had not fared so well: one had tried to stay back in Lille, shot dead in a hayloft where he’d attempted to hide when it was time to move out. The surprised shriek of the farmer’s daughter had given him away and the Germans, instead of pulling him up and forcing him back in the line, simply drilled him with a bullet in case others got the same idea. A second had miscalculated his opportunity to escape, believing his guard distracted by the arrival of two SS officers, eager for an update on the progress of the prisoner relocation. The young Heer guard seemed especially eager to impress the SS men, perhaps hoping to be promoted into their ranks. As he offered a thorough report on their progress since Calais, his eye caught the British soldier inching toward an outcropping of tall shrubs and trees. When the Brit was about ten feet away from the forest that could hide him, the guard lifted his machine gun.

  “Entschuldigung, meine Herren,”—Excuse me, sirs—he said with a curt nod, before firing a quick burst that cut down the soldier. He then resumed his recitation of the successful relocation of the POWs, brushing aside the extravagant praise of the visiting officers while at the same time crediting himself with contributing in key ways to its unqualified success.

  Whenever a burst of bullets echoed through the hills, Gordon knew a man had not timed his escape well.

  And now Hughes. Gordon said a quick prayer as he dressed, pulling his still-filthy clothes over damp skin, hoping Hughes was sitting at a farm table somewhere, enjoying a proper meal, and plotting his route back home to England.

  In late July, the contingent decamped to the main train station in Brussels, where some of those wounded in the battle for France had recovered enough to join them. No passenger rail for them, however; they were loaded into train cars meant for livestock, sixty men to a car with a bucket for pee and excrement. So, thought Gordon. There is something worse than endless marching. There’s this.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another:

  What! You too? I thought I was the only one.

  –C. S. Lewis

  Elsworth, England

  Their business concluded at Elsworth Station, Ivy and her charges began the short walk home. Patsy clutched Margaret’s hand and Margaret clutched Ivy’s, Hugo playing tour guide as the boys sauntered behind. The Hughes’ two-story brick home sat on Boxworth Road, Elsworth’s main street, Hugo explained, a few steps from the greengrocer, the tiny post office, and Vicar Dowd’s Holy Trinity Church. Cattycorner from the church, Hugo pointed out a white plaster building that sat at the head of a vast spread of open farmland. “The schoolhouse,” he said. “Mrs. Helms is headmistress. She’s alright. Could be worse.”

  The group entered the house, the girls forgetting their present misery and charging ahead once they spotted the promised kitten.

  “She’s called Marigold—gold stripes, see?” explained Hugo, as the twins moved to encircle the sleepy and slow-moving kitten, dropping to the floor in a coordinated twin-ballet, placing the startled kitty between them, their knees blocking her escape.

  Hugo helped Colin tote his bag up the polished wooden steps to his room, where a pallet had been fashioned on the floor next to Hugo’s narrow bed, a chamber pot visible underneath. A washbasin sat on an old oak dresser next to a photo of a soldier whose slight build and sandy hair looked a lot like Hugo.

  “Your things can go here,” Hugo offered, pulling out a dresser drawer. “I’ve moved me own things over to make some room.”

  “That your father?” Colin asked, pointing to the photo.

  “Tis,” responded Hugo, eyes slow to meet Colin’s before he turned to take in the cherished photograph. “He used to be the butcher here. Now he’s with the BEF. Shipped out last week.”

  “My dad is in the service, too. It’s partly why I’ve had to come here. Mum’s a hospital nurse. Wouldn’t leave me by myself even though I could have managed fine. But she’s worried the Jerrys are coming for us, so she sent me out of London. Just until my dad gets back.”

  “I bet they’ve met,” declared Hugo, invigorated by the idea of his father serving the Empire alongside someone familiar. Well, not familiar, exactly, but the father of a friend. A new friend.