bring Edward home, I was determined to go.
I spent the afternoon memorising maps and the latest intelligence on coastal flak defences. I prepared my kit and waited for the all-clear to be sent from France to Wilkins to confirm that the pick-up was a ‘go’. I also studied photographs of the field the agent who was escorting Edward had planned for my landing. I knew the time for the RV and number of passengers – one.
I was ready.
After a far from relaxed dinner, I sat quietly and attempted to gather my thoughts. Wilkins appeared at ten p.m. to give me the special code that would be flashed by the resistance agent from his position in the field prior to my landing. Together we waited for a message come through from France to say whether tonight was a ‘go’ or a ‘no go’.
It was a ‘go’.
Wilkins immediately contacted the BBC for a message to be passed during their French Language broadcast. This was our way of letting the agents, who listened to this broadcast via secretly stashed wirelesses – usually while hiding in an attic or a barn – that the pick-up was on. My code name, invented by Wilkins, was ‘The Angel’ and the message for Edward simply said, ‘The angel is coming.’
At midnight, with my fake French papers stashed down my bra, my escape and evasion kit (French money, concentrated food tablets, beret, women’s shoes), thrown into the hold, a map of Brittany printed on silk and a cyanide capsule kept inside a purple velvet pouch sewn into the lining of Anna’s flying jacket, my pistol in its holster and my father’s compass in my pocket for luck, I said my goodbyes to Wilkins, put on my flying helmet, jumped into the Lysander and slid the glass canopy shut. I went through pre-take-off checks, primed the engine and started her up. While allowing the engine to tick over until the oil temperature was 5 degrees centigrade, I tested the flying controls and brakes and chocks, opened her up to 1,800rpm, changed the propeller to course pitch before returning it to fine pitch and checked the magneto switches. Checks complete, I taxied to the grass strip that had been prepared for me at the back of Lanyon, waved my final farewell to Wilkins from the cockpit, let out the throttle, raced her down the field to 80mph, pulled back on the stick, lifted the Lysander away from the airfield and headed out over the Channel.
With only the sliver of a moon and my father’s compass for company, I tried to ignore the fact that a vast and lonely sea (and German fighter aircraft) were only six thousand feet away from the belly of the aircraft and brushed my fingers over the compass now and again for courage and for luck. With no radio aids to fall back on I was flying purely by eye, dead reckoning and fixing my position using airspeed and heading while taking wind variation into account. I set a straight and steady course across the channel, heading for my first check point on the French coast and all the while keeping a lookout for German fighter patrols.
It wasn’t romantic, or adventurous, or any of those things one might associate with war and covert operations. It was, quite simply, petrifying hell.
Despite the blackout in France, I could just about make out the darker shade of grey of the land from the lighter shade of the sea. I had been given sufficient intelligence by Wilkins to plan the best route into France to evade enemy flak and on previous trips I had successfully evaded any enemy contact, but tonight, just inside the French coast, a coloured tracer curved up towards me, then curved away. I kept my course and somehow kept my nerve. The flak petered out and I felt my shoulders relax a little. Thankfully, the moon gave enough light to mark out towns and woodland and knew from my planning that it was time to descend and turn to a higher definition map to navigate precisely to the rendezvous field.
The procedure for landing was this. The agent on the ground would set up an L shape of lights on the field. The lights were nothing more than pocket torches attached to sticks. The agent would turn one light on at first. As I approached, I would flash a code with my landing light, pick up a reciprocal prearranged flash from the agent’s torch (indicating once more