Rating: 4/5
But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France – a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will always be unflyable, stuck in the climb.
In October 1941, in the midst of World War II, a British plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France. The passenger, a young woman named Julia (code name Verity), makes the difficult decision of bailing out into Nazi territory, leaving the pilot—her best friend Maddie Brodatt—to crashland in the field below. Maddie perhaps has a slim chance of survival, but Julia finds herself swallowed up in Nazi-occupied Ormaie… with Maddie’s British identification papers.
It isn’t long before Julia is captured by the Gestapo and taken to the Ormaie Headquarters. The Nazis brutally torture Julia, facing her with another decision: write everything she knows about British war secrets in a betraying confession, or face a brutal execution. Julia agrees to write out her confession, if only to buy herself time.
The first part of the book,
Verity, is Julia’s notes to the Nazis. In these, she spouts sets of code, airfield locations and anything else her captors want to know, while also describing how she met and befriended Maddie at RAF Maidsend. The second part,
Kittyhawk, is the journal of Maddie—the pilot who survived the crash, unbeknownst to Julia—over the next few weeks, detailing how she was rescued by the Resistance, how she had to disguise herself as a German citizen, and how she tried to rescue Julia from the Gestapo HQ.
The very last few pages of Julia’s confession were probably the most harrowing. There was one part where Julia heard that the head of the Ormaie Gestapo and her torturing interrogator, a man called Amadeus von Linden, had a young daughter living in Switzerland. Julia asked von Linden what his daughter’s name was. He told his prisoner the girl’s name—”Isolde”—and there was a brief moment in which we saw von Linden as a human being, and not a heartless Nazi interrogator.
What changes a small boy from a birdwatcher into a Gestapo inquisitor?
Maddie Brodatt later gets the chance to read Julia’s confession. The irony of the friends’ situation is often displayed in their notes. At one point in her journal Maddie writes of Julia:
I don’t believe she’s dead, I don’t believe any of their bluff and lies and bullying threats. I don’t believe she’s dead and I WON’T believe she’s dead until I hear the shots MYSELF and see her fall.
Barely a week later Maddie will shoot and kill Julia herself to avoid her friend being tortured further by the Gestapo. In Julia’s confession, she once talked about how she and Maddie had discussed what their last words would be before they died. They both agreed that Horatio Nelson’s supposed last words of “Kiss me, Hardy,” were heartfelt and true and heroic. Julia’s last words, as she begged Maddie to kill her before the Nazis could torture her, were “Kiss me, Hardy! Kiss me quick!” Those words, words that mark a brave and tragic death, will stay with me for a long time.
At the very end of Julia’s confession, she writes the words “I have told the truth.” 24.5 times before someone notices what she is doing and stops her. So intricately woven, so heartfelt and despondent was Julia’s confession that it never occurred to von Linden that she had been lying all along. Julia was not a wireless operator, and the code she had given the Nazis was obsolete and useless. Her real mission was to blow up the Ormaie Gestapo Headquarters, where she now found herself imprisoned. It was a mission that Maddie was determined to accomplish.
Oh God – if I stop writing now they will take this paper away…What comfort will I take with me to my execution? What comfort for any of us … alone at the guillotine or in the air or in the suffocating freight wagons? … I have told the truth. Isn’t that ironic? They sent me because I am so good at telling lies. But I have told the truth.
In their journals, Julia and Maddie battle with their views on surrender and bravery, while underlying themes of friendship, fear and perseverance make these fictional characters seem very real. A disturbing but beautifully written book.
I like the flute music that I had to write on at the end. … I wrote very lightly in pencil between the notes because someone may want to play it again some day. Not Esther Lévi, whose music it was, whose classically biblical Hebrew name is written neatly at the top of each sheet; I’m not stupid enough to think she’ll ever see this music again, whoever she is. But perhaps someone else. When the bombing stops. When the tide turns. And it will.