The Pied Pipers Be Brave

By John Newman

After victory of the Great War in 1918 events took place that could only be described as supernatural. The German army once spoke of an evil and powerful force that terrorized the battlefields of Belgium and France. Whispers of this phenomena with unmerciful fury on either side of the salient became known as the war witch. She can enter the mind

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Newman
• Release date: Aug 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781916696921

Book preview

A train station in Belgium, December 1918

She threw him across the cattle wagon, using some unseen force to seize him tightly by the throat and pin him to the wall without touching him.

When she dropped him, her sinister laugh pulsed through his body. ‘I’ll end your evilness, I swear . . . I’ll kill you, I swear it,’ he gasped, struggling for breath.  He dropped to the floor. Summoning the strength to get to his feet, he leapt up and grappled her to the ground then drew back his fist. The carriage door slid open and a tall man jumped in to intervene. ‘Don’t do it Lieutenant, you’re in enough trouble as it is!’

‘She killed our men, the whole lot of ‘em.’

‘Shut your mouth!’ 

‘Don’t you know who she is Morgan? Because I do!’ 

‘It’s Captain to you, and don’t forget what you did in the field – you shot one of your own men.’

‘There was bits hanging off him, he would’ve never survived, he begged me.’

‘It’s a court martial offence. I can have you hanged for that.’

‘Please, Morgan, in the name of God, don’t take her with us.’

‘So, if anyone asks questions, you shall tell them she’s a straggler and needs dropping off in Brittany, is that understood?’

‘What’s happened to you Morgan? Don’t you realise who she is?’

But the Captain said no more. Lieutenant John Lee Coldie reached inside his jacket for a possession given to him by a dying nun: a mysterious crucifix. Her last words to him had promised that it would be his salvation and then she had asked him to end the woman’s evil ways. Lying helpless in a corner of the filthy cattle truck he vowed that one day he would carry out the nun’s last wish.

London Underground, 1941

The final explosions came with a deafening, thunderous roar that sent shockwaves racing through the train tunnel and through every person sheltering in the station.

They felt it in the pits of their stomachs as the noise blotted out the sounds of human suffering: mothers trying to calm their children, young men embracing sobbing girlfriends and elderly ones comforting their trembling wives. A woman cried out, something about Hitler having taken away what was left of her house that week, and with it her husband of forty years – one of many who had refused to go to the shelter.

Helen Hudson, a thirty-four-year-old mother, glanced up and down the tunnel at the small groups of families huddled together; the young cradled in their mothers’ arms, at the people sprawled along the platform and on the tracks. On the Tube station wall opposite the platform, a propaganda poster depicting a soldier and a young boy proclaimed, Leave Hitler to me sonny – you ought to be out of London. The boy in the poster could not have been much younger than her son, who sat beside her. She put an arm around him and another around her daughter. There weren’t many other children there of their age, the boy being eleven-and-a-half and the daughter thirteen-and-a-half. They waited silently for the aftermath, fully expecting total destruction.

At 06.15 a.m. silence fell: it was what they had been waiting for. Sarah and Durley sat quietly beside their mother, waiting for the all clear. Moments later, the siren’s wail pierced the air and the exit from their Underground sanctuary began and people braced themselves for the destruction and devastation that would greet them outside.

Helen, a headmistress at the local school, had never seen such pandemonium. Hitler had punched a great hole in the heart of the city and, having endured the heaviest of the monthly raids, she’d had to battle to keep her children out of harm’s way. She knew that there would be unexploded bombs and that it would be just a matter of time before one went off.

Someone shouted out at Helen. She saw an elderly woman in a long, dusty coat and a beige scarf tied round her head. She was limping badly and dragging her left leg. As she passed she stared sadly at Helen’s children. ‘Get them away from here, you silly cow,’ she hissed before limping on, muttering. Other people were looking at Helen now, making her feel foolish.

Three years prior to the war, Helen and the children had lived in the idyllic Cambridgeshire countryside. Oliver, Helen’s husband and the father of her children, was an RAF fighter pilot stationed in Northolt West London. He had tried to stop Helen from following, knowing that Hitler would target London, but she had insisted, constantly reminding him how much she loved him and that she wanted to be as close as possible to him. But now, after two years of war, she stood amid the ruins and the blood and finally realised how naive and selfish she really was. ‘She’s right, this is no place for you,’ she said, putting her arms around her children.

Sarah was the beautiful image of her mother, with blue eyes and long, blonde hair. She shared the same interests, and hoped one day to be a teacher, just like Helen. Looking at the chaos around her, she began to feel that maybe that day would never come. She kept her fears to herself: she had broad shoulders for one so young, but it was proving difficult to stay calm.

Amid the chaos, the police were struggling with looters while fire crews battled intense heat as they fought to extinguish burning buildings. Plumes of black smoke rose high into the air, blocking out the early morning daylight. Air raid wardens were hauling out bodies, and even body parts that protruded from the piles of rubble, the air rank with their stench. Above, in the smoke-darkened sky, RAF planes could be heard, the roar surging from their bellies as they flew past, chasing away the last of the Luftwaffe bombers. That night had brought one of the worst raids of the war so far and London had not slept.

Helen ran her fingers through her son’s dark chestnut hair. Tears welled in her eyes as she gazed at her children in the loving way that only a mother can. ‘I’m sorry, but it’s no good being here, it really isn’t. I have to get you away for your own safety. I must get you away.’

The Evacuation

In 1937 the British government, mindful of Hitler’s rise, had planned an operation code-named Pied Piper. Four years later, Pied Piper had been rolled out on a massive scale. As brother and sister stood among the hundreds being evacuated from London. Durley was full of anticipation, bracing himself for a future without his mother; it had taken many long discussions to convince him that the move was for good reasons. Something else was troubling him (it always would) and was playing on his mind night and day: his thoughts were full of his best friend, ‘Little’ Tommy – a nickname that meant quite the opposite for the biggish-set lad.

They would spend much of their time together, and rarely a day passed when one would be without the other. Tommy struggled with his grammar, so they’d made an agreement: he would keep away the bullies and Durley would help Tommy with his schoolwork. It seemed fair and it worked well. On one occasion, a few boys bigger than Durley, who had overheard that he was afraid of the dark, had approached: he’d taken a few slaps to the head for that. But then Tommy had entered the classroom, and they slapped Durley no more. Tommy, though no intellectual, had shone when playing football and had scored his team’s first hat trick. Durley always remembered how proud of himself Tommy had been that day: he’d grown in confidence as the other team had been regarded as better players and the hat trick had brought the home team a lot of respect, all thanks to Little Tommy. But that glorious day had turned to tragedy with yet another air raid.

Hordes of people had headed to the underground, which had quickly become overcrowded. Durley had managed to reach the bottom of the platform along with some other school pupils, but Little Tommy had not been so lucky: in the blind panic and frenzied rush he was crushed in the stampede, his neck was broken against the concrete steps, and his blood had soaked through his mousy-blond hair. Durley no longer wished to have friends again and the overpowering loss and the images of that day would haunt him forever.

A train horn bellowed followed by the hiss of steam, sending a shudder through Durley’s bones that shook him to his feet. Startled and confused, he snapped out of his daydream. Sarah noticed the jolt that made him jump out of his skin. ‘Stop it,’ she said.

‘Stop what?’

‘You’re thinking about him, I know you are, and you have to stop it right now.’

‘I can’t help it,’ he replied, with