For the Children: A heart-wrenching World War Two novel of bravery and resistance

By David Laws

A young British war widow embarks on a dangerous journey that will change her life, and those of countless others, in this gripping, emotional novel by the author of The Fuhrer’s Orphans.

Helen Fairfax is a ferry pilot and the mother of Peter, aged six. From Monday to Friday she flies from factories to airfields, then returns to the family farmhouse where her parents look after the boy. She feels torn being away from her son so much, but after her husband died in the Battle of Britain she vowed to live up to his example of courage and strike back at the enemy.

Now the Germans are about to launch the V-2 against London, and MI6 is desperate to get its hands on an undamaged prototype of the rocket to discover how it might be defeated. One has fallen in Poland—and Helen must pilot a secret flight into enemy territory to obtain it, accompanied by Leo Beck who, ashamed of his part in building the rocket, volunteers to assist her.

But after a successful landing, they find themselves pulled into another mission. Parents beg her to fly their kids to safety, far from Nazi squads that have begun kidnapping children. It will mean defying military regulations—but that is far from the only risk she will take when she agrees to this unofficial rescue operation . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 25, 2024
• ISBN: 9781504094429

David Laws

David Laws is a national newspaper journalist and an award-winning novelist. The author of two thrillers, Munich: The Man Who Said No! and Exit Day, he invests heavily in background research for his novels and bases the characters close to his Suffolk home at Bury St Edmunds. When not working as a reporter or sub-editor on newspapers and magazines, he has tried his hand at driving buses and trains, flying gliders, selling glassware, delivering bread, and some very reluctant soldiering.

Book preview

Chapter One

London, Saturday 1st January 2000

The audience step gingerly into the studio, both daunted and fascinated by all the cables, cameras, gantries, spotlights, podium and their own tightly terraced banks of seating jammed into the middle of the muddle.

This is TV at its most exciting, the feeling that you are part of a great show; nervous but elated and wondering what will happen next. Where’s the great master of ceremonies, the larger-than-life bouncy host who fronts up this show that most of us have only ever viewed from the seclusion of our living rooms?

Today, in the studio’s green room, sitting nervously and balancing cups of tea on best-dressed laps, we’d been soothed, organised and cajoled by a team of well-groomed, smiling young women assistants, but there’s no sign of the great man. ‘You’ll meet him on set,’ they say.

Not long to wait. Dark figures flit about, as if in a trance, tending to the tangle of wires and gadgets, vague forms peopling the shadows of this intriguing place. The banks of equipment look like an electrician’s nightmare, but the director is a slick fellow, full of effusive arm gestures, as if orchestrating his spectators, keeping us in tune. ‘Hello, everybody, hello and welcome to the show. We have a really great performance for you today… an astonishing episode of history brought to light by the actual participants.’

This episode, he tells us, is to be called Helen’s People. This much we already know. We are Helen’s People. Most of us, if not all, spring from just fifteen little kids who got out just in time. But got out of what? That’s the point of the programme; that’s why we’re gathered here today.

Now for the preliminaries, all the dos and don’ts: no coughing, no interrupting and respond clearly when asked. Just like the actors in the theatre we, the audience, have our part to play.

And then, without any of the expected fanfare, there he is, ambling unannounced from a side door, giving us that crinkly, grizzled grin, the foppish hair bouncing on the familiar brow, the epitome of laid-back style. Always liked him, the nice easy way he has, gently prompting his subjects, none of your nasty TV inquisitorial interrupters here.

Finally, after a couple of false starts, the performance begins, the cameras roll and we hear the familiar silky baritone voice. ‘Hello and welcome to another edition of Never Forget and this is Alex Hunter, your host for the evening, welcoming you to your favourite programme.’

Applause.

‘This is the show that brings you great deeds, great heroism, great stories of yesterday. As we say each week, you ignore the past at your peril. We aim to demonstrate that history matters, that yesterday is today and today is your tomorrow.’

A pause and this is clearly for a close-up shot. ‘In our troubled world of dictators and warmongers, the heroism of the ordinary person shines through in the face of violence.’

A wide sweep of the arm points at the audience. The cameras zoom in. ‘Here today are people anxious to give thanks for their lives and celebrate the remarkable achievement of their survival. Look at their faces, ladies and gentlemen, and you will see whole families, grandparents, parents and the young, who would not be here today were it not for the remarkable acts of courage, daring and fortitude of one person in the face of dire threats and perils.’

Cameras pan along a line of embarrassed faces. We look around at all the wrinkles and grey hair. Some are recognisable. There’s Daniela Lewandowski – I remember her, she once came to tea, and then there’s that big-time businessman Kowalska who’s been in the news. What will they say on camera? I look around carefully, examining all the faces, and recognise Marta and Beata. This is a wonderful reunion; even Friedrich has made it to the studio.

Our host is in full flow. ‘Whole families, several generations are gathered here today to give thanks for their very existence, due in no uncertain terms to acts of heroism. This is history close up. First-person history.’

He’s looking in our direction, at Eliza and Gabriella and me. We can expect the spotlight, the microphone and the questions, to re-run that strange episode of our early childhood.

What do we remember?

For goodness’ sake, I was eight at the time. Just fleeting shadows. All I know is that something ominous happened back then – a wall of noise, a violent vibration – that made me fearful of any kind of travel, followed by an overwhelming sense of insecurity. Later, however, there came light; playing games with that little boy who’s now an eminent professor. I spot him in his seat two rows away. Will he remember me, with my violin, or Gabby, or Eliza? Do I detect a twinkle in his eye?

Even later, of course, clearer impressions: school, friends, career, family. I’m Zofia, by the way, you’ll hear more about me later… much later.

At this point Alex Hunter moves adroitly up a gangway close to the audience and sits on the only unoccupied seat. He extends the microphone to our man with thinning sandy hair and the winning smile I remember so well.

‘Professor Peter Fairfax, you’re an expert on 20th century history at the University of East Anglia and you have a very special tale to tell, a very personal tale. Would you like to explain?’

We lean forward in anticipation. Most of us have never really heard the full unvarnished story, the complete picture, just little titbits, but now perhaps we are about to be told.

The professor – my old friend Peter – nods. ‘I grew up with this history,’ he says in his gravelly kind of growl. ‘All through my childhood I heard it, saw it, lived with it. How young children were rescued from grave danger, came to Britain to begin new lives, and thrived–’ He waves an arm around the sea of faces.

Hunter interrupts. ‘And you know the person responsible for saving these lives? For making possible today’s reunion?’

‘Of course I do. She’s my mother.’

Hunter is beaming his beatific smile. ‘And what’s more, ladies and gents, we have enticed this marvellous lady all the way from her care home, so that she can share with us the celebrations of her 90th birthday.’

He gets to his feet and raises his arms in accompaniment to a roll of drums from somewhere off camera. All eyes swivel to follow the spotlights which now focus on two large studio doors. These open slowly, thanks to unseen hands, and an elderly lady in a wheelchair is pushed centre stage followed closely by two supporters in nursing uniforms trailing red, white and blue balloons and glitzy party hats. From another direction comes a trolley. It carries a huge cake with icing and candles.

The applause is deafening.

Amazing! Of course I recognise her! It’s Auntie Helen!

She seems bewildered at first, then breaks into a grin. That’s when I note; obviously, she’s been prepared; her hair is done and lipstick applied.

The applause dies down and Hunter crouches by the wheelchair. ‘Welcome, Helen Fairfax, thank you so much for being here and sharing your big day with us. Can I ask? What was your greatest wish on your 90th?’

Is he expecting a significant or evocative answer? If so, he doesn’t get it. ‘A nice cup of tea,’ she says in a quavering yet firm voice.

Laughter and more applause.

Despite admonitions to the contrary, Eliza and I holler and shout and make a connection. Auntie spots us and waves back in recognition. We give her the thumbs up. It’s a message from us to her; we three girls, Eliza, Gabriella and me. We’re all of retiring age now but we came good, made something of our lives. At Sadler’s Wells, the London Symphony and the BBC, we kept our promise to do good things. All that peril and action, Auntie – it was worth it!

Ever the showman, Hunter says, ‘And now, before we join the party and cut your birthday cake, we’d all like to hear the story of the rescue from your very own lips.’

‘But it wasn’t just me,’ she says, ‘there were others involved, I wasn’t the only one.’

‘Modest to a fault,’ Hunter says.

‘And it wasn’t all daring derring-do,’ she insists. She’s not intimidated by the occasion or the place; insistent on getting it right. ‘There were some very tricky, frightening and scary moments, and, to be honest, some rather shaming moments.’

‘Of course, of course.’ Hunter is anxious to smooth over her regrets and get to the point. ‘But there’s no one better to tell this story. We already have that from your son. This…’ Here the wave of an all-encompassing arm that takes in audience, studio and show. ‘This is essentially your story. The time for modesty is over. Succeeding generations need to hear this.’

He puts his hands together, as if in prayer. ‘Please!’ It’s a heartfelt plea. ‘Will you tell it to us now?’

I hold my breath and look at all those props that provoke troubling images: the nose section of a plane, looking oddly cut off and rather menacing, and the scary photo of a giant rocket. I recall the rather stiff man from the Ministry of Defence talking in the green room about ‘setting the scene’ and some back-up actors with gas masks, fashion-on-the-ration suits and paint-on stockings.

So the process begins. We’re being taken right back to how we all got here, right back to the very beginning. Back to the days when I was a mere stripling and Auntie was in her early thirties navigating the scary days of the Blitz. They were worrying times those, full of fears and uncertainty when our whole future was in doubt: survival, victory or defeat?

It’s a tough story with a very dark beginning on a dusty London street…

Chapter Two

Tuesday 2nd July 1944

Helen Fairfax put her head down, closed her ears to the clamour all around her and stepped out towards the station as fast as her well-muscled legs would carry her. She’d have run if it wasn’t so shameful.

Her focus was on the road ahead, blocking out all the shrieks and signs of distress around her.

It was a pivotal moment. Everyone for themselves.

She skipped over some bricks and skirted a couple of baulks of timber, detritus from someone’s bomb-blasted roof. She was seized by a single idea that blanked all others.

Get to the station; get out of the city; get to safety.

She was vaguely aware of others around her, intent on the same purpose; most on foot, carrying suitcases and children in arms, some with prams, a few with bicycles, all seized by an atavistic instinct to flee the source of danger, ignoring wreckage in the street, brushing aside obstacles. Helen stepped over a scatter of smashed roof tiles and that was when she almost cannoned into the woman.

Probably a young woman – but prematurely aged. A turban skewed about her head, ragged clothing, spread-eagled on the pavement, waving her arms in signals of surrender and wailing in a loud voice, ‘I can’t do it, I can’t go on.’

This brought Helen to an unintended halt, shocked, her act of flight stalled. Sitting on the pavement next to the woman were two young children. Toddlers, just out of babyhood. Frightened eyes, the beginning of tears. All around them flowed the detritus of an upended pram, the contents rolling and flapping against the grimy flagstones; blankets, pots, clothing…

A deep breath, an even deeper sigh, an urgent resolve to calm down. Helen made her decision. She was ashamed of herself; ashamed, in fact, for all of them. Where was the famous Blitz spirit?

She stooped to upright the pram, picking up a couple of pillows and a bedraggled doll, smiling at the children. ‘Come on,’ she told the woman, now silent, body lolling, eyes vacant. ‘It can’t be that bad. Up you get!’

‘I can’t, I can’t cope. He’s left me all alone, the bastard, all by myself in this lot.’

‘Pick yourself up. Let’s get going.’ It was a sympathetic tone, but one touched, nevertheless, by alarm. Helen put out a hand as a gesture of friendship to the children, sneaking a quick glance behind, drawn by the sound of fire bells and a rising column of black smoke just half a mile to the rear. ‘We don’t want to be hanging around.’

It took a couple of forceful minutes of urging but finally she succeeded in getting the three of them on their feet, pointing in the right direction and mobile, albeit at a snail’s pace, inquiring about the cause of the trouble and getting the lowdown on the family’s plight. ‘He’s gone missing, left me with this lot, bombed out and nowhere to go. I told him we should never have come back to London but he wouldn’t listen.’

They were being overtaken by the rush, frightened people fleeing not just the latest bomb blast but fearful of all the others they expected were about to rain down upon them.

Now they were passing another bomb site, the crater still smoking, houses scythed in half, bathrooms and bedrooms exposed, beds teetering on the edge of a damaged upper storey, wallpaper flapping.

The woman, who announced herself as Ethel, was once more voluble. ‘Bloody ’Itler! Look at it! What’s he wanna do this for? Someone ought to do him in.’

Millions have already left the city, Helen knew, and now another million were on the road. Flocking northwards in a race for safety. This, she acknowledged, was V-1 panic caused by the new Hitler super weapon – a chugging pilotless buzz-bomb being launched from France – and she had disgraced herself by giving into it.

She swallowed. This was not the person she was meant to be. Not how she thought of herself. Not how her beloved Hank would have expected her to act.

Ethel seemed to have regained some of her spirit. ‘What’s Winnie doing about all this, that’s what I wanna know.’

At first Helen was completely focused on getting this family out of the danger zone but as they stepped urgently northwards with Ethel lagging, she found herself warming to her new role as substitute mother, clutching these little hands, urging the girls forward. Tilly and Tina had stopped whimpering and were chattering about their dolls, one of whom had a leg missing.

When they reached the pick-up point for the evacuation buses, a huge disorderly crowd spilled across the circus, blocking pavements and engulfing the terminus. Uniformed figures with clipboards were furiously shouting, frustrated in their attempts to impose order.

Ethel was still talking. ‘Did you see that last one, the one that hit Goodge Street? All them bodies laid out on the pavement… before they covered ’em up.’

Helen made shushing noises but there was no stopping this story.

‘All minus their limbs and some of them had no heads.’

Helen did her best to push her little party to the front. ‘She’s in a bad way,’ she managed to tell a bus inspector.

‘So are they all.’

Vehicles edged their way through the crowds, loaded and left. One after another. Ragged queues formed, faces upturned to the sky, fearful they might be caught even at the point of departure.

Helen decided she couldn’t send her trio on their way with a hurried and peremptory goodbye. Absurdly, she experienced pangs of illogical sorrow at the parting. For a very silly moment she entertained the ridiculous idea of taking them home with her – until she remembered that she wasn’t going home.

Instead, when the girls complained of hunger, Helen felt in her pocket for the precious bar of chocolate she had been saving for her young son and brought out the cheese sandwich wrapped in greaseproof paper intended for her journey. ‘You’ll need these,’ she said, packing them on to a bus.

Finally they went, minus the pram but still clutching the most vital of their possessions.

Helen resumed her journey to the station, praying the trains were running, that the line to Hatfield was still open.

The bomb that had set her running had devastated three houses and damaged many more. She’d heard the phut-phut of its pulse jet engine, stopped in alarm at the sudden silence that meant it was falling, and took shelter in a doorway. The blast, just a few hundred yards distant, had been the most overwhelming experience of noise, terror and rain of debris, causing her temporary loss of control.

Never mind, she told herself. Today I’m a frightened rabbit fleeing the fox, but tomorrow I’ll be biting back. Doing my bit to thwart the enemy. Ferrying warplanes, keeping the system ticking over, backing up the fighter boys.

She ground her teeth, still ashamed of her earlier lapse, and decided that this homily was not good enough. Instead, she made a vow to take the fight straight to the architects of such appalling destruction. She owed it to the memory of a very special person. She also owed it to her son to live up to the heroic image he had of her. She was no longer willing to accept a minor role; she wanted a more direct way of hitting back.

As yet, she didn’t know how, when or where… but somehow she would find a way.

Chapter Three

The station was hardly better than the bus terminus. Chaos , changes of platform, contradictory announcements, rising frustration. Helen caught sight of a departure for Cambridge with a few spare seats and for a moment she was tempted. A change on to her local line? Back home to Peter by evening?

No! A firm if reluctant shake of the head. Duty called. She had to get back to base. Of course, she was being pulled in two directions, she knew that only too well, but this was her decision. While single women and mothers with teenage children were conscripted into national service, mothers like her were exempt – but then Helen was answering a call that could not be denied.

Eventually she found a train for Hatfield and was surprised to recognise Owen Trelawny, one of her father’s friends, now looking considerably older, being pushed and prodded about in the hustle to find a seat. He’d been something in the motor trade, she recalled.

‘What a lovely surprise,’ he said, when she found two places for them by a window and they inevitably began a catch-up session on their lives.

‘A little boy,’ he exclaimed, amazed at the maturing of the young girl he once knew, and she filled in her son’s details: big blue eyes, good at reading, his features perceptibly changing and developing by the week.

‘And the father?’

Helen glanced out of the window and did not reply.

The conversation quickly moved on to the reason for their hasty exodus from the city. ‘It’ll only get worse,’ he said. ‘You know what’s coming next? Some new weapon Hitler’s got. Even worse than the buzz-bombs.’

‘I’ve heard,’ Helen said shortly.

‘No warning this time, no chance to stop it, just bang, wasting a whole city block at a time.’

Helen wondered if they should be talking openly on this subject, since there has been no public announcement from the government, but then people were much more relaxed these days about ‘walls have ears’.

‘It’s what I’m hearing from my friends in the know,’ Trelawny was saying. ‘When people in the city realise what’s coming the stampede to get out will be even greater. Much worse than the Blitz. No more space in those Tube stations. And shelters are useless against the devastating power of this new wretched thing.’

She sighed. The war had reached a stage where the scent of victory was in the air. How ironic then, that the Germans were about to launch on them a devastating new weapon born of a technology vastly superior to the Allies.

‘I suppose you’ll be doing something equally spectacular for the war effort, eh?’ Trelawny asked.

Helen laughed but did not enlarge.

‘Something daring, I’ll be bound, lots of daring young women about these days, and especially you… you with all those long flights, I don’t know how you managed it.’

‘All in the past now,’ she said, making a gesture as if to whisk the past away. ‘I’m a conventional housewife now.’

Not quite true, of course, more the weekend mother, she admitted silently to herself. She smiled back, knowing her aviation exploits were extraordinary to him; that she, a mere girl, had flown solo across endless tracks of desert and barren landscapes, making her name as a pioneer back in the early thirties. In Trelawny’s world women didn’t simply stay in the kitchen; they held soirees, attended races, concentrated on looking elegant. The notion that they might get their hands oily and fingernails blackened delving into an aero engine in a grubby workshop was beyond his comprehension.

She didn’t resent him for that. His was a different generation, old school, trying to get a grip of this fantastic wartime era. Besides, she’d always thought of him as a bit of a toff, with his walking cane, panama hat and pink cravat; a square peg in the rough trade of the motor business.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘that was why I was in town today. Meeting the person who was my supporter back then. Reawakening the old friendship. Re-living all those difficult days and all the tremendous back-up he gave me.’

‘But good times, yes? You loved all those old string-bags.’

‘Yes, they were good times…’ Her voice trailed off, reflecting on her almost manic quest for breaking distance and speed records and flying the flag for women in the air. Now all those carefree skylarking days were gone. The likes of Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring had turned the joy of flying into a menace and a threat.

‘Met my friend in the Café Royal quite by accident,’ she said, keeping up the fiction of the chance encounter with Ashley Devereaux, once her aviation supporter and now senior civil servant at the Air Ministry. In fact, she’d contrived the meeting to indulge in some special pleading. And that was how she knew all about the imminent peril of the V-2 rocket bomb that was shortly to be launched against the city, its power thought to be so devastating that the government feared it might have to leave the capital altogether. No news had been given out publicly but intelligence in Whitehall was privately predicting huge craters, massive explosions, unlimited numbers sent over every day, enormous casualties, the new blitz expected to begin at any moment.

Her mind returned to that café rendezvous. She’d been shocked by the statistics and stunned by the images Devereaux had created for the impending apocalypse: roads blocked by rescue vehicles; civil defence overwhelmed; a logjam of ambulances; gas, water, electricity and sewer services disrupted; and serious health problems. Ten thousand killed every day and twenty thousand badly injured.

The horror of these statistics had so shocked her that they transformed into a nightmare vision. The scene in her head was the worst she could imagine: attending a morgue to identify her family laid out on a slab.

No! She tried to push the image away but it returned cruelly as she peered down at them, the whole