'Fair Stood the Wind For France' by H. E. Bates

H. E. Bates (1905-1974)

I had a little flurry of purchasing and reading H.E. Bates novels in my second year at university: I could only afford the Penguin paperback editions: The Sleepless Moon (first published in 1956); The Feast of July (1954); and Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944). I still have them!

    

The latter was the one I remembered most and, spurred on by the recent re-reading of the similar Second World War stories of Helen MacInnes's Assignment in Brittany (1942) and Nevil Shute's Most Secret (1945),(see earlier blogs), I bought the first edition, in pristine condition - especially praiseworthy as it was produced in complete conformity with the authorised War Economy Standards.

First Edition,  1944

It is the story of a crew of five, whose Wellington bomber - returning from a mission over Italy - crash lands in Occupied France. This is not set in Brittany, as were the MacInnes and Shute novels - nor were they planning to go to France. Franklin, the 22 year-old officer, is seriously injured in the crash and the story revolves round the effect this has, initially on the rest of the crew, then on his burgeoning relationship with the French family who shelter the fliers. First, the two youngest of the crew are given 'passports' and then the older two, all sergeants, follow. Franklin is left at the farm (shades of Hearne in Assignment in Brittany, but this time he is at the mercy of his injury) to recover. Two local doctors, friends of the farming family, have to amputate his arm above the elbow. By this time, Farnklin has fallen in love with Franҫoise - called 'the girl' for much of the story - and Bates skilfully tells of their relationship, not without its hiccoughs of temporary suspicion, surmounting the perils and viciousness of the war.

By the time Franklin is able to leave the farm - with the girl's father dead by his own hand and one of the doctors shot, with 100 others, by the Germans - their mutual respect and trust sustain them through their journey down the river to Unoccupied territory: And as he rowed, looking at the girl in front of him, he felt that they were closer than two people had ever been, and that they were close because of a series of little things: because of the little difference of the morning, because she had bandaged his hand, because of their few belongings together in the attaché case. They were close because, as he had felt once or twice before, they were both very young, living their lives on the sharp thin edge of the world.

Bates is excellent at conveying the microcosm of a war: Franklin looked at the three people sitting in the lamplight waiting for a sound. He saw them, the three generations of one nation, as part of a defenceless people, as part of the little people possessing an immeasurable power that could not be broken. He saw them suddenly as little people who had lain on the ground and had their faces trampled on but whose power was still unbroken. He knew it clearly now as a more wonderful, more enduring and more inspiring power than he had ever believed possible: the power of their own hearts.

Inevitably, given the subject matter, there is little humour. However, there is a deft description of two old ladies, one definitely 'Scots' rather than English, left stranded by the war in Marseilles. They help Franklin with papers for his sergeant, O'Connor, whom he has met up with again (the only, rather Buchanesque contrived episode, with a scarcely believable coincidence). O'Connor, however, is needed both to give his life to save the girl at the end and, with a previously expressed aim that some bloodie Frenchie will pay for it, is last seen shooting at a gendarme to draw the authorities successfully away from the girl.

There are similarities with MacInnes: Hearne first sees Anne Pinot - a girl on the path. her hair gleaming in the low rays of the setting sun; John Franklin first saw Franҫoise - a black flutter of hens on the grass about the fruit trees, and then the white apron of a girl as she followed them... Anne, too, nurses Hearne: I owe you a lot...If I hadn't had some one to nurse me so carefully as you have done, I should still be only half recovered...only it is his right arm, brutally damaged by the Nazis whilst he was held captive. Both Anne and  Franҫoise are determined to go with Hearne and Franklin to England, one with a bullet in her lung on the Breton beach (but, one assumes, to live another day) and the other, after a last scare on the border between France and Spain, in the train with her love crying for the agony of all that was happening in the world.

Bates, MacInnes and Shute are all master story-tellers. Their narratives are coherent and firm, rarely meandering off in unnecessary byways, and their characters are believable. I am so glad that I have returned to them, after half a century. 

H.E. Bates  took his title from Michael Drayton's (1563-1631) poem, and it is worth quoting some of it below.

The Ballad of Agincourt

Fair stool the wind for France,

When we our sails advance,

Nor now to prove our chance,

Longer will tarry;

But putting to the main,

At Caux, the mouth of Seine,

With all his martial train, 

Landed King Harry.

And taking many a fort,

Furnished in warlike sort,

Marcheth towards Agincourt,

In happy hour;

Skirmishing day be day,

With those that stopped his way,

Where the French General lay,

With all his power...

Poitiers and Cressy tell,

When most their pride did swell,

Under our swords they fell,

No less our skill is,

Than when our grandsire great,

Claiming the regal seat,

By many a warlike feat,

Lopped the French lilees...

When down their bows they threw,

And forth their bilboes drew,

And on the French they flew,

No one was tardy;

Arms were from shoulders sent,

Scalps to the teeth were rent,

Down the French peasants went,

Our men were hardy...

Upon Saint Crispin's day

Fought was this noble fray,

Which fame did not delay,

To England carry;

O, when shall English men

With such acts fill a pen,

Or England breed again,

Such a King Harry?

Addendum:

The DVD of the BBC 1980 4-part series came last week, so I watched it over two nights. It follows the book very closely, both in the sequence of events and in much of the dialogue. Apart from it using a Lancaster, rather than a Wellington, bomber, the crash was pretty realistic. The French farm was close to what one imagined from the novel, and the French  - Francoise and her family, and the two doctors - were excellent. The actor playing Franklin lacked any charm the book hinted at, being rather petulant and selfish, even wooden, in his portrayal. All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed watching a well-produced film (the BBC in the good old days of producing quality drama). Complaints about the leisurely pace are ill-founded - the treatment was exactly right for the slow healing of the amputated arm and the growth of the love between John Franklin and Francoise. The 19 year-old French actress, Cecile Paoli, was also very easy on the eye!