We hung suspended in dark misty space, cut off from the world by the roar of the engines and the rush of cold damp air.  A few lights blinked and flashed below; big guns, perhaps. All-consuming was the bitter, enveloping cold; the skin on my face was numb and lifeless from the wind.

Quite suddenly the day emerged out of the gloom and a grey-green world was born courtesy of an unseen sun somewhere off to the south-east.  It had started to rain, the drops feeling like needles of ice.  The pilot made motions with his left hand to indicate that we were about to descend. A smooth green field flew up to meet us; I flexed my body for the impact.

The field wasn’t that smooth, as it turned out, its lumps and bumps hurling the little aircraft about. As we roared to a stop, with the machine still pulsing, it felt as if the landing had re-arranged all my insides. I hoisted myself from my seat, balanced on the fuselage and then jumped to the ground; I was numb and stiff so I landed in a soggy heap on wet stubble.

‘Good luck, old man,’ yelled the pilot, ‘Back here, daybreak, on the 13^th.’

I hauled myself to my feet, backed away from the aircraft, waved, and ran for cover.  I didn’t watch the take-off, instead following hedges, ditches and small belts of woodland along a route I’d memorised from maps and photographs, and then concealed myself in a small copse a long way from the road.  The idea was to get away from the landing site in case the Germans, having heard the plane, came to investigate. I waited a full hour, to be certain, and reflected on the meeting that had brought me here.

‘What’s the point?’ I’d asked, ‘The war’s nearly over, isn’t it?

The intelligence officer remained silent for a spell, merely giving me a wry gaze, before carrying on, pointing to some aerial photographs that lay on the table. ‘We’ll be advancing along this road. Horse transport, footsoldiers, motor-lorries, ambulances, everything.  This wood,’ he pointed to a large lozenge of closely-packed trees, ‘we know nothing about, except that the track leading into it is new since the start of the war.  There could be anything in there – redoubt, artillery, barracks – and aircraft wouldn’t see it.  So you go there, have a look, find out what’s in it, and report back.  You’ll have five days.’

‘So I could be shot as a spy just as the war ends?’

‘I don’t see any need for that. You’ll have to stay out of sight and your uniform will do as well as anything.’

He made it all seem so safe, so reasonable. Now here I was in a damp, rain-sodden November, shivering uncontrollably in a field in occupied Belgium.  It was time to move.

I watched the farm cottage for half an hour before I went to the door, just to be sure that it harboured no unwelcome guests. The woman who answered asked few questions. Her two sons were in the Belgian Army and we’d expected her to be co-operative. I showed her my cap badge and a picture I had of myself in full-dress uniform (no Germans wore the kilt, after all) and did my best in broken French; ‘Grand Bretagne… Ecossais… ami…’  In fact she was Flemish-speaking but a tiny amount of French was all we had in common.

She showed me into a clean but cluttered parlour and brought me some fried eggs and a large cup of fresh milk.  I managed to explain that I needed to hide until nightfall and she nodded and smiled.  I was able to tell her about her sons, that they were both still alive; she hadn’t known.

That evening, I merged into a clump of autumn bushes that dropped wet leaves, like cold dead fish, under an onslaught of rain. Somewhere, miles back, there was artillery fire and once or twice, as I waited, aircraft buzzed over. The woman had shown me a secret, out-of-view way of getting to this point, looking over the road towards the wood, which was actually a plantation of close-ranked pines.  Traffic on the rough track that disappeared into the trees was sparse – just the odd motor-lorry – and nothing compared to the non-stop activity on the main road, an unceasing flow of retreating troops, horse-drawn transport and motors. One group of soldiers stopped by the road just yards from me, squatting low and chatting in a defeated, taciturn manner. One of them stood up, climbed the verge a little way, turned his back to his companions, fumbled with his trousers and began to pee, loud, long and steamy, into the undergrowth. The arc of urine landed in long grass with a hot hiss just five yards from me.

It grew dark and the retreating traffic became sparse, enabling me to slip across the road and into the pines. It was difficult at first to go safely as the trees were planted close together and if I’d hurried I could have put out both my eyes. I kept going, as quietly and carefully as possible, into a dark world of sharp pine scents and damp earth.  And then I came to a clearing.

Here I must record how I was feeling at this time. I was cold, wet and alone in occupied territory, blundering about in a midnight-dark forest, yes. I knew war and knew that I hated it; I’d served in Mesopotamia and Macedonia and for the last year on the Western Front so I knew all about it. Yet this; pitting my wits against the enemy without a shot fired (hopefully) in a kind of Baden-Powell game – and it felt like a game – was something I was enjoying.  Yes, enjoying.

And more; I felt at last as if I were making some kind of measurable difference; any information I was able to obtain and keep, like treasure in my head, could save lives, and might help to shorten the war and bring us closer to an end of the tears. What I was doing was exciting and it also mattered; very different from being just one more piece of cannon fodder in a gruelling advance.

I felt alive.

I had wondered how I would cope in the dark (all I had for light was a box of matches and a cigarette lighter) but in fact the spaces within the forest were lit here and there by lanterns and once a motor-lorry drove past with subdued headlights running. There were lines of motor-lorries and a few hastily-built workshops and garages and what looked like a fuel store.  Several long, narrow rides had been cut through the forest, invisible from the air and forming spacious motor-lorry lines. I worked my way round the forest during the rest of the night and I did find, at the apex of the plantation that faced the line of the allied advance, an arc of sandbags, as if a machine-gun post were being prepared.

There was little to worry us here; perhaps enough to justify some air attacks ahead of the advance but that was all.  Methodically I again thought through the details, the numbers, the geography, as I picked my way through the sodden night-time countryside back to the farm. I couldn’t, of course, write the information down; so I pictured and memorised and revised, guarding the treasure.

The woman had been dozing in an armchair and welcomed me back.  I managed to explain that I had to remain until the 13^th, Tuesday, just before daybreak.  She nodded and directed me towards the same parlour I’d been in before.

I saw little daylight over the next few days. As far as possible I tried to keep away from the windows and disciplined my bladder and bowels so that I only went to the privy opposite the back door after dark. I heard stamping of feet and banging of doors and gruff, terse conversation when the old men who were helping to keep the farm going came in to discuss things with the woman. There was never any sign of the Germans. This puzzled me, given that some of them must have heard the plane the other morning. They seemed to have lost interest.

On the Tuesday morning I set off some while before it got light.  The woman became tearful when I left and I did my best to assure her that she’d be seeing her sons very soon.  I made my way to a secluded corner of the landing field, wrapped myself in my greatcoat, made myself as comfortable as possible and strained my ears for the sound of aero engines.

All I could hear was the rattle of rain on leaf and the slow hubbub of defeat trickling along the distant road. I noticed that there was no dawn rumble of artillery fire. The day hauled itself into sluggish grey life until finally there was a kind of pearliness through the drizzle. But no one came for me.

I spent the time continuing to rehearse the information I’d gathered, but by about nine o’ clock it was clear that I’d have to return to the farm. If contact wasn’t made, my orders were to take cover again and keep trying every dawn until someone showed up. I stood up, shook rain and mud and leaf-litter from my coat, and began to edge along the field. Immediately I came face-to-face with a German soldier.

He was filthy and unshaven and painfully thin; he looked at me, at my greatcoat. His face dully showed surprise and puzzlement – but no fear.

And then he continued past me, heading for the road.

I watched him go, then turned back towards the farmhouse, wondering if I should try to hide elsewhere rather than endanger the woman now that a German – albeit an uninterested one – had seen me. And then I saw that there were more Germans taking their rest in the next field. One of them saw me, waved a brown glass bottle in the air and yelled, ‘Hey, Tommy!  Come and have a drink with us!’

I walked towards them warily, ready with my prepared story about being caught ahead of the main advance, only to be slapped heartily on the back and told, ‘Ha!  No need for us to fight now, eh?  War’s over!’  A bottle was shoved into my hand.

War’s over?

It was obvious I didn’t know what they were talking about, so they explained that two days before there had been an Armistice. ‘We Germans have to get out of Belgium soon, yes? Good! Maybe join the revolution back at home!’

I can’t say I was thinking about the end of killing, of lives no longer to be sacrificed on a conveyor belt of death, of peace and reconciliation, of going home to my wife and the children and my job and being back in Glasgow and never having to shoot or be shot at again.

No, I was thinking about the adventure of the last few days, of the concealment and guile and fieldcraft, of the information I’d obtained that could have been significant but… was all for nothing. Pointless. I might as well have stayed in my billet. The information I’d obtained at such effort was no longer of value to anyone.

I returned to the remains of the final front line in an unlikely manner, hitching a lift in a German motor-lorry. I jumped off and walked past masses of puzzled German soldiers, through empty fields churned by recent shellfire, and found a British unit that was itself packing up and getting ready to leave.

‘Still, successful mission, eh?  Served your country; did your job,’ said my CO, later.

I looked right through him. He didn’t understand. It was as if nothing could ever really matter, as if I could never really be alive again.

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