Perigord, 1944
A thin frost was forming as McPhee and Manners crept along the riverbank. There were four young Frenchmen in a ragged line between them, coming along for the experience. Manners had a filthy headache, after handling the crude “808” British version of the plastic explosive. It stank and gave off pungent fumes when he had soaked it in warm water to make it malleable. But it was powerful. Less than a pound would be enough to blow the railway points apart. He had a dozen charges in his rucksack, each sewn crudely into a cloth bag.
At the rail junctions of le Buisson the east-west line to Bordeaux crossed the north-south line from Agen to Perigueux and up to Limoges and Paris. It was a small station, with a German patrol coming around four times each night to check on the small permanent guard of three of the Vichy paramilitary, the Milice. Just to establish that had taken three nights of surveillance, to the frustration of the French, who had thought the simple arrival of the Jedburgh team would trigger an instant orgy of demolitions and mayhem. They had to be taught that nine-tenths of guerrilla war was patience and observation. McPhee had two hand grenades for the Milice hut, and the Frenchmen had Stens. Francois was with another small squad about three miles back at a sharp bend in the road to Belves, the route the patrolling German lorry would take.
The night was bright with stars, but no moon. McPhee insisted on wearing his uniform, just as he insisted each day on shaving the sides of his scalp with ever-blunter razor blades. The skin above his ears was nicked with tiny cuts, but his bizarre Mohican tuft survived. Manners had taken Hilaire’s advice and was wearing dark blue French overalls and an old leather jacket. He was freezing and he was hungry, and the spring water up in the hills had given him the runs, and his head throbbed. He was about as miserable as he could ever remember being, but it was not the cold that made his hands tremble until he tucked them under the straps of his rucksack. He stepped through a thin sheen of ice and into a puddle. At least his boots were almost new.
Berger’s vaunted team of Maquis had turned out to be one tough old sergeant from the colonial army, an even older veteran of the Great War, a wiry corporal from the Alpine troops, and fourteen hungry and dispirited youths, who had taken to the hills rather than be conscripted for forced labor in German factories. Apart from one Marine deserter, only three of them had any kind of military training, and one had been a mechanic in the Air Force. They could fire a rifle, but had never fired or stripped a submachine gun, and there was no point in wasting ammunition by giving them revolvers. Berger had wanted to boost their morale with a gigantic explosion, something big like a bridge. Gently, Francois and Manners had dissuaded him. There was a limit to their stocks of explosive, and the bridges that mattered were well guarded. Better to start small, to give the best of the young Maquis a taste of action against a relatively soft target. And the coeurs d’aigulles, the points that allowed a train to switch from one line to another, were complex pieces of casting. A single destroyed stretch of rail could be repaired within a day. A network of points could take a week to replace, plus another few days to repair the signals.
Ahead of Manners, the line had stopped. McPhee signaled him to come up to the front. At least there were no hedges in this country to be pushed through or skirted. He slogged forward, ignoring the distant growling of a heavy engine. Too far away to worry about.
“That was the German patrol truck, heading back to Belves. That gives us a couple of hours before they are due back,” said McPhee. “We’re about two hundred yards from the station. You can see the railway line there on the right. I’m going to stake out the Milice hut with the sergeant. You take the boys and start laying the charges. I’ll give you thirty minutes, then I’ll put the grenades in.”
Manners waved the Frenchmen on, as McPhee and the squat little sergeant from the colonial wars began a running crouch toward the station. Manners put Frise in the lead; the one they called Curly. He at least had seen some action in 1940, in the Corps Francs, which took patrols out from the Maginot line, and felt very proud of being promoted to corporal. He had also seemed to be the fastest at grasping the basics of demolition when Francois and Manners had shown the group how the detonators worked. It was a straightforward fuse, and they all had lighters. Just so long as they remembered to stuff the charges into the V of the points.
It was a very small town, and the station was almost on the outskirts. Frise took them quickly past darkened houses, over a narrow road, and past a squat war memorial from 1914-18 until they reached the level crossing. The rails and their crucial points spread out in the starlight like a great fan. Manners opened his rucksack, gave each of the Frenchmen two charges, and pushed them toward the rails. Just as he began placing his fourth charge deep into the points, there came the sound of distant gunfire. Automatic bursts, then single shots. It wasn’t McPhee-the wrong direction. The German patrol! But they were still miles away.
“Finish your work,” he snapped at Jean-Claude, who had stood up and was staring around wildly, a charge still in his hand. The Frenchman bent again to his task. Manners had two charges still to place, and then came a flash of red light at the station fifty yards down the line, and the crack of a grenade, then the burst of a Sten as McPhee hit the Milice hut.
“Finished,” called Frise, shepherding the other young Frenchmen back to the level crossing. Manners scampered across the rails, taking out his shielded red torch to check on each charge. He had placed his own by touch alone. There was more firing from the station. Then from far up the road, the unmistakable ripping sound of a belt-fed MG-34, a German machine gun. Francois was in trouble. A distant, flat boom. Francois was using his Gammon grenades, homemade bombs that eked out their pitiful arsenal.
“O.K.” He waved them back to the rails. “Ignition now.” He had given each of them a “Tommy” lighter, more reliable than matches in wind-as long as they could get the petrol. His own sparked and flared. He had six to light, the Frenchmen only two each. He didn’t have enough fuses to link them all together to a single firing point. The fuses caught. They now had just over a minute to get clear. McPhee was on his own. Francois was on his own. The rule was that they each had to make their own withdrawal to the agreed rendezvous. Back at the level crossing, he slapped the chattering Frenchmen on the back, more to be sure they were all there than from any sense of congratulation. One, two, three.
“Now, move.” He led them back past the war memorial, skirting the main street where they held the market each Friday. No point in cautious creeping. They were running now. He heard windows being opened and furious French whisperings, and the explosions came in sharp, metallic cracks as he pushed the boys up toward the hills that rose above the river. He counted them-ten, eleven-no number twelve. No more firing from the station. McPhee was either dead or escaped. Another explosion. Twelve. All the charges had worked. The French boys had done well. No more sounds from the Belves road. As he pounded up the frosty hillside, his rucksack felt curiously light.
McPhee and the colonial sergeant were already waiting for them at the rendezvous, a sagging ancient barn in the hills behind the hilltop village of Limeuil. The sergeant was cleaning his Sten carefully. McPhee had taken watch outside, and once he and Manners had exchanged passwords, the American solemnly shook each of the young Frenchmen by the hand.
“I heard all the explosions,” he said. “Well done.”
“Any trouble with the Milice?” Manners asked.
“Piece of cake. I think they were asleep, but then the firing started and as one of them opened the door, I tossed a grenade in. One of them survived long enough to start firing a rifle through the window, but the old guy got him with a Sten burst. We went in, got two Lebel rifles and their ammo, and an old revolver, and ran for it as your charges went off.”
Manners congratulated the old sergeant, and moved to the back of the barn. On an earlier visit, they had found some rusty lengths of corrugated iron, put them together as a low lean-to, to make a place shadowed enough to light a tiny folding Tommy cooker without the light showing. He put some water on to boil and poured in the jar of concentrated soup he carried. It was bitterly cold, and now that the boys had stopped moving and their adrenaline surge had passed, they would need hot food. Without being asked, Frise took a loaf of the yellowish chestnut bread from his pack and began sawing thick slices. The colonial sergeant took the guard duty outside.
“You heard the machine gun?” Manners asked McPhee as they crouched over the little pebble of solid fuel, its chemical fumes stronger than the smell of the soup.
“I don’t think our French buddy’s going to make it,” McPhee grunted.
“Don’t write him off that easily. He has a way of getting out of tight spots.”
“The truck was going away. So they wouldn’t have ambushed it, there’d have been no point. The Krauts must have spotted them first. Francois was the only one among them who’d ever been in action. If the Krauts were any good, it would have been like potting rabbits.”
“He had a couple of men who knew what they were doing, the chap who was in the French Marines and the Great War veteran. And they had a lot of cover.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t have a Spandau. That thing rips out bullets like I never heard.”
They dipped their enamel mugs into the soup, and Manners took one out to the sergeant. Nothing, he said. No explosions, no firing, no sound of trucks yet. The Germans would probably wait for daylight before sending out a damage assessment squad with a strong patrol. Manners sent him back inside to drink his soup and took the watch. Inside the barn, the sounds of excited conversation died away as the boys settled down to sleep in the straw. The stars were brighter than ever, almost as bright as they had been in the desert. He traced the handful of constellations he knew, Orion’s belt and the plow, which led him up to the Pole Star. It was a good night for parachute drops, and he wondered how many more tiny knots of frightened, excited men were out in this cold French countryside, how many stripped-down bombers were lumbering back to England after dropping the arms and supplies they used as pinpricks against the million-man army the Germans kept in France. Seventy divisions, Von Runstedt was supposed to have. Seventy divisions, and two thousand tanks. And Rommel had kept a British army on the run in North Africa with just two divisions and less than four hundred tanks. The invasion was going to be a nightmare. But if he and the Maquis could keep Army Group G tied down here in the south, that was almost a third of the German forces who would not be driving the Allies off the beaches.
It was nearly dawn before the survivors came. Manners heard them coming through the woods long before he heard the whispered password “Laval.” No Vichy or German troops would ever dream that the Maquis would use the name of the Vichy political boss as a password. Nor the reply, “Petain,” although the Frenchmen liked to make it sound like “putain”-whore.
They were shivering with cold in shirtsleeves and pullovers. They had taken off their jackets to make an improvised stretcher for the Great War veteran who had taken two bullets in his thigh. There was a whiff of French tobacco in their air, and Francois arrived, nonchalantly bringing up the rear with a Spandau over one shoulder. The men putting down the stretcher clinked from the belt bandoliers around their shoulders.
“You got the gun,” Manners marveled.
“Got the gun, the ammo, the truck, and eight Boches. And two Schmeissers. A successful night. We heard your explosions.”
“So how did it start? Did they spot you”?
“It started by accident. We had a tree all ready to roll onto the road in case the patrol came back, but we lost control of the thing in the dark and it rolled out on its own, just as we heard the truck coming from le Buisson.” He lit another cigarette from the stump of the one he had been smoking, his hand trembling. “Get my boys some food, can you? And take a look at that leg. He could walk a bit, but the tourniquet needs loosening. He’ll need a friendly doctor.”
Back in the barn, as McPhee made more soup and the colonial sergeant began loosening the tourniquet in the light of Manners’s red torch, Francois continued with his tale.
“There was no time to move it, so we had to ambush the truck right there, as soon as it stopped for the log. It didn’t look suspicious, still half on the bank, and only blocking about half the road. So the truck stopped, and we opened up. One of them got off a burst with the machine gun from the roof of the cab, but luckily he was firing the wrong way and the Marine threw a Gammon bomb, and that was it. We shot two of them trying to scuttle down the road. We lost one dead, and the old man was hit.”
“Was the truck a write-off?”
“We pushed it off the road and burned it, took the guns and came back this way. It was easier than I thought, except for burying poor little Jeannot. I don’t think he even fired a shot.” He lit another cigarette. “The boys behaved well. They trust their guns now, and the Gammon bombs. And us. They’ll be even better next time.”
“Next time won’t be so easy. The Germans aren’t idiots. There’ll be no more single-truck patrols, and they’ll start trying to ambush us.”
“I know. But I have an idea.” The Frenchman went across to fill his tin cup, puffing on his cigarette between swigs of soup. “What is the most vulnerable but essential part of our operation?”
“The radio, no question.”
“Correct, and the big danger is their direction-finding trucks, right?”
“Right.”
“How many do they have, for this part of France?”
“I don’t know, but they’ll be a special unit, corps troops, probably assigned to the Gestapo. No more than a company for this region. Say eight or ten trucks at the most.”
“And they always hunt in threes?”
“They have to, to triangulate the bearings on the transmitter.”
“So with three successful ambushes, we close them down.”
“You mean we use the radio as bait? Can we afford to take that risk?”
“We take that risk every time we transmit. Might as well take advantage of it. The thing about the trucks, they are stuck to moving on roads and decent tracks. So we pick our spot, somewhere near a road the trucks must use. And we hit them. It’s not just the specialized trucks; it’s the personnel. Those guys take a lot of training.”
“Let’s be smart about this. We have to set the trap somewhere outside the area we normally use, because after an attack like that the Gestapo will scream blue murder until the army sends in reinforcements to hunt us down.”
“Fine, we’ll go east, into the Massif, somewhere the far side of Brive. It’s nearly empty country, not like round here. But we’ll need some more parachute drops, both here and over in the Massif. That will mean one of us going across there to scout out drop zones, probably me, because we’ll have to liaise with the local Maquis. My brother knows the FFI types in Brive, but most of the guys over there are Communists.”
“So perhaps you aren’t the best chap for the job.”
“They don’t like British imperialists either. Maybe McPhee is the one to send. We must discuss this with my brother. But there’ll be plenty of work here. Tonight’s work will bring new recruits to train. And a lot of angry Germans to make us keep moving.”
“I want to keep hitting their railways, taking out the points network. That’s their Achilles’ heel,” Manners insisted. “Take out the points on the east-west line and they can only run one train a day. Take them out on the north-south lines and we close down half of southwestern France. Now the boys know what to do, I think we can use them to set off the charges as a train is coming, so we get the derailment as well as the track.”
“They are local boys. They won’t do that to passenger trains.”
“I’d rather derail freight trains. They are tougher to move. They have to bring a mobile crane in to clear it, and there can’t be too many of those on the French rail system.”
Late in the morning, a sweating Berger came into view with a young woman, gray-eyed and with wind-blown blond hair, whose arrival made the men fall silent and pick up their already clean guns to tend them again. The two of them were wearing trousers and anoraks and carrying rucksacks, as if out for a hike. Their rucksacks were full of wine and food and Caporal cigarettes. The woman went straight to the old man, asleep and pale on his stretcher.
“She’s a doctor,” said Berger, straightening his back. “Well, almost as good. She’s a vet. I thought you might need one. How is he?”
“In shock, lost a lot of blood. I don’t think the bone was hit but there are two entry wounds and only one exit. One bullet’s still in there,” said McPhee. “I dusted the wounds with sulfa powder-it’s the best we’ve got.”
“What’s the news from le Buisson?” asked Francois, through a mouthful of bread.
“Good, very good,” Berger said as the Maquis gathered around him for the news. “It was a great job, boys. All the tracks and points are gone. One of the railway men told me it will take two weeks to repair, even if they can get the new points. With the Allied bombing in the north, they can’t cast new points fast enough. The Boches took all the French stocks last year, because of the bombing of their rail network. The bad news is that two companies of Boches have arrived and commandeered a house beside the station. It looks like they will put a permanent guard there.”
“Are they taking reprisals?” asked Frise. “I have family in le Buisson. So does Lespinasse.”
“Nothing yet, but they beat up a few people when they did their search. A new squad of Milice is on the way with some Gestapo, according to the railway men, and apparently they are bastards. Le Buisson is in for a rough time. The priest told me that ten guys have taken off for the hills already.”
“Do we know where they are?”
“Up somewhere in those woods above the Gouffre, the big cave. There are some remote farms up there, sheep and cattle. They’ll be all right. One of our emergency camps is nearby, where we have a small arms dump. Frise, you’ll know some of them. If you go across the river tonight, find the guys, and we’ll meet you at that camp near Audrix tomorrow evening.”
“Did the railway men know where the rail repair train would come from?” asked Manners. Back in England they had been told that the French railroad workers, traditionally left wing and with a strong trade union, would be their most useful informants.
“Due from Bergerac tomorrow. Why?”
“That means it will come through le Bugue?”
“Of course, but why?”
“I’d rather derail one of those than almost anything else. Are there any good ambush points?”
“There’s the bridge over the Vezere, but that will be guarded,” said Berger. “Then the track runs along the road by the river, with a steep wooded hill on one side. There would be places there, but it’s close to le Buisson, and the Boches would be there within ten minutes, unless they are already patrolling the line.”
“We have not told you of our new secret weapon,” said Francois. He lifted the tarpaulin off the Spandau. “The Germans are in soft-topped trucks. So we ambush the repair train, and when the Boches come along the road to the rescue, we ambush them from the far side of the river. This gun is accurate up to a kilometer. We’ll do a lot of damage.”
“Do we have time to set all this up?” interjected McPhee.
“I have to go back to the dump to get some more explosives, which means crossing the river. And I’ll need the electric detonator,” said Manners. “And then find an ambush point. We have to move now, and find a good firing point for the Spandau, then pick a rendezvous point. We also need to be sure that the Spandau is firing accurately from the moment it opens up-so has anybody ever used one, apart from me?”
“Of course,” said Francois. “We used them whenever we could capture one in the desert-much better than those little Bren guns you British gave us.” He looked down at the coiled bandoliers. “I have more than enough ammo, but I’ll need two men to carry it. I’ll take the Marine and the sergeant. They can both use a rifle.”
“We rendezvous at the Gouffre-it’s about two miles through the hills from that stretch of rail track,” said Berger. “Francois, you had better go with Manners to agree about your firing point and his ambush point. Manners, you’ll need some men to give you covering fire after you blow the train. McPhee, you go back with the rest of the men to the Audrix camp.”
“What about him?” McPhee jerked his thumb at the wounded veteran, who was swigging wine from the bottle Berger had brought. The vet patiently took the bottle from him, and finished bandaging the leg.
“Sybille?” called Berger. “Comment va-t-il? How is he?”
“He’ll have to stay here, unless there is a warm place nearby where he can go. I’ll have to take the bullet out today, and I’ll need boiling water,” she said.
“O.K. There is old Boridot’s farm in the next valley. He’s a taciturn old buzzard, but he fought in the Great War. He’ll help, but I will have to come along to talk to him. McPhee, you and your men come with me and the vet to carry him, and then you head off for Audrix. All agreed? Any questions? Right, leave that food here for another time, pack up those guns, and let’s get moving.”
There were no points along the stretch of single-track line, only culverts. It took five pounds of plastic to blow a culvert, and Manners couldn’t spare them. So he used the culvert as cover and decided on a simple charge to blow the track. He only had fifty meters of detonator cord and one detonator box. He tested the box, leaning down hard on the handle, and the little clockwork dynamo produced a spark. That would do. He took a handful of icy mud from the bottom of the culvert, and smeared it over his charge. The fumes of the 808 explosive had started his headache again.
He felt terribly exposed. The railway ran alongside the road, and three times he had to duck into the culvert when traffic came by. There was a priest on a bicycle, then a German truck preceding a staff car, and then a gasogene, one of the civilian cars converted to run on gas generated by charcoal because of the petrol shortages. The gas bag was draped over the roof, and the things were so underpowered that they had to be pushed up steep hills. But for wartime France, it was often the only civilian transport on offer.
He checked his watch. Almost four, and the sun was going down. He put his ear against the rail-no sound of a train yet. He peeked over the rails at the road. It was clear in both directions. He looked back up the hill and waved to where the three boys were installed, ready to give him covering fire if he needed it. His detonation point was as well concealed as he could make it, behind a big tree and a fallen log. He took the metal mirror from his shirt pocket and flashed it over toward the copse where Francois waited with the Spandau. He got an answering flash, and then sent the quick burst of Morse to say that he was ready. God knows what they would do for signals when there was no sun.
His head was almost bursting with pain. He darted across to the road on top of the riverbank, and clambered down to dunk his head into the icy water. He held it below the surface, counted to ten, and came out gasping. That was better. The road was still clear. One last quick check of his charge, and he tidied the site, smoothing out the hollow in the gravel where he had knelt. So much easier to work in daylight. He put his ear to the rail again. Still nothing. No, perhaps a faint vibration somewhere deep in his head. He lifted his head, shook it to clear the water from his ears, and lowered it again. Yes, definitely a vibration. He clambered back up the hill to his detonating point and squatted behind the old log, smoothing his wet hair back with his hands. That was a foolish indulgence. He’d probably catch a cold, and he had nothing to use to dry his hair. He took off his leather jacket and used its woolen lining to soak up the worst of the water. That was better, and the warmth of his body would soon dry out the lining. Now he could hear the train.
It took a very long time in coming along the level track, but the sound of the laboring steam engine was bounced back from the slope of the hillside. Certainly a freight, and heavily loaded. It must be the repair train, and if it weren’t, it would still block the line until they could get a crane in.
He saw the smoke first, and then something came into sight. Not a locomotive, but a flatcar, piled high with sandbags protecting a machine gun post. Then the locomotive, and the gantry behind it for the big winch and pulleys. That was the repair train, and the poor undertrained fools were so unaccustomed to ambush that they didn’t know that they had played into his hands. Thank God they weren’t veterans from the Eastern Front battles against the partisans. The timing was always tricky when trying to derail a train with a single charge. But now he could detonate it beneath the flatcar, and the sandbags would contain part of the force of the explosion to rip an even bigger gap in the rail. And take care of the machine gunners. But what if they had another machine gun car at the rear? Oh Christ, he hadn’t thought of that. But no time for that now, and he pressed down on the detonator handle just as the flatcar reached his charge, and ducked his face deep into the leaves.
The explosion was a hugely satisfying thud that sent the fallen log trembling, but when he raised his head to look, he couldn’t see a thing. Sand everywhere, falling into his damp hair, getting into his eyes, drifting down through the savagely shorn trees. It formed a great dust cloud made thicker by deep gouts of black smoke from the stricken locomotive and the sharp hiss of escaping steam mixed with the terrible scream of grinding metal as the rest of the train derailed.
Slowly his vision cleared, as he heard his Maquis shrieking with joy from above. There was no sign of the machine gun or the soldiers, and the flatcar was folded almost in two where the locomotive had pushed it against the trees as it slumped from the gapped rail and toppled sideways to plow along the hillside. The repair train itself had jerked the other way, off the rails and across the road, and the gantry with the pulleys and the flatcars with their spare rails and the freight cars with their precious spare points had all toppled down the bank of the river where he had bathed his head only minutes beforehand. Down the track, two more freight cars lay on their side, but the last one was still on the rails. No sign of more Germans. Movement below him, where the driver was clambering out of the side of his wrecked train and bending to help haul something out. The fireman … Christ.
“There may be some Germans left. Keep a watch here and at the far end of the train,” he called up the hill to his men, and he slid and staggered down and around the front of the train to help the engine driver. The steam was coming out so fast that he felt sure the boiler wouldn’t burst, but the smoke was everywhere, and the side of the engine was too hot to touch. His pulled his hand inside his leather sleeve, used that to get a purchase, and then he could put his hand under the fireman’s armpit and haul. They got him out and onto the road. The driver was too dazed to do anything but fall to his knees and vomit copiously. Manners went back to the crushed flatcar. No sign of the machine gun, and only the naked trunk of a single German soldier, his helmet still on his head but his legs gone. Then he saw another German, a bundle of clothing that had been blown into the cutting. Almost unconsciously, he tugged at the buttons on the blouse, pulled out a pay book and a wallet. It should tell him what units the Germans were using, he thought, stuffing them into his blouse.
He clambered up the hill toward his men, the mud easier now with the fine layer of sand to give his boots a grip. The boys were standing in full view, their weapons hanging loosely by their sides, enthralled by the sight of the wrecked train. One threw his arms wide open to embrace Manners and the others began spontaneously to applaud. But there was no time for that. Manners bundled them up the hill, away from what was now an ambush site for Francois. They had to be well clear before the German patrols arrived from le Buisson. Christ, they’d be angry. This line would be out for days, and a whole freight car of replacement points had fallen into the river. Maybe they could do something to make sure they could not be salvaged. Perhaps if he booby-trapped the door …
Lungs heaving, their hands and faces scratched from the climb through the woods, they got to the ridge in time to see the German trucks coming along the road from le Buisson. God, they were badly trained. They should have been spaced at least two hundred yards apart in this country, and there should have been an armored car to lead them or at least a couple of motorcyclists. Had they no fear of an ambush?
Francois waited until the trucks slowed to take a sharp bend in the road where it crossed the railway line, still almost a mile from the train crash. And then as the lead truck turned and rumbled across the crossing and down the slope, Francois had a perfect head-on shot with no deflection and he held his aim as the first short burst hit the road just ahead and the truck rolled into it. A sustained burst and the truck slowed as if it had hit a wall, and careered off the road and into a ditch. The second truck drove into the same burst of fire, drove through it and failed to make the bend and rolled into the river. Francois paused, switched his aim, and raked the last truck, now stopped just before the level crossing. The two trucks stuck in the middle were trying frantically to turn, soldiers leaping out into the trees. The last truck exploded as the petrol tank blew up and ammunition began to cook off. Long raking bursts into the trees, and then the sound of single shots as the rifles began firing at the soldiers. Francois would have to change the machine gun barrel soon. Another two bursts into the two middle trucks. More single shots. Now the Germans were firing back, but firing anywhere, Francois’s position still unspotted. Time to go. His Frenchmen were capering with joy behind him, the fools. They’d attract bullets. He pushed them down the slope beyond the ridge toward Audrix. His headache had quite disappeared.
Boridot’s farm looked deserted and ramshackle and the small vineyard was thick with weeds. But the vegetable garden was well kept and blooming with early radishes and some of the fattest cabbages Manners had ever seen. There were some chickens pecking in the yard, and two dogs chained to rings in the stone wall. They came barking at Manners until their chains yanked them back as he pushed Berger’s bicycle through the sagging gate. It was held closed by a piece of old rope that looked as if it had come from the same batch that now served Boridot as a belt. The old farmer wore a faded red handkerchief on his head, the four corners tied into tiny knots to keep it in place, and wooden sabots instead of shoes. And his teeth gripped the aged pipe between his teeth with the same determination as his hands kept the gleaming shotgun pointed at Manners’s chest.
“I have come to see the wounded man, the one who was shot in the thigh,” said Manners, suddenly conscious that he did not know the wounded man’s name, that he sounded foreign, and that a German might be asking the same sort of question. The barrel of the shotgun looked very big indeed. He scoured his mind for something reassuring to say. Had not Berger said that old Boridot too was a veteran? “You will remember from the Great War that it is the rule in the British Army that an officer must see to the comfort of his wounded men.”
“It is all right, Grand-pere. This is the English officer,” said a woman’s voice, and the vet he had seen the previous day appeared in the doorway wiping her hands on a towel. She was wearing a full gray skirt and a white blouse, buttoned neatly to the neck, with her fair hair tied up in a large knot. Even wearing the same sturdy boots, she looked far more fetching than she had dressed in baggy pants as a hiker. “I know him. Berger introduced us.”
“Is he really your grandfather?” Manners asked her as the shotgun was lowered and the craggy old man came forward to shake his hand.
“No, I just call him that. I’ve known him all my life,” she said, coming forward to be kissed on both cheeks. It was a French greeting Manners always enjoyed, although it made him slightly uncomfortable, and he did it clumsily with an abrupt jerk of his head. She carried a scent of faded lavender, like the bowl his mother kept in her sewing room. He remembered her name was Sybille, and there was amusement in her eyes as he stepped back.
“How is your patient?”
“I’ve known worse, but not since the last pregnant cow whose calf was turned in the womb,” she said. “I’m glad to see you, because you must tell London to start sending medical supplies in the parachutes. Not just those field dressings, which will get us all arrested and shot if the Germans find them. We are short of everything, even aspirin. But the new sulfa drugs, can you get London to send some? And plain white bandages? And scalpels and gut for sewing wounds?”
“I’ll try, Sybille. But I think they are more concerned with inflicting wounds than treating them.”
“Well, come and see the old goat. Perhaps you can order him to stop trying to put his hand up my skirt.”
“Shows he’s better,” grunted Boridot. “A little apero, to take the heat from the day?” He led the way inside, which smelled as gamy as a badger’s den. There was a huge cheese made from ewe’s milk on the table, and an earthenware dish containing a fat pate beside it. On an old couch, whose broken fourth leg had been replaced by a large stone, lay a middle-aged man with a clean bandage on his thigh and a half-filled glass in his hand.
“My own pineau,” gestured Boridot proudly, and took his handkerchief off his head to wipe it around a cloudy glass. He filled it with a reddish-brown liquid from a liter bottle, and handed it to Manners. He poured himself another glass, and Sybille picked up the drink she had been sipping before she came to the door. The ration of four liters a month did not seem to be affecting this farm.
“How goes it?” Manners asked the recumbent man. He looked half-drunk, and sounded even drunker when he said he felt well enough to fight some Germans again. Manners reached into his blouse to give him a packet of English cigarettes. Alongside the Players, he found the dead German’s pay book. Feldgendarmerie, Military Police-that told him nothing. He opened the leather wallet and found, to his surprise, a traveling chess set, with flat pieces that fit neatly into slits in the leather. No name or identification on it, so it might be useful to help the boys pass the time. He closed it, slipped it into his breast pocket, and then handed the cigarettes to the wounded man.
“Do you want to get us all killed?” Sybille asked dryly. “The Germans find those, and we’re all dead.”
“The Germans find a wounded man with a bullet hole in his thigh and we’re all dead anyway,” he replied neutrally. “Besides, old Boridot would blow them away.”
She looked at him, just a bare hint of a smile on her face. No makeup hiding that fine skin, good eyes, he thought, the catalog forming in his mind by reflex. But somehow she seemed to want to make herself look plain. Tiredness, perhaps, too many years of war and occupation. With enemy soldiers around, he could understand an attractive woman wanting to look drab.
“I want to thank you for taking care of him,” he told her formally. “I understand the risks you must be taking.”
“I’m the one taking the risk, with that glamorous horse doctor,” belched the man on the couch. He lit a Players, looked at it suspiciously, and then handed the packet around.
“It’s the best care you’re going to get, so treat her with respect. Otherwise, she might saw your leg off next time,” Manners said firmly, lighting Sybille’s cigarette. “May I pay your fee, madame? We are well supplied with currency.”
“This cigarette will more than repay me. Besides, I’ve known this dirty old man since he used to watch us coming out of school to run home to our lunch. There’s not much to buy, anyway. Now if you had some coupons for clothes, or some of that parachute silk…. My husband sometimes smoked these, before the war. We went to London for our honeymoon,” said Sybille, and held up the glowing cigarette to watch the way the smoke curled. “God, I’ve almost forgotten what it tasted like.”
“Buckingham Palace, Tower of London, Houses of Parliament,” chanted the drunk on the couch. “Not very romantic.”
“We’ve all forgotten a lot of things from peacetime,” Manners said. He wondered where her husband was now.
“Is your husband a vet as well, madame?” he asked.
“He was a vet. He was killed in 1940, somewhere near Calais with an artillery regiment which was wiped out holding the town to let the English escape from Dunkirk. Horse-drawn artillery, against panzers.”
“The Germans have horse-drawn artillery too,” he said quietly. “And nearly a hundred thousand Frenchman got out with us at Dunkirk.”
“I’m not blaming the English, monsieur. I blame the Germans, and that rotten government we had, and the whole foul, political mess of the prewar days. Communists, fascists, royalists, socialists, radicals-I spit on all of them.” She smoked her Players. “I think these things are very bad for the health. But not as bad as war.”
“Well, I blame Hitler,” said Manners.
“If not him, the Germans would have thrown up some other arsehole. They always do. Hitler, the Kaiser, Bismarck,” said Boridot. “We should have finished the job back in 1918. If we’d marched on to Berlin, Jacquot, and stayed there? That would have done it.”
“We were both glad to get home, and you know it,” said Jacquot. “I thought I’d had my share of German bullets, last time.”
“You’re just going to have to remember how to dodge them, Jacquot,” said Manners, relieved to have a name for the man. “I rely on the old soldiers like you to teach the young ones how to do it.” He put his empty glass on the table, thanked Boridot, and turned to go. Sybille rose too, and in automatic courtesy, he asked if he could escort her anywhere.
“You seem determined to get me arrested, monsieur,” she laughed, as he helped her don a thick jacket of black wool. “Yes, I’d be pleased if you rode with me. But if we see any Germans, you have to promise to jump over the hedge.”
“No bloody Germans round here,” called Jacquot as they left. “We killed the bastards.”
They rode in single file up the cart track, her bicycle even older than his, but well cared for, the chain oiled and no rust on the wheel rims. He rode behind her, looking at the neat ankles that disappeared into her boots, the well-shaped rump above the basket that was tied above the rear wheel, filled with the straw to protect the eggs Boridot had given her.
“I can’t give you any parachute silk,” he said as they reached the wider track and he could pedal along beside her. “It’s a firm rule. Security, you understand.” She snorted. “But I promise to buy you a set of the finest silk lingerie in Paris when this war is over.”
“Very well, monsieur, I will accept that as my fee for treating Jacquot and all the others I fear you will be sending me. You must buy them from Lanvin, if you please. And how many Frenchwomen have you promised such a gift?”
“Just you. I’m not sure I could afford the amount of silk that some of these farmers’ wives might need. A lot of them seem to take very large sizes.”
“That’s an insult to French womanhood,” she replied, and he couldn’t tell if she were joking. She spoke again. “I won’t ask where you are heading, but you’d better wait before we reach the road to le Bugue, and then follow me. There may be a Milice patrol. I presume you have papers-you had better tell me the name on them.”
“I think I should turn off before le Bugue, rather than ride through it,” he said. “The name on my papers is Alain Guyon, but I’d like you to know my real name-Manners, Jack Manners.”
“Jacques. But to be known as Alain,” she said. “Well, Jacques, if you don’t follow me you’d miss the chance of a perfect omelet, and I’d miss the chance of another of your cigarettes.” She grinned at him, and suddenly she did not look plain at all. “I can imagine the kind of food you boys make for yourselves. Come back and eat. Go through the town and past the church to the square where the men play boules. Just across the street you’ll see the sign for the vet. Use the surgery entrance. I’ll put up the ‘closed’ sign if there’s any sign of trouble.”
“Now you wait here until I’m out of sight,” she added. “And one more thing, Monsieur Jacques.”
“Yes,” he said, nervously, not sure of himself now that she had suddenly taken charge.
“You might want to hide your gun before you cycle into the town.”