Allies

by Alan Gratz

  Sam was so unnerved by the bombing he didn’t even give James a funny answer. He must have been asking himself the same thing.

  “I hope Henri and his grandmother weren’t hit,” Sam said quietly. James hoped so too.

  “Come on,” said James. “Let’s just get this nightmare over with.”

  They gathered their wits about them and set off to the north again. James glanced at the sky, wondering if and when their own allies would bomb them again, and he caught the others doing it too.

  About thirty minutes had passed when they ran into another fifteen Canadian paratroopers, led by Major MacLeod from C Company. MacLeod was a tall, thin Nova Scotian with a brown mustache that looked like a horsehair brush. He wasn’t from James’s company, but he was now the ranking officer in the group.

  “I was supposed to have a heavily armed force of more than a hundred men, with machine gunners, heavy mortars, Bangalore torpedoes, the lot,” MacLeod declared.

  He certainly didn’t have that now. James counted twenty men with nothing more than three machine guns, eight Bren guns, a few pistols, and one PIAT.

  “We’ll have to do,” said MacLeod. “We have a mission: Destroy the enemy radio station at Varaville, capture or destroy the enemy headquarters there, and blow the bridge over the Divette River.” He paused and looked around. “And that’s just what we’re going to do.”

  James shot a disbelieving look at Sam. Do all that with just twenty men? The major was nutters.

  “But, sir, we’re not with Charlie Company,” Sam said.

  “You boys from other companies are too far away from your objectives to make it in time,” MacLeod told them. “We’re near Varaville. With your help, we have just enough men to give it a go. Listen,” he told the whole group, “we don’t fulfill our objectives, and all those boys coming off the boats in a few hours are going to have more fight than they can handle. We’re here to do a job, and by God we’re going to do it.”

  And just like that, James and Sam were off to attack the Nazis at Varaville.

  From where James hid, he could see the German headquarters in Varaville. It was located inside a fancy château on the edge of town. The large house was white with tall windows and a steep slate-gray roof. Three smaller buildings of white-and-gray stone, miniature versions of the château, sat nestled up against its sides, like puppies sleeping around their mother. The house was at the far end of a long, paved driveway lined with trees. Much closer was a yellow-brick gatehouse that would have easily passed for a mansion back in Winnipeg.

  Major MacLeod signaled for James and Sam to go into the yellow gatehouse with two other soldiers to check it out. The place was silent as a grave, and when James and Sam came through the front door, Bren guns at the ready, they understood why. The gatehouse was being used as barracks, with every inch of space taken up by bunk beds. Every single one of the beds had recently been slept in but was now empty.

  “Somebody’s been sleeping in my bed, Papa Bear,” Sam said.

  “Ninety-six somebodies,” James said. There were eight rooms, and six double bunks to a room. And not one Goldilocks in the building.

  From a second-floor window, James and Sam could see the German defensive position. The Nazis were set up in a long trench on the other end of the lawn, near the house. The trench was reinforced with dirt and concrete, as was a large bunker that might have been a command post. Machine gun bays stood along the length of the trench. James could even see some of the Germans’ round gray helmets moving back and forth through a narrow slit in the front of the bunker. He huffed. Besides almost killing the Canadian paratroopers, the British bombing had evidently awakened the sleeping Germans and put them on the defensive. James and Sam shared a knowing look—a full-frontal assault on the Nazis now would be a suicide mission.

  Luckily, Major MacLeod seemed to agree.

  “Ninety-six empty beds means ninety-six enemy soldiers,” the major said when they told him their news. “That’s almost five times more men than we have. We’ll have to try to draw them out.”

  Major MacLeod arranged most of the soldiers as best he could behind a low wall and a shallow ditch near the gatehouse, facing the château. The small Canadian troop was now in a line parallel to the Germans, separated by the long, flat grass lawn.

  The major kept a small group that included James and Sam with him at the gatehouse.

  “All right. Let’s just hope they haven’t seen us yet,” the major said.

  POOM! The wooden gate that blocked the driveway exploded in a blizzard of splinters. No one was killed, but the explosion knocked everyone standing to the ground.

  “Good lord, they’ve got a heavy gun,” Major MacLeod said.

  And they’ve seen us, James added silently. That command post he’d seen—the one with the reinforced concrete bunker and the narrow slit in the front—that must be where the big gun lived.

  The Nazis in the trench began firing their rifles and machine guns, and the Canadians answered back with what they could from their hiding places. It was a full-on battle now.

  “Pass the word for the soldier with the PIAT,” the major said. “We’ll try to get a bead on the Germans’ big gun from the second floor of the gatehouse. You and you”—he nodded at James and Sam—“guard the downstairs doors.”

  Major MacLeod hurried upstairs with three other soldiers, including the corporal with the PIAT, while James and Sam took up defensive positions on either side of the first floor. Moments later James heard the distinctive shunk of the British anti-tank weapon being fired from a second-floor window, and he took a peek outside.

  The PIAT bomb landed with a BOOM, kicking up smoke and sod, but it fell too short to do any damage to the German gun or any of the Nazi soldiers in the trench. James cursed, but he knew the corporal with the PIAT would be saying much worse right now as he hurried to reload and try again.

  KRAKOOM! The second floor of the gatehouse exploded, buckling the ceiling above James. He ducked and staggered outside, where dust and debris were still settling. Broken glass and pieces of brick crunched under his boots. He looked up. The roof was still on the gatehouse, but the second floor was a smoking hole. The German gun had scored a direct hit on the building. But the same shell that destroyed the gate isn’t nearly powerful enough to do that, James thought. Then he realized: The shell must have hit the corporal’s extra PIAT rounds. That’s what had caused the huge explosion.

  The corporal—the major! James hurried back inside, but Sam met him coming out.

  Sam shook his head. “Don’t, James. They’re all dead.”

  Four men killed in a single blast. And with them had gone their only heavy gun.

  James put a hand to the wall of the gatehouse and said a silent prayer for the major and the other men. If Day, the practice jumps in England, the anti-aircraft fire over the Channel, parachuting into France, the British bombing—each of them had been real, and frightening, in their ways. But the way Major MacLeod and the others had been there one moment and then just—just obliterated the next, chilled James to the bone. The thought that his life might end instantly, explosively, in the fraction of a second, scared a stillness into him he knew would be with him the rest of his life.

  Sam put a hand on James’s shoulder, and James nodded. James would be all right. He wanted to be anywhere but here in France, anywhere but fighting this war, but there was no way out but forward. No time to not be all right.

  Together, James and Sam abandoned the gatehouse and joined the other paratroopers shooting from cover. A captain took over for the major, but there wasn’t much to do besides snipe at the heads of German soldiers who sniped at the Canadians. Even the German big gun became useless—it was too big to target individuals and too small to destroy the Canadian defensive positions. It was a stalemate.

  Sam turned his back to the German defenses and leaned against the low stone wall, out of sight from the snipers.

  “So I guess we just settle in until reinforcements come?” Sam
asked.

  “Yeah—but whose reinforcements, ours or theirs?” James asked. They both knew the likely answer to that—there were far more Germans in Normandy right now than Allied soldiers.

  “Hey, what’s happening, fellows?” someone asked, and James and Sam both jumped.

  Two Canadian paratroopers strolled out of the darkness, one with blond hair, the other with red hair. Both were privates. The blond soldier held a Bren gun by the barrel, carrying it backward over his shoulder. The redhead carried a two-inch mortar and at least six mortar bombs that James could see strapped to his web belt.

  “Take care of the Krauts already?” the blond soldier asked.

  James and Sam grabbed the men by their belts and dragged them forcefully to the ground just as bullets tore through the air where they had been standing. Over the smaller fire they heard the POOM of the German big gun, thrown in for good measure. The shell landed far down the road with a BOOM, taking out a tree.

  James caught his breath. If that big gun had hit the soldier with the mortar shells, the newcomers would have been vaporized—and James and Sam along with them.

  “No, we haven’t taken care of the Krauts yet,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, so I see,” said the blond private, readjusting his helmet. “We’re Bravo Company. We were totally lost, and then we heard the gunfire—that’s how we knew where you were. But when it stopped awhile back, we figured the fighting was over.”

  “Sounds like the Jerries have a 75-mm gun,” said the redhead.

  “We haven’t had anything big enough to take it out,” James said. He nodded toward the small metal tube the redhead carried. “Think you can hit it from here with your mortar?”

  The private took a peek over the wall and ducked back down just before a German bullet hit the top of the wall, kicking up the kind of mortar that held rock walls together. “Friendly,” the private said.

  “Yeah, they’re regular Betty Boops,” said James.

  The redheaded soldier shook his head. “A two-inch shell’s not gonna do any good against that bunker they’ve got protecting it. It’s just gonna tickle the top of it.”

  James understood. Mortars worked by lobbing bombs at high arcs toward their targets. Mortars struck from above—which didn’t help much if the bunker was covered over with thick concrete. The weakest part of a bunker was the slit in the front that the big gun fired out of.

  Which gave James an idea.

  “Okay, let me have that mortar and some bombs,” James said.

  The redheaded private looked confused. “Do you know how to aim a mortar?”

  “I don’t need to,” James said excitedly. He took the mortar and the bombs from the private. “Come on, Sam!”

  Sam didn’t ask where they were going. He followed along silently as James crawled away from the Canadian position, staying low in a shallow drainage ditch. The ditch took them to a line of trees on the far side of the château’s front yard, where James had a clear line of sight to the gun emplacements. Bullets hadn’t followed them, and rifles weren’t sniping at them now, so he hoped they hadn’t been seen.

  Without a word, James prepared the mortar, and Sam unpacked the shells. James watched his friend for a moment, suddenly aware that the shells in Sam’s hands were likely to do to some Germans what their big gun had done to Major MacLeod and the others. James hated the thought of anyone dying that way, but this was a war, and he had a job to do.

  Mortars were designed to be planted on the ground and then tilted and fired, but James had other plans. He found a small but sturdy-looking tree and held the mortar to it, aiming it almost horizontally at the slit in the German bunker.

  Sam smiled and nodded.

  To fire a mortar, you dropped a bomb into the tube, and gravity did the rest. The back end of the bomb would strike a pin at the bottom of the mortar’s barrel, triggering an explosive charge that launched the mortar back up the tube and toward its target. Without gravity to activate the bomb, Sam was going to have to do it himself.

  James held the mortar steady. Sam took the first of the bombs, slid it partway into the barrel of the mortar, and nodded once, twice—

  On the third nod, they both turned their heads away, and Sam shoved the missile hard down the barrel.

  POOM! The mortar shell fired almost instantaneously, and a second later the front of the big gun’s bunker exploded in a cloud of white dust.

  Yes! Success! James almost couldn’t believe it had worked. There was no time to rest on his laurels though. James waved at Sam to keep the shells coming, and he aimed for one of the machine-gun emplacements. POOM. POOM. POOM. POOM. They got off four more rounds, one for each of the machine guns and one more for the big gun, and then dove for the drainage ditch, expecting return fire.

  But nobody fired back.

  James heard a cheer go up from the direction of the yellow gatehouse, and he peeked out of the ditch to see a Nazi soldier waving a white flag from one of the bunkers.

  The Germans were surrendering.

  James stood up in wonder. He and Sam had done something that worked. Something that had saved more of his comrades from being killed. He felt a tingle of—what was that feeling? Triumph? The last time he’d felt that way was when he and the other students in Winnipeg had made Marvin Lennox back down. But this victory was so much greater than that one.

  James and Sam hurried to join their comrades as a captain accepted the Nazi surrender. There were only forty-three German soldiers uninjured enough to surrender, but they still outnumbered the Canadians almost two to one.

  When the German soldiers saw how few Canadians there were, and how many more of them there were, they fumed at one another. James didn’t have to understand German to know how angry they were to discover that they had surrendered to an inferior, less-well-armed force.

  “Exceptional work, gentlemen,” the Canadian captain told James and Sam. “If we get out of this alive, I’m recommending you both for a commendation.”

  Exceptional, James thought. The captain called me exceptional. He’s going to recommend me for a commendation!

  James was stunned. It was the first time in his life he could remember anybody ever calling him anything but average. Maybe the army was a place where he could be more than he was back home.

  But what did that say about him? That he was average and forgettable as a civilian, but as a soldier he was exceptional and commendable? Was that the person he wanted to be?

  James knew he should be happy. His gambit had worked. They had beaten the Nazis! Taken the château! But at what cost? And how did this help Canada? Why were they here?

  “We counted ninety-six beds,” the Canadian captain told the paratroopers. “Unless we managed to kill and injure fifty-one Nazis, there may still be Germans inside the château who haven’t surrendered.”

  He dispatched three teams of two to search the first and second floor of the château, as well as its basement. James and Sam were one of the teams. The captain assigned the first floor and the second floor to the other two teams.

  James and Sam were assigned the basement.

  I wish I was average and forgettable again, James groused to himself.

  James stood in the empty kitchen, covering Sam with his Bren gun. Sam flung open the door to the château’s basement and jumped back.

  Nothing. No shouts, no bullets, no grenades. Just a set of wooden stairs, disappearing down into darkness.

  Upstairs, James heard nervous scuffling, then a relieved cry of “All clear!” The first floor had been empty too. If there were any German soldiers in the house, they were in the basement.

  “What the hell am I doing here?” James asked for the million and fourth time.

  “You’re going down there first,” Sam said.

  “What? You go down there first!”

  Sam shook his head. “I’m the senior officer.”

  “We’re both lance corporals!” James protested.

  “I made corporal before you did.”

>   “By one week!”

  “So I order you to go down first because I’m one week your senior officer,” said Sam. “And also I’m afraid of the dark.”

  “That’s low, Sam. Real low.”

  James sighed. He’d hated going down into the basement of his own house since he was a boy. Still did, truth be told. The creaky stairs, the cobwebs, the dark shadows, the damp chill. Once, his younger brother had locked him in down there as a prank, and he’d sprained his wrist hammering on the door in his panic to be let out. The memory sent a shiver down his back, and he felt a gnawing pinch in his stomach.

  The only time he’d ever been that scared again was when Marvin Lennox and his gang had chased him through the streets of Winnipeg on If Day.

  And today, of course.

  But the other soldiers were waiting for the all clear. Chest heaving, James lifted his Bren gun again and inched toward the door. He peered down, trying to see, but it was too dark. A light switch had been wired to the wall just inside the door, and arm shaking, he slowly shifted his left hand from his gun to flip it.

  Nothing. There was no bulb, or no electricity, or both.

  James moved on to the landing at the top of the stairs, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He tried to tiptoe down the steps, back pressed to the wall on his right, but the treads were just as old and creaky as his basement stairs back in Winnipeg. They gave him away with every shift in his weight.

  Forget sneaking around, James thought. If there was a German waiting to shoot him down there, he couldn’t have telegraphed his arrival better if he’d marched down crashing cymbals together.

  “Is there anybody down there?” he called. “Geb auf!” he added, using what little German he remembered from their training to order whoever was down there to surrender.

  James was afraid his quaking legs would go out from under him if he didn’t move, and he rushed the rest of the way down the stairs. At the dirt floor he backed into a corner. Cobwebs grabbed at his neck underneath his helmet, making him shudder. The damp, earthy smell of every basement everywhere in the world washed over him, and he felt his old panic rise up within him.