by Alan Gratz
“Damn it, they’re running away down the alleys,” someone said, clear as day.
Dee frowned. Who was talking? And where were they? Dee couldn’t see any other boots on the street. And there was something strange about the words themselves.
Dee realized what it was with a start. He was so surprised he banged his head against armored panzer above him.
The person was speaking German. Dee could hear the Nazi soldiers in the tank!
“We have to go after them,” another Nazi soldier said.
“Well, I can’t go after them. That pig dog blew off my tread because you couldn’t hit him with the machine gun!”
“Maybe if you knew how to steer—”
“Be quiet,” a stern voice told them. “Radio the lieutenant. Tell him to set the church on fire and retreat. We’ll regroup with the 21st Panzer Division near Bayeux.”
“Yes, Captain,” a soldier said. The other soldiers in the tank were quiet as the radio man relayed the orders.
Dee blinked. Set the church on fire? Why would they want to do that? he wondered. Just to cover their retreat? The American army wouldn’t stop to put out the fire. Not when they had the Germans on the run.
Dee wormed his way around to look at the church. He was much closer to it than when he’d first looked at it from down the street, and though it was getting on toward nightfall, he could see that the windows were boarded up and the door barred. What was inside the church that the Nazis wanted to burn before they ran away? What were they trying to hide?
“Lieutenant Weber acknowledges, Captain,” the radio man inside the tank said. “They’re setting the church on fire now.”
There was a whoosh as an incendiary device ignited outside the church, and quickly the whole base of the building was engulfed in flames. The Nazis must have doused the outside of it with gas or kerosene to make it burn so fast.
“Well, at least we’ll have our revenge on these Frogs for blowing up the supply depot last month,” said one of the men inside the tank.
Frogs? Dee knew what that meant. That was an insulting word other countries used to describe the French. Revenge against what French people?
Dee felt the air go out of him as he understood. The French people from the village. All the empty houses, the meals left uneaten. The Nazis had dragged them from their homes and boarded them up in the church, and now they were setting fire to it.
Orange flames climbed the church, and black smoke poured out from the cracks in the windows.
Dee had to get out from under the tank. He had to let the others know. He had to get those people out of that building before everyone inside was burned alive!
Dee wiggled to the front of the tank. He had just gotten to his knees and was ready to crawl out and run for the nearest alley when—tink-tink-tink—an American grenade came rattling across the cobblestones toward the tank and rolled to a stop right beside him.
Dee dropped to the ground and turned away from the grenade, curling himself into a ball—there was no time to do anything else.
Fwoosh!
Fwoosh? Dee had been braced for a bang, not a fwoosh. White smoke suddenly surrounded him. He coughed and choked, and his eyes watered. He was in pain, but he was relieved too—it wasn’t a frag grenade, it was a smoke grenade!
Hands grabbed him and dragged him away from the tank. Over the bumpy cobblestones, across the rough concrete of the sidewalk, and finally to a stop behind the corner of a building, out of sight of the tank’s turret. Dee hacked and spat, but through his blurry eyes he could see Sid’s big face, beaming down at him.
“Gotcha!” Sid said.
Dee put his hands on Sid’s arms and nodded his thanks, still unable to talk.
“When you’re all right, we’ll see if we can’t get inside that tank, kill us some Germans at last!” Sid said.
Dee shook his head. He tried to talk but could only cough. Finally, he was able to croak out words.
“No. Sid—we have to get to that—church. There are—people inside.”
Sid looked over his shoulder in horror. “What? That place is lit up like a furnace.”
“It’s—the villagers. That’s where they went. They’re boarded up—inside.”
“That’s nuts! How do you know?” asked Sid.
Dee’s nose and throat still burned, but the tears had stopped. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
“I heard—I heard the German soldiers in the tank,” Dee said. “When I was underneath.”
“They were speaking English?” Sid said.
“No,” Dee said. He paused. There was no time to be shy about it, and no time to explain. “I understand German,” Dee said. “I’m German, Sid. I was born in Germany.”
Sid pulled back from Dee and frowned.
“You’re—you’re a Kraut?” Sid said. The look of confusion on his face changed to one of disgust. “What are you—?”
Dee pulled himself to his feet. “Sid, we have to get those people out of that church.”
They couldn’t go back out into the street—the panzer was still there, and some of the German snipers had stayed behind to cover the others’ retreat. Dee jogged around the back side of the building instead, coming at the church from a side street. He looked back, expecting Sid to be with him, but he hadn’t followed. Dee’s heart sank. He knew Sid wouldn’t understand. That’s why he’d never told him anything. Dee knew how Sid felt about the Germans, and he hadn’t wanted this to come between them. But there hadn’t been any other way to explain everything to him in time.
Dee ran to one of the tall windows on the side of the church. Flames curled up the side of the building, and the heat made Dee flinch. Inside, he could hear screams. People were still alive!
Dee looked around for something to hit the boards with, but there was nothing. He kicked at them instead. Fire licked at his trousers and shoes, and heat scorched his face. He kicked harder. The boards wobbled but didn’t break. Inside, the yelling got louder. The villagers had heard him pounding on the boards, and they were hitting them back, trying to help break through.
“Dee!” Sid cried, his voice full of anger and hate.
Dee turned.
Sid stood a few steps behind him, his rifle aimed right at Dee’s head.
Dee threw up his hands. “Sid, wait—I can explain!”
Pakow!
Dee flinched, but the bullet didn’t hit him. He turned. Sid had shot the boards near the top of the window. Sid held his aim for a moment longer, never once looking at Dee. Dee ducked out of the way, realizing Sid was giving the villagers inside time to get away from the window. Seconds later he fired again, and again, and again. With each bullet the wood shattered and chipped, weakening the boards. After Sid expended a full clip into the barricade, Dee stepped back in and kicked at the boards.
Crack!
One of the boards broke! Dee kicked again and again, smashing through the wood where Sid’s bullets had loosened things up. Someone started bashing the boards from the inside too, and soon Dee could see into the sanctuary.
It was an inferno. Pews burned, and flaming timbers fell from the ceiling. Huddled in the few places that weren’t ablaze were groups of women and wailing children. There weren’t any men, Dee realized. He didn’t want to think what the Nazis had done with the village’s men.
Pakow!
Bits of rock kicked off the stonework around the window, and Dee flinched again, thinking Sid had shot at him. But it wasn’t Sid. A German sniper up in a second-story window somewhere in the village had spotted them and was trying to stop them from getting the prisoners out of the church. Without a word, Sid slapped a new clip in his rifle and returned fire, covering Dee.
Dee kicked and pulled at what was left of the boards. The hot, charred wood scorched his hands, but he wasn’t going to stop. At last he made room for the first child to be handed out, and he took a little girl from her mother and set her on the ground outside. Another bullet pinged off the wall of the church, and Sid shifted
his aim to fire back.
“Behind the café!” Dee told the girl, pointing the way to cover, and off she ran.
Dee lifted more children across the sill, then he helped pull a woman through, and she stayed with him to help people out, doubling his speed. Another woman came through and went to watch the children who had already been rescued. Dee and his helper pulled more and more children through the flames as Sid’s rifle blazed.
Pa-KOOM. They all ducked, even Sid, as an explosion boomed from out in the street. The panzer had been hit with another explosive from behind, where its armor was weakest, and one of the German soldiers inside was waving a white flag. The sniper bullets stopped too, and Sid turned to help pull women from the fire. More soldiers joined them now that the fighting was done, and they pulled the remaining women through the window as the flaming roof came crashing down inside.
They had saved every last one of the women and children trapped in the church.
“Sid—we did it!” Dee said. “We got them all out!”
Sid heard him, but he didn’t turn around. He wouldn’t look at him.
Dee sagged. Sid had been his best friend in the army. His best friend ever. But Sid hated Germans, and Dee understood why. It couldn’t have helped that he’d lied to Sid all this time. Dee wished now he’d never told Sid the truth, but the damage was done.
The remaining GIs gathered in the small town square, between the burning church and the now-burning panzer tank. With them, at gunpoint, were the German prisoners they had taken from the tank. The sun was finally down now, and the only light was the hellish orange glow of the destruction both sides had wrought.
The sergeant who’d put together the satchel charge was there, and he clapped Dee on the shoulder. “Good work stopping that tank and rescuing those women and children,” he said. “The rest of the Germans retreated,” he told them all. “We need to press on after them, toward Bayeux. We’ll get one of the locals to give us directions. In the meantime, I need one soldier to stay behind to watch the prisoners until more GIs come through off the beaches.”
“I’ll guard them,” Sid volunteered.
“I’ll stay with you,” said Dee.
“He said he only needed one soldier to watch them,” Sid said. He was talking to Dee, but he still wouldn’t look at him.
Dee nodded sadly. So this was it. This was where he and Sid parted ways, never to see each other again. Driven apart by who Dee was, and where he’d been born.
Dee reached out for Sid to say goodbye but stopped short. Sid had made it clear he didn’t want to think about Dee ever again. The other soldiers moved off down the street, and Dee left Sid with the prisoners and went to collect another discarded rifle.
“You like setting churches on fire with women and children inside, do you?” Dee heard Sid bark at the German prisoners. “Same way you like rounding up Jews and sending them to concentration camps?” They couldn’t understand his words, of course, but they understood his anger well enough. The Germans watched Sid warily and kept their hands up.
Sid slapped a fresh cartridge into his rifle.
“Why don’t you all just line up against that wall over there,” Sid told them. He waved his rifle toward the alley, and fear dawned on the Germans’ faces as they comprehended what Sid meant.
Dee understood too. When the rest of the Americans were gone, Sid was going to line the Nazis up and shoot them.
“Sid, don’t,” Dee said.
“Go. Go!” Sid ordered the Nazis, ignoring Dee.
“Sid, you can’t kill them in cold blood. It’s murder.”
Sid swung around, his face screwed up in anger. He held his rifle waist-high, aimed now at Dee.
“Oh, defending your countrymen, are you?” Sid said. “Now we see your true colors.”
“They’re not my countrymen anymore,” Dee told him. He wanted to explain, to tell Sid about his uncle Otto, about the Night and Fog, how they had come to the United States. Why he had joined the army. But not like this. Not here, not now, in the middle of a French village in Normandy between a burning church and a burning tank. Not with five Nazi soldiers for an audience.
“I don’t care about these men,” Dee said. “I wish they were dead for what they did. But they’re prisoners now, Sid, not soldiers. You can’t just execute them.”
One of the Nazi soldiers had been watching their back and forth, and understood that Dee was arguing in their favor. “Tell him not to shoot us!” the Nazi said in German. There was no way he could know that Dee could understand him, but he was desperate. “Tell him we were just taking orders!” the Nazi begged.
All the pent-up fury of surviving Omaha and getting shot at and losing Sid erupted out of Dee, and he turned on the Nazi with such a roar that the prisoners stepped back, even though Dee was half a head shorter than any of them.
“You don’t deserve his mercy!” Dee cried. “Just following orders? What kind of person follows orders to kill innocent women and children? What kind of person does anything that madman Hitler tells you to do?”
Chik-chik.
The sound made Dee turn. Sid had cocked his rifle and was aiming it right at him. Dee slumped. Sid had just heard him yell at the Nazis in German. It didn’t matter what he’d said—just hearing the German language come out of Dee’s mouth like a native speaker was enough to ruin whatever chance Dee had to salvage their friendship.
Dee raised his hands in surrender.
“Don’t shoot them, Sid. Then you’ll be just as bad as they are.”
Sid looked Dee straight in the eyes. “Get out of here, Dee,” he said, his voice cold. “Get out of here, or I’ll shoot you too.”
Dee held Sid’s gaze for a long moment, hoping his friend would see reason. But there was nothing in Sid’s eyes but fury.
Dee turned around and walked away.
He was on his own now. It was “Dee-Day” after all. His day, and his alone. And all by himself he would march on to Bayeux, and then Paris, and then on to Berlin, the city of his birth.
Halfway through a field outside of town, Dee heard rifle shots behind him. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Dee took a deep breath and kept moving.
He didn’t need anyone else with him to defeat Hitler. He had a rifle, and ammunition, and no other purpose in life than this. He would march on and do what he had joined the army to do in the first place: give his life to stop the Nazis.
Thwack.
A bullet caught Dee square in the shoulder, knocking him back. He dropped his rifle as he fell, and his helmet went flying. Darkness engulfed him, and he was unconscious before he hit the ground.
Darkness engulfed Monique Marchand inside the small beach hut. She didn’t have a watch, but she figured it must be well after eight o’clock at night.
It had also, more importantly, been at least half an hour since Monique heard the last gunshot or explosion on this part of the beach.
Monique’s stomach growled, and she shivered as the cool night air cut through the gaps in the wooden shack. She had been inside this hut since eight o’clock this morning—twelve hours! Her mother was used to her being out and about all day, riding her bicycle along the shore or swimming, and she wouldn’t miss her. Not until curfew. But from the sounds of things outside, there might not be a German curfew anymore.
Or any Germans, for that matter.
But Monique wouldn’t know until she left the beach hut. Or at least peeked outside.
Whatever had happened here today, Monique shouldn’t have been there. Some places in the sea and on the beach were free of mines, and you could still go swimming. Monique had done just that yesterday, but she had accidentally left her bathing suit in the hut here on the beach after she’d changed, and she had biked back to get it this morning.
And arrived at the exact same moment the war had come to Normandy, France.
She’d been hiding here ever since, curled up in the sand at the bottom of the hut, her arms over her head, singing loud enough to drown
out the explosions.
Almost loud enough.
Monique sang when she got nervous. She caught herself now singing Rina Ketty’s “J’attrendai.” She smiled at that. J’attrendai meant “I Will Wait.” That could have been her theme song. Hiding curled up at the bottom of a beach hut while things happened outside was the story of her life in a nutshell. She was always afraid to jump in, to make a splash. Take risks. Even now, she wanted to wait. Wanted to hide out in this hut forever—or at least until the sound of engines and shouting soldiers was gone. But life was happening out there. Happening without her. If she didn’t leave now, she never would.
Her stomach in a knot, Monique stood up, opened the door a few centimeters, and peeked outside.
It was dark, but her eyes had long since adjusted to the night. She usually knew this stretch of beach like the back of her hand—she had lived every day of her thirteen years in the little village right up the road, after all—but the once-familiar landscape now looked like nothing she’d ever seen before.
The water, just beyond the shore, was filled with lights like stars. But not stars. They were the lights from ships. Dozens of them. Hundreds. As far as she could see. Smaller boats that rode up onto the sand, delivering trucks and tanks and men who carried their own lights, and larger ships, farther off, that roamed the sea like dark leviathans.
The invasion. Monique knew that’s what this must be—the much-expected, oft-discussed Allied invasion of France. “I Will Wait” was so popular because that’s all any of them had been doing since the Nazis conquered France in 1940. Waiting for someone to come and save them. And now they had finally done it! But here? In her backyard? Monique had never expected that! The Germans had built their defenses up and down the Atlantic—the “Iron Coast,” they called it on the radio—from the south of France all the way up to Denmark. Forts and bunkers for thousands and thousands of miles. And the Allies had picked her little part of Normandy to invade?