The pause proved his undoing. A second Boche appeared at the hatchway, and this one had a machine gun. The young Frenchman was sprayed with bullets. The plunger flew out of his hand and skittered across the weathered planks.
The last of the Resistance fighters dove for it, but the German had the same idea, dropping the gun and leaping down onto the Frenchman. They wrestled for the detonator, a life-and-death struggle, each shouting in a language the other did not understand. The Resistance man was bigger and stronger, but the Boche was younger, and at the peak of his training. They rolled around on the floor, both men jockeying for advantage.
A roar followed by the screech of gears filled the stable. It signified that the tank commander had decided to flee whatever danger threatened his Tiger. The armored hulk trembled for a moment before the treads began to move forward.
On the floor, both men took in the horrifying sight of tons of machinery bearing down on them. Too late, they let go of each other.
They were not able to get out of the way in time.
Jacob’s lungs were on fire as he pounded through the orchard, his rifle held out in front of him, jerking wildly with each crazed step. He could see the outskirts of the town through the trees ahead of him, which meant that somehow, he had managed to crash through the German lines without encountering a single defender. Good luck—or maybe not. He could hear rifle and machine-gun fire behind him as Bravo Company battled the enemy he’d somehow evaded. At this point, the shot that brought him down would very likely come from one of his own people, or from the artillery barrage that was still dropping shells on the town.
Running past enemy lines didn’t seem like such a great idea anymore. But now that he was here, he had to find out what had happened to René and his mission. German shells were still falling on the road into town. Until that stopped, the American armor would never be able to advance into Sainte-Régine.
As he emerged from the cover of the trees, his training kicked back in and he flattened himself to the ground, surveying the surrounding buildings, searching for snipers. Nobody shot at him. Carefully he crawled to a wooden fence and got to his feet again, peering through a gap in the boards.
Spying a German uniform, he sighted along his rifle and prepared to fire. Then he realized that the enemy soldier was supervising a bucket brigade of citizens battling a house fire. He didn’t dare shoot without risking hitting one of them.
Where was the big gun? That was the real question. How could such a devastating weapon be so completely hidden in a French village half the size of Jacob’s hometown in Connecticut?
Calm down, High School, Beau would have said if he’d been there. Don’t go running off half-cocked. Think this out!
Struggling to calm his hammering heart, he surveyed what he could see of Sainte-Régine. The downtown consisted of streets of old cottages and, at the center, row houses around a cathedral and an open square. That was it. You’d have trouble hiding a Chevy roadster in this place, much less a devastating artillery cannon. And before you knew it, you were out of this one-horse town—his eyes settled on an ancient wooden structure that looked like an oversized barn.
As he stared at it, trying to figure out what it was, or what it might be hiding, the entire front wall disintegrated into toothpicks. There was the roar of a very large engine, and out of the cloud of dust rolled a gigantic German tank.
A Tiger! Jacob thought to himself in horror. Captain Marone never said anything about a Tiger tank in Sainte-Régine!
His eyes fixed on the huge machine’s 88-millimeter cannon and light dawned. No wonder nobody had been able to find the mystery artillery piece menacing the road. It wasn’t artillery at all.
He frowned. Even at a distance, he could see that there was some kind of interruption to the dark camouflage pattern of the tank’s hulk. He squinted. It looked as if the armored side had been slathered with mud—but how would that happen to a vehicle hidden inside a building?
He ran to the cover of a small shed and peered around the corner for a closer view. There was something familiar about the slate-gray color of the “mud.” Jacob had seen it before—formed into bricks and encased in protective wrap in his backpack. That wasn’t mud; it was RDX putty—the high explosive he had provided to René!
Jacob’s mind raced. So René’s Resistance cell had gone on the mission after all. They’d found the Tiger and realized that it was the gun they’d been looking for. They’d even molded the explosive to the body of the tank to blow it up. But why hadn’t they followed through?
Something had gone wrong. They must have been caught deploying the RDX, and wound up captured or killed before they could set it off. He sat back on his heels and tried to work out what this meant. It didn’t take Albert Einstein. Any way he twisted it around in his mind, the answer always came out the same: Mrs. Firestone’s little boy was now in charge of taking out that Tiger tank.
It was impossible. No lone soldier could destroy a tank, much less the most powerful one on earth. But this particular tank was already covered in high explosive. All Jacob had to do was find a way to set it off.
The RDX putty was detonated by a small plunger he’d given to René, but that could have been anywhere at this point. No matter how hard he racked his brain, he couldn’t recall any plan B from his training on how to ignite high explosives. He did remember something about a detonator providing a spark. Surely a bullet slamming into the armor of the tank would do the same thing.
With the stock of his rifle pressed against his shoulder, he scrambled out from the cover of the shed and ran across the hard-packed dirt terrain. About thirty meters from the Tiger, he dropped to one knee and opened fire. The first bullet ripped into the gray putty and ricocheted off the armor with a clang. He shot three more, all direct hits. They only served to knock chunks of explosive off the side of the tank.
And then, the big turret began to swing around in his direction. It moved so slowly that he was almost mesmerized watching it turn toward him. By the time he sprang into action, he was practically staring straight down the barrel.
Jacob was never sure exactly how he got out of the way—just that when the big gun fired, he wasn’t standing there anymore. Nothing was there except a giant, smoking crater in the dirt, and Jacob was flat on his face about ten meters away, his ears throbbing with pain at the noise of the blast.
Something was digging into his hip—more pain. He knew he had to get away. The turret was already moving in his new direction. He reached down to the sore spot and found what was digging into his flesh. It was a hand grenade.
Something clicked in his fevered mind. Rifle bullets weren’t producing the spark he needed, but an exploding grenade …
He leaped to his feet and pulled the pin with his teeth. Then came the hard part—counting out the seconds as the 88-millimeter cannon pivoted to reacquire him. At Fort Benning, the sergeants had told them to count to five before throwing. But this grenade had to go off in the air as close as possible to the RDX.
Four … five …
Throw it, High School! Beau was not there, but Jacob heard his voice as clear as if his friend had been standing at his shoulder.
Six … seven …
The barrel of the giant gun found him again and locked on.
Eight …
Jacob chucked the grenade, while at the same time hurling himself backward and to the side.
The grenade detonated just as it was coming down onto the side of the Tiger. Jacob heard it go off. Then there was an explosion that was much, much larger.
He felt a massive wave of heat pass over him and he remembered very little after that. The next thing he knew, the tank was completely engulfed in flames. There was no sign of life inside it.
He had no idea how long he’d been unconscious. In a daze, he picked himself up off the ground and looked around. Members of Bravo Company were coming out of the woods, leading groups of German prisoners. In the distance, he could see the road. The armored column was on the
move, approaching town.
“I did it,” he blurted aloud.
It wasn’t a boast or even a simple statement of pride. He said it in sheer amazement. Almost nothing had gone according to plan, but the basic strategy had worked. With the big gun silenced, the Americans had a clear path into Sainte-Régine. René’s beloved village was free.
René! Jacob picked up his rifle, slung it over his shoulder, and, half jogging, half limping, shambled to what was left of the barnlike structure that had been the Tiger’s hiding place. Upon closer inspection, he could see that it had once been a stable. Now, of course, it was fit only for the wrecking ball. An entire wall was missing and parts of it were burning—a sure sign of just how large the tank’s explosion must have been. Jacob was lucky he hadn’t blown himself up too—along with half the town.
A grisly discovery awaited him inside. There were five bodies on the floor of the stable—two German soldiers and three men in dark clothing who must have been Resistance fighters. Two of them—one from each side—appeared to have been crushed by the tank. Jacob swallowed hard. No matter how much he saw of war, he couldn’t seem to get used to it. Maybe that was a good thing.
The detonator plunger lay close by. That would have come in handy. No sign of René. Did that mean the Resistance leader had escaped the fate of his three comrades? Jacob had to find out.
Rejoining his unit never even occurred to him. He ran across the small town, ignoring the shouts from the stray members of the German garrison who were looking for an American to surrender to. As he ran past the vanguard of the armored column, crew members called out to him in concern.
“Hey, buddy, you need a ride?”
“We’ve got medics in the truck back there!”
For the first time, Jacob took stock of the state he was in. His uniform was filthy and tattered, smoldering in places, but too muddy to burn. His pants were torn at one hip, and he could feel warm blood trickling down his thigh. Something from the explosion had struck him—something small, since he wasn’t badly wounded. It didn’t hurt—or maybe the problem was that his entire body hurt, this one area no more than any other. But even if there was a German V-2 rocket lodged in there, it wasn’t going to keep Jacob from getting to the farmhouse. He wouldn’t let it. Reaching René was his one thought, his one purpose.
A few minutes later, he actually jogged past Captain Marone in a jeep, but his commanding officer failed to recognize him.
By the time he made it to the dirt lane that led through the orchards to the local farms, Jacob could already see the dense black plume coming from somewhere ahead. He had been in a daze ever since the explosion of the Tiger had knocked him out, but now reality returned in the form of a churning dread in the pit of his stomach. The smoke could have been caused by anything—a brush fire or burning trash. But he just knew.
The farmhouse was gone, burned to the ground. All that remained was a brick chimney where Madame’s kitchen had once stood. Jacob broke into a run and limped up to the still-burning ruin. René sat cross-legged on the ground, facing the wreckage but not quite seeing it, his disbelieving eyes focused on some point a hundred miles away.
“What happened?” Jacob managed, his voice raw.
René looked at him—looked right through him, really. “The Boches. This is what they do to us—to the Resistance.”
“But the children! Madame!”
The Frenchman indicated the smoldering rubble. “All gone. It was a risk we accepted willingly. Today I am not so willing. Four years our secret stayed safe. I should have known it would not last forever.”
Standing there, awash in this man’s grief, Jacob was assaulted by a murky vision from two nights before. A pale face in a German uniform coming upon him as he made his way back to Bravo Company from the final meeting with René. Jacob had been so grateful to have escaped the soldier, to have avoided a deadly shoot-out. Even as he’d run off into the orchard, he’d fully expected a bullet between his shoulder blades. He’d been so relieved that he’d immediately put the encounter out of his mind. Never had it occurred to him that the German might have been able to identify the farmhouse he’d been coming from. It seemed so obvious now that an enemy soldier’s visit would finger the house as Resistance.
It was like a lightning strike. He should have known. Somewhere in his brain, he must have known! Why had he ignored the obvious danger? He’d been happy just to survive. And in his joy, he had doomed Madame and the children and destroyed René.
Never taking his eyes off the wreckage of his home, René murmured, almost as an afterthought, “Sainte-Régine is free?”
“Free,” Jacob confirmed. “The German garrison surrendered.” But even as he was delivering this good news, tears were streaming down his cheeks. “René—it was—it was me.” Weeping openly, he told the story of his chance meeting with the drunken German soldier. “He let me go. But he must have seen the house I’d come from.”
Slowly, the Resistance leader got to his feet and turned to face Jacob.
“I’m sorry!” Jacob sobbed. “I’m so, so sorry!”
When René spoke, his tone was oddly formal, like a government official making a proclamation. “I thank you for helping to save my village. But I must not lay eyes on you again. Do you understand?”
Wordlessly, Jacob nodded. His eyes still blurred with tears, he turned and stumbled away. Not even when they’d lost Freddie and Leland and so many others had he felt such deep despair. That had been the fortunes of war, tragic yet unavoidable. Even expected.
But this had been his fault—his carelessness, his stupidity. René and his family had saved his life, nursed him back to health. And he had repaid them by bringing disaster down on their heads. And the worst part: There was nothing he could do to make it right.
As he stalked through the orchard, he cursed the day he’d enlisted in the army. He’d wanted to make a difference. Well, he’d certainly managed that. Madame would burn no more meals. The children would not grow up. And René would never be the same.
Wrapped up in the turmoil of his thoughts, he almost missed the sound of running feet. Suddenly alert, he reached for his rifle, but before he could pull it from his shoulder, a German uniform burst out of the underbrush. Acting on pure instinct, Jacob stuck out a leg. The enemy soldier tripped over it and tumbled to the ground. By the time he got to his knees, Jacob was standing over him, rifle pointed.
The rage Jacob experienced was something new. He’d known fear and adrenaline in battle, but this was sheer, unadulterated hatred. This was not the soldier who had killed René’s family, but he was one of them, and he would do. Just a moment before, Jacob had been lost in despair. Yet as his misery morphed into anger, he felt better, because now he had purpose—and the purpose was vengeance. This enemy was going to pay for Madame and the children—and for Freddie and Leland and all the others too.
He stared down the rifle barrel and saw—himself. Not Jacob Firestone, but pale blue eyes that reminded him very much of the teenage boy he faced in the mirror every day. In another life, they could have been twelfth graders together, swapping chemistry notes and talking about girls. He felt his finger loosening on the trigger.
No! he exhorted himself. You walked away from an enemy in this orchard once before and look what happened! You can’t let this one go!
But when Jacob sighted down at the boy, he beheld no menace, only terror. There had been so much death and suffering already. What could possibly be gained by killing this poor scared kid in the aftermath of a battle that was already over?
Jacob lowered his rifle. “Get out of here, High School. Beat it.”
And when the stunned boy scrambled up, gawked at him in disbelief, and ran off, Jacob felt reborn.
If the portier hadn’t opened the heavy brass doors of Au Toit Rouge, Trevor might have blasted right through them. That was how fast he was moving in an effort to put as much distance as possible between himself and his father and great-grandfather.
Once clear
of the building, he kept on sprinting, heedless of direction—a left turn at the café on the corner, a right turn at the bookstore, straight on past the old stone cathedral. The only destination that mattered was away.
Where could you go when everything you’d ever believed in was turned upside down? Certainly nowhere in Sainte-Régine, the place where it had all happened.
A baby stroller was thrust in front of Trevor. He nearly dislocated every joint in his body in an effort to stop before he flattened it. A young mother scolded him in angry French, and he apologized in halting English, sidestepping and moving off quickly.
Jacob Firestone—not a hero! Worse, practically a villain! A hero wannabe whose carelessness wiped out an entire family! Never in a million years could Trevor have imagined anything like this to be true. And yet he had heard it from G.G.’s own mouth.
“But, Grandpa,” Dad had pleaded with the old man back at the hotel, “that wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid! You couldn’t have been expected to know what was going to happen.”
G.G. was adamant. “I could have been expected to follow my training, and to remember the things I’d been seeing ever since I’d set foot in Europe. I could have been expected to have half the brains God gave geese. But instead I was an idiot. A lot of innocent people paid the price for it, and I wasn’t one of them. Tomorrow, I’m going to tell them to save their medal for someone who deserves it.”
Trevor shook his head to clear it, but it did nothing to stop the whirling of his mind. Had they honestly traveled to Fort Benning, London, and all across France for G.G. to get a medal he wasn’t even going to accept? Surely this hadn’t been his great-grandfather’s plan all along! It couldn’t have been. G.G. had been having a fantastic time on the trip—at least at first. But the closer they’d gotten to Sainte-Régine, the more the weight of all this had started to press down on the old man. On the other hand, Dad said that the threatening messages from La Vérité had started even before they’d left Connecticut. Dad hadn’t understood their full meaning, but G.G. should have.
War Stories Page 15