‘Not yet returned from Paris.’
‘I should be with him.’
‘He is expected later. May I ask, Captain, how long is your attachment here?’
‘I’m not sure. A few days. What is the time now?’
‘Noon. I detect your accent is Austrian.’
‘Yes, well, I am from the south.’
‘Thought so.’ The orderly smiled. ‘I too. Born in Salzburg.’
And with that he departed, leaving the door unlocked, Theo noted, thus confirming everything he could remember.
The night had been long and sleepless. Seven times he had shuttled back and forth across that debris-strewn square in Colombelles, endlessly relaying messages, demands and instructions like a runner in no man’s land. His first meeting with the Germans, having stepped from the post office into the glare of headlights, had been with an aggressive artillery captain who spent minutes scrutinizing his papers before frogmarching him, still clutching his white flag, into a disused school building set up as a command post. There he met his contact, Colonel von Luck, a battle-hardened Panzer commander who, like his opposite number Matheson, was co-ordinating matters, but from the German side. Field telephones, Luck explained, connected him to Rommel’s chief of staff Hans Speidel, who was waiting at Army Group B headquarters in La Roche-Guyon. Generalfeldmarschall Rommel, meanwhile, was at the end of a telephone in Paris, together with his superior Gerd von Rundstedt, chief of all forces in France. Luck would relay messages to Speidel who would then pass them to Rommel. The extreme sensitivity of the matter, he added, meant that communications had to be spoken in code, which would add time to the process. The first such message – that the ‘bridging’ materials had arrived and ‘assembly instructions’ were now awaited – duly went off shortly thereafter, then he and Luck sat down in a dusty schoolroom to wait.
‘Been in Normandy long?’ Luck enquired, like a stranger in a pub.
‘Since the invasion. You?’
‘Soon after.’ He poured cups of bitter black coffee. ‘Sent in to put a stop to it.’
‘… Although I was also here in nineteen forty.’
‘Me too! Junior officer in 7th Panzer!’
‘The Gespensterdivision.’
‘You know it?’
‘I… was in Saint-Valery-en-Caux. At the end.’
‘With all those thousands of Scotch boys! We sure kicked your arses that day!’
‘Yes, I suppose you did.’
‘And we’ll do so again.’ He produced a flask and tipped brandy into his coffee. ‘You’ll not break us, you know.’
‘Then why am I here?’
Luck’s eyes flickered, but he said no more. Thirty minutes later the first reply arrived from La Roche-Guyon and Theo was escorted back to the post office. Crossing the moonlit square once more, he handed the message to Matheson who promptly disappeared with it. Another hour passed; he spent it drinking tea in a bombed-out cobbler’s shop with Grant. An aerial bombardment continued on the other side of Caen, searchlights scoured the sky and flak flashes lit the night, but the private ceasefire with 21st Panzer held.
‘Your non-combat status…’ Grant asked him at one point. ‘You know, the no-shooting, no-killing, no-carrying-guns thing.’
‘Yes.’
‘How’s that going?’
‘It’s difficult.’
‘So I imagine.’
Eventually Matheson returned. ‘He’ll have to do better than that!’
‘Rommel?’
‘Of course Rommel!’ Matheson waved a paper. ‘He proposes arranging safe passage for the Allies through Normandy, or “opening the Caen door”, as he calls it, but that’s about all. Nothing about the surrender of Army Group B, nothing about German forces in the rest of France, nothing even about disarming the troops here. For all we know it could be a giant trap!’
‘Allow us through the door, then pounce on us from behind.’
‘Exactly, and Freddie de Guingand isn’t having that! Right, Trickey, here’s the reply, off you go and be smart about it.’
Gradually, through the long hours of night and repeated trips across the square, the terms were hammered out. Plodding back and forth from one camp to the other, Theo soon gleaned that Montgomery was being as wary as Rommel – and neither old foe was giving much away. The Allies were planning their Normandy breakout, but unknown to Rommel they needed more time to prepare; meanwhile, the Germans, weakened but dogged, were still inflicting great damage. Rommel’s offer to open the door, even in some limited form, could catapult them across France and save weeks of bloody campaigning. Similarly, via increasingly frank conversations with Luck, Theo learned that Rommel had the backing of many of his officers, but by no means all, with some wavering and many still ignorant of the plan. Thus, unknown to the Allies, he too needed time to brief and win them over. Nor, crucially, Luck confided, was Rommel certain of Rundstedt’s support.
‘That dithering old goat!’ he fumed. ‘He should get off the fence or resign!’
Luck’s tone was changing as the hours passed, Theo also noted, from cocky and disdainful to frustrated and morose.
‘Only Rommel can save us now,’ he murmured at one point.
‘I believe he’s trying to.’
Luck nodded. ‘I’ve been with him since the beginning, you know, ever since 7th Panzer in forty. And you know where they are now?’
‘No.’
‘Being torn to pieces on the Russian Front, poor bastards.’
‘Where were you after France?’
‘With 21st Panzer in Africa. Not this 21st, the original one. Finest formation in the Afrika Korps. And do you know what happened to it?’
Theo shook his head.
‘Decimated. Fed to the wolves during the final retreat to Tunisia, needlessly and pointlessly, all on the whim of that lunatic in Berlin.’
‘I was in Tunisia. We fought against 10th Panzer.’
‘10th! And you know what happened to them at the end!’
‘No, we’d been withdrawn by then.’
‘Wiped out. Driven into the sea at Tunis, when they could have been saved, should have been saved and brought home to fight again. But Hitler wouldn’t have it and they went down, all killed or captured. And then he erased them from history, banning any mention of their name, because they had shamed him.’
Back at the cobbler’s shop the mood was similarly sombre.
‘We need this,’ Grant muttered as the latest message went off with Matheson.
‘This?’
‘Rommel’s plan. Nobody’s admitting it but we need it. Everything’s going to pot: the breakout, the advance across France, getting to Germany before the Russians – and that’s crucial! There’s infighting at the top, worse now that Patton’s back on the scene. Churchill wants to sack Monty, Bradley and Dempsey don’t get on, everyone hates Tedder and apparently Roosevelt’s thinking of replacing Eisenhower as supreme commander. The wheels are falling off the wagon, Theo, yet this scheme of Rommel’s could get everything moving again. We could roll up France in a matter of days, follow through into the Low Countries, and be in Berlin before Christmas. If only it can be made to work.’
And by dawn it appeared that it might, subject to certain conditions. Trudging wearily across the square, Theo delivered the final message to Luck. It agreed that Rommel had four days to arrange a cessation of all hostilities in France. No ground would be given during that time, the fighting would go on, and men would die, but the main Allied attack – beginning with the biggest air bombardment in history – was on hold for that period. Without specifying it, this four-day hiatus suited everyone, allowing the Allies to finish their preparations, and Rommel to consolidate support from his commanders in the field – and the wavering Rundstedt. Then, the agreement went on, once the ceasefire was in place, discussions about the future of Germany itself might begin, although their content was left undefined.
And as a final gesture of trust and good faith, to provide advice and clarific
ation as needed, and as an objective observer, the liaison officer Trickey was to remain at Field Marshal Rommel’s disposal, and under his protection, until the ceasefire was delivered.
‘To make sure he doesn’t try any tricks,’ Matheson said.
‘To ensure the Allies keep their damned word,’ Luck said.
‘To get you a step nearer Paris,’ Grant said.
And as an orange sun rose above the smoking skyline, and he was driven away in the waiting staff car, the guns and mortars around Colombelles began shooting again.
*
‘You find yourself in a curious situation, Captain.’ Major Brandt smiled. Dark-haired, late thirties with an Iron Cross at his throat, General Staff collar patches, and the palm tree insignia of the Afrika Korps on his shoulder, he had introduced himself in clear English but then reverted to German. ‘I trust the uniform fits?’
Theo tugged at the tunic, which was too small and smelled of carbolic. Equivalent in rank to his British uniform – now presumably locked in a cupboard somewhere – it too had green and silver Staff collar patches, but no other identifying emblems or insignia. Catching sight of himself in the bedroom mirror had been a chilling experience. ‘A little tight.’
‘Allied rations are more plentiful than ours. Anyway, it won’t be for long.’
Four days, the first one already half gone. ‘Where is the Generalfeldmarschall?’
‘Carentan. Visiting 17th SS Panzer Grenadiers. He hopes to return tonight.’
‘Hopes?’
‘You understand he has little time to achieve what he must.’
‘Yes. But I’m supposed to be observing…’
‘You will. In the meantime, he requests that I escort you instead.’
‘Escort me where?’
Brandt picked up his cap. ‘You’ll see.’
They set off, Brandt driving an open Jeep-like Kübelwagen laden with boxes and crates. The chateau at La Roche-Guyon lay on the Seine thirty miles northwest of Paris and over fifty inside German lines, and for an hour they drove west through pleasant countryside and a succession of small towns and villages showing little evidence of conflict. As they drew deeper into Normandy, however, Brandt became more watchful, repeatedly craning his neck around, and upwards to the sky. At one point he pulled in behind a barn as a flight of American fighters sped by a mile away. The detritus of war was more visible too, with baggage, discarded equipment and broken-down vehicles littering the verges, and columns of men and machines clogging the roads. At Lisieux he took the main street into town and drew up outside a bomb-scarred hotel. Retrieving the boxes, he piled their arms high and strode up the steps.
‘What…?’
‘Deliveries. Come on.’
It was a dressing station, hastily converted from the hotel and packed to the rafters with casualties. The smell hit him first, rank and nauseating in the July heat, an eye-smarting mix of disinfectant, putrefaction and sewage. Hefting his boxes, Theo followed Brandt up the steps and into a once-elegant foyer now crammed with injured men. Lying on stretchers, tables and chairs or simply head to toe on the stone floor like fish in a tin, many were bleeding from open wounds, some unconscious and one or two appeared dead. Sighs of pain, punctuated by cries of agony and delirious shouts echoed around the hall; orderlies worked among the wounded, tending and dressing as best they could, but from their expressions he could see they were overwhelmed. And even as he stared, stretcher-bearers barged him aside to carry in more.
‘This way.’ Brandt set off along a corridor. Picking his way past the casualties, Theo glanced into a room serving as operating theatre. In it a surgeon in a blood-soaked gown was sawing at a young victim’s leg, while orderlies held him down. He was awake, Theo saw, his eyes delirious with terror.
‘Don’t they have ether?’
‘Run out,’ Brandt replied over his shoulder. ‘We’re trying to lay on hospital trains to get the boys home, and ship in extra supplies, but what with shortages – the Russian Front gets priority, you know – and the RAF attacks on the railways, not to mention the French Resistance blowing the lines, trains are hard to come by.’
Pushing through swing doors, they reached offices and storerooms at the rear of the hotel. ‘In here.’
‘Major!’ A medical officer in a leather apron was sitting at a desk. ‘Thank God. What have you got?’
‘Some morphia, dressings, anaesthetics. Antiseptics, too, I think.’
‘Wonderful. Any penicillin?’
‘Sorry, impossible to get right now.’
‘Never mind, any little helps. Thank you.’
‘Thank the Generalfeldmarschall and his family. And he apologizes there couldn’t be more.’
‘No apology necessary, and please thank him when you see him.’
‘I will. Is there anything else?’
‘Well… Some blood perhaps. We’re desperately short.’
‘Of course. Captain Ladurner?’
‘I… Pardon?’
‘We shall give blood. What is your type?’
‘Oh, er, type O, negative… that is, I think.’
‘Excellent!’ The doctor rubbed his hands. ‘A universal donor. This way please.’
Thirty minutes later, arms bandaged, they were outside in the Jeep once more.
‘The medical supplies,’ Theo asked a little giddily. ‘Rommel arranges them?’
‘He buys them. Out of his own pocket. His wife then pays to ship them here.’
Grinding gears, he let out the clutch and sped off westward again, into the lowering sun. Once more he stuck to back roads and lanes, driving fast yet with an eye always on the sky. Soon they were entering the rearmost positions of the front line. Brandt stopped for directions at a crossroads; while waiting Theo saw machine-gun emplacements, camouflaged artillery, batteries of anti-aircraft guns, tanks, stores dumps, tents, vehicles, and men, everywhere, hurrying, resting, shouting, laughing, sitting at the roadside eating, or slumped asleep on the ground. None paid him, their sworn enemy, the slightest heed. But for the colour of the battledress, he reflected, it could be any army in the world. Brandt returned and they set off forwards again, passing a ruined village of dust and rubble and a field of bloated cattle corpses. A few refugees too, forlornly dragging their shattered lives away in a cart. They entered woodland, dark and pungent, the Jeep’s engine echoing raucously, then at the end of an arched avenue they broke into open sunlight, rounded a bend and skidded to a stop.
An armoured column was blocking the road: two tanks, two half-tracks and two troop carriers. For a moment Theo thought it was parked, simply waiting to move off, then peering past the rearmost vehicle he glimpsed flames, and coils of black smoke, and the twisted bodies lying, and he knew what had happened. He’d seen it with the Sherwood Foresters four years previously, and countless times since. The terrifying suddenness of air attack, the noise and the speed of it, of running in panic as the attackers dived, cowering in ditches while the bombs shrieked and the guns stuttered. And the deathly stillness of the aftermath. Brandt shut off the motor and they dismounted; the lane was now silent but for the crackle of flames. Picking their way along the column, he saw not a single vehicle had escaped the onslaught; several were burning, one half-track lay tossed on its side, and bodies were strewn everywhere: in the road, in the verges, piled in the vehicles, many of them grotesquely mutilated. One was even hanging overhead, suspended in a tree like a scarecrow, his feet unaccountably bare, one arm waving, while another man, blackened by fire, slumped from his tank as though struggling from the flames. Further on they found a gathering of survivors, six or seven infantrymen clustered together like sheep, their eyes staring in shock, while another youth, his shattered arm hanging at his side, walked in dazed circles.
‘Private, come.’ Brandt steered the youth to the verge. ‘Sit here. You others, take care of him. Are there any more?’
Heads shook.
‘Make your way back.’ He pointed. ‘There’s an aid post in about a mile. Keep moving,
help each other.’
‘Wait.’ Fumbling at a pocket, Theo produced Grant’s handkerchief and tied it around the youth’s shoulder. ‘Keep this tight, but loosen it every ten minutes or so.’
They watched them go, shuffling away like old men, then reboarded the Jeep, crawled slowly through the column and drove on. They passed more walking wounded coming the other way, then after another mile came to a copse of trees and pulled into a tented clearing. Once it had been a command post, but now there was no command in evidence: the clearing silent, the tents empty, a lone radio operator sitting at a lifeless console, a row of blanketed bodies to one side, and a few living ones standing aimlessly about like passengers on a railway platform.
‘Who are you?’ Brandt asked.
‘39th Pioneer Reserves.’
‘Where’s Brigade?’
‘We don’t know. They pulled out.’
‘Battalion?’
‘That way.’ A gesture through the trees.
‘Christ.’ Brandt drew his Luger and set off.
Theo followed. ‘What is this?’
‘The River Dives. 346th Infantry Division. Or was. Hurry, we’re late.’
‘The Dives? But…’
‘Come on, stay low.’
Crouching, they hurried on westward into the trees. As the wood thinned they heard distant rifle fire and Brandt motioned for Theo to stay back, but something drew him on, something vaguely familiar in memory. They reached the edge of the copse and found a young officer leaning against a tree. He was holding binoculars in one hand, while his other hung in a sling. Theo followed his gaze, shielding his own eyes against the setting sun. Below the copse, a grassy meadow sloped down to a winding river, beyond which stood a small town. The grass was pale and golden in the evening light, but pockmarked with shell craters and dark stains where bodies lay. A single burned-out tank smouldered near a small bridge spanning the river. The same bridge, he then realized, that he’d last seen, and attacked, from the opposite side, with Jock Pearson and the men of 8 Para more than a month earlier.
‘That’s Troarn,’ he said incredulously.
‘Indeed,’ Brandt replied. ‘Taken by British Fallschirmjäger some time ago.’
The Bridge Page 16