Liberation

  “Luc was here,” she said. “He told the Gestapo where you are. What else would they want to know? You have four, five hours at most, Gaspard.” Nancy spoke clearly and firmly. “Böhm will call in an airstrike on your position and follow up with ground troops. They are coming now. You can’t wait. If you had properly prepared escape routes—”

  “I said NO!” Gaspard slammed his heavy hands onto his knees with a solid thwack. “I did not lead these men into the mountains to run from the Nazis at every alarm. And I have known Luc for ten years. He would never betray us. Never. We are as safe here today as we were yesterday.”

  Nancy balled her fists. “You didn’t see it! You didn’t see what they did to her! He would have said anything to spare her a second more suffering—so would I. They cut her belly open.”

  Gaspard stood up. Now they were both on their feet, eyeball to eyeball.

  “Then he would have lied!” Gaspard shouted in her face. “The Boche will waste their bombs and men on some ruin miles from here.”

  “You don’t know that! Böhm has broken dozens of men.”

  He sliced through the air with his hand. “Bullshit. I’m not giving up this place, this camp, because you think Luc might have given away its location, Madame.”

  She grabbed his arm and tried to control her voice. “What would it cost you? You could spread your men further out in the hills. Leave here for two, three days and if it turns out Luc managed to give them a false location or none at all, you can come back.”

  He gave her a look of complete contempt. “I do not understand why Fournier’s men listen to you, little girl. How am I supposed to lead my fighters if I keep telling them to run and hide every time there is a rumor the Germans might be coming? Are we men or rabbits? We are here to fight.”

  The urge to scream in his face was almost overwhelming. “When the time is right! When the Allies land in France we’ll need every man to harry the Germans behind their lines. Now we need to arm, prepare, train and survive until we are needed.”

  That was a mistake.

  “I am not the pawn of a bunch of British imperialists in London! I say how I will fight for my country, not them!” The men around him were nodding in agreement. “You will not turn me into a good little English soldier with a handful of bullets and a slab of chocolate. Now piss off back to your little band of rabbits in the hills.”

  He walked away.

  “Luc told them, Gaspard!” she yelled after him. “They are coming! For God’s sake, do something!”

  He kept walking.

  36

  The second Nancy got back to camp, she dragged Fournier, Tardivat, Mateo and Denden to the bus and told them the whole story.

  “Screw him,” Fournier said, lighting another cigarette. “If he won’t listen, then let the Boche have him.”

  Denden shook his head. “If it was just Gaspard, I’d say, go for it. Let this Major Böhm chew him up for breakfast. But he has hundreds of men spread around those hills. We can’t let Böhm polish them off for lunch.”

  Fournier sniffed, then leaned over the map spread between them. “So you want us to do something? What?”

  Nancy pointed out the routes up to Mont Mouchet. Strange to think these places were just lines on a map a few weeks ago. Now she could see every road, the villagers in every house, recite the name of every friendly peasant, every suspected collaborator.

  “We can’t risk getting destroyed ourselves. The Germans will have air support so we are going to stay hidden from the bombers and Henschel’s, but the ground troops? We can do something about that. There are no good roads leading to the summit from the east, so I reckon the Germans will send in their men from Pinols, Clavières and Paulhac then try and complete the encirclement of Mont Mouchet from there. Those are the troops we can slow down. Give Gaspard’s men a chance to hold them off till nightfall and then disappear off the mountain into the woods or through Auvers before the Germans can fully close the trap.”

  Fournier tapped the map on the road north of Mont Mouchet. “That road I know well. A few booby traps, I think.”

  “Good,” Nancy said. Delaying tactics rather than full-pitch battles—Fournier was thinking like a guerrilla at last.

  “I’ll need to take the gazogène to make it in time,” Fournier added.

  They only had three of the chugging charcoal-burning trucks, but he was right. She hesitated. Made a decision.

  “OK. Take it. But hide it well and come back on foot. The roads will be crawling with troops for the next week.”

  She held his gaze until he nodded, then she turned to Mateo.

  “We’ll take the road from Clavières. Then we’ll need guides in groups of three along these paths toward Le Besset to take Gaspard’s men out of the fight.”

  She looked at the men around her. They nodded.

  “Spread the word among the farmers. Tardivat, you coordinate the rescue parties and can you arrange for the reception of whoever makes it out? Cover in the woods, get some supplies into the farms above Chavagnac. And you’re in charge of improvising any other small-scale ambushes on the smaller roads. Take the chance to let some of the new boys have a taste of action, but keep them safe. Denden, whatever happens, don’t miss your transmission. Tell London we want extra medical supplies and plastic.”

  She rolled up the map.

  Denden downed the last of the tea in his mug. “Marvelous. Let Operation Ungrateful Bastards commence.”

  Mateo and Nancy took a dozen men, including Juan and Rodrigo, down the valley to the Clavières road. She had hopes of finding what she needed about two miles from Mont Mouchet, where the pasture lining the roadside was dotted with mature trees. She kept glancing at her watch. She was sure Böhm would advise the military to attack Gaspard’s position at once, before news of the horror in the market place and its implications had time to spread. How long did it take to make the final preparations for an attack like this? Brief the officers, assemble the vehicles and weaponry? She spent half the hike to the road trying to work it out, and half swearing she would not think about it again.

  They emerged onto the road as the sun reached its zenith, and in twenty minutes found a place for the first stage of the operation. When Nancy saw an oak tree tall enough to block the road she planted a kiss on its wrinkled bark, then told Mateo to take it down with a ring of plastic explosive. Then she sent a couple of scouts toward Clavières to keep an eye on the road and warn away any locals. The scouts she picked were two of the younger lads, and as they set off Nancy noticed Mateo watching them until they disappeared round the bend of the road.

  “Worried about them, Mateo?” she asked, handing him the plastic from her pack and watching as he made a neat ring of charges around the thick trunk.

  “No. Just, I am twenty-three years old, and they make me feel like a grandfather.”

  “Why?”

  He plunged a time pencil into the charge and crimped the copper top. “Fire in the hole!”

  They scrambled to a safe distance in the roadside ditches, heads down.

  “Because,” Mateo said, as if their conversation hadn’t been interrupted, “I picked up a rifle at sixteen and have been fighting ever since.”

  “You should have tried picking up a girl instead,” she said. He grunted. “Maybe Jean-Clair will give you lessons. His mother told me he left broken hearts in every village in the Alps. Seemed pleased about it.”

  His reply, in Spanish and probably obscene, was lost in the sudden crack of the explosion, then the tear of wood and storm in the leaves as the great tree fell. The impact made the earth shudder. Nancy lifted her head. Perfectly done. The oak had fallen right across the width of the road.

  She clambered out of the ditch, unslung her pack and pulled out one of their precious anti-tank grenades. How many men would the Germans send? A vision struck her, as if carried by the breeze, of Gaspard’s men clustered round the old farm buildings caught unaware by a wave of artillery fire, the fountains of earth, the scream
of the shells, the blood and confusion.

  Nancy felt the spring wind on her face, and remembered this sensation, a fizz in her blood, from their attack on the transmitter. Not fear, but a strange heightening of her senses. There was something dangerously delicious about it.

  “Jean-Clair! Stop staring down the road and watch what Captain Wake is doing!” Mateo said sharply. Jean-Clair jumped and Nancy almost dropped the bloody mine. “The scouts will whistle when they see something,” Mateo continued. “You watch and learn.”

  Watch and learn indeed. Nancy wanted to find the sweet spot under the fallen trunk. The Germans would have to use their heavy vehicles to shift this monster out of the way, and when it started to shift, the grenade would go off—if they didn’t spot it first. She lay on her front and crawled under the branches, the spring leaves catching in her hair. It was a Hawkins grenade, impossible to throw far, but fierce, adaptable devils with about a pound of explosive in them. They used a chemical igniter, triggered by pressure, so grenade or not, they were perfect to use as mines for booby traps like this. She pushed it in front of her, using her elbows to drag herself under the twisted limbs of the oak along the gravel road, looking for a curve in the main trunk. Just a little farther. She looked right and left, judging the distance to the roadside, the cover above her. This would do, tucked under the main body of the tree, and far enough forward so the trunk wouldn’t take all the force of the blast and leave the vehicle pushing it undamaged.

  She removed the retaining pin, then heard the crack of a snapping branch as the trunk jerked toward her. She snatched back the Hawkins with her fingertips, scrabbling to pull it clear as the trunk settled forward into the very place she had just put the damned thing.

  A sudden thumping rush of blood made her hand twitch. She waited to see if she were dead.

  “All good, Captain?” she heard Mateo ask.

  “Peachy,” she replied through gritted teeth. Then she took a long, slow breath and very carefully repositioned the Hawkins. She slithered back through the branches, every nerve taut and singing now.

  Mateo pulled her to her feet and she ran her hand through her hair, shaking out the twigs. The countryside seemed unnaturally quiet, or maybe she was just listening too hard. She caught the sound of one of the scouts thudding toward them.

  The boy was sprinting up to the roadblock like he had Hitler himself on his heels.

  “Tree’s mined!” Nancy shouted at him, and he skidded to a halt in the gravel and skirted round, keeping his eye on the giant oak as if it might rear up and fight him.

  “Well?” Mateo said gruffly as the boy reached them.

  “Two kilometers out. I think… I think… a thousand men. I think artillery too,” he panted.

  Mateo lit a cigarette. “They weren’t going to come to the party with balloons and streamers, kid.”

  Nancy shot him a look. “Let’s get into position, shall we?”

  They left Juan in the forest near the fallen oak, then headed east for a mile and split the team. Rodrigo took his squad onto the northern slopes while Mateo and Nancy set up basic tripwires with two of the French boys, Jean-Clair and Jules.

  “I wish we had more time,” Mateo muttered to Nancy as she dug into her pack again.

  Jean-Clair and Jules watched them. She didn’t reply.

  Mateo took a pair of hand grenades from her and a roll of industrial tape, then bound the first grenade to the slim trunk of a sapling at the roadside at waist height. He didn’t speak again. Nancy tied off the cord on another sapling on the opposite side of the road, then came back to watch Mateo tie his end to the loop of the firing pin. He made a neat job of it.

  “Jean-Clair,” Nancy said, “you and Jules take the other grenade, set it up like this one, twenty meters further on.”

  Jean-Clair took the grenade, cord and tape and the two boys trotted up the road.

  Nancy watched them tie the tripwire at just the right height for the front of a troop lorry. Even knowing where it was, Nancy could barely see where the thin gray cord stretched across the road in the dappled shadows. As Jean-Clair and Jules came back Nancy noticed their drawn, concentrated expressions, and where their fingers gripped their Bren guns, she saw the telltale slick of sweat on metal.

  She spoke quietly. “Boys, you’ve been trained for this. You’ll be fine. Get into position.”

  They nodded, their Adam’s apples bobbing up and down as they swallowed down their fear and excitement, then scrambled up the shallow slope to the south. Trained, my arse. Two or three weeks in a class of fifty with Nancy yelling at them was not exactly Sandhurst.

  “You’d better be right about this, Captain,” Mateo said as he climbed over the low stone wall that separated the road from the field.

  There wasn’t great cover on this side of the road, just a drainage ditch on the upper edge of the field, then the woods beyond that.

  “Why?” she asked as she followed him.

  “Because if you are wrong about this attack, I’m going to have to defuse Jean-Clair’s first booby trap.”

  It was meant as a joke, but she was too strung out to laugh now.

  “I’m not wrong,” she said, walking up the slope away from him. Then she stopped, feeling the ripple in the air before she even heard it. An explosion rolled toward them up the road.

  37

  The two hours they spent waiting for the convoy to finish clearing the oak and reach them was a delicate torture. Nancy wanted it done, needed to move, to fight, but every moment the Germans spent looking for further booby traps was another moment for Gaspard to prepare his defense and start getting his men off the plateau. She glanced at her watch. Only four hours of daylight left. If they could keep the Germans from overrunning Mont Mouchet till dark, most of Gaspard’s fighters might make it off the mountain.

  She put her head back, leaning against the back wall of the ditch, counting her breaths, then her head snapped up as she heard a rattle of machine-gun fire to the west. Minutes later came the throaty detonations of mortars and the snap of rifle fire. It was the second part of the plan. As soon as the road was cleared, Juan was ordered to fire into the convoy then run. With any luck, the Germans would waste another hour looking for him.

  Juan dropped panting into the ditch beside them twenty minutes later. Mateo embraced him, a brief fluttering sigh the only sign he’d found the waiting for him hard.

  “Well?” Nancy asked.

  “Kid was right,” Juan replied. “Thousand-odd infantry with artillery in support. Your mine took the track off the tank they sent up to clear the tree; they had to repair it before they could move. All very orderly. When they looked like they were nearly done, I gave them a little blast.” He mimed spraying his machine gun. “They had mortars on my position within two minutes. So I scarpered.” He sounded grudgingly impressed. “They’re Waffen-SS. Haven’t seen troops that good in this area before. Only the best for Gaspard.”

  Nancy cursed fluently under her breath. That was all they needed. Crack troops and plenty of them. She could smell wild garlic, gun oil, the mineral tang of the soil, sweat. They would be coming soon. She twisted round in the ditch and put her hand on Jean-Clair’s arm.

  “Kid, our job is not to stop these guys, it’s just to slow them down. We want them to waste time chasing us. We’re going to make some noise, then disappear like smoke, OK?” She spoke low enough so only Jean-Clair could hear her.

  “OK,” he said.

  The minutes crawled by until Nancy heard the rumble of engines in the distance, then lifted her voice. “Anybody fires a shot before I give the order, and I’ll kill you my goddamn self. Clear?”

  “Yes, my captain…” they murmured.

  The throaty roar of the diesel trucks grew distinct. Nancy peered through the long grasses which lined the ditch. A light tank upfront was followed by two half-track vehicles towing howitzers. Damn it. The grenades wouldn’t make a dent. She watched the heavy vehicles pass, shaking the valley as they went, then saw the mass
of infantry coming up behind them, four abreast. As they passed below her, less than thirty yards away, she could see the individual faces. Men, not boys. Fit, well-fed masters of the universe, their lines orderly, marching in time. Farther west along the road they became a green snake crawling up the valley. Her valley.

  She gripped her Bren, feeling its metal, warm from the spring sun against her fingers and prayed, not to God, but to whoever back in Britain had made that pair of grenades and hoping they had managed to get some extra magic in there; or that the breeze, the moisture in the air, the million little movements of the world would mean one of them would roll under one of the half-tracks before it exploded. Knock out an engine, force the Germans to leave one of those howitzers useless on the road rather than drag it up the mountain and train it on the boys in Gaspard’s camp.

  The first grenade went off, a short vicious explosion, which shivered up the valley and sent a flock of game birds into startled flight behind them. Then the second one went half a minute later. The sound was different—a muffled, doubled explosion which shook the ground, not the air. Nancy pressed herself against the ditch, watching for the smoke. Yes. A column of it, black and unctuous with engine oil from the first half-track.

  She felt Jean-Clair move beside her.

  “Wait your turn, Jean-Clair.”

  A clatter of machine-gun fire, echo tripled by the high slopes above them, poured down on the Germans from the woods opposite Nancy’s position as Rodrigo and his squad engaged. The rattle of the light machine guns and the thud of the bullets into the scudding gravel mixed with the sharp urgent orders shouted in German, the cries of men already injured, then a hollow boom as the fuel tank on the injured half-track went up, the stink of it washing over them. The SS-men reacted fast, taking firing positions behind the remaining vehicles. Nancy’s knuckles whitened on the stock of her Bren as she watched four groups of three infantry set up mortar positions on the northern verge, where the low stone walls edging the road gave them cover, and began finding the range on Rodrigo’s position. Nancy could taste the adrenaline, bitter in the back of her throat.