“Come on, Gaspard, you son of a bitch,” she muttered, squeezing the field glasses until her knuckles turned white. His men were spread on both sides of the close approach to the bridge on the town side. The last line of defense.
“Do it. Blow the charge.”
Böhm and the colonel had abandoned the car and taken up a position on a high slope to the west of the town. Junior officers scrambled up the banks toward them, or away with the colonel’s orders.
The colonel was in an increasingly good mood. “A rather ragtag attempt to hold the bridge,” he said. “A lucky shot with the bazooka, and brave men, of course, but under-supplied and under-manned. I think we have you to thank for that, Böhm, do we not?”
Böhm did not reply, continuing to watch the action through his binoculars.
“I understand,” the colonel continued as if Böhm had simply not understood, “that you laid the groundwork for a very successful raid near Chaudes-Aigues. Marvelous. Scattered them to the four winds. I hear they were so desperate for resupply a woman went to Châteauroux for a new radio!”
Böhm lowered his glasses, looked at him. “Did she get it?”
The colonel shrugged. “I believe so, but the locals were quite sure she never made it out of town again. Hadn’t you heard?”
“Communications have been somewhat disrupted since the Allies invaded the south,” he replied. Could it be her? She was quite mad when he saw her in Montluçon. Too crazed to charm her way through the countryside with a radio on her back. It could not be her.
“They will blow the bridge,” Böhm said.
The colonel laughed politely. “No, no. If they had sufficient explosives they’d have blown it before we arrived! This little defense is proof they can’t take it down.” He tilted his head to one side. “Though even if they had, we’d have been able to construct an adequate crossing in half a day. Heaven knows we have enough men, and enough timber available! The river is relatively shallow here.”
The thoughts began to turn in Böhm’s head. If it had been her who fetched the radio…
“When did the woman get the radio?”
“The report came in a week ago. Ha!”
“What?” Böhm shifted his view.
“That little puff on the bridge, just clearing. Poor bastards only had enough explosive to open an envelope. The bridge is intact and they’re running for their lives.”
Böhm watched as a small group of men ran across the bridge, the German forces swelling behind them. One Frenchman fell forward onto the road.
The colonel raised his voice. “Get everyone moving please, I want the whole column across that bridge in half an hour. Push on. See if the damaged tank is repairable and report back to me.”
Böhm could feel it in his blood. This unease. He scanned the square, the lightly defended sandbag emplacements, the pathetic charge on the bridge. They hadn’t even managed to set it in the place where it had the best chance of doing some real damage. It was like they weren’t even trying. The raid on Wake’s camp had been a success, a great success, but he’d been sure there were a thousand men in those hills, and they’d found fewer than a hundred bodies.
They weren’t even trying…
Something caught his eye, a flag stuck through the louvers of the bell tower.
“It’s a trap!”
The colonel’s face twisted into an expression of polite skepticism. The Germans poured into the middle of the town, no longer firing, their guns at their sides. Two tanks were on the bridge itself, the three others waiting their turn in the square. A squad of engineers were already examining the damaged one. In the square. Böhm felt his stomach clench. The tanks could fire round 180 degrees, but if there were men on the upper stories of those buildings with more bazookas they were vulnerable.
“Get your men out! Withdraw!” he screamed in the colonel’s face.
It was already too late.
Nancy watched Gaspard blow the fake charge and then run; the man next to him went down. Damn. Damn. Damn.
“Nancy! It’s working!”
Denden pulled on her arm and she swung her binoculars back to the square. It was crushed with troops now. Two tanks were pulling out onto the bridge, infantry surging around them.
“Wait!” she said.
“But Nancy…”
“Wait, Denden.”
The second tank ground its gears and pulled out over the water as the fifth and final Panzer entered the square. The Kübelwagens were backed up behind it, blocking the road.
“Now!”
Denden launched himself onto the bell rope and the deep-throated clang rang out across the town.
All hell broke loose.
The third-floor windows all around the square burst open and the Maquis who had been waiting inside started pouring fire down onto the crowd of German soldiers below. At the same moment the bridge exploded, a chain of blasts that shook the tower, showering dust down on them. Denden yelled with delight. A great fountain of dirt and stone rocketed skyward, and a choking cloud was blown back into the square.
As the dust cleared over the river, Nancy saw that the bridge was gone. In the riverbed the two tanks lay on their sides in the fast-flowing water, surrounded by struggling men. From his redoubts on the far side of the bank, Gaspard fired down at the Germans in the water. The few who had made it across had already dropped their weapons and were standing on the bank, too scared to help their drowning comrades, their hands in the air.
Denden yelped again. Bazooka rounds exploded round the three Panzers. The gun turret of one swung round and fired into the ground floor of the butcher’s shop. A shattering, tumbling, punching of falling masonry and the house crumbled into the square, collapsing onto the German troops packed below. They started screaming at the tank commander. Then, as two more bazooka rounds from the opposite side of the square hit the tank, they rolled back from it like a wave. Smoke poured through the slits in the armor. René had got to his second position, then.
The screaming was getting louder. Infantrymen were throwing themselves against the walls, flinging their rifles down as if they had burned their hands. Others launched themselves forward on the ground. Nancy looked south. Fournier was folding up the rear of the column, gathering the stragglers and wagons who hadn’t yet made it into the town. She could see it was him by his walk. His Bren was held loosely across his chest, his rifle on his back, and he was chatting to the man beside him. The stragglers all had their hands in the air, and their weapons littered the roadside.
“That’s enough.” She whispered it. Then blinked, and shook her head. “Denden, that’s enough. They are done.”
He held the rope and the tolling ceased. The gunfire turned from a storm to an occasional ripple. A final scattering of cracks. Then silence. They shifted the sandbag off the trapdoor, and Nancy walked down the spiral stairs slowly, awkwardly. She’d started bleeding from her ankles again and only now did the pain find a way to get through the fog of her brain. She hadn’t spotted any men she recognized as Gestapo in the square. Perhaps they were in the wagons? Or perhaps the intel was wrong. God, this hellish pull and push of doubt and hope.
Denden followed her. They ignored the body on the stairs and the other by the door and stepped out into the square, their backs to the river. Tardivat was already separating out the officers, tasking his boys to collect the Germans’ weapons. The Maquis poured out of the houses, their guns trained on the cowering troops. Tardivat strolled over to them.
“Congratulations, Field Marshal Wake,” he said.
Nancy’s eyes traveled over the bodies, some Maquis, many, many more German infantry caught in that killing field. She still couldn’t spot any Gestapo men. How long had it lasted? Three minutes? Five?
“Once they are disarmed, organize burial parties,” she said. “Did the mayor make it?”
Tardi nodded.
“Good. Talk to him about where they should be buried. Put the officers in the police cells or take them to the chateau—”
“Nancy! Behind you!” Fournier’s voice.
She spun round. A major. He had reared up from the river like an ugly ghost, his side arm raised, ten feet from her. So this is where I die then, Nancy thought. Thank God I got to see these bastards beaten first.
A single shot. Nancy flinched but felt no pain. Had the idiot managed to miss from this range? No. His right eye had disappeared. He fell forward, dead before he hit the ground. Nancy heard the sound of a hundred weapons being lifted, bolts sliding back—the Maquis were aiming their guns at the trembling prisoners, and she ran forward, arms raised.
“No!” Nancy shouted. “Lads, I’m fine! Look at me! We did it!”
Everything was on a knife edge. Their blood was up and there wasn’t a man among them who hadn’t seen a friend’s farm burned, had a relative disappear. They all knew the stories of the women and children killed, the wild brutality of the Gestapo in these last months. But no. Not now. They couldn’t beat the Germans and then become them.
She clambered on top of a tank where they could all see her. Come on, Nancy. Just once more. Find the words. She spread her arms wide.
“Men of the Maquis! Listen to me! These men are your prisoners. You have won, you have won your liberation. France is free. The troops who took your country are at your feet, begging for mercy. Be men!” Please listen. Please, please, by all that is holy, please listen. This day had to be a victory, a day to celebrate, not a massacre of prisoners to shame them in the years to come. “Listen to me! Be better than ordinary men! Be men of the Maquis.”
One. Two. Then slowly, one at a time, they lowered their guns. To her right, a German private, a boy of seventeen at most, started to cry, and another older man looking up at a Maquis gun next to him put his arm around his shoulders. The muzzle was pointed away from him again.
She looked around, to the other side of the river, where the shot that had saved her life had come from. There was Gaspard, rifle at his side. He raised his hand in greeting.
63
Most of the prisoners had been billeted through the town and in the castle itself, disarmed and in small groups with each house guarded by Maquisards that Nancy trusted not to get drunk and take a bloody revenge before the Allies arrived. Still nothing on any Gestapo men, though perhaps they were hiding among the ordinary soldiers. She would find out soon. She would look every one of them in the eye before the Americans arrived. First she had to make sure that peace held, that the day of victory did not slide into slaughter at darkness.
Nancy and Fournier went back to the Great Hall of the chateau and, with a bottle of brandy on the table in front of them, worked through the arrangements for the next weeks. They had already had deputations from some of the towns and villages in the area asking representatives of their group to take part in ceremonies of thanksgiving for their liberation. Denden was in some far-off corner of the tower, sending and receiving messages and updates in a frenzy of Morse.
“We go to the villages that were victims of reprisals first,” Nancy said. “Then the home towns of the men who died.”
She pulled a notebook from her tunic pocket.
“What is that?” Fournier asked. “I thought you gave your notes to Captain Rake.”
“My book of the dead,” Nancy replied, handing it to him and then refilling her glass. “Names, addresses. That I kept with me.”
Fournier took it like a holy object and put it in his own pocket, then finished his own glass. “I’ll make a tour in town. Check everything is in order. Good night, Field Marshal.”
“Good night.”
But Nancy didn’t go to bed. She had to work out a plan to gather up all the weapons and explosives she could, empty the remaining caches of arms before some kid found them and come up with some system to distribute the remaining cash she had from London to the men and the families of those who had not survived. Then she would make her search.
An urgent step in the corridor made her lift her head. Jules.
“Madame Nancy, we have picked up the colonel who commanded the column. Tardivat has him locked up in the pantry.”
“That’s fine, Jules. What else?”
“The colonel had a Gestapo man with him. Denis told me… if I heard of any Gestapo I should tell you, only you. But I think some of the men have found out. He’s in the stables.”
She shot to her feet and was out of the room before he had even finished speaking, hand on her side arm.
Half a dozen Maquisards were there, arguing with the two guards, who stood aside as she approached.
“Lads,” she said lightly, “go get some sleep. And check yourself for wounds. Keep them clean. Be a bit fucking tragic if you died of blood poisoning now, wouldn’t it? Leave this one to me.”
It worked. The little crowd melted away and the guards shot her grateful looks. She lit a lantern from the one hanging in the courtyard. Would this man know what had happened to Henri? She was afraid she’d answer a blank look with a bullet. Could any of them remember how many people they’d killed? She opened the door, shutting it behind her before lifting the lamp. The stables smelled of fresh hay and leather. The Gestapo man was propped up against the door of one of the stalls, his ankles and wrists bound and a feed sack over his head. Nancy remembered how that felt. She hung the lantern on a hook to her side.
The shock, when she pulled the sack off his head and saw Böhm blinking up at her, was brutal. Another of God’s little bombshells. He knew. She was going to get her answer and suddenly she was afraid, afraid for the first time in her life. It was as if the floor had disappeared underneath her and it took all her strength to stay standing.
She had taken out her side arm and pressed the barrel to the side of his head before her conscious mind even recognized him.
“Is Henri alive?” she said. She imagined the bullet in slow motion spinning in the barrel then shattering his skull, plowing through the soft matter of his brain, the long spurt of blood and bone that would fly across the straw beside him.
He watched her. Then, seeing she would wait for an answer, he reached with his bound wrists into the side pocket of his tunic.
“I will tell you. But do this one thing for me.” His fingers caught the edge of a letter and plucked it free. “Get this to my daughter. Give me your word.”
“Fine.”
He lifted his bound hands and she took the envelope, shoved it into the pocket of her slacks, still holding the revolver to his head.
“Now tell me. Is Henri alive?”
“The answer is in your pocket. That’s a farewell letter to my child. Because I know that you’re going to execute me, just as I did your husband many weeks ago. He was killed, shortly after a visit from his father and sister. Life has a cruel symmetry.”
The image of Böhm’s brains splattering all over the straw was so clear she was surprised to discover that she had not already pulled the trigger.
Böhm was staring up at her, and for the first time since she had met him, he looked… confused.
“Do it, Madame Fiocca. I murdered your husband. I ordered his torture. I tormented him for weeks. He suffered terribly, you know. Then I tortured you, with a chance to save him. I know what that did to you, Madame Fiocca. I saw it. You have already tried to kill me once; why are you hesitating now?”
She heard the desperation in his voice. She uncocked her revolver and returned it to the holster on her hip.
“No, Böhm. You will stand trial. I’d like very much to kill you, but that would be selfish of me, don’t you think? There are plenty of other widows, mothers, fathers and husbands who need answers from you. I’m going to hand you over to the Americans.”
He knitted his fingers together, but Nancy could see they were trembling. She picked up the lantern and left him alone in the dark.
64
Dear Fraulein Böhm,
My name is Nancy Wake, and I am an agent working with the Maquis in southern France. We have just captured your father and are going to hand him over t
o the American authorities. He asked me to send this letter to you. I do not know what he has written, but I imagine it’s something about how he sacrificed his life for the dream of a Greater Germany and how he was willing to do difficult things to protect you and your future.
Your father is a monster. A stunted man and for all his learning, he knows nothing of human life, of love. I saw the regime he served before the war, and saw nothing but cruelty and posturing brutality pretending to be strength. That is not strength, it is weakness trying to disguise itself, lashing out to hide its own lacerating fear. He will tell you he is a patriot, I guess. I know he is a coward.
He tortured and murdered my husband. He killed my friends. He is not a hero to be welcomed home. He and his kind have caused untold suffering to millions of women like me, to millions of little girls like you, and I think we are only just beginning to learn the true horror of what they have done behind this mask of science and patriotism.
You are young. You do not bear responsibility for this suffering, but in the next few years you will have a choice to make. To be angry and afraid for your whole life, and shut your eyes to the truth. Or to be strong, to face it and become part of building a different future.
Yours,
Nancy Wake
65
The Americans arrived late the next morning and scooped up the prisoners with cheerful efficiency. They also left crates of supplies, food mostly, but a good amount of fuel too, for the returning townsfolk of Cosne-d’Allier and a couple of structural engineers who were tasked with rebuilding the bridge Gaspard had just blown up. News that Paris was liberated reached them mid-afternoon.
Once the prisoners were gone, including Böhm, the tension in the town began to dissipate and by the early afternoon the mayor was said to be organizing a party. Every member of the Maquis had a girl on his arm and flowers in his buttonhole and the owner of the chateau arrived, not to throw them out on the street, but to break open the wine cellar and share out the contents.
Liberation Page 30