by Ariel Lawhon
It’s happened. D-Day. Though in reality, we had no way of knowing if it ever would. So much depends on the winds of war and the SOE gives us very little information. No details of the broader military strategy. Dates, times, and locations that do not pertain to our mission are all kept top secret. And I understand why. If we are captured and interrogated, we could cost the Allies a victory. We know only the specifics of our own assignment: train, arm, and organize the Maquis for battle. Everything beyond that was a contingency based on the hope of an Allied invasion. But now that it has happened, the second phase of our mission has gone into effect and I wasn’t here to see it. Overcome by exhaustion, disappointment, and the sense that I have missed the most important night of the war, I cry myself to sleep.
* * *
—
I wake to pounding on the door. The sun is high in the sky and hangs somewhere over the bus. Warm yellow light drifts in through the windows. I am still in the clothes I was wearing yesterday. My boots are still on. It takes a moment to realize that no, I have not gone blind in one eye—my beret has fallen over my face.
“Wake up, Duckie!” Denis Rake shouts.
“Bastard. Go away. This is a terrible time for payback,” I mutter.
The door creaks open. “What’s that? I can’t hear you.” And then, “What the jolly hell is that? Where did you get a mattress?”
What I try to say is “I stole and bartered for it,” but what comes out sounds something more like “I farted in public.”
“Are you drunk?” Denis asks.
“Oh, bugger off.” That comes out clear enough.
“Listen, while you’ve been in here wasting the day, we’ve been getting news about the invasion. You’re going to want to hear this. Get up.”
* * *
—
We spend the rest of the day glued to the radios. News trickles in slowly but consistently.
“It came in last night, about four in the morning,” Denis says. “It was just gibberish at first. A good hour of it. You know, the typical nonsense. ‘The crocodile is thirsty’ or ‘You may now shake the trees and gather the pears’ or ‘Is Mrs. Munchkin ready to play a game of boules in the yonder dark forest?’ Just all that garbage they spout every night as misinformation. But then it came. That one phrase. ‘I wish I was by the seaside at sunrise.’ And everyone knew.”
I am so horribly sad to have missed it. Three and a half months we’ve been waiting for that very phrase. Gathering weapons. Organizing troops. Waiting to strike. The moment it went out over the airwaves, hundreds of Resistance leaders and Allied operatives, scattered from Marseille to Dunkirk, knew that the time had come to destroy whatever targets they had been assigned. Bridges. Towers. Tunnels. Trains or railways or ships. We have never been given exact numbers—that information is classified—but Hubert believes it to be hundreds of German-held targets.
Throughout the Auvergne, Gaspard, Tardivat, and Fournier, along with Hubert, are crippling the German military. Gaspard is cutting a series of underground cables the Germans use to communicate. Fournier is blowing up a munitions factory at Clermont-Ferrand while Tardivat does the same with one near Montluçon. Even Hubert has gotten in on the action and taken a dozen Maquis to Moulins, where sometime in the next few hours they will destroy a railway junction the Nazis use to transport troops and supplies throughout the countryside.
It is terrible of me, but I am jealous of my colleagues. I so badly wanted to participate in these acts of sabotage. I wanted to light fuses and throw grenades, to watch buildings, bridges, and tunnels crumble. I wanted the pure satisfaction of seeing our plan unfold. Because the next phase of our mission will go into effect the moment they are done.
Along with the weapons we use to arm our maquisards, London has also been dropping explosives into France. Collected and held, not just for today, but for a second influx of Allied troops in the coming weeks. I brought the lengthy target lists myself. Rolled up on tissue paper and tucked into the lining of my purse. Or, for the top secret ones, stored within the folds of my own brain. I personally assigned them to Fournier, Tardivat, and Gaspard.
I’ve missed so much tonight. It’s as though a month of Christmases has come in a single night and I wasn’t there to unwrap a single present. These are things I cannot say out loud, of course. It is selfish and stupid and vain of me to even think them. We’ve all been given a job to do and it is ridiculous to be jealous of anyone else’s. I’ve done mine. For three months straight, I’ve done my job. Last night I collected Anselm and now our forces can be properly trained. My colleagues are all celebrating. They pass bottles of brandy. They cheer. And we all hover beside our radios, tuned to the BBC French Service. We hear about Normandy and the ships that crossed through unforgiving waters—well over five thousand, they are saying—gunwales brimming with Allied soldiers that have landed on the northern coast of France. Aeroplanes—hundreds and hundreds of aeroplanes—from the United States and the British Royal Air Force, dropping paratroopers inland at Normandy. And other planes behind them, bombers, roaring in to destroy the German coastal defenses. We hear of the ghastly blood-filled waves at Normandy. The countless bodies lying on the beach. And the tens of thousands of men who are even now pushing inland. Who are fighting back. Who are resisting the great evil that Hitler has unleashed upon the continent.
And now the real work begins. This is why we have come to France. Because the Maquis d’Auvergne is the only thing standing between the Hermann Göring Division—an armored mass of troops, almost twenty thousand strong and supported by the Luftwaffe, that, having ravaged Italy, is even now moving north from the Côte d’Azur—and the Allied soldiers at Normandy.
CHAUDES-AIGUES PLATEAU, CANTAL, FRANCE
June 10, 1944
“We have to get out of here, Nance,” Hubert says, stretching out with an exhausted groan on top of my mattress. I’m tempted to tell him to go find his own bed but that would be cruel. He’s been sleeping on the ground since March. “There are too many Maquis.”
“The sky rains guns and the forest bleeds new recruits yet my partner complains?”
He cracks one eye and scowls at me. “With Fournier’s troops, and now Gaspard’s, plus all these volunteers, there are seven thousand men massed in these hills. That’s twice as bad as what Gaspard did at Mont Mouchet. Mark my words, the Germans have noticed. We’re practically begging for an ambush. We need to take Anselm, Denden, and our team and move west. Just far enough to where we won’t get the full brunt of the next attack. We’re no good to London if we go and get ourselves blown up.”
“You’re right. But we have an airdrop tonight at Strawberry. And another one tomorrow as well at Pineapple. And the day after that will be the daytime airdrop.”
I have Hubert’s full attention at this. He pushes up onto his elbows and looks at me. “London agreed?”
“Denis got word less than an hour ago. Two days from now we’re getting one hundred and fifty planes, fifteen crates each. Everything we’ve asked for. In triplicate. It will take five fields and every man we’ve got to collect the shipment. The coordinates are in and we can’t change them now. This one delivery will arm us to the teeth and ensure we can stop the Boche from marching toward Normandy. We can move west, but not for at least three days.”
“Okay,” Hubert says, and I can hear the drone of looming sleep in his voice. “But as soon as everything is collected and distributed we relocate.”
“Agreed.”
“Nance?”
“Yeah?”
“I have another group of recruits to interview and assign tonight.”
“I figured.”
“But I don’t have to meet Fournier for another hour—”
“—and you want to nap where you are?” I try not to laugh.
“It’s not that—I mean, yes, this bed is damned comfortable—it’s just that I can’t actua
lly get up.”
It’s true. He looks like some enormous Great Dane stretched out on the mattress, limbs akimbo, already starting to drool from one corner of his mouth.
“Just don’t get used to it,” I say. Then I grab my coat and my pack and I’m out the door to collect tonight’s shipment.
* * *
—
I pry open a crate the size of a small Volkswagen to find it crammed to the lid with no fewer than two hundred pairs of British army boots. It is five in the morning, I am freezing cold and exhausted all the way into my bones, but at least there is still a bright moon and we don’t need torches to unpack this latest airdrop.
“About damn time,” I mutter, tossing the crowbar to my feet and pulling out a brand-new pair of size elevens, fitted with laces, each boot stuffed with a pair of heavy wool socks. It’s not much as far as uniforms go, but a quarter of our new recruits are arriving barefoot, so beggars can’t be choosers. Besides, I’ve been requesting footwear for six weeks now, and it feels like nothing short of victory to have received exactly what I’ve asked for. I suppose London didn’t consider them a priority until now, given that guns kill Boche but boots do not. Or at least not easily. One would have to have a German skull directly under one’s foot and, in my experience, they don’t willingly lie down in your path.
“Jacques! Come look at this!” I shout, drawing the attention of Fournier’s favorite—and my newly commandeered—lieutenant. “Our volunteers will be British to their bootstraps!”
Jacques looks up from his position across the clearing and holds up one finger, indicating he’ll be over in a moment. He’s unloading a crate of his own filled with what appear to be four or five dozen Sten guns, and has begun the long, arduous process of degreasing them. Even from here I can see the thick, oily gunk on his hands. Tonight’s shipment came in two hours late but was average in size. Fifteen planes with fifteen crates each. Each crate the size of a small vehicle, except for the last, labeled Personal for Hélène. It is no bigger than a hatbox, and I’ll open it later, in the privacy of my bus.
The clearing is about the size of a rugby field and there are eighty men scattered about, working like fiends to unload the crates, clean and catalog their contents, and load everything on flatbed trucks. These are men whom Hubert, Denis, and I plucked out from Fournier’s groups, chosen for their intellect, loyalty, bravery, and work ethic. Their one job is to accompany us to drop sites and prepare the fields. They light bonfires, gather crates and parachutes, unpack and clean the weapons, and distribute the supplies to each group as we have determined. Then, together, we do it all again the next night. Sleep has become a thing that happens in snatches—often only an hour at a time—stolen, most days, directly after lunch when the chaos is at a minimum.
Volunteers have been arriving by the dozens, every day, for the last month. Word of the Allied landing has spread to every crack and cranny in France, and able-bodied men stream from the woods like termites ahead of fire, wanting to be part of the famed Maquis d’Auvergne.
“They smell of m-m-mothballs,” Jacques told me two nights ago as we carefully lifted mortars from a long, narrow crate and set them into racks on one of the trucks. As usual, the plateau was a good thirty degrees colder than the valley below. So we chewed on sugar loaf soaked in eau de vie to give us the illusion of warmth, and tried not to snap at each other. That’s the hard part, not taking your misery out on your colleagues. In truth, the plum brandy does little to keep us warm, but it helps with morale.
“They’ve been hiding in closets the last four years,” I said. “Trying to wait out the war. But now that victory is at hand they want to say they fought for their country.”
Jacques may suspect the motives of these fair-weather friends, but I am happy to see them. Every new recruit must be interviewed, though, to ensure he’s not a German double agent or part of the Milice, and then assigned to a group. This job falls to Hubert and has prevented him from joining me at the airdrops for several weeks. It’s gotten so bad that Fournier has been assisting him. Only once the men have been approved and placed within an existing group do they come to me for weapons and ammunition. Then I pass them on to Anselm for training, both in their new service gear but also in the larger artillery and explosives we’ve begun receiving. The Maquis have affectionately begun referring to Anselm as “Bazooka,” given his tendency to wax eloquent about that particular stovepipe-shaped weapon. The fact that he’s been begging for, but has not yet received, any is no small source of irritation for him.
I look around the clearing, at the number of crates remaining and the exhaustion of our men, and know there’s no way we’ll finish by dawn, not with the late delivery and the low temperatures. We’re all limp and battered.
“Jacques!” I call again, and this time he leaves his crate and jogs over to me.
“Oui?”
His bloodshot eyes are evident even by moonlight. “How many crates do we have left?”
“One hundred. M-m-maybe more.”
I look at the horizon and squint. Sunrise will be on us soon. “Tell the men to finish the crates they’re working on now and then I want you to send all but ten back to camp for some rest. Leave the others to guard the clearing. They can relieve the guards and resume work after a bit of sleep and some breakfast.” I smack the crate beside me, twice, with the flat of my hand. “I want these boots, along with a crate each of cleaned rifles and revolvers, delivered outside my bus. Hubert has an entire group of one hundred new recruits for me to outfit.”
“Oui.”
He doesn’t go so far as to salute me, but he looks as though he’d like to. He reminds me of Picon in his absolute loyalty and confidence in my abilities.
I stand and stretch, listening to all the various parts of my body pop and crackle like so much packing material. My hamstrings and the muscles that run along my spine are so tight and sore, I can barely straighten myself to my full height. My fingernails are black with gun grease. My hair is limp and filthy and smells like that of a teenage boy. And I am alarmed to realize that there is an odor wafting from my own person. Something has to be done.
“I will meet you back at the encampment,” I say.
“W-w-here…?”
He doesn’t finish the question, but I know what he means. Jacques isn’t being overprotective. He knows that Hubert is going to ask, and he wants to have an answer.
“To the hot springs in Chaudes-Aigues, and then for a quick sleep. I can’t go on like this. I’ve not bathed in three weeks and I’ve hardly slept the last three days.”
* * *
—
Chaudes-Aigues is a city of red-tiled roofs and old stone buildings set close together in a large valley accessible by the surrounding plateaus. It has narrow, sloping streets. One cathedral. A ruined castle. And, most important, hot springs. The renowned public baths are set into the side of a natural rock formation on the west end of town, and by the time I reach them I can barely stand, much less walk toward the women’s side, pay an admission fee of three francs, and stumble to the dressing room. I am too filthy to go straight to the pools, so I set my pack to the side and strip naked, tossing my clothing beneath one of the many metal spouts protruding from the limestone wall like curled metal tongues, and pull the lever above it. Within seconds a stream of hot water is pouring onto my clothing, creating a dirty puddle and an unfortunate smell. I stand there, breathing the steam, until the puddle turns clear and runs off in one of the countless little gutters that have been carved into the floor. Then I take my turn beneath the spout and stand, head down, watching the grime run down my body.
It is worth noting that I am not one for public nudity—my own, or that of others. But these are special circumstances and there is a very large, severe-looking woman at the gate to the women’s side of the baths. I doubt there is a Frenchman for one hundred kilometers in any direction who would dare to cro
ss her. God forbid a German tried. The men’s section is on the other side of the rock formation, and while there is a mixed area between the two, I have no intention of venturing anywhere near it.
Once I’ve stood under the spout for five minutes, I dig around in my pack for one of my most prized possessions: the bar of rose-scented soap that Buckmaster sent. I build up a lather and coat every inch of my skin, along with my hair. I repeat this three times until I’m sure there is no residue left on my body. Then I collect my pack and my pile of drenched clothing and walk into the spa itself. It’s a large cave, open on two sides. Directly in front of me is a twenty-foot-wide bowl, carved out of the floor and filled with gently steaming water. Beyond that, through one of the openings, is a courtyard with another, larger pool. I choose the one in front of me for no other reason than it is closest and the thought of walking fifty extra steps makes me want to cry. Besides, there are fewer women in the bowl and therefore less chance someone will want to talk.
I set my pack and clothes on the lip of the bowl, then sit with a groan, and slide the rest of my body into the water. It is almost too hot but not quite, and I’ve adjusted in a few seconds. It smells of mineral and rock with the faintest tinge of sulfur. Somewhere in a corner there is incense burning and the floral scent of lavender covers up the more pungent smells of water heated by subterranean volcanoes. I make a mental note not to think of volcanoes. Lava. Explosions. Or the idea of myself getting boiled like so much raw chicken.
There are two other women in the bowl. An elderly woman whose breasts float on the surface like empty hot water bottles. They drift off in different directions, as though irritated with each other and needing a bit of time apart. The other woman looks like a younger version of the first and I decide they are sisters separated by at least a decade. The younger one has no breasts to speak of whatsoever. Or if she does, she’s not comfortable flaunting them to family or strangers, because she’s tucked herself into the water so far that it comes almost to her nostrils.