by Helen Watts
Suddenly she felt a hand tapping on her leg. The young mother whom she had scolded when they first arrived, clutching her baby to her breast, was gesturing towards the door.
‘We’ve got to get out,’ she mouthed. ‘They are going to burn us.’
Audrey shook her head, the tears sliding down her cheeks. She didn’t want to leave Alita alone.
‘She’s gone,’ whispered the young mother, realising Audrey’s dilemma. ‘There’s nothing you can do for her. Save yourself. Please. Please help me save my baby!’
This last plea finally sparked Audrey’s resolve. She knew she had to try. For Alita, for Sylvie, Christelle, Sabine and the little ones, she had to prove that life was worth fighting for, that she would never give up.
She nodded to the girl and turned to gaze for one last time at her precious daughter, her face so familiar, so perfect and yet now so still. Raising herself up, Audrey bent gently over her daughter’s body, taking care not to move or disturb her, unable to believe that she couldn’t possibly hurt her any more, and softly kissed her on the forehead.
As her tears fell onto Alita’s cheeks she brought her hand down across her face and closed her eyes.
‘Goodnight my princess,’ she whispered. ‘Sleep tight.’
Then Audrey Rousseau took a deep breath and got slowly, cautiously to her feet. She had a job to do.
Audrey gestured silently to the young mother to follow her and together they tip-toed quietly over and around the fallen bodies, until they reached the door back into the nave. They pressed themselves flat up against the wall and Audrey peered round into the main body of the church. It was still dark and full of thick black smoke, but framed in the daylight shining through the front door opposite, Audrey could just make out the shape of soldiers moving around. They were wearing gas masks to protect themselves from the fumes and were throwing objects – straw, firewood, broken chairs, bits of splintered church pews – into the centre aisle.
She glanced back at her new companion and down at the woman’s baby, which was bound to her chest in a sling. If the baby cried, the cover of the smoke would not be enough. They had to move fast.
Audrey waited until there was a pause in the movement of the soldiers across the nave and then tugged at the mother’s arm, indicating that she should copy her and remove her shoes, then get ready to go.
Using their sleeves to keep the foul-smelling fumes from their mouths and noses, the two women sprinted, hidden by the smoke, back up to the altar. Above it were three tall windows, all of which had been shattered by the bomb blast. The middle window was large enough to squeeze through.
While the mother crouched with her baby behind the damaged altar, Audrey found the stool which she had been using earlier that day to stand on when she was decorating the windowsills with flowers. It had been thrown across the choir by the blast but, amazingly, was still in one piece. Now she propped it up against the wall below the middle window and, swallowing hard to quell her urge to cough as the smoke stung her throat, she climbed up onto it and reached up.
Audrey was not an especially fit woman, but at that moment she found strength she never knew she had, for somehow she managed to heave herself up, her bare feet scraping up the wall to get a grip, and threw herself out through the gap.
The window was a good three metres above the ground outside and, although there was a shrubbery to break her fall, Audrey was momentarily winded from the landing. She sat there among the plants for a few seconds, trying to get her breath, gulping in the fresh air. Then she heard the baby’s screams above her.
Rapidly she got to her feet. The desperate young mother was hanging half in and half out of the window, her baby dangling down awkwardly from her sling.
‘Catch her,’ she cried. ‘Quickly, they’ve spotted us.’
Audrey got ready to catch the tiny screaming bundle but there was no time. Alerted by the baby’s cries, one of the soldiers had rushed across the nave. He leapt up onto the stool and just missed grabbing the mother’s back foot as she jumped out, her baby nearly falling from her arms.
They started to run, but the soldier had already aimed his gun. The mother and baby fell just a few metres from the window. Five bullets thudded into Audrey and, as she collapsed, she rolled down the steep bank which led down from the back of the church to the retaining wall.
Satisfied, the soldier climbed down from the window and went back to work in the nave.
Following their orders to finish off the job, the soldiers set light to the bonfire they had created in the church. When they had finished piling up as much combustible material as they could find to hand, they took up their weapons and opened fire once again, trying to silence the last few cries and groans. Then, at the platoon leader’s signal, they lowered their guns and paused before exiting to toss some grenades into the pile.
Then the front door was pulled close and bolted shut.
When Audrey came round, lying there in the ditch by the church wall, the first thing that struck her was the smell. The sweet, sickly smell of burning flesh mixed with thick, suffocating wood smoke.
Then the pain hit her. It felt like there was a knife being driven through her shoulder, and both her legs felt like they had been hit with a steam roller. But she knew she had to get away. She could be seen and it wouldn’t take the soldiers long to realise she was alive.
Mustering all her strength, she started to crawl on her stomach, dragging her injured legs through the grass until she reached a gap in the wall leading to the church garden. Centimetre by centimetre she edged her way into the garden and dug herself into the soft earth between some rows of peas. Finally, satisfied that she was well hidden, and utterly exhausted, she passed out.
Once the grenades exploded, the bonfire piled up in the nave took only seconds to ignite. The dry straw and kindling and broken wooden furniture burned rapidly and, fuelled by hundreds of burning bodies, the flames were soon soaring upwards, hungrily licking the church roof.
Fed by the air being sucked through the broken windows, the church turned into a raging inferno, high enough to burn through the roof timbers, savage enough to reach up inside the bell-rope tower, and hot enough to melt the huge bronze bells.
In just over an hour, Oradour’s beloved church had been transformed into a burnt-out, smouldering shell. Apart from Audrey Rousseau, not one of its reluctant congregation that day got out alive.
20: The Cornfield
From their tiny hideout beside the compost heap, Alfred and Benoit heard the explosion inside the church. They had fallen silent, too traumatised to talk and too scared of being discovered to make any noise. Alfred had even closed his eyes for a while. He had grown bored of staring up at the corrugated roof and, after the adrenaline rush of his escape from the schoolroom, he was starting to feel fatigued. Perhaps if he could just rest a little, it would help to pass the time…
But then the blast from the church shook the ground beneath him and rocked him back to his senses. His eyelids flew open. Simultaneously, Benoit shot up onto his elbows. ‘What the hell was that?’ he whispered.
‘It sounded like a bomb.’
‘I think it was. From the church, do you think?’
‘Yes, it sounded like it.’
‘That was the direction all those footsteps were going in... the children’s voices… I…’
Benoit didn’t finish his sentence because the sound of the explosion was then followed by the chilling sound of gunfire. Repeated shots and machine guns.
Alfred immediately started to shuffle his small body out of the shelter. He was scared. Very scared.
‘Where are you going?’ cried Benoit, trying to keep his voice low.
‘I’m not stopping here any longer,’ whispered Alfred, trembling. ‘I have to go. I have to get to the cemetery now. Then, if it’s clear, I can make it to the woods.’
Alfred was already on his hands and knees, ready to crawl out of the shelter.
‘No, Alfie!’ Benoit cried, his muted
voice straining, too afraid to shout. He reached sideways and grabbed Alfred’s ankle, desperate to restrain him, convinced the boy was going to his death. But Alfred was too determined and too terrified to be held back. He shook his foot hard and wriggled free of Benoit’s grasp.
Alfred didn’t dare glance around him and he didn’t want to look back. He simply set his eyes on the opposite side of the field, where he could pick up the little lane which joined onto Rue de la Cimetière, and ran.
There was a footpath diagonally across the field and, for the first forty to fifty metres, Alfred stuck to that, making good speed on the sun-baked, hard trodden earth. He could see the gate now, where the footpath came out onto the lane next to the stonemason’s workshop. He was nearly there. But then he heard more gunfire. It seemed to be coming from all directions now, around the village. One minute there was a burst of noise from the direction of the mill, by the river, then it was joined by more distant gunshots, from the far side of the village, back in the direction of his cottage. Alfred tried not to think about what that could mean.
Unsure what to do next, Alfred stopped in the middle of the path and looked wildly about him. Suddenly, taking the lane onto Rue de la Cimetière didn’t seem like such a good idea. He was far more likely to run into some soldiers there. In a panic, Alfred turned away from the noise and began running up the hill through the long grass towards the edge of Pierre Petit’s cornfield.
More gunfire. Louder now, and much, much closer. It seemed to be coming from the Joubert barn behind him on the corner of Rue de la Cimetière and Rue Depaul. Terrified, Alfred ran head-long into the corn, which in the early summer sun was already as high as his waist. Then he dived down to the ground, taking cover among the thick green shoots. He knew he had to stop. If the Germans were that close they could easily spot him. He had no choice but to wait, to lie low, hidden among the corn, until the firing stopped.
21: Escape from the Barn
The deafening crack of the explosion inside the church sent shivers up Dietrich’s spine. This was the signal he had asked all the platoons at the six locations around the village to listen out for. There was no turning back now. The massacre had begun.
He did not open his mind to the horror of what he was about to cause. He did not see these victims as people. They were purely pawns in the game of war – a game in which he was well practised, and which he could not lose.
He knew that some of his comrades, Captain Krüger and Ragnar among them, thought he was taking a risk in changing Major General Scholz’s orders, but he hadn’t really changed them, he felt. He had adapted them. Improved them. He had reacted to new information and moulded the plan into sheer perfection. No one could deny he was the creator of the greatest strike at the Resistance yet.
After waiting for a few seconds to allow the smoke bomb to fill the nave, Dietrich gave the order for his soldiers to storm in and open fire. The black smoke which billowed out of the door as the men wrenched it open mingled with the sounds of the chaos inside.
‘Quick! Quick!’ Dietrich roared at his men. The sooner they could shut up that pathetic shouting and screaming, the better.
He watched the soldiers disappearing into the gloom. Then, satisfied that his orders would be carried out as he wished, he passed back control to the platoon leader. He needed to move on. He needed to make sure that the gunfire he could hear from around the village meant that his grisly game was being played out.
Dietrich stayed only a few minutes at the mill barn. All the men inside were dead and the soldiers had begun piling straw and wood on top of the bodies, ready to set them alight. Likewise the men in the barn further up the road, and in the blacksmith’s workshop. So far so good.
He walked on up the hill, heading next for the Joubert barn. Near to the junction with Rue de la Cimetière, Dietrich heard a commotion in one of the terraced houses to his left. The troops who were not assigned to the church or to one of the six other key targets around the village had been ordered to continue checking the rest of the buildings for fugitives, then to set fire to each building once it was confirmed as clear.
He ducked his head inside the doorway. It was a tiny, modest home, with a long narrow hallway and just two rooms leading off it. A blond-haired teenage SS soldier was standing blocking the far end of the hallway, near the bottom of the stairs. He was pointing his rifle into a tiny cubby hole under the stairs and shrieking, ‘Out! Out!’
‘Who’s in there?’
The soldier jumped, alarmed at Dietrich’s voice.
‘Just shoot them, you fool!’
‘I, I can’t, Major. They’re…’
Dietrich had no time for this. He stormed down the hall, taking his revolver from its holster and pulled the soldier out of the way. Cowering in the cramped little cupboard was an old couple, the man shielding his wife’s head with his hands.
‘Please,’ begged the old man, his voice barely audible.
Dietrich fired two shots and put his revolver back in its holster. Without a trace of emotion on his face, he stepped back and slammed the cupboard door shut.
He looked at the young officer, who was leaning with his back against the wall and snivelling, with complete disgust. He began to march back down the hallway towards the front door, but as he drew level with the soldier, he turned and shoved his face into his, their noses almost touching.
The soldier felt Dietrich pressing something into his chest. He was convinced he was about to die too.
Dietrich glanced up at the Death’s Head badge on the soldier’s cap. ‘You don’t deserve to wear that badge,’ he sneered. ‘You’re pathetic. I should shoot you, too, for disobeying my orders.’
A trickle of sweat ran down the side of the young soldier’s face and his lips trembled.
‘Now, can you manage to torch the place, or do I have to do that for you as well?’ continued Dietrich, the sarcasm dripping from his every word.
The soldier rapidly nodded his head, his knees weak, and with one last sneer, Dietrich was gone, letting the box of matches that he had been pressing into the soldier’s chest fall from his fingers onto Ethan and Rachael’s floor.
At the Joubert barn, Leon and the others had been trying to stay calm, despite the machine guns pointing at them from the barn door. The soldiers outside certainly seemed relaxed. They were laughing and joking and Leon began to allow himself to believe the story they had been fed. Maybe Major Dietrich had been telling the truth. Perhaps they were just keeping the men there while they searched the town one last time. If the Germans turned up no evidence, proved that the Mayor was right to say that they were innocent, maybe they would be released.
But then came the explosion from the church. Leon’s first thought was of Sylvie and the children. ‘Oh my God,’ he cried out aloud. ‘My family’s in there.’
He turned to Guy, who was standing next to him, looking alarmed, his hands above his head.
‘What are you doing?’ Leon asked, not understanding.
Without taking down his hands, Guy nodded his head towards the barn entrance.
Leon turned and looked straight down the barrel of one of the two machine guns, now being made ready to fire. He opened his mouth, and the last thing he noticed before the bullets started to fly, was that the guns seemed to be aimed rather low.
The initial blast of bullets which sprayed into the crowd of sixty terrified men huddled together in the Joubert barn all came in below waist level. Crying out with pain, one man after the next fell to the floor, clutching at their legs.
Next to Leon, Guy had been hit by a bullet in the wrist as he gave up his sign of surrender and dived to the ground. Untouched, Leon dropped behind him onto the floor, face down, and was rapidly hidden by falling bodies.
The shooting continued until all sixty men were felled.
‘Why are they doing this?’ Leon kept asking himself. ‘Why aim to wound, not kill?’
When finally the firing stopped, Leon dared to lift his head. Through the tangle of bod
ies he could just see the machine gunners standing up and lifting their guns to one side. Then the cruel reality of the SS plan hit home.
Two soldiers entered the barn and began scattering straw and firewood then covering it with oil. Meanwhile, the remaining soldiers from the platoon, some carrying rifles, others revolvers, picked their way through the heap of bodies, shooting anyone they thought had remained unscathed.
Leon felt a boot pressing down on his back and had to hold his breath so as not to cry out.
Diving for cover, one man had fallen across Guy Dupont’s legs. Guy glanced down and recognised him as an old friend named Gerard, someone he had grown up with. One of the SS officers saw Gerard, too, and saw that he was unhurt. He killed him with a shot to the head, and Guy cried out as he felt the bullet pass through his friend into his own thigh.
More shots were fired. The body in front of Leon went limp. He was certain that he would be next, but his own body was so deeply buried under others that the soldiers did not see that he was still unmarked.
When the soldiers were satisfied that no one could move, they ignited the bonfire that they had created.
Trapped beneath the weight of the bodies above them, Guy and Leon could feel the fire beginning to singe their clothes. Guy’s hair caught fire and he had to fight hard to free his hands in order to smother it.
It was at that moment that Major Dietrich arrived at the Joubert barn. Leon could hear the soldiers joking and laughing with their commander, clearly pleased with their results.
‘Pigs!’ one of the injured men screamed in response.
‘Can you move, Guy?’ Leon whispered to his neighbour.
Guy coughed as the smoke began to fill his lungs. His eyes were streaming but he nodded.
‘Quick, try to get up, while they’re distracted,’ said Leon. ‘I’m not going to let them burn me alive.’