Cold Lonely Courage

by Soren Petrek

  © 2011 Soren Paul Petrek

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publishers, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-61914-599-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  Cover Art by Michael Morgan

  Michael Morgan is a Member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour and a Founding Academician of the South West Academy of Fine Art in the United Kingdom. His extraordinary paintings are in private and public collections internationally.

  For information concerning his original paintings and prints visit www.marinehouseatbeer.co.uk

  For my parents, William and Sandra Petrek, my Rock of Gibraltar and my wife Renee, my sail on the horizon.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Author's Note:

  “I was responsible for recruiting women for the work, in the face of a good deal of opposition, I may say, from the powers that be. In my view, women were very much better than men for the work. Women, as you must know, have a far greater capacity for cool and lonely courage than men.”

  —Captain Selwyn Jepson, British Special Operations Executive Senior Recruiting Officer, World War Two.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Artillery shells roared through the sky, ripping apart the serenity of the late spring day. Their passing was an obscene display raining down death. The soldiers below clawed their way deeper into the trench, screaming in pain and terror. Men and equipment detonated, pieces of them falling into smoldering piles of dead and ruined bodies. The stench of scorched earth mixed with smoke choked the men and poisoned the air.

  Yves Toche and the men in his unit watched as a sea of German uniforms and tanks came hurtling towards them from behind the bombardment. This was the German blitzkrieg, or “lightning war,” that had seen Poland’s million-man army fall within a month. The Germans pushed the French army back effortlessly as they poured out of Belgium into France.

  The skies were full of German planes, relentlessly strafing and bombing the defenders. Yves watched as squadrons passed overhead, fanning out along the front to join the infantry and armor on the ground to crush the French troops before they had a chance to respond.

  Yves peered over the top of the trench in front of him and shook his head. The French military was not prepared for something like this. They expected Germany to attack but it never seemed to come. Many had taken to calling it the phony war. War had been declared but there was no fighting. The French had placed their faith in the heavy guns directed at Germany and spaced along the mighty Maginot line. It was designed as an impenetrable fortress against invasion from the east. There were over 500 concrete and steel fortifications commanding gigantic firepower and hundreds of thousands of troops. The Germans feigned an attack along the line but then sent a million men and armor into the Netherlands and Belgium through the “impenetrable” Arden Forest. The natural and man-made barriers that were supposed to stop the enemy had failed. Germany had invented a mobile war machine and France simply wasn’t prepared. Germany had learned from its mistakes in the trench battles following their loss in Yves’ father’s war. They didn’t intend to make the same mistake twice.

  Yves looked at the faces of the men in his group. They looked as scared as he felt. The troops descending on them were experienced and hardened. The Germans were emboldened by an expectation of easy victory. The French were paralyzed by the reality that every preparation they had made had failed completely. They were not fools; they expected a full-scale attack, but nothing like the avalanche crashing towards them. Yves saw a few men break and run, but most held their ground. Every muscle in his own body screamed at him to bolt. Instead he checked and rechecked his rifle. It seemed puny in the face of so much firepower, yet he held his position. The ground rumbled as the mass of men and machines came surging forward.

  Yves heard the order to fire. He raised his rifle and shot wildly into the enemy line. Men to his left and right fired desperately. Behind Yves’s position the French artillery was firing their cannons on the advancing Germans. It had little effect as the mass of men and machines charged forward. As he fired, Yves heard the terrifying scream of a Stuka dive-bomber falling down from the sky. He tried to scatter along with others but could only crouch at the last minute when the bomb hit. He was flung from his foxhole, cartwheeling through the air. For one wild moment events around him moved in slow motion. He was jarred back to consciousness when his body slammed into the ground. When he tried to move he felt impossibly heavy. He managed to control one of his hands long enough to reach up and feel the ruin of the right side of his face. He could not see out of his right eye, and could feel his mouth filling with blood. The terror of the implication of his wounds settled on him but couldn’t penetrate the shock that enveloped his body. He knew that he was badly wounded and wondered why he hadn’t been killed instantly. He could see a little out of his left eye but there was nothing left of the men that had been near him when the bomb exploded. They had been swept from the earth, swatted away by the terrible force unleashed from numerous explosions. His vision blurred, as he drifted into merciful unconsciousness.

  Some time later, medics from an ambulance scooped Yves onto a stretcher and raced away towards the rear and a field hospital. Along with countless others, Yves’s war had been cut brutally short.

  CHAPTER TWO

  This is madness, Madeleine thought as she moved slowly down the hospital corridor, shrinking against the wall trying to avoid the dead and dying. A wounded soldier cried out as she slipped in a widening pool of blood pouring out of the torn remnants of his leg. Doctors and nurses rushe
d past, pulling her along in their wake as they flung themselves from patient to patient, trying to save what lives they could.

  Madeleine turned as an orderly grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away from the triage area towards a desk stationed next to a set of double doors. A young doctor looked up from a chart, momentarily taken aback by her radiant beauty.

  “Yves Toche, I’m looking for Yves Toche,” Madeleine blurted out. “He was wounded and brought here.”

  The doctor gestured towards the double doors. “He’s at the end of the ward,” he said abruptly dropping his eyes and moving past her.

  Madeleine saw a hint of hopelessness in the doctor’s expression as he quickly looked away. A question died on her lips as she realized the meaning of the look on his face. Yves was severely wounded. There was no other explanation.

  Madeleine hurried through the double doors and into the ward.

  The ward was quiet and orderly. Madeleine realized at once that the men inside were dying and heavily sedated to ease their pain. She walked down the row of beds looking for her brother, her grief growing as she saw the extent of the trauma the young men had suffered. She clenched her hands, so overwhelmed by what she saw that she could not look away.

  At the end of the room she approached the final bed. She hardly recognized the young man beneath the bandages. His face and hands were tightly wrapped. A tube dripped into a needle in his arm. She quietly bent over him and whispered his name.

  “Yves. It’s Madeleine.”

  She watched as Yves came back from some far off place in his mind. He slowly responded to her voice. Finally his one eye widened as he looked at her. The cornflower blue was still there, but the life force behind it was distant behind a milky haze. Madeleine brushed away a few strands of golden curls that poked out from the bandages that were soaking through with the blood from his wounds. The bandages covering him were a mercy. She could barely stand thinking about the cruelty of the damage inflicted on him. Tears filled her eyes and she tried not to fall apart as she sobbed quietly.

  “Madeleine. Is that you? I can’t see,” he said, his voice trailing off behind the drugs easing his suffering.

  “Yes Yves, I’m here. Are you in pain? I can get the doctor,” she said carefully, taking his hand into hers.

  “No pain, medics and doctors worked on me already…”

  Madeleine bent closer trying to hear as Yves whispered.

  “Yves you can’t leave us,” Madeleine answered desperately.

  “Have to go.”

  “You’re breaking my heart,” she cried as her tears streamed down her face, falling onto the bandages that held his mangled face together.

  Madeleine held him until the last rasps of breath left his body.

  It was long after he stopped breathing that she sat back and looked at him. The pain was gone and he seemed at peace. She prayed silently for him and her family. She asked nothing of God for herself. She was adrift. She could sense the room around her, but she wasn’t there. Neither was Yves, just an empty shell that had once been the light to her dark, the day to her night. The enemy had taken that away without provocation. There had been an act of greed and revenge provoked by Germany’s damaged pride, Madeleine thought. Both were mortal sins, evil in their implications.

  Madeleine stared out the window behind Yves’ hospital bed, trying to gather her wits. She knew that she couldn’t sit next to Yves’ bed and ignore the fact that German troops were rapidly overrunning all of France and would eventually overtake the hospital. She needed to get home and had many long miles to travel. There would be refugees everywhere, and the sooner she set out the better. She felt weak and alone in a way she had never experienced. She knew that she needed to get Yves back to La Ciotat. Her parents would be devastated. She would have to deliver the worst news a parent can get. She could not return without bringing him with her. At least his family could bury him.

  Madeleine brushed the tears from her face. She stood up and kissed Yves on his cheek, the warmth of his body fading. She walked towards the front to get his remains released. She didn’t intend to take no for an answer and didn’t really expect any resistance. Life was for the living and a wounded man would need the bed. She felt strengthened by purpose and knew that somebody would answer for her brother’s death. Germany would find France a hard trophy to hold, of that she was certain. The French people were long accustomed to controlling their own fate. Germany didn’t have a monopoly on national pride. The French were renowned for it.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Madeleine looked from the train window and saw her parents waiting for her on the train platform. She squeezed her eyes closed; suddenly losing the resolve that she had mustered to deliver the terrible news. As she stepped from the train she saw them catch sight of her. She could not keep the anguish from her face. One look and they both knew. There would be explanations later but the message was conveyed. Her mother fell to the ground unable to move. Her father stood mute, crumpled by the blow. In his grief she saw his strength holding him together, his chin raised as he hobbled forward to embrace the child he had left.

  “Soldiers die, Madeleine. We must honor Yves by living our own lives the best we can. The Boche has come before. When we defeat them this time we will destroy them utterly.” Jean-Pierre said determination and coldness creeping into his voice. His eyes were distant, seeing something far away that only he could see.

  Madeleine drew strength from his resolve; it was an anchor for her to hold onto. She knew her parents would not meekly accept the loss of their son, her brother. Revenge would be exacted.

  As the terrible reality sank in and the German lines drew nearer, they clung to each other at every opportunity, afraid that if they let go they’d lose each other the way they’d lost Yves. Madeleine knew that they needed to open their restaurant and serve their customers. Families all over were quietly mourning, having lost young men at the front. Others had been captured and of them there was no news. France was falling rapidly and it seemed as if nothing could stop that now. The British had come to their aid but had been pushed back into the sea at Dunkirk, allowed to leave as Hitler permitted their escape. There would be no counter attack, and hope faded as a grim future unfolded.

  Within a couple of weeks the Toches reopened their doors and continued the routine of managing their restaurant. Yves would have expected this. He had been born to run a restaurant. His easy manner with customers and his love and respect for the food that came out of the kitchen was obvious. When Madeleine served in the dining room or cleared tables, she lacked Yves’ good-natured spirit. He had charmed everyone right down to the dour, unhappy people who thrived on complaint. They were no match for him. He shone like the sun with his easy smile and desire to please. Madeleine’s reaction to customer complaint clearly indicated that she was a resteraunteur better suited to the back of the house.

  Germany charged past the French defenses and took the country in little more than a month. Madeleine’s father was silent as all of this transpired. Nobody knew what to expect or what to do. Eventually German troops established a presence in the town and more were garrisoned nearby. France surrendered and was broken down into two governing areas. A puppet government had been set up in the south in the city of Vichy. The fiction was that France was allowed self-government in the south. It meant little and was all the more insulting when Henri Petain, a national hero from the First World War, agreed to an armistice with Germany. He then took control of the Vichy government as its head. Her father said the world had gone mad. General Petain, a hero from the Great War, was now a collaborator with his old enemy. Madeleine watched as her parents aged before her eyes. The only normalcy was the routine of the restaurant as they tried to mask their grief through work.

  Customers came to Chez Toche, but now they had a new clientele. German officers came in, and for the most part were at least cordial. A few were arrogant and boisterous, treating the French like servants to provide their every whim. The Toches did not
hing to overtly antagonize the Germans.

  Within a few months whisperings of a resistance movement began. Jean-Pierre said that whatever was to be done during the occupation would happen behind the scenes. The Toche family discussed the implications in secret, waiting and willing for an opportunity to do their part.

  Madeleine was often the object of flirtations from the young officers. She came to realize that they weren’t all Nazis. She never encouraged any of their comments or behavior. For the most part they were young men and boys far away from home, trying to live up to some romantic notion of fraternizing with beautiful French girls. A few glared at her in a way that concerned her but there was no one to whom she could complain. She did her work and moved ahead. She had no social life outside of the restaurant even though her parents tried to encourage her to see her friends. She simply told them that she wasn’t ready, and they left it at that.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Madeleine took over the duties of going to the market to purchase supplies for the restaurant. Because there were few restaurants in town they were able to obtain more rationed items than individual families. The strength of their cuisine made the restaurant a favorite dining spot among the German officers. Someone in a position of authority must have given orders to provide the restaurant with whatever was required. The sea and the countryside provided much of the menu. The Germans spent lavishly, and the Toches were able to buy better cheese and meat from the small farms. The fishermen in the port kept the supply of fish abundant and fresh. Wine in the region was plentiful and the restaurant kept their cellar well stocked.

  Obtaining what they needed simply required more effort than before. Many Mondays when the restaurant was closed, Madeleine and her parents traveled around the countryside, gathering the wild thyme and rosemary that grew abundantly in the dry rocky terrain of the hills that rose up a few miles from the sea. Everything wild and edible was collected. The truffle hunters and their pigs went on providing the dark pungent fungus that could change an everyday meal into a gourmet feast. No one interfered with the truffle hunters. The magic of the ugly little fungus saw to that.