‘Vive la France,’ the woman replied weakly, before tugging the arm of her baffled looking son to resume their walk.
The first explosion and attached bullets echoed a kilometre away as Eugene led Rosie into another narrow alley. They were behind an apartment block, with rats darting through ankle-deep trash at their feet.
Edith had used this route hundreds of times while delivering messages for resistance and knew what came next, but Rosie gagged from the stench as Eugene cut down six concrete steps and opened a rectangular hatch covering a low brick archway.
He had to sit Edith on a step before crawling through the arch. A stream trickled below as he went down four metal rungs into the base of the brick-built sewer.
‘Feels like home,’ Edith joked weakly, as she pushed off a ledge and jumped into Eugene’s arms. Rosie lowered the equipment before closing the hatch and climbing down herself.
Even with Edith clamped to his back, Eugene could stand up straight. During storms the sewer was flushed by rainwater running over a metre deep into Lorient harbour, but it had been dry for the past few days, allowing the stench of untreated sewage to build up.
Eugene’s torch lit the way, sending rats sploshing for cover. Rosie felt sick and tried thinking of flowers or the smell of bread cooking, but her imagination broke down every time something unmentionable squelched under her boot.
‘It won’t be long,’ Eugene said, when he looked back and caught the nausea on Rosie’s face.
But it wasn’t long in the same way that dentists tell you something won’t hurt before putting you through an hour of complete agony. They were going gently upwards, against the trickle of sewage. Edith seemed slightly dazed, but also happy. She reminded Eugene that it had been her idea to start using sewers to move around town.
‘Not just sewers,’ Eugene said, making conversation to take Rosie’s mind off her nausea. ‘We knocked a few cellars together. The Boche3 would put up a security barrier and we’d go into someone’s house and emerge six doors down on the other side. Or sometimes even in the next street.’
‘We had some scrapes, didn’t we, boss?’ Edith said.
‘I’d expect more scrapes before we’re out of this,’ Eugene said.
There was enough tenderness in the way Edith spoke to Eugene to make Rosie suspect that she had a crush on him. And if the crush wasn’t quite mutual, it was still clear that Eugene was extremely fond of her.
In several spots the sewer had worrying cracks caused by bombing, and in one place the ceiling had partly collapsed. They had no choice but to squeeze beneath it, wary of bringing the roof down.
The final two-hundred-metre section was a circular stone pipe. They had to stoop, but it was easier on the nose because no sewage ran into this section of the pipe. At its mouth, the pipe emerged into a steep-sided ditch.
After clambering up an embankment, they found themselves amidst the rusty rails and overgrown tracks of a railway depot more than two kilometres from where they’d set off.
It had been a passenger train storage and maintenance yard before the invasion, but passengers weren’t encouraged to travel into the secure zone around Lorient, so there were no trains left, and the only sidings in use were a pair that had been extended half a kilometre to serve a concrete mixing plant built by the Germans.
The mixing plant was visible over the tops of trees, though dark green camouflage netting had been stretched across to make it hard to see from the air. After a full three-sixty to check that nobody was in sight, Eugene dashed across a dozen rusted and overgrown tracks, before squatting down beside a disused signalling hut.
‘What’s the hold-up?’ Rosie asked.
Eugene sat Edith against the side of the hut. He shook his arms and wriggled his fingers, while simultaneously rubbing his boots on the rough grass to clear the filth trapped in the soles of his boots.
‘My hands have gone numb,’ he explained.
Rosie was straining under the weight of the pack and machine gun. She thought about setting it down, but wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to lift it up again. She settled for a long drink from her water bottle, and a vigorous attempt to scrape her boots.
This was also her first proper chance to look at Edith’s injuries. All the agents in Espionage Research Unit B had done first aid training, but as she was a girl Charles Henderson had also sent Rosie away for a more advanced nursing course.
As far as Rosie could tell, a broken finger and the possibility of cracked ribs were as serious as Edith’s injuries got. The bad news was that the sheer number of minor cuts, burns and bruises would slow the healing process. Several were already infected and a trip through a germ-filled sewer was the last thing she’d needed.
‘Sorry, but I had to put her down or I would have dropped her,’ Eugene said, as he screwed the cap back on his water bottle. ‘Not too far to Madame Lisle’s place now.’
Notes
3 Boche – Offensive term for Germans
CHAPTER SEVEN
Madame Lisle ran a small stud farm. Unlike most peasants, she’d been allowed to remain in the Lorient military zone because petrol was in short supply and several important Kriegsmarine officers had taken a liking to the practical, well-tempered horses she had a reputation for breeding.
Lisle was in her mid-sixties. She knew Edith, having been a lifelong friend of her guardian Madame Mercier. While not a resistance member, Lisle had helped in small ways and had even harboured a radio operator who’d been forced to go on the run.
Eugene had considered approaching Madame Lisle in advance, explaining their situation and asking to buy horses for the operation. But everyone was nervous after the brutal Gestapo crackdown and you couldn’t be sure how anyone would react. So while he’d checked out Madame Lisle’s property two nights earlier, making sure she was still around and had the kind of animals he needed, Eugene didn’t speak with her until he arrived on her doorstep with Edith on his back.
‘Edith, my god!’ Madame Lisle said. ‘The state of you.’
Shock turned to fright as she took in Eugene and Rosie’s combat gear and she moved to close her front door.
‘I have Germans visiting today,’ she spluttered. ‘You’ve got to go. It’s dangerous here.’
The reaction was no surprise and Eugene wedged his boot in the door. ‘I’m sorry to impose.’
‘You cannot!’ Madame Lisle shouted.
She was angry at Eugene barging into her front hall, but Edith’s wounds and bloody dress were hard for a decent person to ignore. Madame Lisle’s body deflated as she took a step back.
‘They’ve been torturing people around here too,’ she said anxiously. ‘Four Gestapo came to my neighbour’s house. Their boy is only thirteen. He’s a bit simple, but they threatened to slice off his private parts if he didn’t tell them what he knew about two friends who were in the resistance.’
‘I know,’ Eugene said soothingly, as he helped Edith into the hallway.
‘The poor boy is up each night with cold sweats and nightmares,’ Madame Lisle said.
‘These are tough times,’ Eugene said. ‘I promise we won’t stay long.’
He took no pride in using his bulk to intimidate an elderly woman, but it was a matter of survival and there was nowhere else to get horses.
‘Are you here alone?’ Rosie asked. ‘Is anyone working on the farm?’
‘I have a stable boy, but he takes Saturday off.’
‘We’ll just be here until dark, Madame,’ Eugene said. ‘We need three horses and I’ll pay whatever you ask. We’ve got a train to catch this evening and after that you’ll never see us again.’
‘Do you have a bath?’ Rosie asked; breathing air tinged with the smell of horse piss, while realising she ought to have removed her sewage-smeared boots before stepping indoors.
‘I’ve a tin bath but no coal. I’ve been chopping wood, but my back is terrible and that Michel is hardly worth the money I pay him.’
Eugene smiled as he showed off
his bicep and sensed a chance to win the old girl over.
‘Big strong arms,’ he said. ‘I can chop all the wood you need.’
Madame Lisle was on edge. She couldn’t sit still and over the next couple of hours her mood flitted between sympathy and resentment. She helped Rosie scrub Edith in tepid water, and found some bandage and iodine for her wounds, but she snapped at Eugene and didn’t thank him for chopping wood and helping her feed the horses.
The German visitors were due at eleven and Madame Lisle led them upstairs. The first floor was the home’s single bedroom. Photos of pet dogs and faded rosettes from horse shows were pinned around the dressing table.
While Eugene squatted by a small sash window, Edith lay on the bed as Rosie practised her nursing skills, cleaning the dirt out of wounds and putting in a couple of stitches with sterile thread from her first aid pack.
‘I could shoot him dead from here,’ Eugene said quietly, as he peered down at a horse trotting on the cobbles behind the house.
The grey-haired German in the saddle wore brown riding boots and a dark blue Kriegsmarine admiral’s uniform. He was accompanied by the naval rating who worked as his assistant, while a driver waited in the open-topped Mercedes out front.
Edith hissed with pain as Rosie dabbed dark purple iodine fluid into a deep cigar burn on her shoulder blade.
‘Sorry,’ Rosie said. ‘The wounds down your legs are already badly infected. I need to seal these up to stop it spreading.’
‘I know,’ Edith said, as a tear streaked down her face. ‘I’m trying to keep quiet but it really hurts.’
Eugene watched as the German took the horse on a trot across the cobbles and the surrounding paddock. He was clearly an expert rider and when he jumped off, he gave Madame Lisle an enormous smile.
‘You breed such beautiful animals,’ the admiral told her, as he smiled under his great walrus moustache. ‘The price as agreed, in Reichsmarks. Shall we go indoors to settle up?’
Eugene ducked below the window frame as the German turned back towards the house.
‘Madame seems awfully friendly with the admiral,’ Eugene noted warily.
Rosie dismissed the thought. ‘He’s an officer. He loves horses, of course she likes him.’
‘Madame Lisle’s horses are beautiful,’ Edith said, sounding like she was a little bit out of it. ‘If I ever got rich, they’d be the first thing I’d buy.’
Edith was weak and her whole body ached from being tortured, but after eating, drinking and washing she felt human for the first time in days. And the chance of life, after facing execution, gave her a sense of elation.
‘I don’t think this floor is very thick,’ Eugene said, as he heard Madame Lisle and the officer chatting in the kitchen directly below. ‘Put the iodine down and keep still for a bit. We can’t risk another yelp.’
Downstairs, the admiral began counting out his money.
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ Madame Lisle said. ‘I trust your word as an officer.’
The admiral laughed.
‘When the Gestapo buy horses, I count their money,’ Madame Lisle said. ‘Those thugs practically steal them, the prices they force me to accept.’
‘They’re not gentlemen,’ the admiral said, speaking in stilted but polite French. ‘We’d have none of this trouble with resistance if the French people had been treated correctly. But what do I know? You and I hail from a gentler era.’
Madame Lisle gave a friendly laugh, but as that noise faded Eugene thought he heard the clatter of a diesel engine.
‘Sounds like a truck,’ Eugene whispered.
He crept across the bedroom to hear better, but there was no window overlooking the front of the house.
‘Maybe it’s to take the horse away,’ Rosie suggested.
‘You can’t take a horse in a regular truck,’ Edith said. ‘You’d frighten it to death.’
Rosie’s heart accelerated as Eugene picked up the machine gun resting on top of his backpack and edged towards the door.
‘How can anyone know we’re here?’ Rosie whispered.
‘A million ways,’ Eugene said. ‘If someone saw us going into the sewer they’d guess we’d end up near here. Or someone saw us coming out of the pipe and took cover. Or we passed someone working in a field.’
Edith was naked and Rosie threw over one of her own dresses. ‘Get that on in case we have to run.’
As Rosie grabbed her boots and pushed her feet into them, Madame Lisle opened the front door. Out back, Eugene saw the admiral’s assistant being startled by two armed Gestapo officers coming around the side of the cottage.
‘They’re blocking our exits,’ Eugene said, as he took the safety off his pistol and threw the machine gun over his shoulder.
Rosie didn’t have a weapon handy, so Eugene threw her the aged revolver that his Gestapo friend had used to shoot Edith’s guard.
‘Stay with Edith,’ Eugene said. ‘Don’t come down unless I shout.’
The admiral was surprised to see Gestapo and shouted with the tone of someone used to being in charge. ‘What the devil is going on here?’
‘Gestapo business,’ someone shouted back. ‘Stand aside, these premises are to be searched.’
Training kicked in the instant Eugene and Rosie knew they were facing hostiles. They were trapped upstairs, so they had to make the first move.
Eugene rushed through the bedroom door, rounded the top of the stairs and aimed downwards. His first two shots hit the admiral in the back and as he crumpled another blast hit the Gestapo officer coming through the front door.
As Madame Lisle covered her ears and hurried down the hallway towards her kitchen, Rosie scrambled to the upstairs window. The old revolver wasn’t the most accurate weapon and her first shot skimmed over the head of a Gestapo man heading for the back door.
The bullet disturbed the admiral’s new horse, dragging the assistant holding her reins off his feet and bowling another Gestapo man over. As two more Gestapo officers scrambled away from the bucking horse, Rosie took advantage of the distraction.
Her first shot with the elderly revolver had pulled to the left, so she made a slight correction to her aim and popped off two shots. One Gestapo man was shot clean through the heart, the second was knocked unconscious by the bullet hitting his metal helmet square on.
With surprise still on his side, Eugene moved towards the front door. He shot the admiral’s driver, then sprayed a dozen bullets into the admiral’s Mercedes and the truck the Gestapo had arrived in. One Gestapo man was injured, while two more shot wildly towards the cottage as they ran for cover behind the car.
The machine gun needed reloading, but before Eugene backed into the hallway he ripped a grenade off his belt and lobbed it into the open-topped car. As he attached a fresh stick of bullets to his gun, Eugene heard someone shooting behind him.
It was the Gestapo man that Rosie had failed to stop coming in through the back door. Madame Lisle had grabbed a knife and sat cowering under her kitchen table. As the German passed without seeing her, he aimed his rifle at Eugene’s back.
‘Dirty son of a pig!’ Madame Lisle shouted, as she plunged a jagged-edged bread knife deep into the German’s calf.
The German squeezed the trigger as he fell, shooting Eugene in the right buttock. Nobody heard Eugene’s excruciating howl because it coincided with the grenade exploding. The blast sent chunks of shrapnel in all directions, some of the hot lumps puncturing the uniforms of retreating Gestapo men.
Up in the bedroom, Rosie acted clinically, using her last bullet to shoot the admiral’s assistant through the chest as he got up after being bowled over by the horse. Edith was weak, but she’d managed to open Eugene’s backpack, pulling out a leather holster which held three grenades and an automatic pistol.
‘Thanks,’ Rosie said, throwing down the useless revolver before pocketing the grenades and taking the pistol. ‘Get your dress on. Be ready to leave.’
Rosie’s ears rang from the grenade blast,
but she was more unsettled by the sudden outbreak of silence.
‘Eugene?’ she shouted, as she rounded the top of the stairs.
He was slumped against the wall of the narrow hallway, with his right leg twisted awkwardly under his body. The bullet had entered his buttock at an upwards angle and exited close to his belly button, taking his bladder and a huge chunk of his lower intestine with it.
The burst stomach left Eugene’s pipe work spattered up the wall, and a smell of his ruptured bowels mingling with the gun smoke in the air. He was still conscious, and while Rosie’s first thought was to help him, Eugene gestured frantically down the hallway.
The German who’d shot Eugene had fallen on his face with a kitchen knife sticking out of his calf. Madame Lisle had shown great agility for an elderly woman, jumping on the German’s back, ripping out the knife and thrusting it back towards his stomach. But the soldier was much stronger. He’d gashed his right hand badly as he grabbed the blade plunging towards him. Now Rosie watched him turn the knife around and go for Madame Lisle’s throat.
She was afraid of shooting the unfamiliar pistol and taking out Madame Lisle by mistake. She also had no idea who was still alive outside, so she feared a bullet in the back as she charged down the hallway.
Madame Lisle screamed as Rosie stepped over the blood pooled around the dead admiral. She took aim at the German. The bullet cavitated the top of his head, and took a huge chunk from the back of his skull as it exited. Rosie couldn’t have aimed any better, but the German’s final spasm had driven the kitchen knife deep into Madame Lisle’s throat.
Lisle was losing blood fast. Rosie wanted to help, but more shots ripped along the hallway. As she took cover by backing into the kitchen, Eugene swung around with his machine gun.
He’d fixed the fresh clip on to the machine gun half a second before he’d been hit and he opened up, hitting a pair of Gestapo men coming across the front lawn towards the house.
Then it all went quiet again. Madame Lisle was past saving, so Rosie dashed back towards Eugene.
Henderson's Boys: One Shot Kill: One Shot Kill Page 4