The next morning the sky was bright and clear with only the broken blossoms in the rose garden testifying to the ferociousness of the storm. She braved the hard, curious eyes of the Germans by walking round to the stables for her bicycle. There was no excuse now for bicycle rides, Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts was deserted. Only one or two farmers, obstinate to the last, had been allowed to remain, and that mainly so that they could still supply milk and fresh eggs to the militia. She wheeled her bicycle over the cobbles of the courtyard and through the archway on to the gravelled drive, expecting at any moment to be stopped.
Lieutenant Halder turned sharply in her direction, his eyes narrowing. She lifted her head high, her chin wilful. If he wanted to stop her he would have to do so physically. A private called out ‘Halt,’ beginning to run towards her, but Halder barked out a restraining order and the private slowed to a standstill, watching hostilely as she pressed down on the pedals and skimmed away from them.
She had no intention of going far. She did not want to be away from Valmy when Dieter returned, nor did she want to miss any message that might come from him. At the far end of the drive she turned left, away from the village and towards the sea. She wanted to see for herself if extra troops had been posted. If the cuff tops were bristling with men.
She cycled as near as possible to the giant rolls of barbed wire that closed off the cliffs. Two soliders were squatting outside a pillbox, playing cards. Another was patrolling, keeping a lookout for any approaching officers. It was all very curious. There was no sign that tanks were being ferried to the coast. Or extra men. No sign of any extraordinary activity at all. Yet for three consecutive nights the message from London to the Resistance had been broadcast loud and clear. Why, then, were the Germans not in a state of high alarm? Was their confidence such that nothing could shake it?
Depressed and anxious, she cycled back towards Valmy. The day had grown hot and sultry. The storm of the previous evening had cleared nothing from the air. If anything it seemed even more oppressive. To the right of her the sea glittered, surging with a heavy swell, the waves creaming on the beaches, the steel spikes and bars that Rommel had ordered embedded in the sand, rearing skywards grotesquely.
If Hitler did not die … if the Allies came … Then Dieter would fight against them. He would fight, not for Hitler, but for Germany. He would be responsible for the deaths of men who were coming to free France. And he, too, would very likely die. The monstrousness of it all sickened her. She skimmed to a halt, wheeling her bicycle to the verge of the road and into the field beyond, throwing herself down on the grass.
Time: it was the one thing that they desperately needed and the one thing that they did not have. Time for von Stauffenburg to carry the bomb into Hitler’s headquarters. Time for Rommel to assume the mantle of leadership. Time in which a peace treaty could be signed. Time in which the coming battle could be averted.
She blinked up at the sky and the scudding clouds, overcome by the terrifying certainty that time was not going to be kind to them. It was going to betray and defeat them. Minute by minute, it was leading them, not towards happiness, but towards disaster.
That evening, for the fourth time, she listened in, alone, to the radio. ‘It is hot in Suez … It is hot in Suez,’ the voice of the announcer said clearly. ‘The dice are on the table… The dice are on the table.’ She waited, her heart racing, and at last it came. The second part of the message that Dieter had told her would presage the invasion of Europe. ‘Wound my heart with a monotonous languor … Wound my heart with a monotonous languor.’ She drew in a deep, shuddering breath, and as she did so there came the sound of a powerful car approaching Valmy at speed.
She leapt to her feet, running out of the room and down the spiral stone staircase. It had to be Dieter. It couldn’t possibly be anyone else.
She flew along the corridor to the head of the stairs. Distantly she heard the car doors slam; heard him wishing his chauffeur goodnight. There was no urgency in his voice. No strain. As she reached the head of the stairs he stepped into the huge, medieval hall beneath her and she knew, instantly, that he had heard nothing.
He looked up towards her, sensing her presence immediately.
‘Good evening, Major,’ the sentry on guard outside the grand dining-room said courteously.
‘Good evening, Corporal,’ Dieter said, removing his cap and gloves and tossing them to one side, taking the stairs towards her two at a time. ‘I missed you,’ he said fiercely, crushing her against him.
She looked up at him, her eyes large and dark. ‘You don’t know, do you? The message … It’s been broadcast four times since you left. Tonight, just minutes ago, the second part was broadcast.’
The grin of delight at having her in his arms again vanished. ‘I don’t believe you!’ he said, his brows flying together. ‘It isn’t possible.’
‘There was also a message to all civilians living near the coast. We were told to move inland for safety. Papa has taken Maman and Marie to Balleroy. I said I would join them later … after I’d seen you.’
He gripped her hand tightly, striding quickly towards his room. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he asked savagely. ‘There’s been no news of it! Not a whisper!’
He slammed into the room, punching on the light, striding across to his desk and the telephone.
‘The signal Canaris warned would presage the landings has been broadcast for four nights!’ he barked at Halder. ‘What orders have been given from headquarters?’
Lisette could hear stunned amazement in Halder’s voice. His reply came that none had been given.
Dieter severed the connection, his face grim. ‘You’re sure, quite sure, what it was that you heard?’
She couldn’t speak. It hadn’t occurred to her that the Germans were unaware of the message. Information about it had come from German intelligence. It was inconceivable that they hadn’t listened to it and acted upon it. But if they hadn’t heard … If it was she who brought it to their attention …
‘Oh God,’ she whispered, her face white, knowing the treachery she would be guilty of. ‘Don’t tell them, Dieter. Please …’
‘I have to!’ His eyes were agonised. ‘Von Stauffenburg can’t act until the beginning of next month. We have to be in a position of strength when Hitler is removed so that Rommel can negotiate a peace that will be honourable to Germany. If the Allies succeed in invading France there will be no peace with honour. Only defeat.’
He began to dial again. She didn’t know who he was calling. It didn’t matter. She moved with lightening speed, seizing the telephone wire as he said tersely, ‘Major Meyer speaking. The Canaris message …’
She wrenched at the wire with all her strength, ripping it from the wall, yanking the telephone from his desk, sending it crashing to the floor.
‘I’m not sorry,’ she gasped defiantly as he whirled round on her. ‘I had to do it! I couldn’t let you tell them if they didn’t already know!’
His face was sheet-white. ‘Mein Gott!’ He kicked the telephone out of the way, seizing her shoulders. For a terrible moment she thought that he was going to hit her and then he groaned, pulling her against him. ‘I understand,’ he said, his voice choked. ‘And you must be understanding for me, Lisette.’ He looked down at her and in his eyes she saw all his love for her. All his concern. All his fear for her safely. ‘I’m going down to the coast. I don’t know when I will be back. As soon as it is light you must make your way to Balleroy.’
She nodded, overcome by the feeling that time had run out. That these few moments were all they were ever going to have.
‘I love you!’ she said fiercely. ‘Oh God, my darling. I love you!’
His lips came down on hers, hard and sweet, and then he was gone, sprinting along the corridor and down the stairs, snatching his cap and gloves, wrenching open the door and running for his car.
Two hours later the first of the planes began to roar overhead. She turned off the lights, pulling the heavy black-out
curtains to one side, her eyes straining skywards. There were more of them than she had ever seen at one time before. Certainly more than was usual for the nightly bombing of Cherbourg. She stood alone in the darkened room, hugging her arms tight against her chest as wave after wave of low-flying aircraft flew over Valmy. It was beginning. The invasion of France by the Allies was under way.
Dieter’s Horch careered at breakneck speed down the narrow lanes that led to his observation bunker. The sky to both the east and west was red with flares, the sound of bombing unmistakeable. The Horch swept through the outer perimeter of the coastal defence zone and rocked to a halt. Seconds later, with Halder and two gunnery officers hard on his heels, he was scrambling quickly up a steep, sand-covered track behind the cliffs.
‘They’re bombing Le Havre as well as Cherbourg,’ Halder panted to him. Dieter grunted but did not slacken his pace. The track to the bunker was treacherous in the darkness. Coils of barbed wire hemmed it in on either side, and beyond the barbed wire was mile after mile of minefields. The slit trench they were making for was almost at the top of the cliffs. He dropped down into it with agility, taking the concrete stairs beyond two at a time sprinting down underground passages to the large, single-roomed bunker below.
The three men manning it swung round to him in surprise. He wasted no time on explanations, striding past them to the high-powered artillery glasses which stood on a pedestal opposite one of the apertures. Slowly, moving the glasses from left to right, he scanned the bay. There was nothing. No lights. No sound. Not even an errant fishing boat-on the silk-dark surface of the sea.
‘There’s nothing there,’ he said tersely to Halder. ‘But there will be. I’d stake my life on it.’
He strode across to the field telephone, dialling headquarters. ‘Meyer here,’ he said in answer to a sharp query on the other end of the line. ‘The Canaris message was broadcast only minutes ago. Have you been appraised of it?’
His Lieutenant Colonel sounded amused. ‘No, my dear Meyer, we have not. Please don’t sound so anxious. I really don’t think the enemy is stupid enought to announce its arrival over the radio.’
Dieter blanched. ‘That message is vital to our security!’ he hissed. ‘It means that we can expect the invasion within forty-eight hours!’
‘Then get down to the coast and keep me informed,’ his Lieutenant Colonel said laconically. ‘Good night, Meyer.’
If the man had been in the same room Dieter knew that he would have shot him. Savagely he asked for a connection to Rommel’s headquarters at La Roche-Guyon.
He was informed that the message had been received; that no immediate action was being taken. The Field Marshal had taken leave. He was visiting his wife in Ulm.
Dieter slammed down the telephone, convulsed with fury. The work of counter-intelligence had been for nothing. Germany had been given the opportunity of being ready and waiting when the Allies invaded and the opportunity had been squandered. Within hours the enemy would be storming ashore and the German army was sitting on its backside, doing nothing. It didn’t bear thinking of.
He seized the artillery glasses once again. In daylight, from this position a hundred feet above the beach, the whole of the Bay of the Seine could be seen, from the tip of the Cherbourg peninsula to Le Havre. Even now, in the moonlight, he had a formidable view. But the sea was still empty. There was nothing to be seen.
It was the longest night of his life. For months he had done all that he could to make the beaches of France inaccessible to the Allies. Now there was nothing more he could do. He tried hard not to think of Lisette. To think of Lisette was to be convulsed with fear for her safety and fear was the last thing he wanted to feel or to communicate to his men. He used the field telephone constantly, checking on his units, determined that any soldier landing on a Normandy beach would never leave it. They would be repulsed as Rommel had always said they would be – in the water. The fighting would not spread beyond. It would not touch Valmy.
The telephone rang stridently. ‘Paratroopers have been reported on the peninsula,’ his Lieutenant Colonel barked, no longer sounding amused. ‘Alert your men, Meyer.’
‘Yes sir,’ Dieter said tightly, refraining from telling him that his men had been on full alert for hours.
‘The sky is beginning to lighten, Sir,’ Halder said, as he slammed the telephone receiver back onto its rest.
Dieter walked across to him and swung the artillery glasses once more over the vast sweep of the sea. There was a heavy, low-lying mist. White-capped waves roared ceaselessly shorewards. His glasses swung slowly across the dark mass of the Cherbourg peninsula and then back once more across the bay. The sky was dulling to grey, long fingers of light presaging dawn. He was just about to lower the glasses when he halted, every muscle and sinew freezing in immobility.
They were coming. Ship after ship was taking shape and substance as the mist and clouds and the night ceased to hide them. There were hundreds of them. Thousands of them. More ships than he had ever dreamt possible. A mighty armada filled the horizon from east to west. An avenging force so terrible in its beauty that the breath caught in his throat.
‘Jesus God,’ he said softly. ‘Take a look, Halder. You’ll never see such a sight again.’
He handed the glasses to Halder, but still he could see them. Pennants flying, battle ensigns streaming in the wind. His lieutenant lowered the glasses and turned to face him, his face white.
‘It’s the end,’ he whispered. ‘No force on earth could repel an invasion of that size!’
‘You’re wrong, Halder,’ Dieter said grimly. ‘We can. And by God, we’re going to!’ He strode once more over to the telephone and rang headquarters. ‘It’s the invasion,’ he said brusquely. ‘It’s here. All ten thousand ships of it!’
The bombing continued all night, sometimes far off over Cherbourg, sometimes frighteningly near. She left Dieter’s study and ran up the stone spiral staircase to the turret room. In daylight, the entire headland and the sea beyond was clearly visible from the high-arched windows. Now all she could see were clouds scudding across the face of the moon, and the planes. Wave after wave of planes. She opened the window and leaned out and saw that the sky to the east and the west was streaked with flame. Cherbourg and Le Havre. Both burning.
The night seemed interminable and then slowly, almost grudgingly, the darkness began to pearl, presaging dawn. Through the early morning mist the headland and the lip of the cliff took on shape and substance and she leaned further out of the window, straining her eyes seawards. At first she could see nothing, and then a sliver of light cleaved the sky and there they were. Ship after ship. Massing the horizon. Uncountable. Unimaginable.
The sliver of light cracked and broke. Dawn seeped over the horizon and a dull gold glow rippled over the hundreds and thousands of ships and men that had come to free France. There was one long second of silence. One moment in which everything was perfectly still and then the roar of guns crashed out across the water and planes swooped in low, bombing as they came.
She ran to the radio, tuning it to London, pressing her ear against the set in order to hear above the deafening noise.
‘This is London calling,’ a voice said faintly through a roar of static. ‘I bring you an urgent instruction from the Supreme Commander. The lives of many of you depend upon the speed and thoroughness with which you obey it. It is particularly addressed to all who live within thirty-five kilometres of the coast. Leave your towns at once. Stay off frequented roads. Go on foot and take nothing with you which you cannot easily carry. Get as quickly as possible into open country …’
A shell exploded, so near that she could hear nothing more. Common sense told her to run for the cellars but from where she was, she could see the beach. See the ships as they neared the shore. Recklessly she crossed once more to the window, the concussion of the shoreline guns reverberating through the soles of her shoes.
The noise and clamour and smoke were so dense that she could barely di
stinguish anything. The glass in the windows exploded inwards, a shard catching her on the forehead. Planes continued to scream overhead. Guns from the German shore batteries blazed out over the water, met by devastating fire from the battleships. She pressed her hands over her ears, gasping for breath as smoke-blackened air billowed around her.
Then she saw the streak of flame as a plane keeled away from formation, its tail on fire. It screamed down, over the cliffs, heading in a sickening spin for the beech woods beyond Valmy. She saw one parachute open and then another. Heard the rattle of machine-gun fire and knew that it was being directed at the helpless figures in their harnesses.
She didn’t stop to think. To think would have been to be paralysed by fear. She ran from the room, down the twisting stairs, running along the passageways, running, running down the main stairs, out into the kitchens, struggling with the heavy rear door, hurling herself outside into the inferno that was now Normandy.
From the beach, machine-gun fire and artillery fire and mortar fire assailed her senses. Dust and smoke and burning cordite filled the air. Blood from the cut on her forehead trickled down into her eye and she dashed it away, running through the gardens to the fields.
Planes continued to roar overhead, bombing the shore batteries, overshooting and raining their cargo down on to meadows and fields. She saw the first parachute balloon into the woods and then the second. Gasping for breath, she vaulted the low hedge that separated the kitchen garden from the wilderness beyond and kept on running, running, towards them.
Luke Brandon blasphemed in fury as machine-gun fire ripped into his leg. Jesus Christ, but this wasn’t the way he had intended to set foot on French soil. He was going to be killed without having fired a shot in retaliation. He tried to see if his co-pilot had been shot, but Colley’s’chute was already billowing down between the trees.
His lips tightened as he rated their chances of survival. As a spotter pilot, his last message to the battleship Texas had been that truck convoys were moving rapidly towards Sainte-Marie-des-Ponts, the village only half a mile from where he was going to land. The Germans would be so thick on the ground that there would be no escaping them. Not with a smashed and shattered leg. The trees were only seconds away. He clenched his teeth against the pain and crashed into them.
Never Leave Me Page 16