The Corsican

by William Heffernan

  Sartene looked to his left, then back to his right. Far off in each direction, large camouflaged piles of stacked tree trunks could be seen perched at the edge of rock shelves that stood above the road. He nodded to Auguste, who was stretched out beside him, then stared at the troops moving along the road as Auguste raised his rifle to his shoulder.

  A soldier in a troop carrier directly below was picked up and thrown forward as the report of Auguste’s rifle echoed across the river. To the south and the north a great rumbling came as the denuded trees crashed toward the road, dragging rocks and dirt with them, blocking each route of escape. Then the mortar and machine-gun fire; the roar of the bazookas disabling the tanks and the screams of men dying as they scrambled from the trucks.

  The Germans fought from behind the trucks, firing blindly at the spits of fire that flashed above them. To the right and left others assaulted the steep rocky slopes, firing their weapons as they ran, then dying before they advanced more than ten yards from the road. The explosions came in fiery orange bursts, followed by billowing black smoke as the ammunition trucks burst into hot shards of steel. The troops retreated toward the river, screaming in panic as the first of the mines that had been placed there sent bodies hurtling into the air. Those who survived then turned and ran back to the road, where the automatic-weapon and mortar fire poured down, chewing everything in its path.

  The fighting lasted for twenty minutes, and then it was quiet and the spring air was filled with the smell of cordite and blood and burning flesh. Sartene moved down the hill, slipping on the loose rocks, righting himself, then sliding again. On the road the moans of the wounded could be heard amid the sounds of the flames, and there was the occasional shot of a partisan rifle ending individual torment.

  He walked through the killing ground without speaking. Auguste was a few steps behind, his eyes searching the bodies for any sign of life. At the edge of the road where the high grass dipped down to the river, a German soldier lay on his side. His eyes were staring wildly at his hands, his gray-white face showing the final horror of his young life. The twisted bundle of gray intestines protruded between his fingers as he fought to keep them within the gaping hole in his belly. Tears streamed down the boy’s face, and his jaw and lips trembled uncontrollably. He looked up at Sartene, and his body began to shudder. A gagging sound rose from his throat as he tried to speak, followed by a reddish-green mixture of blood and bile. Auguste withdrew a German P-38 from a holster and shattered the boy’s forehead.

  Sartene stared across the river to the orchards. “Another child, Auguste.” He looked up at the black smoke blotting out the bright morning sky. “I wonder how many more children we’ll have to kill.”

  “Too many,” Auguste said. “Unless we’re unlucky and they kill us first.”

  They walked back through the forest on the layer of pine needles that stretched out before them like a soft brown carpet. The smell of the fighting was gone now, replaced by the sweet scent of the trees and the sound of the birds; the only memory of the fighting was the sight of the men marching ahead, carrying the captured weapons.

  They moved five miles through the gently rising forest before they reached the camp and were able to rest. Sartene slid to the ground, allowing his body to fall back against a large boulder. Others in the camp began preparing a meal, but he could not bring himself to think of food.

  “How many men did we lose?” he asked. His voice was weary and even softer than usual.

  “Only five,” Auguste said. “It was a great victory. Except for the five.”

  Sartene struggled with his backpack and placed it on the ground beside him. He reached inside and withdrew a well-worn book, Emil Ludwig’s Napoleon.

  “I was reading this last night,” he said. “Let me read you a part of it. It deals with an argument between Metternich and Napoleon, and it begins with the emperor shouting at the German.

  “‘“You are not a soldier. You do not know what passes in a soldier’s mind. I grew to manhood on the battlefield. Such a man as I does not care a snap of the fingers for the lives of a million men!” He flings his hat into a corner of the room. Now, there is nothing assumed about his anger, and what he has just said is the revelation of an innermost truth. The man who turns pale at the sight of a dying horse, who cannot bear to see a human being pass away, remains and must remain impassive when, in his army lists, he adds up the figures, shifts the hundreds of thousands from column to column, and erases the myriads of slain. Is not war made with human lives, and does it not end with corpses? What is the use of reproaching a craftsman for using the tools of his trade?’”

  Sartene closed the book and placed it in his lap. “Sometimes I wonder why I spend so much time studying war. I don’t enjoy it, I only learn about life from it. That’s strange, isn’t it? That a man learns about life by studying suffering and death, by reading about the lives of men who forced those things upon so many throughout history.” He shook his head slowly. “It’s different when you do it for yourself or your family. Somehow when that happens, it seems justified. But this is just killing for the sake of politicians. It puts nothing in your pocket.”

  Auguste picked up the book and held it in his hands. His face was drawn and haggard, and there were deep circles beneath his eyes, and he had not shaved for several days. He offered Sartene a half-smile.

  “You wouldn’t be a man if you didn’t understand the difference and still accept the fact that you have no choice,” he said.

  Sartene returned the slight smile. “You must be getting old, Auguste.”

  “Why is that?” Auguste asked.

  “Because you’re becoming wise.”

  Francesco approached them slowly, then stopped in front of Sartene. He appeared uncomfortable; his dark eyes seemed to have lost some of their cruelty. Because of the battle, Sartene thought.

  “An American captain from OSS just arrived, Buonaparte,” he said. “He brings news from Corsica, from your son.” He looked away. “It’s your wife, Buonaparte. She’s dead. From some illness.”

  Chapter 3

  In the months that followed, Sartene left the others when he could to be alone with his thoughts and the mountain. There was new pain now, behind his eyes, but he did not speak of it, nor did the others. Once, in a small village to the north, Auguste noticed him staring at a woman gathering water at a fountain. She was a sturdy woman with the strong face of one who had endured much without complaint, and for a moment he thought Sartene might speak to her. When he had felt Auguste’s eyes on him, Sartene had turned to him and nodded, then looked away. No words had been spoken.

  The American had remained with them, fighting at their sides and reporting back to London by radio about troop movements to the south. His name was W. C. Peters and the French partisans laughed and teased him about his use of the initials, telling him that his parents had named him for a shithouse. But Peters took it well, and he joked about the wide-brimmed hats favored by the men of the region, accusing them of trying to be French cowboys. Most of them seemed to enjoy his boyish sense of innocence. He was always grinning; it was something different for them.

  Sartene did not question why he stayed in the hills with them. It was not the Corsican way. To question a man’s intentions was like questioning his past. It was an affront to his honor. It was enough that Peters fought well and was providing information to London. But the naiveté of the man disturbed him. He had met Americans before, working on the docks as a boy. He had learned English from them, and in conversations he had been surprised by their apparent innocence. Peters was like that. He did not seem capable of thinking beyond the orders he had been given; there was something sheltered about him, and that was disquieting, in the midst of a war. It made Sartene wonder if the man had the pragmatism needed for survival.

  It was June 1 before Peters explained the reason for his continued presence. It was night and they sat off by themselves, Sartene, Auguste and the American, a large map of Europe spread between them. P
eters beamed his flashlight on the map as he spoke, and Sartene listened closely as he translated for Auguste.

  “Within the next couple of days or weeks an Allied force will invade northern France. The troops are already poised in England, and when they get the green light it’ll be the biggest damned invasion force this world has ever seen.” Peters paused to grin at the Corsicans, then waved his flashlight back and forth across northern France. “It’ll be a big push, straight through to Paris, then north and west right into Germany.” He directed the flashlight to the south, stopping it in the center of Italy.

  “Within days,” he continued, “Allied forces are expected to take Rome and then begin the push north. For the present the Germans will be pouring in troops to reinforce their men there. Our first job will be to disrupt that flow as much as possible. But once Rome falls and the invasion of France is underway, and the Russians begin pushing in from the east, we expect resistance to begin to crumble in southern France.” He paused to let his words sink in, rather than to await any questions.

  “Then it’s almost over?” Auguste asked Sartene, who translated the question to Peters.

  “Not quite, old buddy,” Peters said, shaking his head and grinning again. “The Krauts can still be expected to put up one helluva fight. But once Paris falls, London expects a general pullback for a last-ditch effort to keep us from crossing the Rhine. London also expects that at that point a lot of high-ranking Jerries are gonna take a hard look at the big picture and that quite a few of them may suddenly lose interest in protecting the fatherland.”

  He beamed the flashlight at the border between the provinces of Burgundy and Savoy a hundred miles to the north. “Now if that happens, London feels this position here will become strategic. Since the Rhone flows from Lake Geneva in the north to the Gulf of Lions in the south, and since any Jerry officers on the run would probably head for Switzerland or Spain, that kinda puts it at a crossroads.”

  “The Boches will find it difficult to move through the countryside,” Sartene said. “The French will want to avenge what’s been done to them.”

  “Well, Buonaparte, the kind of Kraut we’re worried about should be moving with a pretty heavy guard. And that kind of a Kraut should be pretty valuable from an intelligence standpoint if we can grab him.”

  Peters waited, as though trying to decide whether to go on. Then he grinned at them. “Those Krauts also could be carrying a lot of loot with them. Gold, jewels, paintings. Anything they can use to feather their nest with, wherever they expect to end up. And we don’t want to help the Frenchies free their country and then have them find out they got nothin’ left but an empty cookie jar.”

  Sartene shook his head and smiled at the younger man. “Sometimes I think the Americans are the only English-speaking people who have never learned the language.” He patted Auguste’s leg and translated as literally as possible. “Did you understand our friend, Auguste?”

  “Except for the cookie jar, I think so,” he said.

  Sartene turned back to Peters. Even in the dim light of the flashlight he could see the color in his cheeks. “You can count on Auguste and Francesco and me and the few other Corsicans who are with us,” he said. “As far as the French partisans are concerned, I can’t promise you anything. Many will want to return to their homes and families, and who can blame them? But there should be enough who will stay. But there is one thing you must understand, captain. These men may want to keep any valuables they find. They have lost a great deal and may want something for themselves now.”

  “I’m afraid that can’t be done,” Peters said. The grin was gone from his face. “The orders are very clear.”

  Sartene smiled. “We’ll have to see,” he said. “But there’s also something you must do for us.”

  “Anything at all. You just name it and if I can do it, it’s done,” Peters said.

  “Good,” Sartene said. “Auguste has a brother in the prison in Bastia. You must use your influence to see he is freed and allowed to join us after the liberation. Also my son in Corsica. He must be contacted and told to join us too, with his family. You see, I have a grandson I’ve never seen, and soon he’ll be four years old.”

  It was late August before Paris fell to the Allies and German resistance began to crumble. The German retreat was speeded by a second invasion on the southern coast of France, and when it began, Sartene and his remaining men moved north to Lyon, where the Rhone turned south in its meandering journey from Lake Geneva. It was a different war now. No longer was it necessary to hide in isolated mountain camps; no longer did his men have to depend on captured Nazi supplies. They went out regularly now from Lyon, traveling in groups of four or five, following the path of the Rhone west and then north to the town of Bellegarde, which sat in the foothills of the Jura Mountains nine miles from the Swiss border. Peters was still with them, directing the search for fleeing Nazis, and Sartene and Auguste worked with him, knowing that any intelligence gathered from those captured would speed the liberation of France and their own liberation from the war.

  He had come to know Peters better during those months, but the familiarity had only intensified his earlier opinion. The young captain was indeed naive; he had no understanding of the people with whom he fought, no feeling for what it meant to them to have their home occupied by foreigners. They, like the Germans, were equally foreign to Peters, and he understood them only in terms of the rules he had been given to wage war by, never realizing that the concepts of rules and war were contradictions in themselves. Peters, he had learned, came from a large midwestern city and therefore lacked any understanding of country people. But what was most surprising to Sartene was the young captain’s lack of interest in acquiring that knowledge. He would go through the fighting, risking his life, and gain nothing from it.

  It was September 2 when they came across the bodies of the Germans outside a small farmhouse a mile north of Bellegarde. The French partisans had not left much. Those who had survived the initial attack had their throats cut, and the one officer among them had been tied to a tree, masculated, and allowed to watch his life drain away.

  Sartene stood before the dead Nazi, noting the contortion of his face, the look of horror that had frozen there when death finally came.

  “Helluva way to go. Having your prick cut off like that.” Peters had come up beside him. He stood with his hands on his hips, the sun glinting off the skin that showed through his closely cut hair. He had continued to wear civilian clothes, even though the uniform he had brought with him would have been safe now, and it confused Sartene, given the rigidness with which he followed orders.

  “I’ve seen it done before, at home in Corsica,” Sartene said. “But it was usually reserved for those who had violated a man’s wife or daughter or sister. But then the French have always thought of their country as a woman.”

  “Still pretty cruel,” Peters said.

  Sartene’s thoughts wandered back. The man on the ground inside a tent, his arms and legs spread-eagled, tied to stakes. One hand slipped the point of the knife beneath the man’s eye. The man on the ground screamed as the knife twisted, popping the eye and sending it along his cheek, where it dangled on a cord of tissue.

  Peters was still staring at the Nazi.

  “These peasants understand cruelty,” Sartene said. “They live with the cruelty of nature, and they learn from it.”

  “Was it like that in Corsica?” Peters asked.

  Sartene nodded.

  “You miss Corsica, don’t you, Buonaparte?”

  “No, not Corsica. Only my family,” Sartene said. “Corsica is a conquered land, and like all conquered lands it’s only fit for the conquerors.”

  “You won’t go back then?” Peters asked.

  “Only to visit my wife’s grave, while my son makes arrangements with the French for us to go elsewhere.”

  “Your son, is his name Sartene too?”

  He turned to the stocky square-faced American, his hard, vulpine eyes
showing a momentary contempt for his crude attempt at cunning.

  “I only asked because I heard the men talking about its not being your real name,” Peters added. He was grinning.

  “A man’s name is like his life. It’s what he chooses it to be.” Sartene turned away from the dead Nazi and started toward the cluster of trees near the house where Francesco and Auguste sat in the shade. Peters walked with him.

  “What were you in prison for?” the American persisted.

  “For offending the French,” Sartene said. He stopped and squared himself in front of the American. “I’m a simple man, captain. And like most simple men I’ve learned never to dwell on the past. My concerns are for the future, for my family and our life together.”

  “I thought you Corsicans were big on vendettas. That involves the past, doesn’t it?” There was a smirk on Peters’ face.

  Sartene placed his hand on the American’s shoulder as though dealing with a foolish child. “A vendetta comes from a lingering pain in someone who has been offended. The pain is of the present and the justice it demands is of the present.”

  He turned abruptly and walked to the others. Auguste had removed one of his boots and was gently massaging the ankle he had turned an hour before. His eyes followed Peters as he entered the house.

  “Is it worse?” Sartene asked as he sat beside Francesco.

  “Five years ago I wouldn’t have noticed it,” Auguste said.

  Sartene nodded. It was true, the fighting had taken its toll. Auguste, like himself, was now fifty. He removed his beret and ran his hand through his hair. It was still thick, but what had once been a touch of gray had intensified in the past four years. He looked at Francesco. The additional years showed on him as well, even though he was still young.