‘You idiot! You stupid, stupid idiot! Why did you not take it with you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Dawson muttered. ‘I’m really sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.’
‘So now they know you are there,’ Celine said flatly. ‘How else would a Wehrmacht knife be in wash-house of a Luxembourg farm?’
‘Yes,’ Dawson said, ‘but your parents will still know nothing about that.’
‘Well, I hope the Germans believe them,’ Celine muttered, her voice low and angry, ‘because if anything happens to them it is your fault.’
Silently, they watched the drama unfold in front of them.
The SS officer nodded to the soldier, turned away and walked back towards the two captives, still pressed up against the wall of the farmhouse, their arms held firmly by the soldiers beside them. Now Dawson could see that he was holding a knife of some sort and, as the officer reached Celine’s father, he pulled the blade from its scabbard and waved the weapon in front of the old man’s face.
‘That must be the trench knife,’ Dawson muttered.
‘What are we going to do?’
Dawson was figuring the odds, looking for angles and weaknesses in the German position. The facts were overwhelming – they were looking at twelve or thirteen soldiers, most with Mauser carbines slung over their shoulders, though a couple were armed with Schmeisser MP 40 machine-pistols. Between them, he and Celine had an elderly shotgun, two cartridges loaded with buckshot, and a bayonet. He’d have thought twice about tackling even a single enemy soldier with that armoury – against the number in front of them, any attack would be suicide.
Dawson fully understood the reality of their situation and so, he knew, did Celine. He also knew they had to do something – he could not just sit there in hiding and watch her parents be killed by the German soldiers. Not when part of the reason for their predicament was his fault. They had to do something soon – the questioning by the SS officer was already getting visibly more aggressive.
‘I could get across there, behind the barn,’ Dawson whispered, pointing towards the hay barn. ‘That would bring the soldiers within range of the shotgun.’
‘Yes? And after you fire both barrels? What then?’
‘Run back here.’
‘You will never make it,’ Celine snapped. ‘You would be dead before you get half-way here.’ She looked around, then stepped back. ‘Wait here,’ she said.
‘But what—’ Dawson started to say, but she’d already gone, running lithely through the trees, deeper into the forest and away from the farm.
He had no idea where she’d gone, or what her intentions were, but he was certain she’d be back. She wouldn’t abandon her mother and father without trying to do everything in her power to save them. Maybe she’d gone for help, to try to find the Luxembourg police or somebody. He just didn’t know.
But whatever Celine’s intentions, Dawson hoped she’d be quick, because the situation at the farm was deteriorating – fast.
The SS officer was still shouting at Celine’s father, waving the trench knife in front of his face, clearly running short of patience. He stepped sideways to stand next to Celine’s mother, and repeated his questioning, with the same result. It was only a matter of time, Dawson knew, before the officer escalated the interrogation, neutral Luxembourg or not.
And even as he watched, the SS officer stepped back from the old man and gave orders to one of the soldiers standing nearby. The soldier put down his Schmeisser, undid his equipment belt and placed that on the ground near his machine-pistol. Then he removed his tunic to reveal a very grubby undershirt.
The SS officer said something else to him and he nodded agreement. He stepped forward to the middle-aged man and said something to him. But before the captive could reply, the German soldier smashed his fist into his stomach.
Despite the restraining arms of the soldiers standing on either side of him, the old man bent forward, retching and gasping for breath. A few feet away, Celine’s mother howled in anguish, a high, keening wail that echoed around the clearing. Another soldier stepped forward quickly and slapped her across the face. The wailing ceased abruptly.
The first soldier reached down with his left hand, grabbed a handful of the old man’s hair and wrenched his head up. Then he crashed his right fist into the man’s face and stepped back.
Even from fifty yards away, Dawson could see the blood streaming from his mouth and nose as he slumped forward again, still fighting for breath. At a command from the SS officer, the two soldiers holding the man released him and he collapsed to the ground. The soldier stepped back and aimed a powerful kick at the old man’s stomach, a blow so violent that it lifted his body an inch or two off the ground.
Then the soldier moved sideways to stand in front of Celine’s mother, and Dawson knew exactly what was going to happen next. And he knew that, no matter what the consequences, he had to try to stop it.
The attention of all the German soldiers was concentrated on the events unfolding outside the farmhouse and none of them, as far as he could tell, was looking in his direction. That was absolutely the only edge he had.
He checked the shotgun once again, but left the hammers forward – he couldn’t risk tripping and the weapon discharging accidentally.
He looked again at the soldiers, then moved to his left, still in the shelter of the trees, until the hay barn was more or less directly between him and the enemy troops, to provide him with the maximum possible cover. Then he took a deep breath, gripped the shotgun firmly, and ran.
Chapter 44
16 September 1939
Dawson reached the wooden side of the barn and stood with his back pressed against it for a few seconds. Then he pulled back the hammer on the left-hand chamber of the weapon. Most shotguns, he seemed to recall, had different degrees of choke on each barrel, and he had a hazy recollection that the left-hand barrel usually had a tighter choke – and hence a slightly longer range – than the right. Not that it was going to make much difference. Once he fired the first shot, he knew that the German soldiers would be all over him.
He peered around the corner of the hay barn. The soldier who’d beaten Celine’s father was now standing in front of her mother, clearly about to repeat the same treatment on her.
As the soldier swung back his arm to drive his fist into her stomach, Dawson brought the shotgun up to his shoulder, aimed the barrels at the main group of German troops and pulled the trigger. The old shotgun kicked like a demented donkey, slamming the steel butt-plate back into his shoulder, and the boom of the shot echoed off the few buildings in the clearing.
The closest soldiers were about twenty-five yards away, and Dawson knew that was approaching the extreme range of the weapon. But buckshot is heavier than birdshot and carries further. Three of the soldiers fell to the ground immediately, though Dawson knew that, at worst, they’d only have suffered painful flesh wounds from the heavy pellets – that’s if they’d managed to penetrate their thick clothing. They’d probably dropped out of shock more than anything else.
The sound of the shot was followed by an instant of silence, then yells as the soldiers shouted in alarm and orders were given. Some of the Germans started running for cover, but others swung round, with their weapons in their hands, and started looking for a target. The first rounds from a Schmeisser machine-pistol cut through the air and slammed into the wooden walls of the barn.
Then, as Dawson watched from his vantage point, trying to decide the optimum moment when he should fire the second barrel, and disarm himself at the same time, a single shot rang out. But that shot came from behind him.
He spun round, but could see nothing – there were no German troops anywhere in sight. He looked back, just as the half-dressed soldier who had been beating up Celine’s father tumbled backwards and fell twitching to the ground, his dirty undershirt suddenly a sodden mass of red.
Dawson looked back at the forest, but still saw nothing. He brought the shotgun back up
to the aim, pulled the trigger and fired the second barrel towards the German soldiers, then dropped the useless weapon and ran back towards the tree-line, dodging from side to side as shots from the German soldiers rang out behind him.
He ducked behind a tree as soon as he reached the edge of the forest and looked around him.
Another shot sounded close beside him, somewhere over to his left, and he turned to see Celine crouched beside a bush, a Winchester hunting rifle in her hands. As he ran towards her, she cranked down the loading lever to chamber another round, the spent brass cartridge case spinning out of the breech as she brought the weapon back up to the aim.
‘I told you to stay right here,’ she said.
‘I had to do something,’ Dawson replied. He spotted another rifle lying on the ground beside her – a bolt-action heavy-calibre weapon that didn’t look unlike the Lee-Enfield he was used to – and grabbed it.
Celine fired again, and another German soldier tumbled backwards. ‘Did you kill any of them?’ she demanded.
‘I doubt it, not using a shotgun at that range.’
‘Shame.’
Dawson snapped off a shot but missed the man he’d been aiming at. The SS officer – who would have been his prime target if he’d been visible – had vanished from sight, but the German soldiers had clearly recovered from the shock of the sudden and unexpected attack and were already regrouping. He could see them dodging into cover and advancing towards the edge of the forest. Bullets whistled around him, cutting through the undergrowth and thudding into the trunks of the trees that surrounded them.
‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ Dawson said, working the bolt and firing another round, more to try to discourage the enemy soldiers than with any real hope of hitting them.
‘I cannot leaving my mother and father with these animals.’
‘You have to or we’ll both be dead inside five minutes. We’ll get away from here, go deep into the forest. The Germans will follow us. Then we can circle back.’
Celine fired another shot, then nodded. ‘You are right,’ she muttered. ‘I know you are right, but—’
A burst of fire from a machine-pistol shredded the bush right beside her.
Dawson couldn’t wait any longer. ‘Come on,’ he snapped, grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet.
‘Wait!’ she snapped, and thrust a couple of boxes of ammunition at him. ‘Take these.’
Then she turned and ran, dodging between the trees, her slight figure lithe and graceful even in flight.
Dawson followed, pausing only to fire off another couple of shots as he started to run. He caught up with her after about fifty yards, when she ducked behind the trunk of a tree and fired another round back at their pursuers.
He did the same, then shouldered his rifle. ‘We need to move,’ he said. ‘We need speed, not firepower. That’s the only way we’re going to survive this.’
Celine nodded somewhat reluctantly, then turned and ran, Dawson right beside her.
‘Where’d you get the rifles?’ he asked.
‘The next farm,’ Celine replied shortly. ‘It is only two hundred metres from ours. The farmer is away, but I know where where his keys are.’
‘Where are we going? We’ve got to avoid where Dave’s hiding.’
‘I know. Don’t worry – we go in the opposite direction.’
After that, Dawson saved his breath for running.
Behind them, the sound of shots was diminishing slightly, presumably because the German troops had lost sight of them among the trees.
Dawson stopped, listened for a moment for the sounds of the shots, then fired two rounds in quick succession towards where he hoped the Germans were.
‘No more,’ Celine said, ‘unless we see them. We must double back very soon.’
A couple of minutes later, they reached a gully, at the bottom of which was a small stream, meandering towards the Moselle, Dawson guessed.
‘Which way are we going?’ he asked.
‘Right.’ Celine pointed.
Dawson scrambled down to the base of the gully, leaving heavy prints all the way down the side, waded through the stream and then stamped his foot hard into the muddy bank on the opposite side. Then he opened one of the boxes of ammunition Celine had given him, stuffed the rounds into his pockets and tossed the empty box up onto the opposite bank.
‘That might convince them we’ve gone that way,’ he said.
Together, they waded up the stream, heading west, Dawson assumed, away from the river Moselle, further into Luxembourg. Up to then, they had not bothered about the noise they made, but now they tried to move as quietly as possible. They crept upstream, keeping as low as they could, looking and listening for any noise of pursuit. They could hear shouted orders coming from somewhere to their right, to the north of the watercourse, but no further shots, so presumably the German soldiers had – at least for the moment – lost sight of them.
Ducking under low branches and around bushes and shrubs that sprouted from the riverbank, they moved more quickly as the sounds of pursuit diminished behind them.
‘Do you think we have lost them?’ Celine whispered.
‘For the moment, yes. Let’s start working our way back towards the farmhouse.’
About fifty yards further on, the high banks on both sides of the stream flattened out, and they were able to step out of the water and onto dry land again. Celine led the way up a grassy slope and back through the forest.
They could still hear the German soldiers – or, to be exact, they could hear the sound of shouted orders – somewhere to the east of them. Dawson guessed they were probably at least a couple of hundred yards away, which was far enough, under the circumstances. But still they both kept a sharp lookout, because it was always possible that the SS officer had ordered his soldiers to carry out a wide sweep through the forest on either side of the main group of searchers.
‘How far now?’ Dawson whispered, as they crossed through a small open glade and then stepped back under the sheltering canopy of the trees.
‘A hundred metres. I think we—’
Celine broke off, and they both ducked down, as a single shot sounded from somewhere almost directly in front of them.
It was just the sound of a shot. No bullet came anywhere near them, and after a couple of seconds they stood up again.
‘What was that?’ Celine asked.
Dawson already had a really bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. ‘Jesus, I hope I’m wrong,’ he said. ‘Get us to the farmhouse as quickly as you can.’
But even as they started jogging through the forest, they heard another shot, again from somewhere right in front of them and that pretty much confirmed what Dawson had feared.
Celine glanced at him and shook her head. ‘Oh, no,’ she moaned, tears springing to her eyes.
‘I don’t know,’ Dawson replied.
Celine abandoned all caution and ran ahead of him, her rifle in hand as she sprinted through the forest.
Dawson could hardly keep up with her, encumbered as he was with his heavy uniform and boots.
A few seconds later, he burst out of the edge of the forest, to see the farmhouse directly in front of him. They were approaching it from the opposite direction, so the barn and the other outbuildings were on the far side. Ahead of him, he could see Celine running around the side of the building, towards the main door of the farmhouse.
For an instant, there was almost complete silence. The only sounds Dawson could hear were the pounding of his boots on the earth and his laboured breathing. Then a howl of anguish rent the air. The noise was chilling, almost feral in its intensity, and for a fleeting instant he doubted if it came from a human throat.
Then he rounded the corner of the building and skidded to a halt, his rifle held ready to fire. But the yard was deserted or at least no German troops were present.
Celine was slumped on the ground, her arms cradling the lifeless body of her mother, the result of one of the shots they�
�d heard now all too obvious. There was a small round hole in the centre of the woman’s forehead, the skin around it discoloured by the residue from the shot, and a massive hole at the back of her skull.
Celine looked down again at the tragic ruin of her mother’s face, then threw back her head and howled, a high-pitched wail of agony that told its own story of grief and rage and frustration.
Dawson stepped behind her and looked down at the body of her father, despatched in the same callous manner by a single shot through the head. The weapon used had almost certainly been a pistol, and that in itself identified the likely perpetrator. Most German soldiers carried rifles or machine-pistols and it was usually only the officers who would be armed with a handgun.
‘That SS bastard did this,’ Dawson muttered to himself, then turned back to Celine.
She was now standing, looking down at the bodies of her parents, the grief-stricken expression on her face now replaced by one of cold fury.
‘Celine, I’m so sorry,’ Dawson began, but it was as if she didn’t hear him.
‘Where are they?’ she snapped. ‘Where are the fucking Germans?’
Dawson pointed towards the forest that surrounded them. ‘Following our trail through the woods, I suppose.’
Beside one of the two dead German soldiers was a discarded Schmeisser machine-pistol. She walked across to the body, snatched up the weapon and strode over to where the German army lorry was parked. Before Dawson could stop her, she’d pulled back the bolt and emptied the entire magazine into the side of the vehicle, shredding the tyres and probably wrecking the engine.
‘Now they’ll know exactly where we are,’ Dawson said.
‘Good,’ Celine snapped. ‘Let them come, all of them.’
Dawson grabbed her arm. ‘No, Celine. That’s suicide, and you know it. We’ve got to move, get away from here.’
For a few moments, Dawson thought she would hit him, then her fixed expression softened and she nodded. ‘Yes, I know,’ she murmured. ‘Now we go.’
To Do or Die Page 28