by Thomas Wood
Red was ahead of me, his fiery hair swaying from side to side as he fell heavily onto each of his feet, surging towards the temporary safety of the factory. He disappeared around the corner of the wall, only to reappear suddenly as I shot behind it with him. Parked on the corner of the building, I was met by his pistol staring at me, as he kept a watch of my back as I was running in towards him. Maybe he had changed his mind from a few minutes ago, maybe he was regretting killing Jameson and he was helping me to make amends for it.
Just as I rounded the wall, I felt a round chip away at the brickwork of the factory, a dust cloud of mortar and sand suddenly flicking its way across my face. It had been a close call, but I was safe.
I didn’t stop or slow down as I thundered through the door and into the factory, stopping momentarily to cover Red’s approach into my position.
We thumped our way up the concrete stairwell, this time not paying any attention to the threats that could have been waiting at the top. We just wanted to reach the summit, and as quickly as possible.
The large, open-plan room that I had been in with Joseph ten minutes ago was exactly how it had been when we had left, but the smell of sweat and grime had taken more of a hold now, far more noticeable as I entered into the air of the factory floor.
Red had to begin shouting straight into my ear as every gun that had been outside, plus more that I hadn’t seen it seemed, began chucking rounds into every square inch of the factory, hammering the windows with all their might.
Throwing ourselves on the ground, to take advantage of the small amount of cover the low walls would give us, we splashed our way through the puddles as Red began to scream at me.
“How…How many rounds have you got?!” We were showered in another fine coating of crystal as someone took the liberty of putting several rounds in the pane of glass that was directly above us. We both kept our heads down, hands tightly over the backs of our necks to protect ourselves, letting the snowflake-like shards tinkle all around us, some of them nipping at the backs of my hands like mosquito bites.
“Three magazines…twenty-seven rounds I guess!” I screamed, with so much effort that I thought my throat would never feel soothed ever again. Despite the intensity with which I had screamed, Red didn’t react, as if he hadn’t heard me, but as I went to repeat myself, he replied.
“Not enough! We need to start firing back! I’ve got six in my pistol and one spare magazine for this thing!” He screamed, tapping away at the MP40 that he had swung off his back. He had just under seventy rounds all told, considerably more than I had anyway.
The machineguns suddenly sparked up, apparently taking over from the smaller arms that had grown too lazy to keep smashing up all the windows. Fireflies began filling the air in the factory, zipping through the now open windows, before dipping slightly and chipping away at the wall on the far side of the room. We were going to have to move, the machineguns were probably cover for an assault party.
“Why aren’t they closing in?!”
“They’ll just be trying to wipe us out first! That way they reduce the risk of their clearing up party being killed! They won’t be wanting us as prisoners anymore, I can assure you of that!”
The machineguns suddenly stopped for half a second, and I could hear the roar of engines as one of them quickly repositioned himself.
I took my chance.
I poked my head up to take a quick look around, wistfully thinking that maybe they had all turned to retreat, confident that we were already dead.
One motorbike had moved up to the southward end of the factory, closer to where the door was, the other staying perched exactly where it was, the sneering machine gunner ready to begin firing from the outside end of the factory towards the middle, creating a deadly enfilade of machine gun fire, one that made it near on impossible for us to escape from.
Jameson was still laying solemnly where he had done a few minutes before, face down on the train track, with a gaping hole in the back of his head, as deep as a wishing well’s. He was totally motionless.
Joseph, on the other hand, was still where he had fallen, but he was far from motionless. With an act of defiance typical of such a detestable man, he was simply refusing to die. He was screaming out in agony and, as a group of four soldiers tried their hardest to move him, I was almost certain that a rock of white, covered in blood, was in fact one of his bones that had detached itself from his body, more than likely his shoulder blade having been severed by one of the bullets.
Instinctively, I swung the pistol round and hung out of the window and emptied my entire magazine onto the men who were trying to save Joseph. I hit two of them, the other two flinging themselves to the ground before fumbling around for their weapons. They had dropped Joseph where he was, his back landing almost perfectly on the steel runner of the track, a hint of glee sparking up deep within me as I watched the discomfort on his face, accompanied by a contorted howl.
It didn’t take long for the others to realise what was happening, the small arms fire picking up again suddenly, accompanied by the sweeping motion of the machine guns, that were closing in on our position. Rounds began to bounce around the room, as if a thousand rubber balls had been tossed into the room and were pinging about all over the place. It was only going to be a matter of time before either of us was hit by something.
“Joseph’s still alive! Dying, but alive!”
Bewilderingly, Red popped his head up, puffing his cheeks out as he fired off an entire magazine from his MP40 down on the men below. We couldn’t keep up with this sort of firepower, we had already managed to make it through almost half of our rounds within a matter of seconds.
“They’re starting to close in! They’re going to make entry any second now! Here, take this!”
He passed me his pistol as I began to reload my own with one of the two spare magazines that Louis’ son had let me take possession of.
It wouldn’t be too long now before we were out of rounds, our only defence against the Germans would be our fists, while they still had the plethora of machine guns and rifles to call upon. Our time on this earth was becoming very limited indeed.
31
“Move! Go! Go!”
Coordinated grenades suddenly appeared on the ground of the factory, and I felt myself tossed through the air like a discarded piece of paper as one of them exploded far too close to me. Red was caught by it too and, as the ringing slowly began to subside, I noticed that he was laughing, a manic, high pitched cackle. It was something that I found impossible to do right now.
None of the windows had any glass left in them now, what had been left of them was ripped from the frames by the three grenades that had all simultaneously popped up and through the windows.
We knew full well that we were losing this battle, and that, before too long, the firing would stop, allowing the assault party that was undoubtedly at the bottom of the stairwell by now, to make entry into the factory, just to make sure that we had been finished off.
We hadn’t been able to fire a single round at them for a while now, but they must have been guaranteed some sort of a bonus if they managed to fire a thousand rounds each, as the bullets continued to stream in, tracers flashing and lighting up Red’s face brilliantly.
All of a sudden, every single weapon seemed to open up, from the machine guns right the way down to their sidearms, as a continuous sheet of ammunition was pumped through into the factory floor, with so much ordnance in the air that I became convinced that their own bullets were striking others, cancelling out their effectiveness.
So many tracer rounds started to zip into the room that it was like one rolling piece of lightning, one tumbling in after the other, making it difficult to identify one round from another. My head rolled backwards and forwards, left to right, as I tried to follow the path of one round of tracer after the other, watching them as they self-destructed by burying themselves in the wall on the far side of the room.
Red began to scream, an indeciphe
rable cry, which continued for almost as long as the barrage of bullets. I had to pull him in closer to me just to make sure that he hadn’t been hit.
“No!” He screamed and cried, and I wondered who he was thinking of as we both prepared to meet our creator. For me, it was my parents, who I hoped somehow knew that I had done the honourable thing, even though I had thought about it. I hadn’t taken the deal that Joseph had offered me, more because it was taken away from me, but I liked to think that maybe it was because, in my mind, I knew that it was the wrong thing to do.
I hoped that they were proud of me, and that they took some sort of comfort that both of their sons had died bravely, fighting on the side of the war that represented the good and the moral.
I could no longer hear the individual gunshots as they ripped their way from the machine guns and rifles, now all I could hear was the clanging and smashing of bullets into the steel beams that ran along the ceiling of the room. The twanging noise as bullets struck metal continued for what felt like hours, the sound of the gunshots themselves just a continuous backdrop for the sound of impending doom.
Seemingly louder than everything else, three dull thuds, as if a potato had been dropped to the bottom of a dustbin suddenly resounded in my ears. I had seen the grenades land far too late, and as I began to scuttle away, trying my hardest to stay as low as I possibly could to avoid the quilt of brass rounds that was being pulled over my head, they exploded.
I was thrown backwards like a ragdoll, but Red was tossed further than me, with one of the grenades far closer to him than it had been me. He hit the ground with such a force that I thought he might never be able to walk again, but it was his incredulous howling that immediately worried me the most.
He rolled around on the floor, clutching at his eye as he screamed, and I scurried my way over to him, instantly prising his hand away from the injured area. His eye was already coming up a nice red colour, the surrounding area already swollen, soon to turn a deep blue colour.
“I can’t see! I’m blind in one eye!”
“You’re alright, Red. Calm down. It was just a clump of concrete. You’ll live.”
Suddenly, I noticed that all had gone quiet, there wasn’t a single sound in the air. My ears felt fragile after the continuous clamour that they had been forced to endure, and I wondered how long it had been truly quiet for.
“Shh Red, shut up mate, be quiet.” I tried to calm him down, placing my hand on his chest to act as some sort of meagre deterrent at howling out any further.
The three grenade blasts that once again had been thrown in unison, must have been some sort of signal, the assault team poised at the bottom of the stairs and ready to make their way into the building.
“Red…Red…Come on mate, pick up your weapon. Here, here.”
I kicked my left leg out to him, the MP40 making a grinding noise across the concrete as it slid its way over to him. I rolled over so that I could face the door at the top of the stairway, where the soldiers would soon come bounding through.
I pulled the pistol up ready to fire. Red did the same with his weapon.
Suddenly, four figures appeared, one after the other, creeping through the doorway. As soon as they spotted us, it was too late for them, Red taking out the first two through the door, while I picked off the other two who had tried to fan out over to their left.
It was over in about half a second, the bodies already piled up on the ground before the gunshots had finished bouncing off the walls all around us. The issue now was, we were all but out of ammo. We could maybe fend off another four soldiers, but after that we would really be struggling.
Suddenly, the machine guns started sparking up again outside, and we both flinched as we curled up tighter into a ball, waiting for the inevitable sparks to start flying through the window frames again. But, this time, it did not happen. All that we could hear was the continuous rattle of the machine guns.
Red scrabbled around along the floor, apparently feeling much better now that he had a bit more adrenaline surging around his body, as he tried to inspect what all the noise was about, looking partially disappointed that we weren’t worthy of the Germans’ attention anymore.
“They pals of yours?” He said, cocking his head to one side in the direction of the water tower. I had no idea what he was on about but began to cautiously make my way to the window to take a look for myself. “Because they’re definitely not mates of mine.”
I made it to the window. I was just in time to see bodies streaming from the south, marching on the factory as if it was their birth right, disgusted that the Germans thought that they would be able to claim it for their own.
A short, brutal prrrp made us duck back down under the wall again, this time being showered in brick dust and mortar that had been ripped from its housing.
Scrabbling away again, Red and I began to talk at what could be deemed a normal volume for the first time in ages.
“I have absolutely no idea.”
The Germans were engaging whoever it was coming from the tower, but still giving us a burst of the good news every five seconds or so, just to make sure that we knew that we hadn’t been let off scot-free.
“Down!” Screamed Red, pushing backwards so that I lost my balance and was sent crashing to the ground. He fired off a short burst of three rounds, right in my ear, before the gun stopped. It had jammed.
“No! No! No!” He screamed, tugging away at the charging handle as he tried to clear whatever stoppage he possibly could.
“Camarade! Camarade!” Came the timid call from the top of the stairwell, making me raise my pistol and shout back to him.
“Show yourself, hands first!”
He did as he was told, weapons stockpiled in his grasp, but nonetheless submissive. Slowly, he peered around the edge of the doorway and I was surprised to see a man dressed in civilian clothes.
“Who are you?” I queried, forcefully, pistol still aimed cautiously at his chest.
“A friend. A friend of Louis. He said that you might be needing a bit of help.”
I turned to Red, almost tearing up out of the sense of relief that surged around my body, “It’s a jolly good job you’re a terrible shot, Red!”
The man edged his way towards us, weapons still raised in surrender, still nervous around us in case we suddenly distrusted his credentials.
“These are for you,” he said graciously, “a gift from the resistance.”
He passed the MP40 to me, pulling out the accompanying magazines that I would need to join in the fight properly. He handed four of them to me, all made up to the brim so that I immediately had an impressive arsenal.
“You need these also?” he asked, producing some pistol magazines from some unknown source.
“Yes, we’ll take them. Everything,” Red said, grabbing at all that he could, as if he had been starving before this man had showed up.
He was a scrawny little man, quite tall but almost impossibly thin. He had a gaunt face and dark, sunken eyes, but there was something about him, despite his depressing outward appearance, that gave me great hope. Maybe it had been a glint in his eye, or how he had gone out of his way, under the raining bullets, to make sure that we were armed and ready.
As he handed over the final few bits of ammunition, he was already scurrying over to one of the empty holes in the factory wall which, until recently, had housed the glass windows that had adorned this whole side of the factory.
“Louis said he is sorry that he had to betray you. He had to lead you here so that they did not kill him. He is also sorry that he is not here with us now.”
He had barely finished his sentence before he was carefully firing rounds down on the Germans, in a genteel way, if there is such a thing. He did it as if he was a fine artist, applying the final few strokes to a masterpiece.
Red and I glanced at each other, his eyebrows furrowed at the man, a slight smirk on his face.
“Come on then Red, back to work.”
In unis
on, we leant over the wall, and I began to squeeze and release the trigger, allowing myself only three rounds before I stopped firing, checking that I was hitting the right target, before moving on. This I continued until I had expelled all the rounds in one magazine.
“Alf!” Red hollered at me, ducking behind the wall as we both changed magazines together. “It was me Alf! It was either you or the girl!”
“What are you on about?!”
“In Paris! The hotel! I had to get Joseph’s trust, I had to hand the girl over to him, I couldn’t give him you. You were my friend…”
It took me far too long to work out what he was going on about, by which time he had already retaken his place atop the window, firing rounds down in a similar controlled way as I had done. Sensing me looking up at him, bewildered, he ducked back down again.
“I’m sorry, really I am! I couldn’t have given you up, you would have been killed. Joseph knew everything that went on from Chautillion to Paris, he had people everywhere. I snuck out with a few of them to come and get you. It felt good to be so close to you, to get to you before the Germans worked it out.”
“You were in the car with me?”
“Yeah…” he said, looking at me as if I was some sort of imbecile. He had been the mysterious silhouette in the front of the car, the one that had haunted my dreams all this time, the one who had always wanted to turn and speak to me, but never quite getting there.
I couldn’t quite believe it. All this time he had been looking over me, I was certain of it. He had picked me up from the Hotel La Romaine in Paris. He must have known who I was when I parachuted back into France earlier on in the year, and he had finally made himself known to me a few nights ago with Jameson. Red must have always been on the right side. At the very least, he must have always been on my side.
Dumbstruck, I followed him in sitting back up, to loose off a few more rounds down on the few remaining Germans that milled around in the courtyard, most of them having fallen back to the two trucks parked further down the railway tracks.