Hearing the uneven sound of Maurice’s limp on the cobblestones, Hans glanced at his watch and smiled. The night was almost over. The villagers would be let out of their confinement for another day of work, and he could go back to the barracks for hot sausages, brot, and steaming black coffee.
“Bonjour, monsieur,” Maurice said, as he came into the square.
Hans, leaning against the wall, nodded to the old man in his peasant garb, patched neatly by his late wife, Lalu. “Guten morgen,” he replied.
It had been the same for the entire year, each speaking in his own language, with neither one giving a hint that he spoke the other’s language fluently.
Hans unlocked the outside door leading to the church tower and relocked it as Maurice disappeared inside.
Removing his sabots at the second-floor level, Maurice quickly climbed the narrow wooden steps to the bell tower, his limp miraculously disappearing. He had only five minutes to listen to the wireless before ringing the Angelus.
Hidden in the niche behind the coils of rope, the short-wave radio waited with messages from England for the French Underground. It had taken Maurice a long time to smuggle the parts past Hans, and an even longer time to put the radio together, because he could never work on it more than five minutes at a time.
He carefully turned the wireless on, tuned it, and knowing how easily sound carried from that far up, held the single earphone tightly to his right ear.
The static was disconcerting and the news from the BBC was of little interest. But just as Maurice made ready to turn the radio off and put it back in its hiding place, he heard the signal for which he had been waiting for the past six months—the first line of “Chanson d’Automne.” “Les sanglots longs des violins de l’automne . . .” It was the first alert that the invasion forces were gathering.
Down below, an impatient Hans waited for the old man to sound the Angelus. He was getting slower and slower, and if he got any worse, Hans decided he would have to talk with the curé and get a replacement.
As if the old man understood, he began, tremulously at first, but then gathering force, to ring the bells that reverberated over the countryside. And when the job was done, Maurice knocked on the locked door and waited for Hans to let him out.
The German relocked the door behind him, and with his night duty over, Hans took the key and headed toward the barracks.
An excited Maurice, forcing himself to keep the same slow, leisurely, limping pace, walked home. He knew that when the second line of the song was broadcast, the landing would be only forty-eight hours away. “Blessent mon coeur d’une languer monotone.”
At La Roche-Guyon, in the stronghold of the Counts of Rochefoucald, Field Marshal Rommel, the former Desert Fox of North Africa, left his quarters with his aide, Lang, to inspect part of his Atlantic Wall.
For two months he had stared toward England and waited uneasily for the imminent Anglo-Allied invasion. April passed, and then May. Now it was June, and still no sign of ships in the channel.
The Wall had been a farce when he first arrived in November 1943. But he had proceeded immediately to fortify the entire section of frontier, using a half million men as laborers and all the equipment he could muster, even stripping the old Maginot Line and the Siegfried Line of their materials, and erecting concrete cones strapped with deadly mines. The cones were invisible at water’s edge but capable of blowing apart the landing craft as they struggled toward the beaches.
On the beaches themselves, mines were attached to metal-tipped stakes—Rommel’s asparagus—planted in rows and connected to each other with barbed wire, the disaster appointed for those soldiers lucky or unlucky enough to reach shore. And if they reached the grassy knolls beyond the stretch of beaches, Rommel had designed an even more sinister welcome—a living hell of fire and brimstone in the shape of pipes leading to kerosene tanks, automatic flame-throwers capable of incinerating everything and everyone in its path, at the press of a button.
But he had not stopped with mere coastal defenses and gun batteries in the chalky bluffs. Remembering the paratroopers and gliders of Sicily and Italy, he flooded the low-lying areas beyond the rivers and forced young girls of the surrounding villages to whittle sharp-pointed stakes that would impale the paratroopers in the open fields, if they were not drowned.
Despite all his preparations, a tired Rommel recognized a major weakness to his defenses. He desperately needed the panzer divisions under Hitler’s direct authority. And so, with the meterologists of Paris assuring him of bad weather for the next several days, Rommel left the village of La Roche-Guyon for Germany, to see the Fűhrer.
In England, in the air planning room, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Dow Pomeroy listened for the news—that General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, had given the signal for the 5,000-ship invasion convoy to set sail. Closely coordinated with their arrival, the planes carrying the British and American paratroopers were waiting for takeoff.
They settled on three days—and only three-when the signs were right—June 4, 5, and 6.
On the morning of June 2, Dow looked up as Colonel Hank Lawton of the U.S. Air Corps entered the planning room.
“Well, the great armada has started,” Lawton announced. “All we can do now is wait for our turn.”
Dow nodded. Operation Overlord had begun—at last.
Like the long body of a segmented Chinese dragon in a parade, the convoy started its lumbering trip across the channel with troops, guns, tanks, and fireworks of the most grievous kind. Slowly, it wound its way through the waters, with minesweepers in formation ahead, and its long dragon tail trailing all the way from Portsmouth.
But the heavens, governing man and earth, the wind and the tide, became dark with clouds. A major storm began. High waves lashed against the ships, and the winds tugging at the barrage balloons overhead gave the dragon a drunken appearance as the ships listed. And the men on the smaller vessels leaned over the rails and lost the sumptuous meal that all men facing a sentence of death are given.
Suddenly, with the French coast only forty miles away, the invasion force received orders to return to port. And the mammoth task of turning the head of the dragon around in rough seas began, with the added danger of being spotted by the Luftwaffe.
“Hell!” Sergeant Giraldo looked toward Lieutenant Marsh Wexford, when he heard the news at the holding grounds of the 82nd Airborne. “I wonder what went wrong.”
“The weather. There’s a gale blowing in the channel.” Marsh replied, the dejection just as obvious in his face as in the others seated around him.
“How long do you think it will last?” Laroche asked, looking up from the alligator he had been whittling from a small piece of wood.
“Can’t last long,” Gig volunteered. “Else the men will go stir crazy, holed up on the ships.”
“The stand-down is for twenty-four hours,” Marsh offered.
“How about a game of poker?” Giraldo suggested, “to pass the time?”
Laroche laid down his knife and piece of wood. Gig pulled out his deck of cards, and the four, with nothing else to do but wait, put their minds to winning at cards, if not on the battlefield. Ad in the hangars and the tents, other groups did the same.
Again Maurice Duvalier hurried toward the bell tower in the town of Ste.-Mère-Église. He had been baffled by the broadcast of the first line of “Chanson d’Automne,” on two consecutive days. But there had been no sign of the second line. He was becoming increasingly nervous. And yet he and his friends had waited four years for their liberation from the Nazis. Now that the invasion alert had been given, it was hard to wait any longer.
The guard on duty in the evening was not nearly so pleasant as Hans. Far more suspicious, too, he would stand and watch Maurice maneuver the stairs, and sometimes not bother to close the doors, as if by watching Maurice at the bells he could be assured that the old man did not use the ringing of the hours as a signal for the people in the village. To distract the guard from his usual scrut
iny, Maurice had brought his small grandson, Ibert, with him to the square that night.
A man with the responsibility of the entire free world upon his shoulders, General Eisenhower, the overlord, sat with his advisors in the library of Southwick House and summoned the head meteorologist, Group Captain J. N. Stagg. In the same manner that King Saul sought the advice of the witch of Endor before battle, so Eisenhower listened to the scientific advice of Stagg.
A slight break in the weather was all they could hope for—it would be a mere twenty-four hours before the storm began again. Eisenhower looked at Air Chief Marshal Tedder, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander; at Montgomery, in charge of land forces, at Leigh-Mallory, Allied air commander, and at the naval commander, Admiral Ramsay. They had already called off the invasion for June 5. They now had a half hour to decide if the invasion should take place on June 6. The men were divided. It was up to Eisenhower to decide.
He thought of the thousands of troops, the thousands of ships waiting. It was impossible to keep them at their hiding stations much longer without the Germans finding out. Finally, he stood.
“I don’t like it a bit more than you, but there it is. I am quite positive we must give the order.”
With his decision, a new D-Day was confirmed. June 6, 1944.
The dragon unwound its long body from the ports and once again began its lumbering way across the channel.
The next morning, Maurice, in the bell tower, heard the second line of the poet’s words, “Blessent mon coeur d’une langueur monotone.” The invasion was in 48 hours.
Joyfully, he rang the Angelus, not in six steady peals against the wind, as he usually did, but in sets of two, with a space between them. Vic-toire! Vic-toire! Vic-toire!
To some of the people waiting in their houses, it was the ordinary Angelus, no different from any other morning. But to a few, it was the sound of liberation and the call to arms.
As the great invasion force continued on its way, with the Americans headed toward the infamous beaches labeled Omaha and Utah, a frustrated General George S. Patton, Jr. the hero of the Sicily campaign and also its antihero, because of the soldier-slapping incident, was left behind in England. Slapping the hysterical soldier with his glove almost cost Patton his military career, since an officer was not allowed to touch an enlisted man.
He had been given no part in the planning of the Normandy invasion, no part in the initial fighting. He was used merely as a decoy for the Germans against a Calais attack farther north. And yet he was the general on intimate terms with the treacherous hedgerow country of Normandy. A military student in France in 1913, he had become familiar with the entire area from Cherboug to Samur, not once but twice. For again, in World War 1, he had trained his tank corps in that area.
It was Montgomery who had been chosen to lead the land battle, and the plans included the set piece that was a trademark of the British Field Marshal.
Kept informed, however, of the plan by Bradley, Patton was concerned, for he was well aware of its dangers. The Allies could be boxed in because of Montgomery’s caution.
“Monty is supposed to take Caen on D-Day,” Patton said. “Well, Brad, he won’t do it. He’ll take his time, and in the meanwhile, the Germans will get ready for the counterattack.”
Lieutenant Marsh Wexford and the members of his pathfinders unit were only concerned with their part in the invasion. Leaving the airfield a half hour before the other paratroopers, they double-checked their equipment.
One of the most important pieces was a child’s cricket, a metal snapper that could be purchased in any five-and-dime store for a few pennies. Laroche took out his and snapped it once. Gig responded with two clicks, laughed, and then put the cricket up. But Marsh was thinking of the flares and equipment he would need to light the landing field for the others to see where to jump.
No matter how often they had practiced, he knew there was a wide margin for error, especially going into territory he had never seen. They had studied the maps that were now hidden in their helmets, but he remembered the drop in Sicily and wanted no repeat. He took off his helmet to look at the map once again.
“I declare, Lieutenant, you’ve got to be the ugliest S.O.B. in the entire infantry,” Giraldo teased, and quickly added, “sir,” because of his rank.
Marsh laughed and ran his hand over his head, which had been shaved in the Mohawk manner. His once handsome face was blackened with charcoal.
“You really started something in Sicily, Giraldo,” he retorted. “Now we’re all just as ugly as you.”
Giraldo grinned, while Laroche took up for Marsh. “The lieutenant can wash his face and grow some more hair. But there isn’t any hope for you, Sergeant.”
“Just wait til we get to Paris. I’ll show you what the mam’selles like,” Giraldo boasted.
Gig said, “Have you forgotten so soon? Laroche won all your money at poker.”
“He’s too short. They’ll beg to go out with me. Money or no money.”
“But I speak the language, monsieur. Vive la difference!”
“I hope you speak it better than Giraldo spoke Italian in Sicily,” Marsh commented.
“Geez! Look below. Have you ever seen so many ships in your life?”
They passed over part of the convoy, ten lanes wide, twenty miles long, and in the brightness of the moon, they recognized the magnitude of the operation—and the vast importance of the paratroopers’ mission to serve as a buffer between the Germans and the beaches, to destroy the bridges and hold the ground against the Germans until the great dragon could give birth to its young and wash them ashore.
Flying low along the coast, the plane carrying Marsh and his men passed through a field of flak. A light peppering of small-arms fire was heard, like hail on a tin roof. And in the distance, flames burned—houses and buildings caught up in the crossfire of the enemy.
The alert light came on—then the green.
“Here we go,” Marsh said, and the pathfinders of the 82nd Airborne jumped. The invasion of the European continent had begun.
Chapter 14
Once again Marsh Wexford parachuted into enemy territory. But it was different this time. The responsibility for his entire combat team rested on him.
Now the goal was not merely to stay alive, not even to engage the enemy, but to clear the designated landing area of its deadly mines and obstacles, and then to light the way for the others who would drop from the skies in less than a half hour.
Weighed down by heavy equipment, Marsh could see burning houses in the distance, and people rushing around in the square.
The sound of bells in the church tower reached him as he approached tree-top level, for Maurice, summoned by the curé with permission from the German garrison, was signaling for help to fight the local fires. As Marsh plunged into a nearby orchard, he saw two men in peasant garb running past him. If they saw him, they gave no evidence.
Landing in a hedgerow, Giraldo was hopelessly tangled in the thick bocage that had divided the fields for centuries. And Gig Madison, crashing through the glass roof of a farmer’s greenhouse, awoke the owner’s dog to a vicious barking.
Two other members of the pathfinder unit, Hardie and Kaminsky, also landed in the orchard. After a quick snap of the cricket, they were answered by Marsh. The three joined together and began a frantic clearing of the designated landing area in the field nearby. Crawling inch by inch, with their bayonets prodding the ground ahead like blind men’s canes, they flattened themselves to the ground as a burst of machine gun fire ripped through the field. Suddenly a grenade silenced the machine gun positioned in a small opening cut in the hedgerow. Giraldo, with a chirp of the cricket, rushed through the slit that allowed passage from one field to the other and joined the three men.
But Gig Madison was having trouble of another kind.
“Steady, boy. I’m your friend. Ami, that’s what I am. Comprenèz-vous?”
Gig stood at the entrance of the greenhouse and faced the Great Dane that wa
s almost as tall as he. Animal lover, he had no wish to shoot the animal, and, too, a shot would bring someone to check. Yet the growl was unfriendly and the dog was blocking his escape.
Staring at the dog in the moonlight, Gig slowly and deliberately reached into his pack and removed the can of Spam that would have been his breakfast. Regretfully, he opened it with the metal key, took his knife, sliced off a piece of the meat and offered it to the dog. In one gulp, the Great Dane swallowed it and looked to Gig for more. He cut another slice and began to walk from the greenhouse with the dog following. Another snap of his powerful jaws demolished the second tidbit of Spam. By the third slice, Gig had made a friend for life.
“All right, Caesar, but you got to be quiet,” Gig admonished, reconciled to the dog’s following him.
With a click of the cricket, Gig found the others and, working steadily, they cleared the field as the distant roar of the DC-3s signaled the first wave of the 18,000 paratroopers.
Overhead, Lieutenant Colonel Krause, carrying the American flag that he vowed would fly over Ste.-Mère-Église before morning, looked down. He too saw burning buildings in the square, but there was no sign of flares from the pathfinder unit.
“There it is, sir,” the pilot called out. “The drop zone.”
Now outlined in red, the field beckoned the combat team. In other areas, the paratroopers jumped in the darkness, some landing in the flooded areas where they were dragged under by the weight of their equipment and drowned. Others were carried by the wind into the very square of the town and floated down into the burning buildings, their screams and the explosions of the ammunition attached to their bodies adding to the horror of the night.
The German garrison, realizing the invasion was taking place, called for help. But their message was never received, for Maurice Duvalier and the French Underground had cut the communications wires.
On Wings of Fire Page 12