On Wings of Fire

by Frances Patton Statham

  “I found him on the bridge, sir. He’s no trouble. I—”

  “Get rid of him, immediately!”

  “But, sir . . .”

  “That’s an order!”

  A miserable young soldier began to unzip the top of his combat suit, while the friend next to him attempted to intervene.

  “He’s just a harmless little puppy, Captain.”

  “You heard me, Corporal.”

  “Yes, sir.” The two young soldiers exchanged glances, and the corporal, wondering what had caused the captain to be so angry, gently placed the small brown puppy on the ground.

  “Fall back in line, Corporal. To the rear, Innes, take Harris with you and scout ahead for the next several hundred yards.”

  The reluctant corporal left Lester by the roadside, while an inconsolable Marsh Wexford began the next phase of infiltration without looking back at the abandoned puppy.

  A chill in the morning air and the dampness of the ground where Marsh had slept made his bones ache, as if he were an old man divining the change of seasons. Even his throat felt sore and Marsh was conscious of the uncomfortable cold mist that invaded his lungs and caused his breathing to become labored as he led his men onward through the woods.

  He hated the fall rains and winter weather in Europe, coming without warning to numb his fingers, rendering them clumsy in the reloading of his weapons. They should be supple, quick to deal with Germans hidden behind the trees throughout the forest.

  At the exchange of fire ahead, Marsh dropped to the ground and, from his place behind a log, listened and watched for the two soldiers to return from their scouting.

  He blew on his hands to warm them, but the expiration of breath changed into a cough—raw, barking. Forcing himself to stop in the middle of the cough, he covered his mouth and wheezed, feeling his lungs protest at the same time.

  When the wheezing had subsided, there was no sound except the gentle patter of morning rain on the leaves and the telltale rattle of tanks where they had no business being.

  Five minutes passed, then five more. The two soldiers ahead did not return. Marsh, uneasy, said to the man beside him, “Bring the panzerfaust with you. We’ll go ahead and see what’s holding them up.”

  The two moved out in the direction of the road, careful not to break cover or give a clear view of themselves to the enemy around them. Their progress went unchallenged, unprotected, which aroused Marsh’s suspicions. Something was wrong ahead. He wasn’t certain what it was, but the feeling remained, that primitive instinct that caused the adrenalin to begin flowing, an autonomous thing that had nothing to do with logic or reason.

  “Wait for me here,” he ordered, “and cover me. I’m going ahead.”

  Marsh slowly wound his way forward, until he came to a bend in the road where his view was obscured. His senses tingled with alertness as his breathing grew more labored.

  Hidden at the bend in the road was a single German tank, camouflaged, its menacing gun waiting to blast the entire company the moment it swept around the curve.

  Realizing the soldiers were slowly making their way through the woods to this central point, Marsh knew what he had to do. He hurried back to the soldier waiting with the panzerfaust and he exchanged his rifle for the more powerful weapon.

  “There’s a German tank ahead,” he said. “Go back and warn the others about the ambush. I’ll try to knock it out.”

  “I’d feel better, Captain, if I went forward with you.”

  “Do as I say, soldier. Enough troopers have already died, without more falling into a trap at this late date.”

  All his anger, his hurt was directly at that one tank and its occupant, as if the war were now being fought between two men, like David and Goliath. Forgotten was the promise he made to Paulina di Resa in the villa in Sicily. He had a vendetta of his own to settle—for Gig, Giraldo, and Laroche. But the German in command of the tank was the same man Paulina had sworn him to avenge when she had drawn the cross of blood in Marsh’s hand.

  Marsh slung the panzerfaust over his shoulder and slowly began to reweave his way through the woods to the position on the other side of the road from the hidden tank.

  The panzerfaust instructions he had translated from the German ran through his mind—the range of effectiveness a mere thirty-three yards, much shorter than the bazookas the infantry had been trained to use against enemy tanks. In Sicily, Marsh had learned not to rely on the bazooka against the Tiger tanks. But he had seen the panzerfausts in action against the U.S. Army tanks, and he was well acquainted with their destructive power.

  As Marsh advanced, the two soldiers he had sent ahead watched and listened in desperation, while the trench knives of their German captors were held at their throats to keep them from warning him.

  While Heinrich von Freiker also listened for the sound of advancing troops, Marsh continued forward. He was committed to knocking out the tank with the panzerfaust with its finned projectile. And he would make sure he was much closer to it than thirty-three yards. He was determined to make no mistake, no error in judgment, for he had only one projectile between the tank and his company.

  With the panzerfaust hoisted to his shoulder, he came within range of the tank, the rain-soaked forest disguising his steps, but not the cough that forced its way past his lips. He stopped and listened, and then moved on.

  Ten more yards to go, and he would be almost face to face with the enemy.

  It was now or not at all, for the gunner had started whirling the large turret gun into position toward the wooded area where he was hiding.

  In a sudden rush, Marsh left the dubious safety of his hiding place, crouched at the edge of the road and positioned the panzerfaust on the ground.

  “Fire!” The order, loud and penetrating, came from Heinrich for the tank gunner to fire.

  As the sound exploded all around him in the forest, a relieved Marsh realized the gun was positioned too high to reach him. He took the panzerfaust and fired it, its projectile spewing toward the tank. It hit and the tank erupted in flames.

  For one second’s purgatory before hell began, the two opponents stared at each other—Heinrich in his immaculate black SS uniform covered by a raincoat, and Marsh in the dirty, wet combat suit he had worn for six days straight.

  As a piece of metal struck his foot, tearing the leather of his boot into shreds, Heinrich screamed. In disbelief he saw the blood trailing—his own blood—as he fell over the side of the burning tank and rolled in the wet leaves to put out the fire that scorched his hair and filled his nose, nearly suffocating him.

  The powerful gun of the tank, fired a few seconds before the panzerfaust, dug up the forest, splitting a nearby linden tree in half to fall on the unsuspecting Marsh only moments after he had fired the projectile.

  Now Marsh lay pinned to the forest floor at the bend in the road, the trunk of the tree too heavy to lift from his body, his rifle left in the woods beyond, and a frenzied Heinrich von Freiker, dragging his foot behind, heading toward him with his side arms drawn.

  Chapter 36

  In a paroxysm of coughing, with the heavy weight of the tree across his chest and legs, Marsh felt the dripping of the rain on his face.

  His luck had run out. A sadness overwhelmed him. The commemorative coin, the promise he had given to little Ibert Duvalier—all were gone.

  Once more he struggled against the weight that pinned him down, but it was hopeless.

  With the wounded German officer staring down at him, examining every inch of his face as he aimed carefully, Marsh waited patiently for death. He would have preferred his blood spilled, not in Holland, amid the canals and soft polder land reclaimed from the sea, but in the land of his birth—France—to be near the mother he had never known in life. Reunited in death—two worlds apart.

  He heard the click of the gun and he closed his eyes.

  “Nein,” a guttural voice cautioned. “We need him for questioning.”

  At the sound of the voice, Marsh open
ed his eyes to see another German officer staring down at him.

  But Heinrich ignored the voice. He aimed and fired at Marsh’s head. Marsh felt nothing, heard nothing except the explosion in his ears.

  A dazed and weakened Heinrich looked at the pistol in his hands and back to the soldier still alive on the ground. He had missed him at close range.

  Heinrich raised his pistol, and attempting to focus his eyes, he aimed again at Marsh.

  The other officer deflected the gun with his hand. “Nein,” Heinrich. You are not to shoot him.”

  “You already have two prisoners, Karl,” Heinrich argued. “That should be enough.”

  “But this is an officer. He is much more valuable to us. Come, Heinrich..” he ordered, confiscating the side arms. “Horst is bringing up the car to take you to the hospital.”

  “Karl. . .”

  “Leave him to me, Heinrich. You’re bleeding to death.”

  Looking toward the trail of blood through the leaves, Heinrich became sick. His vision blurred again and his mind, once more playing tricks on him, saw his father staring up at him from the forest floor.

  Horst arrived, jumped from the car, and lifted his Obersturmbahnführer in his arms.

  “Promise me, Horst. You will kill him.”

  “Who, my Colonel?”

  “My father. I tried to shoot him but the bullet missed.”

  Horst, worried that his commander had received a concussion from the tank explosion and was out of his head, said nothing, but continued to the car. He left the scene as the two captured paratroopers were led from the woods to help remove the tree trunk pinning their captain to the ground.

  In the house along the downs, Alpharetta and Dow sat in the parlor with Birdie, Freddie, and Reggie.

  Eight days had elapsed since the two had watched the great air armada pass over them. Eight days of waiting for news of the fighting.

  No mention had been made of Marsh’s division, the 82nd, or the other American one, the 101st. It was as if a conspiracy had silenced any information about four of the bridges, with only the British soldiers fighting near the Arnnhem bridge mentioned, and that news increasingly somber.

  Waiting for the night’s newscast by the BBC, Alpharetta sat patiently, quietly, her ears attuned to the latest development of the invasion that was rapidly turning into disaster. But still, she hoped to hear something about the Americans fighting in Operation Market-Garden.

  As a chilled Alpharetta got up for her sweater, Birdie said, “I think, this is it, luv.” Quickly she sat down again and, folding her arms for warmth, shivered and listened.

  Arnhem was declared a disaster. The few remaining British paratroopers had been evacuated in the night—two thousand of the original ten thousand, a massacre by the Germans. Birdie’s eyes filled with tears.

  As Alpharetta waited to hear what had happened to the Americans, how many had been killed, the telephone rang in Dow’s office next to the parlor.

  Freddie, answering the phone, motioned to Alpharetta through the open door. “It’s for you,” he said.

  A surprised Alpharetta rose and walked into Dow’s office. She stared at the telephone, hesitating to pick it up. She didn’t know why her heart should react, even before she knew who was on the other end of the line. Finally, with Freddie staring at her from the door, she lifted the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Alpharetta?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me—Belline.”

  The words were muffled, and sounded far away.

  “Is anything wrong, Belline?”

  Unintelligible sobbing sounds took the place of words, and Alpharetta, listening to the incoherence, grew alarmed. “What’s the matter, Belline? What’s happened? Belline?”

  Struggling to make herself understood, Belline finally managed to speak. “Ben Mark’s been killed.”

  A stunned Alpharetta, hearing the words, refused them. All week, she had been thinking of Marsh and the danger he was in. It never occurred to her that Ben Mark was the vulnerable one. Now it was her turn to remain silent, as if she had lost all ability to speak.

  “Alpharetta? Did you hear me? Ben Mark is dead.”

  “No. There must be some mistake, Belline.”

  “There’s no mistake. I have the telegram in front of me.”

  “If he were shot down, he could still be alive.”

  “His plane exploded in the air. Ted, the best man at our wedding, called me a few minutes ago.”

  Alpharetta swallowed. A great hurt lodged in her throat—for Belline, for herself, for Rennie, and the unborn baby. She clutched the telephone and listened to Belline’s sobbing, as she tried hard not to do the same.

  “Belline? Belline?”

  There was no more conversation for the moment. The telephone only served to carry inchoate sounds of grief, with Alpharetta powerless to comfort Belline in her sorrow. The ache in her throat remained as a new fear overtook her. In tones that sounded alien to her own ears, she managed to say, “And Marsh?” Have you heard anything from Marsh?”

  “Not a word,” Belline sobbed. “For all I know, he’s dead, too.”

  “Don’t say that, Belline. Pray to God nothing’s happened to him, as well.”

  “Right now, I’m not even sure there is a God.”

  “Where are you? I’ll get permission from Dow to let me come and be with you.”

  “There’s nothing you can do, Alpharetta. I just wanted you to know, since you loved Ben Mark, too.”

  The line went dead and Alpharetta, staring at the black telephone, the harbinger of tragedy, slowly hung it up. She did not return to the parlor where the others were sitting. Her grief was too new to be shared. She raced through the hallway, opened the front door, and fled into the night.

  Dow, with one ear to the radio and the other alert to the telephone call, heard the front door close. Something was wrong. He had been with Alpharetta too long not to sense it. Excusing himself from the room, Dow grabbed a flashlight from the hall table next to the door and dashed into the night, the beam of light searching for the red-haired woman who had fled in the fog.

  “Alpharetta! Where are you? Come back.”

  His voice was taken up by the wind and carried into the night. Alpharetta continued to flee until a rabbit hole caused her to pitch forward onto the grassy downs. The breath was knocked from her as she hit the ground.

  Like a miniature searchlight seeking out the planes in the sky, the small flashlight beam in Dow’s hands struggled through the fog, revealing Alpharetta on the ground.

  Hands suddenly lifted her to her feet, but no voice inquired as to her state of health or mind, for the worst had been assumed.

  “I’m all right,” she protested. “You don’t have to help me.” Alpharetta backed from him and brushed the dirt from her skirt.

  “What’s the matter, Alpharetta? Why did you leave the house so suddenly?”

  Turning on him as if he were the enemy, Alpharetta retaliated, “The war’s the matter—Americans getting killed in every battle. And their deaths, their victories, too unimportant for the British to mention.”

  He ignored the lashing out at him. This was not like Alpharetta, venting her hurt upon another.

  “If you’re speaking of Arnhem, Alpharetta, naturally it’s uppermost in our minds. Our airborne troops have been slaughtered. You heard the news. We’ve lost eight thousand of our best troops. Britain has no more men to take their places. For us, Arnhem is another Dunkirk.” His sad voice went unnoticed.

  “And you think we can afford to throw away the lives of our own soldiers? The 82nd and 101st are in the same invasion. You think somehow they’ve all miraculously escaped death?”

  “No, Alpharetta. I don’t think that.”

  “Then why can’t we hear what’s happened to them? Why does the news have to come from a telephone call?”

  “Who rang you up a few minutes ago?” he demanded.

  “Belline.” Alpharetta wiped the t
ears from her eyes.

  “And?” he prompted.

  “Ben Mark is dead.”

  “Oh, Alpharetta, I’m so sorry.”

  Before she knew it, she was in his arms, his voice caressing even as his hands caressed. The wind gusted over the downs and lashed the two in an embrace. Their lips touched—seeking, comforting—in the mistaken knowledge that love had been denied them both.

  Not understanding his emotions, a suddenly angry Dow pushed her from him. Maintaining his grip on her arms, he stared at her and tried to fathom her inmost thoughts.

  “Don’t grieve for him, Alpharetta. It’s not your place. Belline is his wife, not you.”

  “How can I help it? Poor Ben Mark. He’ll never see Atlanta again. Never see his own child.”

  Tears began streaming down her cheeks as the revelation hit Dow with unexpected impact.

  “There’s to be a child?” he asked in an incredulous tone.

  Alpharetta nodded.

  “How soon?”

  “In less than seven months.” Alpharetta, realizing that she had just breached Belline’s confidence said, “I shouldn’t have told you, Dow. Promise me, you won’t tell anyone about it.”

  A grim Dow replied, “Don’t worry, Alpharetta. Your secret is safe with me.”

  “Thank you,” a miserable Alpharetta replied. “You see, for Belline’s sake. . .”

  “There’s no need to say any more about it.”

  It never occurred to Alpharetta, absorbed in her grief, that Dow had completely misunderstood her when she had confessed about the baby.

  “Are you ready to come back to the house now, or would you rather stay out awhile?”

  His voice was gentle, different from his anger of a few moments earlier.

  “I can’t go in now, looking like this.”

  “Are you up to walking?”

  “Yes.”

  He tucked her arm into his and occasionally shone the flashlight on the path, while Alpharetta sought to draw her emotions under control before facing Birdie and the others.

  Chapter 37

  The next morning, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Dow Pomeroy abruptly left his headquarters on the downs. Only Eckerd went with him, Reggie and Freddie having taken off on a special reconnaissance flight. The two women remained behind with only the batman, Lloyd, to call upon if they needed help.