by Will Belford
A primeval growl rose in Joe’s throat and he threw himself across the room.
Summerville pulled Yvette back and pointed the bayonet into her throat.
‘Halt! Or she dies now.’
Joe stopped, panting with shock and fatigue. Yvette stared at him, eyes wild with terror.
‘You ... what the … ?’ stammered Joe, dumbfounded.
‘Silenz!’ yelled the man he knew as Summerville. ‘Now, I’m going out of this door behind me now,’ whispered Hagan. ‘If you move a centimetre I cut her pretty little Jewish throat, verstehen sie?’
Joe raised his hands and breathed hard, trying to calm himself. His eyes were moving from the tip of the bayonet to Yvette’s terrified eyes to Summerville’s bright blue eyes. He knew he needed to focus on those eyes, but his chest was thumping and his ears were ringing.
‘Let her go you bastard,’ he said as quietly as he could.
‘Very well, catch,’ said Hagan. He threw Yvette forward onto the table and ducked out the door, slamming it behind him. She slumped to the floor.
Joe knelt and gathered Yvette into his arms.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he cried, crushing her in his arms.
He held her tight. Long minutes passed as she wept into his shoulder, then he gently pulled her face up to his and looked into her swollen eyes.
‘Joe, my uncle, he needs a doctor. Joe, you must ‘elp!’
‘Yvette, we must get away from here, the Germans are nearly here, you must come with me now.’
‘But mon oncle. Please, tell me ‘e is still alive?’
She crawled across the floor, to where Pierre lay clutching at the holes in his skin. Bright blood pulsed out between his fingers with every heart beat.
‘I’m sorry Yvette,’ said Joe desperately, kneeling beside her, ‘but I don’t think he’s going to make it, and they’ll kill you too unless you come with me now.’
‘Non,’ said Yvette as she took her uncle’s hand and stroked his brow. There was a finality in her voice that struck at Joe’s heart.
‘What do you mean no? You can only expect more of the same, we have to go. Now.’
‘Non, I will not leave,’ said Yvette. She looked across the horrid floor at him, her beautiful face bruised and streaked with tears and blood.
‘Joe, it is too late. Everything is gone. You cannot save me anyway, you cannot even save yourself. I am sure there is worse to come than what ‘as ‘appened here. Get away while you still can.’
There was a discreet cough from the doorway.
‘Ah … sir?’
Joe turned to find Sergeant Smythe standing behind him in an unfamiliar apologetic stance. Peering through the door were the rest of the squad.
‘We really oughta get goin’ sir,’ he said, ‘them Gerry engineers are already over the river and the rest are crossing on inflatable boats.’
Joe stared at him as if he were a stranger.
‘Come on sir, time to go now.’
The sergeant came in close, and Joe glared at him, sightless. Smythe knelt down beside him and spoke quietly and gently into Joe’s ear, as if he were a wounded animal about to be put down.
‘Sir, you can’t ‘elp the lady anymore, you’ve got a responsibility to your men sir. I’m sorry sir.’
He stood up.
‘Sorry ma’am. Come on sir.’
‘Go, Joe,’ said Yvette in a broken voice.
Joe stood, stumbled, his knees locking up. Smythe grabbed his arm to keep him from falling.
‘OK boys, let’s get back to the square and find a truck or something,’ said the sergeant, ‘Looks like the Lieutenant is AWOL for the moment. Where the ‘ell is Summerville by the way? Anyone seen him?’
As they pulled him away, Joe stared at Yvette and tears sprung from his eyes, leaving pink trails in the dust on his face. She crouched by her uncle and put her arms around him, then looked fearfully at the doorway, wondering what fresh horror would come through it next.
~ ~ ~
As Joe’s squad rounded the corner, a dozen Germans crept into the square and took up cover positions around the train station. A second squad followed, then another, and within a few minutes the square was swarming with enemy troops.
Joe shook himself and looked around. He pushed his rage and despair deep, deep down inside and forced himself to think. He had seven men, all wounded to some degree, unarmed, cut off from his company. Was there any chance of escape? Behind them he heard the sound of boots on cobblestones and suddenly knew it was hopeless. He turned to his men.
‘Sorry boys. Perhaps if we’d left immediately…’
‘Hande hoch!’
A German with a machine pistol coming up the side street had seen the group in khaki standing on the corner. They raised their arms and stood, disconsolate. The man with the gun let out a stream of high-speed German. They looked at him blankly. Joe stepped forward and spoke in halting German.
‘Ich bin der commandant. Wo sind ihren Offizier?’
The German eyed him uneasily; he seemed nervous, covering eight men with just one machine gun. He looked behind Joe and raised his voice.
‘Unteroffizier! Hier bitte!’
A man with the three stripes of a Feldwebel came over from a nearby halftrack.
‘Ja Privat? Englanders ja? Gut.’ He turned to Joe.
‘Sie sind der Leutnant? Ja? Gut. Kommen sie,’ and gestured towards the town hall.
‘Wait,’ said Joe, ‘my men stay here,’ pointing at his men and gesturing at the ground.
‘Ja, ja, ihren menschen hier gestehen. Alles is richtig ja?’ The German sergeant beamed at him.
Joe scowled at him and turned to his men.
‘I’ll be back in a minute. Hide your rings and watches in your socks or your jocks if you want to keep them. And keep your mouths shut whatever any of these bastards says, even if he speaks English. Is that clear?’
‘Yes sir,’ replied his men.
‘Good boys, we’ll be out of this soon. Okay you Nazi bastard, let’s go.’
The German smiled again and pointed towards the town hall.
~ ~ ~
Yvette looked out of the door. The street was empty. She ran to the end of the block where the local doctor lived and banged on the door. The curtains in the window were pulled aside a fraction and the doctor’s wife peered out, then opened the door.
‘What is it Yvette?’ she said in an urgent whisper, looking around fearfully, ‘You should not be outside, the Germans are here.’
‘Helena, my uncle needs help, he’s been stabbed,’ said Yvette, ‘please, he’s bleeding everywhere, he needs a doctor or he’ll die!’
‘Francois,’ called the woman over her shoulder, ‘come quickly, Pierre Bendine needs you.’
The doctor came out in his shirtsleeves with his bag.
‘What is it Yvette?’
‘Come quickly, my uncle is hurt.’
Once the doctor had cut Pierre’s shirt away and seen the true nature of the wounds he knew it was hopeless. The bayonet had penetrated in three places low in Pierre’s side, piercing his intestines and slicing up into the left lung. With every breath, a foul mixture of blood and faeces bubbled out of the ragged tears in Pierre’s torso, to join the puddle spreading on the floor. This was not the sort of wound people recovered from.
‘Pierre, can you hear me?’ asked the doctor. Pierre just groaned.
‘I’m going to give you something for the pain, alright?’ He reached into his bag for the morphine and a syringe.
‘Will he be alright doctor?’ asked Yvette urgently.
‘Come with me child,’ he said, leading her into the kitchen.
‘Yvette, I’m afraid your uncle’s wound is mortal,’ said the doctor. ‘I can stop the bleeding, but he will still die, it will just take days, one, maybe two, of agonising infection before it happens. Even if we had a hospital in this town they could not help him. I am so sorry.’
‘Doctor Lasalle, for God’s sake
, isn’t there anything you can do to save him?’ pleaded Yvette.
‘All we can do is make him comfortable. I will give him something to make him sleep. Truly Yvette, there is nothing you can do for him. I am sorry my dear.’
Yvette returned to her uncle and put her arms around him, tears rolling down her cheeks. The doctor filled his syringe to the brim with morphine. It was a lethal dose—there was no point prolonging the agony—he’d known Pierre all his life, who’d have thought it would end like this?
He pushed the needle into the dying man’s vein and depressed the plunger.
‘There, he will sleep now, make him as comfortable as you can right there, don’t try to move him. I’ll come back tomorrow.’
A hammering on the door made them both jump. The door swung open and three German soldiers with rifles walked in.
‘Aus, jetz,’ the first one shouted, pointing at them and then the door, ‘Raus!’
‘Do as they say Yvette, don’t argue,’ said the doctor. He picked up his bag and walked through the door. Yvette followed, casting a terrified glance at the slumped form of her uncle.
In the street outside a truck was parked. Beside it, a short fat man in a leather trenchcoat was examining a clipboard. He pointed at Yvette and two of the soldiers grabbed her arms and started to drag her around to the tailgate of the truck.
‘Non! What are you doing?’ shrieked Yvette, ‘Doctor Lasalle, help! Help me!’
One of the soldiers slapped her brutally across the face, then the two of them pushed her up into the truck and jumped in after her.
‘Alles gut, vierzehn Juden,’ said the man in the trenchcoat, ticking something on his clipboard.
‘You must be Doctor Lasalle,’ he continued in French, ‘the town records show no evidence of Jewish blood in your family, lucky for you. Guten tag, Herr Doktor.’
When the doctor returned home he put his bag down and sat at the table.
‘Is Pierre alright my dear?’ asked his wife.
‘He will be dead by now, his wound was mortal. I gave him morphine.’
‘Mon Dieu, that is terrible news,’ said his wife.
‘Forget Bendine, he is dead and his niece has been taken away by the Nazis. We cannot be seen associating with people like that anymore.’
‘What?’ she asked incredulously, ‘people like what?’
‘Jews,’ he replied.
‘Oh Francois, you can’t be serious, you’ve known Yvette all her life.’
‘I’m perfectly serious Helena. We will be accused of harbouring them next, and our lives will be forfeit. From now on, we don’t know any of the Jews in this town.’
~ ~ ~
The mayor’s office looked the same as it had half an hour before, but for two things: the Nazi reversed-swastika flag hung where the tricolour had been, and the mayor was nowhere to be seen. In the seat behind the mayor’s desk, a German officer sat, his boots up on the varnished surface, a smoking cheroot in one hand and a glass of cognac in the other. Beside him, two soldiers with machine pistols covered the room.
As Joe was marched in, the officer drew on the cigar and took a deep pull of the cognac. He puffed out the smoke in a series of ostentatious rings that glistened in the beams of sunlight coming through the windows. Joe could see the motes dancing in the turbulence of the man’s breath.
‘Zo. Ein Englander,’ stated the officer, taking another draw on the cigar.
‘Australian actually. Lieutenant Joe Dean.’
‘Surely you are not going to keep your serial number a secret Lieutenant?’ asked the German in good English. He laughed to himself then translated. His men laughed dutifully.
‘76429309, and much good may it do you,’ replied Joe, trying to sound braver than he felt.
‘Come come Lieutenant, you say you are from Australia? You must have swum a long way to get here. Please, take a seat. Unless I am much mistaken, you are the man who defended the riverbank after the rest of your company fled and blew the bridge, richtig?’
‘We were the last across if that’s what you mean.’
‘Ja. A gallant effort. You destroyed my flammenwerfer panzer, I am annoyed about that. You also disabled another tank and your men killed two of mine and wounded four more. You must have held us up for at least, what would you say men, half an hour?’
He looked around at his guards and translated for them. Once again they laughed dutifully.
‘We did what we could in the circumstances,’ said Joe sullenly.
‘Ja, you fought well, I could do with a leader like you in my battalion. Someone who is prepared to take a risk. But I am sure you are not interested in fighting for the glorious German Wehrmacht are you Lieutenant?’
‘I’d sooner drink a pot of your piss Captain, or Major or whatever the fuck you are,’ replied Joe.
‘Ja. The kind of response my father told to me expect from people of your country. He fought the Ossies not far from here in the last war you know, at Passchaendale; he captured many of them. He was amazed at how disrespectful the Australians were to the British officers.’
‘Passchaendale eh? Then was he there when the Aussies blew up Hill 60 and overran the German positions? Did they take him prisoner too?’
‘Regrettably not, he was wounded manning a machine gun against a bayonet charge, after most of his men had been killed. He was found after the counter-attack with a bayonet sticking out of his chest, barely alive. He was taken to Germany and has had difficulty breathing ever since. But enough of these memories, what are we to do with you?’
‘Whatever you want, I imagine,’ said Joe.
‘Ach, if only it were that simple Lieutenant. You see, despite what you have heard about us, we of the Wehrmacht still abide by the rules of war, ja? Unfortunately, I have no option but to turn you over to the Feldpolizei for transportation to the nearest Stalag. Feldwebel, lock the Lieutenant and his men up in the local police cells for the moment. Who knows? The Gestapo may want to speak to them.’
‘What about my men?’ Joe interjected, ‘some of them are wounded. We need a doctor, food, water.’
‘Ja, ja, you will have them, now go.’ The German waved him away.
An hour later, Joe found himself staring out of the barred window of the police lockup. The police station adjoined the train station and the cell’s only window looked out into the square at ground level. His men were all crammed into the cell next door, a separation that the Feldwebel had said was ‘required under the terms of the Geneva Convention.’ Required under the terms of “whatever we damn-well please” Joe had thought at the time, but there was no point in arguing. The local doctor had come and bandaged his men’s wounds and the guards had thrown in some bread and water, so they were as comfortable as they were likely to get.
‘Now what?’ thought Joe, staring at the cobbles in front of his face. Unless he could concoct some sort of scheme to escape, he had to resign himself to the possibility of being a prisoner of war. Who knew how long this war would last? The way the French and British had collapsed it could well be over in a few months. His father had told him about men who’d been taken in 1914 and kept in a cage for the whole four years of the war. He didn’t think he could stand that.
A truck with loudhailers mounted on it pulled into the square, followed by a Kubelwagen. Two men got out of the car, a tall one in a mottled camouflage uniform with an officer’s cap, and a short fat one in a black leather overcoat that was too big for him. They disappeared into the town hall. A few minutes later they came out again and one of them signalled to a soldier on the truck. The loudhailers crackled to life and a stream of German-accented French poured forth. The message ran for about a minute then repeated itself, over and over again. After a few minutes, doors began to open around the square and the townsfolk came cautiously out.
Before long a crowd of several hundred had gathered at the town hall steps and the recording was switched off. In the sudden silence the mayor came out onto the front porch of the town hall with the Ger
man officer who had interviewed Joe. He began to speak, and while Joe’s French was not up to a full translation, the message seemed to be that if they co-operated they would not be harmed. The crowd soon dispersed.
‘Fellas?’ called Joe through the window, ‘they’re going to send us to a prison camp. As you know it’s our duty to try to escape, but we’re only going to do that if we all make it without any of us getting killed. We’ve lost enough men from this unit, I don’t want any of you to die needlessly now. Seems to me our best chance will be when they move us. They’ll have to put us on trucks or a train or something, so we’ll just have to stay alert for a chance. If it comes, it’ll come suddenly, so you’ll need to be ready to run at a moment’s notice, alright?’
‘Sure Lieutenant,’ replied Smythe from the adjoining cell, ‘we’ll be ready, don’t you worry.’
Joe smiled at the confidence in the man’s voice. He only hoped that he had sounded that confident – he knew their chances of escape were almost nil. If they were to get away it would have to be in the next day, before the Germans overran the entire countryside and cut off all routes to the sea. Fortunately, none of his men were completely disabled by their wounds, they could all walk at least.
He started as the door to his cell clanged open. Joe turned to see the two men he’d seen in the square walk in, a guard taking up position with his rifle behind them. The first man was tall and lean and had the look of a professional soldier. His uniform’s collar bore a Death’s Head and a double-‘S’ symbol. The other was short, overweight and had the sort of ruddy complexion that comes from too much beer and sausage and not enough exercise. Despite the summer heat, he was still wearing his over-sized black leather coat; a soldier he clearly was not.
The tall one looked at Joe with total lack of interest, as if this was just the first of many people he would question that day, then suddenly barked out ‘Name, Reihe, Seriennummer?’
‘Joe Dean, Lieutenant, 76429309,’ replied Joe.