The Single Solider: a moving war-time drama

by George Costigan

  Phillipe had contacts with every Maquis Group in the Department and for now he kept them armed and fed, joining them in twos and threes to make the execution raids that kept spirit and purpose high; and to protect each other at the RAF drops. They had safe barns and food stores dotted all over their endless geography, a limited supply of explosives, they had talked and raided and argued and eliminated all that year and with all their differences they were finally a united, if ramshackle, army. Waiting for the call to attack, and clear their land of its weeds.

  And there were men named as Milice who were nothing of the sort. Old scores settled under cover of conflict; and almost always for the currency of the peasantry; Land. By no means all honourable men.

  As there were Germans who doubted their orders without ever daring to question them, knowing that a leather-coated sadism awaited any wavering.

  Arbel wrote.

  They came to Ardelle only every three months now, but they proved he survived. He’d been digging and shovelling and bagging lime for nearly a year. Claude, cutting his hair, showed him the first white hair. He was not yet twenty-five. He pared his body to its needs for survival, his soul he washed each Sunday in Mass and cheap wine, and his mind he exercised with German and card-playing with Lothar. And when he left the bar he closed mind and soul down. He would have closed his ears, too; for still the accordion defeated the men, and still they tried.

  Ardelle wrote, never knowing whether he received her letters, he never said so. Were they censored, intercepted? She never knew –she simply wrote.

  The men of the Maquis snatched what days and hours they dared at home, because the time to leave permanently and fight and die was coming. And vigilance. Vigilance. An incautious group listening to the radio one night were surrounded by a squad of well-armed Miliciens and six died. A weak lad from their group had been tortured for the location of the camp-site. He died too. Then it snowed. A metre and a half fell in one night, froze, and some of it was still there, in the shade, greying, in April. Too dangerous. Trails. The Maquis war went on white hold.

  It snowed in Germany too and with it wind from Siberia. The men fashioned extra make-shift socks out of lime-bag paper. Tacked bits of wood to the bottom of their shoes. Were almost grateful for the shifts near the oven. Almost. The food got worse. No potatoes now. Beetroot and courgettes. They don’t fill.

  Jacques thought. “How will it come?”

  “The baby?”

  “The war.”

  “When the Germans retreat.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Jacques – what if it comes tomorrow? What then?”

  “I – don’t know.”

  “You go to the hills. I stay. You come back when you can.”

  “You stay? Alone!”

  “I can’t come with you.” She stood there, five months pregnant. “I’m not going.”

  “Then you’ll be killed defending me.”

  “Us.”

  “Like my father.”

  He pulled on his cigarette.

  “Or...”

  “Or? Or what?”

  “You go.” His head was down, eyes on the floor.

  “I go,” she repeated. “I go where?”

  “On the escape route for the children.” A beat of Time.

  “I can’t.”

  “I think you must.”

  “I’m not Jewish, I’m not a child, it’s not for me. Us.”

  “Simone – you are my blood. We pay.”

  “Pay?”

  “Find out next time –find out. They need money. You said so. You take our child in you or in your arms and you give him his life, Simone. That’s sacred. Not tomorrow. But when it’s Time – you’ll go. And until then I’ll pray it never comes.”

  “I’ll think about that, please.”

  Now he looked up at her.

  “And if it never comes – what then? Will you stay?”

  Another beat.

  Simone said, “I see why your Mother said iffing is close to sin.”

  “Would you stay?”

  “Jacques – I didn’t want to be pregnant but I’m not sorry I am. You healed me.”

  She took one hand into hers.

  “I dreamt once of A Blazing Love. I’ve never felt it. But I’ve felt This Love, and I’ve healed in it, and this is not that blazing Love. So I’ve learned Blazing Love is not all Love.”

  “You love me?”

  “I love being loved by you.”

  “You love me?”

  “Yes. You’re staring.”

  “So are you.”

  “I’m looking, you’re gawping.”

  “You said it. You said ‘yes’.” Simone laughed.

  “We make Love!” She patted the child. “Beautifully. What’s special about words? Does it make it truer?”

  “Makes the best memory.”

  “Better than making love?”

  Jacques thought.

  “Yes.”

  “Better than making Love? Better than kissing? Better than naked? Words are better than naked! No. You’re mad, mister.”

  “No, not words. But those words. There’s a flame. Now... “ “That’s your dreams coming true.”

  “Yes! Yes. Yes.”

  “But I’m not a dream, mister. This is not a dream.”

  “It was a second ago.”

  “This baby isn’t.”

  “I know. I know.”

  Silence fell between them.

  “How hard can you pray?” she asked. Silence.

  “Not that hard. I already did.” he said. Silence again.

  “But you’d stay?”

  She looked up. “Of course I would.” Warmer silence.

  And another night. Another night together.

  Another New Year’s Eve waiting for the church bell to toll. Ardelle come and gone. Another fire. Another fag.

  And when they lay in bed. “Your breasts are bigger.”

  “Mm.”

  “Is it nicer? For you? When I...”

  “Yes. Is it nicer for you?”

  “I like the idea of more of you. I love the idea of more of you.” Simone turned him on his back, took his hands and placed them underneath his head.

  “You can’t move – you’re tied in that position.”

  And slowly and then in a wonder his mind exploded with her kissing mouth on his chest, his stomach and now kissing him in her.

  Gasping.

  Wonder-shocked. Simone lay on his chest.

  “Making love hurts now, Jacques. But...”

  “Can I do that to you?”

  She looked at him.

  He said, “You’re staring.”

  “Go on then.”

  As January crawled snow-bound past their windows Jacques and Simone lived in white peace.

  “You have the best of me,” one of them said – and the other agreed.

  Three men made a break from the factory. One, they later heard, made it back to France but the other two spent three months in a forced labour camp. As ‘Vertraussman’ Arbel was taken to Gorlitz, to a big building and interrogated all day about what he knew, what he might have encouraged, what his politics were, had been. Half-way through he realised that they would do nothing to him.

  He was too good a worker. They needed him. He was sent back.

  “I live in a state of shock. Why?”

  “Because,” she sat up big and grinning in their bed, “I’m here! The fairy at the top of the Christmas Tree. You’re blessed, oaf! We both are. It won’t last. It’ll all be blown away. All change.”

  “I know that.”

  “Good.”

  “I made you a rocking chair.”

  The war was on ice.

  9

  The Germans posted larger units in all the market-towns: Figeac, Maurs, Bagnac, St Céré –all the valley towns and from there they rode up into the hills to sporadically terrorise the villages. They talked with the men of The Milice, identifying them deliberately, publicly,
so there could be no possibility of their changing sides. Drank in the bars and went back to their barracks, their bunks and their letters home.

  Razor-blades went scarce.

  A beard was taken to be a sure sign of a Maquisard and everything and everybody froze till Chibret accepted, at Bernadie’s gun-point, that he go to Aurillac to buy blades. He flushed crimson with fear, shame and impotence, buying five in every shop, but he knew this might just save his neck. The men shaved and so Chibret was brought into their web. Blackmail was currency. There was but one rule now –By Whatever Means.

  Ardelle gave food, Duthileul gave money, taking care to gain in return information about the RAF drops and even more care to be seen there with his son.

  In the village Galtier and Valet were marked to die for their refusal to feed, to help Fred; Jauliac and Grivault watered the wine and cut the meat thinner, Chibret bustled and blustered and Herrisson lived in fear now his move to Toulouse was cancelled. He had done both –he had helped Jacques and turned a blind eye to Feyt but mostly he had obeyed German orders. He thought of joining the men but believed they would kill him on arrival so he waited, and hoped it would pass somehow, somewhere down on the A roads it would all pass by. Madame Lacaze gave money to Fred who kept his end of the bargain, that her son never know.

  Phillipe told the men over and over that everyone would be called to account –either at the gates of Heaven if you believed in them –or now, for a Free France and its future. In his opinion the laws of Christianity no longer applied. This was their shared Destiny. Fail it and freeze for eternity.

  Marco came through with the explosives. Phillipe picked the best ten from three groups and planned the attack on the Ratier Factory in Figeac.

  As far as possible everything had been tested. The bombs and grenades, the bikes, the lorry, the guns and the men.

  “We engage the Germans as of tonight. There will be reprisals. But we will fight on now till the end of us or the end of them.”

  They rode and drove down all four approaches to Figeac –the devices shared should any three be stopped –none were, and they gathered in the hillside facing the Ratier. Two o’clock, no moon. Two bombs on the railway line into and out of the factory, timed to fire three minutes ahead of six more in the factory walls. At two-fifteen the first bombs of their war worked, and as the nightshift ran out to see, so the factory walls exploded, a whole section of roof fell, fire caught and spread and Phillipe and his men went back home to their camp. No shots were fired, no bullets wasted.

  “This next week will be the hardest yet. Reprisals. Then we blow up the Toulouse rail connection.”

  The local papers and the radio would call for them to be denounced in the name of France. Hollow sound. Falling on deafening ears.

  Simone and Jacques woke knowing neither had slept well and that he must move back behind his wall.

  He fed the cows the winter feed, took them to mill in the snowmud mess of his pasture, came home, fed the chickens, lit the fire, made breakfast and looked at her stomach as she sat upright in the chair.

  He asked, “What more should I want?”

  “What more do you want?”

  “What you want. You see more.”

  “I did.”

  “What should I see?”

  “You ask the stupidest questions. What do you mean – ‘should’?”

  “What should I see?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “You’re cross?”

  “You think because I read books I know something. I know nothing.”

  “No-o. There’s something you’ve seen –you would have been a teacher.”

  “Don’t.” Her voice was sharp.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s the past and I won’t think about that.” Her hands on her stomach.

  “I’ve never had dreams like that.”

  “It’s not a dream. It wasn’t...”

  “It won’t be,” he promised. “

  You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do.” Jacques didn’t recognise this certainty in his voice, nor did he know if he liked it. But he went on, “I do. I know. You’ll teach, I can see that.”

  “You can’t. No-one can.”

  The Germans cut the lunch-break to half-an-hour. The food got worse, and less, so the robbing from local farmers increased. Correspondence got scarcer. Arbel sensed the war must be turning. He didn’t rationalise, he smelt it as a farmer smells rain a week away.

  Another refugee child was delivered and when Simone and Madame Lacaze took him to Souceyrac Simone asked the Curé the price of her escape. She told Jacques and he thought for two long sleepless nights in his mother’s bed.

  Then he went to see Jean-Louis Duthileul.

  “If...” Jacques faltered, standing in the warm kitchen, turning his cap in his hands.

  “When.”

  “Then ‘when’ – what would you buy?”

  Duthileul looked up. The girl was pregnant, what was this? “I could lend...” he began, but Vermande cut him off.

  “I could never re-pay a loan.”

  “No. Then let me think. How much do you need?”

  Like a fool Jacques told him the figure.

  Duthileul thought. Waited a day, letting Jacques think, too –and then offered just enough –for Jacques’ barn, herd and the three fields.

  Jacques tried to think hard and quick. “Janatou?” he asked.

  “Jacques – please...”

  “I need to consider.”

  “Of course. But The Maquis attacked the Ratier Factory in Figeac. There’ll be reprisals. Soon there’ll be no time to consider.”

  “I know about time. Don’t bully me.”

  “It’s your need, my friend.”

  “We’re neighbours.”

  “As you wish.”

  What choice do I have? None. If I were to only sell him the fields –where would my herd go? And if I give him the herd what use are the fields or the barn? And I must have that money. For the choice. Of Life. For them.

  Jerome told Sara the news of the Ratier strike as a cause for elation and celebration; but when the village heard they finally understood the horror-rumours from Figeac. That 25 men and women had been executed whilst the old ones played boules in the church square. A lorry had driven up – unloaded twenty people randomly ripped from their breakfast tables and five road-working men the patrol had passed and picked up; the soldiers waited for the game to stop and a crowd to gather – then shot all twenty-five in the stomach and the throat. Left them for Figeac to deal with.

  Went back to their barracks.

  One German soldier deserted and was welcomed by a Maquis group near Carrenac and he lived out his war killing his own. The rest patrolled the towns, and the vast forested land surrounding them as far as Germany it felt, knowing the invasion battle to come would settle the course of the conflict. And some longed for it, hating the dumb insolent pompous French, Churchill and his damned island fortress, Stalin and his suicidal serfs and Roosevelt and the wretched cowardly Americans; hated the feeble fucking Italians and read avidly the reports of the Japanese – but a world where Hitler united with Hirohito was for serious dreamers only. And some wished Hitler would stop now; and some wished him assassinated – but all of them followed orders.

  There was food and drink, whores, a game of football once or twice, and as the Spring came – well hell – they could have been in Russia, in Africa, Italy. All they had to deal with for the moment were these gnats, groups of gnats in the hills. Fleas.

  Tics.

  Jerome’s group and another from Labastide waited two starlit nights for ammunition from England and on the third night, when the clouds came, so did the planes and the boxes on parachutes. It was gathered and distributed. And some was pilfered to be sold back later to the Maquis themselves, some to the Germans, even. But re-armed, the group provided cover for Charles Arnac’s men from Issendouls as they planted three bombs inside the Figeac-Toulouse train tunnel
. Two went off as the early morning coal train triggered them and was devastated, the driver and his plate-man killed and as much of the coal as possible was distributed as thanks for food, shelter and support. Everyone knew by lunchtime and everyone waited for the reprisals.

  The Germans consulted with The Milice.

  And took revenge on an isolated farm near Tauriac. The wife was held to watch as her son, daughter and husband were hung in front of her from the barn roof, then burnt, then the whole farm razed and she was left hanging outside the smoking wreck. They had been farmers. The Maquisards knew for sure that they hadn’t been members of the Maquis – but the point the Germans wished to make spread like malaria. Only contagious.

  When Jacques heard he crossed the road again. “I agree.”

  “I’ve written it,” Duthileul showed Jacques a paper.

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the way it’s done.”

  “If my word isn’t enough...”

  “Fine. Here is your money.”

  A big roll. String round it. Jacques stalled. “Do you want to count it?”

  “No, I want to wait.”

  “Vermande,” he was almost impatient, “one day soon there won’t be time to cross the road and knock on this door. Take it. Bury it – but have it.”

  “When will you take the barn and the land?”

  “Not till it’s over. And perhaps you won’t use the money. Won’t have to use it. I hope not.”