Part Two

First Light

 

Périsse l’univers pourvu que je me venge.

Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac

 

One

 

There was something in the air. The invasion was on its way.

They all knew it was on its way. The whole of Europe knew it was on its way – even the Germans. The only thing they didn’t know was where and when.

It stuck out a mile that it was coming from the increase in messages from the BBC. It was obvious from the amount of training going on across the Channel, the collection of invasion craft and warships, the number of men gathered in Southern England; it was clear from the urgency that showed in everything the Germans did, the way they moved their men, increased their security and watched the French like hawks in case they knew something the Germans didn’t. Everything suddenly seemed to be on the move, aircraft, guns, lorries, men, all turning to face the north where they knew the threat existed.

Though Radio Paris had stepped up its appeals to the French not to be deluded by British and American promises, and the Germans had stepped up their threats about what would happen if they were, the messages from London continued to grow in intensity. Despite the fact that Gestapo agents seemed to be everywhere – fortunately easy to recognise because of the German love for green that manifested itself in the colour of their hats or jackets – the whole of France was on the alert. The next messages from London would surely indicate invasion in a matter of hours and the beginning of guerrilla warfare against railways, roads and telephones. In Néry, Reinach, Urquhart and Neville stayed up all night preparing explosive charges, grenades and incendiary pots until the almond-paste smell gave them all a headache. The feeling that the end of their ordeal was in sight had grown so strong it was almost possible to reach out and touch it, and it no longer occurred to either Neville or Urquhart to question their stay in the district or complain that they were not being sent on their way. Almost without being aware of it, they had become involved in Néry’s determination to be free.

Few of them had realised that Cassino was the key to Rome or that Rome was the key to the invasion, but on 4 June they heard that the Italian capital had fallen and that Roosevelt had announced that Berlin would be next.

Marie-Claude was short-tempered with worry. With Hössenfelder’s help no longer welcomed, the farm had begun to go down again. Neville had no time to soften the blow by paying her the small attentions she’d grown used to, and this only served to increase the tension. Like everyone else, Neville was absorbed in the endless discussions that went on nightly about what they could do with their weapons now they had them, the endless counting and recounting of ammunition – as if they thought that it might have evaporated or been eaten by mice – the constant admiring of the shining inner workings of their machine-guns. It was a man’s world in which she no longer had any influence, and it left her desolate.

Only Urquhart stood aloof. He continued his training sessions in the woods. He even entered into the endless discussions of what they should do. But always he was, slightly cynical, slightly sceptical, as though he felt they were only playing at soldiers. Yet he too paid no attention to Marie-Claude, and she was starved of affection. Desperately wanting to be in love with someone, she wasn’t sure whom; and, filled with angry frustration, she could only take her problem to Father Pol. Her eyes filled with infinite distress, she sat opposite him, bolt upright in her chair and hostile in her misery, expecting – demanding – help. The old man had long since guessed what was troubling her and he poured her a measure from his dwindling store of marc and placed it carefully beside her, saying nothing, waiting for her to speak. She didn’t even seem to notice as he sat down opposite her.

Adjusting his thick glasses, he stared at her warily. She was an attractive girl, with a flair for dress when she wasn’t wearing the men’s clothes she used about the farm. Everything in the cluttered and ugly little room, smelling of the old man’s body odour, looked shabby and colourless beside her.

‘Is it possible to love twice, Father?’ she asked bluntly.

Father Pol sighed and scratched at the emery of blue bristle on his chin. As he’d watched her grow up through the war, seeing her grief as she’d lost her husband and then the man she was going to marry in his place, he’d often wanted to take her head in his hands and comfort her. But he’d been anointed to console only with words, and sometimes – to a young girl – words were as dry as old bones and just as uninteresting.

‘Are you in love again, child?’ he asked.

Marie-Claude lifted her head, her face full of solemn beauty. There were tears on her eyelashes and she wasn’t sure whether they were caused by sadness or just plain frustration.

‘I think so, Father,’ she said.

‘Who?’

‘I’m not sure. I don’t know.’

Father Pol was puzzled and she went on. ‘I loved my husband when he was alive, Father.’

‘He was a fine, virile man.’

‘But he’s been dead now for four years. Is it wrong to forget him?’

‘It would be a miracle, child, if you didn’t.’

Marie-Claude sighed. ‘I have a farm, Father,’ she said. ‘I need a man for the farm and I need a man for me.’

‘I’m sure you won’t find it hard, my child,’ the priest said. ‘I’m sorry sometimes that I’m old and married to the church.’

‘There’s so much to do.’

‘The Lord never intended that the Via Crucis should be travelled with ease. Duty is bitter, child, but the rewards are splendid, and Almighty God in His wisdom knows best.’

Marie-Claude drew a deep breath. ‘My worries probably seem unimportant to God. Ernestine Bona–’

Father Pol held up his hand. ‘There’s a statue of the Sacred Heart in the bedrooms of many wanton women,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem to make young men wish to possess their vessels in honour, or their vessels want to be so possessed. Even so, though I sometimes find the conduct of Christians deplorable, I still think the arm of the Lord is round us.’

‘Do you think the English are hypocrites, Father?’

Father Pol’s face was expressionless. This was something he’d been half-expecting. ‘Our two friends at the farm?’ he asked.

Marie-Claude frowned. ‘I hear that after ten o’clock at night the English are the same as Frenchmen. Yet they don’t seem to notice me.’

‘Perhaps they feel their duty lies elsewhere.’

Marie-Claude’s head jerked up at once, her eyes ablaze with indignation. ‘Who?’ she demanded.

Father Pol smiled. ‘Not “who”, child – “what”. Their country, for instance. Perhaps to them love’s a luxury they can’t afford at the moment. Perhaps, like you, they’re waiting for the right time.’

Marie-Claude sniffed. ‘When it comes, they’ll probably go away.’

‘That’s a possibility. God teaches us not to count our chickens before they’re hatched.’

‘And anyway, what can we do? Just because we’ve got some weapons, it doesn’t mean we know anything about fighting.’

Father Pol gestured. ‘We do what we can,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard the story about the juggler who wanted to make an offering but, as he was poverty-stricken, all he could do was toss up his knives and plates in front of the statue of the Virgin until the sweat ran down his face. But since this was all he had to offer, the Madonna herself stepped down from the pedestal and wiped the sweat from his brow. It’s only a legend but it’s beautiful, and in the same way we shall know how to behave when the time comes.’

‘In the meantime, Father, I live like a nun.’

Father Pol drew a deep breath. ‘Are you troubled by impure thoughts?’

Marie-Claude moved restlessly, her mouth mutinous. Sometimes, she felt, she derived her only pleasure from them. It was the absence of action that bothered her. ‘If they looked at me, Father, it would help. Underneath my clothes I’m a woman.’

‘I’m aware of that; like most of the men in Néry. God made the human body. Even the bits the religious perfectionists don’t always like. But these are troublous times, child, and you must possess your soul in patience. What bothers us all is nerves and the fact that we’re growing a little on edge. I try to be consoled by the fact that the Germans are too.’

 

By this time half Néry knew about the parachute drop and, listening to them, it appeared that they had all taken part in it.

‘I’ve just been talking to another one who was there,’ Urquhart said as they ate their evening meal. ‘This one swore he carried two of the big containers away under his arms.’

Neville laughed, but Marie-Claude kept her eyes down on her plate.

Reinach couldn’t sit still. ‘If they don’t invade soon,’ he complained, ‘it’ll be too late! It’s June now. For God’s sake, it’ll be autumn again before long.’

That evening the weather was bad, with the rain heavy on the roof and the wind roaring through the trees to rattle the windows and shake the shutters. The atmospherics on the old radio made it impossible to hear and, after thundering on it for a good half-hour with her fist, Madame Lamy switched off in disgust.

‘They’ll not come tomorrow,’ she said. ‘That’s certain. They’d all drown.’

But within half an hour, Reinach was tapping at the back door, wearing a rubber coat dripping with water. His eyes were bulging with excitement. ‘It’s on!’ he announced, his wide empty mouth splitting his face from ear to ear. ‘Didn’t you hear the messages?’

Marie-Claude dived for the radio but Reinach grabbed her arm. ‘It’s finished! They’ve stopped now! But I heard him! It might have been de Gaulle himself for all I know. He said we had to gather and transmit information and that it would be of the most vital importance to the progress of the operation.’

Marie-Claude ran to where Urquhart was repairing a broken stall in the cow-byre with Neville. ‘It’s on!’ she yelled. ‘Come quickly!’

Reinach was still dragging off his rubber coat when Father Pol appeared, coming through the back of the stackyard. Almost immediately behind him was young de Frager. ‘The message came,’ he announced. ‘We must start at once!’

Urquhart’s expression showed his usual disbelief. ‘To do what?’ he asked.

De Frager gestured wildly. ‘This is a great date in history,’ he said. ‘We must be part of it.’

‘Well, go on, how?’

De Frager glared and Father Pol leaned forward. ‘You spend too much time asking how, my son,’ he said.

Marie-Claude was also staring angrily at Urquhart. He puzzled her. Sometimes he seemed sympathetic towards what they were hoping to do. At others he was merely cynical.

‘And where,’ she said. ‘And when.’

Urquhart looked up at her and smiled, refusing to be drawn into the acrimony of an argument, and Neville pushed forward.

‘Surely we can do something,’ he insisted.

‘What?’ Urquhart asked.

‘For Christ’s sake, stop saying “how” and “what”.’

Urquhart’s eyes narrowed. ‘When you can prove you have some idea what the hell you’re wanting to do, I will,’ he said.

‘All you do is sneer at everybody else’s suggestions.’

‘And all you do is hypnotise yourself with your own bloody visions of glory – like they do. We’re nothing. Remember that. Nothing. A group of bloody amateurs who won’t even give their full attention to learning to use what weapons they’ve got. We couldn’t even put on the simplest field exercise.’

De Frager pushed between them. ‘They’re probably on their way already,’ he said. ‘Any day now we’ll be free! God’s surely on our side!’

Father Pol shrugged. ‘God’s been on so many sides already,’ he said gently. ‘Sometimes on both sides at once.’

De Frager gestured. ‘Someone’s got to have the courage to stand up to them! The Lord didn’t come down from Heaven just to prevent men getting into bed with the wrong women or to tell old ladies it’s time they went to church again! There are Germans on the sacred soil of France! We should drive them back to their own filthy country!’

‘When they’re beaten they’ll go on their own,’ Urquhart pointed out.

‘Merely letting them go isn’t enough,’ Reinach growled, for once grudgingly siding with de Frager. ‘When it’s all over, other men will say “We helped to free France.” We need to say it too.’

 

Tarnera had also heard the broadcast but when he passed on its contents to Klemens, the colonel looked at the rain pouring down the windows and the wildly tossing trees outside. He couldn’t believe that the allies would risk all their elaborate plans, their fleet of ships and thousands of men’s lives, by launching them into such diabolical weather.

The possibility worried him, nevertheless, and he telephoned General Dannhüber for instructions. Dannhüber sounded as much on edge as everyone else.

‘How can I give you instructions,’ he demanded, ‘when I don’t know what to instruct against?’

‘Is it the invasion, General?’

‘Rommel says it isn’t imminent. My advice to you, Klemens, is sit on it. They haven’t come yet, that’s for certain. I’ve just been in touch with Paris.’

Mollified, Klemens telephoned Major Doench at Rolandpoint and Major Rieckhoff at St Seigneur, and discussed possible action with them before coming to the conclusion that, lacking information, the only thing they could do was wait. As he finally put the telephone down, Klemens called in Klein-Wuttig and Tarnera.

‘Are we ready?’ he asked.

‘We have an alert out throughout the command,’ Klein-Wuttig said. ‘Guards have been doubled, all vehicles have been immobilised and every man’s been told to sleep fully dressed, with his weapons alongside him.’

‘Good. Good. Security?’

‘Checked,’ Tarnera said. ‘Patrols in the village and sentries doubled on the château.’ He smiled. ‘I should hate anyone to burst in and slit my throat.’

Klein-Wuttig scowled at him and Klemens waved them away before they started arguing. ‘You’d better get some sleep,’ he said. ‘But make sure the telephone orderly knows there’s to be no dozing. And one of you had better be on call all night. Arrange it how you like.’

After they’d gone, Klemens went to bed himself. When the allied parachutists arrived, they’d not drop near Dijon, he knew, and certainly not at Néry. Then he remembered that the roads from the south and from Paris back to the Reich cut the command north of St Seigneur and, realising the allies might well try to stop supplies from Germany, he started to worry again.

He tried to make himself sleep, but he remained uneasy and twice he sat up, once to make a note of something he felt he’d need to check the following day, once to make sure the telephone orderly had had no messages. He finally managed to drop off just before dawn but it was a restless sleep and he was still tossing when the telephone alongside his bed rang. It was Tarnera.

‘I thought you’d like to know, Herr Oberst,’ he said. ‘They are coming.’

‘Who’re coming?’ Klemens was still befuddled.

‘The allies, Herr Oberst. I’ve just received a report that glider troops and paratroops have been flying over the Normandy coast in millions.’

‘Nonsense!’ Klemens could still hear the rain against the window.

‘I’m afraid not, Herr Oberst,’ Tarnera said. ‘It’s just been confirmed.’

Then Klemens realised it was daylight and sat up sharply. ‘What’s the time?’ he asked.

‘Five fifty-five, Herr Oberst’

‘It must be just another raid, like the Dieppe thing. Surely.’

‘Not this time, Herr Oberst. It seems the sea’s black with ships and they’re firing on the coastal defences.’

‘The Führer said it would come in the Pas de Calais area.’

Tarnera sounded sceptical. ‘I’m afraid that’s a figment of the Führer’s imagination, like the Reich that would last for a thousand years. Quite a lot of it’s already crumbled in Russia and Italy.’

‘Shut up, Tarnera!’ Klemens was wide awake now and bad-tempered with lack of sleep. ‘You ask for trouble. How did you find out? From Dijon?’

‘No, Herr Oberst. It came through headquarters at La Roche-Guyon and via Le Mans.’

‘I find it hard to believe.’

‘Perhaps we’ve all been kidding ourselves,’ Tarnera said drily. ‘I gather Paris didn’t believe it either.’

 

They didn’t even believe it in Néry.

Marie-Claude was picking up the twigs and small branches that had been snapped off by the wind, and her mother was sweeping up the petals of the blown roses that scattered the front of the house, when Reinach fell into the yard over the wall at the back.

‘Haven’t you heard?’ he yelled. ‘They’ve landed in Normandy!’

‘What!’

‘Four o’clock this morning! Near Caen! Put the radio on!’

As they switched on, the BBC was already playing ‘La Marseillaise’, and Reinach, Madame Lamy and Marie-Claude stood still and solemn and straight. As it finished, they were all reaching to embrace each other when it changed to ‘God Save The King’, and they all looked hurriedly at Urquhart and Neville and stiffened again. As the last notes died away, Marie-Claude’s face split in one of her wide electric grins. It died immediately as a new tune started.

‘What’s this?’ she demanded.

‘“Star-Spangled Banner”,’ Neville said. ‘It’s the American one.’

Marie-Claude’s eyes blazed. ‘For God’s sake, do we have to listen to “The Red Flag”, and the Dutch and the Belgian and the Australian and Scottish national anthems before we can move?’ She dived for the kitchen and came back with a bottle of marc and began to splash it into tumblers in vast helpings that burned their throats.

‘Eisenhower made a broadcast in French,’ Reinach said. ‘His accent wasn’t too bad. I almost understood him. De Gaulle’s going to speak at lunch-time. The allies have kept their promises. It’s up to us now to keep ours.’

The yell was already going round the fields – ‘They’ve landed!’ – and Lionel Dring appeared at Father Pol’s presbytery, his eyes blazing with excitement. ‘They’ve come, Father! We should ring the bells.’

‘There aren’t any bells,’ Father Pol pointed out. ‘The Germans stole them to make guns.’

‘Then, for God’s sake, let’s bang a drum or something! The allies have come back to France!’

Caught by the tempest, Father Pol sent word that there would be a special mass, and by mid-morning black-clad figures in their best clothes were heading towards the church. Everyone in the village turned up – even Neville who wasn’t a Catholic. The shabby old building with its carved stations of the cross and its agonised Christ, its worn seats and peeling pink-washed walls, was full of optimism and joy and hope. The Baronne arrived on the arm of her great-grandson and followed by old Balmaceda – looking like an ancient doll with her bright artificial hair set against the dramatic black of the Baron.

Father Pol had decided that it was time to follow the example of Father Xavier in Rolandpoint and was already thundering away. ‘Nazism and Vichy fascist institutions are anti-Christian!’ he was shouting. ‘It is our duty to contribute to their defeat!’

When they’d finished shouting ‘Vive la France’, they sang ‘La Marseillaise’, the tune surging to the roof, then they all streamed out into the sunshine purged and sanctified.

Klein-Wuttig watched them, puzzled. There was no sign of war in Néry and his orders were not to provoke trouble. Yet it filled his brain with worms as he saw tricolours being waved at him by children too small to argue with, because he was fully aware that older brothers and sisters had passed them out and were carefully watching his reactions.

The radios remained on all day, heavy with German announcements and threats, and instructions from Radio Paris and Radio Vichy. Later, de Gaulle spoke.

‘It is he!’ Madame Lamy breathed, almost as if she were hearing a god give tongue.

‘He’s only a man,’ Marie-Claude said, looking at Neville and Urquhart.

‘He’s France! He means France to us!’

‘He means nothing at all unless we hear him.’

There was a lot of static and a few precautionary thumps from Madame Lamy; nobody in the whole village was making any pretence of doing anything else but listen. ‘The Battle of France has begun,’ the sombre voice intoned. ‘In the nation, in the empire, and in the armed forces there is now one purpose, one desire. Look upward. There, where the burden of our blood and years lies like a lowering cloud upon us, there the light of our greatness is shining through.’ It struck exactly the right note and left them all elated and entranced.

‘He said we had to destroy the enemy,’ Sergeant Dréo yelled.

‘And the Germans,’ Father Pol pointed out drily, ‘have said that their troops have been given orders to shoot anyone co-operating with the invasion.’

‘That’s right,’ Guardian Moch agreed. ‘In fact, Pétain says we’re going to be plunged into civil war, and Goebbels says the allies have done exactly what the Germans wanted and walked into a trap.’

‘You’ll have us believe soon that Hitler planned the invasion to make a German victory,’ Marie-Claude snorted. ‘The Germans will collapse.’

‘No,’ Sergeant Dréo said. ‘They’re good fighters. I know. It’ll be a long struggle. We must make preparations. Is everyone in the réseau ready?’

Reinach looked sheepish. ‘Some of them.’

‘Why not all?’

‘Because some of them have gone off north to see what they can do. Gaudin’s brother. Yves Rapin. And young Guélis. The barman from the Frontière came over from Rolandpoint for them. Even young Hénault. He rolled up his father’s 1914 kit and set off after them. They said they were sick of waiting here for something to happen.’

They stared accusingly at Urquhart, as though it were his fault, and Dréo pounded the table.

‘We must do something!’ he shouted, and his words seemed like a special plea to the Almighty for guidance.

 

But what?

With few young men left – even, for that matter, few middle-aged men who’d been brave in the other war – the knowledge that they were old and rusty made the following days bitter. There was an enormous sense of anticlimax, and they sat far into the night waiting for things to crystallise.

More youths vanished, to appear in the hills behind the village, wearing scarves round their necks and clutching rifles and Sten guns, magazines sticking out of every pocket. De Frager was prominent among them and there was a great deal of show, but not much action except that a few telephone lines were cut. There were also rumours of Milice and collaborationists further to the east being caught and beaten up or even shot. Then they heard that the narrow-gauge railway down to St Seigneur had been torn up five kilometres from Rolandpoint, and the feeling that something was happening at last lifted their hearts and filled them full of elation – until they learned that the job had been so badly botched it had been repaired almost immediately: Brisson’s brother, who was a garde-voie and responsible for that stretch of track, had been taken out and shot although he’d had nothing to do with the sabotage. His son was said to be walking round with a gun in his pocket swearing to kill the Communist who’d done it. It made them all hesitate a little.

Finally they learned that at Noidan-sur-Clamery, over to the west of Dijon, the villagers, made bold by a parachute drop, had openly attacked a German column. Two lorries had been set on fire and three men killed, but the following day German-controlled Cossacks had swept up from Dijon; fifteen men and boys had been shot and several women raped. The guns that had appeared in the woods round Néry vanished immediately and the young men were back in their homes that night, worried sick in case they’d been seen.

‘We must do something,’ Reinach nagged. ‘London have said we must.’

‘You’re not strong enough,’ Urquhart pointed out. ‘Your strength lies in simply existing.’

Neville sighed. He was profoundly touched by the need of the people of Néry to salvage their pride, but he’d also read enough history to know in his heart that Urquhart was right and they were wrong. Night after night he had defended their need to do something and every time Urquhart had demolished his arguments with his experience. Yet, despite his emotional involvement, his common sense told him that the time hadn’t yet come for them to act.

‘In case you haven’t noticed it,’ he said, ‘you live in what will probably be the last bit of France to be liberated. You’re a long way from British airfields, close to Germany and in an area that’s strongly held.’ He saw their eyes on his face and drew a deep breath. ‘Wait,’ he urged. ‘The Germans are avoiding trouble because they think you’re stronger than you are, and one of the first historical principles of war is to make your enemy think just that. If you attack them, they’ll know you’re not.’

Father Pol frowned. ‘I notice you talk a great deal about this history, my son,’ he observed thoughtfully.

‘History’s a part of warfare,’ Neville said. ‘English soldiers learn it at Sandhurst, the French at St Gyr, the Americans at West Point, the Germans at Potsdam. It helps them to avoid trouble the next time the same situation arises. British cavalry have always been careful to avoid getting themselves into the mess they found themselves in at Balaclava.’

Father Pol’s eyebrows rose. ‘There were British cavalry at Balaclava?’ he said, surprised. ‘I thought it was the Chasseurs d’Afrique who won that battle.’

‘It wasn’t won,’ Neville said more harshly. ‘And it wasn’t the Chasseurs d’Afrique who lost it.’

For a moment, Father Pol seemed about to take up the challenge but then he changed his mind. ‘This history,’ he probed. ‘You have studied it?’

Neville nodded.

‘And it is this same history which makes you suggest that we should not yet attack the Germans?’

Neville leaned forward. ‘Time’s on your side,’ he pointed out. ‘Any military planner would tell you the same.’

‘Even this Wellington you speak about?’ Dréo asked.

‘Even Napoleon. And if anyone knew his history, he did.’

Father Pol nodded, satisfied. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I am convinced. We will wait.’

The others seemed to agree with him. All except Reinach who got to his feet and stared at them with angry eyes. He seemed as taut and tense as a tightly wound spring.

‘I just wish I were in Normandy!’he growled.