Four

 

The Wehrmacht started arriving in the Néry–St Seigneur– Rolandpoint valley the next day.

Mère Ledoux’s youngest son, who entertained ambitions to play football for one of the big French teams after the war, was kicking a ball against the wall of the bar and kept careful count of them as they passed. Everyone knew that the Gestapo was beginning to crack and were collecting civilian clothes – in Dijon there wasn’t a suitcase left in the shops – while the French police were actually beginning to round up the gangs who’d lived off the possessions of the Maquisards hiding in the woods.

Then a German lorry carrying pigs for troop rations was shot up on the Vangouillain–Mary-les-Rivières road near Salutre. In the atmosphere of mounting dread, the German soldiers left their dead behind, climbed into the escorting kübelswagen and bolted. Since the réseau who’d done the job had also had casualties and bolted, the pigs were left unattended until discovered by young Dréo and his friends on their bicycles. By evening they’d all been slaughtered, cut up and hidden by the overjoyed Néry men.

It was as they were turning their backs on the bullet-riddled lorry that they saw the column of Germans pouring up the road from Dijon; a long stream of armoured cars, motorcyclists, staff cars, lorries, even occasional tanks. Lacking any kind of formation, they moved very slowly and there were frequent halts to investigate possible traps – a sure proof that the Maquis were beginning to be feared.

‘I think,’ Reinach observed grimly as they watched from the trees, ‘that our friends are finally heading for le dernier round-up.’

There was already a great deal of hither and thither between Rolandpoint and St Seigneur that seemed to indicate Klemens’ men were preparing to leave. But nothing had yet happened in Néry. To the south, they heard, Villebasse was drowning in Germans who in their rage and fear had set fire to the village and partly destroyed it. Assômes was also sunk deep in the German tide and the young men had tried to avenge the earlier atrocity by sniping at the retreating columns as they passed, while the girls kept watch for the next lot. But, though they were harassed, the Germans were by no means throwing their hands in. While the troops remained in the lorries, tanks were called in and machine guns set up, and the whole column finally went into action with mortars and light artillery plastering the woods behind the running Frenchmen. The village was left devastated, a terrible sight with burning houses, mutilated men, and weeping women and children.

All transport began to disappear – lorries, petrolettes, cars, even bicycles. The Germans had been harried for miles and were willing to shoot to obtain something on wheels.

‘There’s a rumour at the château that the Americans are being held up north of Chaumont,’ de Frager announced. ‘The Germans are blowing the bridges across the Marne, and the Maquis are having to fight to hang on to the crossing at Vignogny.’

‘That’s all we need,’ Neville said bitterly. ‘We can’t do a thing if we can’t rely on the Americans coming up on time.’

‘We can do a bloody lot even without the Americans,’ Urquhart growled. ‘What’s the matter, lad, losing your nerve?’

Neville’s head jerked up but for once there was no sign of a smile on Urquhart’s face.

‘You don’t think everything went dead right with Montgomery’s plan at Alamein, do you?’ he said. ‘I bet he bit his nails a bit here and there, in spite of what they say. It’s a good plan you’ve thought up. Boy’s Own Paper couldn’t have done better. And it’ll work. All we have to do is keep an eye on Klemens so that we know the minute the bastards look like leaving.’

The praise surprised Neville because Urquhart had never been one to offer much encouragement, and he began to take heart again.

That afternoon, Reinach found a reason to take his lorry to Haute Falin in the hills. It was noticeable as he left that several mothers with young children were taking the opportunity to visit relations and were packed on boxes in the back. Other women were stuffing perambulators with babies and treasured possessions and setting off in well-spaced groups on foot, ostensibly with the same purpose in view. Half of them carried messages demanding help while their husbands busied themselves digging holes in their gardens, packing valuables into boxes and old suitcases, and burying them under footpaths and dung-heaps and vegetable plots.

After dark the horizon to the south flickered with flashes and they could now hear the sound of gunfire. As they talked, Commandant Verdy de Clary arrived, his cold indifferent eyes hard. ‘I am a French officer,’ he told Reinach. ‘I request the right to join you.’

Reinach glared. ‘You’ve waited long enough,’ he snapped. Verdy’s eyes flickered. ‘There was no point in aggression when the Germans were powerful,’ he said stiffly.

‘No,’ Reinach snorted. ‘C’est comme au bal des pompiers. Ce sont toujours les mêmes qui dansent. It was always the same people who took the risks. Did you expect them to lay down and let you walk on them? There were some who didn’t. Most of them are dead.’

The old man’s eyes flickered. ‘I’m a French officer,’ he repeated. ‘I demand a command.’

‘I don’t fight under some parvenu who sat back and enjoyed the war,’ de Frager retorted. ‘We don’t want people who’ve rejected us.’

‘I want them,’ Urquhart said quietly. ‘He’s a trained soldier, and I want every man I can get who knows his job.’

‘No one would work with him!’

‘They will if I say so,’ Urquhart snapped. ‘I want someone who’ll do as he’s told, not just some farm-boy who’ll let off his gun when he thinks the time’s right.’

The following morning, Euphrasie, the Baronne’s maid, brought the information that she’d been told to complete the German officers’ laundry before midday.

‘They’re moving!’ Reinach said, and half an hour later Jean-Frédéric Dréo came hurtling into the village on the Spitfire.

Neville and Urquhart had been sitting at the table, Neville frowning at his map, Urquhart sharpening a billhook with a stone as if the normal work of the farm had to go on and there was nothing else in the world to think about.

‘They’re burning papers in St Seigneur and Rolandpoint,’ Dréo panted.

Urquhart looked at Neville, then at Marie-Claude who was helping her mother to dry the breakfast dishes. ‘It’s time we went,’ he said quietly.

He put down the billhook and the stone and rose unhurriedly. As he followed him, Neville’s heart was pounding. At the door he turned and saw Marie-Claude’s eyes on them, troubled and concerned.

‘Better start things moving, Marie-Claude,’ he said. She nodded silently, drying her hands on a towel, her eyes never leaving their faces.

By lunch-time they were on the slopes above the village where a surprising number of men had discovered there was work to do. As the village emptied, several of the older children slipped surreptitiously out of school and set off on their bicycles to play truant. One or two went fishing, passing on their way to the river through the hamlets of Araigny, Tarey and Violet. One boy went to visit his grandmother in Metz-le-Bois, and another cycled through the villages of Cheuny, Ammi, and Beauzois before disappearing with his girlfriend into the woods at Bois Seul. ‘What you do afterwards is your business,’ his father told him. ‘What you do before belongs to Néry.’

Their arrival halted all activity in the hills. Harvesting stopped. Men and youths disappeared into barns and started digging under dung-heaps and piles of hay, lifting boards or burrowing into the roofs of their cottages, even into the walls at the backs of pigsties. Old rook guns appeared, with twelve-bores and long hunting rifles, even ancient muzzle-loaders that had been in their families for generations and hadn’t seen the light of day for years. The action was largely symbolic because the hill villages had also had parachute drops and there were anti-tank weapons, Stens, Brens, mortars and rifles. Bicycles, petrolettes and horses appeared in the streets and it was surprising how many of their owners found they had business in the direction of Néry. At four in the afternoon, a message reached Reinach from the St Seigneur post office.

‘Those parcels you asked me about – they’re on their way. They’ve just left. They should arrive tomorrow.’

Reinach dug out the old lorry, tossed his tools into the back for the look of the thing, and set off for the woods. Men were already waiting near the saw-mill with their bicycles and petrolettes, watching a German light plane circling just above.

‘Reconnoitring the route up the valley,’ someone said. ‘They don’t trust anyone these days.’

 

‘When Major Rieckhoff’s people from St Seigneur reach Rolandpoint tomorrow,’ Colonel Klemens was saying, ‘they’ll pick up Doench’s men and von Hoelcke’s tanks and press on here. When we leave we’ll be in strength.’

‘Route, Herr Oberst?’ Klein-Wuttig asked.

‘Rue des Roches to the Langres road.’ Klemens looked at a sheet of paper in his hand. ‘All food to be removed. All surplus stores to be destroyed. The first vehicles, consisting of two of Captain von Hoelcke’s tanks, will leave here at 10 a.m. the following day. I don’t want to be caught in the Forest of Frênes after dark.’

He paused, glancing again at the paper, aware of Frobinius watching him carefully from near the fire. ‘The second part of the column under Fritzi,’ he went on, ‘will leave as soon as the tanks and the following lorries are clear of the village. All men will carry weapons, ammunition and rations for three days. Lorry-mounted machine-guns will be manned at all times. Lookouts will watch not only the sky but the trees as well. I shall be in the centre of the column with Tarnera. The rear will be made up in the same way as the van, with von Hoelcke’s remaining two tanks coming last. That way, we shall have armour and guns handy at any point. If trouble comes, it’ll come – here the road starts to rise to the St Amarin ridge. Questions?’

‘Women?’ Tarnera said. ‘There are still women clerks in St Seigneur.’

‘They leave this afternoon. Their buses go straight through. I don’t want to be hampered with them.’

‘Sniping?’ Klein-Wuttig said. ‘Suppose it starts as we leave the village?’

‘No mercy,’ Frobinius snapped.

‘I want no women and children harmed,’ Klemens said.

Frobinius smiled. ‘We don’t differentiate. We take the whole family.’

‘I would remind you that this is my command.’

‘And I would remind you, Herr Oberst, that since July 20th, on the Führer’s instructions, all commands are subordinate to the SS and the Gestapo. I will handle the security. The first family that’s shot, the first house that’s burned, will serve as a warning for everybody else along the route.’ Frobinius rose. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have things to attend to.’

As he left the room, arrogant in his shining boots and black uniform, Klemens glared after him.

KIein-Wuttig coughed. ‘One other question, Herr Oberst.’ He’d been worrying for some time over whether he should inform Frobinius about what was hidden in the cellar. In the end he’d decided not to, and now his eyes glanced down-wards meaningly.

Klemens’ frown disappeared. ‘The lorry containing the – ah – secret equipment – will be immediately behind my car. Fritzi,’ he said. ‘I’d be obliged if you’d get Transport to provide their best driver. I also want a lorry with a machine-gun in front of my car and another behind the lorry.’

‘What about loading the lorry, Herr Oberst?’

‘I shall attend to that myself,’ Klemens said. ‘At the last moment. There’ll be a commanding officers’ conference this evening to finalise details. Let’s make it as late as possible – say nine o’clock – so that there can be no leaks. We don’t want the orderlies guessing what’s happening. We’ll also keep the Baronne and her staff confined to their quarters. I don’t want them to know when we’re leaving.’

 

‘Ten o’clock tomorrow.’

Euphrasie brought the information the following morning as she arrived at the farm to buy eggs for the Baronne’s midday omelette. ‘Corporal Goehr told me. There’s an officers’ conference tonight and they’re putting a sentry on our corridor so no one sneaks out to listen. Goehr usually comes down with a pot of coffee about then and he had to tell me why he couldn’t tonight. He fancies me.’

Reinach scowled. ‘Very soon,’ he growled, ‘with God’s help, you’ll be able to use those eyes of yours on French boys.’

Euphrasie sniffed. ‘You think I chose to use them on the Germans? That Schäffer tried to put his hand up my skirt.’

As she left, Urquhart rose. ‘I’m off to Rolandpoint to see Brisson.’

‘Tell him to get that radio operator of theirs to contact the Americans,’ Neville said. ‘Tell them they’ve got to hurry. We need them.’

‘Tell Ernestine to get to work on him,’ Marie-Claude advised. ‘You ought to be able to persuade her. Half an hour in bed–’

Neville turned on her. He was tense and nervy and his good humour had gone, but this time he was at one with Urquhart. ‘It doesn’t matter if he goes to bed with the radio operator himself so long as he gets the Americans,’ he snapped.

Marie-Claude looked hurt, and Urquhart winked at her and slapped her behind as he went outside.

 

From the château that afternoon, they heard the gunfire in the south more plainly.

Worried, Tarnera walked through the village, expecting to see signs of hostility and preparations for their departure. But the place looked normal enough, though somehow to Tarnera things still didn’t feel right. He could see an old man leading a horse into a farmyard. Two or three more, holding billhooks and sickles wrapped in sacking, were standing and talking outside the bar. He noticed they were all smoking, something that was unusual at a time of tobacco shortage and he assumed that some ‘tabac’ owner in Dijon or St Seigneur had been cleared of his stock by the Maquis.

Reinach stopped his lorry alongside him. Lionel Dring was in the cab with him, and several other men and youths with axes and billhooks were in the back.

‘More logs for the colonel,’ Reinach called. He jerked his head to the back of the lorry. ‘They’re all getting in on the act now. The woods are full of wood chips just waiting for the collecting.’

Tarnera offered him a cigarette. ‘What about the dam? Are they still working on that?’

‘Oh, yes, Herr Hauptman. It’s almost dry, but Ernouf’s digging above the Fond St Amarin. He thinks he might be able to get the spring coming down to Néry again by next week.’

By next week, Tarnera thought, they’d all be in Germany with a little luck.

As the lorry drove off, Reinach was grinning. ‘“How’s the dam?”’ he said, mimicking Tarnera. ‘“Nearly dry, Herr Hauptmann.” “And how’s the dip?” “Sopping wet, Herr Hauptmann.”’

Dring gave a laugh and Reinach’s great empty mouth opened in a guffaw. ‘C’est le sang-froid,’ he said. ‘A crétin’s face and le sang-froid.’

High up the hill, he stopped the lorry and looked back. The smoke from the German fires round the village was lifting slowly to form smudges in the sky. The road in front of him was growing narrower and steeper, cutting into the slope more deeply as it rose to the crest. Over the still air, he could hear the drum of engines and knew they belonged to German vehicles approaching from St Seigneur and Rolandpoint. They were going to swamp Néry when they arrived because only a token number of older men and women now remained in the village, stoking fires with whatever rubbish they could find to make smoke so that empty houses looked occupied, turning radios up so they could be heard outside, and letting themselves be seen a dozen times or more so that there would seem to be more of them than there were. Only a few places like the shops, the bar, the presbytery, the office of the mairie, which would be noticed if they were empty, remained occupied.

 

Having offered up prayers for the success of what they were going to do, Father Pol dusted the little figurines above the altar in the church, gave a quick flick to the Henri IV window and cleaned the halo of St Peter with brass polish. Putting away his cloths, he genuflected and knelt before the statue of the Madonna. ‘Remember, oh, most gracious Virgin Mary…’ he began.

He had got only as far as ‘…despise not my petitions…’ when Father Xavier from Rolandpoint arrived.

‘Praying for success?’ he asked.

‘Clergymen managed to equate Napoleon’s victories with evangelical counsels,’ Father Pol said stiffly. ‘And no doubt Lutheran pastors manage to do the same with Hitler’s, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t. Are your people on the way?’

‘At this very moment,’ Father Xavier said. ‘Shall we join them?’

 

The first men to arrive on the slopes above the village came from Rolandpoint. Led by Brisson, they came through the trees and over the hill in a bunch, having left Rolandpoint in ones and twos. Like the Néry men, most of them were magnificent shots.

Ernestine Bona was with them. ‘You said there wasn’t a plan,’ she accused.

‘It just shows you can’t rely on anybody,’ Reinach grinned. ‘The St Seigueur group’ll be here after dark,’ Brisson said. ‘They’re bringing a few from Bourg-la-Chattel.’

Soon afterwards, Verdy de Clary appeared. He was dressed in his uniform complete with képi, harness, revolver and map case.

‘I will fight in my uniform,’ he said.

Urquhart nodded. He was also wearing his uniform, the grey-blue freshly pressed, the stripes bright and the gold crown above them polished. It was important to him too.

Then the men from Tarey, Araigny, Violet and Courbigny began to trickle in with other little groups from Roches-le- Drapeaux, St Verrier, and the hill villages. Neville and Reinach watched them, counting them as they appeared. Urquhart was near the road, siting weapons, arranging caches of grenades and marking the ranges with white stones. Above him on the slopes, Lionel Dring and Patrice de Frager were dragging up their new playthings. The last parachute drop had proved an embarrassment of riches, with money, tobacco and food – even chocolate – to say nothing of a vast mass of weapons which had even included two 28mm airborne anti-tank guns. Since they’d learned how to use them in the Doubs, Dring and de Frager had claimed them at once and contemptuously handed over their bazookas to younger members of their teams.

These men were now scraping shallow positions near the Bren gunners, which they were protecting with logs and boulders. The youngest of them, a boy of sixteen, held his tube-like rocket launcher lovingly. Among the trees, doctors from Rolandpoint and St Seigneur, led by Dr Mouillet, checked bandages and humped first aid boxes. Men and boys stacked tins of food, along with cans and bottles of water. Gaudin’s elder son had thrown a sheep on its back across a log and cut its jugular vein. As it was skinned, fires were started to cook the strips of flesh for rations.

Deep in the undergrowth overlooking the road, Sergeant Dréo, his medals in a bright row across his chest, was planting his old machine-gun, limping backwards and forwards with his son, their artificial legs thumping and creaking as they secured the folds of undergrowth with string. ‘One snip,’ Sergeant Dréo said, ‘and we have a clear field of fire.’

Underneath the trees, boys made up explosive charges and primed grenades, their beardless faces intent. Among them Sergeant Dréo’s grandson worked quickly and efficiently, watched by Elsie, his bicycle close by. There was a low murmur among them and occasionally, as an aeroplane passed overhead, their heads lifted even while they continued to work.

‘Everything ready?’ Urquhart asked.

Reinach nodded. ‘By the time we’ve finished, the Boches’ll be so confused they won’t know which way they’re going.’

In the early evening they slipped back into the village and gathered at Mère Ledoux’s bar. The barman was stuffing bottles into an old suitcase.

‘Everybody must be out of the village before dawn,’ Neville insisted.

As they waited in the doorway, the German troops from Rolandpoint appeared. It was a long and heavily armed convoy and there were a lot of uncovered vehicles with machine-guns mounted on them. The occupants all wore steel helmets but many of them were officers.

‘St Seigneur headquarters,’ Brisson said.

Shortly afterwards it started to drizzle, and through the rain six big buses arrived, camouflaged in the jaundiced colours of the Afrika Korps. Infantrymen in full battle-kit climbed out of them and waited as they drove into one of Gaudin’s fields. There were gunners with them, and three 88mm guns, and they began taking up positions round the village.

Guardian Moch appeared, coming down the hill from the west. ‘Germans up there, too,’ he said. ‘I think they’re from Pailly. Some of them are cavalrymen.’

‘Probably Ukrainians,’ Reinach said. ‘There were some at Diepape.’

Moch grinned. ‘For Cossacks, they don’t have much knowledge of horses. They’ve got horrible saddle galls.’

When the cavalrymen appeared they turned out to be U-boat sailors from Bordeaux, who’d been mounted and uniformed in grey to fight their way back to Germany, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief because the White Russians were notorious for their cruelty.

By dusk the village had filled with Germans, the Panzer men sitting on their tanks to watch the others straggle in. Their commander was a good-looking man with blond hair and blue eyes of the sort so much admired by Hitler. He was wearing a white peaked cap.

‘He’ll stand out like a bull’s-eye in the woods,’ Reinach observed thoughtfully.

Then they noticed that the backwash from other roads was also finding its way into Néry, and Moch pulled his ‘Anthony Eden’ over his ears and went round the village on a bicycle to count them.

‘One thousand two hundred,’ he said. ‘Give or take a few.’

‘It’s more than we expected.’

‘There’s a general, too. He just drove into the château.’

The curfew was carefully observed. The bar emptied before it grew dark and they all faded away through the thin drizzle, warning the maire’s secretary, the postmistress and all the others to be ready to slip out over the walls early next morning. By dusk the village was still as the grave.

Except for four boys and a dog.

Jean-Frédéric Dréo, Gaudin’s younger son, Euphrasie Doumic’s brother, Louis, and Gaston Dring had been working all afternoon preparing grenades and plastic explosives. They had slipped away through the woods, accompanied by the inevitable Elsie, for a view of the assembling Germans. They were tense and excited, and quivering almost as much as Elsie herself aware that the following day something tremendous was going to happen.

‘It’s going to be the biggest defeat the Germans have ever suffered,’ Jean-Frédéric said.

They had just clambered to their feet and left the shelter of the trees when Gaston discovered his shoelace was broken. Bending to repair it, he heard the sound of an approaching car. So did Elsie who immediately bolted towards the road, barking wildly.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Jean-Frédéric said, putting two fingers to his mouth to whistle her back. ‘She’ll be shot!’

 

Dréo’s whistle was heard clearly over the noise of the car bringing Sturmbannführer Frobinius back to the château for Klemens’ evening conference. He had spent the afternoon in Rolandpoint checking on rearguard security, and, alert to danger, he turned in his seat as the car slowed to a halt. Silhouetted against the lighter blue of the night sky, he could see three figures running along the ridge. ‘Stop!’ he yelled.

The boys hesitated, then swung away in a panic. Frobinius didn’t hesitate. ‘Get them,’ he said quietly.

The SS men jumped out at once and began to run along the edge of the field. As the boys saw them they turned again to head back for the trees, but they’d already been cut off and they swerved desperately in the direction of Rolandpoint.

‘Shoot, you fools!’ Frobinius shouted, standing in the car to direct the beam of a powerful signalling lamp up the field.

The three figures looked like leaping spiders in the white light, and the first shots brought down Louis Doumic with a shattered knee. The other two stopped dead. Frobinius climbed through the hedge and began to walk slowly towards them, watched from the shadows in the trees by the horrified Gaston Dring.

‘Where were you going?’ he demanded.

The two unwounded boys glanced at each other. ‘Home,’ Jean-Frédéric said.

‘Why didn’t you stop, then, when you were told to?’

They were almost speechless with fear. Jean-Frédéric managed to speak. ‘We thought our parents would be after us, monsieur. We’ve been in the woods.’

‘Why?’

Godefroy Gaudin had a brainwave. ‘With a couple of girls,’ he said.

‘Show me your hands,’ Frobinius demanded.

Gaudin put out his hands and Frobinius lifted them to his nose and sniffed.

‘Plastic explosive,’ he said. ‘I know the smell.’ He turned to the sergeant who was bent over the moaning Louis Doumic. ‘These men are terrorists,’ he said. ‘Shoot them.’

The sergeant straightened up. ‘They’re only boys, Herr Sturmbannführer.’

‘A boy can kill as easily as a man can. Shoot them.’

They stood the two boys against a tree and dragged the moaning Louis to join them.

‘Sturmbannführer–’ As the sergeant tried again to protest, Frobinius snatched his gun away.

‘You’re like all the others,’ he snapped. ‘This is what I ordered! This is what I want done!’

The rattle startled animals in the wood and they heard the flap of wings as a bird crashed through the undergrowth.

‘Leave them there,’ Frobinius said, and, turning on his heel, he strode back to the car while the scared Elsie, who had been watching from a distance, her tail between her legs, crept closer in the dark to sniff at the blood on the bodies.