THE SCHOOLMASTER REPLACED the black notebook in his pocket and resumed his seat at the iron table. Here we are, coming to a crisis in the war, and she wants news of her great grandson, one of God knows how many foreigners forced to work for the Germans. Well, I suppose he is all she has.
At this moment the Feldwebel Hans, clipboard in his hand, strolled up. In warm weather the two often met at noon and the sergeant usually offered the teacher a glass of German beer, which was reserved by the patron of the café for the German soldiers who had to sign for it. The Feldwebel, wiping his face, sat down. The stray dog, still accompanying him, also sat down, panting.
“Hot, very hot,” remarked the German. Then to the proprietor, “Two beers, please.”
Monsieur Lavigne wiped a corner of the table with his dirty white apron.
“Merci,” said the teacher. “Eh bien, what’s new today? Are we ready for the invasion?” At times he enjoyed needling the young German. “Your compatriots act as though they expected it this afternoon at the latest.”
“Ach, these frontline furiosos, they are impossible. Always drilling, shouting at each other, saluting. Frankly, my friend, I am skeptical about your invasion. Perhaps, yes... it is possible. But look at that blockhouse over there. Nothing can wreck it, nothing. You saw it built yourself. There are ten meters of solid concrete over those guns. Tell me, what shells could penetrate such a depth?” He took a large swallow of the beer.
Enjoying his own beer as a guest of the Reichswehr and one not permitted by German army regulations to drink it, Monsieur Varin did not care to contradict his host. But he did not hesitate to voice his doubt.
“Ah, oui, you may be right. But after all, my friend, things haven’t been going too well for you people lately. One has only to look at the maps. They tell the story of what’s happening over there on the Eastern front.”
The Feldwebel did not wish to betray a lack of confidence before a Frenchman, so he said, “Ha-ha, ho-ho, let the English come. We are ready for them.”
The teacher nodded, but he wondered. Daily he read between the lines of the censored Paris press and followed the maps with attention. As he often told the Père Clement when they were alone, those maps indicated plainly the extent of the impending disaster for the Germans.
It’s coming, he told himself. I only want to be here to see it. And surely, he thought, it must come before long or it will be too late. After four years of occupation, of hardships and privation, tempers in the village were rising. That little girl who choked to death last month because no doctor could get through the coastal road. The thin legs of the boys and girls on the street. When you see your children go to bed hungry night after night, well, a man will do anything.
And those strange warships spotted off the coast when the fog lifted suddenly one afternoon. What were they doing? Those massive flights of planes on their daily bombing runs from England. Were they pounding the enemy’s lines of communications in preparation for an imminent invasion? Certainly the Germans were on the alert. Signs of crisis abounded. Nogent-Plage was obviously no longer a kind of convalescent area for battered troops. It had been transformed, by orders from Berlin, of course, into a frontline garrison, a pivotal point of the main coastal defense. That was plain. And the battalion of Silesians was here for one purpose. To repel an invasion on the beaches. Somehow the invasion must succeed. “It must,” said the teacher out loud.