A Note from the Author

I stood on Omaha Beach and scooped sand for Colonel Walter B. Forbes, who had flown missions over the beach on D-Day but had never set foot on the ground. I visited Pegasus Bridge and had lunch at the Café Gondrée, the first French business to be liberated after four long years of Occupation. I visited the Château de Bénouville, stood in the chapel that hid evading Allies.

I did this on July 4, the day of liberty for Americans. I found it fitting, as an American, to celebrate July 4 in Normandy.

Favorite part of the trip: I stood in the spot where Sergeant Wagger Thornton fired the single PIAT shot that stopped a panzer in its tracks en route to the bridge. Just how significant was that single shot? When German officers saw a series of explosions in Bénouville, they figured the British were present in great strength, and chose to wait for dawn and clear orders. What they had observed, in fact, was that Thornton’s shot had inadvertently ignited an awesome fireworks display of machine gun clips, grenades, and shells—a display that lasted nearly an hour and caused confusion to the Germans, which prevented a decisive counterattack. Just how decisive could that counterattack have been? Rommel’s Twenty-First Panzer Division, consisting of 127 tanks and over twelve thousand men, waited at various distances for orders. It was the only panzer division to counterattack the Allies on D-Day—and was largely ineffective, due to conflicting reports on the situation, due to orders that came too late . . . due to one guy with impeccable aim.

Read about Wagger Thornton’s historic shot in The Pegasus and Orne Bridges by Neil Barber (Pen and Sword, 2009) or in Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944 by Stephen E. Ambrose (Simon & Schuster, 1988). It was Ambrose who gave me the idea for this impressionistic Rahab retelling when he mentioned the brothel in Bénouville.

Chris Trueman recounts the significance of the bridge’s capture on History Learning Site: “The taking of Pegasus Bridge in the early hours of D-Day was a major triumph for the Allies. The control of Pegasus Bridge gave the Allies the opportunity to disrupt the Germans’ ability to bring in re-enforcements to the Normandy beaches” (“Pegasus Bridge,” accessed December 6, 2011, http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/pegasus_bridge.htm). Ambrose says this: “A panzer division loose on the beaches, amidst all the unloading going on, could have produced havoc with unimaginable results.” Later in his book he asserts, “An argument can therefore be made that Sergeant Thornton had pulled off the single most important shot of D-Day, because the Germans badly needed that road.”

It was pretty cool to stand in that spot. So Tom did, too, however briefly.

Many characters in Flame of Resistance are composites of real people, while others, including Krista Hegel and Madame Léa Vion, actually existed. The places were real, some of the businesses were real, and many events actually happened. To sort through the mishmash of truth and fiction, as C. S. Lewis says, “The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, ‘with backward mutters of dissevering power’—or else not.”

—T. G.