Of the two other tables in the room, one was occupied by four men playing cards and arguing drunkenly with each other, while at the other table, a lone soldier snored softly face-down, an empty bottle of port near his hand. On the couch by the fireplace, two of the snoring man’s companions were captivated by a plump-bosomed French whore, who was in the process of removing her stockings, the last item of clothing she’d worn that evening. Kurzmann watched the young French girl for a few moments, but looked away, feeling nothing. Thanks to the Soviet artillery shell, he no longer possessed the physical requirements for lovemaking, and found dwelling on it only depressed him further.
The sight was not lost on Brune and Stahl, however. The larger sergeant nudged his companion with an elbow the size of an artillery shell.
“Tits,” Brune grunted.
Stahl glanced over at the whore and shrugged. “Just another French slag.”
Brune continued to stare at the whore, the playing cards in his hands forgotten. Kurzmann noticed the big man beginning to grow flush, and it wasn’t due to the cognac.
“They should share,” Brune muttered. He picked up his glass and drank half of its contents in one greedy swallow, his eyes never leaving the whore, who was now sitting between the two men, giggling as their hands began to roam.
“Go to the cellar,” Stahl told his companion. “Plenty to choose from down there.”
“I want her,” Brune said, finally taking his gaze from the woman to glare at Stahl.
Kurzmann began to grow concerned. Brune had already been in two fights here at the chateau, both times over women. Looking to Stahl, he saw that the smaller man had arrived at the same conclusion.
“Come now,” Kurzmann finally said. “She’s for those other two, not you. If you’d wanted a whore sent to you tonight, you should have made arrangements this morning.”
“I like big tits,” Brune muttered. “The slags downstairs are all too skinny.”
“Meat is meat, and a hole is a hole,” Stahl replied. He let out an exasperated sigh. “But if you want her, tell the staff. They’ll see to the details for tomorrow night.”
“They should share!” Brune repeated, this time with anger in his voice. The big sergeant set his glass down hard and shifted in his seat, gathering himself as if to stand up, but he froze at the click audible from underneath the table.
Kurzmann brought up the cocked P-38 automatic and rested its butt on the edge of the table, the muzzle pointed at Brune’s heart. “That’s enough, SS-Oberscharführer. You know the rules, especially since you’ve already broken them twice. Save the fighting for the Popovs.”
Brune turned his head slowly, like the turret of a Panzer, and fixed Kurzmann with his gaze.
“You’re pulling a goddamn gun on me?” he asked, his voice a dangerous rasp.
“That’s right,” Kurzman answered, the barrel of the pistol unwavering. “I outrank you, and you’re acting a drunken fool. Go to the cellar and exhaust yourself, then in the morning, arrange for her return. Those men have every right to enjoy themselves without you barging in amongst them.”
Brune stared at Kurzman for a long moment, the big man’s face darkening in anger, but Kurzmann didn’t so much as blink. Finally, Brune huffed a long breath out his nostrils like a snorting bull, and his shoulders visibly slumped. With a snarl, he snatched up his tumbler and flung it into the fireplace, the act so sudden and violent Kurzmann nearly shot him out of reflex. Then Brune stood up, adjusted his trousers to hide his physical discomfort, and stomped out of the parlour, heading towards the staircase leading down into the cellars.
The room had gone silent, and once Brune left, all eyes turned from Brune’s back to Kurzmann and his pistol. The whore had drawn herself up into a terrified ball on the couch between the two bemused men, while one of the card players had frozen with his hand outstretched mid-bet.
“What was that all about?” the betting man asked.
“Too much cognac,” Kurzmann replied. “Nothing to worry about.”
The soldier looked dubious, but after a second glance at Kurzmann’s pistol, he nodded and went back to placing his bet.
With Brune out of the room and stomping down the staircase into the chateau’s cellar, Kurzmann de-cocked the Walther and set it down on the table. Glancing over at Stahl, Kurzmann noticed the man returning a gleaming, razor-edged bayonet to the table. Stahl had been ready to act, but Kurzmann wasn’t sure whose side the Sturmmann would have chosen in a fight.
“You’re going to have to watch your back from now on,” Stahl said without much emotion.
Kurzmann shrugged. “I always watch my back. Besides, I know I am faster than he is.”
Stahl shook his head. “Brune has been shot four times, and he is still strong enough to break your spine with his bare hands. You could have emptied that Walther’s magazine into him and he’d still have ripped your arms off.”
“That’s good to know,” Kurzmann said. “Do you know how he earned his Crosses? He never mentioned it to me.”
“They gave him his first piece of tin for fighting in France,” Stahl said, “some place called La Paradis. The second he earned while breaking out of a Popov encirclement with a handful of men a couple of months ago. The pig farmers had shot him three times, but Brune still made it out of the Kessel with the remnants of his platoon.”
Kurzmann nodded. “I’ve heard about the fighting around Demyansk. They say Totenkopf and the other divisions are suffering heavy casualties, but still holding strong.”
Stahl began sliding his sharpened knives into their sheaths. “He doesn’t talk about it much, but he said he’s requested permission to fight his way back into the Kessel. I think he wants to go back to Demyansk so he can die with the rest of his division.”
Kurzmann frowned and shook his head. “Such a waste of loyalty. We should have never gone into Russia.”
Stahl glanced around the room, then narrowed his eyes and gave Kurzmann a hard look. “That isn’t something you say with men such as these nearby.”
“I know,” Kurzman muttered. He picked up his glass and finished its contents in one long swallow. “I forget myself when I drink too much. It is a bad habit.”
“It is a habit that can get you pushed against a wall and shot,” Stahl replied. He gathered his knives, gently placing them in a cloth knapsack hanging from the back of his chair, then stood and slung the knapsack over his shoulder.
“I am going back to my room,” he said.
Kurzmann yawned and took his feet from the edge of the table, then stood himself. “I’ll follow you up. It’s been a long evening.”
The two men left the parlour, Stahl giving a long look as they passed the French whore and the two men on the sofa. The woman had recovered from her fright at Brune’s outburst, and was now working to unbuckle one man’s trousers, while the other planted kisses all over her body.
As they walked down the marble hallway, the two passed the doorway leading down into the cellar. The heavy wooden door was slightly ajar, and from the cellar depths beyond, they heard the muffled cries of a woman in distress, and Brune shouting vehement curses, punctuated by the sounds of a belt striking exposed flesh.
“He’s just getting started,” Stahl said mildly. “She’s in for a long night.”
Kurzmann didn’t answer. While he didn’t care what happened to some Popov girl, the hunter’s instinct to kill prey quickly made such torments unappealing to him. He quickened his pace until the sounds from the cellar no longer reached him.
Leaving the hallway, the two entered the main foyer and nodded to the pair of soldiers standing guard. Each of the Waffen-SS men had an MP-40 slung over their shoulders, and they nodded and saluted Kurzman and Stahl, who returned the salutes before turning and ascending the main staircase. All around them, artwork and finery adorned the walls, a large crystal chandelier hanging from the top floor some ten metres overhead down through the gap made by the stairwell.
As they stepped onto the third floor
hallway, Stahl suddenly paused and turned to Kurzmann. “Let me show you something.”
“What is it? I’m barely on my feet as it is,” Kurzman grunted.
“You’ll find this interesting, trust me.” Stahl turned and walked down the hall, running his hand along the polished stone walls until he suddenly stopped, and with a smile to Kurzman, gave the wall a quick push. Kurzmann heard a klunk, and a narrow segment of the wall swung in, to reveal a dark, narrow opening.
“A secret passage?” Kurzmann asked.
Stahl nodded. “I found it three days ago, when we had that storm. Walked past and felt a soft breeze on my cheek. Thought it was just a quirk, the wind coming through a chink in the masonry somehow, but instead I discovered the whole section of the wall was false, just wood fronted with thin stonework to make it blend in.”
Kurzmann stepped up and peered into the doorway. There was no light, and even his keen eyesight didn’t penetrate the dark beyond the first few metres. A twinge of claustrophobia ran down his spine; the passage was barely half a metre wide, and he would have to duck his head to enter.
“Have you explored it?” he asked Stahl.
The little man nodded. “It leads to a very steep staircase that descends down to another short passage on the second floor, and then to the first floor, and finally the cellar. Beyond that, it branches off to a tunnel that runs some fifty metres to the stables, where it comes up in the tackroom.”
Kurzmann raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Very interesting indeed.”
“Probably how these old French aristocrats snuck out to shag their serving wenches,” Stahl said, smirking at the thought. He eased the door back into place and felt it click home. Unless one knew where to look, Kurzman thought, the door was invisible.
As Stahl turned and began to walk towards their rooms, Kurzmann paused, then used his thumbnail to scratch at the secret door’s stone facade, until he left a small, innocuous-looking mark. Then he followed Stahl down the hallway.
Kurzmann did not hear Brune return to his room until it was nearly morning.
Chapter 5
One Mile North Of Saint-Lyphard, France
March 26th, 0700 Hours
Lynch watched the German patrol as they motored past the hedge. A small, two-door civilian car with an open top passed first, leading the way. The passenger sat with an MP-40 poking over the doorframe, his head up and keen for any signs of trouble. One hundred yards behind, a pair of old Renault flatbeds lumbered along, each with a half-dozen Germans sitting on the bed with their legs dangling over the sides, looking bored and still half-asleep. Above and behind each cab, a soldier stood and manned a pintle-mounted machine gun of a design Lynch had never seen before.
Lynch stayed perfectly still while the three vehicles passed his position, as did the other dozen men lining the hedgerow. The only thing that moved was their eyes, as the Commandos watched the Germans pass within a few yards before the patrol continued on, unaware they’d motored right past certain death if any of them had raised the alarm. Every Commando along the hedgerow had a weapon at the ready.
When the Germans were far enough away, Lynch turned to Le Chasseur, lying on the ground next to him.
“I didn’t recognize the machine guns on those lorries - were they French?” Lynch asked.
The partisan nodded. “Mitrailleuse model 1931 machine guns, used in tanks and along the Maginot Line. The Boche salvaged them and use them in their second-line units, along with everything else. Your own army’s materiel is also used, weapons and vehicles left behind after you retreated across the Channel.”
“The Jerries were much better equipped when we were here a year ago,” Lynch replied.
Le Chasseur shrugged. “That was before the invasion to the east. The Russian bear consumes everything, so the Boche here in France make do with the leavings of war.”
Lynch processed that information as he chewed on the last of his breakfast, a biscuit with an absurdly large dollop of marmalade precariously balanced on top. The troop had been wrapping up its morning meal when Bowen, at the farthest end of the hedgerow, had signalled the approach of the German patrol. It was the first traffic they’d seen since settling into their hiding place, a small, overgrown field behind a hedgerow along the western side of a narrow road leading between Saint-Lyphard and Herbignac. They’d reached the field an hour ago, as the sky was lightening to the east, and Le Chasseur, whose decisions on movement and navigation were to be taken as gospel by the Commandos, declared there was too much risk in crossing so close to sunrise.
As Lynch finished the last of his biscuit and washed it down with the dregs of his tea, he glanced at the Frenchman, watching as the man ate the last of a bit of hard cheese and chewed on the end of a stale baguette, which he softened by dipping in his mug of tea. For a man easily twenty years Lynch’s senior, the partisan was in amazing physical condition. Although he carried as much as Lynch and the other Commandos, Le Chasseur marched along with them as if he was being held up by their pace, a pace trained into them through countless twenty-mile night marches carrying a full kit and weapons. In addition, the Frenchman saw like an owl in the dark, and his ears caught sounds no one else noticed, even Bowen.
What was more, Le Chasseur had navigated them across what Lynch estimated was nine miles of wilderness without ever once consulting a map or compass. Every road and trail, every river and stream, every copse of trees and darkened farmhouse - the Frenchman knew them all, and wound the troop past obstacles with the surety of a man who’d passed that way many times before. Lynch suspected Le Chasseur had a mental map of this entire region of France, although how long the man had been fighting as a member of the resistance wasn’t known.
“If I may ask,” Lynch said to Le Chasseur, “what happened to your unit when the Germans invaded?”
The Frenchman gave Lynch a thin smile. “I was a civilian when the Boche came the second time.”
“Second time?” Lynch asked. “Oh, you mean in ‘40? Were you a soldier during the last war?”
Le Chasseur nodded. “I fought against the Boche for three years, before I was wounded and sent to hospital. By the time I recovered, my family, they had all been taken by God, either the war or the sickness of 1918. So, as many young men did, I joined Le Legion.”
Lynch frowned for a moment, then raised his brows. “Ah, you mean the Foreign Legion?”
“Oui. I marched for twenty years. When I left Le Legion, I returned to France, and I saw that war was coming, that the Germans would not end their ambitions with annexing small territories. When they invaded Poland, I knew France was next.”
“So, what did you do?” Lynch asked.
“I prepared for war,” Le Chasseur said. “I spent most of the money I had saved from my time in Le Legion, buying supplies of food, of medicine, and the many other things one needs when you live alone, hunted by your enemies.”
“You didn’t think we’d win against the Germans?” Lynch asked.
The Frenchman shook his head. “Not after I learned of what happened to Poland. The Boche move too fast, they strike too hard. The armies of France are brave, but they are slow, and they think of war as it was fought when I was a young man. I kept some measure of hope in my heart, but in my mind, I knew we would not stand against them and win.”
“I was at Arras,” Lynch said, “and for a short time, there was hope. But then Jerry turned his eighty-eights on our Matildas, and pushed forward his panzers and his half-tracks, and the hope was ground into the mud, so it was. After that, it was the long walk to Dunkirk, where we waited to sail away, or die on the beach.”
Le Chasseur looked away for a long moment, then gave a small nod. “I was there, at Dunkirk. I hid for a week, watching you and the other Englishmen. I told myself that if enough men escaped Hitler’s wrath, France would one day find hope again.”
“Well,” Lynch replied, nodding to the Thompson next to him, “we’re here again, so we are.”
The resistance fighter smiled
and gave Lynch a pat on the shoulder. “You are most welcome, mon ami. Most welcome indeed.”
For the rest of the day, the men of No. 4 Troop moved about as little as possible, each squad taking turns to watch the road while the other three slept, ate, and otherwise conserved their energy. The sun overhead was bright and warm, with only a few clouds in the sky, but it was early spring, and small crusts of snow still survived unmelted along the base of the hedgerow, the ground cold enough that the men slept wrapped in their greatcoats.
As afternoon slid into evening and the sun dipped closer to the western horizon, Lynch and the other squad leaders roused the men and made sure they ate something substantial before the troop broke camp around 2000 Hours, just as the sun began to touch the tops of the taller trees. They hadn’t seen any signs of movement along the road in several hours. and with twilight making it difficult for anyone to see them, the Commandos slipped across the road, moving by squads, and began the second leg of their journey.
Like the night before, Lynch’s squad led the troop, following their Maquis guide as the Frenchman picked his route unerringly across the countryside. The troop moved through the bocage with little difficulty, as Le Chasseur always led them to a carefully-formed gap in the hedgerows which allowed the squads to pass through unhindered. As the night wore on, it became more evident to Lynch that not only did the Frenchman know this area very well, he had clearly prepared their route, making sure they would be able to move through the hedgerows without wasting time skirting around them or hacking through the tough brambles.
At one point, while the troop took a ten-minute rest inside a small hedgerow, Herring pulled Lynch aside, glancing at Le Chasseur as he did so.
“Tom, how do we know this bloke is on the up and up?” Herring asked. “For all we know, he’s going to walk us through a hedge and into the muzzles of a Jerry MG line.”
Commando- The Complete World War II Action Collection Volume II Page 33
