by Thomas Wood
He contemplated what I had said for a few moments, apparently accepting what I had put to him, but still no closer in lowering the pistol. It was then that Red, his timing as good as ever, suddenly piped up.
“I can help. I can get you both out of here, alive. Just put the gun down. Trust me.”
They stared at one another for a few more seconds, with me nothing more than an observer, clutching at his cheek as blood poured from the hole that had opened up on the side of my face. Neither one of them seemed willing to back down, neither of them wanting to appear weaker than the other.
“Their orders out there,” Red said, nodding in the direction of the window, scraping the barrel of the pistol along his forehead as he did so, “are to wait there until I come out. I will give them a signal and they’ll move in to arrest you. Let me go out there, talk to them. I’ll tell them you didn’t show up and you can go.
“You’ll be free to pursue Baudouin however you choose. You’ll still be alive.”
I felt like I should get up, talk to Jameson and confer about the proposition before us, to make an informed decision, one that could end up with us both dead if we got it wrong. But, by the time I was scrabbling to my knees, he had already made the decision for us.
He spun the weapon round, reaching the grip out towards Red, as he took a step backwards from his threatening position. Red took the pistol, before nodding courteously towards Jameson as a sign of his gratitude.
“Let me go outside, I’ll talk to them. They’ll more than likely just leave straight away. No one wants to be out here at this time of night any longer than they’re needed.”
We both nodded, as he began to cautiously make his way out of the room. As his feet thudded down the stairs, I began to dust myself off, retrieving the pistol that Jameson had forced me to drop on the other side of the room.
“Come on.” I said, retaking control of the situation, “I’m not staying in here. Outside, stay low we’ll watch from behind the wall.”
Pressed up against the cold, damp stone wall that ran around the perimeter of the cottage, I peered cautiously over the top, in plenty of time to watch Red, pistol down by his side, lurch his way over to where the sound of idling truck engines rumbled their way through the night.
I could just about make him out in the dark, as he approached another figure who could only have been the officer in charge of this little party. It might even have been Joseph himself.
I felt almost proud of him as he began speaking to the silhouette, as if it was somehow something to do with me that he had survived, and then been able to save us and our mission as a result. I liked to think that, even though I was younger than he was, he had looked up to me in some way in the few weeks of war that we experienced together. I warmed to the idea that I had helped to mould him into the soldier that he had been, and that he had retained that respect that he had for me so much that he would try and call the Germans off our tails.
After a short discussion, he turned, making his way back down the track that he had walked down, this time accompanied by at least five other figures, nervously trotting behind him. I supposed that this was just to confirm that we weren’t there, and that Red wasn’t lying to the Germans himself.
Ducking back down, I wiped my sweaty palms down my trousers in turn, before turning my head and pressing right into Robert’s ear.
“When I say, you’re to go up and over the wall over there, and into the trees. I’ll cover you from here then follow on behind. Got it?”
He nodded, and as I peered back over the wall, seeing that Red and his entourage were a mere two hundred yards away, hissed down towards Jameson, “Now. Go.”
As if he had heard the command himself, Red suddenly bellowed from the bottom of his lungs, a harrowing and nerve-shattering cry, which pierced the night more ferociously than a howling werewolf could ever dream of.
“Feuer!”
His adopted German accent still needed a bit of work, as it still retained the stubborn dialect of Tyneside, but the soldiers that were accompanying him didn’t seem to mind one bit, as they began to hammer the cottage with everything they had, intent on reducing it to nothing more than a pile of rubble and shattered glass.
One of them must have spotted my head duck back down below the wall, as sporadic rounds began to clip the wall the other side of my body, which was gradually followed by more rounds as they all clocked onto what was happening.
Jameson was back by my side, hands pressed hard over his ears, his chin tucked so far into his chest that I thought it would leave a nice impression upon his skin if he stayed there much longer.
“We’ve got to move!” I screamed at him, trying to rip his hands from his ears and shock him into action. “On your belly, crawl to the other side! Stay low! Get into the trees! Go!”
My voice felt like it was going to either give up, or morph into the howl of the gods as I spat and screamed into his face, all the while grabbing and throwing him away from me, in the direction I wanted him to go.
The sky above me was suddenly alive with tracer rounds zipping close over the top of the wall, machineguns chiming in as they spat rounds towards us like a horizontal hailstorm.
Jameson was scrabbling away behind me, scurrying like a floundering crab that had just escaped from a child’s bucket.
I risked lifting my body up slightly, before sliding my arms over the wall, firing off a few token rounds before ducking back down again.
All I succeeded in doing was drawing further attention to my position and the fact that I wasn’t yet on the move, leading to an increased amount of activity whizzing just inches above my head.
I felt sick to the very core of my being as I realised that this was more than likely the end of my life. This was it, I could see no way out, and what a way to go.
Twenty minutes ago, I rediscovered the fact that one of my friends, my best friends, was alive, not in fact dead because of me, like I had believed for well over a year. I had become briefly reacquainted with him, remembering all of his little quirks and characteristics that had made me so fond of him. Only to let him wander back to his masters, to have him order a maelstrom of fire and fury upon us, so that I would end up dead.
Red had betrayed us. He had betrayed me. I had let him.
I should have killed him when I had the chance, I should have checked to see if he was in the bottom of that crater in 1940, I should have refused to come back to France. There were so many regrets that made an appearance in my head as the rounds flew, including one about how I should have armed myself with better weaponry than a tiny pistol, that could barely stop a crow from eating a farmer’s crops.
As the whizzes and cracks intensified to the point where it was all I could think about, I huddled myself up against the wall, tucking my legs in like a lost child waiting for his mother to come and find him.
The world had seemed against me for the last few years now, like it was squeezing me to really drain everything out until I simply gave up. The walls that I had managed to keep at bay for so long, were finally getting the better of me. I couldn’t push them away for much longer.
17
I was dead anyway, so what was the harm in popping my head above the wall to see what would finally get me?
The sky was ablaze with lights and flashings, each burst of a gun taking the time to light a small part of the French countryside. I even caught a glimpse of Red standing next to a machine gun that was firing from the back of one of the trucks, that had reversed up the road, so it was able to fire upon us.
He was standing there, as nonchalantly as you like, his pistol waving around as he screamed and shouted at the men around him, like a courageous general leading from the front. I pulled the pistol up from behind the wall and rested it on the top for a while, bullets still hissing and popping past my ear, like the crack of a whip was slamming into my eardrums every two or three seconds.
I half-closed one eye and really concentrated in on the figure that was standing th
ere, commanding the men around him to continue throwing the shower of sparks that were throwing themselves towards me. I took a breath out, before squeezing the trigger, taking the time that I did not really have to make sure that I did not snap at it, but gently persuaded the pistol to expel a round.
Almost taking me by surprise, it kicked upwards for a moment, as the round was ejected and flew through the night. I was overcome by an intense exhilaration as I hoped that I had hit my target, caught him square in the chest like I had aimed for and brought him crashing to the ground. Nothing else would matter anymore, as long as I knew that I had killed Red, it didn’t really matter what happened to me, I didn’t much care myself.
But I knew the round that I had taken so much time to think through and fire off, was nothing more than to make me feel better about my situation, to make me believe that I was somehow fighting back. My bullet would make it no more than fifty yards before beginning to drop and by seventy yards it would have buried itself totally in the ground, probably not even enough momentum to do that.
Red and his troops were standing about two hundred yards away, there was nothing that I would be able to do with a pathetically underpowered pistol such as this one.
All I had achieved in sticking my head up for the ten seconds that it took for me to take the shot, was increasing my chances of being hit, as well as advertising that I was still alive, and still willing to fight back. Not a particularly intelligent move for someone who was now down to his last two rounds.
I heard a solid thud, followed by another and one that clattered into the wall of the house before coming to rest on the grass. Three grenade blasts suddenly erupted at the base of the wall of the cottage, showering me in the finest shards of glass that I had ever seen, and gave the house a good shake up in the process. Someone was moving up under the cover of all the fire. Now was my time to move. If I didn’t then it would be game over.
I scrabbled over the sopping wet grass pathetically, trying to keep my head down just enough to avoid the bullets, but high enough to be able to move as quickly and effectively as I possibly could under the circumstances.
I reached the corpse of Robert Jameson, lying face down at the bottom of the wall pathetically, and as I tugged around at his body, trying to see where he might have been hit, I began to get a groan out of him.
He wasn’t dead, he wasn’t even hit, he was just petrified of what might happen to him if he moved from what he had deemed to be a safe haven. It wasn’t like I had been in many situations like this before, but I felt bad for him, I understood why he was doing what he was doing.
It was only after a few seconds of looking at him, that I managed to catch the screaming above all the noise, as more grenades began rocking the house as the Germans tried their best to bring it clattering to the ground. I was certain that they were using this as some sort of exercise, to test their accuracy in firing while on the move and their ability to use cover and get grenades into a target. At least, that’s what I was hoping anyway.
“Get over the wall now! You’ll die if you sit here!”
I began yanking at his clothes, heaving him up, before bending him over the wall and flipping his feet over behind him, so he dived head first into the ground on the other side, hoping that he would have the presence of mind to stick his arms out to break his fall.
In the same movement, I toppled over the wall with him, hoping that on the other side, it would be a land flowing with milk and honey, the birds would be singing, and the sun would be rising over a perfect landscape.
I was wrong. If anything, the bullets and projectiles that buzzed over our heads seemed far louder here, as the Germans began creeping forward with their barrage, hoping to suffocate the two individuals that were cowering behind the walls.
I knew that if we were to try and make a run for it now, we would be cut down in a matter of seconds, as there was far too much open ground between where we were quaking and the trees that we could try and get lost in. There was no hope for us.
I began to imagine that the bullets were slowing down somewhat, and that eventually the Germans were slowly but surely running out of ammunition, allowing us a slim possibility that we could make a run for it, letting us dream of surviving this awful affair.
My imaginings gradually became a reality, as I thought that they had closed in so tightly that they weren’t going to be firing into the house for fear of catching one another in the cross fire. As I peered over the top of the wall, I quite quickly realised that the bullets, that were so constant in the midnight air, hadn’t started to thin out at all, if anything they had got much heavier.
For some reason, the Germans were redirecting their fire, using the cover of the cottage wall like we had been doing only seconds before. They were firing into the trees on their right flank, the ones situated at the rear of the cottage as I had looked at it from up on the ridge.
I couldn’t for the life of me work out why they were doing what they were doing, and why no one was being dispatched to work out if they had killed the two spies, that they had been sent there to kill. I saw a figure carrying a pistol, which could only have been Red, running away from the rest of his troops, before burying himself in the ditch on the far side of the road, where he lay quaking now that he found himself in a more perilous position than before.
It was only then, that I realised that the tracer fire was flowing in both directions and that, from the treeline, someone was firing back at the Germans, and doing a much better job at it than I had done with my pistol.
I thought for a moment of charging over to the ditch where Red was, popping a bullet in his skull then running back, but deemed it far too risky to be doing something so stupid, for no real gain.
Just as I returned my attention to the two-way tracer that was now illuminating the sky, almost as well as the sun does, a figure slammed into the wall beside me, almost knocking himself out in the process. Why Robert hadn’t said anything to warn me of an incoming figure was beyond me, but then I realised it was possible that he had, and that I had been so focused on everything else going on that I hadn’t heard him.
I pulled the pistol into the face of the figure who had approached, catching his petrified little eyes in the vague light of the middle of the night.
“Papa changed the plan. He saw where the Germans were coming from and moved us to a better position. He said he hopes you don’t mind.”
Louis’ son, also called Louis, who I had met briefly in my last trip to France, had managed to find us despite all the confusion and deadly darts that populated this small locality. I wanted to hug him, to kiss him, but at the same time rebuke him for being so stupid and wanting to come out with his father on an operation such as this.
“I brought you these. I thought you might be needing them.”
He produced two German rifles, which he handed to me proudly, as if he had whittled it out of the trees himself. He began rummaging around in his pocket, as he began to produce clip after clip of matching ammunition, increasing my odds of survival each time that he did.
“Already loaded,” he said confidently, as he watched me pack the rounds away in my pockets, ready to use in a few moments.
I began to feel more buoyant about the immediate situation, that we would soon be out of here and able to take stock over what our next move could be.
“How many men does your papa have over there?” I screamed at him, as I began to check that the rifle was in fact loaded as he said. It wasn’t that I did not believe him, but because I didn’t want to charge around, come face to face with a German, only to find that the boy had been mistaken, and he had handed me the unloaded rifle. I hoped he knew that that was the reason, and not that I didn’t trust his word.
“About twenty of them, I believe. That’s how many he started with anyway.” He said, giving me a knowing look that I did not believe was possible from such a young lad. “What is the matter with your friend?” he shouted, after attempting to hand the rifle to Jameson.
/>
“Leave him, he needs a break.” I screamed back, preparing myself to issue instructions to the young boy, before he interjected.
“We need to get over this wall, back to where you were before, we’ll be able to help Papa much more effectively from there.”
He barely waited for a response from me, but was already up and over the wall, a German submachine gun slung across his back for good measure.
“Jameson!” I hollered, effectively picking him up and throwing him over the wall again. He began to come to his senses, adopting a mixture between stumbling and crouching as he made his way back to the wall that he had left a few minutes before.
“Here!” shouted Louis Junior as Jameson made it to him, standing the rifle up on its butt and fishing out the accompanying ammunition for Robert. Obligingly, he took it, staring at it for a while not really knowing what to do with it or what it was even for.
“You do know how to use it, don’t you Robert?” I shouted mockingly, which seemed to pull him back to his senses.
“Of course. Not since basic, but how hard can it be?” My hunches had been right, he hadn’t fired a rifle since his initial training, which must have been some years ago. “It’s just like riding a bike, isn’t it?” He began chuckling for the first time since yesterday.
Louis Junior was already swinging the MP40 off his back and ready for action.
“Pick your target, fire, then move down the wall. We need to give the impression that there’s more than three of us. We’re going to draw a lot of fire, but keep moving and you’ll be fine, okay?” I repeated the same instructions for Jameson, but in plain English.
The three of us all popped up in unison, like a trio of nosy neighbours all wondering what the noise was. I swung the rifle up on top of the wall and was surprised to catch, in the corner of my eye, Jameson doing the very same. All he needed was to not think about what was happening, then he would be fine.
Louis Junior fired the first round, a series of three pops before he hit his target, forcing him back down and moving left along the wall.
