by Ken Follett
The pilot continued to bank one way then the other, dodging flak. The men struggled to keep their footing on a floor that was slimy with vomit.
Woody looked out of the open door. Bonner had lost height while trying to gain speed, and the plane was now at about five hundred feet – too low. There might not be enough time for the parachutes to open fully before the men hit the ground. He hesitated, then beckoned his sergeant forward.
Defoe stood beside him and looked down, then shook his head. He put his mouth to Woody’s ear and shouted: ‘Half our men will break their ankles if we jump at this height. The bazooka carriers will kill themselves.’
Woody made a decision.
‘Make sure no one jumps!’ he yelled at Defoe.
Then he unhooked his static line and went forward, pushing through the double row of standing men, to the flight deck. There were three crew. Yelling at the top of his voice, Woody said: ‘Climb! Climb!’
Bonner yelled: ‘Get back there and jump!’
‘No one is going to jump at this altitude!’ Woody leaned over and pointed at the altimeter, which showed 480 feet. ‘It’s suicide!’
‘Get off the flight deck, Lieutenant. That’s an order.’
Woody was outranked, but he stood his ground. ‘Not until you gain height.’
‘We’ll be past your target zone if you don’t jump now!’
Woody lost his temper. ‘Climb, you dumb fuck! Climb!’
Bonner looked furious, but Woody did not move. He knew the pilot would not want to return home with a full plane. He would face a military inquiry into what had gone wrong. Bonner had disobeyed too many orders tonight for that. With a curse, he jerked the control lever back. The nose went up immediately, and the aircraft began to gain height and lose speed.
‘Satisfied?’ Bonner snarled.
‘Hell, no.’ Woody was not going to go aft now and give Bonner the chance to reverse the manoeuvre. ‘We jump at a thousand feet.’
Bonner went to full throttle. Woody kept his eyes on the altimeter.
When it touched 1,000 he went aft. He pushed through his men, reached the door, looked out, gave the men the thumbs-up, and jumped.
His chute opened immediately. He dropped fast through the air while it spread its dome, then his fall was arrested. Seconds later he hit water. He suffered a split-second of panic, fearing that the cowardly Bonner had dropped them all in the sea. Then his feet touched solid ground, or at least soft mud, and he understood that he had come down in a flooded field.
The silk of the parachute fell around him. He struggled out of its folds and unfastened his harness.
Standing in two feet of water, he looked around. This was either a water meadow or, more likely, a field that had been flooded by the Germans to impede an invasion force. He saw no one, enemy or friend, and no animals either, but the light was poor.
He checked his watch – it was 3.40 a.m. – then looked at his compass and oriented himself.
Next he took his M1 carbine out of its case and unfolded the stock. He snapped a 15-round magazine into the slot, then worked the slide to chamber a round. Finally, he rotated the safety lever into the disengaged position.
He reached into a pocket and took out a small tin object like a child’s toy. When pressed, it made a distinctive clicking sound. It had been issued to everyone so that they could recognize each other in the dark without resorting to giveaway English passwords.
When he was ready, he looked around again.
Experimentally, he pressed the click twice. After a moment, an answering click came from directly ahead.
He splashed through the water. He smelled vomit. In a low voice he said: ‘Who’s there?’
‘Patrick Timothy.’
‘Lieutenant Dewar here. Follow me.’
Timothy had been second to jump, so Woody figured if he continued in the same direction he had a good chance of finding the others.
Fifty yards along he bumped into Mack and Smoking Joe, who had found one another.
They emerged from the water on to a narrow road, and found their first casualties. Lonnie and Tony, with their bazookas in leg bags, had both landed too hard. ‘I think Lonnie’s dead,’ said Tony. Woody checked: he was right. Lonnie was not breathing. He looked as if he had broken his neck. Tony himself could not move, and Woody thought the man’s leg was broken. He gave him a shot of morphine, then dragged him off the road into the next field. Tony would have to wait there for the medics.
Woody ordered Mack and Smoking Joe to hide Lonnie’s body, for fear it might lead the Germans to Tony.
He tried to see the landscape around him, straining to recognize something that corresponded to his map. The task seemed impossible, especially in the dark. How was he going to lead these men to the objective if he did not know where he was? The only thing of which he could be reasonably sure was that they had not landed where they were supposed to.
He heard a strange noise and, a moment later, he saw a light.
He motioned the others to duck down.
The paratroopers were not supposed to use flashlights, and French people were subject to a curfew, so the person approaching was probably a German soldier.
In the dim light Woody saw a bicycle.
He stood up and aimed his carbine. He thought of shooting the rider immediately, but could not bring himself to do it. Instead he shouted: ‘Halt! Arretez! ’
The cycle stopped. ‘Hello, Loot,’ said the rider, and Woody recognized the voice of Ace Webber.
Woody lowered his weapon. ‘Where did you get the bike?’ he said incredulously.
‘Outside a farmhouse,’ Ace said laconically.
Woody led the group the way Ace had come, figuring that the others were more likely to be in that direction than any other. He looked anxiously for terrain features to match his map, but it was too dark. He felt useless and stupid. He was the officer. He had to solve such problems.
He picked up more of his platoon on the road, then they came to a windmill. Woody decided he could not blunder around any longer, so he went to the mill house and hammered on the door.
An upstairs window opened, and a man said in French: ‘Who is it?’
‘The Americans,’ Woody said. ‘Vive la France!’
‘What do you want?’
‘To set you free,’ Woody said in schoolboy French. ‘But first I need some help with my map.’
The miller laughed and said: ‘I’m coming down.’
A minute later Woody was in the kitchen, spreading his silk map over the table under a bright light. The miller showed him where he was. It was not as bad as Woody had feared. Despite Captain Bonner’s panic, they were only four miles north-east of Eglise-des-Soeurs. The miller traced the best route on the map.
A girl of about thirteen crept into the room in a nightdress. ‘Maman says you’re American,’ she said to Woody.
‘That’s right, mademoiselle,’ he said.
‘Do you know Gladys Angelus?’
Woody laughed. ‘As it happens, I did meet her once, at the apartment of a friend’s father.’
‘Is she really, really beautiful?’
‘Even more beautiful than she looks in the movies.’
‘I knew it!’
The miller offered him wine. ‘No, thanks,’ said Woody. ‘Maybe after we’ve won.’ The miller kissed him on both cheeks.
Woody went back outside and led his platoon away, heading in the direction of Eglise-des-Soeurs. Including himself, nine of the original eighteen were now together. They had suffered two casualties, Lonnie dead and Tony wounded, and seven more had not yet appeared. His orders were not to spend too much time trying to find everyone. As soon as he had enough men to do the job, he was to proceed to the target.
One of the missing seven showed up right away. Sneaky Pete emerged from a ditch and joined the group with a casual ‘Hi, gang,’ as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
‘What were you doing in there?’ Woody asked him.
‘I thought you were German,’ Pete said. ‘I was hiding.’
Woody had seen the pale gleam of parachute silk in the ditch. Pete must have been hiding there since he landed. He had obviously panicked and curled up in a ball. But Woody pretended to accept his story.
The one Woody really wanted to find was Sergeant Defoe. He was an experienced soldier, and Woody had been planning to rely heavily on him. But he was nowhere to be seen.
They were approaching a crossroads when they heard noises. Woody identified the sound of an engine idling, and two or three voices in conversation. He ordered everyone down on their hands and knees, and the platoon advanced crawling.
Up ahead, he saw that a motorcycle rider had stopped to talk to two men on foot. All three were in uniform. They were speaking German. There was a building at the crossroads, perhaps a small tavern or a bakery.
He decided to wait. Perhaps they would leave. He wanted his group to move silently and unobserved for as long as possible.
After five minutes he ran out of patience. He turned around. ‘Patrick Timothy!’ he hissed.
Someone else said: ‘Pukey Pat! Scotch wants you.’
Timothy crawled forward. He still smelled of vomit, and now it had become his name.
Woody had seen Timothy play baseball, and knew he could throw hard and accurately. ‘Hit that motorcycle with a grenade,’ Woody said.
Timothy took a grenade from his pack, pulled the pin, and lobbed it.
There was a clang. One of the men said in German: ‘What was that?’ Then the grenade detonated.
There were two explosions. The first knocked all three Germans to the ground. The second was the motorcycle’s fuel tank blowing up, and it sent a starburst of flame that burned the men, leaving a stink of scorched flesh.
‘Stay where you are!’ Woody shouted to his platoon. He watched the building. Was there anyone inside? During the next five minutes, no one opened a window or a door. Either the place was empty, or the occupants were hiding under their beds.
Woody got to his feet and waved the platoon on. He felt strange as he stepped over the grisly bodies of the three Germans. He had ordered their deaths – men who had mothers and fathers, wives or girlfriends, perhaps sons and daughters. Now each man was an ugly mess of blood and burned flesh. Woody should have felt triumphant. It was his first encounter with the enemy, and he had vanquished them. But he just felt a bit sick.
Past the crossroads, he set a brisk pace, and ordered no talking or smoking. To keep up his strength he ate a bar of Dration chocolate, which was a bit like builder’s putty with sugar added.
After half an hour he heard a car and ordered everyone to hide in the fields. The vehicle was travelling fast with its headlights on. It was probably German, but the Allies were sending over jeeps by glider, along with anti-tank guns and other artillery, so it was just possible this was a friendly vehicle. He lay under a hedge and watched it go by.
It went too fast for him to identify it. He wondered whether he should have ordered the platoon to shoot it up. No, he thought, on balance they did better to focus on their mission.
They passed through three hamlets that Woody was able to identify on his map. Dogs barked occasionally but no one came to investigate. Doubtless the French had learned to mind their own business under enemy occupation. It was eerie, creeping along foreign roads in the dark, armed to the teeth, passing quiet houses where people slept unconscious of the deadly firepower outside their windows.
At last they came to the outskirts of Eglise-des-Soeurs. Woody ordered a short rest. They entered a little stand of trees and sat on the ground. They drank from their canteens and ate rations. Woody still would not permit smoking: the glow of a cigarette could be seen from surprisingly far.
The road they were on should lead straight to the bridge, he reckoned. There was no hard information about how the bridge was guarded. Since the Allies had decided it was important, he assumed the Germans thought the same, therefore some security was likely; but it might be anything from one man with a rifle to a whole platoon. Woody could not plan the assault until he saw the target.
After ten minutes he moved them on. The men did not have to be nagged about silence now: they sensed the danger. They trod quietly along the street, past houses and churches and shops, keeping to the sides, peering into the gloomy night, jumping at the least sound. A sudden loud cough from an open bedroom window almost caused Woody to fire his carbine.
Eglise-des-Soeurs was a large village rather than a small town, and Woody saw the silver glint of the river sooner than he expected. He raised a hand for them all to halt. The main street led gently downhill at a slight angle to the bridge, so he had a good view. The waterway was about a hundred feet wide, and the bridge had a single curved span. It must be an old structure, he guessed, because it was so narrow that two cars could not have passed.
The bad news was that there was a pillbox at each end, twin concrete domes with horizontal shooting slits. A pair of sentries patrolled the bridge between the pillboxes. They stood one at each end. The nearer one was speaking through a firing slit, presumably chatting to whomever was inside. Then they both walked to the middle, where they looked over the parapet at the black water flowing beneath. They did not appear very tense, so Woody deduced they had not yet learned that the invasion had begun. On the other hand, they were not slacking. They were awake and moving and looking about them with some degree of alertness.
Woody could not guess how many men were inside, nor how they were armed. Were there machine guns behind those slits, or just rifles? It would make a big difference.
Woody wished he had some experience of battle. How was he supposed to deal with this situation? He guessed there must be thousands of men like him, new junior officers who just had to make it up as they went along. If only Sergeant Defoe were here.
The easy way to neutralize a pillbox was to sneak up and put a grenade through one of the slits. A good man could probably crawl to the nearer one unobserved. But Woody needed to take out both at the same time – otherwise the attack on the first would forewarn the occupants of the second.
How could he reach the farther pillbox without being seen by the patrolling sentries?
He sensed his men getting restless. They did not like to think their leader might be unsure as to what to do next.
‘Sneaky Pete,’ he said. ‘You’ll crawl up to that nearest pillbox and put a grenade through the slit.’
Pete looked terrified, but he said: ‘Yes, sir.’
Next, Woody named the two best shots in the platoon. ‘Smoking Joe and Mack,’ he said. ‘Choose one each of the sentries. As soon as Pete deploys his grenade, take the sentries out.’
The two men nodded and hefted their weapons.
In the absence of Defoe, he decided to make Ace Webber his deputy. He named four others and said: ‘Go with Ace. As soon as the shooting starts, run like hell across the bridge and storm the pillbox on the other side. If you’re quick enough you’ll catch them napping.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Ace. ‘The bastards won’t know what’s hit them.’ His aggression was masking fear, Woody guessed.
‘Everyone not in Ace’s group, follow me into the near pillbox.’
Woody felt bad about giving Ace and those with him the more dangerous assignment, and himself the relative safety of the nearer pillbox; but it had been drummed into him that an officer must not risk his life unnecessarily, for then he might leave his men leaderless.
They walked towards the bridge, Pete in the lead. This was a dangerous moment. Ten men going along a street together could not remain unnoticed for long, even at night. Anyone looking carefully in their direction would sense movement.
If the alarm was raised too soon, Sneaky Pete might not get to the pillbox, and then the platoon would lose the advantage of surprise.
It was a long walk.
Pete reached a corner and stopped. Woody guessed he was waiting for the near sentry to leave his post outside the pillbox and wa
lk to the middle.
The two sharpshooters found cover and settled in.
Woody dropped to one knee and signalled the others to do likewise. They all watched the sentry.
The man took a long pull on his cigarette, dropped it, trod on the end to put it out, and blew a long cloud of smoke. Then he eased himself upright, settled his rifle strap on his shoulder, and started walking.
The sentry on the far side did the same.
Pete ran the next block and came to the end of the street. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled rapidly across the road. He reached the pillbox and stood up.
No one had noticed. The two sentries were still approaching one another.
Pete took out a grenade and pulled the pin. Then he waited a few seconds. Woody guessed he did not want the men inside to have time to throw the grenade out again.
Pete reached around the curve of the dome and gently dropped the grenade inside.
Joe and Mack’s carbines barked. The nearer sentry fell, but the farther one was unhurt. To his credit he did not turn and run, but courageously went down on one knee and unslung his rifle. He was too slow, though: the carbines spoke again, almost simultaneously, and he fell without firing.
Then Pete’s grenade exploded inside the nearer pillbox with a muffled thump.
Woody was already running full pelt, and the men were close behind him. Within seconds he reached the bridge.
The pillbox had a low wooden door. Woody flung it open and stepped inside. Three men in German uniforms were dead on the floor.
He moved to a firing slit and looked out. Ace and his four men were haring across the short bridge, shooting at the farther pillbox as they ran. The bridge was only a hundred feet long, but that proved to be fifty feet too much. As they reached the middle, a machine gun opened up. The Americans were trapped in a narrow corridor with no cover. The machine gun clacked insanely and in seconds all five of them had fallen. The gun continued to rake them for several seconds, to be certain they were dead – and, in the process, making sure of the two German sentries too.
