by Jason Walker
“You know, there are wild hares up here. I haven’t eaten fresh meat for months. If we catch one, we’ll make a good BBQ!” one of them joked.
Claude sensed the danger more than the German humour. He poked his head outside the mouth of the cave a little to try and get bearings on the voices, from which direction they were coming, and how far away they were. One fact was evident; if he could hear Germans speaking, they were too close for his liking. He then spotted them; they were only ten metres away now, maybe less. Claude, for a moment, froze in fear, then managed to compose himself and crawl back into the cave. He started trying to block the entrance with snow.
The two soldiers both had sticks and were poking them into snow holes in the hope of finding a hare.
He glanced back at Fontaine and Nadeau, and considered waking them up but decided against it in case they woke with a start and made some noise which would attract the attention of the Germans. He remained silent, and absolutely motionless. They were now just a couple of metres away. Claude drew his hunting knife from its sheath. One of the guards was looking towards Claude, the mound of snow he had piled up being the only thing stopping them from having eye contact.
The soldier moved forward a few steps and poked his stick into the snow. It came out the other side, only the width of a finger away from Claude’s head. It was now or never.
Claude grabbed hold of the stick and pulled it with all of his strength. The sudden and unexpected movement caused the guard holding it to lose his footing and fall down, his head just inside the cave’s entrance. Claude raised his right arm and then thrust it downwards, driving the blade of his knife into the guard’s throat, straight through the carotid artery. After only a few seconds of gurgling, the German was dead.
The noise and commotion woke up Fontaine and Nadeau unceremoniously.
Claude relaxed for a spilt second, a split second too long. A hand - that of the second German appeared and grasped him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him out of the cave. Fontaine rushed to the entrance and peered out. He could see the guard was on top of Claude, one knee on his chest, and was pounding the young boy’s face with his right fist. Fontaine’s reaction was to get outside and help Claude, but Nadeau stopped him.
“You can’t. He is now a prisoner, he will be considered a spy, and he will be shot. The Kraut is unaware of our presence. For all intents and purposes, Claude is alone, and he will tell them that. If we go out there and kill the second guard, they will soon send a search party, and this mission is over. Claude may be a 14 year old boy, but he knew the risks. We cannot go out there to help him. We need to stay here, do our job, and report back to Garrow”, said Nadeau.
Fontaine, with tears in his eyes sat back down, knowing his friend was right.
Claude was now unconscious from the brutal beating. The Nazi tied together his wrists and ankles and started dragging him away down the hill back to the camp.
Chapter Eleven
Just outside of Bordeaux.
The truck was heading into Bordeaux. Inside was Nancy, accompanied by Jean Luc Moreau and two more men who Captain Garrow had assigned to escort her on her mission, whatever it was.
“You seem awfully calm considering you’re a very wanted woman”, observed Moreau. “Oh, I’m sure I’ll be fine, especially with three strapping men to protect me”, replied Nancy, somewhat flirtatiously given the circumstances.
The truck’s engine decreased its RPM, and Nancy and Moreau instinctively looked forwards. Ahead was a checkpoint. They pulled up at the barrier, four hearts pounding, four faces sweating. One of the checkpoint guards stepped out of the hut and approached the driver’s window.
“Identifikation, bitte.”
The man behind the wheel handed over his wallet. A few seconds of silence ensued while the soldier studied the wallet’s contents. He then yelled in German.
“Hey, Himmel, check out the back.”
A second guard emerged from the hut and slowly walked around to the back. There was some rapid movement, and a couple of shots rang out. The guard at the back was dead before his brain had even registered that Nancy and Moreau were there.
Moreau then leaped out from the back, and, with his pistol, killed the guard who was still by the driver’s window but had not had time to take his rifle from his shoulder. Another shot, another German on the floor, more red snow.
Jean Luc retrieved the driver’s wallet from the cold dead hand of the German, jumped back into the truck, and the four of them sped off, continuing their journey into Bordeaux. Their time had now become extremely limited. As soon as the dead bodies were discovered, not one person in the entire town would be able to breath without being scrutinised. For now, however, they were safe.
“Told you”, said Nancy, beaming.
Chapter Twelve
The tired soldier dragged the still unconscious Claude into the mine. Two workers approached to help, picked up the boy and carried him towards the office. They dumped him down onto the floor just outside the door. Claude finally woke up. The first thing he saw was a pair of highly polished military boots. He looked up straight into the eyes of General Lutze.
“And who may this be?” asked the general.
“I found him hiding on the mountainside watching this camp. He killed another guard who was patrolling the area with me. He tried to kill me too, but I overpowered him and brought him back here myself”, replied the soldier, unaware of how ridiculous it sounded for an armed man to boast about getting the better of a 14 year old boy.
Lutze crouched down and took hold of Claude’s face, squashing his cheeks, making him look like a puffer fish.
“Where are you from, you little tramp?”
Claude looked at Lutze with burning hatred in his eyes. “I am from Wormhoudt.”
Lutze looked surprised and smiled. “Wormhoudt, ja? I thought we killed you all that day.” He looked up at the soldiers who had gathered around to watch the show. “I guess we must have missed one of the little vermin”, he said, smirking.
Claude, not yet old enough to understand what true fear was, spat into the officer’s face.
The grip around his face became tighter and Lutze turned red with rage.
Lutze stood up and kicked Claude in the stomach, resulting in every bit of breath being extracted from his lungs. He then placed the heel of his boot onto Claude’s hand and applied all of his body weight.
“And, gentlemen, when we do catch vermin such as this specimen, this is what we do to them”, he said to his audience, basking in the attention he was receiving.
He pulled out his pistol. From inside the office, Professor Lenard rushed out, his face contorted with horror.
“General, what are you doing? He’s just a boy.”
“No, professor, he’s just a little piece of shit, just another little diseased rat which must be put down.”
Before the professor could protest further, Lutze had squeezed the trigger and put to an end the life of the fourteen old boy who had taken it upon himself to wage his very own war against the Nazis, the people responsible for killing his entire family.
Professor Lenard was visibly shaken. He ran back into his office and filled his rubbish bin with the entire contents of his stomach.
Lutze re-holstered his weapon. As he wiped away the spit from his face, the very spit which had been delivered by Claude in a final act of defiance, he smiled, and ordered the body to be removed and destroyed.
Adrien Fontaine, having witnessed everything through the tunnel of the shaft at the top of which they were still hiding, lowered the binoculars from his face, his face as white as the fresh snow on the ground outside cave.
“What is it? What is it?” demanded Nadeau.
“Those pigs…those fucking Nazi pigs just shot Claude. He was just a kid.”
“No”, said Nadeau. “He was someone who chose to be a casualty of war, someone who chose to fight against our enemy, and he was someone who dies a hero.”
Fontaine nodded.
While they were both in agreement, they both felt an enormous amount of guilt at not being able to do anything to stop Claude’s brutal death.
“We need to get back and report to Garrow. Pack up, let’s get out of here before they come up looking for the dead body.
The two men left the cave and started descending down the mountain, taking the same route which they had used, but this time without Claude leading them.
After an hour of walking, they stopped and heard some rustling in the bushes nearby.
Then, a German voice started shouting.
“Fire, fire.”
The sound of shots started ringing out around them. Fontaine gave the command to run like hell. They ran through the forest and could hear - and feel - bullets whizzing past their heads.
“Where are they shooting from?” asked an out of breath Nadeau. “I don’t know, just keep going.”
Chapter Thirteen
Danielle was laying on the cot, alone in the cell. The other women were out working in the courtyard. She rubbed her lower abdomen, feeling as if her heart and soul had been ripped from her body. She felt empty. She started to think of her mother and the bakery, the times they had shared together before the war had started. Happy times. She could smell the unmistakable scent of freshly baked bread. She could taste her mother’s famous chicken pie. She could hear her cheerful laughter as they would stand next to one another kneading the dough. She remembered how Bridgette would always bake her a chocolate cake every year, without fail, for her birthday. A huge cake from which they would give a slice to every customer on that particular day. She saw her mother in the forest, and she heard her last words: “I’m sorry, my Bichette.”
Danielle was crying now. So many happy memories. How did all of this happen so suddenly? Why had no one seen it coming?
For the first time, she felt a tiny kick inside her womb. Her baby was making its presence known. She stroked her tummy and told her baby that everything was going to be alright, and that she was not going to let her go.
Bridgette had given Danielle the gift of life before dying. She resolved that she would not die before her baby. Children are not supposed to die before their parents. It’s not how the circle of life is supposed to work, and Danielle had no intention of breaking that rule, not for one moment.
As Danielle had been thinking back to the days at the bakery, Nancy stepped actually stepped inside it. It had been ransacked; nothing remained intact, including the fireplace. She spent thirty minutes looking around searching for something, anything which would give her a clue as to the whereabouts of Danielle, her contact. Nothing. She knew about the secret cellar underneath the bakery and, by opening up the wall at the back of the fireplace and climbing down, she once again drew a blank. She could however see that someone had been living, or at least existing there due to empty plates and a couple of glasses. Whoever it had been was long gone however.
Having closed up the secret wall, she once again stepped outside, and Moreau, who had been guarding the door with the other two men, asked if she had found what she had been looking for.
“Non”, was the simple answer.
An elderly man local to the area was walking along the street close by. Nancy ran over to him.
“Excusez-moi, Monsieur. Do you know what happened to the bakery?” The old man shook his head and kept his eyes to the ground.
“The Nazis. There’s no more bread. I don’t know what happened to the young girl, but the mother, Madame LeClair, she was escorted out by the Gestapo. She was badly wounded. She was never seen again”, he said.
“When did this happen”, Nancy asked.
“A few weeks ago. Please, I know nothing more, I must be on my way.”
“Merci, Monsieur.”
“What now”, asked Moreau.
“We start praying to God that Danielle is alive.”
Chapter Fourteen
Utterly exhausted, Fontaine and Nadeau arrived back at Captain Garrow’s bush shack in the forest and entered, escorted by a sentry.
“Where’s Claude”, snapped Garrow.
“The Germans caught him and they shot him. He’s dead, Captain”, said Fontaine, feeling responsible for the death of a teenager.
Nadeau helped Fontaine to remove his jacket. There was a large blood stain on his shirt.
One of the bullets which had been fired by the Germans in the forest had caught his shoulder. The doctor, still present following the amputation took a look and told Fontaine that the bullet would have to be removed immediately.
He walked over to the other side of the room and removed a pair of tweezers from his medical bag.
“This may hurt a little”, he said, stating the obvious, as he wiggled them inside the wound trying to find the bullet. After a few minutes, it was successfully removed and the doctor patched up the wound the best he could with what he had.
“I couldn’t even treat a sick dog properly with what I have here, it will have to do. It’s just a flesh wound, keep it clean and it will be fine.”
Garrow asked Fontaine and Nadeau to follow him to another room where the three of them sat. They had much to discuss.
Chapter Fifteen
Professor Lenard had spent the last hour pacing up and down in the office. He didn’t see his desk, the blueprints, not even the walls. The only thing he could see was the precise moment that the bullet had entered Claude’s brain and he had slumped to the ground. A teenager’s life snuffed out by someone who had shown all the emotion of a normal human being swatting a fly. Enough was enough, he would not be a part of this any longer. He had almost finished packing his cases when the general arrived.
“Good evening, Professor. Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes, I am leaving, General. I signed up for this mission to help you to find something valuable within the network of tunnels inside this mountain. What I did not sign up for was to be a part of killing innocent children. I absolutely cannot and will not accept that.”
Lutze took on a more serious tone: “My dear Professor. The boy was not innocent. He had been up in the mountain spying on us. He came from a village which we captured several years ago and he was, to the best of my knowledge, the only survivor, the only one who managed to escape. That creates a lot of anger, and a resistance fighter - regardless of age - who is angry is a problem for me. It has brought shame upon myself and the men who I led to bring that village down to allow anyone to escape.”
“General, I am a scientist. I do not have the stomach for war. I am not a fighter. This is not who I am”, replied the professor.
“Professor, the work we are doing here is, as you know, very important not only to me, but to the Führer himself. I cannot allow you to leave until our work here is done.”
“Be that as it may, General, This is not what I signed up for. I shall send a telegram to the Führer personally and explain the horrors which are going on here, and why I am leaving. I am quite sure you will find someone else just as qualified to take my place”, said the professor as he was stuffing one last shirt into his suitcase.
Lutze, not for the first time that day, pulled his pistol from its holster and aimed it at Professor Lenard’s head.
“Professor, the telegram lines are down and there is no other form of communication available here. I strongly urge you to reconsider your position”, the general said, his face deadly serious.
“So I am bound here? I am compelled to stay here? I am just another one of your slaves, is that it?
“That’s correct, Professor; until our work here is completed, that is. Then, you will be free, and you will enjoy rewards along with the thanks of a grateful Führer.
The professor nodded at the general in defeat. Lutze holstered his pistol, snapped his heel before turning and left the office leaving Johannes Lenard alone, very alone indeed.
Chapter Sixteen
Danielle was still on the cot laying down, rubbing her stomach in an attempt to comfort, and bond with her unborn ch
ild. The other women returned to the cell, their working day complete. Marion approached her first.
“It’s time, Danielle. Be brave”, she said in a soothing voice which didn’t sooth her at all.
Marion placed her hands on Danielle’s knees and exerted a little pressure to move them apart.
“Wait”, said Danielle. “I’ve changed my mind, I am not going to do this to my baby.”
“Danielle, we’ve been through this. The guards will be here soon. You don’t want them to do the things that they have done to other women to you, believe me. You don’t want to go to Ravensbrück, do you? You must trust us”, Marion pleaded.
The other women moved in closer and were now holding her arms, shoulders, and ankles. Danielle was panicking and violently shaking, trying to free herself of the women’s grip. Marion pulled out the wire from underneath her dress.
“Be still, Danielle, this won’t take long. It will be much easier if you stay still.”
Danielle struggled more, using all of her strength. She managed to kick one of her legs free and lashed it out, straight into the nose of Clara who had been holding it. It was broken, and was pouring with blood.
“She’s broken it”, she cried, suddenly sounding like she had contracted a bad cold. With the shock of Clara’s bloodied nose, the other women loosened their grip, and Danielle escaped, running over to the far side of the cell.
Heavy footsteps were heard in the corridor heading in the direction of the cell. The women fell down to the floor pretending to be asleep. Danielle remained crouched down in her corner.
“What’s going on here?” asked a guard. Silence.
“Keep it quiet, you know the rules.”
The guard walked away and left Danielle whispering to herself, the same words over and over again.
