Moon Above, Moon Below

by William Peter Grasso

  “Yes, I’m very sure. If we got delayed on the road for any reason, we’d have to rip the boules open and set the timers all over again. Then we’d have to paste them back together again, and there wouldn’t be enough time for it to dry. The tops could fall off the loaves as we’re pushing the cart inside the headquarters, and the whole world would see our handiwork…and we’d be dead. You remember how rough the walkways are there?”

  “I suppose you’re right. But that means you’ll have to ride in the back with the bread.”

  Sylvie smiled. “That would be wonderful. I’m feeling very hungry this morning. I can munch on bread while I twist together these little wires sticking out of the boules.”

  “Actually, what would be wonderful is if your American boyfriend and his pilot buddies just bombed the fucking place. Then we wouldn’t have to be doing this at all.”

  “I’m sure the people of Champosoult don’t agree, Eva. Bombs don’t seem to be very discriminating who they kill.”

  Angelique tiptoed into the space behind the shelves, checking nervously over her shoulder. “I don’t know where Dominique or the Boche sergeant are. I’m very nervous about the other women, too. They’re growing suspicious—I hear them whispering you’re up to something.”

  Sylvie replied, “Of course they are. That’s why once the van has left for Champosoult, you’re all going to vanish and not come back until the Americans are here. It should only be a matter of a few days.”

  “But that will make them all the more suspicious.”

  Sylvie pulled a fat envelope from the crate, stuffed full of 10-franc notes. “Here,” she said as she placed the money in Angelique’s hands. “The amount we agreed to is all there, with our thanks. Spread the rest around among the ladies. That should keep them quiet.”

  Angelique replied, “You think of everything, don’t you?”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  It hadn’t taken much for Dominique to lure the old mess sergeant to the basement. A quick flash of breast and a beckoning finger had him flying down the steps. But he posed a bigger challenge than she’d imagined; his resistance to the choral hydrate—knockout drops—she’d slipped into the bottle of schnapps seemed extraordinary.

  There was enough in there to put a horse to sleep! He must’ve eaten an enormous breakfast, and that’s delaying the process. Maybe that will help him sleep longer once the drug takes effect.

  Worse, he kept offering her the bottle. To forestall taking that drink, she’d sat him in a chair and begun dancing a seductive striptease around him, humming the music she’d heard spilling from the cabarets of Quartier Pigalle in Paris for musical accompaniment. It would take considerable skill—and a bit of luck—to avoid ending up naked in short order, since her simple work uniform consisted of very few garments, with no garters, jewelry save her wedding ring, or other accessories to dawdle over as a true folies girl would. She labored to come up with lengthy, theatrical ways to drag out the shedding of head scarf, shoes, and socks. Each of the nine buttons down the front of her dress was worth several verses of a tune before it managed to become undone.

  But good entertainment is infectious. Eventually the sergeant was humming along, sloppily out of tune like a drunk, as he drifted ever so slowly into unconsciousness. She breathed a sigh of relief when, down to just her panties, his head finally slumped forward against his chest. In seconds, she put her clothes back on and was bounding up the stairs, leaving the sergeant to his slumber.

  When Dominique finally rejoined Sylvie and Eva, they were nearly finished loading the bread—most of the boules edible, but 12 deadly—into the delivery van. “We thought we’d have to come rescue you,” Sylvie said. “You didn’t have to...?” Her eyes widened as her voice tapered off, leaving the unfinished question hanging in the air.

  Dominique asked, “Do you mean fuck him or kill him?”

  “Either one.”

  “No, neither one,” Dominique replied. “It just seemed to take forever for him to pass out. But he should sleep soundly enough for everyone in this place to be long gone by the time he wakes. Are we ready to go?”

  “Yes,” Sylvie replied. “Ride in the back with me and watch for planes out the rear windows.”

  The guard roused Tommy Moon and John Peterson from sleep earlier than usual. There was an officer with him this morning, a Wehrmacht leutnant, who informed the American captives they would be transported to camps in Germany immediately after the morning ration. Peterson’s destination would be an oflag, where ground forces officers were held. Tommy, as a flyer, was being sent to a stalag luft.

  The morning ration was the usual offering: a slab of round bread—quite fresh and delicious, actually—washed down with horrible ersatz coffee that tasted like it was brewed from the sweepings off a workshop floor. Perhaps as a going-away present, there was a special treat: each man received an apple. “Good for your teeth,” the leutnant said as he climbed the stairs. “Have a pleasant journey.” The door at the top of the stairs slammed closed behind him.

  They hadn’t finished wolfing down their food when a rapid series of explosions from the floor above knocked them to the floor and instantly filled the cellar with a thick cloud of dust. One final blast splintered the door at the top of the stairs and propelled the leutnant down into the cellar. His body lay motionless on the floor like a charred and broken toy soldier. If the blast hadn’t already killed him, the plummet certainly had. Through the doorway above, the morning sun blazed down like a beacon.

  Tommy and Peterson looked at each other in amazement. “What do you think?” Tommy asked. “Sign from God?”

  “Only one way to find out.”

  They climbed the stairs. When they stepped out into the sunlight at the top, they saw the entire front wall of the building was blown out. The only Germans inside were lying dead in the debris.

  Peterson asked, “I say we make a break for it. You with me?”

  “Absolutely,” Tommy replied. “Let’s go.”

  When they got to the rubble-strewn street, the only Germans they saw were a few soldiers, dazed and bloody from the blast, who didn’t seem to notice the Americans stealing away right before their eyes. “We’ve got to go southwest,” Tommy said. “That should be the most direct route back to our lines. They couldn’t be more than a couple of miles away unless something went really fubar during the night. C’mon…let’s cut down this alley.”

  They’d barely made the turn when the strangest contraption on four wheels they’d ever seen came barreling down on them. It was a boxy delivery van, at one time conventionally powered by gasoline, no doubt, but its nose had been extensively modified. Mounted alongside the engine bonnet were two cylinders, one much taller and wider than the other, resembling upright boilers with a maze of interconnecting plumbing. All together, it made the van look like a locomotive.

  If they hadn’t jumped aside quickly, it would have run over them.

  They expected to see German soldiers in the cab. Instead, there were two women, one behind the wheel, the other looking at them with a startled look of recognition. She screamed something to the driver, and the ungainly vehicle rattled to a halt.

  “TOMMY,” Sylvie cried as she jumped from the cab to the ground. There was no time for a kiss, an embrace, or questions. She swung open the van’s rear doors and said, “Get in. Hurry!”

  They scuttled into the back of the van, joining another woman who seemed even more surprised than Sylvie had been when first laying eyes on the Americans. “We’ll talk once we’re clear of here, Tommy,” she said. Then, switching to French, she told Dominique, “This is a total surprise, but they can be trusted.” Sylvie slammed the doors closed. In a few seconds, the van was moving again.

  Speaking French, Tommy introduced himself and Peterson to Dominique. He explained to her how they’d come to be prisoners at the German headquarters. She explained how they’d just blown up the place.

  “Holy shit,” Tommy said. “You blew the Krauts to kingdom come w
ith bread?”

  “Pain Chaude,” she replied, with the coy wink of an eye. “Hot bread. We had no idea we’d be freeing Ami prisoners as well.” Then she explained what her job was now: to be the rear lookout for the American aircraft that tended to strafe anything that moved on French roads. He didn’t miss her sneer at the pilot wings on his jacket as she said it.

  Speaking little French, Peterson was getting more confused by the minute. “Am I getting this right? You mean they’re the ones who blew the place up? And where the hell are they taking us?”

  “Hang on, John. I was just about to ask that.”

  They were both thrilled by her answer: “We’re going to the American lines.”

  “Great,” Peterson said. “Why walk when you can ride?”

  They were well clear of the town when the van came to a halt on the narrow road. The rear doors flew open again as Sylvie climbed in. “Switch with me,” she said to Dominique, “so I can talk with our American friends.”

  With a shrewd smile, Dominique pointed to Peterson and asked, “Would you like me to take him, too, so you and your pilot can be alone?”

  “Don’t be such a pain in my ass,” Sylvie replied. “We’re not in the clear yet. Get up front with Eva and be her lookout.”

  “Mais oui, mon général,” Dominique said, and even Peterson understood enough to catch the snarkiness in her compliance. They heard the cab door slam, and then they were moving again.

  “Your arm…is it broken?” Sylvie asked.

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Does it hurt very much?”

  “Only when I laugh…or move…or breathe.”

  “Well,” she said, “the important thing is you’ll be safe soon. We’ll all be safe soon.”

  Peterson chimed in, “I sure hope you’re right about that.”

  “You know, Tommy,” she said, “I was just thinking how coincidental this all is.”

  “Coincidental? What do you mean?”

  “When I was being held prisoner by the Gestapo in Gacé, your bomb rescued me without you even realizing you were doing it. Now, I’ve returned the favor…in exactly the same manner. That’s a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  The van gave a shudder and began to slow down.

  “Something wrong?” Tommy asked. “This thing runs on wood gas, right?”

  “Yes, and we may be pushing its fuel supply a bit too much. This van only gets about thirty kilometers to a tank…and that’s about how far we’ve driven since we last stoked the gas generator. It would be so much easier if we just had some petrol.”

  The van lurched a few times as its engine sputtered. Then it fell silent, and they rolled to an unceremonious stop in the middle of the road.

  “Merde,” Sylvie said, “I guess we’ll be walking after all.”

  “And we’d better walk pretty damn fast, too,” Peterson said, his face drawn, his voice agitated. “We’ve got some jugs circling overhead like vultures.” He jumped out and ran to the cab to warn Eva and Dominique. Soon all five of them were on the run, looking to put as much distance between themselves and the van as possible.

  With the pain of his broken arm, Tommy found it impossible to keep up. He dropped to his knees, hoping the blinding pain would subside just enough to let him continue. But he knew he was still much too close to the van—and he could hear the rasp of a jug’s prop as it began its attack dive.

  “NO! KEEP GOING,” Tommy called to the three women as they raced back to him. “DON’T WAIT FOR ME.”

  They didn’t listen. “Sorry, Tommy,” Sylvie said, “if it’s going to hurt either way, let it be this way.”

  The women picked him up and started jogging toward Peterson, who was watching them, stationary and dumbstruck. “You could help, you know,” Sylvie told him as they passed.

  He knew he should be helping. The three women never stopped running with their wounded cargo.

  But the jug was so close. The roar of her engine blotted out everything but the instinct to survive. Peterson threw himself on the ground, hoping any rock, any blade of grass might save him.

  And then .50-caliber bullets ripped their world to shreds.

  At 0725, the German staff car pulled into the cobblestoned village square of Hordouseaux, white flags of truce flying from its front fenders. When it rolled to a stop, the ranking general of the vanquished German forces, General der Panzertruppe Heinrich Eberbach, climbed from its back seat. He found no Allied officer waiting to take his surrender.

  “We are five minutes early,” the general fumed to the aide standing beside him. “You would think they’d be just as eager as we are to get this business over with as soon as possible.”

  “Jawohl, Herr General,” his aide replied. “One would think.”

  But they had to wait four more minutes until a small convoy of light armored vehicles rolled into the square, forming a cordon around his staff car. They were obviously British. General Eberbach was expecting Yanks.

  An American jeep with British markings rolled into the square and came to a stop nose to nose with the German vehicle. A slight, wiry man stepped from its passenger’s seat. Eberbach had seen enough pictures to instantly recognize him as Bernard Law Montgomery.

  “What is your name and title?” Montgomery asked.

  “I am Eberbach, commander of Panzer Group Eberbach, representing all forces currently contained in the Falaise-Argentan encirclement.”

  “Very well, I am—”

  “I know who you are,” the German interrupted, and then turned to his aide and said, loud enough for everyone in the square to hear, “I will not surrender to this spectator.”

  Switching to German, he told his aide, “Tell this man I will only tender our surrender to a man who actually defeated us.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Lieutenant General Walter “Beetle” Smith, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, found the situation in SHAEF’s London headquarters that morning quite frustrating: Things around here weren’t this screwed up when disasters were going on. Now we’ve got a victory on our hands, and we’re all running around like chickens without heads.

  Yelling into the telephone carrying his call to General Bradley in France, Smith said, “We can’t order a German general to surrender to Montgomery, Brad. If he wants an American, we’ll give him an American. Who’s closest—you, Hodges, or Patton?”

  “None of us,” Bradley replied. “The only American general in the area is John Wood, Fourth Armored commander.”

  “No good,” Smith said. “Only two stars. This Eberbach guy is equivalent to three, right?”

  “That’s what I understand, Beetle. But Monty’s got four and he wouldn’t surrender to him.”

  “A different kettle of fish entirely, Brad. Monty could have ten stars and it wouldn’t make any difference now. Let’s not fuck up something as momentous as this by insulting this Kraut twice in the same day. It’s got to be you, Hodges, or Patton—and it’s got to be quick.”

  There was silence on the line for a few long moments, so long that Smith thought the connection might have been broken. “Brad, are you still there?”

  “Yes, I’m still here, Beetle. My people are checking the latest command post reports.”

  “Come on, Brad, we don’t have all fucking day. Ike’s breathing down my neck. Who’s going to take this surrender?”

  Bradley sighed, loud enough to be heard through the telephone line. Then he said, “If we need it done fast, we’d better give it to Georgie.”

  Bradley’s instincts were correct: Patton had hit the road as soon as he caught wind of Montgomery’s humiliation. He was only a few miles from Hordouseaux when Bradley’s call was patched to his jeep’s radio directing him to take Eberbach’s surrender. It put a smile on his face that lasted all the way to the village outskirts. Now it was time to get serious. A major event in history was about to take place in this village, and no one felt more entitled to play the starring role in that event than George Patton.

  I to
ok the gamble, when everyone else was cowering in caution, held back by imaginary lines. Don’t those fools know that good things never come to those who wait?

  I risked everything…

  And now my brave men and I will be forever known as the ones who brought down that paper-hanging son of a bitch Hitler once and for all.

  He found Heinrich Eberbach waiting in the tiny café on the village square. The German rose and offered a slight bow as he asked, “Ah, you are Patton, are you not?”

  “Yes, General, I am. Am I correct that it’s general and not field marshal?”

  With an amused smile, the German replied, “Are you referring to Paulus at Stalingrad, General?”

  “Yes, I am. We understood it was Hitler’s standard procedure to promote a general who was about to surrender.”

  “Apparently, Der Führer is no longer enamored with the practice, since it didn’t yield the desired result at Stalingrad. You understand the point of such a promotion, don’t you, General?”

  Patton understood fully: No German field marshal had ever surrendered, so in Hitler’s mind, promoting a general intent on surrendering to field marshal was a mandate for that man to commit suicide.

  There was no point saying that out loud, though. Instead, he said, “I understand, General. Completely.”

  “Good,” Eberbach replied. “Then let me make it clear: this surrender will feature no promotion. And no suicide.”

  Patton looked around the establishment and asked, “Has Montgomery decided not to join us?”

  A British major replied, “No, sir, the general has other business to attend to.” Placing a document of several pages on the table, he added, “These have been left for you.”

  “What a pity he can’t be here,” Patton replied, a smirk on his face as he riffled through the pages. “But we’ve never gotten his help before. We certainly don’t need it now. Would you like to look these papers over before you sign, General Eberbach?”

  “No need. I’ve had ample time to read them pending your arrival. But before I sign, I must remind you, General Patton, that the document indicates my men will be afforded the full protection of prisoners of war as provided by the Geneva Convention. The barbaric reprisals your troops and airmen have been committing against my men are to cease immediately.”