Army of Shadows

by John Harris

  There seemed to be a great number of soldiers about the streets and Neville looked round uneasily at them. ‘Do they check papers ?’ he asked.

  Marie-Claude shrugged. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘What’s the drill?’

  ‘The drill?’

  ‘In case they stop us.’

  ‘I shall think of something.’

  ‘Don’t you have a plan?’

  ‘What’s the use of a plan when the drill’s different every time.’

  As they reached the village centre, Neville realized he was tensing himself against the back of the cart, his foot jammed hard against the side, his jaw set and his teeth clenched. He forced himself to relax and glanced at Marie-Claude. If she were afraid she showed no sign of it, and sat straight-backed and undaunted in a way that pleased him somehow, her head up, the white column of her neck straight, her eyes wide, a slight frown on her brows. Only the tightening of her lips hinted at what she was feeling.

  The German soldiers eyed them incuriously. The cafes were open and at one German officers were eating breakfast.

  ‘When they first came,’ Marie-Claude said, smiling reflectively, ‘they put wire round them to keep the French out. But during the night schoolboys put up notices, “Wild beasts. Keep away”, so they took it down again and we use them, too, now. We take our bicycle pumps in with us and hang them on the hatstands next to their belts and holsters. They hate it.’

  As they turned the corner, they saw a line of men. standing at the next crossroads, some of them soldiers, some in the uniform of the Gestapo, others still in civilian clothes.

  ‘The rafle!’ Marie-Claude spoke quietly, her expression unchanged. ‘The round-up. They might be looking for British airmen, French resistance workers, young men for forced labour in Germany, or merely their own deserters.’

  ‘What do we do?’ Urquhart demanded

  ‘Nothing. They’re too busy to worry about as at the moment. Whenever they hold one, every woman in the place wraps up anything she can find to make a parcel and lets herself be stopped. It delays the searching and helps anyone who has to, to get away.’

  Neville had licked his lips nervously. As he gathered his feet under him, ready to run, Urquhart laid a hand on his arm.

  ‘For Christ’s sake.’ Neville breathed, ‘We’re just putting our heads in a noose.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Urquhart growled. ‘Or are you afraid?’

  Neville’s head jerked round. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Well, you’re putting on a bloody good imitation of somebody who is.’

  The insult steadied Neville, as it was intended to, and he frowned as Marie-Claude’s voice came. They’ll shoot anyone who tries to bolt,’ she said. ‘And Arsène will already have gone to ground.’

  The old horse continued to plod towards the line of men. Then, abruptly, without any sign of panic, Marie-Claude pulled on the reins and the horse swung between two large gate-posts into a muddy yard surrounded by buildings. An old man with a thin sly face came towards her.

  ‘Pigs, Bona,’ she said quietly. ‘I want pigs.’

  The old man looked nervous, well aware of what was happening further along the street. ‘I haven’t got pigs,’ he said.

  A woman appeared. She was older than Marie-Claude, pretty and plump, but sharp-eyed as though she knew everything that went on. She wore thick powder and heavy eye make-up, and as she stood near the cart Neville caught a whiff of a suffocatingly strong perfume. Her legs were good but she wore shoes with heels so high she was pigeon-toed when she walked. Her dress, new and obviously acquired on the black market, was so tight it showed the bulges of flesh round her hips.

  She stared up at Marie-Claude, her expression hostile.

  ‘We have no pigs, Marie-Claude,’ she said. ‘Not for sale.’

  ‘Today you have,’ Marie-Claude said sharply. ‘I want one. Two would be better. One for me. One for the Germans.’

  ‘You heard what my father-in-law said.’

  ‘Give me the pigs, Ernestine,’ Marie-Claude snapped, jerking her head at her passengers. ‘I need them.’

  The woman stared at her for a moment, then at Urquhart and Neville. Finally she turned and hurried away across the muddy yard. ‘Give her the pigs,’ she said to the old man.

  A flicker of a smile crossed Marie-Claude’s face and she jumped to the ground. ‘Get the back off the cart,’ she commanded.

  ‘Do we hide here?’ Neville asked as they lifted the catches.

  ‘Of course not. If I drive in here with you, and out without you, they’ll search the place at once. We came in to buy pigs and when, we’ve bought them, we go out again, back to where we came from.’

  Half an hour later, there were two half-grown pigs in the back of the cart, and Neville and Urquhart were splashed with mud and pig dung, and panting with the exertion of hoisting them in. The old man produced a net which they draped over the two sullen animals and tied into place, then the old horse began to splash out of the muddy yard.

  The round-up seemed to have finished. A soldier in a doorway glanced at them but he saw only what had entered, plus two disgruntled pigs, and he made no move to stop them. Without speaking, they jolted out of Rolandpoint back towards Néry, not speaking until the houses were behind them and they were already climbing the hill. Then Urquhart noticed that Marie-Claude was smiling.

  ‘What’s so funny? ‘ he asked.

  She gave a little laugh. ‘It’s always good to put something across Ernestine Bona,’ she said. ‘I now have two pigs and Ernestine has two less.’

  ‘You don’t like her?’

  ‘Anyone kissing her would come away looking like a baker’s assistant. She once tried to steal my husband.’

  ‘Does she work with the Nazis ?’

  Marie-Claude’s eyes flashed. ‘She helped with the pigs, didn’t she?’ She chuckled. ‘She’ll never condescend to ask for them back and we need pigs. We haven’t had pigs for a year.’ She gave them a broad unashamed grin. ‘You ate what was left of the last lot.’

  Neville glanced at Urquhart. ‘What about us?’ he asked.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘It seems to have put paid to us leaving.’

  She shrugged. ‘Father Pol always did think you were unwise trying to leave so soon.’ She laughed again. Tomorrow we must clean out the old sties. You’ll be able to do it for me.’

  She began to sing softly to herself and Neville looked at Urquhart. He was surprised to find him grinning.

  ‘Do you get the impression,’ Urquhart asked, ‘that we’re being put upon?’

  7

  There was only one thing in everyone’s mind: the invasion waiting just across the Channel, holding back only for the days of fair weather when it could be launched against the shores of France.

  There was no fear anywhere that it wouldn’t succeed. With the Germans already out of Africa and in trouble in Russia and Italy, and with the vast industrial might of America behind it, failure just couldn’t be conceived.

  ‘After all,’ Marie-Claude pointed out, ‘there are a quarter of a million men. waiting in England, and the British Empire, the United States and Russia are a formidable combination to take on, even for Hitler’s Germany.’

  They could hear the RAF going over at night, and learned that Auxerre and Tonnerre and Chatillon-sur-Seine had been bombed because they were junctions leading to the invasion coast. They also heard of the Resistance blowing things up in Besançon and the Doubs next door, where the Resistance was stronger because the high ground was higher and they were harder to get at. Occasionally they even heard of sabotage in Dijon, which was an important German military administration centre for north-eastern France, and of damage done to railway points and turntables. The townspeople seemed better at that sort of thing than the country-dwellers.

  Their lack of success was something that bore heavily on the men of Néry. Twice they had failed and suddenly the good hard life of the fields and the pleasure of cheating
the Germans with high prices for their food was no longer enough. They were beginning to itch for action again. Every man in France was beginning to itch for action, and the men of Néry had old scores to settle.

  As the Germans well knew.

  ‘According to our predecessors,’ Colonel Klemens was saying, ‘Resistance cells sprang up here in 1942 and 1943 but were totally destroyed. Since then there’s been nothing.’

  Tarnera and Klein-Wuttig waited. There was obviously something on the colonel’s mind.

  ‘However,’ he went on, ‘Dijon’s had a report that a parachute drop took place here recently and I want supervision of the villages in the command to find out where it went to. Dijon suspects Rolandpoint and I want a man there to keep an eye on the place.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Klein-Wuttig said at once.

  ‘Disguised as what?’

  ‘I’ll find something.’

  ‘See that you do. Go and see Major Doench at Rolandpoint. Anything suspicious to be reported at once. We’ll follow it up with a house-to-house search.’

  The failure to contact the Resistance in Rolandpoint had drawn Urquhart and Neville closer together, Neville edgy and frustrated. Urquhart more philosophical and with an old soldier’s calm.

  ‘When do we go then?’ he demanded of Marie-Claude.

  She seemed unexpectedly cheerful. ‘You don’t,’ she said. ‘Without Arsène, you have to stay here for a while longer.’

  Then her smile faded and he had the feeling that some secret tribunal within her was summing them up. He shrugged. Since she was obviously used to running things, they had to leave it all to her.

  ‘How long will it take to organize the route again?’ Neville asked.

  ‘A month.’ Her cheerfulness had given place now to briskness. ‘Two months. Perhaps longer. Sometimes airmen have stayed hidden in attics for as long as three.’

  As she disappeared, Urquhart stared after her, his expression puzzled. ‘That girl’s a bloody sight cleverer than I thought,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Urquhart grinned. ‘I have the sad dry taste of shattered illusions,’ he said. ‘I thought she was keeping us here for the glory of France. Instead, now, I think she’s keeping us here because we’re a bit of extra bloody labour about the farm.’

  ‘I don’t believe it.’

  Urquhart looked at Neville’s eager youthful face. ‘People have a habit of belying their looks, old son,’ he warned.

  ‘Well, what if they do. I suppose we owe her a bit.’

  ‘Okay.’ Urquhart laughed. ‘Then next time there’s some muck-spreading to be done, let’s see you at it, boy, with a bit of this same enthusiastic willingness to repay, instead of creeping up to it like an undertaker approaching a corpse.’

  Quite clearly, Marie-Claude had them exactly where she wanted them and there was nothing they could do but accept it, able to do no more than fight the war at a distance through the BBC.

  That night, Dréo, Reinach and Ernouf turned up at the farm to listen to the broadcast from London, all claiming that their own batteries had given up the ghost. Smiling his sideways withdrawn smile. Urquhart decided that they’d really come only to daydream about the mayhem they hoped to commit on the Germans when the second front became a fact.

  ‘And since they haven’t anything more lethal than those guillotine things they chop the bread with,’ he thought, ‘it’s a pretty pointless bloody exercise.’

  The radio behaved as if half its inside was missing, so that Madame Lamy was continually on her feet, pounding the case. Her efforts made little difference and reception remained poor.

  Above the crackling, however, it was still possible to feel some of the excitement in the air. The announcer gave no dates but he seemed to be suggesting that the invasion was just round the corner. ‘When the allies come,’ he said, ‘they will rely on your help. In no more valuable way can this be given than with information about the enemy. Observe him more closely...’

  ‘How close do they want?’ Marie-Claude snorted. ‘He’s already standing with one foot on our necks.’

  She was shushed to silence and they listened wistfully to the long list of personal messages - ‘Marie sends her best regards to Ratouf’, ‘Napoléon passa par le tombeau comme il a passe partout’, ‘C’était Anne de Bretagne avec ses sabots’ - messages that were meaningless to the Germans, but contained hidden instructions for those they concerned. Occasionally a personal message to a family to say their son was safe in England was slipped in, occasionally something insulting for the Germans, but none was ever prefaced with ‘D’Auguste à César’ and they were all aware that somehow the war was passing over their heads.

  There was a long silence as the announcements finished, and a distinct sense of anti-climax. Marie-Claude looked angrily at the hopeless expressions on the faces around her.

  ‘We weren’t expecting any messages,’ she pointed out sharply.

  ‘One might just have come,’ Ernouf said wistfully.

  ‘To tell us what?’

  ‘Well -’ Ernouf shrugged ‘ - we can’t just sit here doing nothing. In Paris, Maquisards disguised as Milice got into the Ministry of Information and killed a few traitors.’

  ‘And in Marseille,’ Marie-Claude said, ‘when they blew up a brothel the Germans used, the Gestapo destroyed the old port and sent thousands to concentration camps.’

  Ernouf shifted uncomfortably. ‘The Francs-Tireurs Partisans are active,’ he said.

  Reinach snorted. The FTP are Communists and don’t fight for France. Whenever they murder a German officer the Gestapo take twenty innocent hostages. I spit on the FTP. All they do is raid banks for money, mairies for ration cards, and tabacs for cigarettes. There are more Frenchmen killed getting cigarettes than anything else.’

  There was another long silence. One view seemed to be that active resistance would erode German morale, another that it was best to lie low until the invasion.

  ‘We should kill Germans,’ Ernouf said doggedly. ‘That’s the understanding.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Does it matter where?’

  ‘It matters a lot,’ Urquhart said. ‘Where you do it dictates the sort of weapons you’ll need.’

  The older men looked blank. ‘Has war changed so much?’ Sergeant Dréo asked. ‘At Verdun it was just rifles and machine guns.’

  ‘There are a few refinements these days.’

  Ernouf gestured. ‘Then we must just kill them with what we’ve got,’ he said. ‘Wherever we can.’

  ‘The guerrilla’s job’s not to hold ground,’ Neville pointed out earnestly. ‘It’s to hinder the enemy’s progress across it’

  They stared at him indignantly. ‘Doubtless you’ll know exactly what to do then,’ Ernouf muttered.

  ‘Yes, I will.’

  ‘Well,-what?’

  ‘You don’t have to look further than Wellington.’

  They looked at each other, puzzled.

  ‘Who is this Wellington?’ Dréo growled.

  Dring’s shoulders lifted. ‘He’s nobody from here.’

  ‘He defeated Napoleon at Waterloo,’ Neville explained.

  ‘Oh, him’ Dréo shifted uncomfortably. ‘Napoleon wasn’t himself that day.’

  Neville grinned. ‘No. He had piles.’

  Reinach interrupted. ‘Never mind Napoleon’s piles,’ he growled. ‘What did this Wellington do at Waterloo that was so clever?’

  ‘Nothing more than he’d done before with Napoleon’s marshals.’ Neville was vital with eagerness. He was no good about the farm and ham-fisted when it came to making repairs, but on his own subject there was nobody to touch him - certainly not in Néry - and he plunged into his theme with enthusiasm.

  ‘He waited until Napoleon had exhausted himself trying to break into his lines. He did it at Torres Verdas. He did it at Busaco and half a dozen other places. He let his enemies fight for him.’

  ‘So?’ Dréo’s expression was suspicious, even danger
ous.

  Neville’s face was bright and innocent with youth and knowledge. ‘So when you start something, make sure that the Germans can’t hurt you, and then go for them as they retreat.’

  Dréo swallowed the contents of his glass at a gulp. ‘And when do you predict the Germans will start this retreat?’ he demanded.

  Neville smiled. ‘After the invasion,’ he said.

  The argument went on late into the night and was resumed early the following morning outside the gate, as Reinach stopped his lorry to pick up scrap for Sergeant Dréo, Dréo and his son were with him, sitting in the back of the vehicle, their artificial legs stuck stiffly out in front of them.

  Reinach had obviously been brooding all night, and he started off again at once as he shoved and heaved at an old harrow.

  ‘We’ve got a few weapons,’ he said in a low voice.

  ‘I’ve seen them,’ Urquhart said. ‘You’ll not get far with those.’

  ‘I have two shotguns and a rifle,’ Marie-Claude put in. ‘I hid them in the woods. They’re still there.’

  ‘Rifles and shotguns,’ Neville observed, ‘aren’t much good against Spandaus and Schmeissers and tanks.’

  For once the two Englishmen found themselves thinking the same way, if for different reasons. To Neville it was simply an exercise in historical logic: A plus B equals C. To Urquhart it was nothing but the voice of experience. He’d been through it. Their unanimity obviously irritated Reinach.

  ‘You two talk too much,’ he snarled.

  Urquhart indicated Neville. ‘He knows what he’s talking about,’ he said. ‘He’s read the books and, what’s more, they’ve stayed read.’

  Neville grinned at him. ‘And he,’ he said, ‘knows because he spent two years fighting the Germans. Hand to hand. Tooth and nail. Ask him.’