by John Harris
The first men to arrive on the slopes above the village came from Rolandpoint. Led by Brisson, they came through the trees and over the hill in a bunch, having left Rolandpoint in ones and twos. Like the Néry men, most of them were magnificent shots.
Ernestine Bona was with them. ‘You said there wasn’t a plan,’ she accused.
‘It just shows you can’t rely on anybody,’ Reinach grinned.
‘The St Seigneur group’ll be here after dark,’ Brisson said. ‘They’re bringing a few from Bourg-la-Chattel.’
Soon afterwards, Verdy de Clary appeared. He was dressed in his uniform complete with kepi, harness, revolver and map case.
‘I will fight in my uniform,’ he said.
Urquhart nodded. He was also wearing his uniform, the grey-blue freshly pressed, the stripes bright and the gold crown above them polished. It was important to him too.
Then the men from Tarey, Araigny, Violet and Courbigny began to trickle in with other little groups from Roches-les-Drapeaux, St Verrier, and the hill villages. Neville and Reinach watched them, counting them as they appeared. Urquhart was near the road, siting weapons, arranging caches of grenades and marking the ranges with white stones. Above him on the slopes, Lionel Dring and Patrice de Frager were dragging up their new playthings. The last parachute drop had proved an embarrassment of riches, with money, tobacco and food - even chocolate - to say nothing of a vast mass of weapons which had even included two 28mm airborne anti-tank guns. Since they’d learned how to use them in the Doubs, Dring and de Frager had claimed them at once and contemptuously handed over their bazookas to younger members of their teams.
These men were now scraping shallow positions near the Bren gunners, which they were protecting with logs and boulders. The youngest of them, a boy of sixteen, held his tube-like rocket launcher lovingly. Among the trees, doctors from Rolandpoint and St Seigneur, led by Dr Mouillet, checked bandages and humped first aid boxes. Men and boys stacked tins of food, along with cans and bottles of water. Gaudin’s elder son had thrown a sheep on its back across a log and cut its jugular vein. As it was skinned, fires were started to cook the strips of flesh for rations.
Deep in the undergrowth overlooking the road, Sergeant Dréo. his medals in a bright row across his chest, was planting his old machine-gun, limping backwards and forwards with his son, their artificial legs thumping and creaking as they secured the folds of undergrowth with string. ‘One -snip,’ Sergeant Dréo said, ‘and we have a clear field of fire.’
Underneath the trees, boys made up explosive charges and primed grenades, their beardless faces intent. Among them Sergeant Dréo’s grandson worked quickly and efficiently, watched by Elsie, his bicycle close by. There was a low murmur among them and occasionally, as an aeroplane passed overhead, their heads lifted even while they continued to work.
‘Everything ready?’ Urquhart asked.
Reinach nodded. ‘By the time we’ve finished, the Boches’ll be so confused they won’t know which way they’re going.’
In the early evening they slipped back into the village and gathered at Mere Ledoux’s bar. The barman was stuffing bottles into an old suitcase.
‘Everybody must be out of the village before dawn,’ Neville insisted.
As they waited in the doorway, the German troops from Rolandpoint appeared. It was a long and heavily armed convoy and there were a lot of uncovered vehicles with machine-guns mounted on them. The occupants all wore steel helmets but many of them were officers.
‘St Seigneur headquarters,’ Brisson said.
Shortly afterwards it started to drizzle, and through the rain six big buses arrived, camouflaged in the jaundiced colours of the Afrika Korps. Infantrymen in full battle-kit climbed out of them and waited as they drove into one of Gaudin’s fields. There were gunners with them, and three 88mm guns, and they began taking up positions round the village.
Guardian Moch appeared, coming down the hill from the west. ‘Germans up there, too,’ he said. ‘I think they’re from Pailly. Some of them are cavalrymen.’
‘Probably Ukrainians,’ Reinach said. ‘There were some at Dieppe.’
Moch grinned. ‘For Cossacks, they don’t have much knowledge of horses. They’ve got horrible saddle galls.’
When the cavalrymen appeared they turned out to be U-boat sailors from Bordeaux, who’d been mounted and uniformed in grey to fight their way back to Germany, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief because the White Russians were notorious for their cruelty.
By dusk the village had filled with Germans, the Panzer men sitting on their tanks to watch the others straggle in. Their commander was a good-looking man with blond hair and blue eyes of the sort so much admired by Hitler. He was wearing a white peaked cap.
‘He’ll stand out like a bull’s-eye in the woods,’ Reinach observed thoughtfully.
Then they noticed that the backwash from other roads was also finding its way into Néry, and Moch pulled his ‘Anthony Eden’ over his ears and went round the village on a bicycle to count them.
‘One thousand two hundred,’ he said. ‘Give or take a few.’
‘It’s more than we expected.’
There’s a general, too. He just drove into the chateau.’
The curfew was carefully observed. The bar emptied before it grew dark and they all faded away through the thin drizzle, warning the maire’s secretary, the postmistress and all the others to be ready to slip out over the walls early next morning. By dusk the village was still as the grave.
Except for four boys and a dog.
Jean-Frédéric Dréo, Gaudin’s younger son, Euphrasie Doumic’s brother, Louis, and Gaston Dring had been working all afternoon preparing grenades and plastic explosives. They had slipped away through the woods, accompanied by the inevitable Elsie, for a view of the assembling Germans. They were tense and excited, and quivering almost as much as Elsie herself, aware that the following day something tremendous was going to happen.
‘It’s going to be the biggest defeat the Germans have ever suffered,’ Jean-Frederic said.
They had just clambered to their feet and left the shelter of the trees when Gaston discovered his shoe lace was broken. Bending to repair it, he heard the sound of an approaching car. So did Elsie who immediately bolted towards the road, barking wildly.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Jean-Frederic said, putting two fingers to his mouth to whistle her back. ‘Shell be shot!’
Dréo’s whistle was heard clearly over the noise of the car bringing Sturmbannführer Frobinius back to the chateau for Klemens’ evening conference. He had spent the afternoon in Rolandpoint checking on rear-guard security, and, alert to danger, he turned in his seat as the car slowed to a halt. Silhouetted against the lighter blue of the night sky, he could see three figures running along the ridge. ‘Stop!’ he yelled.
The boys hesitated, then swung away in a panic. Frobinius didn’t hesitate. ‘Get them,’ he said quietly.
The SS men jumped out at once and began to run along the edge of the field. As the boys saw them they turned again to head back for the trees, but they’d already been cut off and they swerved desperately in the direction of Rolandpoint.
‘Shoot, you fools!’ Frobinius shouted, standing in the car to direct the beam of a powerful signalling lamp up the field.
The three figures looked like leaping spiders in the white light, and the first shots brought down Louis Doumic with a shattered knee. The other two stopped dead. Frobinius climbed through the hedge and began to walk slowly towards them, watched from the shadows in the trees by the horrified Gaston Dring.
‘Where were you going?’ he demanded.
The two unwounded boys glanced at each other. ‘Home,’ Jean-Frederic said.
‘Why didn’t you stop, then, when you were told to?’
They were almost speechless with fear. Jean-Frederic managed to speak. ‘We thought our parents would be after us, monsieur. We’ve been in the woods.’
‘Why?’
Godefroy G
audin had a brainwave. ‘With a couple of girls,’ he said.
‘Show me your hands,’ Frobinius demanded.
Gaudin put out his hands and Frobinius lifted them to his nose and sniffed.
‘Plastic explosive,’ he said. ‘I know the smell.’ He turned to the sergeant who was bent over the moaning Louis Doumic. These men are terrorists,’ he said. ‘Shoot them.’
The sergeant straightened up. They’re only boys, Herr Sturmbannführer.’
‘A boy can kill as easily as a man can. Shoot them.’
They stood the two boys against a tree and dragged the moaning Louis to join them.
‘Sturmbannfuhrer-’ As the sergeant tried again to protest, Frobinius snatched his gun away.
‘You’re like all the others,’ he snapped. This is what I ordered! This is what I want done!’
The rattle startled animals in the wood and they heard the flap of wings as a bird crashed through the undergrowth.
‘Leave them there,’ Frobinius said, and, turning on his heel, he strode back to the car while the scared Elsie, who had been watching from a distance, her tail between her legs, crept closer in the dark to sniff at the blood on the bodies.
5
The crash of the shots echoed all over the village. It had a special quality and those who heard it instinctively knew what had happened even before young Dring arrived, shocked and sobbing, with the news.
Slipping over the hedges with blankets, they found the bodies against the tree, their faces wet with rain. Elsie approached, nervously wagging her tail, then returned to the bodies and nudged at Jean-Frederic with her nose, bewildered by bus stillness. Lifting them over the wall, they buried them deep in the wood. Father Pol bent over the graves. ‘. . . Endormis dans la paix du Seigneur. Ouvrez pour eux les portes du Paradis...’
Think we ought to let their mothers know?’ Dring asked.
Their mothers are in Mont Algérie,’ Reinach said.
‘They ought to have been in Mont Algérie too,’ Neville muttered.
‘But they weren’t. Officer Neville;’ Reinach said harshly. ‘Because war isn’t tidy, and because they were French and wished to- take part.’
Sergeant Dréo was as stiff and erect as a statue when they told him. Behind him there was activity among the trees and small moving lights as an extraordinary number of men moved about in the undergrowth. Groups had arrived from the villages to the south. They’d heard there was to be a great victory and, wishing to be part of it, had arrived by the back lanes on foot, on bicycles, on horses and on petrolettes, and in cars resurrected from haystacks, caves and woods. There was a sound of digging and saws and muted swearing among the undergrowth that drowned the muffled sobbing of Dréo’s son, the dead boy’s father.
‘I shall kill that man,’ Sergeant Dréo said. ‘They were just boys with a little pride.’
Neville’s expression was sick and wretched and Dréo looked hard at him. There’ll be no surrendering to me,’ he went on. ‘And I shall kill anyone who tries to stop me.’
Leaving the old man to comfort his son. they moved into the undergrowth where a headquarters had been set up. Dr Mouillet was bent over his bandages and dressings with a few frightened girls who’d heard of the shootings. One of them, Jean-Frederic’s girl friend, was sobbing bitterly. A telephone engineer from St Seigneur, who’d been a signaller in the army, was working over a radio set.
‘We’re in contact with Verdy de Clary,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to get de Frager now.’
Ernestine Bona pushed through the grass into the area of light round the lantern. ‘We’ve picked up a message from the Americans in the south.’ she said. ‘They’re heading for Dijon. The Spahis of the Free French First Division are with them. They were heading up the valley of the Saone but they’ve been told by Chaumont to get through to us instead. They say that if we can stop the Germans here for a while, they’ll have to retreat via Roches-les-Drapeaux, and the American tanks are heading down there. It’ll be like Falaise in Normandy all over again.’
‘How long do we have to hold them?’
‘Until the evening.’ The radio operator had a curiously dry voice that sounded like the rustle of old leaves.
‘That’s a whole day!’ Neville said. ‘We can’t hold them that long! We hadn’t planned to!’
‘Then for the love of God,’ Reinach said, ‘Let’s think about it.’ He turned to the radio operator. ‘Tell them we’ll do it.’
‘How?’
‘Let’s burst into the chateau tonight and shoot the bastards down,’ Lionel Dring said. They’ll be no good without officers.’
‘Shut up!’ Reinach’s authority sat on his shoulders as if he’d been leading military formations all his life. ‘We can do better than that. What do you think I had in mind when I built that cellar?’
It was dark when the staff conference started, and the air seemed to be full of the distant thuds of explosions.
Klemens had been taken aback by the arrival of General Dannhüber who had had to leave Dijon in a hurry. When the Gestapo had started firing on police stations there had been an unexpected retaliation, and before they’d known what was happening the whole town was in the streets. The Germans had withdrawn hastily, and in the rush Dannhüber’s car and two others had been cut off. Petrol bombs bad finished off one of them at Vangouillain and a burst of firing at Assomes the second. Knowing that Klemens was still in control to the north, with tanks under his command, Dannhüber’s car bad headed as fast as possible for Violet and up to Néry.
Klemens had been none too pleased to see the general. When Frobinius had arrived and made his report, his plans for leaving the village without trouble had begun to collapse about his ears.
‘For God’s sake,’ he snapped. ‘All the SS do is to make the job harder for the army! For every Frenchman you frighten into submission, another dozen are driven into opposition!’
‘I must inform Reichsführer-SS Himmler of your view,’ Frobinius said.
Klein-Wuttig watched the clash of temperaments warily. There was something electric in the air and he was beginning to worry about his accusation of Tarnera. Frobinius had no such doubts.
‘Have no fear,’ he told him quietly. ‘He’ll be arrested as soon as he sets foot in Belfort. Probably Klemens as well.’
The conference opened in a cool atmosphere, with Klemens icy with fury at the sight of General Dannhüber sitting opposite him in the most comfortable chair in the room. Von Hoelcke, the panzer captain, sat next to the general, his uniform as smart as if he were about to go on parade for the Führer’s birthday. Rieckhoff and Doench, the majors from St Seigneur and Rolandpoint, both looked tired and rumpled and they were clearly uneasy. The Afrika Korps commander. Captain Witkus, wore an air of indifference because he was secure in the knowledge that if he didn’t think much of Klemens’ orders, he’d do as he’d learned to do in Africa and follow his own instincts. The naval man, Fregattenkapiten von Hassbach, still startled to find himself not a sailor but a cavalryman, was entirely bewildered.
Tarnera was the last to arrive. As he’d driven through the village he’d heard radios playing and seen chinks of light between shutters and curtains, and smoke rising into the damp still air. The bar had been closed, he’d noticed, and the only people he’d seen were German soldiers. He felt vaguely troubled and realized that he’d seen remarkably few people about the village all day.
Outside the door, Unteroffizier Schäffer had whispered to him about the arrival of General Dannhüber and acquainted him with Frobinius’ shooting of the three boys. Tarnera had said nothing but he was white-lipped with anger and the tension in the Baronne’s dining-room was clear.
Klemens outlined his plans sullenly. ‘I’ll take the centre rear of the column,’ he said. ‘Perhaps the general would like to take the centre van.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Dannhüber asked.
What Klemens meant was that he wished to be as close to his lorry-load of pictures as possible and well
away from General Dannhüber who, he hoped, would be able to restrain Frobinius with his rank. He explained that the column would be led by tanks and lorries, followed by the Afrika Korps buses.
‘Experienced fighters, every man, General,’ he said. ‘Then I think perhaps your own car. There’ll be an 88 just ahead, then more lorries, and finally my own car followed by the marine cavalry and von Hoelcke’s last two tanks. How does that seem to you?’
Dannhüber considered. He was an intellectual general, thin-faced to the point of gauntness and deeply lined. The position Klemens had given him seemed sound as far as he could see. He was in one of the strongest parts of the column, near the tanks and 88s; and close enough to the experienced Afrika Korps men who at least wouldn’t make a shambles of anything they did, as the mounted sailors inevitably would. It seemed as safe as Klemens’ place, which he assumed would be as safe as anywhere. He glanced at his chief of staff, Colonel Kaspar, who sat alongside him, looking less like a soldier than the curator of a museum that he’d been until the war had snatched him up. He stared at the route Klemens had marked on his map.
‘Why this route?’ he asked.
‘Room to manoeuvre, sir,’ Klemens said. ‘The Fond St Amarin’s too narrow and the Chemin de Ste Reine has trees. The Rue des Roches is open all the way to the ridge and, since we have horse-mounted cavalry, we might even use them if we have to.’
‘God help us if we do have to,’ Dannhüber said, in which sentiment he was silently echoed by Fregattenkapitan von Hassbach. ‘What about the other roads ?’
‘There’ll be strong patrols at the bottom of the Rue des Roches to make sure there’s no activity there. I’d rather keep my people out of the Chemin de Ste Reine altogether, with those trees.’
Dannhüber nodded his approval and Klemens turned to von Hoelcke. ‘Any questions?’
‘Can my tanks get off the road?’
‘The road’s wide enough for two columns of traffic and you can move alongside it to any point of danger.’
