Army of Shadows

by John Harris

  There was only one thought in everybody’s mind: they must not abandon their vehicles. Without their vehicles, without the means of towing their guns or carrying their ammunition and light weapons, they would become virtually defenceless against the Frenchmen they all knew were now crowding into every wood and hiding behind every hill all the way back to the frontier. By leaving their tanks, their scout cars and lorries, they could have fought their way through and over and round the barrier but, after the experiences of Normandy and Falaise, they all knew that on the other side they would be entirely vulnerable to attack. Without transport they could never hope to reach Germany.

  Down the hill, the scout car waited. The lorries which had turned after it began to form up behind. More heavy vehicles joined them, their drivers helped by sweating, dusty men shoving at the front wheels. A gun crew, trying to swing their heavy weapon, ran over a straining man’s leg and the crack as his thigh bone snapped could be heard for yards. He started to scream and, without a great deal of tenderness, they lifted him into the back of a lorry where a medical orderly bent over him.

  But there was no more firing and nothing stopped the vehicles turning. Even the big Afrika Korps buses managed to jolt in a wide circle in the field, swaying behind the guns until they were back on the road and facing downhill. All Klemens’ carefully made plans for the column had already fallen apart. Frobinius hadn’t thought to organize the turning and it was now impossible to change places, so that the tanks which should have been at the front of the column were all now at the rear, and the soft-skinned vulnerable vehicles, because they had found it easier to change direction, were more often than not at the front.

  Frobinius’ black Mercedes went hurtling down the road, its horn screaming, Frobinius standing up and yelling to the panting soldiers to get themselves and their vehicles out of his way, so that he could reach the new head of the column. With him in the car was von Hoelcke, transferring from the leading tank to the one which had been bringing up the rear. Reaching the back of the column, he found his second-in-command sitting with his head out of his turret, sweating in the dusty sunshine and wondering what the hell had gone wrong.

  ‘Out!’ Von Hoelcke yelled at him. ‘Get up the hill! Take over my tank! I’ll take over this one!’

  A motor-cyclist was stopped and, swinging his machine round, he roared back up the slope to where von Hoelcke’s first two tanks still waited, half-hidden by the corner and occasionally engaging the hidden snipers with bursts of machine-gun fire to make them keep their heads down.

  As the lieutenant climbed into the turret, the two panzers on the hill began to disengage, edging backwards to the bend where they hauled off the road and turned into the field, their tracks scattering clods of earth, before following the column streaming back to Néry. Ahead of them, Frobinius’ Mercedes pushed into the village. It wasn’t easy because more lorries, trying to escape from the Americans in the north, were now beginning to crowd into the valley from the direction of Chatillon and Troyes, while his own vehicles returning to Néry found themselves facing those still trying to get out. There was already a ghastly traffic jam near the chateau where military policemen, their metal gorgets dulled with dust, struggled to bring some order to the confusion. As they finally managed to make a gap, von Hoelcke’s rear two tanks pushed their way through and out on to the Chemin de Ste Reine. As soon as they were free of the village, they halted again to wait for the column to form up in some sort of order behind them.

  Waiting among the villagers on the slopes above Néry Urquhart turned as a man came scrambling over the brow of the hill.

  ‘They turned back!’ he was yelling excitedly. There were shots! It was terrific but we beat them!’

  ‘It hasn’t even started yet,’ Urquhart growled.

  He had arranged his men like an arrowhead with the long straight road up the hill as the shaft, his forces increasing in density as they reached the point, and another concentration of weapons in the trees at the lower end where the feathers would have been. Between them they could bring a tremendous fire to bear at the tip and tail of any German column. There was also a large group under Neville - with rifles, Stens, Brens and grenades - acting as a reserve half-way down. Heavier weapons were on the hillsides.

  Urquhart frowned as he watched. He knew what he was doing but he wasn’t so sure anyone else did. Under him, he had over three hundred men and the problem was chiefly one of discipline. Neville’s plan was complicated, ambitious, even wildly optimistic, and one wrong shot could destroy it. Gathering the group commanders round him, he told Reinach once more what he wanted.

  Reinach started to harangue the half-circle of men like a born leader. He wore a beret with fluttering ribbons that some former conscript had given him, and stood with his hands on his hips, his body leaning forward, in a manner that was typically French. ‘Nobody,’ he said ‘- repeat nobody -fires until the Very light’s seen and the first shot comes from here. If anybody does I’ll break his jaw. Understood?’

  Heads dipped in acknowledgement.

  ‘If anybody gets excited and fires too soon the whole thing falls apart. Got that?’

  More nods.

  ‘And if we have to, we break off and scatter. We want no repetition of Vercors here. They won’t chase us far. They haven’t time. So we don’t want anyone killed unnecessarily. Understood?’

  The heads nodded again.

  ‘Then don’t be brave. There’s no one to admire you except your friends who’re doing the same. So don’t stand up or leave cover. Only shoot if the Germans are within range, because we have to watch the ammunition. If we’re going to do what we’ve planned, let’s do it properly.’

  As the men scattered, Urquhart moved back to the headquarters they’d set up, where the women were waiting with the wireless operator and the signallers. Ernestine and Marie-Claude seemed to be having an argument. Ernestine was pointing at him, and at the same time gesticulating wildly with her other arm. As he approached, she stopped and they faced him, looking guilty, Ernestine still flushed with the argument, Marie-Claude pale and angry.

  Neville was watching him.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ Urquhart demanded.

  Neville gave him a twisted smile. ‘The usual. Just seeing it from the other chap’s point of view.’

  ‘Bugger the other chap’s point of view,’ Urquhart grinned. ‘You’ve done your job, Field-Marshal. And bloody well, too. Now it’s the turn of the brigadier.’

  Determined not to be forced into the humiliating confusion of the Rue des Roches, Frobinius, von Hoelcke and Witkus decided to be more careful this time. It irritated Frobinius to have to act in concert with the other two. But, despite his seniority of rank, his role had always been that of a policeman, while they had both fought their way through the debacles in North Africa and Normandy and were tough, experienced in war, and as anxious as he was to stay alive.

  While the vehicles heading into Néry were halted by men of the Militarpolizei, a short column consisting of an armoured car with infantrymen, backed up by one of von Hoelcke’s rear two tanks, was sent out of the village to reconnoitre the Chemin de Ste Reine. As they moved away, the first lorries, some of whose drivers had been caught a month before in the valley at Falaise and could see another killing ground looming up, began nervously to edge after them. Others began to follow. After a while, Frobinius caught on to what was happening and sent men to halt them, but it was already too late and a large number had already followed von Hoelcke’s leading tank as it clattered after the armoured car. Once more they were committed.

  As the armoured car and the leading infantrymen reached the corner where the road began to wind up to the Crète St Amarin, von Hoelcke halted and Frobinius joined him.

  ‘Edge up to the corner, driver,’ von Hoelcke said. ‘But keep her hull-down.’

  As they moved forward, von Hoelcke nervously eyeing the slopes on either side, one of the infantrymen from the armoured car came running back, waving his arms.
>
  ‘The road’s blocked, Herr Major,’ he said.

  ‘Gottverdammt!’ Von Hoelcke scowled. ‘What with? More rocks?’

  ‘No, Herr Major. This time it’s trees.’

  As the tank edged forward, Frobinius raised his binoculars. It was quite clear that the trees that formed the barrier ahead had all been chosen because they had leaned over the road and would fall across it under their own weight at the last saw stroke. He could see traces of mud round the tops of the lopped trunks.

  ‘Those bastards couldn’t all have been cut last night,’ he said. ‘They must have been sawing through them all the time they were cutting their logs and planks. They stuffed up the cuts with mud and came out this morning to finish them off.’

  ‘See anyone?’ von Hoelcke asked.

  ‘No. Nothing.’

  But again a machine-gun opened up and everybody dived for cover.

  Frobinius lifted his head. ‘Surely we could break through,’ he suggested.

  Von Hoelcke was staring up the slope at the fallen trees. ‘My tanks can’t,’ he snapped.

  Frobinius looked back down the valley. The sky was brassy with heat and the column of vehicles behind them was covered with a shimmering haze from the engines. Over it hung a pall of yellow dust through which the sun flung the shadows of the overhanging foliage. ‘What are the chances of dragging those trees clear?’ he demanded.

  Von Hoelcke stared at him. ‘Have you seen the size of them? They’ve obviously picked the biggest they could find. And those bloody Frenchmen are sitting right on top waiting to pick us off. There’s still another route.’

  The Fond St Amarin’s dangerous and they’ve probably blocked that, too. There’s a chalk cliff close to the road. They could have weapons there.’

  Von Hoelcke looked coldly at Frobinius. ‘Do you have any other alternatives?’ he asked.

  Frobinius scowled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it.’

  By this time, however, Néry was packed with vehicles and it was difficult even to approach it. Only by turning out the Afrika Korps men with their guns at the ready could Frobinius force a passage.

  ‘What the hell’s happened?’ he screamed above the shouts, the din of engines, the revving motor-cycles and the rumble of exhausts. ‘Where have all these damned people come from?’

  A military policeman appeared. The Americans are south of Troyes now, Herr Sturmbannführer,’ he yelled. ‘They’re only forty-odd kilometres away and heading for St Seigneur. All the traffic from the Sens-Nancy road that wasn’t cut off is trying to get out this way, too!’

  They got the armour through at last, with von Hoelcke back in his own tank again as they reversed direction yet again. In a fury, he drove his vehicle at a cart drawn by four horses that happened to be in his way. Forcing it from the road, dragging the screaming animals backwards until they fell, he backed off and pushed a lorry after it until there was a gap.

  ‘Shoot those animals.’ he roared. ‘Right, Witkus, are your people ready? This time, it’s all or nothing!’

  With a struggle, they got the column moving again. The crumpled lorry that von Hoelcke had pushed off the road had started to burn. The flames were licking the side of a wooden barn while the blazing petrol had reached the spot where the four horses lay, so that the stink of scorched hair and flesh filled the nostrils with sickening intensity. Then the cart caught fire and the flames increased, filling the road with smoke. One heroic man with a lorry tried to drag the wreckage aside, but it didn’t help much. The following vehicles had to feel their way through the smoke, while the men on foot held handkerchiefs in front of their mouths and eyes and stumbled past, their sweating faces fixed under their helmets. The column was moving again but by now there was no order, no cohesion. Units had twice been broken up and scattered, and their officers were sometimes half a mile from their commands. All too often the clerks, the unfit and the elderly were at the front simply because fear and inexperience had made them the fastest off the mark.

  As the column halted on its way out of the village to the Fond St Amarin, Frobinius stopped his car alongside von Hoelcke’s tanks. Just ahead and on their left, Guardian Moch’s house stood alone at the end of its narrow lane, surrounded by the scattered debris of its owner’s black market activities. The road in front swung in curves through the trees. Then it dipped into a hollow before turning and rising alongside a chalk escarpment, topped with more trees and undergrowth, and finally climbing steeply to the ridge. The chalk cliff was thirty feet above the road while on the right, the land dipped into a hollow full of lush grass, brambles and nettles, before sweeping up to another thick belt of undergrowth below the final steeper slope to the tree-lined ridge.

  The valley was silent beyond the throbbing of the engines and the mutter of tired voices as Witkus’ scout car pulled up.

  ‘What now?’ he demanded.

  They were worried about the silence and had almost decided to send an armoured car ahead with infantry to feel their way through the hollow, when a bright red petrolette ridden by a girl in a yellow dress hurtled down the lane from Guardian Modi’s house and swung into the road half a mile ahead of them. It was going at full throttle, which was how the villagers always tackled the steep slope of the Fond St Amarin. Anything less failed to carry them to the brow of the ridge, and that meant pushing their machines for the last quarter of a mile.

  ‘She’s going fast,’ von Hoelcke said.

  Witkus grinned through the paste of dust and sweat on his face. ‘Perhaps she was scared,’ he said, ‘when she saw what was following her. Perhaps she thought it a very big operation for a very small rape.’

  ‘It isn’t a joke!’ von Hoelcke snapped.

  ‘Hasn’t the whole damn war become a joke?’

  Frobinius was gesturing excitedly. There’s only one place this road leads to,’ he said. ‘On to the Chatillon-Langres road! If she can get through, we can! Follow her up, Hoelcke!’

  Stephanie Moch had a good start, however. After her wild ride to Rolandpoint, she had volunteered willingly for the job. She knew exactly what to do and, as she hurtled down the slope into the dip, her skirts fluttered up to her waist. By the time Frobinius and von Hoelcke came to life, she was almost a mile ahead of them in the dip, going as fast as she could.

  9

  Up on the hill, squatting behind the Bren, Urquhart’s eyes were everywhere. The countryside below him looked warm and rich with the hot colours of late summer. It was friendly and real and he remembered how alien and foreign he’d felt when he’d first arrived in the spring. He frowned, uncertain of his emotions but sure that in the months he’d been there he’d become part of this little corner of Burgundy. He’d heard it said that France was the land all men loved, even the Germans, because here all men walked free and the sun shone down softly, as it did on no other place on earth. Now he knew what it meant.

  He turned on his side and stared down the valley. As though they sensed the tension in the air, the grasshoppers had stopped their croaking and the silence was immense. No one moved except for the occasional messenger, standing on the pedals of his bicycle to drive the machine over the lumpy ground.

  There’s a gun barrel glinting down there!’ Urquhart pointed out. ‘Tell them to rub dirt on it and push up the foliage a bit.’

  Reinach’s head Lifted. Over the silence they could hear nothing but the hum of bees. The stillness seemed to be a living thing, breathing alongside them in a curious kind of menace.

  ‘Tanks!’

  They all heard the drum of engines and the clink and clatter of tank tracks. Reinach pointed and they saw the rising cloud of grey-white dust appear in the valley. Then they saw the flash of the sun on windscreens, and Reinach’s arm shot out again.

  ‘Here they come!’

  A scout car appeared first, then a group of infantrymen, followed by two tanks moving like grey-green slugs up the winding road beneath the trees. Behind them was a group of lorries, then two more tanks, followed by buses and big
troop-carrying lorries.

  Neville caught his breath at the strength they implied and glanced uneasily at Urquhart. Urquhart was watching calmly, his eyes glinting, a tough self-reliant man in no doubt about what he was going to do.

  ‘Got the bastards,’ he said.

  ‘They’re not here yet’ Neville looked along the ridge of the chalk cliff. ‘Some clot’s bound to fire too soon.’

  Urquhart didn’t seem to hear him. ‘Grenades?’ he asked.

  ‘A dump every twenty-five yards. Ammunition caches in the trees.’ Neville scowled. ‘I don’t like this business. And neither will you by the time you’ve finished.’

  Urquhart turned slowly. ‘Who said I ever did?’ he asked.

  The head of the column had now reached the corner where the road turned and began its last straight climb up to the crest of the ridge. Two changes of direction and the confusion in the village had brought a weird mixture of old cars and lorries, men on stolen bicycles and motor bikes, even weary infantrymen on foot, up among the leading military vehicles. The column was moving with the speed of a tortoise because there were even horse-drawn vehicles interspersed among the lorries and, with no room to pass, they were all reduced to the pace of the starved and tired animals.

  Urquhart’s teeth showed in a grin. ‘For the first time,’ he said, ‘the buggers are beginning to look defeated.’

  As von Hoelcke’s tank turned the corner and ground to a halt, the road ahead looked deserted and Stephanie Moch on her petrolette was nowhere to be seen. Frobinius climbed out of his Mercedes and walked up to join the panzer captain, a puzzled frown on his face.

  ‘Where did she go to?’ he demanded.

  ‘She certainly didn’t carry on up here.’ Von Hoelcke’s eyes were sweeping the silent, empty landscape. That machine just couldn’t go fast enough to be out of sight yet.’