The '44 Vintage

by Anthony Price

  Butler was suddenly aware that his foot hurt again, and that there was a dull pulse of pain centred on his ear. But he was also conscious that his physical problems were now minor ones.

  “I bloody wish you’d give us some good advice,” he said before he could stop himself.

  “Shit, man! You’ve already got my advice,” said Winston conversationally, lifting up his finger. “Next time this old car slows down you take your bayonet and you stick it in lover-boy—and then you run like hell.”

  Butler stared at Pierrot’s back.

  “That’s right!” Winston nodded round the German. “Only don’t include me when you do it. Because as of now you two are on your own —you and the French can double-cross each other until you’re blue in the face. The man didn’t draft me to get mixed up in private fights.”

  Butler was no longer listening to him, but was staring at the countryside round him for the first time.

  They were coming out of the woodland at last, into a more open terrain of fields and copses, well cultivated but un-English as usual in its lack of hedges and proper ditches, and distinctively French with its line of spindly trees marking the straight road that climbed the ridge ahead of them.

  Butler met Audley’s eyes and read the same conclusion in them: if they were going to make a break for it they needed better cover than this; a forest for choice, but woodland of some sort for sure if they were to outrun the machine gun on the Kübel.

  But without the sergeant …

  He looked at the American.

  “No sir!” Winston said quickly. “I mean it. I don’t mind running away from Germans—that’s part of the deal … but running away from Germans and Frenchmen—“

  “Sssh—“ The German sat bolt upright between them, his manacled hands raised.

  “What the hell—“ said Winston.

  “Jabo!”

  “What?”

  The German was listening intently. “Jabo!” he repeated.

  “Year-bo?”

  Grafenberg turned on him. “Jabo—Jabo!” He switched to Audley. “Lieutenant—Achtung, Jagdbomberen—fighters!”

  Butler heard the snarl of aircraft.

  “Oh, sure!” Winston ducked his head to peer through the side-screen. “I’ve got them … Mustangs, two of them … no sweat, Captain—they’re ours, man.” The engine note changed.

  “No—no—no!” Grafenberg’s voice cracked. “We are the enemy—du lieber Gott!—don’t you understand?”

  “Oh my God!” whispered Audley. “He’s right We’re the enemy!”

  “Oh, Jee-sus!” exclaimed Winston, ducking down to peer out of the side-screen again. “Now I’ve lost them—“

  “Down the road—they’ll be coming down the road—“ Grafenberg hunched himself down to get a view ahead.

  “So we better get off it.” Winston shook Pierrot’s shoulder. “Fighter-bombers, man—we gotta get off the road.”

  The car swerved. “Qu’y a-t-il?” protested Pierrot angrily.

  “Des—bloody hell!—des chasseurs … no, des chasseurs-bombardiers —Us vont nous attaquer,” shouted Audley desperately. “Quittez la route, pour l’amour de Dieu—quittez la route!”

  Pierrot rocked away from him. “Que voulez-vous dire—?” He did a double-take of Audley, as though the lieutenant’s newly found fluency surprised him more than what he’d actually said.

  “Hey?”

  “Here he comes!” cried Grafenberg.

  Butler saw a black dot framed between the trees on the skyline—a dot which grew and sprouted wings as he watched it.

  Winston and Audley both simultaneously grabbed at the steering wheel, the American from behind and Audley from the right. The car lurched to the right, tyres screaming. A tree flashed in front of them and then the car left the road with a tremendous grinding crash. Butler was thrown upwards and sideways—he bounced off the canvas roof and came down partly on top of the German, who cried out in pain. The car crashed down again. The door beside Butler burst open and the side-screen fell away just as he was bracing himself for the next neck-breaking bounce—this time he hit the canvas less hard but descended agonisingly onto his Sten. Sound and pain were indistinguishable for a second, and then both were overtaken by a terrifying vision of corn-stubble rushing up and past his face. But just as it was about to hit him his webbing straps tightened against his shoulders and he was jerked backwards into the car again. The door bounced back and hammered him into the car, filling his head with exploding stars and deafening noise.

  Suddenly he was conscious that the sound had been outside him—it was receding—

  He clawed himself upright.

  Winston and Audley and the Frenchman Pierrot were still fighting for the wheel, all shouting at each other at the same time.

  They were in the cornfield alongside the road, bright sunlight all around them. And they were also still moving, although there was now something desperately wrong with the car—a juddering, grinding underneath them.

  “Back under the trees!” shouted Grafenberg gutturally, his English accent breaking down. “Under zerr trrees!”

  This time there seemed to be a measure of agreement among the contestants, and the car swung back towards the line of trees beside the road. But the flash of comfort this brought to Butler’s confused mind was instantly blotted out by the sound of the reason for it—the same sound he had heard as the German had screamed Jagdbomberen.

  Hunting-bombers, he thought foolishly.

  He saw the RSM’s face: There is a requirement for a German-speaking non-commissioned officer.

  The hornet sound of the approaching Mustang dissolved the RSM’s face. It wasn’t fair, he decided angrily. It wasn’t fair that it should have been him. And it wasn’t fair that they should be here. And it wasn’t fair that their own planes should attack them.

  There was a bright orange flash ahead of them—

  The car was moving so slowly—

  The flash blossomed, and to his horror he saw the Kübel lying on its side in the road, burning fiercely.

  “Turn the goddamn wheel!” shouted Winston. “She won’t take the ditch again—“

  The staff car swung sharply to the right again, parallel to the road, but still in the field and just under the canopy of branches. As it did so there was a sharp, hammering noise and the road burst into dust and sparks alongside them. The Frenchman wrenched the wheel instinctively away from the road.

  “Stop the car!” commanded Grafenberg.

  “There’s a copse up ahead.” Audley pointed.

  “We would not get to it in time,” snapped Grafenberg. “If we stop he may think he has hit us—if we go on then he knows we are still alive. So we go behind the trees on the other side of the road, then there is a chance. Believe me—I know!”

  “Right—everyone out—on the double!” said Audley.

  Butler threw himself out of the car. He was halfway across the road before he realised he had left his Sten behind and that he didn’t give a damn. Anything—any humiliation—was better than being a helpless target.

  “Do not move—and do not look up,” Grafenberg shouted. “Whatever you do—do not look up!”

  Butler hugged the ground in the shadow under his tree, listening to the high drone of engines above him. The earth was dry and powdery between the patches of dead grass below his face; as he stared at it a droplet of moisture fell from him into the powder. He didn’t know whether it was blood or sweat, or maybe even a tear of fright. His eyes felt wet, so it probably was a tear, he decided. He couldn’t remember when he’d last cried, but it had been a long time ago, and it would certainly have been with pain, not fear as it was now. He hadn’t cried with fear since he’d had nightmares as a kid.

  He lowered his face slowly down until he was able to wipe it on his battle-dress cuff. The cuff was greasy with sweat at the edge, and there was a darker stain on it which was probably blood from his ear. Now it had tears as well, then—but that was no more than Mr. Churchi
ll had promised everyone years ago: blood, sweat, and tears. And that was rather clever, remembering those words, even though he’d never be able to bring himself to tell anyone how he’d remembered them just after his own side had tried to kill him. And that was the third time in one day—Was it really only one day?

  “Okay, Butler?” said Audley.

  Butler rose to his feet quickly to prove to Audley that he wasn’t in the least frightened. “Sir!”

  Audley was standing in the middle of the road with his hands on his hips. Butler had the very distinct impression that the second lieutenant was also doing his best to prove how second lieutenants ought to behave.

  “Jee-sus!” Winston came out from behind his tree, dusting down his combat jacket. “Jee-sus!”

  “Sssh!” Grafenberg held up his hands again, listening.

  Butler’s stomach turned over.

  “Oh—no—“ began Winston.

  They all listened. Finally Grafenberg relaxed. “No … there were only two. Sometimes …” He shrugged. “Sometimes there are four—or twenty-four. But we are lucky.”

  “Well, you could have fooled me. But I guess you know better, mac.”

  “Yes, I do know better. Sie haben Wichtigeres zu tun—so we are lucky.” Grafenberg looked at Audley. “And now?”

  As Butler turned towards Audley there was a sharp double crack behind him. Audley jumped as though he’d been shot.

  “The Frenchman!” exclaimed Winston.

  They all looked down the road towards the burning Kübel, from which the sound had come. Pierrot was bending over a body at the side of the road, fifty yards away, and as they looked at him he turned. For a moment he stared at them, straightening up slowly, then he started to run back down the road away from them.

  Audley took a step forwards, fumbling at his holster, and then stopped as Pierrot left the road to zigzag among the trees.

  “Yeah … that’s right, Lieutenant,” murmured Winston. “You can maybe run after him, but you sure aren’t going to hit him with that thing.”

  Audley watched the departing figure dwindle in the distance.

  “So now we’d better stir our asses to get someplace else, huh?” Winston’s voice was suddenly gentler and more encouraging—so much so that Butler looked at him with surprise. “It’ll take him an hour or two to find his buddies. We could still get lucky.”

  For the first time Butler saw Winston not just as an American and a foreigner, but as a senior NCO who—no matter what army he belonged to—had the job of jollying along young men like Audley when they no longer knew what to do. And it was his own plain duty no less to support the sergeant.

  “The car, sir—“ he said quickly.

  “—Isn’t going anywhere,” snapped Winston. “It’s a goddamn miracle it got us where it did.”

  Audley straightened up. “And you’re back with us, Sergeant?”

  Winston grinned horribly. “Seems I got no choice, Lieutenant sir … so—which way?” He pointed up the road.

  Audley looked round, squinting up at the sun. “South—then southeast,” he said.

  “Yes …” Winston nodded patiently. “But where to, Lieutenant?”

  Audley stared southwards without answering, as though he hadn’t heard the question.

  Winston waited for a moment or two, and then moved round to block the subaltern’s view. “Lieutenant, we have to have some kind of plan, for God’s sake. We have to know where we’re going—or at least: we have to know whether we’re still chasing the major or just running away from the frogs. So you tell us, huh?”

  “Yes—“ Audley roused himself. “Yes, of course.”

  “Okay.” The American paused. “So?”

  Audley drew a deep breath. “About fifteen kilometres south of here— or it may be southeast… and it may be more than fifteen kilometres, but we should be able to pick up the signposts if we keep going …” he frowned.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a village called La Roche Tourtenay—it’s off the road to Loches somewhere. And the Chateau Le Chais d’Auray is a mile to the west of it.”

  “The chateau—? Is that where the major’s heading?”

  “No.” Audley shook his head. “But that’s where we’re going, Sergeant.”

  “Why there?”

  “Wait and see.” Audley turned decisively to Butler. “Get your Sten, Corporal … Hauptmann—I’m sorry about the handcuffs. But we’ll deal with them when we get to Le Chais d’Auray.”

  Sergeant Winston stood unmoving in front of Audley.

  “You know this place—the Chateau Shay-dough-ray?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “You’ve known it all along?”

  “Yes.”

  “And we’ve been heading for it from the start—but you just forgot to tell us. Is that it?”

  “No. That isn’t it at all, Sergeant.”

  “So why are we heading for it now, then?”

  “Why?” Audley closed his eyes for a second. “If you were on the run back in Texas—“

  “Chicago, Illinois. And Jesus!—I wish I was there now!”

  “Chicago, Illinois. If you were on the run in Chicago, Illinois—on the run from the gangsters, Sergeant … would you go home to your parents?”

  “Hell no! Not unless—“ Winston stopped.

  “Not unless you were desperate. Not unless you’d tried everything else.” Audley regarded the American stonily. “So I am desperate now— and I can’t think of anything else. So I’m going home.”

  CHAPTER 16

  How Second Lieutenant Audley came home again

  BUTLER LAY exhausted among the vines on the edge of the track to the Chateau Le Chais d’Auray, watching the moonlight polish the dark slates on the little conical tower nearest to him.

  The important thing was not to go to sleep, he decided.

  They had marched the day into the afternoon, and the afternoon into the evening, and the evening into the night.

  First they had force-marched out of necessity, simply to put distance between themselves and the scene of the air strike.

  Then they had settled into the rhythm of a route march, by side roads and country tracks, and over fields to skirt round villages, and through hedges and thickets to avoid prying eyes.

  But a route march was no problem: it was what a soldier’s legs were for, and the farmlands of Touraine were nothing to a soldier who had trained on the high moors of Lancashire and Yorkshire and the mountains of Wales.

  Yet each five-minute halt was a little more welcome than the last one. And after each halt it took a little longer to get back into the rhythm. And so, by slow degrees, the route march became an endurance test.

  But at least they were going somewhere at last, because Second Lieutenant Audley studied each signpost and changed direction accordingly.

  And once, when they surprised a small boy beside a fish-pond, Audley exchanged their last slab of ration chocolate for a pointing finger.

  Loches?

  That way, the finger pointed.

  La Roche?

  That way.

  Channay-les Pins?

  That way.

  The urchin never said a word from first to last, and scuttled away smartly as they set out for Channay. After which they retraced their steps and headed for La Roche.

  Audley didn’t trust anyone any more, not even small boys.

  Or German captains.

  “Hauptmann …” Audley seemed embarrassed. The great bruise on his cheek was less black now, more like a dark stain half camouflaged by dust and sweat.

  The German stirred nervously where he lay, brushing at his hair with his chained hands. “Lieutenant?”

  “There are … some things we have to get quite clear.”

  “Some things?” the German swallowed nervously. “What things, please?”

  “The Frenchman said you were in the plot against Hitler. But you’ve said that you weren’t.” Audley paused, then pointed to the handcuffs. �
��So why are you wearing those?”

  “Yeah.” Winston rolled sideways from where he’d flopped down exhausted a moment before. He held up his head with one hand and started to massage his thigh with the other. “I’d like to get the answer to that too, Captain.”

  The German looked from one to the other. “I have given you my parole—my word of honour.”

  “That’s right—so you did.” The American nodded. “But I heard tell that all you boys swear an oath to the Führer. Like a word of honour, huh?” He nodded again. “And that makes you a kind of a problem to us.”

  “How … a kind of problem, please?”

  “Well now … it wouldn’t be a problem if you had tried to give the Führer the business, like the Frenchman said you had. Because then you’d be on our side, because that ‘ud be the only side you’d got left. But that’s where the problem starts.”

  “Please?” The German turned towards Audley. “I will keep my word—as a German officer.”

  “That’s exactly what’s worrying me.” Winston rubbed his thigh harder. “Because that Frenchman wasn’t kidding us. He looked at those papers, and he went off the boil about you and he was ready to get back to the main business of shitting us up. But now you say that’s all baloney, you never touched the Führer … so if those cuffs aren’t for that—if they’re just for screwing the general’s daughter, or stealing the PX blind, or something—then like the Frenchman said, which word of honour are you going to stick to if we meet up with any of your buddies? The Führer’s word—or our word, hey?” He stopped rubbing his thigh and pointed his finger at Audley. “Right, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes … well, broadly speaking …” Audley watched the German, “… right.”

  For a moment the young German said nothing. Then he squared his shoulders defiantly. “If that is what you think, Lieutenant—“ he began reproachfully.

  “No.” Audley cut him off. “It isn’t as simple as that. I was quite prepared—damn it, perfectly prepared—to take your word for us. But if we go on now to … where we’re going … then other people could be involved. And I don’t have the right to risk them—not on your word, or my word, or anyone’s word.”