by Thomas Wood
“I brought you these. I thought you might be needing them.”
He produced two German rifles, which he handed to me proudly, as if he had whittled it out of the trees himself. He began rummaging around in his pocket, as he began to produce clip after clip of matching ammunition, increasing my odds of survival each time that he did.
“Already loaded,” he said confidently, as he watched me pack the rounds away in my pockets, ready to use in a few moments.
I began to feel more buoyant about the immediate situation, that we would soon be out of here and able to take stock over what our next move could be.
“How many men does your papa have over there?” I screamed at him, as I began to check that the rifle was in fact loaded as he said. It wasn’t that I did not believe him, but because I didn’t want to charge around, come face to face with a German, only to find that the boy had been mistaken, and he had handed me the unloaded rifle. I hoped he knew that that was the reason, and not that I didn’t trust his word.
“About twenty of them, I believe. That’s how many he started with anyway.” He said, giving me a knowing look that I did not believe was possible from such a young lad. “What is the matter with your friend?” he shouted, after attempting to hand the rifle to Jameson.
“Leave him, he needs a break.” I screamed back, preparing myself to issue instructions to the young boy, before he interjected.
“We need to get over this wall, back to where you were before, we’ll be able to help Papa much more effectively from there.”
He barely waited for a response from me, but was already up and over the wall, a German submachine gun slung across his back for good measure.
“Jameson!” I hollered, effectively picking him up and throwing him over the wall again. He began to come to his senses, adopting a mixture between stumbling and crouching as he made his way back to the wall that he had left a few minutes before.
“Here!” shouted Louis Junior as Jameson made it to him, standing the rifle up on its butt and fishing out the accompanying ammunition for Robert. Obligingly, he took it, staring at it for a while not really knowing what to do with it or what it was even for.
“You do know how to use it, don’t you Robert?” I shouted mockingly, which seemed to pull him back to his senses.
“Of course. Not since basic, but how hard can it be?” My hunches had been right, he hadn’t fired a rifle since his initial training, which must have been some years ago. “It’s just like riding a bike, isn’t it?” He began chuckling for the first time since yesterday.
Louis Junior was already swinging the MP40 off his back and ready for action.
“Pick your target, fire, then move down the wall. We need to give the impression that there’s more than three of us. We’re going to draw a lot of fire, but keep moving and you’ll be fine, okay?” I repeated the same instructions for Jameson, but in plain English.
The three of us all popped up in unison, like a trio of nosy neighbours all wondering what the noise was. I swung the rifle up on top of the wall and was surprised to catch, in the corner of my eye, Jameson doing the very same. All he needed was to not think about what was happening, then he would be fine.
Louis Junior fired the first round, a series of three pops before he hit his target, forcing him back down and moving left along the wall.
I picked my target, a small rotund soldier crouching behind an old rotten abandoned cart, who popped out every now and then and fired into the trees. I swung the rifle round to match up with my eyesight, before squeezing at the trigger.
Aggressively, the rifle kicked backwards into my shoulder, but slowly rose into the air, as I brought it back down again to find that my target was down. It felt good to have a proper rifle in my shoulder once again, however much my shoulder began to hate it, and I realised that I hadn’t had one since being in France back in 1940.
I snatched away at the bolt, ducking behind Jameson and leapfrogging down the wall towards Louis Junior. A round pinged out fiercely, clattering noisily into the stone wall on my right, whereupon I stopped and repeated the process all over again.
Jameson was operating slower than Louis Junior and me, but it didn’t matter, the fact was that he was managing to get some rounds down and hurrying him would only panic him, meaning that his rounds would be next to useless.
As I pulled around with the bolt once again after hitting another of my selected targets, I glanced across at Louis Junior, taking note of where he was aiming and how well he was doing. For a young lad, his grouping was excellent, and it seemed as if he had been firing weapons for his whole life, he was that adept at firing accurately, before moving away and starting again.
I marvelled at his courage and bravery in this situation and began to feel horrifically guilty for being one of the ones that had dragged him into all this. I was one of the main culprits in taking this boy’s childhood away from him, I had helped to make him a child soldier.
But, I wasn’t going to make my moral objections known right now, I wanted him to keep on firing, I needed him to, especially as Jameson’s rate of fire was about one round every two or three days.
It took quite a while for the Germans to realise that there were more rounds coming from another direction, and by the time that they did, they were already beginning to fall back towards their trucks, presumably so that they could regroup, reinforce and counterattack in the next hour or so. By which time Louis and his men would be long gone, hopefully tucked up in bed.
As rounds were sprayed in our general direction, most flying way above our heads and into the brickwork of the cottage, it was Louis Junior who began to take control of the situation, shouting at us in an aggressive tone.
“We should fall back now, into those trees!”
“Okay, he goes first though!” I screamed, hauling Jameson to his feet and screaming in his face, spitting all over his terrified expression.
“Back over there Robert, over the wall! Wait for us there! Go!”
He began to continue with his stumbling crouch routine before I watched his feet slide over the top of the wall and out of my sight.
“Louis, go!”
The young lad sprinted with every fibre of his being towards Jameson, as I perched the rifle back on the top of the wall and started firing off as many rounds as I possibly could, in the short time I had left. I wasn’t really aiming anymore, just keeping my rounds low and at chest height, hoping more than anything that it would keep the Germans’ heads down just enough to allow me a free run to the wall.
As soon as I had emptied my rifle, I turned and ran with all my might towards the wall, the agonising pain in my legs screaming at me to stop, but my brain told them to keep on going.
I tried to hurdle my way over the wall, tripping and landing face first in the dirt next to Louis Junior, who began guffawing at the sight of a grown man struggling to run under fire.
Dusting myself off, I realised that I felt overwhelmingly sick and all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and let this all blow over. But I had to pull myself together, the other two were looking to me.
I reloaded, before popping my head above the wall to make sure that we weren’t being followed. We weren’t. The Germans were far too busy in trying to fall back now, and make it back to their barracks alive, than to care about the three figures who had disappeared over to their left.
I scanned the area, looking over towards the ditch at the side of the road for a moment, praying for movement so that I could take a pot shot at Red as we departed, but there was no such movement, Red was in the wind.
“Okay, we’re good, let’s drop back. Link up with your Papa.”
Cautiously, we moved out of cover and into the silent wood that had been beckoning me for so long.
20
The gunfire grew more and more dim the further into the trees we ventured, Louis stopping every hundred yards or so to glance backwards, checking that we hadn’t been followed by an unwelcome passenger.
“He’ll be alright,” I whispered to him gently, after he had pivoted round again to check the path that we had just come down. “He’s survived a lot worse.”
He gave me a slight, knowing smile, but one that was tinged with a hint of sadness, as if he was slightly forlorn at the fact that he had withdrawn from the battlefield early, and left his father and his friends to carry on the fight. He would only need a little bit of time to work out that being able to withdraw from a firefight early was a blessing, and one that should never be turned down or taken with a grudge.
A welcome breeze had gradually picked up as we left the cottage, the tops of the trees just bending slightly, the birds nestled on the branches dancing around rhythmically with them. The smell of spent casings and grenade blasts wafted through the air, like I was back at home and could smell my mother downstairs cooking up a feast for me to devour, except this one smelt like a candle that had been recently blown out.
The breeze was just forceful enough to begin playing around with my hair, moulding it and shaping it in the fashion that it wanted. I wasn’t complaining, the wind felt gorgeous against my sweat soaked skin, and I could barely wait to get to some water, to first throw it down my neck, but second to rinse my skin of the oily substance that had seeped from every pore, as we got caught up in the deathly lightshow that had been put on for us.
“You should have killed him. You should have killed him. Look what he’s done. Just look.”
I couldn’t quite work out who Jameson’s ramblings were aimed at, as they were appropriate for both of us. We had both had our chance to put a bullet in between Red’s eyes, but neither of us had taken the opportunity. Me because of a misplaced sentimentality to my relationship with Red, and him out of a fear of actually ending someone’s life, or so I presumed.
He continued to mutter incoherently for a few minutes more, but I didn’t need to hear what he was saying to understand the sentiment of it. I knew, in my heart of hearts, that I should have put my friendship with Red aside, I should have killed him, as everything that he was saying was completely unfounded, bar a rough description of Jimmy which, quite frankly, could have described the vast majority of the British Army’s officers.
I had made a mistake, one that could potentially become very costly for us later on, especially as now I wasn’t entirely sure what our next move was going to be. But we needed to make it through the night, we needed to survive and then, and only then, would I allow myself to begin thinking about what the next few days, maybe even weeks would hold for Jameson and myself.
“Is he okay?” piped up the young lad, talking openly as if it was the most normal thing to be walking through a forest in the early hours of the morning, weapons raised and ready to fire, having just left a group of men fighting one of the best armies in the world, all because you made an almost fatal faux pas.
“Yes,” I lied, stepping over yet another bundle of dry twigs that would simply have loved to snap and let a German patrol know exactly where we were. “We’ve just made a couple of mistakes. That’s all. We’re going to sort them, don’t you worry.”
He gave me a wary nod, the kind that you give when you have faith in someone’s intentions, but not enough trust in their abilities to believe they’ll be able to carry it out.
As Jameson wandered slightly ahead of me and Louis Junior, I began staring at his back to try and work out what we could possibly do next, letting the other two be the eyes on this rather odd patrol.
We were going to have to lie low for a few days, just to let the dust settle, the very same dust that we had done so much to kick up. It could be the difference between succeeding in what we were sent to do or failing. Which something that began to loom over me the longer I stayed there, every day acting as I reminder that I still hadn’t got much further to eliminating the threat posed to us.
There was one thing that was absolutely certain, Chautillion, the village that had so quickly become my second home, would be swarming with Germans out searching for us, knowing full well that we would find it incredibly difficult to move, especially as Joseph had his very large ears in the centre of every resistance meeting that was held. That was without worrying about the number of locals that would happily cooperate with the Germans, if only in pursuit of a quieter life. The sooner all the trouble died down in their village, the fewer Germans there would be smashing up their local butchers and homes.
We weren’t going to be able to trust anyone. We were starting from scratch again.
“Over here, this is the place.” Louis began leading the way, beckoning to Jameson to stop his advance through the trees and crashing through a thick entanglement of brambles and thorns. I thought the boy mad when he gripped hold of one thick, looping bramble in his hand, just waiting for the shrieks and yelps as the thorns punctured his skin and little drops of scarlet to begin watering the ground, but none of it came. Instead, a large grin spread right the way across his face, that seemed to enlighten his entire demeanour, as his eyes screwed up in enjoyment of seeing the two men before him completely bemused.
“Guns,” he said, lifting up what was a very well camouflaged lid. “In here, come on. Now.” I did as I was told, following him into the weeds and all sorts of other rubbish that the resistance had strapped to this lid to keep it hidden. I was even certain there was at least three different types of faeces stuck to it, to make sure the Germans kept well away from it.
A crate had been expertly embedded into the forest floor, and a few weapons lay inanimate at the bottom of it, ready and waiting for the next big operation where they would be retrieved and used.
“Those pistols, can we have a couple?” I asked as I placed my rifle in the bottom of it, after ejecting the rounds that had been in situ as we walked.
“Yes,” he said as Jameson repeated my actions, “take them. Ammunition is over there.” He nodded his head into another set of brambles, and I began using my nose to sniff out where the next lot of faeces was, to determine where the other crate was buried.
Dumping our clips into the bottom of this crate, he pulled out a couple of smaller boxes which housed hundreds of rounds of nine-millimetre brass bullets, a few empty magazines sitting on top of them all. Without hesitation, Jameson and I began filling them with as many rounds as we could stuff in them, before hastily stowing them away about our person ready for the off.
Clamping the lid shut like a parent hiding their children’s Christmas presents, he pulled his shoulders back to look us both in the eye, with a great deal of seriousness and confidence.
“We must split up now. Please wait here for an hour or two before you move. Let me get home.”
I nodded, fully intending to follow his instructions to the letter. We weren’t able to go anywhere tonight, the only places that I knew in and around this village were the church, Louis’ house and Joseph’s cottage, all of which would be forbidden for the foreseeable. We had no choice; the forest would be our hotel for the rest of the night.
After bidding farewell to Louis Junior, we began to search for a part of the wood that would keep us protected from the elements as much as possible. Finding a large tree that had fallen some years ago, we buried ourselves in the large crater that it had left behind, the depression in the ground keeping us relatively hidden from the breeze that was now so unwelcome as we tried to rest. We huddled in tight to one another, using our jackets as a kind of duvet thrown over the top of us both. I was uncomfortable and cold, but I was exhausted, so much so that I felt my eyes beginning to give in on me within a few minutes of lying there with Jameson. After an hour or two of silence, and without even checking to see whether I was awake or not, Jameson spoke.
“We need to split up.”
“Eh?” I mumbled, trying to rouse myself from the half-slumber that I was dozing in and out of.
“We need to separate. We’ll have a better chance that way. They’re looking for two men at the moment, if we split then at least if one of us is caught, then the other doesn’t necessarily
have to give in just yet.”
I knew he was right, I just didn’t want to admit it. Hearing his words made me feel like I was in hospital, being told that I was going to have to prepare myself for yet another amputation. Once Jameson was gone, I would be all alone, almost as if I had no limbs left. Robert would be gone, Jimmy had turned into Judas Iscariot on us both, Cécile was no closer to being back in my arms, Bill had been killed in Egypt and Red, having been dead in my mind for the last eighteen months, had suddenly turned and tried to get me killed.
My life had been one downhill slide ever since I had first been sent to France back in the autumn of 1939. I was beginning to feel more alone in that forest, snuggled in tight with Jameson, than I ever had done before, as I looked back on my life as a series of mistakes and misfortune, struggling more than ever to conjure up the thought of a happier time, or a happier memory.
Silently, I began to feel the cooling sensation of tears beginning to roll down my cheeks, as I thought that I might never get home, I might never experience freedom or happiness ever again. I kept my tears hidden from Jameson, turning my head to one side as if I was thinking through his proposition.
I needed out of this game, it was beginning to get to me. I didn’t just mean getting out of France and ever returning, but out of the war. Out of the constant betrayal and death that had surrounded me for what felt like a lifetime. I knew that if I did somehow return to Britain and suddenly refused to be a part of the war any longer, then I would be branded a coward, spending the rest of my life as a social outcast, the one in the village who rejected the chance to fight against the fascists and instead stay at home. For the rest of my life, I would be no better to the people than a die-hard Nazi, in fact, I would probably be treated worse than if one was to suddenly move into the neighbourhood.
But I was no coward, I had fought, and I thought I had fought bravely at that. The more thought I gave it, the more I gave time to the possibility of running away, not just from my responsibilities and my conscience, but from my country, from the war. There were, as far as I understood, still some countries on the globe that still remained neutral and that they still lived a relatively normal life, away from all the bloodthirsty generals and leaders that had dragged millions into this war already. Maybe I could even get to America. They still enjoyed a lavish lifestyle of glitz and glamour, with no real sign from the people that they would want to join in anytime soon. Maybe I could even find Cécile there.
