It was a loaded question – what red-blooded teenage male would turn down a pretty girl asking for help?
‘What is it you want?’ Jean asked.
Rosie loosened the bloody wire embedded in her ankle and pulled it over her shoe as she spoke. ‘Justin brought me out here because he said you know the forests around here better than anyone.’
This wasn’t strictly true, but after knocking the boys down, they needed some flattery.
‘Are you interested in the bomb bunker?’ Didier asked.
Rosie half smiled, as she clamped a handkerchief over her bleeding ankle. ‘Well, the resistance would hardly be interested in the trees and the squirrels, would it? Why do you call it the bomb bunker?’
‘That’s what they store there, isn’t it?’ Didier said.
This was news to Rosie, but she hid her surprise well.
‘You’ve seen trucks of bombs going in and out?’ Rosie asked.
‘You see Luftwaffe men loading them on to trucks,’ Jean explained.
‘Can you get up close to the wire?’ Rosie asked.
‘You’d be pushing your luck to get up really close. We’d never set traps around there, but there’s an old guard we’ve gotten to know. He likes his rabbit meat and he swaps it for tinned stuff out of the bunker: jam, beans, fruit.’
‘I need a guide to take me up there tomorrow,’ Rosie said, as she pulled out a small camera. ‘I need a good set of photos. They need to be taken in daylight from all angles.’
‘It’s risky,’ Didier said.
Jean shook his head. ‘Not that risky, as long as you go the back way. Stay well clear of the road and the main footpaths. Except for an occasional patrol, the guards stay behind the fence. And if they spot you from inside the wire it’s easy to duck into the trees.’
‘No tracking dogs or anything like that?’ Rosie asked.
‘Not that I’ve ever seen,’ Jean said.
‘This is a down-payment,’ Rosie said, as she took two ten-franc notes from her shoulder bag. ‘The resistance doesn’t just take. Whenever you work for me, you’ll earn a small wage. We can also help you with documents, accommodation and ration books if you ever need them. When more people come here to help me, you’ll receive training and weapons.’
Both lads smiled, but as they reached for the money, Rosie snatched it away before taking a grave tone.
‘If you’re caught, you’ll be tortured and killed. You have to follow my orders and if you betray the resistance, we’ll be every bit as ruthless as the Gestapo when we catch up with you. If you say no now, I’ll walk out of this shed and you’ll probably never see me again. But once you take this money, there’s no stepping back.’
This time the lads hesitated. Didier took his money first and Jean a couple of tense seconds later. Rosie picked an open wine bottle off the rug and took a slug before passing it to Didier.
‘I drink to the resistance,’ Rosie said.
‘And to France,’ Didier said enthusiastically, as streaks of red wine drizzled down his chin.
Part Two
12 June 1943–3 July 1943
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘I’ve got nineteen boys and one girl in total,’ Captain Charles Henderson explained as he led a man in US Army uniform through the hallway of the old village school on campus. ‘Three are currently deployed in France, one in the French colonies and one in Switzerland. At first a lot of people sneered. What’s the point of training kids? But now those same people call me up, desperate to use my agents.’
‘Is there a shortage of adult agents?’ the American asked. He wore thick-framed glasses and the brim of his cap barely reached Henderson’s nose.
‘It’s become impossible for males of military age to live openly in occupied France without being scooped off the street and sent to work in Germany,’ Henderson explained. ‘But I’ve got bilingual twelve-to sixteen-year-olds who are fully trained and ready to drop.’
The American was momentarily distracted by a glass cage with a fist-sized spider inside it, but before he could comment Henderson had led him through swinging doors into a small school hall. There was a good deal of grunting and pained expressions as a dozen shirtless boys grappled on crumbling rubber mats.
‘Attention,’ the Japanese combat instructor Takada shouted as he made a sharp clap.
Red-faced lads in baggy white shorts lined up, with feet apart and hands locked behind their backs. The only motion came from heaving chests and the sweat streaking down their faces.
‘Marc, Luc, Paul, Sam, get your kit on and meet me out front in one minute,’ Henderson said, not quite shouting. ‘The rest of you, get back to it.’
As Takada paired off grapplers who’d lost their partners, Marc, Luc, Paul and Sam exchanged what are we in for looks as they pulled on freezing muddy combat gear in which they’d run seven kilometres earlier that morning.
Marc and Luc were fifteen, similar height and solid build, but where Marc was blond and dashing, Luc was dark, hairy and thuggish. Hard training had given fourteen-year-old Paul a bit of muscle, but he still looked as though a stiff breeze would knock him over. At twelve, Sam was the baby of the group, but he’d trained with older boys for two years and always fought hard, even when he was outmatched.
‘Get a bloody move on,’ Henderson snapped, as the boys paced out into a drizzly June afternoon. ‘Go to the firing range at a jog. And Sam, do that boot lace up properly before you trip and crack your head open.’
Hearing that they were going to the firing range was a relief: shooting guns was a lot less taxing than running with packs, swimming the lake or most of the other reasons for which they could have been dragged out of the gym.
When campus was first set up, shooting practice took place on an open field. But Espionage Research Unit B now had use of a swish new range built by their USAF7 neighbours. There was a wooden armoury building, linked to a partially-covered pistol shooting range. The much larger rifle range was in the open, with rows of sandbagged shooting positions and targets ranging from tin rabbits to the buckled snout of a fighter that had been written off on landing.
For this morning’s exercise a selection of man-shaped paper targets had been set out at varying distances. Each figure had a Hitleresque moustache and target rings on the chest with tiny swastikas in the bull’s-eye.
‘Listen up, boys,’ the American began. ‘I’m Staff Sergeant Hiram Goldberg, United States Army. Captain Henderson tells me that you four are his best marksmen. Over the next ten days, my job is to push those skills to a much higher level. Now, which one of you four thinks he’s hot stuff ?’
There was a second’s silence before Paul spoke, ‘Marc’s probably the best shot, sir.’
Marc knew he was best, but scowled at Paul for putting his name forward. Sam nodded in agreement with Paul, while Luc, who hated Marc’s guts, just stared into space.
‘Let’s see what you’ve got then, young man,’ Goldberg said. ‘Targets are lined up at forty-yard8 distances: eighty, one-twenty, one-sixty and so forth. Take a rifle, lay yourself down and aim for the furthest target you feel confident about hitting.’
There was a strict safety procedure for picking up a strange weapon. Marc couldn’t remember half of it and expected Goldberg or Henderson to yell as he grabbed a No 4 Mark 1T British army rifle, fitted with a telescopic sight.
‘You’re familiar with the weapon?’ Goldberg asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ Marc said.
‘Take your shot slowly, it’s not a race,’ Goldberg said, as Marc lay on his belly in the short grass. ‘Which target are you going for?’
‘Number three, a hundred and sixty yards,’ Marc said.
After checking that the cartridge was full and pulling the bolt to load a bullet into the chamber, Marc focused the optical sight on the target, made tiny corrections for wind and trajectory and pumped a bullet straight into the target, missing the swastika by less than five centimetres.
‘Not bad,’ Goldberg said, smiling as
he studied the target through binoculars. ‘Now, double your range.’
‘Sir?’ Marc said curiously.
‘Three hundred and twenty yards,’ Goldberg explained. ‘Take it slowly. Give it your best shot.’
Marc pulled the bolt, ejecting his spent cartridge. He then reloaded, steadied the gun and held his breath before taking another shot.
It was too far for Sam and Paul to see where Marc hit, but they both saw the target quiver and erupted in a little cheer. Goldberg seemed less impressed at a bullet that had merely grazed the paper target’s outer edge.
‘Now double up again,’ he said. ‘The furthest target. Six hundred yards.’
Marc glanced back at the other boys. ‘I’ll have a go, but I barely hit the last one, sir.’
Marc swung his rifle towards the furthest target. At this range, the minutest jiggle of his rifle sent the view through his sight from one side of the target to the other. Even if he could get a steady view through the sight, Marc knew he’d have to aim off – adjusting for the wind, and the fact that bullets fly in a curved arc, not a straight line.
This was beyond Marc’s skills, so he pulled the trigger and hoped for the best. As he was shooting over the length of five football pitches, only Goldberg with his binoculars got any idea where the bullet landed.
‘You blew up a tuft of grass more than thirty metres shy,’ Goldberg said. ‘Trajectory decays rapidly at distances over four hundred metres. What are your chances of hitting the target if I give you another shot?’
‘Remote, sir,’ Marc said. ‘If I correct any more, I’ll be aiming above the target, so I’ll have no reference point.’
‘Would you bet me a dollar that I can hit from that range?’ Goldberg asked.
Marc laughed. ‘I’d have thought not, sir. But since you’re our instructor and you’re willing to bet, I’ll keep my money off the table.’
Goldberg laughed. He gave Marc the binoculars before taking the rifle. ‘Watch that target.’
As Marc stared through the binoculars, Henderson and the other three boys watched Goldberg perform an intricate ritual. He began by lying flat in the grass, making minute adjustments to his position. He then altered his telescopic sight, took a long white feather from his pocket and studied the movement of its fronds to judge the wind.
There was deliberateness to his movements, as if he was slowing time and cutting out the rest of the world. After a final adjustment, Goldberg held his breath and gently squeezed the trigger.
‘Whoa!’ Marc said, as he watched the swastika bull’s-eye get torn in half. ‘That’s impossible.’
To prove the shot was no fluke, Goldberg reloaded the bolt action rifle. His second shot was weaker, but still only missed the bull’s-eye by two inches. The third flew perfect and punched a hole through the centre of the swastika.
As Goldberg stood up, Marc passed the binoculars to Henderson, who briefly inspected Goldberg’s handiwork before passing them along to Luc.
‘Who wants to learn how to do that?’ Goldberg asked.
‘That was awesome,’ Sam said keenly. ‘Who wouldn’t want to learn how to do that?’
‘It’s a mixture of skill, practice and mental arithmetic,’ Goldberg said. ‘Anyone with a steady hand and half a brain can shoot at six hundred yards. The best Russian snipers can shoot accurately to over one thousand yards. But that’s only half of the story.’
For dramatic effect, Goldberg paused, spread his arms out wide and took in a broad sweep of his surroundings.
‘Right now it’s light. Your target is easily visible, there’s no rain and a steady wind. Most importantly, there’s no enemy sniper ready to blow your brains out if you poke your head up too high, or let him catch the sun reflecting in your telescopic sight while you’re looking for him.
‘So I’m not just going to train you how to shoot. I’m going to train you how to shoot in the dark, when it’s lashing with rain, when you’ve been running all day, and you’re hungry, muddy, and so exhausted that your heart is pounding and you can barely hold your eyes open and your gun upright. These next ten days will be tough. At the end of them, you’ll either be a damned good shot or you’ll be walking with my boot wedged permanently in your butthole.’
Notes
7 USAF – United States Air Force.
8 Yard – One yard equals 91cm (or a little less than a metre).
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Five and a half days after Sergeant Goldberg first escorted the boys to the firing range, the quartet had a night-time exercise in a forested area five kilometres from campus.
With the help of eighteen-year-old trainee PT and training assistant Kindhe, Goldberg had spread eight firing points over ten kilometres of steeply sloped woodland. The boys worked in pairs. They had four bullets for each target, and had to alternate between sniping and target spotting.
Besides shooting accuracy, the boys would be assessed on how quickly they navigated between targets and the safety of their chosen shooting positions. Marc and Luc hated each other, so from day one, Marc paired with Paul and Luc with Sam.
It was two in the morning, with limited moonlight as Paul threw down a kit bag. It was his turn to shoot and he found a good bracing point for his rifle in the fork of a tree.
According to their map, the boys had to locate a circular target between four and seven hundred yards from their aiming point. It was a warm night and Marc’s T-shirt and combat jacket stuck to his back as he knelt on one knee, scanning darkness through high-powered binoculars.
Their bodies ached. They’d not been fed since lunch and their feet had been in boots for twenty hours. To make matters worse they were behind the schedule set by Goldberg and they’d just run two kilometres flat out to make up time.
Marc blamed Paul for selecting an easy footpath, rather than a steep-but-direct climb from the previous target. But Marc kept his trap shut, because Paul had to start controlling his breathing and getting his heart rate down to control four shots.
The rifle scope only magnified by three times, so it was Marc’s job to find their target with binoculars. It took ninety seconds of methodical sweeps before he sighted a yellow ship’s lifesaver ring chained to a tree trunk on the opposite side of a valley.
‘Acquired,’ Marc said, sticking to the language Goldberg had taught them to make describing target locations easy. ‘North-east, aiming down twenty degrees. Two trees, with a willow growing out almost horizontally in front of them.’
‘I see them,’ Paul said, as he peered through the scope. ‘Setting range.’
Paul’s telescopic sight had a split-focus device that enabled him to gauge distance to his target. As he turned the focusing ring, Marc watched swaying treetops.
‘Same wind we’ve had all night,’ Marc said. ‘Coming from your left at less than five knots.’
As the target was down in a valley, Paul suspected that the wind would be lower than up in the trees. But his real concern was that he had to shoot down at the target. To aim this low he couldn’t lie flat. He had to brace, with one knee against the trunk and his right shoulder taking the weight of his upper body.
The technique Goldberg taught for sniper shooting was a form of self-hypnosis. Paul had to cut himself off, imagining he was in a dark space, listening to his own breathing getting slower and slower. He closed one eye as he pulled the bolt to load a bullet.
So still that he could feel the pulse in his neck, Paul shut down until the target through the crosshairs was the only thing in his world. He decided to trust his instincts on the wind and corrected a little less than Marc’s figure suggested.
At this range, moving the gun by a millimetre would move the spot where the bullet hit by half a metre. Even the trigger squeeze had to be smooth if you wanted to hit your target.
The instant the bullet cracked, Marc bobbed up from the undergrowth and checked with the binoculars. The target was intact, but a chunk of tree bark had been blown out of the trunk less than a hand’s width away.
<
br /> ‘Minor correction right,’ Marc said.
Paul swore under his breath: it was a decent first shot, but he’d not made enough of a correction for the lack of wind in the valley. A break would shatter his concentration, so he pulled back the bolt, lined up, held his breath and took the second shot three seconds after the first.
‘Nice one, mate,’ Marc said, as he viewed a huge hole punched in the left-hand side of the life preserver. ‘Let’s have two more of those.’
Scoring a first hit lowers a sniper’s stress level because it means you’ve mastered the wind and range. Paul’s third shot made a hole a few centimetres above the second, while his final shot was right on the edge.
‘You’ve done some damage, but I can’t tell if it was bark splinters or your bullet that hit the ring,’ Marc said.
‘Two and a half out of four,’ Paul said, as he stood up. ‘Could have been worse at that range.’
As Paul pulled a cloth from his jacket and began wiping smears of his sweat off the rifle, Marc glanced at a pocket watch, then at their map. The shooting had gone well, but they were still behind schedule.
‘Looks like the last aiming area’s less than a kilometre away,’ Marc said. ‘Mostly downhill, although we’ve got to cross a stream.’
‘How deep?’ Paul asked warily.
‘Wish I knew,’ Marc said, as he peeled the binocular strap from around his neck.
Marc would snipe at the final target, but as he took the rifle from Paul both lads were dazzled by yellow light.
‘Why can I see you?’ Sergeant Goldberg shouted, as he crawled out of the undergrowth with a powerful torch in one hand and a section of camouflage netting worn like a cape. ‘What are you playing at?’
‘We’re checking the map ready for our run to the final aiming point, sir,’ Marc said.
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