The column moves on, and whatever slight relaxation Frangie had begun to feel is gone now. Mines. This innocent, late-spring landscape is not innocent at all.
They rattle on for ten more minutes when louder explosions, and more, one after another, boom! boom! boom! echo back from the front of the column.
Frangie’s jeep is trapped between overbearing hedges on either side, the rear end of a belching Sherman ahead, and the press of men and vehicles coming off the beach behind. They are boxed in.
Machine guns ahead, speaking two different languages, the zipper of a German MG42 spitting twelve hundred rounds per minute, and the answering American Browning .50 calibers, firing at half the rate. Smoke rises into the sky.
There’s more artillery, then a big, metallic CLANG! as something hits steel-plate armor. Frangie’s view is almost completely blocked, but she sees fire and flying debris. Then a Sherman fires, reminding Frangie of a tobacco-chewer spitting angrily. A second later the tank shell explodes on its target.
A file of GIs comes running past, infantry, their rifles held at port arms. Soon she hears machine gun and rifle fire.
It’s half an hour of sitting in her hedge-and-steel enclosure before the column moves again, and this time they pass a destroyed Sherman. Its turret lies in a hedge, trapped by the tight-woven branches. The rest of the tank burns and smokes.
There’s a medic tending a wounded man in a ditch, and Frangie calls to him. “Need a hand?”
The medic waves her on. “Superficial.”
“What about that crew?” she asks, indicating the burning tank.
“No help for those boys,” the medic says darkly.
Again the column advances between the hedges, the hedges so thick, so dense, that they somehow were only partly crushed by the full weight of a tank turret.
At a wide spot in the road the Shermans squeeze aside to let a jeep with a white major rush past. Ahead Frangie can just glimpse a church tower indicating a village.
The column lurches back to life and motors on.
“When do we get out of these hedges?” Manning wonders aloud.
P-38s are in the air, three of them arcing toward the barely glimpsed village. More sounds of explosions, more columns of smoke.
They come to a crossroads, where the hedges retreat a little, allowing Frangie to breathe. She’d been almost holding her breath in the claustrophobic confines. Four tanks now peel off from the main column and head down a side road, racing along at speed in the open.
A battalion runner comes back along the line, his jeep dipping into ditches to squeeze by. The driver spots Frangie and pulls up. “Captain says maybe a medic ought to go with Sergeant Washington’s detail and—”
The next part is obliterated by the shriek of falling artillery.
“Fug!” the runner yells, and leaps from his car. Frangie, Manning, and Deacon are right behind him, as are the men who’ve been riding on the outside of the tanks. She lands in a wet ditch and hugs weeds as shells explode all around the intersection.
The tanks break for cover, some veering down one road, some down the other, some powering straight ahead.
Shells rain down for five minutes—a very long five minutes.
The cries of Medic! rise on the ensuing silence. Frangie grabs her bags and runs.
15
RAINY SCHULTERMAN—NEAR LIMOGES, NAZI-OCCUPIED FRANCE
They follow the train tracks, Philippe in the lead, Marie close behind him, Rainy bringing up the rear.
Rainy goes over the facts again in her head. Étienne, Wickham, and Marie had been together, tasked with creating a diversion. Wickham and Étienne are apparently dead, Marie alive and only slightly hurt. Rainy had heard two bursts of Sten gunfire. There had been no sound of German weapons.
Étienne, Wickham, and Marie. But only two, Wickham and Marie, had Sten guns; Étienne had a pistol and grenades. So the shooting was either from Wickham or Marie. It is extremely unlikely—unlikely to the point of absurdity—that the British flyer would have been the traitor.
A burst of Sten gunfire, a pause, a second burst.
The first would have killed Wickham. Then a pause as Marie pleaded with Étienne to join her. And, when he refused or perhaps even drew his pistol, the second burst.
There was no escaping the obvious conclusion: Marie had killed both men.
Marie was a traitor.
Now what do I do?
The sensible, if ruthless, thing would be to draw her Walther and shoot Marie in the back of the head. Philippe was obviously sweet on her, maybe even in love, and she couldn’t count on him to do the job. Or even be certain that he would understand.
It would be an act of charity for her to do it.
Right now.
But the rational part of Rainy is having trouble with every other part of her. She is jazzed, keyed-up, jumpy, and nervous. The gun battle, the massive explosions that still rock the night, it all leaves her feeling unreal, feeling a little bit crazy. She thinks she’s right, but she isn’t sure her brain is working right.
And she isn’t sure that she is an assassin.
How the hell has it come to this? She is meant to be sneaking around and reporting on movements of the Das Reich, and instead she’s very likely to be picked up by the Gestapo or the SD, even as she debates executing one of their collaborators.
Her hand reaches beneath her coat, touches the butt of her pistol, and suddenly Philippe calls a halt. There’s a railway signalman’s shed where the track splits. Philippe pushes in, fumbles and finds a lantern, and strikes a light.
“Let’s have a rest, eh?” Philippe says. In the harsh light his face looks grim. “What do you think, Marie? Shall we rest?”
Rainy does not think it is time to rest. Not at all. In fact, it’s insane. They are still on the railroad tracks. The Germans will follow the tracks as soon as they can get a handful of men together. They have maybe twenty minutes.
But Marie agrees with Philippe. “Yes, let’s rest here.”
Marie takes the only chair, lays her Sten gun aside, puts her hands over her face, and cries quietly.
“I am very sorry for Étienne,” Philippe says.
Marie nods.
“It must have been very hard,” Philippe says quietly.
Marie starts to answer but hears something in his tone. Rainy hears the same thing.
Philippe goes to Marie and touches her cheek. “Tell me,” he says. “Tell me how they turned you.”
“Turned . . . what are you . . .”
Philippe says, “Lieutenant Jones, do you believe we should stop here for a rest?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because the tracks lead straight to us.”
Philippe points at Rainy. “You see? It is obvious. And yet, Marie, you go along.”
Whap!
Philippe slaps Marie hard across the cheek, hard enough to start blood dribbling from her nose. “Traitor! Collaborator! Tell me how they got to you.”
Marie tries innocence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Why have you struck me?”
Philippe, overcome by emotion, turns away. Rainy says, “You killed them both, Marie. You shot Wickham, and when you couldn’t convince Étienne, you shot him. Your own brother.”
“He was a bastard!” Marie cries with shocking venom. “My brother! Hah! If you knew . . . Forever sneaking around to look at me in the bathtub!”
It is a confession, however much Marie wishes to cloud things with accusations.
Marie makes a quick grab for the Sten, but Philippe knocks it to the floor, and now the Walther is in Rainy’s hand.
Rainy looks at Philippe. He has recovered somewhat. Now the maquis fighter is back. Now he wants and needs to know how Marie was recruited, by whom, and how many others in the organization are also turned.
“He is going to marry me,” Marie says defiantly.
“Marry you? Who?”
“My sturmbannführer,” Marie says, spitting it defiantly. “He o
wns a castle in Germany. His family is very rich! When the war is over we will be married.”
“A sturmbannführer?” Philippe demands. His voice cracks. “That’s an SS rank. You’ve been sleeping with an SS officer?”
Marie, desperate, tries to turn things around. “This one.” She stabs a finger at Rainy. “Do you know what she is? She is a Jew! Look at her, she is a dirty Jew! Her true name is probably Cohen or Silberstein. She does the bidding of the English Zionists, a Jew bitch bringing war and destruction to our countrymen, Philippe!”
Philippe looks helplessly at Rainy. Their eyes meet, and both know what must happen. They are on the run, easily exposed, and after blowing up the fuel dump there will be no mercy from the Germans.
And no more time.
“I cannot,” Philippe whispers, pleading with Rainy.
Marie’s eyes go wide. “What are you talking about? Do you . . . are you proposing to murder me? My God, Philippe, have you lost your mind? The invasion will fail! Dieter told me himself, the Atlantic Wall cannot be breached. And what then, Philippe? What then when the English and the Americans have been thrown into the sea? The Germans will come for your family, my family . . .”
“I . . .” Philippe’s eyes are filled with tears. “I cannot . . .”
Rainy nods. She feels as if her body has been replaced by a cold, marble statue. She can barely force the words out through a jaw clenched so tightly her teeth might crack. She wants to throw up. She wants to yell, It’s all a mistake, all a terrible joke, I’m going home to New York, to my room, to my things, to my mother and father, to my brother, to the world where people do not kill each other. In a choked, grating voice she says, “Why don’t you take a look outside and have a smoke, Philippe.”
“What? What are you talking about, you fools? Are you mad?”
“No,” Philippe says dully, a man trapped in a nightmare. “I am French.”
He rushes to the door and disappears into the night.
Marie turns her lovely face, now streaked with tears, to Rainy. “I can save you. I can tell Dieter you helped me to escape!”
“And will you tell him also that I am a dirty Jew?”
“You cannot hurt me, you . . . You cannot . . . No! No!” She rises from her chair, hands like claws ready to scratch at Rainy.
Rainy says, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. Relax.”
Marie relaxes back into her chair and sighs heavily. There is even the slight curl of a smile at the corner of her lips.
Rainy says, “It’s not Cohen or Silberstein, mademoiselle. It’s Schulterman.”
She raises the Walther and fires once. Bang! A neat round hole appears as if by magic in the center of Marie’s forehead. She slumps to the floor.
Rainy stands trembling over the body. The sound of the shot, magnified by the close quarters, seems to echo on and on. But the sound of the shot will not carry to the Germans, not from within the shed.
“No other way,” Rainy whispers to herself. At her feet the body of the pretty young Frenchwoman releases its urine and feces. Blood forms a pool in the shape of a leaf.
No other way.
She finds Philippe outside, smoking and weeping silently. “I loved her,” he says.
“Let’s get out of here.”
She leads the way, following the tracks that Philippe has assured her will take them close to his old hometown where he can hope to find shelter for them.
They hear the German patrol long before it reaches them. But the voices are not speaking German—more pressed, unmotivated Eastern Europeans who dutifully follow the tracks through the forest but do not bother to patrol through the trees where Rainy and Philippe silently watch them pass. Had they been SS, the search would have been far more efficient.
Dawn shows pink before Philippe speaks again.
“It had to be done,” he says.
“Yes.”
“This war is cruel.”
“Yes.”
“We cannot reach Oradour during daylight,” he says. “We will have to sleep rough.”
Rainy nods, though she is not at all sure she can sleep. The image of a small round hole in a girl’s forehead will follow her for many days. Perhaps for the rest of her life.
This war is cruel.
“Is it true that you are a Jew?”
Rainy nods.
Philippe looks pained. “I am sorry for . . . Well. You understand. Some people listen to the voices of the church or Vichy when they speak of Jews.”
Rainy is about to say that she isn’t much of a Jew, that she does not attend shul, rarely goes to temple, and does not keep kosher. But the words won’t come. There are times to draw distinctions between the Orthodox true believers and the more liberal, more secular Jews. But Nazi-occupied France is not the place, and mere hours after she has executed a Jew-hating collaborator is not the time. In the world of the Nazis and their allies, there is no distinction between this sort of Jew and that sort of Jew.
It is as simple to the Nazis as black and white: Jew or not Jew.
How terrible, Rainy thinks, that her religion, her tribe, had never been as meaningful to her as it is now. She’d never denied her background; she just didn’t really care. She’d seen herself as above ancient tribalism. She’d seen herself as perhaps part of, but not defined by, her nominal faith. All her grandmother’s stories of pogroms in Poland, all the casual anti-Semitism encountered in America, all the Stars of David given to her at birthdays, the rituals of Yom Kippur and Passover, the eye-rolling repetition of “Next year in Jerusalem,” none of it had made her really care, none of it had made her lock her fate to that of her people, or even to think of Jews as her people.
But that was done. That was over. Jew or not Jew?
Jew.
“I never was much of a Jew,” she says at last. “The war . . . the Nazis . . .”
Philippe sighs. “I never was much of a Frenchman. But the war . . . the Nazis . . .”
Tears come to blur Rainy’s sight. She’s not a person who cries, and doesn’t want to be seen to cry, so she stays behind him, choking off sobs that threaten to worsen, to get out of control.
The grisly killings at the café, the cold-blooded execution of Marie, the terrible memories of captivity . . . She knows now, deep down in her bones, that there is no going back, no erasing or forgetting. These things will be with her as long as she lives, and they are so huge, so overpoweringly sad and wrong and yet necessary that she knows her mind will be chewing over each act forever. She knows that she will never again be who she once was.
Rainy Schulterman, clever young girl with lots of ideas, rest in peace.
So much lost.
They walk deeper into the woods. The leaves drip and the pine needles squish under their feet, but heat is rising and with it humidity. It’s going to be a long, hot day.
Rainy is in no way an outdoorsy type and instinctively dislikes the woods. But Philippe finds a fallen log and they stretch out on it and exhaustion carries Rainy quickly to sleep. She wakes after only a few hours when her stomach rumbles. Her mouth and throat are parched. She manages a few hours of on-and-off sleep until Philippe also wakes.
“I don’t suppose you brought us breakfast?” Philippe says.
“No, and I’m starving. A glass of water would be nice, too.”
“That at least I can provide. The river is just . . .” He looks around, peers up at the sun for direction, and points.
Sure enough, the river is only a ten-minute walk. It’s a narrow stream, no more than a dozen feet across, the banks thick with trees and bushes crowding in to reach the water. Rainy pushes through and kneels by the river, drinking her fill.
“We can follow the river if you don’t mind brambles.” Philippe glances skeptically at her shoes.
“I never thought I’d miss combat boots,” Rainy says. “Where’s this river go?”
“Why to Oradour, of course. This is the River Glane.”
They follow the Glane as Rainy’
s shoes slowly come apart. She tears her coat—a burden anyway in the stifling heat—into strips and binds them around shoes and feet, which helps somewhat, but makes stepping over branches and pushing through thickets even harder.
After a very long walk, a break to eat a few berries they pick along the way, and more walking, Philippe ducks down and motions Rainy to do the same. He points, and she sees a thin filament snaking from an unseen bank out into the river.
“Someone is fishing.”
They creep closer, and then Philippe says, “It’s Bernard! He’s a boy from my village.”
“Can you trust him?”
“I trust no one anymore,” he says sharply. Then, softening, “But Bernard is playing hooky from school, it seems. He will find us food for fear I will tell his mother—she is a holy terror. And, who knows, he may have fish. Holà! Bernard!”
Bernard turns out to be an eleven-year-old boy with a round head and close-cropped mouse-brown hair. And yes, he has fish. And he has cleverly brought along a ham sandwich, which Philippe appropriates in the name of the maquis.
Bernard mourns the loss of two of his fish and the sandwich, but he’s a lively boy with a conspiratorial air about him, and clearly hiding in the woods with fugitive maquis is more fun than doing multiplication tables in school.
“How far are we from the village?” Philippe asks him. “It’s been a long time since I wandered this river.”
“Oh, it’s just there,” Bernard says, waving vaguely.
“Have you happened to see Monsieur et Madame Gilles?” Philippe winces a little, recognizing that he has just revealed his true last name to Rainy.
“Your maman and papa? Of course! How can I not see the headmaster? Or his wife?”
“It seems you do quite a good job of not seeing the headmaster when you prefer to go fishing,” Philippe says. “But tell me: Are they well?”
“Of course, monsieur. Only . . . well, everyone is afraid of what the Boche will do. Because of the invasion. They must be very angry. And . . .” He lowers his voice. “You heard what happened in Tulle?”
“No, what?”
Bernard makes a throat-cutting gesture. “The SS. They hanged a hundred men. They say it was because of the maquis.”
Purple Hearts Page 15
