‘Cower in the woods while others do the fighting and you get what you deserve,’ Luc said. ‘End of story.’
PT and Marc’s responses were more tactful, but Henderson had instilled military discipline in his trainees. They were determined to pursue the 108th, not head back into the woods to administer first aid.
Occasional shell blasts continued as Team A neared the point where the woods turned to farmland. Unlike the Morels’ large farm, this remote area comprised small peasant farms linked by narrow dirt tracks. Most were farmed by a single family and ringed by hedgerows several metres high.
This warren was one reason why the Maquis found it relatively easy getting in and out of the forest without being seen. PT’s team heard German activity a few fields over as they headed towards a barn stashed with bicycles. When they got close they found part of the road churned by metal tracks and a farm gate that had been bulldozed.
PT studied the tracks before whispering, ‘They’re too narrow for a Tiger. It’s some kind of half-track truck, or motorised artillery.’
The shelling had slowed after the initial barrage, so they all jolted when they saw the muzzle of an artillery gun light up a couple of hundred metres away.
‘We should go after them,’ Edith said, though she was still keen to help the people stuck in the woods. ‘Our job is to wipe the 108th out, isn’t it?’
PT didn’t answer, but stepped cautiously over the twisted iron gate. A couple of disinterested cows looked his way and there were ruts where the tracked vehicle had crossed the field before exiting by demolishing another gate on the far side.
‘Christ!’ Daniel said, loud enough to make PT turn around to shush him.
But PT was equally shocked when he saw the horrifically smashed body of an old man. It seemed he’d come out to investigate the noise and been run over by the tracked vehicle. The body was a real mess, but the worst part was that the tracks through the mud swerved towards him.
‘Looks like he wasn’t armed,’ Marc said. ‘But the driver went straight for him.’
Edith headed towards the little farm cottage. It was unlikely that any Germans would have stuck around, but she unholstered a pistol before moving inside.
It was a typical peasant home, with one internal wall separating the living area from a tiny bedroom. A gas lamp flickered and a small dog hid in the darkest corner. Edith backed out as the artillery piece fired again. She found the rest of her squad moving briskly across the manure-caked pasture.
Luc reached the second smashed gate first and a muzzle flash gave him enough light to see the German set-up at the centre of the next field.
‘Wempe hundred-and-five millimetre,’ Luc said. ‘Motorised artillery gun. It looks like there’s a support truck on the road as well.’
PT looked at Marc and Luc, as Edith, Daniel and Michel caught up.
‘Is that gun doing all the damage in the woods?’ Edith asked.
‘Nah,’ Marc said. ‘There’s got to be at least three of them around.’
‘I think I heard some smaller, eighty-eight-millimetre ones, as well,’ Luc said.
‘It won’t stop them attacking the woods, but I still think we should act on this,’ PT said. ‘The truck will make our journey west a lot easier than pushbikes. We’re already close and the hedges give good cover if we’re careful.’
Marc nodded in agreement. ‘If I run around the front of the mobile gun and crack a few Germans with my sniper rifle, they’ll think we’re coming out of the woods and it’ll draw their fire. The rest of you can flank from the sides. Pick off as many men as you can, but you’ve got to blow the tracks off the Wempe before it can drive away.’
‘Makes sense,’ Luc said.
PT agreed, though as he was supposed to be running the show he was irritated by Marc calling the shots.
Marc was equipped for a long journey, but the gear would slow him down. After stashing his pack close to the hedge he set off with his sniper rifle, throwing knife, pistol and ammunition belt covered with spare clips and grenades.
Another huge shell got launched towards the woods as Marc skimmed past a hedge. He sighted the Wempe and a German major standing on the roof of the truck, studying the woods through binoculars. After 100 metres, Marc found a decent climbing tree. He stepped up into a large fork that gave him a view over the hedges, then leaned against a branch and sighted the major through his scope.
Marc held his breath and squeezed the trigger. It was too dark to see subtle movements, but the crack of his rifle scattered at least half a dozen Germans as the major himself crashed backwards on to the truck’s canvas awning with a bullet through his heart.
As Marc’s second shot hit an observer whose head had popped up from the turret of the Wempe, the area lit up with a succession of grenade blasts. Unfortunately, these blasts illuminated Marc’s position and he was forced to jump out of the tree as bullets whistled past.
While the German troops regrouped, the driver inside the Wempe threw it into reverse and shot backwards. The Wempe was less than one fifth the weight of a Tiger tank. While the heavily armoured Tiger was built to plough into battle, the Wempe was designed to fire giant 105-mm artillery shells from safer positions behind enemy lines.
But although it was no Tiger, the big mobile gun still made a fearsome target for a group armed only with grenades and plastic explosives.
Whatever criticism people made of Luc, he was no coward. He shot out of a hedge on a carefully timed run, aiming to get within a couple of metres of the Wempe and toss a grenade under the side flaps to blow off a track.
But the driver’s rapid reverse sent the tank straight towards him. Luc slipped as he turned around and tucked his right leg in half a second before the metal tracks would have mashed it.
He ended up between the mobile gun’s tracks in pitch darkness, listening to its whirring driveshaft echo through the armoured floor centimetres above his ear. There seemed to be a lot of shooting going on as the tracks on either side of Luc stopped moving.
Fearing that the Wempe might turn and squish him, Luc had no option but to clamber out at the front and jump on to its armoured hull. He was now on the front running board, with the turret being slowly cranked into a firing position. Judging by how low the barrel was being aimed, the crew were hoping to fire through the nearest hedge, at what they assumed was a frontal assault by Maquis coming out of the forest.
Luc’s head was less than a metre and a half from the 105-mm gun’s huge muzzle and if it went off while he was this close his eardrums would rupture. His palm seared on the hot gun barrel as he kicked against a metal rung to launch himself to the top of the turret.
Since he’d turned and slipped, everything Luc did had been for self-preservation. Now he finally had a second to think.
He’d dropped his grenade somewhere along the way, but there was another hooked to his belt and the top of the turret was open, with the bloody face of the guy Marc shot staring at him. As a bullet pinged off the armour somewhere behind, Luc ripped a pin out of a grenade and dunked it past the dead man and into the turret.
Someone shot at Luc from close range as he slid off the turret to the side of the tank. Shouts in German came from inside. Luc didn’t speak the language but suspected it was something like ‘Oh shit, that’s a grenade!’.
A fuel can strapped to the mobile gun’s side jammed into his gut. He pushed off, hitting the dirt on his knees as the grenade exploded.
This explosion instantly killed the mobile gun’s four surviving crew members. The much larger secondary blast from the shells stored inside probably would have killed Luc too, but for the fact that the turret hatch was open and most of its energy got directed upwards.
Luc found his feet, but was deafened and completely disorientated. He had no idea if he was staggering towards German machine-gun fire and he felt like church bells were going off in his head as someone grabbed him.
‘Luc,’ Edith said.
At the same moment Marc closed on the sce
ne and shouted something that Luc barely heard.
‘That was amazing!’
As Luc looked around, he realised that while he’d taken out the mobile artillery, the combination of Marc’s sniper shots and everyone else’s grenade blasts had killed most of the Germans or sent them running away.
‘Is Luc OK?’ PT asked.
‘Quite a burn on his hand,’ Edith answered. ‘I’ve got some bandage.’
PT nodded. ‘The other German positions can’t be far off, so we need to move out. I’ll drive the truck. Marc, you speak the best German, so you ride with me up front and deal with checkpoints. The rest in the back. Try and get German uniforms. Grab any weapons you find, and we need fuel. Especially fuel.’
‘What about the bicycles?’ Marc asked.
‘We’ll still stop and pick them up,’ PT said. ‘Might need them further down the line, but this truck gives us a real chance to stay on the 108th’s tail.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Team A had struck gold with the truck. The only damage during the shoot-out was a smashed side window and some bullet holes in the canvas awning. They also found two large cans of diesel, towing ropes and a mechanic’s chest filled with tools and spare parts.
Edith, Luc and Michel faced a rough ride on the bare floor in the rear, with a strong oily smell and the bicycles packed around them. Daniel had found a corner and snuggled on a mound of greasy mechanic’s overalls, with a padded kneeling-mat under his head. Up front, Marc and PT had dressed themselves in uniform stripped from dead Germans.
At nineteen, PT was older than the 108th’s most recent conscripts, while at sixteen Marc looked young, but not so much that he’d raise suspicion.
‘Any ideas on what I should say if we’re stopped?’ Marc asked.
PT shrugged as he drove fast around a tight corner, making spares and tools crash about in the back.
‘Our uniforms show we’re from the 108th,’ PT said, as he accelerated. ‘Whenever I’ve seen big troop movements the vehicles just get waved through checkpoints.’
‘True,’ Marc agreed. ‘I reckon I can handle a checkpoint, but what if someone looks in the back and sees our passengers?’
‘Prisoners, or something?’ PT suggested.
‘Maybe if we tied them up,’ Marc said, then he shouted into the back. ‘Hey, Luc. Mind if we tie you up?’
Luc’s head popped through the canvas flaps separating the cab from the cargo bay. ‘I’ll put on a mechanic’s overall,’ Luc said. ‘If anyone asks, Daniel, Michel and Edith were arrested for sabotage before we left and have no proper paperwork.’
‘That’s credible and it explains the lack of documents,’ Marc said, as he reached into his slightly-oversized German jacket and pulled out several military IDs stripped from the dead Germans. ‘See if one of these looks anything like you.’
As Luc took the IDs and disappeared into the back, PT stopped the truck before turning on to a dirt road that Marc knew well.
‘Used to walk down here every day, between the orphanage and my school,’ Marc said.
PT was more interested in the chunks of bark stripped from trees growing close to the road. ‘Gotta be tanks did that,’ he said.
‘Slow down then,’ Marc warned. ‘Probably not a good idea to run into them.’
‘Tanks aren’t subtle,’ PT answered. ‘We’d hear ’em way before we saw ’em.’
It was a warm night, so the side windows were down and Marc caught a whiff of smoke. He knew that the only thing close by was a row of peasant cottages, with a small farm-supply store at the far end.
PT slowed as they passed a flattened hedge, and while there wasn’t much light, they could see several sets of huge Tiger tank tracks veering off-road towards the cottages. A 60-tonne Tiger will demolish any wall it hits, and it seemed that a line of tanks had gouged through three homes, knocking down the front walls and making roofs cave.
As with the old man splattered by the mobile gun, there was no reason for this carnage beyond enhancing the 108th’s reputation for meanness. Marc recognised most of the distraught people standing beside wrecked homes and glimpsed two bodies laid out, either dead or close to it.
‘Bastards,’ Marc said.
The locals near the road didn’t recognise Marc. They just saw a German truck and German uniforms. PT accelerated because if his home had been demolished, he reckoned he might just be angry enough to shoot at the next bunch of Germans who drove by.
‘There was an old girl who lived in the end house,’ Marc said sadly, taking a last glance back as they sped on. ‘One time a storm broke on our way home from school. I was about six and it was thick mud, so she took four of us boys in and gave us hot milk. I can remember sitting on her floor, with my hair dripping and mud caked up my legs.’
‘Was she still around?’
‘Haven’t seen her in years,’ Marc said. ‘I know one of her sons worked for Morel.’
As this memory faded, Marc realised the burning smell hadn’t. They’d seen no obvious fire at the cottages and the smoke was starting to cloud PT’s view down the road.
‘It’s the orphanage,’ Marc blurted anxiously. ‘It’s over the next hill.’
As his old orphanage came into view, Marc saw its outline lit by orange flames. The main building where the kids slept seemed OK, but the nuns’ accommodation and adjoining chapel were ablaze. PT slowed the truck to a crawl, because tanks had smashed through the orphanage’s boundary wall, leaving the road strewn with chunks of rubble big enough to rip a tyre off its rim.
‘Let me get out,’ Marc said urgently. ‘We need to know how many tanks we’re chasing, and how long since they left.’
Edith and Luc’s heads had popped through the canvas flaps to get a view. The nuns had organised a chain of boys passing buckets and bowls of water from a nearby stream. The fire was out of control, so they were dousing the dry grass between the chapel and the orphanage in the hope that it would stop fire spreading to the orphanage proper.
‘Don’t hang about,’ PT told Marc, as he turned through the orphanage gate. ‘Two or three minutes.’
Marc barely listened, and as he jumped out of the cab a bullet whizzed past, forcing him to his knees.
‘It’s me, Marc Kilgour!’ he shouted, as he raised his hands to the unseen gunman. ‘Don’t shoot!’
The arrival of a German truck had made the nuns send the line of boys scrambling into the surrounding countryside. But a young sister named Mary raced downhill, recognising Marc despite his uniform. Jae’s father was close behind, and sober for once.
‘What happened?’ Marc asked.
‘They were short of rations and must have known that we preserve a lot of food for the boys,’ the sister explained. ‘They arrived twenty-five minutes ago, with six tanks and a line of trucks. They threatened to level the orphanage if we didn’t hand over every scrap of food, then they made some of the older boys help load their trucks. When that was done, they forced five boys into a truck. Things turned nasty when we tried grabbing the boys back. They beat up Sister Fidelis and threw grenades into the chapel.’
Marc was sickened. ‘How old were the boys they took?’
‘Lucien’s the youngest, he’s twelve but big for his age. The others were thirteen or fourteen.’
‘Did the Germans say what they wanted them for?’
This time Farmer Morel answered. ‘They didn’t say anything. But I’ve read that this tactic has been used in the east. There’s a lot of manual labour in the army: latrines, trenches, graves. And why dig yourself when you can force a civilian?’
‘What about Jae?’ Marc asked.
‘They drove across our land tearing through fencing and hedges,’ Morel explained. ‘Jae is safe. She and some of the labourers are out now, fixing holes and rounding up loose animals.’
‘We have to go, Marc,’ PT shouted from the truck. ‘Are you staying or going?’
Morel looked at Marc. ‘Going where?’
Marc felt loyalty to his old orpha
nage, but there were plenty of nuns and his specialty wasn’t putting out fires or nursing scared kids.
‘Give me thirty seconds,’ Marc shouted to PT, before turning back to Morel and the sister. ‘We’re trying to stop the 108th getting to Normandy,’ Marc said. ‘I can’t promise you anything but I’ll keep an eye out for your boys. Tell Jae that I’ll be back in a few days and that I love her.’
It was a token of how much Farmer Morel had warmed to Marc over the past couple of years that he didn’t baulk.
‘She already knows,’ Morel said. ‘You all be careful. I ran over here to investigate the flames, and almost got myself shot. There’s a broken-down truck on the road, just shy of my farm gates.’
‘German truck?’
Morel nodded. ‘Identical to yours.’
Marc reboarded the truck and updated the others, as PT steered a cautious path through the rubble. Then they worked up a plan for their imminent encounter with the broken-down truck.
Morel had been right. It was a canvas-covered Opel truck identical to their own, but he hadn’t noticed the small, towed artillery gun attached to the rear.
The road was barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass, so PT steered past slowly with one side clattering branches. He stopped when the trucks’ front bumpers were level. A bored-looking soldier sat in the driver’s seat, Germanically blond and no more than twenty years old.
‘We’ve got a mechanic in the back,’ Marc said, in German. ‘You want him to take a look under your hood?’
The young German seemed happy taking it easy at the roadside while his battalion charged towards battle in Normandy.
‘We’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘My partner headed off to find water for the radiator.’
‘Up to you,’ Marc said casually. ‘But the locals don’t like us. I wouldn’t want to be in your seat when the resistance works out that the rest of our battalion has left town.’
Marc’s line seemed to tweak the young soldier’s sense of self-preservation. ‘You could be right,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘So it’s just you?’ Marc asked, as Luc vaulted from the back of the truck, wearing a baggy mechanic’s overall.