The Gathering Storm

  “Papa,” I gasped loudly.

  “Shh,” he insisted. “We’re still safe.”

  “No, Papa,” I protested with barely subdued intensity. “I think…that last bomb…I think it was near St. Mary’s. What about my girls? What about the school?”

  “Loralei,” Papa returned, jerking his chin toward the precious human cargo in the rear seat, “how can we…?”

  “It’s not much out of the way,” I argued. “I could never forgive myself. Please, Papa.”

  He was easily swayed. The children at St. Mary’s had already suffered from this war. The three dozen Jewish girls were without families and in great danger from the coming of the Nazis. Downshifting, he guided the Fiat around a corner and aimed the angel atop the radiator cap toward the church and school.

  Within three blocks it was clear St Mary’s had indeed been struck. A pair of fire engines raced past, bells clanging, the firemen shouting, “Clear the way! The girls’ school…”

  The chapel had taken a direct hit. The roof had fallen into the interior, as had one end wall.

  Half the other wall remained against the skyline. The jagged, semi-circular outline of a shattered rose window suggested an overflowing bowl of suffering and loss.

  Hoses snaking across the courtyard and the lanes nearest the school prevented a nearer approach. “Stay with Jessica,” I ordered Papa as I jumped from the Fiat, ignoring his words of protest and warning.

  I encountered Sister Mary Marcia at the door to the dormitory. As soon as we reached each other the nun fell into my embrace. Together we sank toward the flagstones, kneeling.

  Sister Marcia wept.

  “Sister,” I said urgently, “are you hurt? Are you wounded?”

  “No. No…not me! The girls, our girls.”

  Cold fear gripped my heart. “How many are…hurt? Are some—”

  The sister’s slight frame was racked with sobs. “All of them! All of them. When we heard the sirens, we moved them to the chapel. We thought they’d be safer there. We never—”

  “All?” I repeated dully. “All dead?”

  “All but two. Susan and her older sister, Judith. You know them. Seven and nine.”

  I knew them well. The older sister had not uttered a sound since their escape from Warsaw. Little Susan seemed somehow to read Judith’s mind and interpret terrified thoughts to the adults. For weeks I had been working with Judith, attempting to help her find her voice again. What effect would this new devastation have on the children?

  “How did they survive?” I wept with Sister Mary Marcia.

  “Judith was afraid…nightmares…so I let the two of them stay with me, in my cell.” A feverish light shone in Sister Marcia’s eyes, and she fiercely grasped my arms. “You must take them. Judith and Susan. The Nazis will come. Take them away with you. Now. Tonight. At once.”

  “But we don’t even—”

  Sister Marcia shook her head violently. “Anywhere! Anywhere is better than here.”

  “Then you must come too, Sister,” I urged.

  “No,” the nun returned in a hollow, weary voice. “My place is here. But save them if you can…any way you can. Five minutes, only, I need. They have so few belongings. Just give me—” And she disappeared back inside.

  Streams of water from the fire hoses played tag with the flames. Jets of steam shot upward. Ashes rained down.

  In less than the promised five minutes the two Jewish sisters were in the backseat of the Fiat between Jessica and Gina.

  The flight from Brussels began anew.

  Throughout the first night on the road toward France, behind us the sky was illuminated with flashes like lightning.

  “Brussels is burning,” I said.

  Papa put a finger to his lips, warning me to guard my tongue for the sake of the little ones.

  The detour to St. Mary’s had cost us our position at the front of the tide of refugees. This meant our forward progress was slowed to a crawl.

  Human misery closed around the Fiat like water lapping the hull of a boat. As the sun rose, we put the canvas top up. By midmorning the interior of the car was stifling from dust and sun. Jessica and Gina, miserable in the backseat, shared bread, a boiled egg, and a bottle of water with Judith and Susan, then all but Judith dozed fitfully. The convertible top prevented sunburn and afforded a slight degree of privacy, shielding the three girls from the human misery all around them.

  Handcarts and horse carts laden with belongings were topped by the living cargo of humans grown too feeble or sick or old to walk. I glanced in the backseat at the Polish sisters. Surely these heart-wrenching sights were familiar to them from their escape from Warsaw nine months earlier.

  Judith’s eyes opened as though she felt my gaze on her. Haunted, they registered recognition of me as her teacher. The girl’s expression seemed to say, You see? You told me I was safe, but I knew they would come for us.

  I answered aloud the unspoken cry: “Judith? I told you the Lord would keep you and Susan safe. Remember? Bombs fell in Brussels, but you and your sister are unharmed. Listen to me now. Judith, darling girl, remember what I said that day in the classroom when Susan told me you were too afraid to speak or make a noise because you thought the Nazis would hear you from Poland and come find you?”

  Judith’s eyes flickered with the memory. Was I getting through to her?

  “You see, Judith? The Angel of the Lord encamps around about those who trust Him. You trust the Lord, don’t you, darling?”

  Again Judith’s expression registered some understanding.

  I reached back and stroked her thin, pale forearm. “Well then, even if ten thousand people fall all around you, Judith, you are safe. You are here with us. My father, Pastor Robert, knows how to pray. He has asked the Lord to send angels to protect us. Here in this car. Like a little boat. Like the basket baby Moses floated in downriver. You and Susan are safe, no matter what may come. You can rest now.”

  Judith sighed deeply and closed her eyes, falling into a sound sleep between her sister and Gina.

  The running boards of the Fiat were soon crowded with hitchhikers who leapt aboard without uttering a word. Most rode for a while and then, when forward progress slowed to a near standstill, leapt off and took to the fields on foot. Bicycles and motorcycles fared best of all. Young, single-bike riders with no skin but their own to save pressed on faster than those with families. Toddlers rode on the aching shoulders of their trudging elders. Mountains of luggage, packed so carefully before the journey, were abandoned by the way.

  The population of Holland merged with Belgium in the panic to escape until millions of civilians were moving and blocking the Allied armies from reaching the battle.

  A group of Belgian soldiers, wounded in the rout, stepped onto the Fiat’s running boards, three on each side, like ragged bodyguards.

  I noticed how passing refugees stared at the Fiat as if to ask what important Belgian official might be inside. Judith opened her eyes and stared in wonder at the Belgian military belt buckles gleaming at eye level. She glanced her questions at me: Were these soldiers sent to protect us on our journey? Were they angels?

  The child drifted back to sleep.

  Papa and I remained silent as the soldiers spoke to one another through the windows and past our heads.

  “What’s happening?” Papa asked the grit-covered fellow whose face peered in at him.

  The man seemed to be the leader. His arm was in a sling. “Blitzkrieg. Just like Poland. Paratroopers took Brussels this morning. Got the radio station. You don’t have a radio in this old wagon, do you? Well, if you did, you’d hear Nazis broadcasting from Brussels. Flew over our heads.” He mimed the parachutes dropping like leaves.

  A second soldier, the bandage about his head stained crimson, took up the tale. “Panzers drove around our fixed fortifications. Stukas dropping bombs. Our cavalry—horses—charged their tanks and machine guns.”

  “Where are you going?” Papa asked the passengers.

>   “We’ll join up with the French and the British. We’ll fight the Boche like in the last war. On the fields of Flanders we’ll push them back.”

  A stricken youth, who had already seen enough death in one day to last his lifetime, rubbed the dust from his eyes and spat in the road. “Push them back. They’re killing the Jews. Like they did in Poland. Behind us as we run away. They’re killing all the Jews they can find.”

  I snapped, “Watch what you say. We have children in the car. If you speak fearful things, I will ask you to leave.”

  He apologized. “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

  His companion said, “What he means is, this isn’t like the last war.”

  Even I knew this was nothing like the last war. For the Nazis, this was the battle to cleanse Germany’s defeat in 1918. The Nazis would change the outcome of that peace by simply waging war like no one had ever imagined. Total war. A world established without mercy. What had begun in 1933 with the annihilation of its weakest citizens by German state-sponsored euthanasia had now burst forth in the full bloom of brutality. The goal was simply to eliminate or enslave everyone who was not of German blood.

  The children stirred. Jessica sat up, shifting in the crowded backseat.

  Gina said, “Mommy, are these fellows going to protect us?”

  Little Susan took her sister’s hand. “Look, Judith. Good Belgian soldiers riding with us. No one can get past them. No one can hurt us.”

  Jessica replied, “And angels fly above us and go before us and behind.”

  Judith’s eyes widened. I knew she heard and understood.

  The soldier escorts smiled in through the windows at the youngsters.

  “We haven’t surrendered,” declared a soldier of about sixteen, determined not to speak fearfully in front of the little girls. “We’ll fight them in France. France is strong. Stronger than our homeland. Herr Hitler will not defeat France.”

  None of the six soldiers had weapons. Papa asked, “Where are your rifles?”

  An uncomfortable silence passed between the comrades. The leader shrugged. “We didn’t have bullets. None left. Why should we carry rifles when we have no bullets?”

  I closed my eyes and thought of Varrick and William trying to fight the German Panzers with no ammunition. The vision was too terrible. Everything changed. Every dream broken in a few days. I had not imagined how unprepared the nations of Europe were. Everyone had been unprepared but the Nazis. Even so, I determined I would not be afraid. I would not show fear to the girls, no matter what lay ahead in their journey.

  Jessica divided and distributed a fresh loaf of bread and a sliver of salami to the children and the soldiers.

  The conversation of the men rattled like the idling engine of the Fiat. “If we can only get to France!”

  “Where in France?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “The French poilus will hold back the Nazis. Has anyone got a cigarette?”

  “And the British Tommies. They’re fighting men. We can join up with them. They won the war last time.”

  “Yes. With the Americans.”

  “They did it in the last war.”

  “But I haven’t had a smoke in days. Anyone got a…American cigarettes. Now that’s heaven.”

  “Have the Americans joined the war yet? That President Roosevelt fellow? Has he declared war on the Nazis?”

  “They’ll wait until a million of us have been killed and then they’ll come in. That’s the way they did it last time.”

  “I had a Turkish cigarette from a sergeant in the hospital tent. He said he got it off a dead German. There was blood on it too. But I think it was the sergeant’s blood.”

  “Did you smoke it?”

  “What do you think? Of course.”

  “I’ve never seen a dead German. Never been close enough to see if they even bleed when we shoot them.”

  Fingers of smoke from Belgian towns and villages pointed skyward as the Fiat crept forward no faster than a walk. As far as I could see there was no break in the human tide on the highway, either ahead or to the rear.

  “Papa,” I said, studying the profile of my father’s exhausted face, “let me drive.”

  He nodded, held the wheel of the idling car, and switched places with me. I took the wheel and, within seconds, he slumped onto the leather seat and slept. I covered his face with his hat. The wheels idled forward. Pedestrians passed the car.

  I spoke to the officer of the Belgian troops. “Where are you from?”

  “Bruges,” he said.

  “You have family there?”

  He shrugged and gave a rueful grin. “I sent them to my wife’s mother’s for safety…in Brussels.” Unable to wave because of the sling on one arm and his grip on the car with the other, he jerked his chin towards the swarm of refugees. “The house is deserted. So they are out here, somewhere.”

  The first warning of the new attack came from shouts and cries on the road ahead. With the car still barely creeping forward, climbing a long, slight hill in the Belgian countryside, suddenly people were leaping toward the sides of the road.

  The pencil-shaped body of a Dornier bomber crested the summit no more than two miles away. At barely above treetop level, its machine guns strafed the packed roadway. The ratcheting assault of its weapons cleared the pavement like a broom sweeps dry leaves.

  Vaulting over stonewalls, fleeing pedestrians collided with each other. A pair of men exchanged blows with their fists when neither would move out of the way.

  Three soldiers bailed from the Fiat’s running boards.

  I clamped a hand over the officer’s grip. “Help me,” I demanded. “With the children. Jessica,” I said. “Get out.”

  “Can’t,” my sister returned, thrusting Gina forward. “Too slow. Save her.”

  Letting the Fiat steer itself, I passed my niece toward the officer, then flung the door wide. “Come on! Come on!” I shouted to Judith and Susan.” Then: “Papa, wake up! Papa!”

  Anguished cries rose from the road as machine-gun bullets tore into flesh and shattered bone. With Judith clinging to my neck and Susan toted by another Belgian soldier, I jumped into the bottom of a roadside ditch.

  An overturning cart spilled a heap of suitcases down on top of us.

  Ludicrously, I crouched behind a fabric rampart as the Dornier roared closer.

  Burying Judith beneath me, I shut my eyes as bullets pocked the roadway and sliced through the Fiat. The warplane flashed overhead, seemingly close enough to touch. It continued down the highway, lancing the massed humanity and draining out its life.

  Then its guns fell silent.

  I raised up cautiously.

  The Belgian captain stood, still holding Gina in his good arm. “Out of ammo,” he said of the plane, and then about Gina, “she’s fine.”

  Judith and Susan were likewise unharmed.

  The Fiat continued idling forward down the center of the highway.

  Papa! Jessica!

  Setting Judith atop a suitcase, I ran toward the car, breathing a sigh of relief when I heard Jessica crying in the backseat. She, at least, was alive.

  Flinging wide the door, I stomped on the brake pedal and stopped the auto.

  “Are you—?”

  “I’m fine,” Jessica returned. “Terrified, but fine. The girls?”

  “Safe.” I shook my father’s shoulder. “Papa?”

  He roused himself and yawned. “My turn to drive?”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “You didn’t know? Bullets just missed the car.”

  “No,” Jessica corrected, pointing upward.

  In the fabric of the Fiat’s cloth top two thumb-sized holes had appeared. The rips matched another set of gouges in the upholstery—one in the driver’s seat where I had been and the other in the rear seat, where Judith and her sister had been.

  The Fiat’s engine continued ticking normally, in faithful unconcern.

  When I returned to the ditch to retrieve th
e children, Judith remained atop the stack of luggage. As I reported that no one had been hurt and even the car was almost unscathed, a shy smile spread across the nine-year-old’s face. The angels had been on duty, exactly as required.

  By the next morning the stream of refugees swelled like tributaries dumping into one great river. Individuals melded into one mighty teeming mass—bundles tied on weary backs; in rickety carts; employing bicycles and rusty jalopies that were in much worse shape than the old Fiat. Black smoke bubbled from the tailpipe of the vehicle, and the engine emitted an ominous knocking.

  Ahead, a military motorcycle corps cut through the crowd. Shouting for civilians to get out of the way, they led a thundering herd of army trucks, like elephants in camouflage. These were followed by rows of small-caliber artillery, mounted on tractors.

  Papa pulled to the side of the road. Refugees scattered in the fields to either side.

  Papa said, “Scots Guards and the Queen’s Own Westminsters.” He grimaced. “You can tell where the Germans are by the direction the Allies are traveling.”

  Jessica, ashen-faced, asked, “But isn’t that the same road we were—”

  I grasped the situation at once. “The Germans are between us and Paris, then?”

  Papa nodded. “So we’ll go north. If they’re between us and Paris, we’ll go around the battle. Ghent. Flanders and then…” He frowned as he glanced at Jessica.

  “Where?” I breathed the question on the minds of thousands. Where?

  Papa reached past me and grasped a small red volume of the guidebook Baedeker’s Belgium.

  Opening a map, he studied it as yet another fleet of military lorries rumbled past in a cloud of choking dust. “The BEF and the French are also between us and Paris. Here.” His finger stabbed the page. “As long as we stay behind British lines, we’re safe.”

  “Ghent? Flanders?” I peered over Papa’s shoulder and traced the threading highway northwest on the map. “There are so many hotels there. Remember when we stayed at the Victoria? Jessica could rest, Papa. Ghent. A doctor if the baby—”