A Troubled Peace Page 6

  Henry nodded again. It was a simple but brilliant way to sandwich the Nazis and squeeze.

  “So we prepared. We made an airstrip in Vassieux to receive four thousand Allied and French paratroopers that de Gaulle promised to send to help us fight. In June, the BBC broadcast the order: Les montagnards doivent continuer à gravir les cimes. The mountaineers must continue to climb the heights.”

  The doctor paused, closing his eyes, as if listening to the radio once again. “So we closed the passes. We raised our flag. We attacked Nazi convoys and patrols. But the plan’s success, our survival, depended entirely on the paratroopers coming. Our maquis were excellent fighters, but they only numbered a few hundred. All we had were peasants, horse carts, and whatever guns we could steal. And courage, of course, a legion of courage and esprit de corps.”

  Henry noticed the doctor’s hands had begun to tremble.

  “All through France, underground Resistance newspapers celebrated our bravery, using us to inspire other Frenchmen to rise up. Despite this, no paratroopers came. We were left to face the Nazis alone.”

  Henry felt sick. He knew just how the SS and the Gestapo would react to such defiance. “Nothing? The Allies sent nothing? Are you certain your radio signals got through?”

  “Oh, they got through.” Anger crackled through the doctor’s voice. “For weeks, de Gaulle’s headquarters radioed back, telling us to hold on a few more days, that there were weather delays, that the paratroopers might be needed elsewhere, Eisenhower’s forces were pinned down at Normandy, that our airstrip needed a few more yards of length before they could use it. London did parachute in Sten guns and Enfield rifles. Oh, yes, and machine guns from World War One. The guns jammed the first time they were fired—by eight farmers trying to hold back three hundred German soldiers armed with tank mortar that blasted holes in mountain rock.

  “We also begged the Allies to bomb the Nazi airfield in Chabeuil.”

  “Wait,” Henry interrupted. “I came past that airfield. I saw destroyed Junkers. We must have bombed it.”

  “Your Allies claimed their air reconnaissance showed only ten planes. Therefore, the field was not a ‘credible threat’ worth risking fliers and aircraft. What about the risk to our villagers, our children? We radioed back that our spies knew the Nazis had hidden sixty planes in the forest. Finally, the Americans were sent to fly a raid. But they hit the wrong field, miles away. When they did hit Chabeuil, it was already too late.”

  Henry hung his head. He knew how orders were often messed up when transmitted from the French through the British to the Americans. Crews could be sent to bomb the wrong sites and then redeployed the next day to correct the mistake, needlessly risking their lives twice. The fliers had a word for it: snafu—situation normal all fouled up.

  He persisted in trying to find something positive. “But we dropped personnel. When I was here last spring, there were SOE men, British special ops, experts in explosives and espionage. Right?”

  “Yes, they sent SOE. The British also dropped engineering officers to guide the airstrip construction and “pianists,” radio operators. The American OSS parachuted in fifteen rangers led by two young lieutenants from South Carolina and Texas we could barely understand.” The doctor tied off the coil of bandages around Henry’s chest with an irritated yank that made Henry gasp. “Brave men but not exactly the four thousand paratroopers we expected.”

  The doctor’s bitter sarcasm grew. “But of course, we are grateful for the great patriotic display on Bastille Day, July Fourteenth. In broad daylight, seventy-two Flying Fortresses roared over Vassieux, escorted by fighters from Algiers. We rejoiced, thinking, finally, the paratroopers had come. But it was more arms and food containers, eight hundred of them, floating to earth on red, blue, or white parachutes. The planes circled and then roared away.

  “Those canisters barely hit the ground before the Luftwaffe flew in from Chabeuil, alerted by the sound of all those engines, the sight of all those chutes. Villagers tried to cut loose the containers, to salvage what they could. They were gunned down. Within days, ten thousand German troops invaded our little mountain citadel.”

  Henry couldn’t believe it, desperately didn’t want to believe it. Flying Fortresses were B-17s, American bombers. How could headquarters be that stupid—that many planes in broad daylight was like painting a big red arrow in the sky. “But didn’t de Gaulle back you? He was your leader. His Free French Army was just across the Mediterranean in Algeria. He could have flown in reinforcements within a few hours. Did he know what was happening?”

  The doctor glanced nervously to the square outside the church, where his “boss” was sitting, hunched, staring off into space, holding a cup of barley coffee he wasn’t drinking. “Oh yes, de Gaulle’s headquarters knew. Le patron radioed for an immediate air bombardment, saying if they did not at least do that, they were criminals and cowards.”

  He lowered his voice. “Some believe de Gaulle’s people betrayed us. What is the American phrase? Hmmm—‘Sold us out.’ Correct?”

  Henry nodded.

  “We may have been nothing more than a diversion, a way to distract the Nazis while the Allies battled in Normandy.

  “We know now that there were many French paratroopers in Sicily awaiting orders. They were so frustrated at sitting, doing nothing, they nicknamed themselves les paratouristes. It seems de Gaulle and his senior staff planned to use them elsewhere, while praising our courage through radio broadcasts. I believe they were already thinking politically rather than militarily.”

  “I am sorry, doctor, I don’t understand what you mean.”

  The doctor narrowed his eyes. “After the humiliation of our long occupation, de Gaulle wanted France to feel strong again, to look like the French were freeing France, not just helping the American and British do so. He was saving those paratroopers for a drop into the Massif Central, in the middle of France, where it would be easier to make it into Paris with the Americans and British.”

  He leaned forward. “Some speculate that de Gaulle doesn’t want communists and socialists in his new government, even though he needed us to liberate France. Le patron is a socialist. Many of us here are communists.” He shrugged. “Interpret it as you will.”

  Henry was stunned. The Allies hadn’t even completely won the war yet—how could the French already be fighting amongst themselves?

  The doctor tilted Henry’s head toward the light to look at his forehead, which was still oozing blood from le patron’s blow. “This will heal on its own. It looks as if it was stitched up recently.”

  Henry blushed. He definitely didn’t want to admit to the shenanigans of that late-night flight of his. “My mother sewed me up after an accident on the farm.”

  “I could use her here,” the doctor murmured.

  “Don’t you have a nurse to help you?”

  The doctor’s face darkened. “No. No longer. We hid wounded maquis in a cave, Grotte de la Luire. But les boches found us. They slit the throats of the wounded and let them slowly gag to death. The seven women who helped tend them were deported to Ravensbruck. The other doctors and our hospital priest were executed by firing squad. I escaped into the cavern’s underground passageways with a patient. We waited three days before coming out.” He closed up his bag with a snap. “I am not proud of it.”

  He turned to go. Henry caught his arm. “What happened to the villagers?”

  “What happened?” the doctor croaked, his face haggard. “After that parachutage, the Germans dropped incendiary bombs on our towns. They strafed anyone running from the fires. They used our airfield—that de Gaulle’s staff had claimed was too short—to land gliders, carrying SS with orders to exterminate.

  “Exterminate.” The doctor half-sobbed the word. “They slaughtered two hundred people around Vassieux alone, old men, children, women. They castrated men, raped women, gouged out eyes, cut out tongues.

  “There was a twelve-year-old girl buried under rubble, who pleaded for help and wat
er for days. The Nazis laughed at her and shot any survivor who tried to approach to save her. Finally Father Gagnol”—he nodded toward the soft-handed man—“convinced them to let him dig her out. He brought her to the hospital. But it was too late. She died.”

  The doctor ripped his arm away from Henry’s grip. “Patron,” he cried, “I am done here.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Henry sat dazed, horrified, incapable of absorbing it all, because to do so, he would have to comprehend it. How could anyone understand such savage behavior?

  He had seen friends mangled by flak. He’d survived Luftwaffe pilots trying to blast him to bits. He’d endured being tortured physically and psychologically by the Gestapo. Becoming the object of that kind of calculated cruelty, like a mouse toyed with by a cat, changed a man—and not for the better. But it was nothing compared to what the doctor described, that kind of sadistic annihilation of an entire valley of people.

  How could anyone go on after witnessing that?

  Henry watched le patron ease himself up off the bench, square his shoulders, and turn to come into the church. The priest shadowed him, protective.

  That was how. One step in front of the other. Breathe in. Breathe out. Remember the kindness, the bravery that managed to flicker amid such darkness. Like Pierre. Keep faith in that capacity within humans and follow the beacon up out of the abyss. One step in front of the other—a slow march back.

  If this grizzled maquisard could keep walking after such devastation, Henry sure could, too.

  Henry rose, straightened his spine to ease the bite of his rib, and extended his hand to shake the old warrior’s. They were compatriots of a sort—waging war against their own internal demons of regret as surely as they had fought real battles against the Nazis. Henry understood why le patron hit him, the lunacy of it. Perhaps he was suffering flashbacks, too, and he saw Henry as the personification of those who had betrayed “his children.” Sometimes crazy actions carried their own logic. After all, Henry had stolen a plane to talk to God in a midnight sky. It’d made complete sense to him at the time.

  Henry wasn’t going to expect an apology from the old fighter. He’d make it all right for the guy. Le patron had known enough humiliation.

  As Henry grasped le patron’s hand and smiled reassuringly, he could see a quiet gratitude in le patron’s deep-set, droopy eyes. Recognizing it, Henry felt some of his own turmoil fall away.

  Maybe it took a broken rib for him to begin to mend.

  “Henry Forester, sir. Second lieutenant, American Air Forces.”

  Le patron nodded in greeting and gestured to the pale-faced man. “This is Father Gagnol.”

  It was the first time Henry really had a good look at the priest. He caught his breath. It was Pierre’s priest. He was certain of it.

  “Father. Boy, am I glad to see you!” Henry was so excited he got all tangled as he blurted out why. “You’re just the person I’m looking for. Well, not the person, but the person who can help me find the person.”

  The priest shook his head. “Slow, my son. My English is not that fast.”

  How could he be slow now? Henry wanted to jump up and down like he had when he was little and trying to grab Lilly’s attention. “I’ve come back to find Pierre.”

  “Who?”

  “Pierre!”

  “There are…were…many Pierres here, lieutenant.”

  Henry took a deep breath to make himself coherent. “Right. Of course. Let me explain. Last year, end of May, maybe the very first of June, I’m not sure exactly of the date, I brought a little boy to you. Your maquis was moving me. The Milice had arrested Pierre’s mother and shot his grandfather. Pierre was eight years old. I gave him my good-luck marble. You said you knew monks who would protect him.”

  “Ahhhhh.” The priest finally brightened. “I know this boy. Pierre Dubois.” He paused, thinking. “I did not take him myself. The Milice were here that week, led by that informer.” He looked to le patron. “That devil-woman collaborator, ‘Colonel’ Maude.”

  Le patron scowled. “The one who made Monsieur Bellier sit down naked in a red-hot frying pan.”

  The priest nodded, blinking back tears that had welled up in his eyes.

  Le patron put a large, strong hand on the priest’s shoulder. “You saved twelve from execution that day, mon ami. Your pleas moved monsters.”

  With surprise, Henry looked more carefully at the pale, gentle priest. He remembered his instinctive distrust of him when they’d met the previous year, prejudiced by Clayton’s dismissal of anyone who didn’t do work outdoors or with his own hands. Well, it took a lot of spine to argue with Nazis. Henry’s time on the run had certainly taught him that courage came in all sizes, ages, and gender of people. This journey was teaching him that courage was needed to fight internal battles as well.

  He bit his lip to wait a few beats out of respect for the homage le patron was paying Father Gagnol. Then he tried again. “About Pierre, sir. Do you remember where you sent him?”

  “Yes. We were cut off from the abbey I sent children to before. A thousand Nazis were between us by then. So I sent him with a guide to a monastery north of Grenoble. Far away to be safe. I do not know if he made it. Trouble came to us soon after. I have not thought of him.” He crossed himself. “I will remember him in my prayers from now on.”

  “You have no idea what has become of him?”

  “No. I have buried two hundred of my flock. I lost track of one boy.” The priest spoke angrily, and then waved a hand in apology. “Pardonnez-moi.”

  “What about his uncle Jacques?”

  Father Gagnol turned to le patron. “He was part of the Forêt de Lente maquis.”

  Le patron shook his head. “Dead.”

  “What about the maquisard who led me that night?” Henry pushed on.

  “I do not remember who that was, lieutenant.”

  “He was a kid, maybe sixteen? I didn’t know his name. Pierre was the only one who told his name. Oh, wait. Maybe this will help. He was a musician, a trumpet player, from Paris. His parents had been deported.”

  The priest stopped him. Yes, I know Yves. His father was a half Jew, so he was sent here to hide. Yves had a beautiful voice. He sang for my church.”

  “That’s right! We sang a Louis Armstrong song! He had a great set of pipes. I owe him a record. I promised I’d…” Henry stopped. He could tell from the priest’s face. The musical teenager was dead.

  Henry hung his head, remembering walking down the mountains with the boy, singing, pretending to play trumpets like Armstrong. And their final parting, when Henry asked to know where to send the record album.

  “How will I find you?”

  “Vivant, j’espère.”

  Alive, he hoped.

  This time Henry fell silent and le patron prodded. “What is it that you want? What will you do if you find this Pierre?”

  All this time, Henry hadn’t really thought through that. Until this morning he had hoped—despite all the dire news—to find Pierre safe and sound, his little farm operating happily somehow, his mother making that wonderful fritter of potato and onion. Having now heard the full story of the Vercors’s obliteration, Henry knew his first job was to find Pierre and then help him find whatever was left of his family. With some foreboding, he asked, “Pierre’s uncle thought the mother was shipped to Ravensbruck. Could she have survived?”

  More and more, le patron answered for the two Frenchmen. The priest looked relieved at seeing the old maquisard revive. “A few Ravensbruck prisoners—celebrities—were exchanged,” he began. “De Gaulle’s sister was one. But we have no word of the camp. We hope the…” He paused, and nodded slightly, as if reminding himself of something good about the Allies. “We hope the Americans liberate it. Last week, your General Patton reached Buchenwald. His troops care for the prisoners until they are strong to travel. We look for rooms in houses that are left for those who may come home to us.”

  Henry mulled over the situation.
“I don’t think there is anything else for me to do really but go to that monastery. If Pierre is there, I can look after him until we know what has happened to his mother.”

  “We can care for the child, lieutenant,” said the priest.

  “No! I want to do it,” Henry spoke sharply, and then blushed for it. “He saved my life. He hid me for a month. I am pretty sure the Milice arrested his mother because of me.” He looked at le patron. “It’s important that I make that right somehow.” He paused and added, his voice hoarse, “I promised Pierre that I would be with him in trouble. Unlike the paratroopers, monsieur, I’ve come.”

  The old maquisard crossed his arms across his broad chest and scrutinized Henry. Henry returned the hard gaze. Slowly, le patron smiled. Henry could tell that once upon a time that smile had led to hearty laughter.

  “Then we gather charcoal for my gazogène car. I drive you. The monks may not be helpful.” Le patron clapped the priest on the back. “Pardon, Father. You are the only man of the cloth I trust. You and le Barbu. Remember what le Barbu said when he joined us? He said, ‘I kill Germans with my cross and then read the funeral mass over them.’ A priest to my liking.”

  Le patron picked up his walking stick, adding for Henry’s benefit, “We socialists do not like the Church.” He strode off, shouting over his shoulder, “Come. Vite.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Henry sat on smooth gray leather in the backseat of a Citröen deux chevaux—a trophy stolen from the Germans in Grenoble during a nighttime raid for medical supplies. Le patron’s men had risked the heist because a British SOE officer had landed in a tree when he was parachuted in and broken his arm. The doctor had needed plaster to set it and there had been none left in the Vercors villages.

  “As they leave the hospital, they see the commandant car outside a certain mademoiselle’s apartment, keys inside. Voilà. I ride in style.” Le patron was driving and talking, gesturing with both hands to make his points. More than once Henry had gasped and braced himself, as le patron turned to look at him during the telling of a story and swerved wildly, nearly hurling them off the narrow high cliff roads.