CHAPTER NINE
Victor Disappears
AS THE jeep bumped rapidly along, André explained to the lieutenant, “I didn’t want to leave there, sir, till I found my friend Victor. He was the one who really stopped that Nazi car, shooting at the tires, I think.”
“He did?” the lieutenant exclaimed. “Well, why did he disappear after we got there?”
One of the guards interrupted. “Old Frenchman? Walrus mustache? With a shotgun?”
André nodded excitedly. “Did you see him?”
“Saw a man like that run back into the orchard of that farm just as we came up.”
André said no more; at least Victor could run.
The jeep had been proceeding cautiously around road blocks and paratroopers. Now it speeded up.
A little while later, André saw the roofs of his own village, and he cried, “Oh! it’s been hit!”
It was a different village than the one André had left. Many shells must have struck it. Trees were shattered and old walls tumbled. Two houses, not far from the Gagnons’, were badly damaged—one lay in smoking ruins.
People of the neighborhood shuffled to and fro with arms filled with possessions.
André called to one of them, “The Cotys and Mme. Lescot—are they all right?”
“Yes. Everyone did what your captain told us to. We ran into the fields and hid in ditches when those German shells started coming. It was not for long. We are told the Maquis found the Nazi gun and blew it up.”
At a sign from André, the jeep slowed and, a moment later, he saw that his father’s house still stood.
In the doorway, Sergeant Weller shouted at sight of the jeep.
“Kid, you had us scared. Where the—where you been?” he demanded tartly of André. But he did not wait for an answer.
He gave the jeep and its load a hasty glance, and cried, “You bringin’ in prisoners, too!” Then, noticing their rank, he added to the lieutenant, in his sharp, official bark, “Bring that German ‘brass’ right in here, sir. Our company colonel’s inside. He’ll sure want to question ’em.”
Inside the house André found a new, older American officer busy with maps beside Captain Dobie.
They received the prisoners coolly.
After questioning the Nazi officers a few moments, Captain Dobie hobbled out to the hallway and closed the door after him. His broken leg wore fresh splints and a new dressing.
The captain looked at André with displeasure. “I should keep a closer eye on you, boy,” he said sharply. “What do you mean by running loose around the country with a war going on?”
Before the captain could continue, Slim sidled through the doorway.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but that lieutenant an’ the guards are sittin’ out there in the jeep. D’ya want ’em to wait, or can they go, the lieutenant says?”
A call from the colonel in the other room, summoning Captain Dobie, interrupted him.
When Dobie returned with the colonel, the Nazis, well covered by guns, were ceremoniously marched back to the jeep.
The American officer’s orders were curt. “Lieutenant, I want these men delivered to the general, by you, personally. He’s somewhere on Utah Beach by now.”
The jeep, loaded like a school bus, turned and disappeared in the direction from which it had just come.