CHAPTER SIXTEEN
André into the Fighting
ANDRÉ’s trip with Victor was unexpectedly easy at the beginning.
When they passed through Ste. Mère, the town seemed almost quiet, although the litter and destruction on all sides were heartbreaking.
Beyond the town, the roads were clogged.
Victor was not challenged as they wove through marching troops and rolling equipment.
“That looks very unpleasant ahead of us,” Victor stated disapprovingly, when they had crossed the Merderet River bridge.
Shell bursts, dust and smoke hung over the once orderly fields and patches of woods. Noises burst out loudly behind clumps of trees and died away.
Presently, Victor announced: “We proceed but a short distance farther along this road. At an oak tree ahead we turn left to the village where my daughter is.”
It was then that André put forward his own plans. He watched Victor’s look of shocked surprise anxiously. Suppose Victor would not let him go?
“But,” Victor said, “you know I cannot accompany you into St. Sauveur now. Surely you comprehend that!”
André said firmly, “I did not expect it, Victor. I go on with Patchou only. Captain Dobie is near here, so I won’t be alone.”
Even as André said this, he began to doubt whether Captain Dobie would welcome him. He also began to wonder whether he could find the captain’s new post.
As he and Victor drew nearer St. Sauveur, André began to notice that the sound of firing came from many directions. He turned his eyes from north to south and counted several rising pillars of smoke. Sometimes the ground shuddered and rocked the cart.
“It will not be easy to enter the city,” he thought.
But after he and Victor had talked a minute, Victor agreed to let him go.
“However, you must use good sense,” Victor said, as André climbed down from the cart. “Do not approach a single German, even if he looks kindly. You must recall that not all Nazis are like our Papa Schmidt.”
After this good advice, he added, “You are quite right to seek your mother. I shall no doubt get along without you well enough.”
With this, he clacked the reins and drove off.
André and Patchou skirted the jumbled rubble that had once been the village of Pont l’Abbé. They continued on through bypaths and across fields.
“If you stay close to me, you may walk,” André told Patchou. Patchou trotted along obediently, his trembling shoulder pressed tightly against André’s leg.
André looked at the skyline ahead. As he stared, new blazes broke out. Billowing smoke hung over St. Sauveur beyond the hills. After a moment he realized that the city was being bombarded by big guns.
“We may as well get as close to Maman as we can,” he murmured. “Come along, Patchou.” He could see a file of soldiers, hugging the roadside and straggling toward the city.
He led Patchou into a cowpath and they trudged on.
Twice André pulled Patchou down into a ditch as rifle and machine gun fire broke out in near-by villages.
After the second dive into a ditch, André sat thoughtfully silent. It would be better to go back, he knew. But then he thought of his empty house—
“Come on, Patchou,” he whispered. “When we get across the main road to St. Sauveur, just over there, we will try to find somebody to tell us how to find Maman in the hospital.”
They scurried across the tree-lined highway.
Where they crossed, the road seemed deserted. André could not see far in any direction. Back in the fields a stone barn stood among shredded trees below a hill. A château stood on the hilltop, almost hidden by trees.
Just as André looked up, a shell arched down from the sky a hundred yards away.
Before André could grab Patchou’s collar the explosion showered them both with stones and mud.
André reached wildly for Patchou and ran headlong with him into the field toward the nearest building he could see—the stone barn.
The blast of another shell threw André onto his face in a hail of debris. And Patchou twisted with a wild jerk and broke away.
André leaped to his feet, shrieking, “Patchou! Patchou!”
But Patchou had disappeared! And while André called wildly, another voice shouted, “Here, kid! Come here! The barn! Run, kid—run!”
The scream of another “88” from the sky brought André to his senses.
He saw a figure in the half-open door of the barn waving to him frantically.
André raced up to the entrance and threw himself into the arms of the tall soldier who had called. The door banged shut and the bolt was shot. Immediately a patter of machine-gun bullets rattled against the broad iron hinges. The hail of bullets whined and thudded steadily.
Another voice in the barn shouted angrily, “Where are the reinforcements, Lieutenant Ouvarski? Our ammo isn’t going to hold out much longer.”
The strong arms that had pulled André in set him on his feet, and he caught a glimpse of a lieutenant’s shoulder bars.
The lieutenant said gently, “It’s all right, boy. But what were you doing in the battle area?”
André could only gasp for breath. After a moment he stammered, “I—I didn’t know I was so close to the line. Patchou? Can I get him soon?”
The light, from broken places in the roof high overhead, was dim. André caught glimpses of shadowy faces stationed at windows and small breaks in the walls. Rifles cracked, and a bazooka at a far window flamed.
“We’re in a German trap,” the lieutenant explained to André hastily. “I sent out for help. I hope it comes. You get over in that manger, kid, and keep down.”
Then the lieutenant turned to shout orders and warnings to his men. “Don’t show yourself above that window again, Donovan! You want to get hit?”
“Two Heinies edgin’ around that wall,” screamed an unseen rifleman. “Watch it, Lieutenant!”
After a shattering fusilade of machine-gun fire against the old stone walls, a sudden silence fell. And outside, a German voice called, “Do you giff up, or do we take you, vun by vun?”
Silence fell again. And then the bark of the lieutenant’s automatic. Six rapid shots.
“There’s your answer, Fritzie boy!” Lieutenant Ouvarski growled.
The voice outside did not speak again. The lieutenant wiped his face on the sleeve of his shirt.
André thought, “I hope my mother and father and Marie are in a deep stone cellar.” Then suddenly he was too tired to remember why he was there.
He did not even hear the corporal say, “What does old Dobie think he’s doin’ about those reinforcements he promised? Sendin’ ’em by way of Alaska?”