CHAPTER NINETEEN
The 82nd Finishes Its Fight
THE building which had housed the patients from the St. Sauveur hospital for a week was being emptied hastily.
A plump older nurse was helping the sick who could walk. Hurrying them into their wraps, she bustled them out to a line of waiting, ancient cars.
Doctors were aiding the more helpless patients.
All of them froze like statues when a shell crashed near by.
“Since dawn,” scolded the nurse, “this racket has been going on. Now, one foot up into the car, dear. Now the other. That’s my good girl. Bon voyage.”
The last to leave were the Gagnons. Pierre walked slowly toward the door with his arm around Mme. Gagnon. She moved stiffly, but without pain.
At the door a doctor smiled at them.
“Do not worry about madame, M. Gagnon,” he said. “She is greatly improved. I expect no more difficulties for her.”
“Merci, doctor,” Pierre replied gruffly.
The doctor peered around the door. “I see that M. Angell is waiting for you in his car. I’m sure you will find his house a fortress of safety.”
His words were drowned in the shriek and explosion of a second shell, and the rending crash of roof timbers. The blast hurtled the three of them into a corner. A shower of falling lath and plaster filled the room.
The doctor and Pierre pulled Mme. Gagnon to her feet.
From outside, the desperate voice of the car driver shrieked, “Hurry, doctor! Come at once! I do not intend to wait till another explosion hits my car.”
Mme. Gagnon shook herself and with great dignity stated firmly, “I can walk. Observe your own step, Pierre. You, also, doctor.”
She crossed the shattered porch and went down the steps. Pierre and the doctor raced to help her into the conveyance.
At the slam of the door, M. Angell was prepared, and the car leaped forward through the gates and into the lane.
Pierre gasped for breath. “I hope your home is safe,” he said hoarsely.
“No place is safe today,” the driver retorted over his shoulder, swinging the battered old car expertly around curves.
Braced as well as she could manage, Mme. Gagnon looked out with horror on the countryside.
“My son and my daughter!” she cried. “Could they exist through such warfare as this? I must know, Pierre. It is worse than I imagined.”
The doctor spoke soothingly, but broke off to shout, “Angell. Watch yourself!”
A soldier had stepped out from the shelter of a ditch with upraised hand. “You must detour,” he said in French. “This lane and the road beyond are mined.” He pointed to one side. “Those fields are safe.”
M. Angell muttered and nosed the car cautiously into the pasture. Circling shell holes, rocking over hummocks, he steered toward a shallow depression some distance ahead. After that he forced the car up a rise.
As they neared the top, the sound of machine guns and rifle fire, which had been muffled, seemed to explode all around them.
M. Angell brought the steaming car to a stop. He surveyed the landscape on all sides.
After a moment he said, “If you will be kind enough to alight, I shall lead you to safety—but on your own feet. We must abandon this vehicle to the mercies of Heaven.”
Mme. Gagnon said to the doctor, “It is cause for rejoicing, doctor, that your cure was successful and I can walk. Stop frowning, Pierre. Each step I take leads toward home.”
“At the moment,” snapped M. Angell, “our steps lead down that slope on the left, toward those cottages. That path,” and he pointed to the château, “leads to my house, but firing of considerable intensity is going on there.”
A tremendous salvo of shells interrupted. Dense white smoke rolled over the hill and drifted through the trees lining the driveway to the château.
“It sounds as though we were moving directly into the middle of a battle,” Mme. Gagnon said.
M. Angell raised his head. “There is a skirmish there on the other side of the hill, which I do not understand,” he said.
Pierre Gagnon stared around.
At a fresh outbreak of gunfire Mme. Gagnon begged him to lower himself.
But Pierre’s eyes were fixed wildly on a point near the cottages. His mouth dropped open and closed again excitedly.
“Maman!” he gasped. “Patchou! I see Patchou!”
The doctor and M. Angell turned to him in alarm.
Mme. Gagnon stood up. “I do not see Patchou,” she cried. “But if he is here, certainly André must be near.”
Suddenly the vague noises broke into a noisy scuffle on the rocky, brush-covered knoll above them. German and American voices rang out angrily.
“It is unbearable!” Mme. Gagnon cried. “I must find André!”
She broke and ran.
Pierre gave a lunge. He caught his wife’s sleeve and was about to pull her to the ground when a racing dog, like a tornado, streaked up the slope.
Patchou danced to Pierre and then to Mme. Gagnon, lathering their hands in rapturous welcome, yelping shrilly.
An American soldier, his shoulders sagging with fatigue, came out of the underbrush. He frowned at the group. “What’re you folks doing out here?” he demanded. “You better come along with me.”
The doctor—the only one of the Normans who understood English—said, “Yes. Most certainly we do not wish to stay here.”
The American started down the slope. Mme. Gagnon and Pierre, attended by the two other men, followed.
“But Pierre,” Mme. Gagnon protested, “why do we follow them? Did Patchou come this way?”
Patchou answered this by tearing ahead with great purpose.
“You see,” said Pierre.
At the foot of the slope the American pushed his way through a break in the hawthornes. At his heels, M. Angell and the doctor gallantly pulled the bushes apart for Mme. Gagnon.
She took a step forward and stood still, a hand clasped to her heart.
Not twenty feet away, standing near a jeep and a cluster of soldiers, were André and Marie.
At the same instant André and Marie saw her. And André hurled himself toward his mother.
“I knew I would find you!” he cried. “I knew!”
Marie and Pierre drew into the family embrace.
Slim and Weller turned to catch each other’s eye. “The kid done it,” Weller said.
Slim sighed. “I shore wish I had that trumpet now,” he said. “I feel awful sentimental.”
Captain Dobie sat back and smoked, watching the happy reunion of the Gagnon family.
When the doctor and M. Angell left to start up the hill Marie broke away from the family to run after them.
“Oh, Monsieur Angell,” she called, “I must tell you how sorry I am your barn was burned. It was so useful to the Maquis. We are grateful to you for letting us use it.”
“It is nothing,” M. Angell replied courteously. “It was for France. However, if you will accept advice from a stranger, I suggest that you now return home with your mother.”
Marie smiled. “I quite agree with you, M’sieur.”
Within a few minutes, trucks and ambulances drew up. The wounded, both American and German, were cared for and taken away.
Weller and Captain Dobie resisted the suggestions of the medics to go back in the ambulance.
“We don’t want no pamperin’,” Weller said shortly. “I’m only nicked, anyway.”
The fighting squads clambered aboard trucks to return to the St. Sauveur front.
The captain leaned from the jeep to talk more easily with Mme. Gagnon and Pierre.
The radio in the car squawked insistently.
“Answer that signal, will you, Weller?” Captain Dobie said.
Weller snapped a switch, said, “Okay, Colonel,” and gave his report on Ouvarski’s rescue.
Then he listened a few minutes and exclaimed, “Yes, Colonel ... I’ll tell the cap’n. Sure will.”
Captain Dobie had stopped talking to listen to Weller.
André asked curiously, “Good news?”
Weller almost shouted, “Our armies are cleanin’ up St. Sauveur, and the 47th’re movin’ on past—headin’ for the coast an’ then Cherbourg.”
“Good,” said Dobie. “Is that all?”
“Nope.” Weller grinned. “The colonel says the 82nd won’t be goin’ on to Cherbourg with the 9th Division. We’re ordered to take the marshy country south of St. Sauveur. An’ after that we’ll get relieved.”
“The 82nd will be out of the war?” Dobie asked.
“Every bloomin’ man of us,” Weller replied. “An’ that means you, too, Cap’n.”
Slim winked at André. “I guess that means you, too, kid,” he said.
Captain Dobie rubbed his hand across his eyes, and said, “After over two weeks of steady fighting I guess the 82nd deserves a rest. Well, give me that phone, Weller.”
When he had finished his call he said to Pierre, “I have sent for a jeep to take you home, M. Gagnon. Do you think you can hang onto André till the jeep gets here?”
Pierre threw back his head in his great, bellowing laugh. “I think so, mon Capitaine,” he roared.
“Never mind, kid,” Weller said. “I promise you we’ll be back. We’ll see you in a week’r two. You just save us some of that good fresh milk.”
Pierre clapped his hand to his head and glared at André.
“Mon Dieu!” he shouted. “The cows!”