Night of Flames: A Novel of World War II (24 page)

“But the war will be over by then, and I’ll miss all the action.”

Marchal sighed. “I pray to God every day that’s true.” He gave his son a hug.

• • •

Douglas W. Jacobson

By eleven o’clock everything was ready. Marchal walked around the fi eld for a last-minute check. The fi eld was about two hectares of clear, fl at grass surrounded on three sides by dense pine trees. The fourth side, also well populated with pine trees, sloped down to the Ourthe River. At each corner of the fi eld was a hole, approximately a meter across and a meter and a half deep.

Jean-Claude, Luk and Justyn had dug them last week then carefully concealed them with tarps and pine branches.

Now the tarps were removed and lanterns placed at the bottom of each hole.

As soon as they heard the airplane they would light the lanterns, which would be easily spotted from the air but invisible to anyone at ground level.

Marchal walked to the side of the fi eld nearest the river and joined the rest of the crew standing inside the tree line with the horses and wagons. There were seven of them: four men and three teenage boys. They all knew their tasks. They had done this before.

A little after one o’clock in the morning, Marchal heard an approaching airplane. He looked at his friend Paul Delacroix and nodded. The sound was the low, reverberating rumble of a heavy transport and not a Luftwaffe fi ghter.

Marchal shouted, “Go,” and the three boys ran out to light the lanterns.

The plane passed overhead, circled around and headed back toward the fi eld. Marchal sat in his wagon and watched the plane approach, just above the treetops. One by one, fi ve parachutes emerged from underneath the wide fuselage and descended to the fi eld. Large, wooden crates swinging from the bottom of each parachute dropped with a dull thud onto the fi eld as the plane gained altitude and disappeared.

Jean-Claude and the other two boys ran into the middle of the fi eld as soon as the last crate hit the ground and began pulling in the parachutes. Marchal fl icked the reins, and his horse trotted into the fi eld, pulling the wagon. Paul Delacroix did the same in the second wagon.

In less than ten minutes all fi ve crates were loaded onto the wagons, the lanterns extinguished and the four men were gone. The three boys stayed behind to fi ll in the holes and remove all traces of the operation.

By two-thirty in the morning the crates were unloaded and the materials stored in the cellar below Delacroix’s barn. The husky, gray-haired man wiped his hands on his coveralls and produced a dusty bottle of
pequet
from a shelf above the tool bench. He handed it to Marchal who took a swig of the potent, Night of Flames

157

locally produced liquor and passed it around. It was vaguely similar to vodka but a long way from the cognac they would normally have had during better times.

Delacroix read aloud from the checklist that had come with the drop. “Fifty kilos of plastique, sixty-fi ve detonators and timing pencils, twenty Colt 45s, ten Sten guns, one Bren gun, two thousand rounds of ammunition, thirty hand grenades and ten thousand francs in small bills.”

“Pas mal,”
Marchal said, “not bad. I guess that’ll take care of a few more freight trains and supply dumps.”

He glanced at Jean-Claude as his seventeen-year-old son, tall and blond, big-boned but still youthfully slender, took a swig of the
pequet.

The boy grimaced, caught his father’s eye and smiled.

After two weeks of surveillance Jean-Claude knew the schedule. The heavily laden trains hauling coke from the plants in Liege to the German-controlled steel mills in Luxembourg crossed the Ourthe River every night between eleven o’clock and midnight. Once over the bridge, the trains labored to climb the grade and slowed to less than 10 km/hr as they headed south. The terrain was hilly, heavily wooded and very remote. It was perfect.

Standing on the tracks, Jean-Claude looked back toward the lean-to he and Henri Delacroix had constructed. It was well concealed in a hollow about fi fty meters downhill and west of the raised rail bed. It had served as their home for most of the last two weeks. He glanced at Henri then looked at his watch.

It was a little after three o’clock in the afternoon, and the two teenagers set off along the tracks toward the bridge.

They crossed the bridge and continued along the tracks for another kilometer until they came to a crossing with a narrow dirt road. They left the tracks and found a spot hidden among the trees to wait.

An hour later Jean-Claude heard the creaking sound of wagon wheels. The two boys waited until the wagon was almost on top of them and they were certain who it was, before emerging from the cover of the trees.

Jules van Acker drove the wagon, and Jean-Claude’s father sat next to him.

Paul Delacroix sat on a bench in the back of the wagon along with another man from La Roche, a quiet, thin man of about fi fty, whom Jean-Claude knew only as “Gaston.” Jean-Claude guessed from the man’s cultured, more refi ned 158

Douglas W. Jacobson

accent, that Gaston might originally be from Brussels.

When the wagon groaned to a halt, the two boys hurried to the back and began lifting out the heavy canvas packs, which had been concealed under a load of freshly harvested beans. Without exchanging a word, the two boys, their fathers and Gaston each strapped on one of the canvas packs and set off down the railroad tracks. Van Acker turned the wagon around and headed back.

Back at the lean-to, Jean-Claude watched as his father and Gaston removed the materials from the backpacks and spread them neatly on the canvas tarp that served as the fl oor. There were twenty kilos of putty-like plastique, which Gaston carefully divided into four, 5-kilo packs, wrapping each one in a piece of heavy cloth. His father removed four reels of wire from the packs and handed two each to Jean-Claude and Henri.

Then the fi ve saboteurs climbed up the hill to the railroad tracks and headed south to a point where the rail bed began banking and curving to the east.

Gaston held up his hand, and the group stopped. The thin man looked carefully north and south along the tracks.

Jean-Claude knew he was calculating the curvature of the tracks and the angle of the bed.

“A little farther,” he said and the group walked another thirty meters down the tracks.

Gaston stopped and nodded. He knelt on the wooden ties and pointed to a spot alongside each of the rails. Paul and Henri Delacroix set to work attaching the packs of plastique to the rails. Jean-Claude and his father followed Gaston another forty meters down the tracks and did the same.

When all four charges had been secured to the rails, Jean-Claude stood off to the side and watched Gaston meticulously insert the detonators and make each connection to the reels of wire. He must be an engineer of some type, the boy thought, perhaps an army offi cer, a demolitions man. Had he been in the
Chasseurs Ardennais
like his father?

Finally Gaston stood and wiped his hands on his trousers. Marchal and Delacroix began to unwind the reels, backing off the rail bed and down the hill.

It was dark by the time the group returned to the lean-to and settled in to wait for the train.

Jean-Claude looked at his watch when he heard the fi rst unmistakable chugging of a steam locomotive. It was 11:15. His father doused the lantern, and Night of Flames

159

the dark moonless night enveloped the saboteurs.

The sound grew louder.

They were all on their knees. Marchal gripped the handle of the plunger.

The venting steam and scraping wheels of the massive freight train grew louder and louder.

“Should be crossing the bridge now,” Jean-Claude said, his voice cracking.

He and Henri had been listening to these trains for fourteen days, and he had become intimately familiar with the sounds and vibrations that ran through the ground. He was excited. Ever since the war broke out he had longed to be a part of the action, to be a fi ghting man like his father, and now he was getting his chance. He was proud of the surveillance work he and Henri had done. He hoped his father would be as well.

The clamor of the straining locomotive became deafening, then abruptly dropped in pitch as it passed their position, heading south.

Gaston put a hand on Marchal’s shoulder and counted,
“Un, deux, trois,
quatre—”

He squeezed Marchal’s shoulder.

A fl ash of brilliant white light . . . Then a thunderous explosion knocked Jean-Claude to the ground. Three more fl ashes and eardrum-shattering concussions followed in split-second intervals.

Jean-Claude covered his ears and crawled to the far corner of the lean-to as the shrill sound of screeching metal penetrated every fi ber of his body.

Massive trees snapped like matchsticks as the heavily loaded railcars careened off the tracks and plunged into the forest with deep, booming
thuds.

It continued for several long minutes: screeching metal, snapping trees, and
thud
after
thud
as the railcars and thousands of tons of cargo piled up in the valley on the other side of the tracks.

Then it was over and the forest was quiet.

Chapter 30

Rene Leffard sat at one of the small round tables in front of the Den Engle café on the Grote Markt, in the center of Antwerp. He took a sip from his glass of weak, wartime beer. Of all the fi ner things about life in prewar Belgium that Leffard missed, the normally excellent beer ranked right at the top. Fine wines, real coffee, good food—all just distant memories.

But, as he glanced around, Leffard smiled. It was a warm September afternoon, and the cafés around the Grote Markt were practically full. Most people in Antwerp had diffi culty just fi nding enough food but here, on a pleasant autumn afternoon, they joined their friends at the cafés, as they had for genera-tions. In his heart, Rene Leffard knew they would survive.

“
Bonjour,
Rene,” Willy Boeynants said as he slipped into the metal chair across from Leffard.

Leffard nodded and signaled to the waiter to bring another beer. The two friends exchanged small talk about the weather until the waiter delivered their beers and departed.

Boeynants took a sip of beer and grimaced. He set the glass down and glanced around at the other patrons. “The last train wreck has caused quite a stir,” he said quietly. “The head of our department is beside himself, and the Gestapo boys are running around like crazy covering their asses.”

“Anything we need to be worried about?” Leffard asked.

“
Non,
not any more than usual, I suppose. But it may be a good idea to tell van Acker to lay low for a while. There’s a lot of pressure coming from Berlin, and the Gestapo’s going to pull out all the stops trying to fi nd out who’s doing this. We’ve hit them pretty hard the last few months, you know.”

Night of Flames

161

Leffard stared into his beer glass contemplating the situation. Boeynants was right of course. Van Acker’s White Brigade cell had indeed hit the Germans pretty hard. Since late spring they had pulled off three train wrecks, blown up two refueling stations and set fi re to a munitions plant. Was it time to lay low?

Leffard lifted the glass and took a sip. That may be the prudent thing to do, he thought. But, they were at war. Risks had to be taken. He fi nished the beer and tossed some coins on the table. “
Je comprends.
Just let me know if you hear anything more.”

Chapter 31

It was uncharacteristically hot for early October in London. Colonel Stanley Whitehall sat in his steamy offi ce at the headquarters of the Special Operations Executive on Baker Street, staring at the latest decoded dispatch from Poland. He loosened his tie, stained with gravy from this noon’s lunch, and read it over a second time, wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief.

This was the third report forwarded to him from MI-6 on the same subject and, from the tone of the note attached to it, the intelligence boys were getting nervous. They wanted verifi cation, and that meant only one thing: someone would have to go over there. Where in the hell is Blizna? he thought to himself as he got up and lumbered across the offi ce to get a map of Poland from the fi ling cabinet.

A few minutes later, Captain Roger Morgan walked into Whitehall’s offi ce, carrying the fi le he had been reviewing, and sat down in the single wooden chair, sliding it a few feet to the left to catch some of the paltry breeze from the fan whirring away on the top of the fi ling cabinet.

Whitehall looked up from the map that was spread out across the cluttered metal desk and squinted at him over the top of his wire-rimmed reading glasses.

“Christ, it’s way down south, east of Krakow.”

“What is?” Morgan asked, in confusion.

“Blizna,” Whitehall said removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “The bombed-out little village where all this crazy activity is supposedly taking place.

God, these Polish names will drive me up the wall. Is that the fi le?”

“Yes,” Morgan said, tossing the thin folder on top of the map.

“Give me a summary,” Whitehall said, leaning back precariously in his chair.

Night of Flames

163

Morgan took the fi le and opened it, fl ipping through the fi rst few pages.

“Well, the chap’s name is Jan Kopernik. He’s a cavalry offi cer, career man, a major with some demolition training to boot. He was a regimental commander with the Wielkopolska Brigade in ’39. Fought in the Battle of the Bzura—”

“God, bloody affair that was,” Whitehall interrupted. “Sorry, old man, go on.”

“Well, let’s see, after Warsaw fell he led what was left of his regiment out of Poland and made it to Hungary where they were interned. He was, as you know, sent off on that mission to Krakow then returned to Hungary. He eventually got his men to France though they didn’t arrive until just before the invasion in May of ’40. He fought at Montbard where he was pretty severely wounded, evacuated from Marseille in a hospital ship and spent a year recu-perating in London. In ’42, he was transferred up to Scotland and assigned to the Polish First Armored Division.”