Scorched Earth (12 page)

Edith, Luc and Michel faced a rough ride on the bare floor in the rear, with a strong oily smell and the bicycles packed around them. Daniel had found a corner and snuggled on a mound of greasy mechanic’s overalls, with a padded kneeling-mat under his head. Up front, Marc and PT had dressed themselves in uniform stripped from dead Germans.

At nineteen, PT was older than the 108th’s most recent conscripts, while at sixteen Marc looked young, but not so much that he’d raise suspicion.

‘Any ideas on what I should say if we’re stopped?’ Marc asked.

PT shrugged as he drove fast around a tight corner, making spares and tools crash about in the back.

‘Our uniforms show we’re from the 108th,’ PT said, as he accelerated. ‘Whenever I’ve seen big troop movements the vehicles just get waved through checkpoints.’

‘True,’ Marc agreed. ‘I reckon I can handle a checkpoint, but what if someone looks in the back and sees our passengers?’

‘Prisoners, or something?’ PT suggested.

‘Maybe if we tied them up,’ Marc said, then he shouted into the back. ‘Hey, Luc. Mind if we tie you up?’

Luc’s head popped through the canvas flaps separating the cab from the cargo bay. ‘I’ll put on a mechanic’s overall,’ Luc said. ‘If anyone asks, Daniel, Michel and Edith were arrested for sabotage before we left and have no proper paperwork.’

‘That’s credible
and
it explains the lack of documents,’ Marc said, as he reached into his slightly-oversized German jacket and pulled out several military IDs stripped from the dead Germans. ‘See if one of these looks anything like you.’

As Luc took the IDs and disappeared into the back, PT stopped the truck before turning on to a dirt road that Marc knew well.

‘Used to walk down here every day, between the orphanage and my school,’ Marc said.

PT was more interested in the chunks of bark stripped from trees growing close to the road. ‘Gotta be tanks did that,’ he said.

‘Slow down then,’ Marc warned. ‘Probably not a good idea to run into them.’

‘Tanks aren’t subtle,’ PT answered. ‘We’d hear ’em way before we saw ’em.’

It was a warm night, so the side windows were down and Marc caught a whiff of smoke. He knew that the only thing close by was a row of peasant cottages, with a small farm-supply store at the far end.

PT slowed as they passed a flattened hedge, and while there wasn’t much light, they could see several sets of huge Tiger tank tracks veering off-road towards the cottages. A 60-tonne Tiger will demolish any wall it hits, and it seemed that a line of tanks had gouged through three homes, knocking down the front walls and making roofs cave.

As with the old man splattered by the mobile gun, there was no reason for this carnage beyond enhancing the 108th’s reputation for meanness. Marc recognised most of the distraught people standing beside wrecked homes and glimpsed two bodies laid out, either dead or close to it.

‘Bastards,’ Marc said.

The locals near the road didn’t recognise Marc. They just saw a German truck and German uniforms. PT accelerated because if his home had been demolished, he reckoned he might just be angry enough to shoot at the next bunch of Germans who drove by.

‘There was an old girl who lived in the end house,’ Marc said sadly, taking a last glance back as they sped on. ‘One time a storm broke on our way home from school. I was about six and it was thick mud, so she took four of us boys in and gave us hot milk. I can remember sitting on her floor, with my hair dripping and mud caked up my legs.’

‘Was she still around?’

‘Haven’t seen her in years,’ Marc said. ‘I know one of her sons worked for Morel.’

As this memory faded, Marc realised the burning smell hadn’t. They’d seen no obvious fire at the cottages and the smoke was starting to cloud PT’s view down the road.

‘It’s the orphanage,’ Marc blurted anxiously. ‘It’s over the next hill.’

As his old orphanage came into view, Marc saw its outline lit by orange flames. The main building where the kids slept seemed OK, but the nuns’ accommodation and adjoining chapel were ablaze. PT slowed the truck to a crawl, because tanks had smashed through the orphanage’s boundary wall, leaving the road strewn with chunks of rubble big enough to rip a tyre off its rim.

‘Let me get out,’ Marc said urgently. ‘We need to know how many tanks we’re chasing, and how long since they left.’

Edith and Luc’s heads had popped through the canvas flaps to get a view. The nuns had organised a chain of boys passing buckets and bowls of water from a nearby stream. The fire was out of control, so they were dousing the dry grass between the chapel and the orphanage in the hope that it would stop fire spreading to the orphanage proper.

‘Don’t hang about,’ PT told Marc, as he turned through the orphanage gate. ‘Two or three minutes.’

Marc barely listened, and as he jumped out of the cab a bullet whizzed past, forcing him to his knees.

‘It’s me, Marc Kilgour!’ he shouted, as he raised his hands to the unseen gunman. ‘Don’t shoot!’

The arrival of a German truck had made the nuns send the line of boys scrambling into the surrounding countryside. But a young sister named Mary raced downhill, recognising Marc despite his uniform. Jae’s father was close behind, and sober for once.

‘What happened?’ Marc asked.

‘They were short of rations and must have known that we preserve a lot of food for the boys,’ the sister explained. ‘They arrived twenty-five minutes ago, with six tanks and a line of trucks. They threatened to level the orphanage if we didn’t hand over every scrap of food, then they made some of the older boys help load their trucks. When that was done, they forced five boys into a truck. Things turned nasty when we tried grabbing the boys back. They beat up Sister Fidelis and threw grenades into the chapel.’

Marc was sickened. ‘How old were the boys they took?’

‘Lucien’s the youngest, he’s twelve but big for his age. The others were thirteen or fourteen.’

‘Did the Germans say what they wanted them for?’

This time Farmer Morel answered. ‘They didn’t say anything. But I’ve read that this tactic has been used in the east. There’s a lot of manual labour in the army: latrines, trenches, graves. And why dig yourself when you can force a civilian?’

‘What about Jae?’ Marc asked.

‘They drove across our land tearing through fencing and hedges,’ Morel explained. ‘Jae is safe. She and some of the labourers are out now, fixing holes and rounding up loose animals.’

‘We have to go, Marc,’ PT shouted from the truck. ‘Are you staying or going?’

Morel looked at Marc. ‘Going where?’

Marc felt loyalty to his old orphanage, but there were plenty of nuns and his specialty wasn’t putting out fires or nursing scared kids.

‘Give me thirty seconds,’ Marc shouted to PT, before turning back to Morel and the sister. ‘We’re trying to stop the 108th getting to Normandy,’ Marc said. ‘I can’t promise you anything but I’ll keep an eye out for your boys. Tell Jae that I’ll be back in a few days and that I love her.’

It was a token of how much Farmer Morel had warmed to Marc over the past couple of years that he didn’t baulk.

‘She already knows,’ Morel said. ‘You all be careful. I ran over here to investigate the flames, and almost got myself shot. There’s a broken-down truck on the road, just shy of my farm gates.’

‘German truck?’

Morel nodded. ‘Identical to yours.’

Marc reboarded the truck and updated the others, as PT steered a cautious path through the rubble. Then they worked up a plan for their imminent encounter with the broken-down truck.

Morel had been right. It was a canvas-covered Opel truck identical to their own, but he hadn’t noticed the small, towed artillery gun attached to the rear.

The road was barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass, so PT steered past slowly with one side clattering branches. He stopped when the trucks’ front bumpers were level. A bored-looking soldier sat in the driver’s seat, Germanically blond and no more than twenty years old.

‘We’ve got a mechanic in the back,’ Marc said, in German. ‘You want him to take a look under your hood?’

The young German seemed happy taking it easy at the roadside while his battalion charged towards battle in Normandy.

‘We’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘My partner headed off to find water for the radiator.’

‘Up to you,’ Marc said casually. ‘But the locals don’t like us. I wouldn’t want to be in your seat when the resistance works out that the rest of our battalion has left town.’

Marc’s line seemed to tweak the young soldier’s sense of self-preservation. ‘You could be right,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘So it’s just you?’ Marc asked, as Luc vaulted from the back of the truck, wearing a baggy mechanic’s overall.

The soldier nodded. ‘How come you speak like a frog?’

‘French mother,’ Marc explained, disappointed that strenuous efforts hadn’t disguised his accent.

The only things Luc knew about fixing trucks were a few tips he’d picked up while learning vehicle sabotage during his espionage training. He squeezed between the trucks, carrying a random tool pouch he’d found inside.

The broken-down vehicle’s radiator had overheated and the hood had already been loosened to let out steam. As Luc balanced on the front bumper making thoughtful noises, Edith stepped over the little artillery piece and crept in the back.

Shooting the young German would have been easy, but Marc didn’t like the idea of revenge-happy troops finding a blood-spattered truck outside the farm where his girlfriend lived.

Edith crawled over boxes of 37.5-mm artillery shells. When she got behind the German’s seat she swung a cosh, cobbled together using a sock filled with metal sockets from the mechanic’s chest aboard their truck. It was meant to belt the German in the temple and knock him cold, but he glanced around at the last second and it smacked the bridge of his nose.

Luc had been waiting for Edith’s blow and he jumped off the bumper and opened the driver’s door. As Edith knocked the soldier out with a second coshing, Luc grabbed his boots and yanked him into the road.

Luc looked happy as he put the unconscious soldier in choke hold and throttled him. As the German breathed his last, Marc hopped around the back and inspected the artillery piece.

‘Reckon we could use this?’ Marc asked, as he looked across to confirm that their truck had a suitable towing bar.

‘Do you know how to use artillery?’ Michel asked.

Marc shrugged. ‘It’s basically a gun with massive bullets. How hard can it be?’

As Luc dragged his kill through the roadside hedge and deep into one of Morel’s fields, Marc and Michel unhooked the artillery piece and attached it to their truck, along with several crates of small shells.

Edith searched the truck’s cab and found a road map. It had a route marked all the way from Beauvais to Caen in Normandy, passing through Rouen as Henderson had predicted. Edith didn’t read German well, so she passed the map to Marc.

‘PT,’ Marc shouted, as he ran back to the cab. ‘This map has got
everything
: routes, alternative routes, diversions, weak bridges.’

PT didn’t quite believe it when he saw the map. It was a standard German-language road map that had been carefully adulterated with dozens of hand-stamped symbols, which were explained in a separate key typed on waxy paper.

‘They wouldn’t give a map this detailed to every driver,’ PT said.

Marc thought for a moment before replying. ‘I guess they have to give it to some of them. With air attacks and resistance raids, the 108th will move in smallish groups. And there’s a big risk of getting separated or lost in the dark.’

By this time, Luc was back from hiding the body, while Edith and Michel had transferred a can of fuel and anything else worth having from the broken-down truck.

‘I say we use this map,’ PT said, ‘find a weak spot on the 108th’s route and sabotage as many tanks as we can.’

Edith looked wary. ‘Henderson said—’

PT interrupted. ‘Henderson thought we were gonna be riding bicycles, harassing stragglers and broken-down tanks at the rear. But our truck can cruise three times as fast as the tanks and we’ve got a map that shows us where they’re heading.’

‘We don’t wanna fall too far behind,’ Marc said. ‘Luc can ride up front for a bit. I’ve got the best German, so I’ll study the map in the back and try to find their weak spot.’

Thursday 16 June 1944

A hundred kilometres separated Beauvais from Rouen. It was a seven-hour ride for a Tiger tank that couldn’t risk breaking its drive shaft, but even with a couple of diversions to avoid tank columns and Maquis-infested forests, Henderson’s OT truck reached Rouen’s outskirts in two hours. He’d driven fast and Paul, Joel and Sam were thoroughly shaken in the rear.

Rouen’s half-million population was divided by the River Seine. The main German fuel depot was in an industrial area south of the city. Heavy bombing had damaged the only bridge here and nothing heavier than a motorbike was allowed across.

Instead, the 108th’s advance party had put up signs with directions into the city and Henderson crossed the Seine in the heart of Rouen, before taking a tortuous route south through narrow city streets. Each sign was guarded, lest some mischievous resistance member decided to meddle with it.

‘What’s the plan, boss?’ Paul asked, as he stuck his head through the canvas flaps behind Henderson’s seat.

Henderson tapped the fuel gauge. ‘Running on fumes,’ he explained. ‘So we’ll try and kill two birds with one stone. I’ll follow the signs to the depot, get a fresh tank of diesel and a good look around. Hopefully we’ll be able to work out a way to come back and do some damage before the Tigers get here.’

The French had built the depot close to the river so that supplies could be brought in by tanker. There were three large cylindrical fuel tanks above ground, but these were neglected and Henderson immediately realised that the Germans kept their precious supplies in newer tanks, dug into the ground and shielded by metre-thick concrete.

As the Allied planes now dominated the skies, it was important that the 108th made as much ground as possible under cover of darkness. While the first Tigers wouldn’t arrive for at least five hours, many support vehicles due to reach the depot before sunrise had done so. Henderson found himself in a queue of trucks, Kübelwagens, motorised artillery and half-tracked troop carriers.