Chapter 4

The French girl introduced herself. She was Marianne, second in command of the local resistance, whose leader was Alain. I shook hands and was introduced to many of the others, but their names were lost in the mists of time.

“Where are you friends?” he asked.

“I have no friends with me,” I replied.

“You blew up the train, the AA guns and that bridge on your own?” he asked. I could sense the amazement in his voice.

“I did, and I plan to annoy the Germans some more before the day is over,” I said.

He stepped closer and shook my hand.

“We have men watching a platoon of Germans hidden in a farm not far from here. Will you help us?”

I could not refuse. My job was to slow the Germans down, and if that meant helping the resistance, then so be it.

“I need to sort out another weapon and some ammo., “I said.

There were plenty of dead Germans in the field, and that meant there were weapons and ammo to be had.

“let’s go and rearm ourselves, and then we need to make a move,” Alain said

We tracked along the hedge line and then went out into the field. I found a well-maintained MP40; the previous over had a canvas ammo carrier over his shoulder with half a dozen mags in there. He also had a Luger pistol and two grenades.

I took all the weapons and then went to the next guy; he had another four mags for the MP40. You can never have enough ammo.

The rest of the resistance guys also looted the dead for guns and ammo. Then Alain led us off toward the farmhouse. We headed into the woods and out along the river bank.

We came to another stand of trees, and two men stepped out of the treeline. Handshakes and kisses on the cheeks followed. Very French, I thought.

“These men will lead us to the farmhouse,” Alain said.

“How many Germans are there,” I asked.

“Marcel is saying between forty and fifty,” Marianne said.

I did a quick head count; there were twenty-three of us.

“Right, let’s go and see what’s what,” I said.

The man called Marcel led us through the trees. We head up a small hill and Marcel used hand signals to say we should stay low.

I glanced around. There was a farm house and some barns and stuff on the other side of the hill. To the right there was a small stand of trees.

To the left was the river with a small bridge. In front of the farm there were two troop carrying trucks. I counted four guards wandering around.

There was smoke coming from the farmhouse chimney

I turned to Marianne, and she smiled at me.

“I don’t like this. The invasion is happening, and yet there are only four guards?”

“Perhaps their commander is not a good soldier?” she said.

“Maybe, but something smells wrong.!” I said.

I shuffled back down the hill; Marianne, Marcel and Alain followed me.

“What is the matter, English? Are you too scared to fight?” Marcel scowled.

At another time, in another place, he would have been on the wrong end of my fist.

Alain stepped in before anything might happen.

“Marcel, there is no place for that kind of talk”, Alain said, and Marcel scowled at him.

“We need to fight for France, we need to show the Bosch we are not cowards!!”

“Have you been watching the farm for long?” I asked.

“For two days, and we saw fifty men go into the barn, and no more have arrived”, Marcel said.

“We can take on fifty men; we have the element of surprise. “Alain said.

“We do, but we need to be sure that...” I didn’t get to end the sentence.

“We are sure we can do this!” Marcel said. His voice was full of anger.

We all looked at each other.

“Right, we split into two teams, and we outflank them!” Alain said. He didn’t sound confident.

He told us the plan, half the guys would go left and attack from the river bank, half would move through the trees on the right.

Alain told Marcel he would fire a flare gun to start the attack.

We headed back up to the top of the hill where the rest of the resistance were wating for us.

Alain pointed to some of his man and told them to go with Marcel and then we headed to the right. Then night was quiet, there was the faint sounds of guns from the coast but where we were was very quiet.

We headed down the hill and crept around the back of the woods. We started to make our way through the trees. We were in a line. It was quiet, too quiet.

I held up my hand to stop the line of resistance fighters, at the same time we head engines starting up and there was no way they were the trucks that had been parked outside the farmhouse.