began pouring out of their camp onto the roads.
“A minute later there was the sound of motorcycles and cars shrieking
in the streets, and heavy antiaircraft fire.
“Someone cried out, ‘The Invasion has begun! _Parachutists are landing
all around Ste. Mère!_’
“Your father felt that his duty was to remain with Mme. Gagnon. I, that
my duty was to hasten home. And I promised to look after you, André.”
The old man smiled wryly. “I did not have much chance to do that, did I?
“In the midst of it, Marie appeared. She was with Leon Duplis, a Maquis
I know well.
“She said, ‘Father, the Maquis here need women to help with the
villagers. Please do not forbid me to go. In the hospital, Mother is in
good hands.’
“Your father agreed, but not willingly. In another minute Marie and
Leon were on a motorcycle and out of sight.”
“But how did you get home, father? It has been five days,” asked André.
The priest replied, “It was necessary to follow the loneliest roads
through the confusion. One did not know where the shells or the
snipers’ bullets would strike.
“I slept well enough under hedges,” the priest continued. “I was very
kindly given food by many villagers. Sometimes I took refuge in a
church or house. At times I was able to help with the wounded and ill.
And sometimes I stopped to comfort the children.”
Father Duprey rose and put a kindly hand on André’s shoulder. “I am
glad that you were spared, son. Go home now, and do not worry. Even
about Marie. The Gagnons are a family that for two hundred years has
not been easily crushed.”
André went slowly down the parsonage steps.... On the first night of
the invasion his parents had been safe. But that was four days ago, he
thought.
A loud shout stopped him. Streukoff beckoned from the jeep. “Hey, kid!
Say, I gotta deliver you and get a receipt from Captain Dobie. Git in.”
André looked shocked. “The general was joking, wasn’t he? I can walk
the short distance home. I’m sorry I kept you waiting so long.”
“Oh, that’s all right. I needed the rest,” grinned Streukoff. “But I’m
getting that receipt, boy. A general never forgets.”
Captain Dobie looked up from his desk irritably when Streukoff entered
the room and saluted. André followed well in the rear.
“Yes?” Dobie snapped.
After hearing the general’s request, he barked, “You want _what_? You
brought André home? From _where_!”
At one side, Weller muttered, “I should ’a’ known better. I should ’a’
known better.”
The captain scribbled out a receipt for Streukoff and signed it. He
then registered his feelings by banging weights down on all the papers
on his desk.
“I never even _missed_ him,” he said through closed lips.
The telephone jangled, and André saw Weller turn to Captain Dobie
excitedly.
“It’s the colonel,” Weller shouted. “We’re movin’ this command post up
to the other side of Ste. Mère! The 9th division is almost set to help
us on a big push.”
Weller turned his eyes slowly on André.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
_Battle for St. Sauveur_
The idea of Captain Dobie’s staff going away came as a shock to André.
“B-but--” he stammered.
Captain Dobie and Weller consulted maps and papers. At last, the
captain sat back and lit a cigarette.
“You’ve seen Father Duprey? What did he have to tell you?” he inquired
mildly.
“Not very good news, sir,” André replied. “But nothing especially bad
... I wish my family could get home,” he said irritably.
Captain Dobie cocked an eyebrow.
“I wish they could, too,” he said. “And, as long as I am responsible
here, maybe you’d like to tell me why you went off with that pilot in
his plane.”
At this unexpected shift, André flushed.
“You did not tell me not to, sir,” he said shyly.
“I did not tell you not to ride an elephant to Afghanistan, either,”
the captain retorted. “How could I know you had any intention of flying
over the enemy?”
[Illustration]
“I did not know it myself.” André could not help smiling. “It just
happened.”
“Well, you’re lucky to be back. I don’t suppose it really matters if I
turn gray worrying about you,” said the captain.
A bark from Patchou in the kitchen gave André an excuse to bolt away.
Although Captain Dobie’s colonel had ordered the post moved closer
to the fighting, the change would not come until other units were in
position.
During the next couple of days André’s mind turned more and more toward
St. Sauveur. If he could only go forward with Dobie and Weller and
Slim, to be near when that town was liberated. Other French children
were in the battle zone. And, after all, he had been under fire himself.
St. Sauveur, Weller explained, was directly in the path of the
Americans who were hammering through to the coast to keep the Germans
from sending help to the fortress at Cherbourg. The 9th Division and
their own 82nd Airborne were working together in this drive for the
showdown.
Weller came home from an errand to the beach on Tuesday, the 13th,
whistling gaily, off key.
“Good news?” André asked.
Weller replied, “Tops. We wiped the Nazis out of that gap between
Utah and Omaha beachheads. Now we can roll! And boy! You ought to
see our new Utah airstrip. Planes goin’ to London out of there--like
ferries--with the wounded.”
Captain Dobie, talking to his colonel on the phone, hung up, looking
cheerful.
“The towns along the Merderet River seem to be pretty well mopped up,”
he reported. “We hold the bridges. So the way to the Douve River’s
clear now.”
Later that day Weller made a fast trip to the new command post. He came
back to report that a small stone farm building near a crossroads north
of Pont l’Abbé had been found for Captain Dobie.
“We got a pair of new lieutenants takin’ the places of a couple
that got wounded,” Weller said. “Good fighters, these replacements,
Schoenfargle an’ Ouvarski.”
André grew more silent as the captain’s leaving day drew near.
St. Sauveur was to André a pretty little town where his family were. As
each day went by he felt more anxious about his mother. And finally he
decided he must follow Dobie and look for her.
On the last evening, Captain Dobie said, “I’m leaving Slim here for a
few days, on orders, André. He’ll be in touch with me, so send us word
if anything is wrong.”
Weller echoed, “Yeah. You do that, kid, and you just tend to the cows,
and mind what Father Duprey says.”
André was up and the house astir before sunrise next morning.
Maps, papers, and duffle were stacked waiting in the hallway when Slim
appeared at the door and announced, “Jeep’s ready, Captain.”
This was the bad moment for André.
Dobie hobbled out to the jeep and Weller followed. Several of the
neighbors, including Father Duprey and Victor, had come to say good-by.
Patchou kept up a nervous barking, shocked by the departure of friends,
until André put an arm around him.
Over the noisy complaint of the jeep’s motor, Captain Dobie thanked all
those gathered there for their help. And he asked that thanks be given
to the Gagnons.
“I’ll see you all again,” he smiled, clutching at his seat as the jeep
leaped forward.
And up to the overhanging chestnut trees rang cries of “_Vive
l’Amérique!_” and “_Vive le Capitaine Dobay!_”
The last André heard was Weller’s voice, bellowing, “Vive la Frenchmen!”
The silence of the house, as the sun slid up over the trees, was
numbing.
Mme. Lescot arrived to break this up, equipped with an armload of
cleaning things.
“This place resembles a pigsty,” she announced. “Mme. Gagnon must not
see such a mess. Please cause yourself to be absent.”
Slim hurriedly remembered a job to be done. André pushed Patchou
hastily out of doors and went to milk the cows.
He had just put the milk to cool when Mme. Lescot hailed him from the
kitchen door. “Breakfast!” she called.
When Slim and André drew up to the table, Mme. Lescot produced a
breakfast of army supplies she had found on a shelf.
“It is not my business,” she said shortly, “to complain about God’s
behavior. But I cannot help believing He has encouraged the American
Army to habits of extravagance. Do you leave good food behind,
everywhere you go?”
When this was translated into English, Slim laughed.
“No, ma’am!” he said emphatically. “This army eats everything it lays
its hands on. Weller’s just repayin’ the Gagnons for the use of their
house, I guess.”
After breakfast, Slim called for André and the trumpet. Fitted in
between his duties, Slim gave André more lessons in American tunes. The
old house trembled under the blasts.
In the midst of one of Slim’s Texas songs, an ambulance full of wounded
from the fighting at St. Sauveur drew up and stopped.
The driver had a message about Captain Dobie.
“Cap’n’s got himself shot in the shoulder,” he reported.
André and Slim froze.
The driver added, as he started on, “Couldn’t get him to come away and
be evacuated home with these other guys.”
“What’s Weller doin’ lettin’ the skipper get shot!” Slim exclaimed.
“Best I get up there quick, now.”
André had decided to “get up there,” too.
He could surely get far enough to trace Marie, and perhaps find some
clue to where his father and mother were.
Late that evening of D-day plus nine, Weller returned to pick up Slim.
“Come on, Corporal,” he shouted. “The cap’n needs you.
“Looks like we’ll take St. Sauveur in a couple of days,” he told André.
“Then, as soon’s we cut through to the coast, the big push up to
Cherbourg starts off. Won’t be long now.... Take care y’self, kid.”
The two waved from the jeep. “Be seein’ you,” they called.
André answered, “_Oui_--yes. I think so. Soon.”
Because of his own plans, Slim’s departure did not leave André quite so
lonely as he might have been.
The question of _how_ to get near St. Sauveur was the problem. André
thought he might ask some pleasant-looking officer for a lift. He
might--
In the end it was Victor who solved things very simply.
The Lescots’ married daughter’s home had been burned out. She had just
sent word that she was at a farm near Picauville, a hamlet just outside
Pont l’Abbé. The message begged her father to come, please, and get her.
On the morning after Slim’s departure, Victor arrived at the Gagnons’
door with La Fumée and the cart. He explained his journey to André.
“But,” André cried, “I must go with you, Victor. You cannot speak
English any better than you did when we went to Jacquard’s.”
“That is true enough,” Victor admitted.
“Good. I go. I translate when soldiers try to stop you,” André
announced.
“It is an idea,” Victor agreed.
“Well, then?” André cried.
“The cows,” Victor chided.
André paused. “Raoul?” he suggested. “Do you think he would milk them?”
“Most certainly. And steal the milk, equally certainly,” Victor said.
“I’ll ask him,” André decided. “Wait, _please_.”
“I will wait.”
Victor sat impatiently in the cart and polished his glasses while André
raced across the field.
Ten minutes later André was back. Raoul had agreed. And La Fumée was
plodding steadily toward Ste. Mère and the clatter and shriek of
gunfire. Crouching under a blanket at André’s feet lay Patchou.
The Gagnon house stood silently empty for the first time in weeks.
About noon a black motorcycle rolled to a stop beside the Gagnon
pump. Marie, in dark slacks and a man’s cap similar to the driver’s,
dismounted.
[Illustration]
“The house looks empty, Leon,” she said, alarm in her voice.
She pushed open the door and called, “André.” There was no answer as
she entered the empty hallway.
Hurriedly, she ran through the house in a panic, and returned to the
door.
“He isn’t here, Leon,” she cried. “The house is empty. Even Patchou is
gone.”
Leon looked at her calmly. “Perhaps you are not the only adventurous
one in the family,” he laughed.
Aghast at the thought of André wandering who knows where, Marie paused.
“I did hope he had a letter from Maman telling us where the hospital
has moved to. And now I don’t even know what has happened to André,”
she cried.
She looked wildly around the village.
Darting between passing trucks she came to the Lescot kitchen. A few
minutes later she returned to Leon, breathless.
“André has gone off toward St. Sauveur with Victor,” she explained.
“Perhaps we can catch up with them on the road to Pont l’Abbé. We must
hurry.”
The black motorcycle shot off in the direction of Ste. Mère.
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.
[Illustration]
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?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
_Patchou on the Battlefield_
A few minutes after André left Victor, Captain Dobie, Weller, their
colonel, and his aide were poring over a map. They were hidden under
trees, a mile and a half from the stone barn.
They looked up every moment or two toward St. Sauveur.
“Things are going along fine,” the colonel said. “The engineers have
got a rubber pontoon bridge over the Douve River, and troops are
crossing there already. They’ll have a steel one over the river for the
tanks to cross, in an hour or two.”
Dobie nodded. “How soon do you think we’ll be sending our first patrols
into St. Sauveur?” he asked.
“By sunset,” the colonel said. “As soon as the 9th gets the rest of
these towns around here cleaned up, we’ll send our fellows through.
How are those new lieutenants I sent you, Dobie?”
Captain Dobie grinned. “Schoenfargle took forty-seven prisoners
yesterday. And Ouvarski’s squad took over a hundred. That answer your
question, Colonel?”
The colonel laughed. But his aide suddenly held up a hand. “Wait
a second. SOS of some kind on the field telephone. Yes, yes ... I
get you. Yes. Ouvarski ... a dozen men. What? Trapped in a barn....
Okay.... But where, man, _where_?”
He saw the colonel reach out, and handed the phone to him.
The colonel consulted the map and noted the position of the barn. After
a minute’s delay, he got a battery commander by radio. Calmly, he gave
the map location.
“Have that stone barn boxed in by your guns,” he ordered. “Fire for
five minutes exactly--and then quit. We’ll have relief troops ready to
move in then.”
He handed the phone to Weller.
“I’m going down to the bridges now, Dobie,” he said.
Captain Dobie looked white. “Ouvarski trapped,” he repeated. “Can we
spare enough men right now to get them out, sir?”
The aide said, “Why not?”
The colonel put a thin, dirty hand on Dobie’s arm. “You _know_ we’ll
get Ouvarski out. And my orders to you, sir, are to stay right here.
You have my authority to make your man, Slim, a sergeant. Send him in
command of the Ouvarski rescue bunch. Keep Weller with you. And _you_,
Dobie, in future, try not to be so all-fired brave.”
The captain turned to catch Weller’s eye as the colonel marched across
the road to his own hidden jeep.
“He sounds,” Dobie said, “a good deal like me talking to André, doesn’t
he?”
But his smile was short.
“So Slim’s a sergeant at last,” he said. “Get him on the radio. Tell
him to pick up fifteen or twenty men and we’ll meet him down the road.”
“But Captain,” Weller exploded, “the colonel said--”
“Ouvarski’s my lieutenant, and a brave one. It’s _my_ job to see that
he and his men get out alive,” Dobie snapped.
“Okay, sir,” Weller said. “It’s me’ll get courtmartialed. But pay no
heed.”
The jeep bounded and took to the road.
A few moments later they met Slim with a truckload of men, and
instructed him to follow. They whirled past a château set on a hill,
with a scattering of cottages on its lower slopes.
Weller tilted rapidly around high stone walls, and pulled up in the
shelter of a cottage near the château gates.
“Can’t get any closer,” Weller said firmly. “Ouvarski must be in that
barn over there.”
“We’ll stay here till the shelling that the colonel ordered is over,”
Dobie ordered.
Slim had his men out of the truck and ready to move in.
Without warning, from unseen guns, a barrage of shells circled the
barn. The men crouched near the jeep winced under the explosive
pressure on their ears.
Captain Dobie had been watching his stopwatch. Five minutes later he
said, “All right, Slim, shelling’s over. Fan your men out, and take
those Nazis in.”
The new sergeant and his men moved rapidly ahead, skirting the cottage
wall.
They had just disappeared around the corner when Dobie cried sharply,
“What in the name of--”
Weller had sprung headlong from the jeep and lunged at a sunken doorway.
A moment later he returned, breathing hard, with a dog in his arms.
“_Patchou!_” Dobie shouted.
Weller, his face tilted away from Patchou’s loving tongue and
scrambling paws, pitched the dog into Captain Dobie’s lap.
“If this means what I think it means,” he puffed rapidly, “André’s
somewheres about. Maybe you can figure it out, sir....”
Without waiting, he was gone, clanking with grenades, his head lowered
between determined shoulders.
Straining forward in the jeep, Captain Dobie sat raging at his
helplessness. He knew he would be useless in the field. He could barely
walk. But every rifle crack, every grenade explosion sent his blood
boiling. To think of André exposed to all this was a maddening extra
anxiety.
He kept a hand on Patchou, who was torn between the joy of reunion with
an old friend, and terror.
Dobie smoothed his fur absently while he directed his binoculars
toward the heavy firing about the barn. He could not see much that was
happening, because of the cottage wall, and stared around the fields.
“If André’ll only keep under cover till this shooting stops,” Dobie
thought.
He stiffened at the smell of timbers burning, and looked back to the
barn quickly.
Slim appeared around the corner of the cottage and ran up toward Dobie.
“Cap’n,” he panted. “More--” He stopped and stared wildly. “What’s that
dawg! That ain’t--_It is_ Patchou! Well, for cryin’ out--”
“_More what?_” the captain snapped.
“More trouble, Cap’n. The barn’s afire in one corner. An’ we ain’t got
half the Germans yet. They’re hid everywhere. If Ouvarski and the men
have to make a break for it, there’s still enough Nazis to pick ’em all
off.”
Dobie reached for the radio switch. Turning to Slim, he barked
instructions.
“I’ll order smoke shells to cover their escape. Go out there and warn
the men to pull back a little. Where’s Weller?”
Slim poised on one foot to answer.