He disappeared into a thicket to carry out the captain’s order. Dobie
spoke rapidly into the radio and then signed off.
For a while he sat listening, and watching the smoke billow high above
a gable of the barn.
He heard loud, sputtered German orders. Then came renewed rifle bursts,
and a grenade exploded near by.
Just before the outburst, Patchou gave a high, excited yelp and leaped
from the jeep.
“Patchou!” Captain Dobie shouted furiously. “Come here, boy. _Patchou!_”
The dog streaked, with flying tail, back toward the château gates,
stretched to his utmost to cover ground.
With piercing yelps of delight he jumped into the arms of a girl. She
had turned at his barking and then suddenly run to meet him.
Captain Dobie regarded the slim figure with amazement. Slacks, army
jacket, man’s cap from which soft black hair like André’s escaped. And
the same gray-blue eyes.
A flash of enlightenment burst over Dobie.
Irritated to fury, he muttered, “Jumping Jehosophat! Now we have
_Marie_ Gagnon!”
[Illustration]
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
_The Secret Tunnel_
Captain Dobie’s heart and thoughts were with the men under his command.
Beyond that, he was desperately aware of great armies fighting a hard
battle near by.
Seeing Marie here, knowing André was also in the battle area, he
thought angrily, “This is too much.”
“Ma’moiselle,” he shouted, “this is no place for you. Find cover
immediately!”
Marie looked up. “You do not understand,” she said. “This dog belongs
to my brother. André must be here somewhere. Patchou couldn’t get this
far alone.”
“I _do_ know,” replied the captain. “Get under that gateway
quickly--and _hold_ that dog.”
When Marie crouched under the arch, he explained quickly how he had
come to know André.
Marie said nervously, “You haven’t seen him?”
“No! Since I left your home, I have not.” The captain’s voice was sharp
with anxiety. “And I haven’t time to look for him now. My men are in
that burning barn with Germans all around it. I’ve ordered covering
smoke shells dropped to help them escape. And I can’t understand what’s
held the shells up.”
He hesitated. Looking with deep concern at Marie, he spoke more
gruffly. “I’m just afraid there’s a good chance André may be in that
barn.”
Marie ran out a step or two and pointed.
“In _that_ barn?” she cried. “Oh! I can get him out then. Come,
Patchou!”
Captain Dobie stood up and shouted, but Marie and Patchou had
disappeared through the cottage door--not across the field.
Captain Dobie sank back, fuming. The flames were spreading across the
barn roof. He switched on the radio and waited irritably. When there
was no response, he reached back into the jeep for grenades which he
hooked into his belt.
He had just grasped his gun firmly, and gingerly lowered a leg to the
ground, when Patchou barked and wriggled out of the cottage door.
At the same instant Slim came around the garden wall and stopped in his
tracks, staring at the doorway.
“Ouvarski!” he shouted and then, “_André!_”
Captain Dobie’s head snapped toward the cottage.
A tall officer stood behind Patchou, and with him was André.
Behind Lieutenant Ouvarski and André straggled several dusty,
smoke-blackened men. They moved a few steps forward.
Ouvarski steadied himself against a stone pillar. Marie and two of the
men eased a wounded soldier they were carrying, to the ground.
“Captain,” Ouvarski said hoarsely, “can you get medics? Three
wounded--one badly.”
Captain Dobie swallowed hard. “Is that all?”
“All others accounted for, sir,” Ouvarski reported. “No worse.”
“Not any of you are accounted for,” the captain growled. “How did you
get _here_? I thought you were in that blasted barn.”
Slim gasped as Marie, finished with making her patient more easy,
walked forward.
Ouvarski simply threw out a hand toward Marie, and said, “She led us
out.”
Marie walked up to Captain Dobie.
“There’s a tunnel to the barn from this gardener’s cottage, sir,”
she explained. “I didn’t have time to tell you before. The tunnel is
old, but it is open. The Maquis have been using it for months, partly
for wounded men. The barn was our headquarters. We just moved out
yesterday.”
[Illustration: _Marie came up through the old tunnel_]
Captain Dobie nodded, speechless with relief. He pushed back his
helmet, mopped his forehead, and switched on the radio. “I’ll cancel
those smoke shells,” he muttered.
At that moment the air overhead whined ominously. A curtain of shells
fell around the barn and exploded. A dense pall of white smoke drifted
across the field.
“Where’s Weller?” the captain asked Slim. “And what about the Nazis
still around that barn?”
He was interrupted by grenade and rifle fire and the thrashing of men
breaking through shrubbery.
“Watch it!” Weller’s voice rang above the din.
The shooting stopped suddenly, and German and American voices mingled.
Captain Dobie listened a moment, smiled, and switched on the radio.
“Thanks for the smoke shells,” he said into the receiver. He switched
through to his command post. “Say, send along a couple of trucks for
prisoners. And a medic and ambulance. At least three wounded here--one
pretty bad.”
He turned back to the others.
“Well, Ouvarski,” he said pleasantly, “I certainly sent you into
something. Headquarters said positively no Germans left in this area.”
“They came out of this château and we had to take cover in the barn,
sir,” Ouvarski said.
“Take it easy,” Dobie said, “all of you, till the trucks get here.
Sergeant! What ails _you_?”
Weller limped into sight along the wall.
“We’ve about cleaned ’em all out--finally,” he grinned.
Dobie frowned. “But what happened to you?”
“Got myself a bullet.” Weller’s smile broadened and turned into a
grimace of pain.
“I thought I told you to stay away from those Germans,” Dobie barked.
Weller limped painfully to the jeep and Slim spun him gently around and
into the back seat.
“You sure did, sir,” Weller said. “But you forgot to tell them Germans
to keep away from me.”
[Illustration]
Not far behind Weller, a line of Nazi prisoners were coming across the
field, hands on head. With them, on each side, strode Americans with
Tommy guns ready.
Marie was examining the injury to Weller’s leg.
“That bullet will have to be taken out,” she said. “It’s not in very
deep. It won’t hurt much.”
“It’s gonna stay right there,” Weller said. “It’s probably the only
proof I’ll have to show my kids I was ever in this war.”
André had been saying, “Sir,” at intervals. But he had trouble saying
it loud enough to make the captain hear.
When the prisoners had been herded together under guard a little
distance away, Captain Dobie sank back in his seat and smiled down.
“André,” he said, “I’m too glad to see you alive to tell you what I
ought to.”
André felt his face grow red. “I wanted to try to get my father and
mother home.”
“It would have been simpler for all of us if you had waited,” replied
the captain.
“I couldn’t, sir,” André said staunchly.
“If Patchou hadn’t been here, Captain,” Marie said, “I might have
missed André. It was Patchou who found _me_.”
The dog, at the sound of his name, tossed up his head. Then he sniffed
deeply, and whirled in the direction of the château gates, paused a
brief second, and shot away at an excited gallop.
Captain Dobie could only say, “_Now_ what?”
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.”
[Illustration]
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.
[Illustration]
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!”
CHAPTER TWENTY
_Bastille Day--1944_
That night, lights glowed in the Gagnon house. In spite of the blustery
cold wind and drifts of rain, the door stood open most of the evening.
Friends came, laughing, crying, chattering greetings and news. Children
came to ask André questions and stand with open mouths at what he had
to say.
Marie brought cups of hot chocolate and black bread. Mme. Lescot
supplied some small cakes.
Leon Duplis rode over to tell Marie that General de Gaulle, who
commanded the Maquis from London, was now touring the liberated towns
of Normandy.
“The French Army will soon join the fight to free our country,” Leon
whispered to Marie. “They will enter France from the Mediterranean.
But do not tell anyone yet I said so.” And with that he was on his
motor bike and gone.
On the road outside, traffic was coming up from the beach, but in
smaller convoys. “The sea is getting very rough,” someone reported.
By midnight all the guests had gone and the whole family were in
bed--really home at last.
André went out to the road many times the next few days to look for
friends on the army trucks and jeeps rolling by. On the third day,
a messenger from St. Sauveur, on his way to the supply dumps on the
beach, stopped to talk.
“We got the peninsula cut off now,” he reported. “The 9th Division an’
the 79th an’ the 4th Division are on their way to Cherbourg. Goin’
fast, too.”
Captain Dobie’s men were still fighting for the marshes and some hills
west and south of St. Sauveur, he said.
The storm over the Channel had built up to an alarming degree. Rain and
wind whipped the trees along the coast and drove the villagers indoors.
Traffic past the house slowed almost to a stop.
When André asked a truck driver what was happening on the beaches,
the driver said, “A blasted hurricane. The sea is standin’ on end. No
landin’ barges can get ashore. Pretty bad, ’cause General Bradley’s
howlin’ for ammunition.”
Frenchmen coming to the village from the shore said tons of supplies
had been swept away and sunk.
The storm raged for four days, and André went sadly about his duties
watching the road now nearly empty of trucks.
Two days after the storm subsided, André heard that General Eisenhower
had ferried across the Channel to look over the destruction.
“He’ll talk to them army engineers an’ get deliveries speeded up--or
else,” a soldier said.
But the Americans were driving hard to capture Cherbourg. They needed
the port more than ever since the storm had stopped supplies coming
across the beaches.
On June 28th, Leon came, and shouted through the door, “André! Marie!
_Cherbourg has fallen._ Normandy belongs to us again!”
Then, on D-day plus 29--four weeks after the 82nd paratroopers had
first drifted down into the Gagnon orchard--Slim clattered up in a jeep.
André saw him from the hallway and raced out to grab his hand and pump
it up and down--as the soldiers did. He asked, “Where are Captain Dobie
and Sergeant Weller? Has the 82nd been relieved? Did you win your
battle?”
“What you mean, mister?” Slim growled. “Did we win our battle? The 82nd
always wins its battles--Africa, Sicily, Normandy. You know that.”
André took Slim into the house to see the rest of the family. He
translated Slim’s “American” as well as he could for his father and
mother.
“This is my last errand this way,” Slim told them. “I’m on my way to
the Utah airstrip to fix the cap’n’s passage home.”
Before he left, he promised to bring Weller and the captain to see them
on the way to the plane.
The storm had at last blown itself out, and traffic on the road was
again heavy. Now the Allies were getting ready to break through to
Paris--to free the rest of France. The British and Canadians were
fighting hard around Caen. The Germans were bringing up more and more
tanks--better in some ways than the British and American ones--and
the battle was rough. But the Invasion armies were moving toward the
breakout into the farther parts of France. The spirit of Liberty swept
slowly but excitedly across all Normandy.
July 14th, Bastille Day, which was the symbol of French Liberty, would
soon be here.
“This year we will celebrate Bastille Day with good heart,” said M.
Blanc to Father Duprey.
And Father Duprey, who was very practical, asked, “How?”
“Ah, that I have thought about,” M. Blanc answered. “And I have a
plan for our little village. Alone, we cannot do justice to such a
great event as this Liberation. We will join with Ste. Mère Église
to celebrate. We are not without talent in this village.” He looked
mysterious and whispered his plans to the priest, so that no one could
overhear.
When they had finished their discussion, Father Duprey said, “Your plan
will also keep the children out of the fields till the German land
mines have been cleared up.”
The following few days there was a great hubbub in the loft of the
Gagnon barn. Children’s voices rang out. And music billowed over the
rooftops.
Early one morning, Father Duprey summoned André. Victor appeared
with his cart, and with the priest and André jogged off, behaving
mysteriously, to talk to the mayor of Ste. Mère Église.
Bastille Day, Friday, July 14th, was the next day. By sunrise that
morning all the little villages near Ste. Mère were alive with activity.
Mothers bustled breakfast into their families and packed up lunch
baskets. Older sisters swept the family’s best clothes, all nicely
aired, over the heads of the younger children. Then mothers and big
sisters pulled and twisted themselves into their own gayest Normandy
dresses. Fathers put on the dark suits they had been married in.
And all over the peninsula the French tricolor flags, which had been
hidden away, flew in great flapping bursts of triumph from every house.
All churchbells that had survived the bombing began to ring soon after
the sun was up.
In the Gagnon house, Maman was scurrying about, her own silk dress
rustling as excitedly as she was. Marie, too, rustled in her new
pale-yellow parachute gown.
Old cars had been rolled out of sheds where they had been hidden, and
somehow brought to life. They began to ease into the busy military
traffic and headed for Ste. Mère. Carts, bright with flags and flowers,
and loaded with chattering villagers, thronged the roads.
Father Duprey and M. Blanc had gone to Ste. Mère still earlier in a
borrowed car.
In good time, Victor, Mme. Lescot, and their daughter showed up at the
Gagnon door with La Fumée. The fat Percheron whinnied when André led
the family out to jam themselves into the cart.
When La Fumée entered the outskirts of Ste. Mère the town was already
aflame with a noisy celebration.
Victor found a spot where La Fumée could be hitched to a post with a
pail of water beside her.
In the heart of Ste. Mère Église the square was a churning mass of
people. But in a cleared space in the center of the green, officials
and police were arranging things in an orderly way. There was a
flag-draped table on a raised platform, and rows of chairs for special
personages stood in a square.
At one side of the table, dignitaries were gathering. At the other
side, M. Blanc and the Ste. Mère music master were herding the children
who were to sing, into neat rows.
Running to join the children, André saw uniformed French officers in
a group among the dignitaries. All eyes were upon them. Farther back
stood a company of about a hundred American soldiers.
Marie went to join Leon, Jacquard, and the other Maquis who had been
able to come.
When the hour for opening the ceremonies arrived, Father Duprey and two
other priests moved to the table for prayers of thanksgiving.
Then the mayor of Ste. Mère, and the mayors of other villages made
speeches. These over, the music master blew his pitch pipe and M. Blanc
raised his arm to give the beat for the singing. High and clear, the
children’s voices sang out the beloved old songs of triumphant France.
When the last song died away the children settled down on the grass,
and M. Blanc rose.
“We are now about to have a special pleasure,” he announced. “André
Gagnon will express the feeling of comradeship we all have for our
friends, the Americans.”
André had been carefully carrying his trumpet under his arm. His knees
shaking, he stepped forward and put the trumpet to his lips.