One Day in Oradour (15 page)

Her children had no time to help her, no chance to say goodbye to their mother, because it was then that the bomb went off.

The explosion was met with screams of terror from the women and children who weren’t immediately killed. Acrid, black smoke filled their eyes, noses and throats. In a wild panic, everyone who could still move rushed to find a corner, a space, where they could breathe clean air, but there were too few safe places left, and hundreds were unable to escape the choking fumes, which left them coughing and spluttering for breath.

Every door was suddenly pressed with bodies, desperately trying to break the locks and force their way out. Audrey and her daughter Alita were hammering on the door which led to the sacristy, where the priests and the altar boys normally dressed themselves for Mass. More and more desperate women were gathering behind them and for a moment Audrey thought they might be crushed by the weight of the people shoving them against the heavy oak door. Then suddenly the door’s rusty old hinges gave way and the terrified crowd surged through into the room, which was usually off
limits to women. Audrey had to fight her way to her feet and pull Alita up to prevent her from being trampled.

She saw Christelle and Sabine, shocked and dazed, staggering through the doorway, each struggling to carry one of their two younger siblings. Paulette was screaming, the tears leaving white streaks down her smoke-blackened face. In her panic she was half-choking Sabine, so tightly had she wrapped her tiny arms around her big sister’s neck. Louis’s little body hung limply in Christelle’s arms.

Then the gunfire started. Under the cover of the smoke bomb, the German soldiers had poured in through the front door and were now spraying the nave with bullets.

The breakout into the sacristy had not gone unnoticed, and it was here that the soldiers went next. Trapped there in the small room, the women and children were sitting ducks. Christelle, still clutching her brother’s body, was among the first to fall. Sabine spun round, trying to protect Paulette by throwing herself down on top of her on the cold hard floor. It did no good.

Audrey and Alita were the furthest into the room and, as the soldiers opened fire, they began darting here and there behind the rest of the women, trying madly to find something or someone to shelter behind. But the room was sparsely furnished and, as the women and
children in front of them began to fall, there was little left to shield them.

‘Get down,’ Audrey whispered to Alita, pulling her to the ground. As the defenceless figures dropped all around them, Audrey and Alita closed their eyes and waited. Audrey was holding on tightly to Alita’s hand, so she felt the jerk as her daughter’s body was struck, felt the muscles in her fingers contract, and then go slack. Audrey fought back the urge to scream.

But then, as suddenly as they had come in, the soldiers pulled out of the church, and the devastating sound of gunfire was replaced by the moans of the injured and the dying, and the cries of those, like Audrey, who had seen their loved ones mown down in front of their eyes.

From where she lay, frozen with grief in the sacristy, clinging onto her daughter’s hand, Audrey could not see what was happening in the nave. But she could hear the booted feet of the soldiers moving around. It sounded like they were shifting furniture, scraping and dragging heavy things across the floor.

Suddenly she felt a hand tapping on her leg. The young mother whom she had scolded when they first arrived, clutching her baby to her breast, was gesturing towards the door.

‘We’ve got to get out,’ she mouthed. ‘They are going to burn us.’

Audrey shook her head, the tears sliding down her cheeks. She didn’t want to leave Alita alone.

‘She’s gone,’ whispered the young mother, realising Audrey’s dilemma. ‘There’s nothing you can do for her. Save yourself. Please. Please help me save my baby!’

This last plea finally sparked Audrey’s resolve. She knew she had to try. For Alita, for Sylvie, Christelle, Sabine and the little ones, she had to prove that life was worth fighting for, that she would never give up.

She nodded to the girl and turned to gaze for one last time at her precious daughter, her face so familiar, so perfect and yet now so still. Raising herself up, Audrey bent gently over her daughter’s body, taking care not to move or disturb her, unable to believe that she couldn’t possibly hurt her any more, and softly kissed her on the forehead.

As her tears fell onto Alita’s cheeks she brought her hand down across her face and closed her eyes.

‘Goodnight my princess,’ she whispered. ‘Sleep tight.’

Then Audrey Rousseau took a deep breath and got slowly, cautiously to her feet. She had a job to do.

Audrey gestured silently to the young mother to follow her and together they tip-toed quietly over and around the fallen bodies, until they reached the door back
into the nave. They pressed themselves flat up against the wall and Audrey peered round into the main body of the church. It was still dark and full of thick black smoke, but framed in the daylight shining through the front door opposite, Audrey could just make out the shape of soldiers moving around. They were wearing gas masks to protect themselves from the fumes and were throwing objects – straw, firewood, broken chairs, bits of splintered church pews – into the centre aisle.

She glanced back at her new companion and down at the woman’s baby, which was bound to her chest in a sling. If the baby cried, the cover of the smoke would not be enough. They had to move fast.

Audrey waited until there was a pause in the movement of the soldiers across the nave and then tugged at the mother’s arm, indicating that she should copy her and remove her shoes, then get ready to go.

Using their sleeves to keep the foul-smelling fumes from their mouths and noses, the two women sprinted, hidden by the smoke, back up to the altar. Above it were three tall windows, all of which had been shattered by the bomb blast. The middle window was large enough to squeeze through.

While the mother crouched with her baby behind the damaged altar, Audrey found the stool which she had
been using earlier that day to stand on when she was decorating the windowsills with flowers. It had been thrown across the choir by the blast but, amazingly, was still in one piece. Now she propped it up against the wall below the middle window and, swallowing hard to quell her urge to cough as the smoke stung her throat, she climbed up onto it and reached up.

Audrey was not an especially fit woman, but at that moment she found strength she never knew she had, for somehow she managed to heave herself up, her bare feet scraping up the wall to get a grip, and threw herself out through the gap.

The window was a good three metres above the ground outside and, although there was a shrubbery to break her fall, Audrey was momentarily winded from the landing. She sat there among the plants for a few seconds, trying to get her breath, gulping in the fresh air. Then she heard the baby’s screams above her.

Rapidly she got to her feet. The desperate young mother was hanging half in and half out of the window, her baby dangling down awkwardly from her sling.

‘Catch her,’ she cried. ‘Quickly, they’ve spotted us.’

Audrey got ready to catch the tiny screaming bundle but there was no time. Alerted by the baby’s cries, one of the soldiers had rushed across the nave. He leapt up onto the stool and just missed grabbing the mother’s
back foot as she jumped out, her baby nearly falling from her arms.

They started to run, but the soldier had already aimed his gun. The mother and baby fell just a few metres from the window. Five bullets thudded into Audrey and, as she collapsed, she rolled down the steep bank which led down from the back of the church to the retaining wall.

Satisfied, the soldier climbed down from the window and went back to work in the nave.

Following their orders to finish off the job, the soldiers set light to the bonfire they had created in the church. When they had finished piling up as much combustible material as they could find to hand, they took up their weapons and opened fire once again, trying to silence the last few cries and groans. Then, at the platoon leader’s signal, they lowered their guns and paused before exiting to toss some grenades into the pile.

Then the front door was pulled close and bolted shut.

When Audrey came round, lying there in the ditch by the church wall, the first thing that struck her was the smell. The sweet, sickly smell of burning flesh mixed with thick, suffocating wood smoke.

Then the pain hit her. It felt like there was a knife being driven through her shoulder, and both her legs
felt like they had been hit with a steam roller. But she knew she had to get away. She could be seen and it wouldn’t take the soldiers long to realise she was alive.

Mustering all her strength, she started to crawl on her stomach, dragging her injured legs through the grass until she reached a gap in the wall leading to the church garden. Centimetre by centimetre she edged her way into the garden and dug herself into the soft earth between some rows of peas. Finally, satisfied that she was well hidden, and utterly exhausted, she passed out.

Once the grenades exploded, the bonfire piled up in the nave took only seconds to ignite. The dry straw and kindling and broken wooden furniture burned rapidly and, fuelled by hundreds of burning bodies, the flames were soon soaring upwards, hungrily licking the church roof.

Fed by the air being sucked through the broken windows, the church turned into a raging inferno, high enough to burn through the roof timbers, savage enough to reach up inside the bell-rope tower, and hot enough to melt the huge bronze bells.

In just over an hour, Oradour’s beloved church had been transformed into a burnt-out, smouldering shell. Apart from Audrey Rousseau, not one of its reluctant congregation that day got out alive.

From their tiny hideout beside the compost heap, Alfred and Benoit heard the explosion inside the church. They had fallen silent, too traumatised to talk and too scared of being discovered to make any noise. Alfred had even closed his eyes for a while. He had grown bored of staring up at the corrugated roof and, after the adrenaline rush of his escape from the schoolroom, he was starting to feel fatigued. Perhaps if he could just rest a little, it would help to pass the time…

But then the blast from the church shook the ground beneath him and rocked him back to his senses. His eyelids flew open. Simultaneously, Benoit shot up onto his elbows. ‘What the hell was that?’ he whispered.

‘It sounded like a bomb.’

‘I think it was. From the church, do you think?’

‘Yes, it sounded like it.’

‘That was the direction all those footsteps were going in... the children’s voices… I…’

Benoit didn’t finish his sentence because the sound of the explosion was then followed by the chilling sound of gunfire. Repeated shots and machine guns.

Alfred immediately started to shuffle his small body out of the shelter. He was scared. Very scared.

‘Where are you going?’ cried Benoit, trying to keep his voice low.

‘I’m not stopping here any longer,’ whispered Alfred, trembling. ‘I have to go. I have to get to the cemetery now. Then, if it’s clear, I can make it to the woods.’

Alfred was already on his hands and knees, ready to crawl out of the shelter.

‘No, Alfie!’ Benoit cried, his muted voice straining, too afraid to shout. He reached sideways and grabbed Alfred’s ankle, desperate to restrain him, convinced the boy was going to his death. But Alfred was too determined and too terrified to be held back. He shook his foot hard and wriggled free of Benoit’s grasp.

Alfred didn’t dare glance around him and he didn’t want to look back. He simply set his eyes on the opposite side of the field, where he could pick up the little lane which joined onto Rue de la Cimetière, and ran.

There was a footpath diagonally across the field and, for the first forty to fifty metres, Alfred stuck to that, making good speed on the sun-baked, hard trodden earth. He could see the gate now, where the footpath
came out onto the lane next to the stonemason’s workshop. He was nearly there. But then he heard more gunfire. It seemed to be coming from all directions now, around the village. One minute there was a burst of noise from the direction of the mill, by the river, then it was joined by more distant gunshots, from the far side of the village, back in the direction of his cottage. Alfred tried not to think about what that could mean.

Unsure what to do next, Alfred stopped in the middle of the path and looked wildly about him. Suddenly, taking the lane onto Rue de la Cimetière didn’t seem like such a good idea. He was far more likely to run into some soldiers there. In a panic, Alfred turned away from the noise and began running up the hill through the long grass towards the edge of Pierre Petit’s cornfield.

More gunfire. Louder now, and much, much closer. It seemed to be coming from the Joubert barn behind him on the corner of Rue de la Cimetière and Rue Depaul. Terrified, Alfred ran head-long into the corn, which in the early summer sun was already as high as his waist. Then he dived down to the ground, taking cover among the thick green shoots. He knew he had to stop. If the Germans were that close they could easily spot him. He had no choice but to wait, to lie low, hidden among the corn, until the firing stopped.

The deafening crack of the explosion inside the church sent shivers up Dietrich’s spine. This was the signal he had asked all the platoons at the six locations around the village to listen out for. There was no turning back now. The massacre had begun.

He did not open his mind to the horror of what he was about to cause. He did not see these victims as people. They were purely pawns in the game of war – a game in which he was well practised, and which he could not lose.

He knew that some of his comrades, Captain Krüger and Ragnar among them, thought he was taking a risk in changing Major General Scholz’s orders, but he hadn’t really
changed
them, he felt. He had adapted them. Improved them. He had reacted to new information and moulded the plan into sheer perfection. No one could deny he was the creator of the greatest strike at the Resistance yet.