Ormerod's Landing (55 page)

Because it was Sunday and the place was peaceful, the German troops were not wearing steel helmets, neither did they carry arms. It had been decided to parade in this fashion as a reassurance to the French population. There had been no trouble with the people of Moulin-en-Ceil and the occupation commander wanted it to remain like that.

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The column of troops was not long, the band and three platoons stretching four abreast over perhaps three hundred
yards of cobbled streets. They went smartly through the square.
The band played well in the brisk air. Crouching in the old mill building, Le Blanc and the others heard it approaching.
The charges had been placed beneath the bridge over the mill-
stream since early morning. Waiting with Le Blanc were Marie-Thérèse
, Ormerod and the two men from Paris. Ormerod
realized he was the only one who was trembling. Below them,
visible through a hatch in the floor, two canvas boats waited, pulled up clear of the swift millstream onto the stone foundations of the mill building.

The bridge upstream was not the solid stone arch to be seen in so many French towns in that region of small rivers. It had been built only just before the war to replace a stone bridge which had been damaged by flooding through many winters.
It had metal spans and rails but the bridge itself was of wood.
The charges were quite sufficient to blow it to small pieces.

The music increased, the tinkling glockenspiel somehow
sounding above the other more strident instruments like a
happy bird in the field. Then they saw the grey but jaunty band rounding the last corner of the town and making for the bridge, the platoons of infantry following it. Because of the screening
hedgerows they could only see the heads and shoulders of the
bandsmen and the marching troops. They could not see at all
the children of the town who, as children will, had followed the
band. There were a dozen or more, most of them small and in their Sunday best, running along by the legs of the band,
smiling and skipping and jogging to the music. At the edge of the town most of them hesitated and then went back to their parents at the centre. But three, a boy and two little girls, con
tinued to follow the band. From the mill they could not be seen.

The parade had only three hundred metres to go before it
reached the bridge. Ormerod felt miserable and sick. He sensed
the bodies of those around him grow tense. The trigger button
was at the hand of one of the Parisian men. He looked the
coolest of the lot. The top of Le Blanc's head was shining with
pale sweat.

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They watched. The music tinkled and oomphed. The bridge drew nearer. The Parisian with the trigger waited calmly. The
others had frozen. Then, unbelievably, the band halted, the
music ceased, the rest of the troops stopped. Their heads were
ranged along the top of the hedgerow. Ormerod learned a
new French swearword. Then he realized what was happening.
He remembered from his army time.

'They're not going to march over the bridge,' he told them. 'They have to break step. Otherwise the whole lot collapses. It's normal military procedure.'

For once Le Blanc looked as though he valued something that Ormerod had said. 'They will still go?' he asked. 'They will not turn and go back?'

'Maybe they will,' replied Ormerod. 'They just won't
march
over. Look, they're doing something now.'

The German band had, in fact, broken into two lines that
were now forming up one each side of the footway, along the length of the bridge. The rest of the troops were at a halt. The three French children stood smiling and wondering at the Ger
mans. Once they were formed, the band, stationary in two ranks facing inwards, began playing a lilting waltz-like tune.
The infantrymen were then ordered into single file and began
crossing the bridge in broken step.

In the mill house the man from Paris carefully returned his hand to the button. Almost at the same time Ormerod saw a
flash of a pink dress as one of the little girls moved forward
towards the bridge with the soldiers. He reached out and took
the binoculars from the hands of the second Parisian. Putting
them up to his eyes he saw the three children among the soldiers. Frantically he reached across to the Parisian. 'No, mate, no,' he shuddered. 'There's kids ...
enfants ...'

At the same instant a combined act of God and the German sergeant-major saved the children's lives. The sergeant-major had not objected to the children marching with the band, for
the band was a childish thing, but now he did not want them
marching over the bridge with the soldiers. He called and roughly ordered them back. They looked at him doubtfully,
then returned from the wooden cross-boards. He pointed back
towards the town and told them to go home. They looked at

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him with shy sulks but he repeated the instruction sternly and
began walking away. When they were seventy metres back
towards the town, the Parisian, who had not seen them anyway, decided that the correct moment had come. He pressed the button.

The charge below the bridge coughed apologetically for a split second. Then, with a huge roar and a flash of red light, the bridge was lifted up into the air in thousands of pieces, carrying the entire German band and all the infantrymen
stepping across it at that moment. The children and the soldiers
who were waiting their turn to cross were blown over by the force. The sergeant-major had both legs blown off and died
before they could move him. The little river was suddenly full of bodies and blood. From the town the French people and the
German officers began to emerge to see what had happened. A coil of smoke hung over the carnage.

'Time to depart,' murmured Le Blanc.

'You bastard,' said Ormerod. 'The kids.'

'The children were safe,' put in Marie-Thérèse swiftly. 'The
Germans sent them back. Come. We go.'

The others were already dropping through the trapdoor into
the cellar with its running water. As he followed them Ormerod saw the water was stained red and when he reached the side of the canvas boat two bodies floated past. He heard the man who
had pushed the button laugh. The Parisians knew what they were doing with the boats. They launched them quickly and easily, holding them still while Ormerod, Marie-Thérèse and
Le Blanc got aboard. Ormerod put his head between his legs.
Nausea rolled over him. They pushed off quickly. From upstream they could hear the commotion that had followed the
explosion. Whistles were being blown and the noise screeched
across the fields.

Their escape was swift, for the river ran quickly through meadows and well below the level of the grass. They crouched
in the bucking boats and without hindrance reached a small landing stage a mile downstream. They climbed ashore and coolly lifted the canvas craft from the water after them. The others moved decisively but Ormerod felt slow and dazed. He

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looked across the square landscape to where the hairline of smoke was still hanging in the distant air.

Within two hundred metres of where they landed was a
sheltered path between a clutch of cottages. It led, with a slight
elevation, to the platform of the railway station. They had
timed it perfectly. The afternoon train for Chartres was steam
ing easily in. The Parisians quickened their pace so that the
group split up, Le Blanc walked briskly some distance behind
them and Ormerod and Marie-Thérèse followed. She held his
hand, for effect, and found it was still trembling. 'Come on,
cheri,'
she whispered. 'We are going to Paris.'

nine

Paris in the autumn of that year was gradually emerging from its stunned summer. The cafes were open and so were the shops, cinemas and theatres. Performances began mid-afternoon and were finished by early evening. The Opera was
beginning a new season. A different sort of music was provided
by a German military band playing Prussian marches which strode every morning at the head of a picked company of troops around the Arc de Triumph and down the broad and vacant run of the Champs-Ely sees. Parisians tended to find
they had business elsewhere during the hour of this bombastic
display by the conquerors.

Red and black swastika banners were displayed throughout
the city, even hanging from the girders of the Eiffel Tower and
there were military pillboxes and sentry posts at the main junctions. Random identity checks were made at all hours, on a population which had hardly had time to believe its senses,
let alone resist. There was a curfew at midnight. Anyone caught
abroad after that time was arrested and questioned and usually
released the following morning after spending a night perform
ing menial cleaning tasks for the German sergeants. In the later

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years of the occupation some curfew-breakers were shot by
firing squad as a reprisal for acts of force by the resistance
movement. But this was all in the future. The Germans in those
first months of their triumph had inherited a cowed city.

To the eye the most obvious change in the life of the capital was that, overnight, motor vehicles, apart from German mili
tary transport, had vanished from the streets that had once been
among the most congested and clamorous in the world. An
occasional car or taxi, propelled by gas generated from a towed
wood-burning boiler, could be witnessed coughing along the boulevards, but the people, in general, had taken to the bicycle
and the Metro. Former taxi-drivers emerged with little carts towed by one or two bicycles and known as velo-taxis. Food was not yet in short supply and there was almost as much drink available in the cafes and bars as usual. Newspapers, naturally censored by the occupying power, were available at
the inimitable street kiosks, together with new journals spon
sored by the Germans and French sympathizers.

German troops went sightseeing and strolled along the
avenues, their jackboots treading in the russet leaves of another
autumn. Everywhere there were posters showing a German soldier holding a French child in his arms. They were smiling at each other.

For the most part the Parisian treated the invader as if he did not exist, walking by him in the street, looking straight
ahead and never speaking to him unless he asked for directions.
Then he was frequently sent the wrong way. It was a small act of revenge, but it was something.

The Place Denfert-Rochereau is in the fourteenth
arrondissement
of the city, south of the Luxembourg Gardens. Beneath the street in that district run the dark tunnels and communica
tion caves of the Paris Catacombs. Established in the eighteenth
century when several million skeletons from a dozen old cemeteries were brought there, the caves date from Roman times when there were quarries below Montparnasse, Montr
ouge, and Montsouris, the three hills of Paris. The connecting tunnels stretch out to the Porte de Versailles and the suburb of
Gentilly. In the deep darkness of this grisly place are dozens

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of galleries, all lined with skulls and attendant crossbones. During the German occupation it eventually became the safe headquarters of the resistance.

In October 1940, however, the movement had scarcely begun
to stir. The Communists, who formed a powerful and fanatical
part of the eventual strength, were showing no inclination to
fight the invader, for Germany and Russia were still embraced
in a treaty of friendship.

But there were other men, shamed patriots and national
fighters, who had held clandestine meetings, formed committees
of action, and explored the possibilities of the Catacombs.

It was to Denfert-Rochereau that Ormerod and Marie-Thérèse went after arriving in Paris on the evening of the blowing of the bridge at Moulin-en-Ceil.

They left the train at the Gare St Lazare, walking in the thick
of the crowd. A group of German soldiers and French police
men were examining identity cards at the exit. Ormerod glanced
at Marie-Thérèse. She took her card from her pocket and
pushed forward, presenting it to one of the soldiers. They were
having trouble checking everyone because the train had been
crowded. Ormerod followed immediately behind Marie-Thérèse, hoping his papers would not be asked for. But the
official arm of a gendarme moved out towards him and caught him by the elbow. Ormerod's mouth went dry. He stared at the
policeman, a small and bluish face under a large cap, and the Frenchman looked at him closely.
'Carte,'
he said stiffly.

Ormerod fumbled and produced his forged identity card. The
policeman examined it. Ormerod was conscious of Marie-Thérèse
lingering ten yards away. He wondered what she would
do, shoot or run. The French officer sniffed over the card. Something was wrong. He regarded Ormerod again.
'Ce n'est pas signee,'
he said, tapping the card. Ormerod saw that the line for his signature was empty.
'Oui,'
he managed.

The policeman looked at him strangely now. Ormerod saw
Marie-Thérèse move. She stepped two paces closer, then de
liberately pushed a woman carrying a baby into the back of the policeman. The Frenchman turned, a swearword breaking
on his lips. His action knocked the child from the unbalanced
mother's grip and it fell half-way to the ground. The policeman