All the lights above us, p.6
All the Lights Above Us, page 6
There was no answer.
She tried again. “There’s something going on out there, you’d better get a move on.”
Silence.
“Boys!”
The door creaked open by itself, and Adelaide stepped inside.
All the boys she billeted shared this one room, and it was cluttered accordingly. There were open rucksacks, dirty socks, and piles of various artifacts and possessions. The covers on the bed sat twisted and empty, as did the stacks of blankets on the floor.
Adelaide staggered out the back door while she shoved pins into her gray hair. The night moisture in her small garden, and the scent of dew-covered blossoms, swirled around her along with the billowing smoke from the fire. She tilted her head back for a better view of the sky.
She couldn’t see the waves upon waves of airplanes in the darkness, but the noise, and the reverberations crawling up from the ground and tickling her bare feet, suggested they came in numbers she hadn’t fathomed before. And somehow, over the immense growling, there came another sound. A flapping noise, similar to a canvas tent blowing in the breeze. The snapping of blooms and vines came next as something landed with a thud right behind her.
Adelaide’s heart pounded in her chest, and in slow motion she turned around.
There stood a large, lumbering man, hooked to a silk parachute. He stomped about in heavy boots, struggling to untangle his body from his harness. Ammunition and grenades clattered against his chest. His helmet was locked firmly over his massive chin, and black paint coated his ferocious face. An American flag patch clung to his shoulder.
More flapping noises indicated he wasn’t alone. Other men in chutes landed with a crash all around her. They smashed Adelaide’s hollyhock and trampled her roses, groaning and cursing in the night. She heard the pops of harness belts coming undone. Whispers in a dialect she didn’t recognize.
The first paratrooper noticed Adelaide, and he reached for her with burly, hairy hands.
Adelaide screamed at the top of her lungs, then she wheeled around and scampered into the streets of Sainte-Mère-Église, running as fast as her feeble legs could carry her. When she arrived in the town center, out of breath and with her hair in shambles, she didn’t find anything to calm her shattered nerves.
The fire still raged, the flames flowering red and amber in the inky black night. A thick cloud of smoke had settled over the area, and an intense heat radiated through the town center. Dozens of Sainte-Mère-Église residents were out in their pajamas and nightcaps. They stood in a line bailing water under the direction of the haggard mayor. A few of them wailed with fear, and a child’s screams came from somewhere nearby.
A host of armed German guards stood off to the side. The shadows from the flames played on their faces, and their long coats made them look like demons. The grizzly sneers and twitchy fingers indicated they were nervous, and therefore even more dangerous.
One of them was a boy who billeted with Adelaide. Relieved to see a familiar face, she took a few steps toward him. But what unfolded next stopped her cold.
The boy grabbed a wailing woman who tried to break from the crowd. He shoved her to the ground and thudded her back with the butt of his rifle. His face went red with rage, veins popping out of his neck while he squealed at her in German.
A teenage boy ran to the scene with rabid, wild eyes. Clearly the woman meant something to him, and he wouldn’t stand for a German beating her.
Without a second thought, that lovely German boy, who had once hugged Adelaide and called her mother, shouldered his rifle. He fired a single shot that echoed across the town.
The bullet sank into the boy’s heart. Gore spewed from his back. He collapsed to the concrete and his eyes froze in death, while his face remained twisted with anger. The abused woman broke out in wails. She ran to the dead boy and buried her face in his bloody chest.
It was a bucket of ice-cold water in Adelaide’s horrified face.
As for her soldier boy, he only hurled curse words and threats at the woman. When he finally locked eyes with Adelaide, he froze.
Adelaide fought back tears as she took in his transformed face. Some savage beast had taken hold of that boy who had laughed and smiled at her dinner table. It reminded her these weren’t just boys who clung to her skirts and longed for a mother. A whole other side of them glowed red hot in the firelight. They had been swept into a cruel war, and it made them capable of doing incredibly cruel things.
He stared at her, shame pouring from his eyes. Then he turned away and disappeared around the corner.
“Madame Paquet!”
The mayor of Sainte-Mère-Église jogged up to Adelaide. Soot covered his clothes, and panic flashed through his normally calm face. “Have you come to help?”
“Monsieur, you have a situation.”
“Don’t I know it. A stray bomb came from one of those planes and landed right on that hay barn. The Germans let us break curfew to put the fire out, but we aren’t getting anywhere.” He shielded his eyes from the inferno and turned to the coast. “And what in hell is going on at the coast? It looks like Bastille Day over there.”
“Paratroopers landed in my yard.”
The mayor turned to her with an open mouth and bulging eyes. “Madame …”
“I mean it.”
His breathing picked up. “It’s … it’s the landings. They’re here.”
More loud, menacing rumbles came from the coast. Within minutes, they were right on top of Sainte-Mère-Église, shaking the entire town.
The German guards snapped into action. Under the Prussian bark of commands, they hoisted their guns toward the sky and opened fire.
People in the bailing line began to shriek. Their buckets clattered to the ground, water splashed everywhere. They scattered like bugs under a light, colliding and tripping in their haste to get under cover.
Explosive devices didn’t drop from the planes, though. Instead, there came a bouncing barrage of quivering, rippling parachutes.
Flora
BÉNOUVILLE
Flora stood by the small café across from the iron bridge. Her cigarette supply had dwindled to half, but that didn’t stop her from lighting up another one.
The night was off to a hell of a start.
The British Tommies were busy setting a perimeter around their captured bridge. They hoisted machine guns, piled up sandbags, and pulled extra ammunition from mangled gliders. A few climbed under the bridge to disable any German plans to blow it up. They did it with minimal resistance too. A single German officer trembled in the arms of his British captor. He begged to be killed, since he had “lost his honor.” The British soldier just rolled his eyes and handed him off to the medics.
As Flora stood and watched, she learned a lot. General Howard mentioned the bridge was one of only two crossings over the Orne River, and that’s why they came for it before anything else. More British troops had quickly secured the other bridge. Without them, German troops would be forced to divert defensive armies with disastrous detours and roundabouts. It would take them hours, maybe days, to get their Panzers to the coast.
An urgent situation for Germany, but there was a much calmer air here in Bénouville. At least for now.
Flora looked on from the café, and the cigarette glow made her eyes gleam bitterly.
She tried to tell General Howard and the others about her courier role with the Resistance. She detailed her hard bike ride in the dark, and how she had passed off important instructions to activate the Maquisards.
“We can help you in your noble effort. The Resistance is ready to fight.”
She said it with a puffed-up chest and raised head. She expected praise from these British soldiers. Maybe they would reward her somehow. Some cigarettes would have been nice.
Instead, they barely acknowledged her. Only one of them managed a mumbled thank you. Then he hurried off for “more important things.”
It crushed Flora. She just couldn’t understand why no one ever took her seriously. Women were arrested too. They were locked up, deported to camps, and killed right along with the men. And Flora’s alleged “safe zone” wasn’t safe at all in the end. Soldiers landed here first and put her in danger before anyone else in France. Yet they still made her feel minimal, even ridiculous.
She dropped her cigarette into the wet grass and smashed it with her boot heel. A boot once stuffed with coded messages to aid these men who laughed at her.
She tipped her head skyward when another round of planes thundered overhead. They’d been coming in large batches for the last several minutes. She knew she had better get back to Caen and tell Geraud what had happened.
She made a move for her bicycle, but a grinding, squeaking roar echoed from somewhere in the darkness.
Tanks …
One of the British soldiers whistled through his fingers. “Sounds like the welcoming committee is here.”
Soldiers scrambled to man their positions and reload their weapons, just as the first menacing German Panzer burst through the nearby shrubbery. It made an angry charge for the bridge, while another one followed close on its treads.
Flora dropped on her belly in the grass. Gunfire popped and shrieked above her. Tracer flashes tore into her already shredded nerves. She saw a British soldier, illuminated by all the glowing flares, mount a large weapon onto a waiting stand.
His voice came out in a growl. “Boys, load me up.”
A soldier came from behind him and dropped an odd piece of ammunition into the back of the gun. It was big and bulky, almost like a grenade attached to a stick.
Flora frowned. She wasn’t familiar with that weapon, but she suspected it could cause those Germans a lot of grief.
The boys soon confirmed her suspicions. Just before the lumbering tank mounted the bridge, the gun fired a rocket that slammed into the tank with a loud peal of a whistle.
A ball of fire belched from the machine and ripped it apart like paper. A blast of heat flashed across the field. Screams shattered the night, but no one lasted long inside that burning tin can. Only one German was thrown clear, and he paid a steep price for it. The explosion severed both his legs and scorched half his body. He screamed and tumbled around on the ground. His bloodcurdling cries made more than one British soldier offer to put him out of his misery.
As for the other tank, the German driver had seen enough. They wheeled their machine around and beat all hell back into the shrubbery.
Meanwhile, Flora watched the legless German soldier with growing horror. Although people had died all over Europe for half a decade, seeing it right in front of her made her sick. So did the heavy stench of burning flesh and human hair from the tank. She felt her gut tip over, but she wouldn’t dare vomit in front of these soldier boys. They already had enough reasons to mock her.
More explosions hurled from the metal tomb. Flares shot out with frightening hisses and whistles. They scattered colored sparks and embers every which way. A rocket whizzed out of the tank, squealed high into the sky, and exploded in a swath of color.
General Howard pressed his helmet down and ducked with each report. “Christ! What the hell did you fire at that tank?”
“Only a Piat, sir.”
“They must have been loaded with extra ammunition,” General Howard scoffed. “Welcoming committee indeed.”
Another loud explosion ripped through the night, and it shot burning Panzer parts half-way through Bénouville.
Flora pressed herself as far into the grass as she could go.
The whole thing felt like a big reality check. This wasn’t a battle for honor or glory, or even a battle for status, although women always had to fight that. This was a battle for survival, for Flora and everyone around her. These Germans were only the first to die. There would be more. France would run red with blood.
She had to get back to Geraud, because he and his network had their hearts and invasion maps set on Pas-de-Calais. It made the most sense. It boasted the shortest crossing from England, and it already had a port for Allied use. Rumors swirled about a massive army led by the famous General Patton, stationed just across the Channel from there.
It all made a convincing case for an invasion farther north, but the planes pouring past, the captured bridge, and the burning tank told a different story. The invasion wouldn’t come at Pas-de-Calais. It would come right to their own damn doorstep.
Adelaide
SAINTE-MÈRE-ÉGLISE TOWN CENTER
Adelaide remembered plenty from the First World War.
She didn’t live in Sainte-Mère-Église back then. She lived in a big city close to the action, and she volunteered at a convalescent hospital. She never forgot all the dismembered men hobbling on canes and crutches. Awful coughs from gas-rotted lungs resounded in her ears. Then there were the tortured and lifeless stares from living bodies with dead souls.
She knew danger in that war too. The guns were close enough to crack her windowpanes. Stray shells killed people she knew. Her own husband was a captain in one of the French regiments. He lost an ear, a few teeth, and part of his chin in a shell blast. It forever twisted his face, but he marched off that battlefield with his life and both feet, when so many others didn’t.
The Great War taught Adelaide all about the horrors of fighting. She knew the haunted look in her husband’s eyes, and the scores of women who walked through her hometown in mourning. The Great War was hell alright.
But it was nothing compared to the hell of this night as war made a house call to Sainte-Mère-Église.
Paratroopers dropped on the town in a shower of open chutes. They emerged from their silk webs with blackened faces, spirited screams, and weapons at the ready. Gunfire punched blinding flashes through the ghostly orange firelight. The thudding clang of the bell in the church steeple pounded in their ears, and a paratrooper landed with a bang right on top of it, his chute draping over the perilous steeple points.
Another came down in a tree near Adelaide. Branches snapped and broke around him. His own chute strangled him, and his limp body swung in the smoke and flying hot embers.
A third chute dangled right over the searing flames of the burning building. He scrambled his legs and arms to steer away from the inferno, but the flames were too quick for him. They wrapped around his legs like the tentacles of an octopus, pulling him down into their sweltering depths. Sparks showered outward as the ammunition on him went off in the heat.
Adelaide turned away with a sob.
Gone were the days of her husband’s war. Something more sinister was born in this one. Germans tackled paratroopers to the ground like wildcats. They shredded them to Swiss cheese with bullets. They took no pity or prisoners. Even citizens who tried to help were shot in cold blood.
As for the Americans, with only the firelight to guide them, they groped through the madness to locate one another. They bawled out code words and howled out commands. They helped one another up and tried to gain a foothold. All while the church bells clanged and the town’s people staggered to get away from the danger.
Adelaide clamped her hands over her ears and bolted her eyes shut.
So this was the invasion, the one everyone had talked about. The one the Allies and French people dropped leaflets about, got arrested over, passed messages for, and risked their lives to aid. The one they built the Resistance around. The one Georgette had so much hope in. Here it was at long last, the hour of liberation.
It didn’t look like liberation to Adelaide. Not right now. Instead, it wrought hell on her city and turned men and boys into murderers.
Adelaide pulled her tears to the back of her throat, then she ran back down the war zone of a street. Sweat from the fire dripped down her chest. Her robe threatened to come unraveled and expose her underclothes to the world. She barely noticed as her feet slammed on the pavement and carried her back to her house.
The door hung open just as she had left it. The blackened upper-story windows stared down at her like vacant eyes. She burst into her open parlor, crashing into her own side table with fresh blooms from the garden. Down it tumbled. Dripping water, flower petals, and broken glass made a minefield of her floor, especially in her bare feet.
Adelaide stooped to clean up the mess, but an iron pair of hands grabbed her by the arms.
Her instincts kicked in fast. She may have been an old woman, but she was no frail damsel. She huffed, puffed, and out came her fists. But the harder she swung, the tighter the hands gripped her.
“Frau Pacquet, enough of this.”
She recognized the voice. Oberleutnant Henning, the commander of the boys who billeted with her. There was no reason to think he would hurt her. Like the boys she watched over, he always played the gentleman. She saw the Germans in full swing tonight, though. She couldn’t trust anyone anymore.
Her fists swung again. This time, one connected with the soft, fleshy skin and stubble on his cheek.
It was a solid hit, but it barely fazed him. He wrapped his giant, leather-gloved hand around her pumping knuckles. Then he pulled her in a bear hug to keep her still.
“That’s enough, Frau Pacquet. I won’t hurt you. You know me. Settle down, now.”
She squirmed in his arms for a long moment. Then her burning lungs and raspy breath forced her to go still. She broke out in animal-like sobs.
Henning moved his hand to her back while her shoulders heaved underneath it. “Listen to me, you must leave.”
Adelaide exploded. “Are you crazy? There’s too many ways to die out there.” She wiped her tears with the back of her trembling hand. “They’re just boys, you know. All of them. American, German. Just boys! Why do you make them do this to each other?”
“This is the invasion. It will only get worse. You must go to your daughter.”
Your daughter …
Georgette was the only comfort to Adelaide’s riled-up insides. She had tried to get to her daughter for so long. The daughter whose husband was missing and whose baby was hungry. The one who needed her mother more than anyone in Sainte-Mère-Église.
