Martin Walker - The Caves of Perigord

Perigord, May 1944

The ambush site was not perfect, but it was the best Manners could do. They were far enough from a road or track to delay any counterattack from the armored cars. And McPhee was stationed at the only possible approach route with ten men, three Bren guns, and enough Gammon grenades to fashion a mine that could blow the wheels or tracks from any vehicle that tried to use it. Manners had left him checking the rag stoppings in the Molotov cocktails.

The cutting was old and shallow, and ended in a curve that ran alongside a stand of old timber. Some of the oaks were fifty feet high, and the woodmen had sawn their trunks more than half through, supported the gaps with wedges, and pushed mud into the fresh scars in the trees to disguise them. Lacking water, they had all pissed into the earth to make the mud. Manners had rigged belts of plastique around each trunk. Once the armored train had passed, he intended to blow the trees to prevent it from coming back to bring its guns into the fight. He had placed another camouflaged charge at the entrance to the cutting, to prevent the target train from reversing out of danger. The escape routes were planned, the ammunition was checked, the Mills grenades had their fuses in place. And on the far side of the cutting, Malrand’s Spandau was well dug in and carefully camouflaged. Manners had walked the cutting twice, his foot sore but just about healed, to check if the ambush could be seen.

He was more than nervous. This was the most ambitious operation they had tried. Sixty men and four trucks hidden in the woods, two of them on loan from Soleil. If this went wrong, it would undo almost all that his team had achieved since they landed, and cripple the Resistance in this part of France. But it was worth the risk, and not just because of the importance of the target. This was an operation that had Berger’s Gaullists working hand in hand with Marat’s Communists of the FTP. Getting those two to put aside their differences and work together was a crucial part of his mission. And crippling the Brehmer Division before it became operational made military sense. He bit down the thought that the reprisals against the local civilians would be savage. If half of what Marat said about the Brehmer troops was true, they’d be burning and killing their way across Perigord whether he fought them or not.

And when the armored train came into view at last, he understood just how viciously the Brehmer Division intended to fight this war. The first thing he saw, being pushed along in front of the locomotive, was a flatcar loaded with French civilians. God, they had children there, too, with machine guns trained on them! No Frenchman would be able to detonate a mine under the front of that train. Thank the Lord his plan didn’t call for that.

The armored train passed slowly, that dreadful flatcar, then the locomotive, the coal tender, and the steel boxes with loopholes on each side. Then the sandbagged flatcar with the twin 37mm antiaircraft cannons, and another steel box. Then the gap, and the second locomotive came into the head of the cutting, one of the familiar local trains with a long line of passenger carriages, the usual sandbagged machine gun posts at front and rear.

The timing would be crucial now. The armored train began to take the bend, picking up speed as it left the cutting, the antiaircraft guns about to disappear around the curve when he fired the detonator. The five explosions came almost as one, a long, deafening ripple, and the great oaks jerked and began to lean. Oh, Christ, that first one was falling to the side where it would block the others. No, the second one swayed slowly, ponderously into it and gathering speed they both crashed down the slope and onto the antiaircraft gun and the last armored carriage of the locomotive. There was the deep, clanging sound of a great bell being rung, and as the dust rose he saw a great heaving barrier of wood and boughs and leaves that were still whipping back and forth. And the Spandau began ripping at the thin wooden sides of the passenger cars on the second train.

The noise was deafening as the Bren and and Sten guns joined in from his side of the cutting, and Manners watched the sparks rising frantically from the locked wheels of the second train as it tried to brake. But with slow, inevitable grace, it ground on, thrusting the sandbagged flatcar before it into the tangle of fallen trees. Soldiers jumped and scrambled from doors and windows as the flatcar upended and twisted to one side and the locomotive plunged like a blind bull into the crushed ruin of what had been the last carriage of the armored train.

The shriek of escaping steam almost drowned out the sounds of firing and Manners saw rather than heard the flashes of grenades being tossed down onto the train as its carriages seemed to bounce and then sag their way off the tracks. But the Germans were fighting back, the machine gun post at the rear of the train spraying the ridge of the cutting through the great spray of sand and dust that showed Malrand’s Spandau was trying to suppress their fire. More grenades dropped, and Manner’s saw one of Marat’s men beside him tumbled back with his jaw torn away by a bullet, the moistened towel around his Sten suddenly soaking bright with blood.

Manners ducked beneath the skyline and darted along to the trench where Lespinasse and three of Berger’s men were waiting to ambush any flank attack that might come from the troops who had been in the front of the armored train. The fools, they were out of the trench and over by the tree stumps, craning their necks to see the damage. He pushed them angrily back into position behind the Bren. He had to be sure this flank was secure.

Back to what was now a firefight, and it was getting time to leave. Earth was kicking up constantly from the edge of the cutting as the Germans began to reorganize, and there was too much dust to see where the third train might be. He looked around desperately for his detonator boxes. The ground that had come to seem so familiar in the hours of waiting was now unrecognizable after the disappearance of those landmark trees. He clenched his eyes shut and concentrated. The tree stumps were there, so he had been here. He edged to his right and looked again. He was on the lip of the little hollow where he had waited. The boxes were less than a yard from his hand. He scurried down and pressed the handle on the second detonator to fire the charge that would blow the tracks behind the ambush, half expecting a failure. Any stray bullet or excited boot could have cut the wire. But no, a crashing explosion that even his ringing ears could hear.

He took the whistle from his pocket and began blowing long, regular-blasts, the signal to disengage. No firing from Lespinasse’s team on the right. No sounds of battle from McPhee’s post back at the track half a mile behind him. Still blowing his whistle, he bent to the crumpled man with the shattered jaw whose hand clutched at his throat, trying vainly to stop the pumping jets of blood from his artery as he stared in dying desperation at the English captain. Manners turned away and trudged along the line, blowing his whistle and telling his men to pull back and disperse. He could count on Malrand’s Spandau to hold off any counterattack from the third train. He could always count on Francois.

Sybille’s gramophone served the useful purpose of blanketing the sound of the radio, when he listened to the personal messages that were read over the French service of the BBC. And at six-thirty one evening, as he strained to hear over the sound of Maurice Chevalier’s “Valentine” from the parlor, Manner’s heard the alert message. “La fee a un beau sourire.” The fairy has a lovely smile. He smiled and forced himself to listen to the mystifying remainder about the panda being a bear and the camel being hairy and the carrots being ready to cook, and then leaped in the air, turned off the radio, and spun Sybille into a brief, twirling dance.