Martin Walker: The Caves of Perigord

“Explosives, for the rails across the Vezere.”

“We need them,” said the man, and the pistol held loosely by his side was suddenly pointing at Manners. “These explosives are requisitioned in the name of the people,” he shouted, for the benefit of the curious faces on the defenders’ side of the roadblock. “You’ll get a requisition paper, properly signed by me. Out.”

“You can’t requisition from me. I’m a British officer and I’m fighting on your side,” said Manners reasonably. “And there’s an SS armored division coming this way from Toulouse unless I blow those rails.”

The man fired a single shot into the air. “Out, I said.”

“Capitaine, capitaine,” came a loud, delighted voice. “Welcome to liberated France.” It was the big Spaniard from Soleil’s ch‚teau, and he came across to kiss Manners heartily on both cheeks, pushing the thin man casually out of the way. “Comrades, this man is the master of the Sten gun. He builds them blindfolded,” he called. “Clear the road for the brave capitaine.” And he put his own massive shoulders to the farm cart and swiveled it aside for Manners’s truck to pass. “Good luck,” he called, and gave the truck a cheerful clenched-fist salute.

“Full of bloody Reds, this place,” said the police driver as he accelerated away, his hand trembling as he lit a cigarette. Manners grinned at him in relief and carried on trying to work out how much dynamite he would need to do the work of a plastique charge. When he got to le Bugue, not far from the site of his first ambush, he had to go through the town and past Sybille’s house to get to the station. Half a dozen cheering youngsters waving French flags jumped aboard and hung improbably onto the back as he lurched along the rails to the river. A French flag had been hanging from her upstairs window, but her door was closed and there were shutters over the surgery window and he pushed the thought of her bedroom into the back of his mind.

He tried three sticks of dynamite, which was enough to blow the rails and sleepers out of their beds, but not enough for the damage he wanted. So he tried two charges of ten sticks, and blew an impressive crater in the rail bed. Feeling pleased with himself, he repeated the blasts at the farther end of the bridge and added ten more sticks for luck, as a cheerful and swelling crowd gathered to watch. A middle-aged woman came running down from a small hamlet of honey-colored stone, carrying a dusty bottle, and handed it shyly to his driver.

“Have you come by parachute?” asked a small boy.

Manners grinned at him. “Flew in by special plane,” he said. He got the driver to push them all back to somewhere near safety as he lit the fuses and sprinted for cover. He almost didn’t make it, the blast stunning him just after he landed in the ditch, and a thick rain of small stones from the rail bed pattered onto his back. He limped back to the truck, feeling the worse for wear, when the small boy darted up to him and asked, “Where’s the rest of you?”

“Coming,” he said. “Coming soon,” and the crowd cheered and started shouting “Winston Churchill,” and breaking into the “Marseillaise” when he waved wearily to them and tried to explain that they should throw the rails into the river.

But as the truck jerked away, he thought it was a very good question. There was something frighteningly premature about this local mood of liberation, with the Allied armies still coming ashore on the beaches four hundred miles to the north. And there were an awful lot of German troops between them and Manners, and an entire armored division heading straight for him and all those flimsy roadblocks and kids with their French flags and Churchill V-signs. And for Sybille. When they got to le Buisson, and saw the dead Milice men in the square and a fat man with his trousers around his ankles hanging grotesquely from a lamppost, he felt even more worried.

“Cheer up,” said the driver and broke off half the ham sandwich that someone had given him at le Bugue. The bottle was between his knees. “Have something to eat. This eau-de-vie is the real thing. And there’s lots of dynamite left.”

“I know, but too many road bridges,” said Manners, chewing appreciatively. “Take the road along the river to Siorac and then Souillac. I want to know what chance we have of stopping the bastards now they can’t come by train.”

He had four bazookas back in the cave, the only weapons he had with a chance of slowing the German armor. Something like two hundred tanks and self-propelled guns that were almost as good. Being SS, they’d probably be equipped with Mark V Panther tanks, which were a generation ahead of anything he had faced in the desert. A bazooka wouldn’t even dent the frontal armor of a Mark V. All he could hope to do was slow them, force them to stop and deploy, organize standard attacks with artillery and infantry. He might delay them for a few hours if he was lucky. Twenty thousand men, and over two thousand vehicles. They would have to disperse against air attack. At fifty yards between vehicles, which was the minimum the British Army decreed for armored units, the Das Reich division would cover fifty miles of road. They would use at least two roads, probably three if they could. Still ten to fifteen miles of vehicles on each road, a big traffic jam if it had to stop and bring forward heavy weapons. They would put a reconnaissance battalion in the lead, with motorbikes and armored cars and a company or two of Panzergrenadier infantry with mortars. Maybe a couple of self-propelled guns if they were expecting trouble. Could he let the reconnaissance battalion pass, and then ambush the soft-skinned vehicles behind? No, that would have to be a simple hit and run, and he needed sustained fire if he were going to force them to halt and deploy. He would have to try and stop them head-on.

They were coming from Montauban, just north of Toulouse. They would have to come through Cahors and Figeac, and then their route to Normandy would be through Brive or Perigueux. The question was, where would they cross the rivers? They were the only choke points he had. His map showed fifteen bridges across the Dordogne, and he had just four bazookas. He had to work out which road they would take and use the remaining dynamite to demolish the main bridge, and then ambush their alternative crossings. It was hopeless, and probably lethal for any of the Maquis who manned the ambushes with him. But he had to try.

There was only one glimmer of a chance. If his pinpricks were relentless and frequent enough, if the great armored beast were stung so hard and so often, it might just forget about its charge to Normandy and stop long enough to lash out at all the little hornets that were tormenting it. It was not what he would do, and not what any professional soldier would do. Normandy was the crucial battlefield for an armored division, not the soft belly of the Perigord. But the SS were not always coldly professional soldiers. They were political soldiers, driven by their mad creed. They might just be provoked into the stupidity of reprisals. With quickening excitement, he realized that they could even be driven into losing the one thing they did not have: time.

God help him, but he might be able to slow them by offering the helpless targets of the French civilians he was supposedly here to help. To do his best, he had to make the SS do their worst. So, take no prisoners. Butcher their wounded. Desecrate their corpses and leave them on the bridges. Hang them from trees over the road. Madden the Germans with rage. Nobody had given him such orders, and nobody in his army ever would. Nor would they ever forgive an officer who broke the code by doing so. But a cold dread spread through him as he realized that this was the battle he had been sent here to fight. He reached for the bottle of eau-de-vie and looked for places where he might commit atrocities and for men ruthless enough to help him. He had to find Marat.