War Bonds: A Novel of World War Two by Pamela Norsworthy

Author:Pamela Norsworthy [Norsworthy, Pamela]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Published: 2024-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

Scatter thou the people that delight in war.

–Psalms 69:30 (KJV)

France, 1944

In military vernacular, it’s called “clearing,” a purposeful camouflage of the violence involved in sweeping acre upon acre of French soil of steadfast German troops. Clearing the cities and towns of France of the enemy, including pockets of collaborators who had much to lose with the Allied advance, was a brutal if fairly swift endeavor, initiated with Operation Overlord at Normandy and reinforced with Operation Dragoon, as the Allies came ashore in the South of France. Aided by tens of thousands of Resistance fighters, the Allies eventually pushed the Germans back to the Vosges, the low range of mountains between France and Germany which had only now recovered from the battles fought there during The Great War. But weeks of aerial bombing, artillery and cannon fire, and finally, house-to-house fighting in which soldiers looked one another in the eye before pulling their triggers, proved costly. To retake each street, each block, each tavern cost thousands of lives, with homes, churches—entire villages—regularly blown to pieces in the crossfire.

The escape lines would soon be rendered obsolete. Wills emerged from his long-shrouded existence and proceeded to Avignon, making himself known to a captain in charge of a group of British paratroopers moving north. As he attempted to explain his identity—his capture at Calais, his work with the Resistance—the platoon sergeant raised his machine gun and held it steady. He believed this man, who looked French but spoke perfect English, was most likely a German spy.

“Identification, please,” said the captain.

“I have none, sir. My name is William Hughes. Second Lieutenant William Hughes. I have worked with the French Resistance since 1940. Codenamed Carlos. My area of operation was south of Bordeaux, through the Pyrenees.”

This rang a few bells with the captain, but it was information anyone could have cobbled together as the conflict neared its pivotal moments and practical men abandoned long held loyalties in favor of keeping themselves alive. “Hands up, on your head, then. We’ll take you with us and run down your serial number to see who you might be.”

Had Wills opted to traverse the well-worn path to Spain—a path much safer with the Germans in retreat, he’d have been welcomed as a hero at the British Embassy—fed and cleaned up, his country and his family joyously notified that another young British soldier feared lost was in fact, safe and well. Instead, he placed his hands on his head as instructed, a prisoner of war again, of the Allies this time. They placed him on a truck bound for Paris with a German platoon that had been overrun in vicious fire at Toulouse. Seated directly across from him, a face he knew in an instant: the Unteroffizier from Calais, the very man who had trained his machine gun on the surrendered soldiers in the British garrison so long ago. Wills would never forget the terror of those moments, the soldier’s finger playing over the trigger, the intensity in his gaze, his anxiety exposed in the way he ran his tongue across his lower lip again and again.

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