His Enemy, His Friend Page 2

  The whole region was bare and barren, especially in winter, and the winds harsh, cold, strong. They blew so fiercely that few trees survived, and on clear days one had an unobstructed view up and down the coast. The first thing you noticed was the big blockhouse just below the top of the cliff on which the village rested, then other blockhouses at intervals of a mile or so along the shore. They were all sizes, large and small, of gray concrete, which the Germans had forced the French to construct and pay for. These fortifications and others around the Haupt Kämpflinien, the great warline, were Hitler’s main defense against invasion from the sea.

  Here and there along the coastal road were sentry boxes, six feet tall, with conical roofs. Each was large enough for two men and two machine guns. You could see their barrels sticking through the slits on each side. They served to check on traffic and also acted as lookouts over the ocean. Behind the road, away from the water, the dunes stretched for miles, bristling with stakes against parachutists and seeded with mines and booby traps.

  To the pilots of the R.A.F. planes Nogent-Plage was a landmark: the first glimpse of enemy-held territory, the first sight of occupied France, the first shriek and whistle of antiaircraft fire, and, if it was night, the first tracer bullets rushing up in the dark. By day the surf crashing on the beach was the first thing they saw below as they roared in out of the mist. Then the rocky cliff above the sand, the village with its single street, and the black ribbon of road stretching away to left and right.

  Nogent-Plage itself consisted of only a handful of brick and stone houses, with a gap here and there where a field of fire had been cleared for the guns of the blockhouse. Beyond, in back, was nothing save those endless dunes stretching away to the horizon.

  The sand had been there when William the Conqueror set off in his small boats in 1066 to invade England, when Napoleon in 1803 stood on the cliff and looked across to the shores of Sussex, when Hitler on the same cliff in 1940 shook his fist at Britain, the endlessly moving sand was still there. At times the wind blew so fiercely it made one feel that the sand would eventually smother the tiny settlement on its rock jutting into the English Channel.

  The German soldiers who garrisoned Nogent-Plage at the start of the war were giant six-footers who had awed the villagers. That had changed. Now the German troops were usually a dismal-looking lot. They were farmer’s boys from Thuringia, stunted adolescents or weary old men. But this June morning the people of the town felt uneasy. For some weeks a new breed of German soldiers, a tough battery of Silesians, had been stationed in town. They were a motorized flak unit, highly trained, efficient, equipped with light and heavy machine guns and antiaircraft weapons, continually marching up and down the single street in tight formation. They were shock troops and wanted everyone to know it. They appeared invincible. Their smartness, their discipline, even the way they saluted and their officers returned salutes were impressive.

  Above everything, accompanying all comings and goings, was noise—the pound-pound of a hundred pairs of hobnailed boots in unison, the shouts of their noncoms, the raucous calls on the loudspeakers.

  “Machen Sie schnell, schnell, schnell, hup, hup....”

  These men seemed forever on their toes, ready for anything, not war-weary troops resting after months on the icy plains of Russia. They were stationed in Nogent-Plage to kill and be killed. Quite evidently.

  Uneasiness hung over the village that day. For one thing there was organized movement in the Bloch villa. This house had been taken by the occupying forces early in the war, because it belonged to a family of Jews long since dead, deported, or forgotten. It made an excellent headquarters in the center of town. Dispatch riders coated with dust dashed up, black leather briefcases under one arm. Engineers worked on the radio aerial on the roof. From the blockhouse came a sudden burst of fire.

  Could all this mean, the villagers speculated, that the invasion was coming? That long-promised, long-awaited, long-hoped-for invasion, so often hinted at in the B.B.C. broadcasts from London called by the natives, “The Bibbice.” Against all regulations, those Normans, proud, unbending in their attitude toward the occupiers, listened every day to the Bibbice. Once Monsieur Varin, the teacher who lived next door to the Bloch villa, had switched his radio on to the B.B.C. wavelength and sat waiting to turn the volume down before the news from London began. Unfortunately he fell asleep. Those first words woke him with a start.

  “Ici Londres....”

  With a bound he leaped across the room and shut the set off. But the Germans billeted in the next house, almost in the next room, must surely have heard it and reported it. He went to bed in a sweat of anguish, lying awake all night waiting for the hammering on the door that meant a German prison camp—or worse.

  Nothing happened. The night patrols passed as usual. He heard the low, mechanical beat of their metal heels on the concrete, clack-clack, clack-clack. But no thunderous pounding on his door. The Herr Oberst, he guessed, knew what had happened and had arranged things so the German headquarters at Caen did not.

  Chapter 4

  THE FELDWEBEL HANS, as the boy called him, sat on the stone steps of his billet in the pleasant spring sunshine. He rose and yawned. If the glorious Reichswehr, the German army, didn’t think much of him as a soldier, he, in turn, didn’t think much of the Reichswehr. He was hardly passionate about roll calls, drilling, medals, uniforms, saluting, family tradition, army tradition, national tradition—all this seemed to mean little to him. He could easily have obtained a commission through his connections, but the officer corps with its caste feeling nauseated him. Once you get to be an officer, even a lieutenant, he always said, everyone below you suspects you.

  Now, with the thin dog near him and the boy as usual at his side, he picked up a clipboard with papers attached, stuck his empty pipe in his pocket, and walked down the Grande Rue and past the sign Juden Verboten, with the name of the general commanding officer underneath. The boy did not notice it. That sign banishing Jews had been there four years, which was forever to Jean-Paul Varin. It dated back so far he could not remember when it hadn’t been there. His father, he well knew, hated it, but there it was, part of the town like the Grande Rue and the cliff on which the town stood and the ocean below.

  Down the street they walked, the French boy and the German supply sergeant. Since they were invariably together, nobody took this as strange. The Herr Oberst this morning was hardly Hitler’s ideal of a soldier of the Greater Reich. He wore a rather grubby tunic and an ancient garrison cap. If his bearing and general attitude did not express contentment, neither did he appear dissatisfied with his job. The boy beside him, he simply walked along greeting those who greeted him.

  Clack-clack-clack-clack, his heels sounded on the concrete pavement. Not clack-clack, clack-clack, short, sharp, brutal, as those of most soldiers sounded, but leisurely, in a slow cadence. At the end of the village the sergeant and the boy reached the vacant lot beside the small church. The thin, lonely dog had scampered ahead and now was in the middle of the road, sitting and waiting. As often at this time of day, the Père Clement, the village priest, was coaching René Le Gallec with a football, or ballon, as the French called it. The Feldwebel Hans liked the padre, who had been retired to this backwater when the Occupation submerged everyone. Still active at seventy, he especially enjoyed coaching the football players, for he had been a great athlete himself in his youth.

  This morning Père Clement’s soutane was tied up around his waist with a coarse rope so he could run. This arrangement disclosed thick cotton underdrawers, heavy black-wool stockings reaching to his knees, and rough peasant boots, badly scuffed and scarred. The padre in his time at Nogent-Plage had developed many young football stars, and the Le Gallec boy with whom he was practicing was the best of all. The Herr Oberst stood watching, sucking on his empty pipe, throwing in an occasional suggestion or word of advice. Finally he could no longer resist getting into it himself. Glancing up the street to make sure the new, fire-eating Hauptmann c
ommanding the battery was engaged in his office, he yanked off his tunic, snapping a button in the process. The button bounced and rolled. He let it go, intending to pick it up later, placed his tunic on the grass, laid the clipboard beside it, and stepped forward.

  Immediately something inside changed. Now he was in his world, in his element, master of himself. His big frame loose and coordinated, he controlled that round ball with his feet almost delicately, pushing a short stab over to the padre, taking it back, turning it across to the boy with an insolent accuracy beautiful to watch.

  A spurt past the old man, a short step to the right to dodge the boy, then to the left to catch the pair off balance. All the time he was babying the ball until he had René and the Père Clement so confused that they were ducking first one way, then the other, totally unsure of themselves.

  The boy in the blue shorts stood transfixed, his body moving as the Feldwebel moved, twisted, stopped, and ran. Two young women going past watched, fascinated.

  “Ahhhh, ahhh...” they said in admiration. At Nogent-Plage, whenever the Feldwebel Hans played football with the boys a crowd gathered. If he was on the beach coaching the regimental team, a gang of the local lads always sat on the sea wall, commenting.

  So this morning half a dozen younger boys suddenly appeared from nowhere the second he began to play. Now he was concentrating upon René’s moves.

  “No, no, not with the right foot, the left.... You must learn to pass equally well with either foot.... Don’t shoot too soon.... Take your time, you have time.... Watch that ball... and keep your head down. Just watch the ball. Try to remember your teammates are all watching you. They will get it if your pass is a good one. Be careful, don’t lift your head. That’s better... lifting the head is always fatal.”

  He was no longer the casual Feldwebel. Now he had become a wonderful, moving, vibrant force, the great athlete, the virtuoso of ball control, master of himself and his well-coordinated body. When he took the ball to explain what he meant with a cross or a kick, he seemed almost to caress it.

  One of the young women watching glanced up the street as she heard a door slam. She saw the new commanding officer step out of the Bloch villa, heard a clicking of heels that resounded down the Grande Rue, observed the sentries presenting arms. “Herr Oberst,” she said. “Herr Oberst! Der Hauptmann kommt.” The captain is coming.

  The athlete stopped instantly, picked up his tunic, hastily put it on, and, reaching to the ground for his pipe and the clipboard, again became the nondescript Feldwebel. His garrison cap on one side of his head, he sauntered off toward the blockhouse for the morning report—now an hour overdue.

  The dog rose and followed him. At that moment the Feldwebel noticed the little Deschamps girl in the middle of the road, about fifteen yards ahead. Evidently the child had strayed from home. There she stood, a target for passing military vehicles. He got down on one knee and called to her.

  “Hier Liebling.” Come here.

  The child turned to look. She was adorable in her faded pink dress, the tiny skirt so short and shrunken from constant washings that it flared out from her thin legs. The big man held out his arms. It was not precisely the typical picture of a German soldier in France in the fifth year of the Occupation.

  Instantly the child responded, toddling toward the Feldwebel, her arms also outstretched. Then the door of a house banged open, and the girl’s mother rushed up to the Feldwebel. Knowing she did not understand German, he said in French, “She was in the middle of the street.”

  The woman took the child from him and began to scold her. Frightened, the little girl started to cry. Together they went into the house, leaving the Feldwebel Hans in the road, the stray dog at his side.

  He walked briskly down the street toward the blockhouse, and as he did the dog again rose and followed along.

  Chapter 5

  BY NOON A WIND had arisen, bringing a chill from the water. The fog was burning off as it so frequently did at this time of the year. Superficially it was like every day in Nogent-Plage, but there were signs of things to come. Formations of large planes passed over the village all morning, roaring off into the interior. What did they portend? Were they the usual attacks on bridges, railroad yards, and airfields around Paris? Who could tell?

  Georges Varin, the teacher, sat alone at a small iron table on the pavement before the Bleu Marin, chatting with Monsieur Lavigne the proprietor, a heavy-set man of forty-five with a dirty white apron around his waist. On the table was a cup of bitter coffee made of acorns and heaven-knows-what, the result of wartime shortages.

  “Another cup, Monsieur the Professor?” asked the patron. Monsieur Varin was no more a professor than the Feldwebel Hans was a colonel, being only the village schoolmaster. However, everyone called him professor since he had studied two years in Paris and was an educated man, one to be treated with respect in the village. He was useful in various ways. For instance, he helped the farmers across the dunes who could neither read nor write by penning letters for them, in a script full of flourishes, to their sons in German prison camps.

  Dark, small, stocky, and articulate, he used to wear glasses, for he was nearsighted. Unfortunately they had broken and as no new ones were obtainable, even in Caen or Rouen, he carried a pocket magnifying glass to read the communiques in the daily papers. Whenever he read his forehead wrinkled and his eyebrows rose.

  Though accepted by everybody, Monsieur Varin was not popular with the right-thinking, church-going part of Nogent-Plage. He was a Marxist and regularly voted the Communist ticket, a fact he never concealed from anyone. Yet even those who disliked him and distrusted his political convictions respected him as a good Frenchman. Had he not fought three years in the First World War, been wounded and returned to combat? Again he had been called to the colors and served through the whole campaign of 1940 as a noncommissioned officer in a frontline unit.

  All his life Georges Varin and his family had lived in Nogent-Plage. Early in the occupation he became acquainted with the Feldwebel Hans. They respected each other and had a love of music in common. Slowly over the years they became friends. In times of trouble there had been instances when only the teacher through the Feldwebel Hans had managed to get German headquarters in Caen to listen to the protests of the villagers. Once Marcel Deschamps, the fisherman, had lost his bearings in a dense fog and against regulations did not reach shore until the next morning. Ordinarily he would have been imprisoned for this offense, but the Feldwebel Hans saved him so that he received a warning only.

  Few villagers felt there was anything wrong between the schoolmaster and the German sergeant, or considered Monsieur Varin a collaborator and friend of the Nazis. Not only did he despise collaborators, he invariably spoke of Marshal Petain, head of the French collaborationist regime, as “that old donkey.” So Monsieur Varin, though not entirely popular, found his friendship with the Feldwebel accepted because it helped the town. In much the same way the Feldwebel was accepted by his superiors.

  Because of his background and army connections, the Feldwebel talked freely and frankly to an old family friend, Major Kessler, Adjutant at Headquarters of the Northern Command. Usually Major Kessler was accessible to the Feldwebel on the telephone in a tight moment. The officer in charge of the garrison at Nogent-Plage knew this and obtained favors for himself through his subordinate, the sergeant. On the staff at Headquarters in Caen, they regarded von Kleinschrodt with amusement and indulgence.

  “Yes, a strange chap, that von Kleinschrodt. Prefers to remain a Feldwebel when he could, of course, have a commission. I remember his father well at Verdun in 1917—a brave man. But this lad is different. Ah well, he saves us a lot of headaches by his knowledge of the people and the region. Nobody knows them better.”

  Thus each side and all concerned had something to gain by the arrangement, and the Germans officially ignored the sergeant’s friendship with the schoolmaster, something irregular between enemies in time of war.

  This morning while
Monsieur Varin was sitting on the terrace of the Bleu Marin waiting for the arrival of the Feldwebel Hans, the widow Dupont passed by. Her late husband had actually fought in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and she was a little dried-up apple of a woman, weighing perhaps eighty pounds, bent and shrunk with age. She always nodded good morning to everyone she met as she proceeded along the Grande Rue. Her black string bag contained four carrots, a turnip, and an onion for her usual midday meal of soup, even now starting to simmer on the back of her stove at home. The moment she saw Monsieur Varin she stood still and beckoned to him.

  Reluctantly he rose to meet her. The widow Dupont was celebrated in the village for buttonholing people, usually grasping the men by the lapel of their jackets. Also for her bad breath, a compound of garlic and red wine consumed twice a day for eighty years. Hence the teacher did not regard her approach with anticipation.

  As ever, she came close to him, far too close, and seized the lapel of his jacket as if to keep him from edging off.

  “Monsieur Varin,” she said, “would you perhaps care to do a favor for me?”

  “Willingly, madame,” he replied, trying to disengage himself from her grasp. “Always a pleasure to be of use to you.”

  “Ah, bon. One can always count upon you, Monsieur Varin. I wish I could say the same for others in this town. I mention no names—oh no, no names—but doubtless you are aware to whom I refer. Well, it is about my grandson. You may remember he was sent off to work in Germany when he became seventeen by the Fritz in their forced-labor organization, the Todt organization they called it. He worked in an airplane factory. Such a nice lad, too, respectful and honest, and a good Catholic besides, I assure you....”

  “Yes, yes, madame.” Impossible to bring her to the point, but at least he managed to move back slightly. He was awaiting not only the arrival of the Feldwebel Hans, but who knows perhaps a glass of that good German beer. “Yes, I remember Michel, a fine boy. What happened, Madame Dupont?”