burst into giggles again, Jacko grinned from ear to ear, then followed Lorrimer, Rich and the young Maquisard across the square to their jeep.
‘I didn’t know you spoke French,’ Rich said.
‘I don’t,’ Jacko replied. ‘Those are the only Frog words I know. Picked them up from the films.’
‘What a fucking prat!’ Sergeant Lorrimer muttered to himself, shaking his head in exaggerated disgust. Then, indicating the young Frenchman with the German rifle, he said: ‘This is Pierre, of the Maquis. If you understand what I’m saying, Pierre, this is Corporal Burgess, known as Rich, and Lance-Corporal Dempster, known as Jacko. As neither speaks French, you won’t have to put up with their bloody awful conversation.’
‘Well, thanks a lot!’ Jacko exclaimed.
‘I understand,’ Pierre said proudly, smiling at everyone. ‘Rich and Jacko! Nicked names!’
‘Nicked names,’ Lorrimer said. ‘You’ve got it.’ He sighed in exasperation and turned to the other two. ‘Pierre’s going to act as our guide and hopefully lead us to his fellow Maquis. But first he’ll take us to the next village on our route. If it’s been cleared, which we think it has, we’ll come back and tell the others about it. Then we head out.’
‘You picked the right men for the job,’ Jacko informed him.
‘I’m sure,’ Lorrimer said, then he clambered up into the driver’s seat of the Willys jeep, indicated that Pierre should sit beside him, and waited patiently until Jacko and Rich had climbed into the back, the former behind the twin Vickers guns mounted in the middle of the vehicle, between the front and rear seats, the latter behind the Browning heavy machine-gun mounted on the rear. ‘All set?’ Lorrimer asked.
‘Of course,’ Jacko replied.
‘Fire away,’ Rich added.
‘Hold on,’ Lorrimer said. Just to take the wind out of the sails of his two cocky passengers, he released the handbrake and accelerated quickly, making the tyres screech in the soil as the jeep shot forward, practically taking wing. Jacko and Rich were nearly thrown out and had to hold on to their mounted machine-guns to stay upright; they were still frantically trying to keep their balance when their SAS mates in the square, still eating and drinking, clapped their hands and cheered, before being obscured in the cloud of dust churned up by the departing jeep.
‘Mad bastards!’ Callaghan muttered as he watched the jeep disappear around the first bend in the track, heading into the forest.
‘Lorrimer’s just having some sport,’ Greaves replied, grinning. ‘They’ll be all right.’
In the jeep, as Lorrimer slowed it down to a less suicidal speed, Jacko spread his legs and continued to steady himself by holding on to the grips of the twin Vickers. ‘Very good, Sarge!’ he bawled above the roaring of the vehicle. ‘A real smooth getaway!’
‘Designed to wake you up,’ Lorrimer replied. ‘And clearly it did.’
‘Bloody right,’ Rich confirmed, likewise holding on tight to his machine-gun.
‘Very quick! Most admirable!’ Pierre added, trying out his English. ‘We will be there in no time. Take this track, s’il vous plaît.’
Following the direction indicated by the Frenchman, Lorrimer turned off the main road and took the narrower track heading east, winding through dense, gloomy forest. The narrowness of the track and its many bends, and the overhanging branches of trees, slowed him down considerably, but he would have gone slower anyway to enable Jacko and Rich to thoroughly scan the forest for any sign of German snipers. In this task Pierre was even more of a help, knowing the forest intimately, but no movement was evident among the dense trees.
Ten minutes later they were, Pierre loudly informed them, approaching the next village.
‘Slow down when I signal,’ he managed to say in a mixture of French, English and sign language. ‘Stop, please, when I tell you.’
Lorrimer slowed down and stopped entirely when Pierre, at a bend in the narrow track around which they could not see, dropped his right hand with the palm face down. When Pierre indicated that they were going to walk the rest of the way to the village, Lorrimer executed a difficult turn on the narrow track, so that the jeep was facing back the way it had come. Having cut the engine and applied the handbrake, he picked up his 9mm Sten sub-machine-gun and jumped to the ground.
‘You, too,’ he said to Pierre, then turned to Jacko and Rich to say, as Pierre jumped down beside him: ‘You two keep manning those guns. If you hear us running back – or hear or see anything else indicating that we’re being pursued by Jerry – get ready to open fire. Understood?’
‘Yes, Sarge,’ both men replied, simultaneously swinging their machine-guns around on their swivel mounts until the barrels were facing the track at the rear of the jeep.
‘Good. Let’s go, Pierre.’
Lorrimer and the Maquisard walked away from the jeeps and turned the bend in the track, both with their weapons unslung and at the ready. At the other side of the bend, the track ran straight to the tiny village, and gave a partial view of the sides of several stone cottages with red-slate roofs. The village, Lorrimer noted, was only about five hundred yards away and smoke was coming out of the chimneys.
Using sign language, he indicated that he and Pierre should leave the track and advance the rest of the way through the trees. This they did, encountering no one and soon emerging near the backs of the cottages.
From the open window of one of the cottages, they could hear a crackling radio on which someone was speaking in French. Though not familiar with the language, Lorrimer understood enough to realize that he was hearing news of the Allied liberation of the country. The advance seemed to be going well.
Stepping up to the house and glancing through the open window, Lorrimer saw that the kitchen was filled with people, all seated around a huge pine table, drinking wine or calvados, smoking cigarettes and. listening with obvious pleasure to the news on the radio. That they were doing so was a clear indication that the Germans had already left.
Sighing with relief, but still not taking any chances, Lorrimer checked the rear of the other cottages in the row, and found similar scenes inside, so he let Pierre lead him out into the village’s only street.
The street was no more than a flattened earth track running between two straight rows of stone cottages and a grocer’s, animal feed store and saddlery, bakery, dairy, blacksmith’s, barber’s shop, one bar and, at the far end, a church, graveyard and school. Many of the locals – mainly farmers and their wives, most surprisingly plump and red-cheeked given the spartan existence they must have led during the German occupation – were sitting either on their doorsteps or on rush chairs outside the houses, taking in the sun, eating and, like those Lorrimer had seen in the kitchens, celebrating with wine or calvados.
When those nearest to Lorrimer and Pierre saw them, they came rushing up excitedly to embrace them, kiss them on both cheeks or shake their hands, and then plied them with bread, cheese, alcohol, all the while asking about the Allies’ progress. After refusing the wine and telling them as much as he knew, Lorrimer asked if all the Germans had left the village.
‘They left two behind as snipers,’ he was informed in English by a solemn-faced, gaunt man wearing an FFI armband. ‘But they didn’t last
