Big Bang Fic: Rat and Sword Go To War, Chapter 5
Title: Rat and Sword Go To War
Author: rthstewart
Rating: T, for a soldier's salty language
Pairings/characters: Peter Pevensie, Susan Pevensie
Disclaimer: This work of historical fiction is offered respectfully and with deep admiration for the men and women herein depicted as well as C.S. Lewis and the other content owners of the Chronicles of Narnia and its related properties. Any original content in this derivative fiction is in the public domain and may be used freely and without notice to me or attribution.
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: All of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Summary: The High King and the Gentle Queen go to war, again.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
To War
D-Day minus One Month to D-Day minus Two Days
ooOOoo
Major Howard had sent Lieutenant Brotheridge to exert a good influence. Their platoon leader lost that ability about eight pints ago. The man had a lot on his mind and Brotheridge was absolutely…
Peter nudged Parr. “Boss, what’s the word I should use for drunk?”
Parr looked up from his own pint. “Who you callin’ drunk?”
“Danny.” To his face, he was always “sir,” “Lieutenant,” or “Mister Brotheridge.” Behind his back, the platoon called their leader, “Danny.”
The sniper squinted at the swaying Lieutenant at the corner table. “Looks about rat-arsed to me.”
“Arseholed,” Gardner offered, hiccupping.
“Bladdered,” Gray said, wiping his mouth on a sleeve.
Brotheridge’s voice rose above the noise of the smoky pub. “We thought it strange and unaccountable that a stuffed trout should break up into little pieces like that.”
The Sergeants he was drinking with all laughed and toasted him.
“What the hell is he…?”
“That trout was plaster-of-paris,” Peter finished the quote and laughed.
The others all stared at him.
“From the book? Three Men in a Boat? To say nothing of the dog.”
Blank, glassy looks.
“I’ll just shut it again and drink my pint,” Peter said.
Bailey laughed and slapped him across the shoulder blades so hard he nearly upended his beer. “It’s cuz it’s about boats. That's how you know it."
“Pevensie don’t know arse from elbow, but he does know boats!” Parr said hooting.
“I hate boats,” Peter said. “Really, I hate them. I really hope we won’t have boats wherever we’re going.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Parr said with a shrug and put a boot up on an empty stool. “It’s coming. The Major has our orders. He knows what we’re doing and where we’re going.”
“Why doesn’t he say something?” Peter asked, taking another long pull on his cigarette and then snuffing it out. He hated them, hated how they smelled, and how they made it hard to draw a full breath. Getting through the Army without them had become unthinkable. He tried to limit how many he had and how often because they were too much like the syrup of poppy their Narnian physician had sometimes been too free with.
“He can’t,” Parr replied. “My guess is the Major’s been bigoted. The orders are so secret he can’t tell anyone else yet. And that means they probably come from really high up, General Poett and General Gale, maybe even Monty and Eisenhower above them.”
“We are training for a special purpose,” Major Howard had told them a few weeks ago. The second front was coming - that was all it could be and COSSAC had given D Company some special purpose in it. Command had done so in spite of the bridge blown during Operation Mush. Since then, they had been training for days over two strips that were supposed to be bridges, 550 yards apart. They trained and trained until they couldn’t stand it anymore, bored to death and getting stale, stupid, and destructive.
So, Major Howard brought them here, to Exeter, in sealed up trucks, all 180 of them, 6 platoons, plus the sappers. For six days and nights they had been taking, retaking, and taking again two bridges over the River Exe and the Exeter Canal at Countess Weir. One platoon, two platoons, all six platoons, one bridge, two bridge, red bridge, blue bridge. Over and over. Fighting, shooting, smoke bombs, thunder-flashes and grenades. They had shaken the stones from the bridges and tiles from roofs. They’d blown fish right out of the water - good eating, too. Peter had been learning the basics of the sappers’ jobs, how to defuse bombs and detonators, how to go hand over hand under bridges. All terrific.
But then Major Howard had gone and made them put together boats and launch them. And every time they had launched a boat, Peter had gone into the River Exe.
“I just really hope the orders don’t have any boats,” Peter said.
“Oh come on, Pevensie, you’re still swearing like your mother is listening,” Gardner said.
Parr smacked his hand to his forehead in a gesture of despair. “You’re shaming my teaching, Pevensie. Say, I hate those goddamned mother fucking boats.”
The problem with having learned to drink on Lightning and tequila and then the steady practise over the last year in Wiltshire pubs was that Peter really didn’t get especially drunk. And as for the cursing…
“Someone shorter and hairier than you, Parr, told me either swear like a soldier or don’t swear at all.” He raised his glass and drained it. “And I was always better at the drinking. And the buying.” Peter stood and collected the empties off the table. “I’ll get the next round. Oh, and Parr?”
“Yeah?”
“At least I’m not swimming across a river with a Bren gun.”
Peter knew when to make an exit because Gray and Gardner started yelling again. Major Howard had wanted two men strong enough to swim a canal carrying a machine gun. Parr had volunteered Gray and Gardner for that job and they were still furious about it.
By the time Peter got back to the table, the others were putting out their cigarettes and shoving away from the table. It was going to be a lot of beer to drink by himself but everyone took a pint and drank it quickly.
“Where’re we going?” Peter asked.
“One of the goddamned Yanks from the supply depot stole Jones’ girl,” Bailey said.
“We’ll need you to launch ‘em,” Gray said, pulling on his sleeve.
“Always glad to oblige.” Peter quickly drank the rest of his pint and followed them out. This was, after all, a matter of national pride.
Peter had gotten a reputation in D Company as a man who never threw the first punch, but could be counted on to throw the last. He was the one to toss the enemy into the nearest ditch, canal, or stream. He started over the last year by learning to throw poaching Yanks out of Salisbury pubs, for distance. During all the training exercises, he’d perfected the toss of a struggling Pole or para over a railing into the waterway below. He did always make sure they didn’t drown. The townspeople throughout southern England thought they were all hooligans, but a man just didn’t take another soldier’s girl like that. Though, Peter had to admit he didn’t have very high opinions of the girls, either. He knew there must be women who weren’t solely interested in the crown of Narnia or whether Private Pevensie had a chocolate bar, but really he’d not met many of them in his life - both of them.
The night air was bracing, windy and cool.
“There,” Gray said, pointing at a group of Yanks loitering across the street.
“If the Yank stole Jones’ girl, how come he’s still there?” Peter asked, reasonably, he thought. “Wouldn’t he be with the girl and not with his mates over there?”
“There you go again, Pevensie, thinking too much,” Parr said. “Leave the thinking to your elders and betters.”
“Don’t matter anyway,” Bailey said. “If they’ve not taken a Tommy’s girl, they will.”
Gardner and Gray charged forward, fists flying at the Americans, shouting “ABLE ABLE ABLE!”
After the problems with telling friendly from foe in Operation Mush, Major Howard had each platoon yelling a call sign during battle. Brotheridge’s platoon was “ABLE,” Lieutenant Wood’s platoon was “BAKER,” Smith’s was “CHARLIE,” and so on.
“ABLE ABLE ABLE” had become their platoon’s war cry.
Peter waded in after them, ducking the throws of an American private who looked like he was about sixteen. Peter picked the boy up by the shirt and belt and dumped him into a refuse bin. The next man was bigger, meaner, and his fist connected with Peter’s stomach and it was going to hurt when the beer wore off. On his way up from doubling over, Peter hauled back and landed an upper cut that sent the Yank sprawling onto the ground.
“Where the hell are you going?” Parr yelled as some of the boys from Fox’s platoon ran by.
“Give us a hand!” Bailey hollered, shaking loose of a Yank who had him around the middle.
“Can’t stop!” one of them called back over his shoulder. The lot of them disappeared down a side street. Shrill police whistles coming after explained why Fox’s platoon was running and what they were running from.
Jones showed up and it was about time since it was his girl. Jones was always better with starting the mayhem than the actual fisticuffs, proving it when he tried to throw a rock at a burly sergeant, missed, and smashed a window.
It looked to be a proper brawl. The Exeter police came and broke them up just as Peter threw the last of the Yanks in the canal and just before the Yanks’ friends showed up. As the platoon was climbing into a truck, with police escort, Peter saw Major Howard and Captain Priday guiding Danny into a jeep. Brotheridge was still quoting from Three Men in a Boat.
Goddamnit he hated boats.
ooOOoo
Dusk was just beginning to fall when Susan wearily pedaled up the drive to the Château. She wanted a warm bath with salts, a bottle of good wine and… roast chicken, fresh fruit and crusty bread with soft goat cheese would be lovely.
Instead… Well, there would be wine. Maybe some peas and early beans from the garden. Some corn bread if Madame Vion had been able to find it. A soup made from a handful of dried beans and a piece of pork. There was hardly any food. Thank goodness the occasional drop by Lysander included tinned meat. No Frenchmen or Frenchwomen would deign to eat Spam, but it was that or no meat at all.
With a sigh she removed her constant companion, her wooden box, from the bike basket and trudged into the hospital.
She nodded to the duty nurse and went down the hall to Madame Vion’s office.
“Welcome back, Jeanne,” Monsieur Desvignes said, coming out of his office. “Any problems? Do you need help with the box?”
“Thank you, but it’s fine.” Susan immediately felt guilty for complaining even to herself. Madame Vion’s accountant was much older and working very, very hard.
They all were.
“Let me get the door for you, at least. I’ll tell Madame Vion you are back from the chemist.”
“Thank you.”
Susan went into Madame Vion’s office, set the box on the desk, and rubbed her sore neck. A glass of wine would be nice, so she took two glasses and poured a white from the Loire.
The click of heels on the marble floors meant Madame Vion’s return.
“Welcome back, Jeanne!” Madame came forward and kissed her on both cheeks. “All went well? You are later than usual.”
Susan handed her “Aunt” a glass of wine.
“I was stopped at the checkpoint coming back.”
“But no difficulties?”
“No,” Susan replied, savoring the crisp white’s citrus flavours. “Quite the opposite. Sergeant Müller showed me pictures of his wife and children and practised his weak French. He and Lieutenant Becker gave me some batteries. They are in the box.”
“Batteries are always useful, especially for the wireless.”
Susan was just sitting down on the sofa as Madame Vion opened the wooden box. “And it seems not just batteries!” Madame exclaimed.
“What is it?” She hurried to the box and looked inside.
“Oh.”
There were three batteries in with the now filled medicine bottles from the chemist. There was also a nosegay of little pink and yellow flowers.
“It seems you have an admirer in Lieutenant Becker, Jeanne.”
Susan sighed and gingerly removed the now slightly wilted flowers from the box. “I suppose I can put them on the hospital floor for the patients?”
She had long since exorcised herself of any guilt regarding the unsought-for attention of admirers. With the exception of Rabadash the Ass, none of her former suitors had been in the army of a nation at war with Narnia. And look how well that had ended.
“Will you get your head turned by a few flowers, Jeanne? Will you end up like so many of our patients?”
“Absolutely not, Aunt.”
Madame Vion looked at her carefully but she would not find the shy blush or stammer of Susan Pevensie. Queen Susan the Gentle, Susan Caspian, and Jeanne-Louise Lambert had no difficulty managing male attention and had no conflict whatsoever.
When she found in Susan’s countenance what she sought, Madame Vion nodded and sighed. “I am sorry, Jeanne. You are a pretty girl. You should be enjoying this time. Not…” She waved her arm around the office vaguely.
“I have no regrets, Madame. None.” How could she explain that this was what Narnia had trained her to do? That she felt the Lion’s purpose in everything she did here? She had been courted by Kings and Lords; she had been loved and respected by a worldly man of great wealth and gentleness. She already had the heart of a Wing Commander in England. What could a Lieutenant in the 21st Panzer give her that she had not already been offered before, and rejected? All her personas and identities had learned to look beyond the generous gift, the shy token, and the flowery praise.
She put an arm around Madame Vion and kissed her cheek. “Nothing will be a greater reward than to see France liberated and nothing will turn me from that goal. But…”
Madame Vion arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Yes?”
“If Lieutenant Becker or Sergeant Müeller would see fit to provide food occasionally during my stops at the checkpoint, I would not refuse it.”
Madame Vion raised her glass. Susan did as well. “Santé.”
“Santé.”
00oo00
They had been so certain it would come with the full moon period in May. June? Surely the first week of June? There had been hundreds of messages personnel over Radio Londres. They always began with the first four notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, dot-dot-dot-dash, V in Morse Code, V for Victory.
Everyone whispered it would be Pas-de-Calais. But then why such interest in the two little bridges 11 kilometres inland from the Normandy beaches?
With a sigh, Susan swerved around another pit, stood on the pedals and pushed harder. She knew every rut on the road between the Château and Café Gondrée. The route from Bénouville to the Caen chemist was similarly memorized. The advantage to the repeated trips, day after day, week after week was that no one stopped and questioned her anymore. At the Caen checkpoint, the very helpful Lieutenant Becker and Sergeant Müller were slipping food in her box every day. Sergeant Müeller helped make small repairs to her bicycle and found a new tyre for her and a chain. The flowers from Lieutenant Becker also continued to appear. Susan sent all of them upstairs for the patients to enjoy.
Susan was able to move about Caen unnoticed and even after curfew, all for the benefit of the patients of Château de Bénouville and the German babies the women birthed there. The first few times she was searched and questioned, but all the soldiers ever noticed were her medicine bottles labeled for treatment of lurid feminine complaints. At this point, she could pedal through a checkpoint with a basket full of plastic explosives and no one would stop her.
The real danger in being out after curfew was getting hit by falling bomber debris. It dropped out of the sky so regularly, no one was perturbed at all by the frightful noise.
It was getting dark just as she pulled up to the Gondrée Café. She could not see the bridge well, but there would be guards on it. When she could, Susan tried to come in the early evening. The garrison soldiers were sometimes more glib and Madame Gondrée overheard more. If Susan picked up the news in the evening, she and Madame Vion could code it overnight and get it to Caen the next day. Or Susan would transmit short urgent messages via Madame Vion’s wireless during her standing w/t “date” with Tebbitt the next afternoon.
As soon as she pushed open the door, carrying her trusty box of medicine bottles, she sensed something off in the Café. The soldiers were rowdy and loud. She saw Madame Gondrée look up from where she was setting a tray of beers on a table and her eyes told a story that sent Susan scurrying to the back kitchen.
Monsieur Gondrée was washing up and whirled about so quickly at her entrance he nearly dropped a soapy glass. “Jeanne! Thank goodness!”
“Is Madame not feeling well?” she asked loudly, setting the box down on the counter.
“It has been a terrible day for her!” Monsieur Gondrée put the glass aside, hurriedly wiped his hands on his apron and shut the door, dimming some of the noise.
“Thérèse heard them,” Monsieur Gondrée said softly. Susan nodded and made much of banging the box lid about and jostling the medicine bottles so that they clacked, adding a chorus to the German singing on the other side of the door.
Whispering under the din, he said, “Thérèse heard where the trigger is for the explosive charges under the bridge.”
Susan stared at the humble Café owner and father of three little girls.
Monsieur Gondrée glanced back at the door but only noise came through; there was no Gestapo agent on the other side.
“Thérèse heard the soldiers say that the trigger that will blow up the bridges is in the pillbox they just built, the one with the big tank gun.”
“And if the pillbox is taken out, they can’t blow the bridge?”
Monsieur Gondrée nodded.
Both their hands were shaking as they put the empty bottles back in the box.
“Thank you,” Susan said to him. “You and Thérèse both. Thank you.”
“I am not a brave man, Mademoiselle.”
“But you are, Monsieur, you and your wife. You are as brave as Lions.”
ooOOoo
They’d gotten used to the bouncing and jouncing around inside a closed lorry. Major Howard had given them the order to pack up and move out. Might this be the last stop before deployment? The lorry’s tarpaulins were all tied down to keep them secret and out of sight. They’d been bumping over roads for over an hour, heading south.
The sounds of planes outside got louder.
“RAF base,” Parr said.
The truck slowed and stopped. A guard gate, probably. There was some discussion Peter couldn’t hear. The truck started moving again and finally stopped and the engine cut out.
“Fall out!” Major Howard called.
They all clambered out of the truck, blinking a little in the spring sunshine. Looking around, Peter saw the patrols and the barbed wire and the harried look of all the men running around. It was finally coming. And they were part of it.
“Look up,” Brotheridge said, pointing.
A big Halifax rumbled overhead towing a glider.
“It’s a Horsa,” Brotheridge said.
The men all craned their necks up, staring at her. She was beautiful, long, sleek, and larger than the Wacos they’d trained in by at least a third.
“How big is she, sir?” Peter asked.
“Enough for a platoon,” Brotheridge replied. “30 men, give or take.”
They checked into the section tents. There was the usual roll call, jostling over bunks, shoving and yelling. They were confined to base, and everyone was on edge, waiting for the summons.
The officers disappeared with Major Howard. For once no one had much appetite and the food was still terrible.
Peter tried to get to the NAAFI for a pint, but the queues were too long with all the pilots and staff. They found out they were at Tarrant Rushton, in Dorset, that the base was relatively new and primarily for the glider corps.
No one wanted to miss the summons that had to be coming, so they hung around the stuffy tents. It was hot and he nearly burned a lung on all the cigarettes. Peter lost a week’s pay and five hands in a row to Parr, Bailey, and Gray. Parr was probably cheating, but he didn’t care. Gardner had a dice game going and was making out as well as Parr. Maybe Gardner and Parr could buy them pints at the NAAFI.
The order finally came. He heard Lieutenant Wood shouting “Fall In!” to the tent next door with Sweeney’s platoon. They were all on their feet, charging double time out the door to beat the other platoons.
There was a lot of jostling to be first. They were marched across the base into an area cordoned off by barbed wire. Peter whistled and Parr nodded as they saw that the briefing hut they were going into was surrounded by wire and guards.
“This is big. They’ve got inner security even though we’re on a closed base.”
They cursed and shoved but Peter knew how to use his bulk to clear a path. It got even more crowded when the sappers joined. After throwing a few elbows and smashing a few insteps to get in, Peter wasn’t sure what he was expecting. He knew he hadn’t expected this. This was deadly serious. The officers were all excited, high colour, wide eyes. Major Howard looked relieved and in better spirits than he’d been in weeks. It was probably the first time he’d been able to share the orders with his subalterns. Other units surely weren’t getting anything like this. They had been told so many times they were special and now, seeing the inside of the hut, he realised that it was true. D Company was very, very special.
The walls of the briefing hut were covered with maps, photographs, and aerial reconnaissance. In the front, on a dais, was a model, about twelve feet square. Peter pushed his way closer to it for a better look. The model was incredible in its detail. There were little ditches and trenches, fortifications, barbed wire, trees, bushes, and buildings. In the middle, two strips of blue ran the length of it. They were waterways, and over them, two bridges, connected by a single, straight road.
It was just as their Exeter exercise had been over the Countess Weir bridges, in a 12X12 model, except this wasn’t England.
Everyone jostled for seats; Peter stuck to standing on the side, where he could see better.
“Welcome to RAF Tarrant Rushton,” Major Howard began. “We’re officially on lockdown, men. We won’t leave here again until the night of the 4th of June when we fly out.” He paused. “We’ll leave in six Horsa gliders. The Halis will tow us across the Channel and we’ll prang into Normandy, France at midnight on the 5th of June.”
There were scattered, startled oaths, some loud over the din of each man exclaiming to his neighbor. The hum of excitement intensified. Peter was shocked himself. That was barely a week away!
Major Howard tapped the model with a birch pointer and the conversation quieted. “Our objective is two bridges outside the French city of Caen, connected by a road and 550 yards apart. The bridge on the east spans the River Orne and the one on the west is over the Caen Canal. They have been rigged for demolition and are protected by a garrison. The pilots will land the Horsas at the bridges, we prang out, engage and defeat the enemy, take the bridges, intact, and hold them until reinforcements arrive.”
Now, mutters and swearing rose from the Company. “Intact?” Peter heard. “We’re going to crash six gliders into German-occupied France? Us and what Army?” “They’ll blow ‘em and us with ‘em.”
Major Howard rapped the pointer. “We will be the first Allied unit landing in France. We will see the first action. Behind us will be the largest invasion force the world has ever seen.”
Into the stunned silence that followed, Captain Priday spoke. “D Company will be followed by parachute and glider landings, and massive air attacks and naval bombardments. A 12,000 plane assault will soften up Nazi defenses in anticipation of amphibious landings on the morning of 5 June. At dawn, over 150,000 Allied forces will land on over 50 miles of beach.”
Men in the room whistled. This was enormous. Larger even than the Torch landings.
At the map of France, Major Howard pointed again. “The far right flank of the invasion is here, at the Douve River Estuary. American forces will land along this stretch of coast to Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes, named Utah and Omaha Beaches. Moving east, Canadian and British forces will land in three separate operations, ending at Ouistreham. Ouistreham is the far left flank of the invasion and is less than four miles from the Caen bridges we must capture.”
“Supporting the British landings on the left flank will be over 8,000 paras of the 6th Airborne whose objectives are to stop the panzer divisions around Caen, take out the Merville gun battery, and demolish four bridges over the River Dives. Our orders are to take and hold the Caen Canal and River Orne bridges. Our relief is expected by noon on 5 June when Lord Lovat’s commandos will march inland from the beach landings. If we fail and the Germans blow the bridges, we and the entire 6th Airborne will be in the middle of enemy territory, at the mercy of Rommel’s panzers, with water to our backs, no anti-tank weapons, and no way to get them.”
“Any questions?”
There were of course and the Company and the sappers began moving about the briefing room, looking at the models and photographs and asking questions of the subalterns. Peter was pushed toward the map of the French coastline. There were five codenamed beaches labeled with LZs and which divisions and brigades from which Army would land where. Utah and Omaha beaches for the Americans were, as the Major had said, at the western flank. The Canadians and British 2d Army would be landing at Gold Beach, Juno Beach and…
He stared.
Oh Aslan. You were right and I am sorry to have ever doubted you.
“Something wrong, Pevensie?” Lieutenant Brotheridge asked.
His heart was thudding but he didn’t want his platoon leader to think it was nerves.
“No, sir. Excited, sir, that’s all. Could you tell me, our objective, it’s to protect the easternmost beach, where the British 2nd is landing?”
“That’s what the Major said, Pevensie. Our job, and that of the paras of the 6th, is to protect the eastern flank. There are two panzer divisions around Caen, which will be problem enough. The rest of the armor is to the east, since Hitler has assumed we’re taking the shorter distance across the Channel and landing at Pas-de-Calais. If a serious counter-offensive comes, it will come first at those two bridges. If we and the paras of the 6th don’t stop them, they’ll roar down on to Sword Beach and wipe out the British landings.”
Peter put a finger to the map pinned to the wall and traced the word. Sword Beach. Sword. And of the four LZs on Sword Beach, one was codenamed Peter; the other was Queen. At Gold Beach, one LZ was codenamed King.
“Don’t get a swelled head because one of those sectors has your name on it.”
“I won’t, sir.” But there was meaning here, too. High King Peter had been known as the Sword and Soul of Narnia. The sword had been his gift, his talisman, his banner, his code name, and handle to the Cair Paravel staff.
One of the sappers was asking Brotheridge a question about how the bridges were rigged for demolition and what the plan was to take out the Canal Bridge’s pillbox fortification that housed the trigger. Now that the model was there for them all to study, Peter appreciated anew just what Major Howard had been doing to them. They’d been pranging a replica of those damned bridges for weeks.
He pushed through the crowd, leaving the coastal maps for others to see and went to look at the pictures of the area. The closest town was Bénouville. There was information on the local café owner and others in the area who were active in the French Resistance. There was detailed information about the fortifications at the bridge, where the trigger was that would detonate each bridge, and the strength and competency of the conscripts manning the bridges.
Parr and Bailey jostled him. They were looking at photographs of buildings near the Caen Canal bridge.
“That’s the Gondrée Café and the big building is Château de Bénouville,” Major Howard said. “It’s a hospital. The administrator is in the Resistance; so are the Gondrées. British intelligence has agents in the area supporting them. They are why our information is so good.”
“Those buildings are prime spots for snipers,” Parr said. “Lots of tree cover, too.”
“And in the water tower,” Bailey added.
There were several intelligence reports from British intelligence available as well. Peter looked at one about Rommel’s recent visit to the bridges. It was succinct and competent. He was just going to leave it and look more closely at the floor model when he spotted something that was so small, he almost missed it. In the bottom corner of the report, there was a tiny, pencil drawing of a black, four-legged creature - surely a rodent - a rat. He had seen this particular drawing before.
Susan. The sword had been his totem, and the rat had been hers. As he had touched the word sword on the map of the Normandy invasion, now he gently ran a fingertip over the little picture. At Sword Beach there was an LZ named Peter and one named Queen. Susan? Are you there, in France, in Normandy? Are you giving us the intelligence that will bring D Company into Bénouville on glider’s wings?
Peter thought so. By Aslan’s will, Rat and Sword were at war.
00oo00
D-Day Minus Two Days
It had been a late, long, painful night. Two deliveries, one a still birth. Susan had been asked to help with the details of bedding, towels, laundry, and medicine. Lebourgeois had brought one patient in and then he and Desvignes headed out again to meet a Lysander. In the ambulance they had hidden a downed American pilot. Madame Vion had hidden the pilot and treated his broken arm. The Lizzie brought more guns and would return to England with the American. Lebourgeois and Desvignes had not returned until the weary hour before dawn, having seen to the delivery of guns to a Resistance cell south of Caen.
A good night, a productive one, and very, very long. The Lysander pilot had given them a few gifts. Susan was grateful but with all the Stens that were pouring into France from England, couldn’t someone manage to include more than a tin of NAAFI tea, a can of SPAM, and a bar of soap?
They had caught a few hours of sleep and now were getting a late start to the day.
“Thank you, Jeanne,” Madame Vion said as they sipped their plain, weak tea.
The French considered the English uncouth tea drinkers but they had not seen coffee in months. For elevenses , they were sharing German sausage in Madame Vion’s office. The fare was tedious, but a benefit from their good relations with the 21st Panzer, Lieutenant Becker, and Sergeant Müeller was that food had been coming regularly in addition to the batteries and flowers as she bicycled through the checkpoint.
“Will you go to the Café next?”
“Yes, Aunt, if I can be spared,” Susan replied.
“For assuring Madame Gondrée’s continued health, you can always be spared, Jeanne.”
“Thank you, Aunt, I will do so then.”
Even when alone and casual, they always tried to maintain the cover. Always live the cover.
Susan ruthlessly cut the sausage on the plate and forced herself to eat it. In a month, the Wehrmacht would be gone from Normandy, surely. Dead, imprisoned, or in retreat, including the generous Lieutenant Becker.
In the hall, there were sounds of hurried, echoing footsteps. Madame Vion looked quickly about her office as Susan stashed the tea fixings in a cupboard. The sausage could be explained.
The subterfuge, however, was not necessary.
Monsieur Desvignes hurried into the room escorting a winded Monsieur Gondrée. It seemed he had run the two kilometres all the way from the Café.
“I apologize for interrupting, Madame, but…”
“Nonsense, Monsieur! For you, always! Please sit.”
With a nod from Madame Vion, Susan shut the door on the four of them as Madame Vion asked, “Madame Gondrée? Is she well? Do her problems persist?”
Monsieur Gondrée had not even changed out his apron. Susan removed a medicine bottle from a cabinet. He might need it to explain his absence from the Café and unusual visit to Château de Bénouville.
“Thérèse overhead the soldiers this morning as we were opening,” Monsieur Gondrée said. “The soldiers were complaining.” He gasped for a deep breath of air then blurted out, “They are under orders to dig holes to plant Rommelspargel at the bridge.”
They lost precious moments staring at one another. And then, they all moved at once.
Monsieur Desvignes sprinted out of the office and up four flights of stairs to where they hid the w/t. Susan chased after Madame Vion to the pharmacy where they hid the crystals for the wireless set. Susan tucked them in a handkerchief in her bodice.
They met Desvignes at the door and loaded the heavy radio into the basket of her bicycle.
“You don’t have time to code a message before you must send to England at noon,” Madame Vion said.
“I won’t code it,” Susan said. “I’m going to a farmer’s field outside of Ranville. Hopefully it has not been flooded yet.”
It was less than four kilometres. She might make it by noon. She might find a safe place to radio in broad daylight in a countryside crawling with German soldiers. She might think of a message between here and there that would tell Tebbitt of the deadly peril of the Rommelspargel, Rommel’s asparagus. She might be able to warn them before any operation launched. She might be able to do all that, and not get caught.
“Jeanne!” Madame Vion said, running after her just as Susan was pedaling away.
Susan stopped the bicycle. “Yes? Madame, what? I must…”
Madame Vion glanced at Susan’s front, at her blouse and put a finger on the hollowed button sewn there. “Do you have it? Do you have the pill? If you need it?”
“Yes,” Susan managed. “I have it. If I need to, I will use it.” Susan was wearing the means of her own suicide - the cyanide tablet she never left the Château without.
Madame Vion kissed her cheek. “Then go! Swiftly!”
ooOOoo
Tebbitt could feel the urgency at the other end. She was sloppy. There was no special password, like Dryad, Ettin, or Tashbaan to begin the message. There were no numbers. This meant she was, against all sense and precaution, sending an uncoded message. He listened and recorded the dots and dashes and knew he could not ask her to repeat it.
“What is it?” al-Masri asked, hovering.
“Rat sent a message personnel.”
“Are you sure it is Rat?”
“It’s too fast and inaccurate to be anyone else. If she’d been captured they would have done it accurately.”
askcrowwhyliluyedied
Ask/crow/why/liluyedied
Ask/crow/why/liluye/died
“What does that mean?” al-Masri asked. “Did you set up a fallback code?”
“Yes,” Tebbitt said, standing and grabbing his coat. “Call Tarrant Rushton and tell them we have new intel and are working to decode it. Major Howard will need to know and the glider command. I’ll call RAF Benson and tell photo recon to get another plane in the air and over those bridges.”
“And Rat’s message? What about that?”
“We’re driving to Reading to speak to Crow.”
ooOOoo
Two officers - one Army, one RAF - roaring up the front drive of Blackpool Forest School on motorbikes made nearly every head in the place stick out a window. He and al-Masri jogged up the steps and Tebbitt hoped his garbled message had gotten to the right person and that they would not have to wait while Edmund Pevensie was located on the pitch, in the pool, or in the bowels of some underground laboratory. Every memory of public school, the pleasant and the rotten, came surging back.
A hawkish, sour looking man was waiting at the school’s double door entrance. As a product of this environment, recognition was instantaneous. Tebbitt knew who he was without even asking.
“Headmaster Davies?” Tebbitt asked.
“Yes. Welcome to Blackpool Forest, Wing Commander.” Davies eyes slid over al-Masri with that uncomfortable look people gave the man. It had come to be truly irksome.
al-Masri was thoroughly accustomed to it and always enjoyed discomfiting doubters. “I am Major al-Masri, British Army Intelligence, Headmaster. Thank you for accommodating us so promptly.”
“No trouble at all. Just doing our patriotic duty. Mr. Pevensie is waiting for you in my office.”
“Thank you,” Tebbitt replied. “We shouldn’t be long. We may need to use your telephone afterwards.”
“Of course.”
Boys were two deep along the dark paneled halls, all jostling for a look, as they followed the Headmaster. The place reeked of tripe soup and carpet dust. What miserable places these could be.
“Must be bad news,” Tebbitt heard one boy murmur.
“’Course it isn’t, you fool,” replied a contemptuous American accent.
“Yeah, if it’s bad, it’s always a telegram. Like what happened to Darby and Reynolds last week.”
Shabby curtains, shabby tapestries, claustrophobic feeling - was every public school the same?
They followed Davies through one door and then another and an anteroom.
“Here you are, gentlemen.” Davies opened the door and for Tebbitt it was a sudden, disorienting step back some fifteen years in time to the Headmaster’s office of his youth - dim, dark, threadbare carpet and a smell of stale spirits.
Edmund Pevensie rose from an overstuffed, fraying wing chair with massive clawed legs. He had the damnable poise of his sister and had obviously come to the same conclusion as the boys in the hallway. Pevensie knew this was a crisis, but also knew it wasn’t a personal tragedy that had brought two officers tearing across Berkshire on motorbikes the first week in June.
He reached out a hand to al-Masri first. “Major, it’s a pleasure to see you again.”
“Mr. Pevensie, may I introduce you to Wing Commander Tebbitt whom you know by excellent reputation but not in person?”
Tebbitt sensed that Pevensie’s reaction to him was not as warm as to the Major. Possibly brotherly protectiveness of his sister?
“Why don’t we all sit down,” Davies began.
“Thank you, Headmaster, but you’ll have to leave,” al-Masri said immediately. “You are not cleared for this discussion.”
“Cleared?” Davies repeated with a startled glance at Pevensie. “And Mr. Pevensie is?”
“Yes,” al-Masri said. “We won’t be long.” The Major held open the door, projecting the perfect air of indifference, efficiency, and authority.
Pevensie didn’t crack an expression until Davies blustered his way out the door and al-Masri shut it firmly behind him.
“I have wanted to say that to the old fool since I came back from the States,” Pevensie said with a laugh. “I would love to get caught up and learn more but obviously time is critical. What can I do for you?”
Tebbitt removed the slip with Rat’s message but before he could speak, al-Masri put in, “Mr. Pevensie, you are still bound by the Official Secrets Act. You must not speak of this to anyone. Do you understand?”
Pevensie nodded. “I signed a non-disclosure in Washington and again on my return. I understand.”
“Good,” al-Masri answered. “Don’t forget it.”
Damn the man could be cool.
“Before your sister was deployed, we agreed that should circumstances warrant, she could use your private code,” Tebbitt said. “If I couldn’t understand it, I should come to you.”
Tebbitt would swear this impassive, serious person was not a fifteen year old adolescent. But Rat had been this age when she’d fooled everyone into believing she was Mrs. Susan Caspian. al-Masri had said there were no rational facts that could explain the Pevensies. Tebbitt had certainly never found any.
“Here,” he said, handing the scrap to Pevensie. “And I hope to God you understand it.”
Pevensie took the paper, scanned it, and handed it back.
“Can you tell us what it means?” al-Masri asked.
“I can tell you what I think it means. How it applies to your situation, I obviously do not know.”
“The best you can, Pevensie, that’s all we ask, and she wouldn’t have sent it to me and to you if she didn’t think we’d get close to the meaning.”
Pevensie nodded. “I agree, of course. Susan wants me to tell you about how a Gryphon named Liluye died.”
“Gryphon?” Tebbitt repeated. “Like in mythology? Like the gryphon that pulls Beatrice?”
“Also Alice’s Adventures,” al-Masri said, sounding uncommonly dry.
“Yes, that sort of Gryphon, with the head of an eagle and the body of a lion.”
“What happens to her? How does she die?” Tebbitt asked.
“Liluye is wounded in battle. She takes arrows to the wing, is injured, cannot fly, and plunges into the Owlwood.”
Tebbitt thought Pevensie looked awfully bleak for what was just a story. He supposed it was sad. “And?” he pressed.
“Liluye could have survived the arrow wounds. I believe my sister’s point is that she did not because Gryphons are so very large and cannot fly in any area with heavy tree cover. When Liluye fell into the Owlwood, the trees ripped her wings off; she died impaled on a branch.”
Tebbitt glanced at al-Masri, wondering if he was thinking the same thing.
“How do Gryphons fly?” al-Masri asked.
“Powerfully. They would launch from a height, if possible, but once airborne are terrific fliers.”
“Do they glide?” Tebbitt asked.
“Yes,” Pevensie replied. “They can sustain flight, of course, but are able to travel great distances by gliding on thermals.”
With barely a thank you, they pelted out of the office like mad men; Tebbitt bellowed for the telephone to call the photo recon squadron at Benson and al-Masri was penning a telegram they’d run into town and send off to Major Howard and the glider corps stationed at Tarrant Rushton.
The Gondrées had learned that the Germans were installing Rommelspargel, Rommel’s asparagus - glider poles - at the Bénouville bridges. The glider poles were thick, strong pieces of wood buried in the ground. They would tear the wings right off an incoming glider. The Horsas would never even reach the bridges. They’d be shredded to pieces on landing and picked off by waiting Nazi guns. D Company would never make it out alive.
ooOOo
D-Day Minus One Day
“You’re late,” Parr whispered as Peter slid onto the bench next to him. The movie was Stormy Weather, which fit given how wretched it had been. Goddamnit, would they abort the whole invasion because of rotten weather over the Channel?
“I had to pick a lock to let Fox and Smith off base,” Peter whispered to Parr. “They went to dinner in town with their girls.”
“We’re on lockdown,” Gray muttered. “You get caught, you won’t be pranging into Normandy.”
“I know,” Peter replied, nodding his thanks as Gray handed him a light. “It’s their business, not mine.”
Fox and Smith had invited him along, said they could find a girl for him. Peter wasn’t interested and Gray was right. Nothing was worth missing Operation Overlord, certainly not for the girls who were only interested if he had a chocolate bar. He was saving the ration chocolate for France.
“Don’t be stupid. Major won’t punish two of his platoon leaders until after the operation,” Parr said. “Now shut it.”
Peter took a pull on his cigarette. They’d all gotten an extra ration of Player’s because apparently everyone thought they were doomed men. They were getting anything they wanted - except decent food. That would have been the one reason to sneak into town - to get a proper meal at a restaurant. But even that prospect wasn’t enough.
Danny had said over a year ago that D Company was special and by God they were. First unit to hit French soil; first unit to see action. 150,000 men, five divisions, readying for battle all over England tonight and Peter didn’t think they’d all been visited by Monty. General Montgomery had come to Tarrant Rushton, made the rounds, shaken hands, told them they were the best trained and the best equipped in the whole goddamned Army.
And then General Gale had come, just for them, and told them, again, how special they were and how important the bridges were to the whole of the 6th Airborne, and beyond that to the British and Canadian divisions landing to the west, on Sword, Gold, and Juno.
It’d been a gas. Windy Gale had known just what to say to rile them up. “The German today is like the June bride. He knows he is going to get it. He doesn’t know how big it is going to be!” The men had all roared and whistled and stomped.
Peter leaned back on the bench, stretched his legs, which everyone always complained about, blew out a cloud of smoke, and let Lena Horne sing to him. The stormy weather had to let up. It had to be a go tomorrow.
ooOOoo
D-Day Minus Three Hours, 45 Minutes to D-Day Minus One Hour, 44 minutes
The wind beat against the windows and sent a draft into Madame Vion’s office. Susan poured glasses of rough red wine for the four of them.
“Thank you, Jeanne,” Madame Vion said as Susan set the glass on the desk. Madame Vion was fiddling with the wireless for the Radio Londres broadcast. Susan knew she would be able to get the signal faster, but no one touched Madame’s radio.
She gave glasses to Monsieur Desvignes and Monsieur Lebourgeois and sat down with a sigh between them.
“Thank you, Jeanne,” Monsieur Desvignes said. His old, veined hand patted hers reassuringly. “I know you are impatient.”
Monsieur Lebourgeois shifted a little on the couch and sipped his wine. “I do wonder if they’ll be able to launch. The pilots need the full moon and we’ll lose that soon.” He glanced at the window. “And the weather over the Channel is terrible regardless.”
“They’ve only landed before in good weather, so maybe next month,” Monsieur Desvignes added, with a sigh as deep as Susan’s own.
“The broadcast on the first of June said that it would be within two weeks,” Susan reminded them. The broadcast had read the first lines of Verlaine’s poem, Les sanglots longs / des violons / de l'automne -- Long sobs of autumn violins. When they heard the next lines of the poem on Radio Londres, the invasion would be imminent. “We still do not know where, either. It could be hundreds of miles away.”
She did not want to believe that given all the attention on the bridges. Susan had to be honest, though, that all this could easily be part of an elaborate shell game. A message on Radio Londres yesterday had said that “Rat made it home.” She assumed that meant Tebbitt had received and understood her message about the Rommelspargen. Only that morning, the glider poles had been delivered and the holes dug. Slaves from the Todt organization would probably try to install the anti-glider measures tomorrow. She would need to get a message to Tebbitt.
“I have it!” Madame Vion cried. As delicately as if handling eggs or glass, she removed her fingers from the dial. There was an ominous crackle and then the telltale dot- dot-dot-dot-dash burst through, the first notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. V for Victory in Morse Code.
“And they are not jamming the broadcast!” Monsieur Lebourgeois cried, raising his glass.
“There have been too many for the Germans to jam,” Monsieur Desvignes said.
“Shh!” Madame ordered, leaning against her desk and picking up the glass of wine.
“Et voici quelques messages personnel,” the radio announcer said, speaking in perfect Parisian French. And here are some personal messages.
There were many, many messages. Susan knew the meaning of some, did not know others, and thought some might just be noise to confuse. She glanced at Madame Vion who nodded. There were many calls to action embedded here. All over France, people were being instructed to do things. Tonight, tomorrow, and soon.
Then, les dés sont sur la table, the dice are on the table. Madame gasped and they all looked at one another. It was the instruction to sabotage railway lines.
The tension rose in the room, they were so quiet and listening so intently.
The next, il fait chaud à Suez, it's hot in Suez. This was the instruction to attack telephone lines. Surely, it was coming? Finally? Would they hear the next lines in Verlaine’s poem?
Was it her wistful imagination or was there a hint of excitement in the reader’s voice? Was there the slightest pause as he then read, slowly and carefully, the waited for words,
Blessent mon cœur d'une langeur monotone, Wound my heart with a monotonous languor.
A whoosh of air went out in the room upon hearing the long waited for lines of Verlaine’s poem. They all hugged and toasted and shared handkerchiefs for they shed tears. It had begun. In the next 48 hours, the Allies would invade France.
ooOOoo
The order had finally come. It was to be a day later, landing on the 6th, rather than the 5th, and it was still pissing rain. Word was that the RAF weathermen thought conditions were improving, not worsening. There was a window and Allied Command had decided to sail and fly over 100,000 men through it, rough seas and wind on the Channel be damned.
It was a go.
A lot of the men had gone to a church service. Peter didn’t. Lucy and Eustace were right about that - Aslan could be in a chaplain’s tent if he wanted, but it was a poor fit and there were other places where Peter felt closer to the Lion. He’d heard the Lion’s roar in the wind and felt his kiss in the rain as he’d stood outside the barrack tent.
Lieutenant Brotheridge found him afterward.
“Light, sir?” Peter asked as Brotheridge ducked under the tarpaulin where he’d been watching the drizzle come down.
“Thanks.”
Peter lit one cigarette from another and handed it back to his platoon leader. They were all smoking Player’s like chimneys.
“I noticed you didn’t go to chapel with the other lads,” Brotheridge said in between puffs.
“No, sir.”
Their smoke rings floated up and were washed away in the rain. They watched as a big Hali blotted out the sky. In a few hours their platoon would be aloft in Horsa Glider #1 and towed by a Hali all the way to France.
“Anything you want to talk about, Pevensie?”
“I’m fine, sir, but thanks.”
He knew what Lieutenant Brotheridge was trying to do for him. He’d done it himself, before battles, trying to encourage his own army. Peter saw the same anxiety in the men of D Company that Brotheridge did. They were committed and eager, fit and hard, but not hardened. They’d become soldiers but Peter thought he was the only who’d killed before.
The men had thought it was all show when Major Howard made them sharpen bayonets. Peter didn’t think so and at the same time, he’d sharpened the knife Major al-Masri had given him so long ago on a train platform in Oxford. The knife was beautiful and perfectly balanced. The men called it fancy. Peter knew, in the way a warrior did, that the knife had cut human flesh before. By dawn tomorrow it might, by Peter’s own hand, make a desperate killing cut at a man’s flesh again.
So, while other men might go to church and pray for life and nerve, Peter had gone into the Nissen hut where the operation was all set out, right down to where on the 12X12 model the glider poles were to be planted that could kill them all. He’d idly twirled the knife in his hand and looked again at the Allied maps of Normandy hanging from the walls - Sword Beach and Gold Beach - and in the landing sectors - King, Peter, and Queen. He saw the Lion’s purpose and that was all Peter needed.
He and Brotheridge both flicked ash away into the mud. “It’s not good for a man to go into combat hoping for death, Pevensie. It’s not good for him. Not good for the rest of us who’re counting on him, either.”
“I’m not looking for death, sir. I’ve got a good life and family waiting for me when the War ends. But I’m not afraid of death, either. I’m ready to fight and to kill and even die, if that’s the way of it.”
With Edmund or Lucy, he could have said what they had all known, that death was an old friend of theirs, both delivering it and risking it to do a duty that needed doing.
Brotheridge looked him over and blew out more smoke. Finally he said, sounding resigned, “It’s easy for everyone to forget but you’re still young, Pevensie. I should have sent you packing instead of one of the others. You should still be in school, or OCTU, not here.”
“Thank you for letting me stay, sir. I won’t let down D Company, or the mission. I belong here. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“So long as there aren’t any boats?”
“I’ll just send Parr in that case.”
Brotheridge clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man.”
A bugler called them to mess for a light, low fat meal so that maybe the Major wouldn’t get sick over the Channel. Hardly anyone ate, though. Well, Peter did. He knew if he didn’t fuel up now, he’d regret it in another 12 hours, so he ate his portion and two others, too. The brotherhood abused him about it but the prospect of combat had never made him sick before, so Peter didn’t think it would happen this time and he’d managed the glider well enough during training.
Sure, riding to war at the head of the Narnian army wasn’t the same as pranging onto a bridge rigged for demolition with 75 other men and then, assuming they weren’t blown to bits, holding it in the middle of the 21st Panzer Division while over 100,000 men came ashore and dropped around you. The end result was the same, though. When the time came, your training and commitment to the cause would take hold and each man would find the will to kill. Or he wouldn’t. You didn’t know until you were there and had to do it.
Peter knew he could. He had before.
After eating, they’d suited up and gotten the battle smocks. Brotheridge had handed out some fun things that Peter thought were better for morale than anything else - a makeshift compass out of a button, a file sewn into the smock for daring escapes, a silk square with a map of France, water purification tablets, and some French francs.
They’d heard the Yanks had gotten condoms and real chocolate.
The weigh in was nervy. The glider pilots were only allowing 250 pounds per man, which depending on your own weight, could be over 100 pounds to carry. That wasn’t a problem for Peter - he was tall and solid and could have carried a lot more, but the glider couldn’t. Some of the littler chaps were sagging at the knees and if they fell over, they’d be like turtles, unable to get up again under all that weight.
They’d been driven out to the Horsas to help with the loading. In short order, most everyone in the platoon had lost their French francs to Gardner’s dice and Parr’s cards. Peter figured the two of them cheated together and split the winnings. If anyone in the platoon found (and had time for) French whores or wine, Parr and Gardner would have to pay for them.
They passed camouflage paint around and blackened their faces and hands. It was a little gooey and reminded Peter that maybe Susan was already where he was going.
Then, they waited.
“Hold the light up, Pevensie.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Parr had a piece of chalk and was writing his wife’s name on the nose of the Horsa glider. Lady Irene. Irene was Parr’s wife.
The other five platoons were writing special messages to Hitler on their Horsas. There were shapely ladies like Jane in the cartoon, Donald Duck, and the names of many women - mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends. All the planes, including the gliders and the Hali bombers that were towing them, were painted in Operation Overlord fancy dress - white stripes on the wings and tail.
“You wanna write anything, Pevensie?” Parr asked, straightening up and dusting chalk off his hands.
“That’s all right. I’ll leave room for the others.”
“It’s a big glider.” Parr shoved the chalk at him. “Go on.”
Peter tried, but he knew it was hopeless before he’d drawn the tail.
“What the hell is that?” Gray asked, coming up with his own chalk and a mug. “A dog?”
“A cat, or… never mind.” Peter tried to rub his feeble attempt out with his sleeve but Parr held him back.
“Leave it.”
He shrugged. They were all making too much of it and he wasn’t going to explain it.
Parr turned toward Gray, sniffing. “What you got in that mug, Gray?”
“One of the NAAFI girl’s got a Dixie with tea.” Gray tilted his head over toward the aft of the plane.
“With rum,” Peter said, catching a whiff of it.
Gray raised his mug. “Nothing finer on a cold, rainy night.”
He got an elbow in the ribs from Parr. “Let’s go get some.”
Peter let Parr drag him to where the rest of the platoon was hanging around the Dixie, smoking, drinking and eating sandwiches in the drizzle.
Parr was getting two cups, but Peter shook his head. “I’ll skip the rum, thanks.”
He got squint-eyed looks from Parr and Gardner for that one.
“Pevensie turning down a drink?” Gardner said. “I don’t believe it.”
“I hate rum,” Peter said. “Really. Rum reminds me of goddamned motherfucking boats.”
The Halis were warming up, the glider pilots were getting into the cockpits.
Everyone on the platoon did the Jimmy Riddle as Parr called it, except Gray. Gray was going to regret it after all the tea and rum. Peter’d learned that lesson in armor.
Major Howard gathered them around on the soggy field. They did look a fright, faces all blacked out, each carrying 100 pounds of gear, or more, guns over their shoulders, bandoleers across their chests, toggle ropes around their waists, grenades in the pouches.
“Well, boys…”
Major Mad Bastard began his speech, floundered, and finally gave up. Great leader, rotten inspirational speaker. It didn’t matter.
Parr boomed it out and they all started chanting along, “Ham and Jam! Ham and bloody Jam!”
Ham and Jam were the codes for mission success, if they took each bridge intact. Jack and Lard were if the bridges were taken, but blown. Peter hadn’t heard if there was a code for mission failure, bridges blown, D Company dead or captured.
Chanting “Ham and Jam,” everybody shook hands. Then, it was time. Their platoon climbed into Glider 1; Peter wedged in between Gardner and Gray, who already looked uncomfortable. Glider 1 would crash first into the Caen Canal Bridge; assuming they weren’t lost or shot down by flak, gliders 2 and 3 would be one and two minutes behind them. Gliders 4, 5 and 6 would assault the River Orne Bridge.
In the glider, they all hooted and hollered as Danny Brotheridge took his seat up at the front. Major Howard was saying something outside to their Hali pilot, then, since he was the last to come aboard, had to push and climb over their bodies and gear to take his seat on the bench next to Danny. At least there was no goddamned motherfucking boat in their glider.
The Hali’s engines roared and revved and the bomber began rolling down the runway. A moment later their Horsa jerked and followed, pulled along by the tow cable.
5 June, at 2256, they were airborne and D Company was headed to France. Sword was going to war.
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3 Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6 Part 1 Part 2
Author: rthstewart
Rating: T, for a soldier's salty language
Pairings/characters: Peter Pevensie, Susan Pevensie
Disclaimer: This work of historical fiction is offered respectfully and with deep admiration for the men and women herein depicted as well as C.S. Lewis and the other content owners of the Chronicles of Narnia and its related properties. Any original content in this derivative fiction is in the public domain and may be used freely and without notice to me or attribution.
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: All of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Summary: The High King and the Gentle Queen go to war, again.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
To War
D-Day minus One Month to D-Day minus Two Days
ooOOoo
Major Howard had sent Lieutenant Brotheridge to exert a good influence. Their platoon leader lost that ability about eight pints ago. The man had a lot on his mind and Brotheridge was absolutely…
Peter nudged Parr. “Boss, what’s the word I should use for drunk?”
Parr looked up from his own pint. “Who you callin’ drunk?”
“Danny.” To his face, he was always “sir,” “Lieutenant,” or “Mister Brotheridge.” Behind his back, the platoon called their leader, “Danny.”
The sniper squinted at the swaying Lieutenant at the corner table. “Looks about rat-arsed to me.”
“Arseholed,” Gardner offered, hiccupping.
“Bladdered,” Gray said, wiping his mouth on a sleeve.
Brotheridge’s voice rose above the noise of the smoky pub. “We thought it strange and unaccountable that a stuffed trout should break up into little pieces like that.”
The Sergeants he was drinking with all laughed and toasted him.
“What the hell is he…?”
“That trout was plaster-of-paris,” Peter finished the quote and laughed.
The others all stared at him.
“From the book? Three Men in a Boat? To say nothing of the dog.”
Blank, glassy looks.
“I’ll just shut it again and drink my pint,” Peter said.
Bailey laughed and slapped him across the shoulder blades so hard he nearly upended his beer. “It’s cuz it’s about boats. That's how you know it."
“Pevensie don’t know arse from elbow, but he does know boats!” Parr said hooting.
“I hate boats,” Peter said. “Really, I hate them. I really hope we won’t have boats wherever we’re going.”
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Parr said with a shrug and put a boot up on an empty stool. “It’s coming. The Major has our orders. He knows what we’re doing and where we’re going.”
“Why doesn’t he say something?” Peter asked, taking another long pull on his cigarette and then snuffing it out. He hated them, hated how they smelled, and how they made it hard to draw a full breath. Getting through the Army without them had become unthinkable. He tried to limit how many he had and how often because they were too much like the syrup of poppy their Narnian physician had sometimes been too free with.
“He can’t,” Parr replied. “My guess is the Major’s been bigoted. The orders are so secret he can’t tell anyone else yet. And that means they probably come from really high up, General Poett and General Gale, maybe even Monty and Eisenhower above them.”
“We are training for a special purpose,” Major Howard had told them a few weeks ago. The second front was coming - that was all it could be and COSSAC had given D Company some special purpose in it. Command had done so in spite of the bridge blown during Operation Mush. Since then, they had been training for days over two strips that were supposed to be bridges, 550 yards apart. They trained and trained until they couldn’t stand it anymore, bored to death and getting stale, stupid, and destructive.
So, Major Howard brought them here, to Exeter, in sealed up trucks, all 180 of them, 6 platoons, plus the sappers. For six days and nights they had been taking, retaking, and taking again two bridges over the River Exe and the Exeter Canal at Countess Weir. One platoon, two platoons, all six platoons, one bridge, two bridge, red bridge, blue bridge. Over and over. Fighting, shooting, smoke bombs, thunder-flashes and grenades. They had shaken the stones from the bridges and tiles from roofs. They’d blown fish right out of the water - good eating, too. Peter had been learning the basics of the sappers’ jobs, how to defuse bombs and detonators, how to go hand over hand under bridges. All terrific.
But then Major Howard had gone and made them put together boats and launch them. And every time they had launched a boat, Peter had gone into the River Exe.
“I just really hope the orders don’t have any boats,” Peter said.
“Oh come on, Pevensie, you’re still swearing like your mother is listening,” Gardner said.
Parr smacked his hand to his forehead in a gesture of despair. “You’re shaming my teaching, Pevensie. Say, I hate those goddamned mother fucking boats.”
The problem with having learned to drink on Lightning and tequila and then the steady practise over the last year in Wiltshire pubs was that Peter really didn’t get especially drunk. And as for the cursing…
“Someone shorter and hairier than you, Parr, told me either swear like a soldier or don’t swear at all.” He raised his glass and drained it. “And I was always better at the drinking. And the buying.” Peter stood and collected the empties off the table. “I’ll get the next round. Oh, and Parr?”
“Yeah?”
“At least I’m not swimming across a river with a Bren gun.”
Peter knew when to make an exit because Gray and Gardner started yelling again. Major Howard had wanted two men strong enough to swim a canal carrying a machine gun. Parr had volunteered Gray and Gardner for that job and they were still furious about it.
By the time Peter got back to the table, the others were putting out their cigarettes and shoving away from the table. It was going to be a lot of beer to drink by himself but everyone took a pint and drank it quickly.
“Where’re we going?” Peter asked.
“One of the goddamned Yanks from the supply depot stole Jones’ girl,” Bailey said.
“We’ll need you to launch ‘em,” Gray said, pulling on his sleeve.
“Always glad to oblige.” Peter quickly drank the rest of his pint and followed them out. This was, after all, a matter of national pride.
Peter had gotten a reputation in D Company as a man who never threw the first punch, but could be counted on to throw the last. He was the one to toss the enemy into the nearest ditch, canal, or stream. He started over the last year by learning to throw poaching Yanks out of Salisbury pubs, for distance. During all the training exercises, he’d perfected the toss of a struggling Pole or para over a railing into the waterway below. He did always make sure they didn’t drown. The townspeople throughout southern England thought they were all hooligans, but a man just didn’t take another soldier’s girl like that. Though, Peter had to admit he didn’t have very high opinions of the girls, either. He knew there must be women who weren’t solely interested in the crown of Narnia or whether Private Pevensie had a chocolate bar, but really he’d not met many of them in his life - both of them.
The night air was bracing, windy and cool.
“There,” Gray said, pointing at a group of Yanks loitering across the street.
“If the Yank stole Jones’ girl, how come he’s still there?” Peter asked, reasonably, he thought. “Wouldn’t he be with the girl and not with his mates over there?”
“There you go again, Pevensie, thinking too much,” Parr said. “Leave the thinking to your elders and betters.”
“Don’t matter anyway,” Bailey said. “If they’ve not taken a Tommy’s girl, they will.”
Gardner and Gray charged forward, fists flying at the Americans, shouting “ABLE ABLE ABLE!”
After the problems with telling friendly from foe in Operation Mush, Major Howard had each platoon yelling a call sign during battle. Brotheridge’s platoon was “ABLE,” Lieutenant Wood’s platoon was “BAKER,” Smith’s was “CHARLIE,” and so on.
“ABLE ABLE ABLE” had become their platoon’s war cry.
Peter waded in after them, ducking the throws of an American private who looked like he was about sixteen. Peter picked the boy up by the shirt and belt and dumped him into a refuse bin. The next man was bigger, meaner, and his fist connected with Peter’s stomach and it was going to hurt when the beer wore off. On his way up from doubling over, Peter hauled back and landed an upper cut that sent the Yank sprawling onto the ground.
“Where the hell are you going?” Parr yelled as some of the boys from Fox’s platoon ran by.
“Give us a hand!” Bailey hollered, shaking loose of a Yank who had him around the middle.
“Can’t stop!” one of them called back over his shoulder. The lot of them disappeared down a side street. Shrill police whistles coming after explained why Fox’s platoon was running and what they were running from.
Jones showed up and it was about time since it was his girl. Jones was always better with starting the mayhem than the actual fisticuffs, proving it when he tried to throw a rock at a burly sergeant, missed, and smashed a window.
It looked to be a proper brawl. The Exeter police came and broke them up just as Peter threw the last of the Yanks in the canal and just before the Yanks’ friends showed up. As the platoon was climbing into a truck, with police escort, Peter saw Major Howard and Captain Priday guiding Danny into a jeep. Brotheridge was still quoting from Three Men in a Boat.
Goddamnit he hated boats.
ooOOoo
Dusk was just beginning to fall when Susan wearily pedaled up the drive to the Château. She wanted a warm bath with salts, a bottle of good wine and… roast chicken, fresh fruit and crusty bread with soft goat cheese would be lovely.
Instead… Well, there would be wine. Maybe some peas and early beans from the garden. Some corn bread if Madame Vion had been able to find it. A soup made from a handful of dried beans and a piece of pork. There was hardly any food. Thank goodness the occasional drop by Lysander included tinned meat. No Frenchmen or Frenchwomen would deign to eat Spam, but it was that or no meat at all.
With a sigh she removed her constant companion, her wooden box, from the bike basket and trudged into the hospital.
She nodded to the duty nurse and went down the hall to Madame Vion’s office.
“Welcome back, Jeanne,” Monsieur Desvignes said, coming out of his office. “Any problems? Do you need help with the box?”
“Thank you, but it’s fine.” Susan immediately felt guilty for complaining even to herself. Madame Vion’s accountant was much older and working very, very hard.
They all were.
“Let me get the door for you, at least. I’ll tell Madame Vion you are back from the chemist.”
“Thank you.”
Susan went into Madame Vion’s office, set the box on the desk, and rubbed her sore neck. A glass of wine would be nice, so she took two glasses and poured a white from the Loire.
The click of heels on the marble floors meant Madame Vion’s return.
“Welcome back, Jeanne!” Madame came forward and kissed her on both cheeks. “All went well? You are later than usual.”
Susan handed her “Aunt” a glass of wine.
“I was stopped at the checkpoint coming back.”
“But no difficulties?”
“No,” Susan replied, savoring the crisp white’s citrus flavours. “Quite the opposite. Sergeant Müller showed me pictures of his wife and children and practised his weak French. He and Lieutenant Becker gave me some batteries. They are in the box.”
“Batteries are always useful, especially for the wireless.”
Susan was just sitting down on the sofa as Madame Vion opened the wooden box. “And it seems not just batteries!” Madame exclaimed.
“What is it?” She hurried to the box and looked inside.
“Oh.”
There were three batteries in with the now filled medicine bottles from the chemist. There was also a nosegay of little pink and yellow flowers.
“It seems you have an admirer in Lieutenant Becker, Jeanne.”
Susan sighed and gingerly removed the now slightly wilted flowers from the box. “I suppose I can put them on the hospital floor for the patients?”
She had long since exorcised herself of any guilt regarding the unsought-for attention of admirers. With the exception of Rabadash the Ass, none of her former suitors had been in the army of a nation at war with Narnia. And look how well that had ended.
“Will you get your head turned by a few flowers, Jeanne? Will you end up like so many of our patients?”
“Absolutely not, Aunt.”
Madame Vion looked at her carefully but she would not find the shy blush or stammer of Susan Pevensie. Queen Susan the Gentle, Susan Caspian, and Jeanne-Louise Lambert had no difficulty managing male attention and had no conflict whatsoever.
When she found in Susan’s countenance what she sought, Madame Vion nodded and sighed. “I am sorry, Jeanne. You are a pretty girl. You should be enjoying this time. Not…” She waved her arm around the office vaguely.
“I have no regrets, Madame. None.” How could she explain that this was what Narnia had trained her to do? That she felt the Lion’s purpose in everything she did here? She had been courted by Kings and Lords; she had been loved and respected by a worldly man of great wealth and gentleness. She already had the heart of a Wing Commander in England. What could a Lieutenant in the 21st Panzer give her that she had not already been offered before, and rejected? All her personas and identities had learned to look beyond the generous gift, the shy token, and the flowery praise.
She put an arm around Madame Vion and kissed her cheek. “Nothing will be a greater reward than to see France liberated and nothing will turn me from that goal. But…”
Madame Vion arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow. “Yes?”
“If Lieutenant Becker or Sergeant Müeller would see fit to provide food occasionally during my stops at the checkpoint, I would not refuse it.”
Madame Vion raised her glass. Susan did as well. “Santé.”
“Santé.”
00oo00
They had been so certain it would come with the full moon period in May. June? Surely the first week of June? There had been hundreds of messages personnel over Radio Londres. They always began with the first four notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, dot-dot-dot-dash, V in Morse Code, V for Victory.
Everyone whispered it would be Pas-de-Calais. But then why such interest in the two little bridges 11 kilometres inland from the Normandy beaches?
With a sigh, Susan swerved around another pit, stood on the pedals and pushed harder. She knew every rut on the road between the Château and Café Gondrée. The route from Bénouville to the Caen chemist was similarly memorized. The advantage to the repeated trips, day after day, week after week was that no one stopped and questioned her anymore. At the Caen checkpoint, the very helpful Lieutenant Becker and Sergeant Müller were slipping food in her box every day. Sergeant Müeller helped make small repairs to her bicycle and found a new tyre for her and a chain. The flowers from Lieutenant Becker also continued to appear. Susan sent all of them upstairs for the patients to enjoy.
Susan was able to move about Caen unnoticed and even after curfew, all for the benefit of the patients of Château de Bénouville and the German babies the women birthed there. The first few times she was searched and questioned, but all the soldiers ever noticed were her medicine bottles labeled for treatment of lurid feminine complaints. At this point, she could pedal through a checkpoint with a basket full of plastic explosives and no one would stop her.
The real danger in being out after curfew was getting hit by falling bomber debris. It dropped out of the sky so regularly, no one was perturbed at all by the frightful noise.
It was getting dark just as she pulled up to the Gondrée Café. She could not see the bridge well, but there would be guards on it. When she could, Susan tried to come in the early evening. The garrison soldiers were sometimes more glib and Madame Gondrée overheard more. If Susan picked up the news in the evening, she and Madame Vion could code it overnight and get it to Caen the next day. Or Susan would transmit short urgent messages via Madame Vion’s wireless during her standing w/t “date” with Tebbitt the next afternoon.
As soon as she pushed open the door, carrying her trusty box of medicine bottles, she sensed something off in the Café. The soldiers were rowdy and loud. She saw Madame Gondrée look up from where she was setting a tray of beers on a table and her eyes told a story that sent Susan scurrying to the back kitchen.
Monsieur Gondrée was washing up and whirled about so quickly at her entrance he nearly dropped a soapy glass. “Jeanne! Thank goodness!”
“Is Madame not feeling well?” she asked loudly, setting the box down on the counter.
“It has been a terrible day for her!” Monsieur Gondrée put the glass aside, hurriedly wiped his hands on his apron and shut the door, dimming some of the noise.
“Thérèse heard them,” Monsieur Gondrée said softly. Susan nodded and made much of banging the box lid about and jostling the medicine bottles so that they clacked, adding a chorus to the German singing on the other side of the door.
Whispering under the din, he said, “Thérèse heard where the trigger is for the explosive charges under the bridge.”
Susan stared at the humble Café owner and father of three little girls.
Monsieur Gondrée glanced back at the door but only noise came through; there was no Gestapo agent on the other side.
“Thérèse heard the soldiers say that the trigger that will blow up the bridges is in the pillbox they just built, the one with the big tank gun.”
“And if the pillbox is taken out, they can’t blow the bridge?”
Monsieur Gondrée nodded.
Both their hands were shaking as they put the empty bottles back in the box.
“Thank you,” Susan said to him. “You and Thérèse both. Thank you.”
“I am not a brave man, Mademoiselle.”
“But you are, Monsieur, you and your wife. You are as brave as Lions.”
ooOOoo
They’d gotten used to the bouncing and jouncing around inside a closed lorry. Major Howard had given them the order to pack up and move out. Might this be the last stop before deployment? The lorry’s tarpaulins were all tied down to keep them secret and out of sight. They’d been bumping over roads for over an hour, heading south.
The sounds of planes outside got louder.
“RAF base,” Parr said.
The truck slowed and stopped. A guard gate, probably. There was some discussion Peter couldn’t hear. The truck started moving again and finally stopped and the engine cut out.
“Fall out!” Major Howard called.
They all clambered out of the truck, blinking a little in the spring sunshine. Looking around, Peter saw the patrols and the barbed wire and the harried look of all the men running around. It was finally coming. And they were part of it.
“Look up,” Brotheridge said, pointing.
A big Halifax rumbled overhead towing a glider.
“It’s a Horsa,” Brotheridge said.
The men all craned their necks up, staring at her. She was beautiful, long, sleek, and larger than the Wacos they’d trained in by at least a third.
“How big is she, sir?” Peter asked.
“Enough for a platoon,” Brotheridge replied. “30 men, give or take.”
They checked into the section tents. There was the usual roll call, jostling over bunks, shoving and yelling. They were confined to base, and everyone was on edge, waiting for the summons.
The officers disappeared with Major Howard. For once no one had much appetite and the food was still terrible.
Peter tried to get to the NAAFI for a pint, but the queues were too long with all the pilots and staff. They found out they were at Tarrant Rushton, in Dorset, that the base was relatively new and primarily for the glider corps.
No one wanted to miss the summons that had to be coming, so they hung around the stuffy tents. It was hot and he nearly burned a lung on all the cigarettes. Peter lost a week’s pay and five hands in a row to Parr, Bailey, and Gray. Parr was probably cheating, but he didn’t care. Gardner had a dice game going and was making out as well as Parr. Maybe Gardner and Parr could buy them pints at the NAAFI.
The order finally came. He heard Lieutenant Wood shouting “Fall In!” to the tent next door with Sweeney’s platoon. They were all on their feet, charging double time out the door to beat the other platoons.
There was a lot of jostling to be first. They were marched across the base into an area cordoned off by barbed wire. Peter whistled and Parr nodded as they saw that the briefing hut they were going into was surrounded by wire and guards.
“This is big. They’ve got inner security even though we’re on a closed base.”
They cursed and shoved but Peter knew how to use his bulk to clear a path. It got even more crowded when the sappers joined. After throwing a few elbows and smashing a few insteps to get in, Peter wasn’t sure what he was expecting. He knew he hadn’t expected this. This was deadly serious. The officers were all excited, high colour, wide eyes. Major Howard looked relieved and in better spirits than he’d been in weeks. It was probably the first time he’d been able to share the orders with his subalterns. Other units surely weren’t getting anything like this. They had been told so many times they were special and now, seeing the inside of the hut, he realised that it was true. D Company was very, very special.
The walls of the briefing hut were covered with maps, photographs, and aerial reconnaissance. In the front, on a dais, was a model, about twelve feet square. Peter pushed his way closer to it for a better look. The model was incredible in its detail. There were little ditches and trenches, fortifications, barbed wire, trees, bushes, and buildings. In the middle, two strips of blue ran the length of it. They were waterways, and over them, two bridges, connected by a single, straight road.
It was just as their Exeter exercise had been over the Countess Weir bridges, in a 12X12 model, except this wasn’t England.
Everyone jostled for seats; Peter stuck to standing on the side, where he could see better.
“Welcome to RAF Tarrant Rushton,” Major Howard began. “We’re officially on lockdown, men. We won’t leave here again until the night of the 4th of June when we fly out.” He paused. “We’ll leave in six Horsa gliders. The Halis will tow us across the Channel and we’ll prang into Normandy, France at midnight on the 5th of June.”
There were scattered, startled oaths, some loud over the din of each man exclaiming to his neighbor. The hum of excitement intensified. Peter was shocked himself. That was barely a week away!
Major Howard tapped the model with a birch pointer and the conversation quieted. “Our objective is two bridges outside the French city of Caen, connected by a road and 550 yards apart. The bridge on the east spans the River Orne and the one on the west is over the Caen Canal. They have been rigged for demolition and are protected by a garrison. The pilots will land the Horsas at the bridges, we prang out, engage and defeat the enemy, take the bridges, intact, and hold them until reinforcements arrive.”
Now, mutters and swearing rose from the Company. “Intact?” Peter heard. “We’re going to crash six gliders into German-occupied France? Us and what Army?” “They’ll blow ‘em and us with ‘em.”
Major Howard rapped the pointer. “We will be the first Allied unit landing in France. We will see the first action. Behind us will be the largest invasion force the world has ever seen.”
Into the stunned silence that followed, Captain Priday spoke. “D Company will be followed by parachute and glider landings, and massive air attacks and naval bombardments. A 12,000 plane assault will soften up Nazi defenses in anticipation of amphibious landings on the morning of 5 June. At dawn, over 150,000 Allied forces will land on over 50 miles of beach.”
Men in the room whistled. This was enormous. Larger even than the Torch landings.
At the map of France, Major Howard pointed again. “The far right flank of the invasion is here, at the Douve River Estuary. American forces will land along this stretch of coast to Sainte-Honorine-des-Pertes, named Utah and Omaha Beaches. Moving east, Canadian and British forces will land in three separate operations, ending at Ouistreham. Ouistreham is the far left flank of the invasion and is less than four miles from the Caen bridges we must capture.”
“Supporting the British landings on the left flank will be over 8,000 paras of the 6th Airborne whose objectives are to stop the panzer divisions around Caen, take out the Merville gun battery, and demolish four bridges over the River Dives. Our orders are to take and hold the Caen Canal and River Orne bridges. Our relief is expected by noon on 5 June when Lord Lovat’s commandos will march inland from the beach landings. If we fail and the Germans blow the bridges, we and the entire 6th Airborne will be in the middle of enemy territory, at the mercy of Rommel’s panzers, with water to our backs, no anti-tank weapons, and no way to get them.”
“Any questions?”
There were of course and the Company and the sappers began moving about the briefing room, looking at the models and photographs and asking questions of the subalterns. Peter was pushed toward the map of the French coastline. There were five codenamed beaches labeled with LZs and which divisions and brigades from which Army would land where. Utah and Omaha beaches for the Americans were, as the Major had said, at the western flank. The Canadians and British 2d Army would be landing at Gold Beach, Juno Beach and…
He stared.
Oh Aslan. You were right and I am sorry to have ever doubted you.
“Something wrong, Pevensie?” Lieutenant Brotheridge asked.
His heart was thudding but he didn’t want his platoon leader to think it was nerves.
“No, sir. Excited, sir, that’s all. Could you tell me, our objective, it’s to protect the easternmost beach, where the British 2nd is landing?”
“That’s what the Major said, Pevensie. Our job, and that of the paras of the 6th, is to protect the eastern flank. There are two panzer divisions around Caen, which will be problem enough. The rest of the armor is to the east, since Hitler has assumed we’re taking the shorter distance across the Channel and landing at Pas-de-Calais. If a serious counter-offensive comes, it will come first at those two bridges. If we and the paras of the 6th don’t stop them, they’ll roar down on to Sword Beach and wipe out the British landings.”
Peter put a finger to the map pinned to the wall and traced the word. Sword Beach. Sword. And of the four LZs on Sword Beach, one was codenamed Peter; the other was Queen. At Gold Beach, one LZ was codenamed King.
“Don’t get a swelled head because one of those sectors has your name on it.”
“I won’t, sir.” But there was meaning here, too. High King Peter had been known as the Sword and Soul of Narnia. The sword had been his gift, his talisman, his banner, his code name, and handle to the Cair Paravel staff.
One of the sappers was asking Brotheridge a question about how the bridges were rigged for demolition and what the plan was to take out the Canal Bridge’s pillbox fortification that housed the trigger. Now that the model was there for them all to study, Peter appreciated anew just what Major Howard had been doing to them. They’d been pranging a replica of those damned bridges for weeks.
He pushed through the crowd, leaving the coastal maps for others to see and went to look at the pictures of the area. The closest town was Bénouville. There was information on the local café owner and others in the area who were active in the French Resistance. There was detailed information about the fortifications at the bridge, where the trigger was that would detonate each bridge, and the strength and competency of the conscripts manning the bridges.
Parr and Bailey jostled him. They were looking at photographs of buildings near the Caen Canal bridge.
“That’s the Gondrée Café and the big building is Château de Bénouville,” Major Howard said. “It’s a hospital. The administrator is in the Resistance; so are the Gondrées. British intelligence has agents in the area supporting them. They are why our information is so good.”
“Those buildings are prime spots for snipers,” Parr said. “Lots of tree cover, too.”
“And in the water tower,” Bailey added.
There were several intelligence reports from British intelligence available as well. Peter looked at one about Rommel’s recent visit to the bridges. It was succinct and competent. He was just going to leave it and look more closely at the floor model when he spotted something that was so small, he almost missed it. In the bottom corner of the report, there was a tiny, pencil drawing of a black, four-legged creature - surely a rodent - a rat. He had seen this particular drawing before.
Susan. The sword had been his totem, and the rat had been hers. As he had touched the word sword on the map of the Normandy invasion, now he gently ran a fingertip over the little picture. At Sword Beach there was an LZ named Peter and one named Queen. Susan? Are you there, in France, in Normandy? Are you giving us the intelligence that will bring D Company into Bénouville on glider’s wings?
Peter thought so. By Aslan’s will, Rat and Sword were at war.
00oo00
D-Day Minus Two Days
It had been a late, long, painful night. Two deliveries, one a still birth. Susan had been asked to help with the details of bedding, towels, laundry, and medicine. Lebourgeois had brought one patient in and then he and Desvignes headed out again to meet a Lysander. In the ambulance they had hidden a downed American pilot. Madame Vion had hidden the pilot and treated his broken arm. The Lizzie brought more guns and would return to England with the American. Lebourgeois and Desvignes had not returned until the weary hour before dawn, having seen to the delivery of guns to a Resistance cell south of Caen.
A good night, a productive one, and very, very long. The Lysander pilot had given them a few gifts. Susan was grateful but with all the Stens that were pouring into France from England, couldn’t someone manage to include more than a tin of NAAFI tea, a can of SPAM, and a bar of soap?
They had caught a few hours of sleep and now were getting a late start to the day.
“Thank you, Jeanne,” Madame Vion said as they sipped their plain, weak tea.
The French considered the English uncouth tea drinkers but they had not seen coffee in months. For elevenses , they were sharing German sausage in Madame Vion’s office. The fare was tedious, but a benefit from their good relations with the 21st Panzer, Lieutenant Becker, and Sergeant Müeller was that food had been coming regularly in addition to the batteries and flowers as she bicycled through the checkpoint.
“Will you go to the Café next?”
“Yes, Aunt, if I can be spared,” Susan replied.
“For assuring Madame Gondrée’s continued health, you can always be spared, Jeanne.”
“Thank you, Aunt, I will do so then.”
Even when alone and casual, they always tried to maintain the cover. Always live the cover.
Susan ruthlessly cut the sausage on the plate and forced herself to eat it. In a month, the Wehrmacht would be gone from Normandy, surely. Dead, imprisoned, or in retreat, including the generous Lieutenant Becker.
In the hall, there were sounds of hurried, echoing footsteps. Madame Vion looked quickly about her office as Susan stashed the tea fixings in a cupboard. The sausage could be explained.
The subterfuge, however, was not necessary.
Monsieur Desvignes hurried into the room escorting a winded Monsieur Gondrée. It seemed he had run the two kilometres all the way from the Café.
“I apologize for interrupting, Madame, but…”
“Nonsense, Monsieur! For you, always! Please sit.”
With a nod from Madame Vion, Susan shut the door on the four of them as Madame Vion asked, “Madame Gondrée? Is she well? Do her problems persist?”
Monsieur Gondrée had not even changed out his apron. Susan removed a medicine bottle from a cabinet. He might need it to explain his absence from the Café and unusual visit to Château de Bénouville.
“Thérèse overhead the soldiers this morning as we were opening,” Monsieur Gondrée said. “The soldiers were complaining.” He gasped for a deep breath of air then blurted out, “They are under orders to dig holes to plant Rommelspargel at the bridge.”
They lost precious moments staring at one another. And then, they all moved at once.
Monsieur Desvignes sprinted out of the office and up four flights of stairs to where they hid the w/t. Susan chased after Madame Vion to the pharmacy where they hid the crystals for the wireless set. Susan tucked them in a handkerchief in her bodice.
They met Desvignes at the door and loaded the heavy radio into the basket of her bicycle.
“You don’t have time to code a message before you must send to England at noon,” Madame Vion said.
“I won’t code it,” Susan said. “I’m going to a farmer’s field outside of Ranville. Hopefully it has not been flooded yet.”
It was less than four kilometres. She might make it by noon. She might find a safe place to radio in broad daylight in a countryside crawling with German soldiers. She might think of a message between here and there that would tell Tebbitt of the deadly peril of the Rommelspargel, Rommel’s asparagus. She might be able to warn them before any operation launched. She might be able to do all that, and not get caught.
“Jeanne!” Madame Vion said, running after her just as Susan was pedaling away.
Susan stopped the bicycle. “Yes? Madame, what? I must…”
Madame Vion glanced at Susan’s front, at her blouse and put a finger on the hollowed button sewn there. “Do you have it? Do you have the pill? If you need it?”
“Yes,” Susan managed. “I have it. If I need to, I will use it.” Susan was wearing the means of her own suicide - the cyanide tablet she never left the Château without.
Madame Vion kissed her cheek. “Then go! Swiftly!”
ooOOoo
Tebbitt could feel the urgency at the other end. She was sloppy. There was no special password, like Dryad, Ettin, or Tashbaan to begin the message. There were no numbers. This meant she was, against all sense and precaution, sending an uncoded message. He listened and recorded the dots and dashes and knew he could not ask her to repeat it.
“What is it?” al-Masri asked, hovering.
“Rat sent a message personnel.”
“Are you sure it is Rat?”
“It’s too fast and inaccurate to be anyone else. If she’d been captured they would have done it accurately.”
askcrowwhyliluyedied
Ask/crow/why/liluyedied
Ask/crow/why/liluye/died
“What does that mean?” al-Masri asked. “Did you set up a fallback code?”
“Yes,” Tebbitt said, standing and grabbing his coat. “Call Tarrant Rushton and tell them we have new intel and are working to decode it. Major Howard will need to know and the glider command. I’ll call RAF Benson and tell photo recon to get another plane in the air and over those bridges.”
“And Rat’s message? What about that?”
“We’re driving to Reading to speak to Crow.”
ooOOoo
Two officers - one Army, one RAF - roaring up the front drive of Blackpool Forest School on motorbikes made nearly every head in the place stick out a window. He and al-Masri jogged up the steps and Tebbitt hoped his garbled message had gotten to the right person and that they would not have to wait while Edmund Pevensie was located on the pitch, in the pool, or in the bowels of some underground laboratory. Every memory of public school, the pleasant and the rotten, came surging back.
A hawkish, sour looking man was waiting at the school’s double door entrance. As a product of this environment, recognition was instantaneous. Tebbitt knew who he was without even asking.
“Headmaster Davies?” Tebbitt asked.
“Yes. Welcome to Blackpool Forest, Wing Commander.” Davies eyes slid over al-Masri with that uncomfortable look people gave the man. It had come to be truly irksome.
al-Masri was thoroughly accustomed to it and always enjoyed discomfiting doubters. “I am Major al-Masri, British Army Intelligence, Headmaster. Thank you for accommodating us so promptly.”
“No trouble at all. Just doing our patriotic duty. Mr. Pevensie is waiting for you in my office.”
“Thank you,” Tebbitt replied. “We shouldn’t be long. We may need to use your telephone afterwards.”
“Of course.”
Boys were two deep along the dark paneled halls, all jostling for a look, as they followed the Headmaster. The place reeked of tripe soup and carpet dust. What miserable places these could be.
“Must be bad news,” Tebbitt heard one boy murmur.
“’Course it isn’t, you fool,” replied a contemptuous American accent.
“Yeah, if it’s bad, it’s always a telegram. Like what happened to Darby and Reynolds last week.”
Shabby curtains, shabby tapestries, claustrophobic feeling - was every public school the same?
They followed Davies through one door and then another and an anteroom.
“Here you are, gentlemen.” Davies opened the door and for Tebbitt it was a sudden, disorienting step back some fifteen years in time to the Headmaster’s office of his youth - dim, dark, threadbare carpet and a smell of stale spirits.
Edmund Pevensie rose from an overstuffed, fraying wing chair with massive clawed legs. He had the damnable poise of his sister and had obviously come to the same conclusion as the boys in the hallway. Pevensie knew this was a crisis, but also knew it wasn’t a personal tragedy that had brought two officers tearing across Berkshire on motorbikes the first week in June.
He reached out a hand to al-Masri first. “Major, it’s a pleasure to see you again.”
“Mr. Pevensie, may I introduce you to Wing Commander Tebbitt whom you know by excellent reputation but not in person?”
Tebbitt sensed that Pevensie’s reaction to him was not as warm as to the Major. Possibly brotherly protectiveness of his sister?
“Why don’t we all sit down,” Davies began.
“Thank you, Headmaster, but you’ll have to leave,” al-Masri said immediately. “You are not cleared for this discussion.”
“Cleared?” Davies repeated with a startled glance at Pevensie. “And Mr. Pevensie is?”
“Yes,” al-Masri said. “We won’t be long.” The Major held open the door, projecting the perfect air of indifference, efficiency, and authority.
Pevensie didn’t crack an expression until Davies blustered his way out the door and al-Masri shut it firmly behind him.
“I have wanted to say that to the old fool since I came back from the States,” Pevensie said with a laugh. “I would love to get caught up and learn more but obviously time is critical. What can I do for you?”
Tebbitt removed the slip with Rat’s message but before he could speak, al-Masri put in, “Mr. Pevensie, you are still bound by the Official Secrets Act. You must not speak of this to anyone. Do you understand?”
Pevensie nodded. “I signed a non-disclosure in Washington and again on my return. I understand.”
“Good,” al-Masri answered. “Don’t forget it.”
Damn the man could be cool.
“Before your sister was deployed, we agreed that should circumstances warrant, she could use your private code,” Tebbitt said. “If I couldn’t understand it, I should come to you.”
Tebbitt would swear this impassive, serious person was not a fifteen year old adolescent. But Rat had been this age when she’d fooled everyone into believing she was Mrs. Susan Caspian. al-Masri had said there were no rational facts that could explain the Pevensies. Tebbitt had certainly never found any.
“Here,” he said, handing the scrap to Pevensie. “And I hope to God you understand it.”
Pevensie took the paper, scanned it, and handed it back.
“Can you tell us what it means?” al-Masri asked.
“I can tell you what I think it means. How it applies to your situation, I obviously do not know.”
“The best you can, Pevensie, that’s all we ask, and she wouldn’t have sent it to me and to you if she didn’t think we’d get close to the meaning.”
Pevensie nodded. “I agree, of course. Susan wants me to tell you about how a Gryphon named Liluye died.”
“Gryphon?” Tebbitt repeated. “Like in mythology? Like the gryphon that pulls Beatrice?”
“Also Alice’s Adventures,” al-Masri said, sounding uncommonly dry.
“Yes, that sort of Gryphon, with the head of an eagle and the body of a lion.”
“What happens to her? How does she die?” Tebbitt asked.
“Liluye is wounded in battle. She takes arrows to the wing, is injured, cannot fly, and plunges into the Owlwood.”
Tebbitt thought Pevensie looked awfully bleak for what was just a story. He supposed it was sad. “And?” he pressed.
“Liluye could have survived the arrow wounds. I believe my sister’s point is that she did not because Gryphons are so very large and cannot fly in any area with heavy tree cover. When Liluye fell into the Owlwood, the trees ripped her wings off; she died impaled on a branch.”
Tebbitt glanced at al-Masri, wondering if he was thinking the same thing.
“How do Gryphons fly?” al-Masri asked.
“Powerfully. They would launch from a height, if possible, but once airborne are terrific fliers.”
“Do they glide?” Tebbitt asked.
“Yes,” Pevensie replied. “They can sustain flight, of course, but are able to travel great distances by gliding on thermals.”
With barely a thank you, they pelted out of the office like mad men; Tebbitt bellowed for the telephone to call the photo recon squadron at Benson and al-Masri was penning a telegram they’d run into town and send off to Major Howard and the glider corps stationed at Tarrant Rushton.
The Gondrées had learned that the Germans were installing Rommelspargel, Rommel’s asparagus - glider poles - at the Bénouville bridges. The glider poles were thick, strong pieces of wood buried in the ground. They would tear the wings right off an incoming glider. The Horsas would never even reach the bridges. They’d be shredded to pieces on landing and picked off by waiting Nazi guns. D Company would never make it out alive.
ooOOo
D-Day Minus One Day
“You’re late,” Parr whispered as Peter slid onto the bench next to him. The movie was Stormy Weather, which fit given how wretched it had been. Goddamnit, would they abort the whole invasion because of rotten weather over the Channel?
“I had to pick a lock to let Fox and Smith off base,” Peter whispered to Parr. “They went to dinner in town with their girls.”
“We’re on lockdown,” Gray muttered. “You get caught, you won’t be pranging into Normandy.”
“I know,” Peter replied, nodding his thanks as Gray handed him a light. “It’s their business, not mine.”
Fox and Smith had invited him along, said they could find a girl for him. Peter wasn’t interested and Gray was right. Nothing was worth missing Operation Overlord, certainly not for the girls who were only interested if he had a chocolate bar. He was saving the ration chocolate for France.
“Don’t be stupid. Major won’t punish two of his platoon leaders until after the operation,” Parr said. “Now shut it.”
Peter took a pull on his cigarette. They’d all gotten an extra ration of Player’s because apparently everyone thought they were doomed men. They were getting anything they wanted - except decent food. That would have been the one reason to sneak into town - to get a proper meal at a restaurant. But even that prospect wasn’t enough.
Danny had said over a year ago that D Company was special and by God they were. First unit to hit French soil; first unit to see action. 150,000 men, five divisions, readying for battle all over England tonight and Peter didn’t think they’d all been visited by Monty. General Montgomery had come to Tarrant Rushton, made the rounds, shaken hands, told them they were the best trained and the best equipped in the whole goddamned Army.
And then General Gale had come, just for them, and told them, again, how special they were and how important the bridges were to the whole of the 6th Airborne, and beyond that to the British and Canadian divisions landing to the west, on Sword, Gold, and Juno.
It’d been a gas. Windy Gale had known just what to say to rile them up. “The German today is like the June bride. He knows he is going to get it. He doesn’t know how big it is going to be!” The men had all roared and whistled and stomped.
Peter leaned back on the bench, stretched his legs, which everyone always complained about, blew out a cloud of smoke, and let Lena Horne sing to him. The stormy weather had to let up. It had to be a go tomorrow.
ooOOoo
D-Day Minus Three Hours, 45 Minutes to D-Day Minus One Hour, 44 minutes
The wind beat against the windows and sent a draft into Madame Vion’s office. Susan poured glasses of rough red wine for the four of them.
“Thank you, Jeanne,” Madame Vion said as Susan set the glass on the desk. Madame Vion was fiddling with the wireless for the Radio Londres broadcast. Susan knew she would be able to get the signal faster, but no one touched Madame’s radio.
She gave glasses to Monsieur Desvignes and Monsieur Lebourgeois and sat down with a sigh between them.
“Thank you, Jeanne,” Monsieur Desvignes said. His old, veined hand patted hers reassuringly. “I know you are impatient.”
Monsieur Lebourgeois shifted a little on the couch and sipped his wine. “I do wonder if they’ll be able to launch. The pilots need the full moon and we’ll lose that soon.” He glanced at the window. “And the weather over the Channel is terrible regardless.”
“They’ve only landed before in good weather, so maybe next month,” Monsieur Desvignes added, with a sigh as deep as Susan’s own.
“The broadcast on the first of June said that it would be within two weeks,” Susan reminded them. The broadcast had read the first lines of Verlaine’s poem, Les sanglots longs / des violons / de l'automne -- Long sobs of autumn violins. When they heard the next lines of the poem on Radio Londres, the invasion would be imminent. “We still do not know where, either. It could be hundreds of miles away.”
She did not want to believe that given all the attention on the bridges. Susan had to be honest, though, that all this could easily be part of an elaborate shell game. A message on Radio Londres yesterday had said that “Rat made it home.” She assumed that meant Tebbitt had received and understood her message about the Rommelspargen. Only that morning, the glider poles had been delivered and the holes dug. Slaves from the Todt organization would probably try to install the anti-glider measures tomorrow. She would need to get a message to Tebbitt.
“I have it!” Madame Vion cried. As delicately as if handling eggs or glass, she removed her fingers from the dial. There was an ominous crackle and then the telltale dot- dot-dot-dot-dash burst through, the first notes of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. V for Victory in Morse Code.
“And they are not jamming the broadcast!” Monsieur Lebourgeois cried, raising his glass.
“There have been too many for the Germans to jam,” Monsieur Desvignes said.
“Shh!” Madame ordered, leaning against her desk and picking up the glass of wine.
“Et voici quelques messages personnel,” the radio announcer said, speaking in perfect Parisian French. And here are some personal messages.
There were many, many messages. Susan knew the meaning of some, did not know others, and thought some might just be noise to confuse. She glanced at Madame Vion who nodded. There were many calls to action embedded here. All over France, people were being instructed to do things. Tonight, tomorrow, and soon.
Then, les dés sont sur la table, the dice are on the table. Madame gasped and they all looked at one another. It was the instruction to sabotage railway lines.
The tension rose in the room, they were so quiet and listening so intently.
The next, il fait chaud à Suez, it's hot in Suez. This was the instruction to attack telephone lines. Surely, it was coming? Finally? Would they hear the next lines in Verlaine’s poem?
Was it her wistful imagination or was there a hint of excitement in the reader’s voice? Was there the slightest pause as he then read, slowly and carefully, the waited for words,
Blessent mon cœur d'une langeur monotone, Wound my heart with a monotonous languor.
A whoosh of air went out in the room upon hearing the long waited for lines of Verlaine’s poem. They all hugged and toasted and shared handkerchiefs for they shed tears. It had begun. In the next 48 hours, the Allies would invade France.
ooOOoo
The order had finally come. It was to be a day later, landing on the 6th, rather than the 5th, and it was still pissing rain. Word was that the RAF weathermen thought conditions were improving, not worsening. There was a window and Allied Command had decided to sail and fly over 100,000 men through it, rough seas and wind on the Channel be damned.
It was a go.
A lot of the men had gone to a church service. Peter didn’t. Lucy and Eustace were right about that - Aslan could be in a chaplain’s tent if he wanted, but it was a poor fit and there were other places where Peter felt closer to the Lion. He’d heard the Lion’s roar in the wind and felt his kiss in the rain as he’d stood outside the barrack tent.
Lieutenant Brotheridge found him afterward.
“Light, sir?” Peter asked as Brotheridge ducked under the tarpaulin where he’d been watching the drizzle come down.
“Thanks.”
Peter lit one cigarette from another and handed it back to his platoon leader. They were all smoking Player’s like chimneys.
“I noticed you didn’t go to chapel with the other lads,” Brotheridge said in between puffs.
“No, sir.”
Their smoke rings floated up and were washed away in the rain. They watched as a big Hali blotted out the sky. In a few hours their platoon would be aloft in Horsa Glider #1 and towed by a Hali all the way to France.
“Anything you want to talk about, Pevensie?”
“I’m fine, sir, but thanks.”
He knew what Lieutenant Brotheridge was trying to do for him. He’d done it himself, before battles, trying to encourage his own army. Peter saw the same anxiety in the men of D Company that Brotheridge did. They were committed and eager, fit and hard, but not hardened. They’d become soldiers but Peter thought he was the only who’d killed before.
The men had thought it was all show when Major Howard made them sharpen bayonets. Peter didn’t think so and at the same time, he’d sharpened the knife Major al-Masri had given him so long ago on a train platform in Oxford. The knife was beautiful and perfectly balanced. The men called it fancy. Peter knew, in the way a warrior did, that the knife had cut human flesh before. By dawn tomorrow it might, by Peter’s own hand, make a desperate killing cut at a man’s flesh again.
So, while other men might go to church and pray for life and nerve, Peter had gone into the Nissen hut where the operation was all set out, right down to where on the 12X12 model the glider poles were to be planted that could kill them all. He’d idly twirled the knife in his hand and looked again at the Allied maps of Normandy hanging from the walls - Sword Beach and Gold Beach - and in the landing sectors - King, Peter, and Queen. He saw the Lion’s purpose and that was all Peter needed.
He and Brotheridge both flicked ash away into the mud. “It’s not good for a man to go into combat hoping for death, Pevensie. It’s not good for him. Not good for the rest of us who’re counting on him, either.”
“I’m not looking for death, sir. I’ve got a good life and family waiting for me when the War ends. But I’m not afraid of death, either. I’m ready to fight and to kill and even die, if that’s the way of it.”
With Edmund or Lucy, he could have said what they had all known, that death was an old friend of theirs, both delivering it and risking it to do a duty that needed doing.
Brotheridge looked him over and blew out more smoke. Finally he said, sounding resigned, “It’s easy for everyone to forget but you’re still young, Pevensie. I should have sent you packing instead of one of the others. You should still be in school, or OCTU, not here.”
“Thank you for letting me stay, sir. I won’t let down D Company, or the mission. I belong here. It’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”
“So long as there aren’t any boats?”
“I’ll just send Parr in that case.”
Brotheridge clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a good man.”
A bugler called them to mess for a light, low fat meal so that maybe the Major wouldn’t get sick over the Channel. Hardly anyone ate, though. Well, Peter did. He knew if he didn’t fuel up now, he’d regret it in another 12 hours, so he ate his portion and two others, too. The brotherhood abused him about it but the prospect of combat had never made him sick before, so Peter didn’t think it would happen this time and he’d managed the glider well enough during training.
Sure, riding to war at the head of the Narnian army wasn’t the same as pranging onto a bridge rigged for demolition with 75 other men and then, assuming they weren’t blown to bits, holding it in the middle of the 21st Panzer Division while over 100,000 men came ashore and dropped around you. The end result was the same, though. When the time came, your training and commitment to the cause would take hold and each man would find the will to kill. Or he wouldn’t. You didn’t know until you were there and had to do it.
Peter knew he could. He had before.
After eating, they’d suited up and gotten the battle smocks. Brotheridge had handed out some fun things that Peter thought were better for morale than anything else - a makeshift compass out of a button, a file sewn into the smock for daring escapes, a silk square with a map of France, water purification tablets, and some French francs.
They’d heard the Yanks had gotten condoms and real chocolate.
The weigh in was nervy. The glider pilots were only allowing 250 pounds per man, which depending on your own weight, could be over 100 pounds to carry. That wasn’t a problem for Peter - he was tall and solid and could have carried a lot more, but the glider couldn’t. Some of the littler chaps were sagging at the knees and if they fell over, they’d be like turtles, unable to get up again under all that weight.
They’d been driven out to the Horsas to help with the loading. In short order, most everyone in the platoon had lost their French francs to Gardner’s dice and Parr’s cards. Peter figured the two of them cheated together and split the winnings. If anyone in the platoon found (and had time for) French whores or wine, Parr and Gardner would have to pay for them.
They passed camouflage paint around and blackened their faces and hands. It was a little gooey and reminded Peter that maybe Susan was already where he was going.
Then, they waited.
“Hold the light up, Pevensie.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Parr had a piece of chalk and was writing his wife’s name on the nose of the Horsa glider. Lady Irene. Irene was Parr’s wife.
The other five platoons were writing special messages to Hitler on their Horsas. There were shapely ladies like Jane in the cartoon, Donald Duck, and the names of many women - mothers, sisters, wives, and girlfriends. All the planes, including the gliders and the Hali bombers that were towing them, were painted in Operation Overlord fancy dress - white stripes on the wings and tail.
“You wanna write anything, Pevensie?” Parr asked, straightening up and dusting chalk off his hands.
“That’s all right. I’ll leave room for the others.”
“It’s a big glider.” Parr shoved the chalk at him. “Go on.”
Peter tried, but he knew it was hopeless before he’d drawn the tail.
“What the hell is that?” Gray asked, coming up with his own chalk and a mug. “A dog?”
“A cat, or… never mind.” Peter tried to rub his feeble attempt out with his sleeve but Parr held him back.
“Leave it.”
He shrugged. They were all making too much of it and he wasn’t going to explain it.
Parr turned toward Gray, sniffing. “What you got in that mug, Gray?”
“One of the NAAFI girl’s got a Dixie with tea.” Gray tilted his head over toward the aft of the plane.
“With rum,” Peter said, catching a whiff of it.
Gray raised his mug. “Nothing finer on a cold, rainy night.”
He got an elbow in the ribs from Parr. “Let’s go get some.”
Peter let Parr drag him to where the rest of the platoon was hanging around the Dixie, smoking, drinking and eating sandwiches in the drizzle.
Parr was getting two cups, but Peter shook his head. “I’ll skip the rum, thanks.”
He got squint-eyed looks from Parr and Gardner for that one.
“Pevensie turning down a drink?” Gardner said. “I don’t believe it.”
“I hate rum,” Peter said. “Really. Rum reminds me of goddamned motherfucking boats.”
The Halis were warming up, the glider pilots were getting into the cockpits.
Everyone on the platoon did the Jimmy Riddle as Parr called it, except Gray. Gray was going to regret it after all the tea and rum. Peter’d learned that lesson in armor.
Major Howard gathered them around on the soggy field. They did look a fright, faces all blacked out, each carrying 100 pounds of gear, or more, guns over their shoulders, bandoleers across their chests, toggle ropes around their waists, grenades in the pouches.
“Well, boys…”
Major Mad Bastard began his speech, floundered, and finally gave up. Great leader, rotten inspirational speaker. It didn’t matter.
Parr boomed it out and they all started chanting along, “Ham and Jam! Ham and bloody Jam!”
Ham and Jam were the codes for mission success, if they took each bridge intact. Jack and Lard were if the bridges were taken, but blown. Peter hadn’t heard if there was a code for mission failure, bridges blown, D Company dead or captured.
Chanting “Ham and Jam,” everybody shook hands. Then, it was time. Their platoon climbed into Glider 1; Peter wedged in between Gardner and Gray, who already looked uncomfortable. Glider 1 would crash first into the Caen Canal Bridge; assuming they weren’t lost or shot down by flak, gliders 2 and 3 would be one and two minutes behind them. Gliders 4, 5 and 6 would assault the River Orne Bridge.
In the glider, they all hooted and hollered as Danny Brotheridge took his seat up at the front. Major Howard was saying something outside to their Hali pilot, then, since he was the last to come aboard, had to push and climb over their bodies and gear to take his seat on the bench next to Danny. At least there was no goddamned motherfucking boat in their glider.
The Hali’s engines roared and revved and the bomber began rolling down the runway. A moment later their Horsa jerked and followed, pulled along by the tow cable.
5 June, at 2256, they were airborne and D Company was headed to France. Sword was going to war.
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3 Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6 Part 1 Part 2