H.J. Gaudreau - Betrayal in the Louvre (17 page)

By eight o’clock that morning the fighting had stopped.  Oushel fought to stay awake.  He’d been up all day yesterday and marched all last night.  Now he lay comfortably in soft dirt in a dark stall.  He snored and knew the sound would give him away.  As he lay there he imagined being home, a warm fire in the sitting room, his parents reading.  He thought about his brothers and racing the carriage and team.  He smiled when he thought about how mad his father had been when he saw how foamed up the horses were.  His neighbors were walking up the drive toward the house; they were talking.  What were they saying?  It didn’t make any sense.  What were they yelling?  He couldn’t understand.  No wait, it was a dream.  He’d been asleep.  Damn!  There were Germans outside the barn.  He listened.  They opened the door.  Silence.  Then, a burst of excited words filled the air.  How could those people do that?  It was all one long word.  It was a hundred syllables.  Didn’t they use commas and periods?  They’d found John.  Silence.

After several minutes he heard Germans speaking in a low voice.  Along the central corridor at the far end were several doors.  He heard them being banged open.  The storage shed was searched.  Then he could hear the grain door open.  Next came the tack room.  Finally, the stall doors were opened.  Had he shut this stall door?  Did it look different?  He couldn’t remember.  They were in the next stall.  He heard the door bang shut.  Now his.  He shut his eyes.  He could feel the German standing over him.  Any moment a bayonet would be shoved through him.  He nearly sat up and surrendered.  Someone called out from the opposite end of the barn.  It was a name.  They were looking for someone.  From right above him he heard a yell back “Ya?”  Then the stall door shut!  They’d not seen him. 

He started to breath again.  He listened to the Germans for a few more minutes.  Maybe they were searching John’s body?  Were they going to search the barn again?  Suddenly a torrent of screaming and yelling; must be a Sergeant.  Do Sergeants yell in every army?  He heard several voices saying “Yawohl” and more words.  Yup, they were talking to the Sergeant, maybe an officer.  What or who ever it was it didn’t sound too happy.  Someone was getting their ass chewed.  Probably for something meaningless and stupid.  After a few more minutes he thought he could hear them moving off. 

Time passed. Oushel had to pee.  He was hungry.  His uniform, wet and warm last night was now wet, cold and scratchy.  It must be midday.  He thought about crawling to the corner and peeing.  Suddenly gunfire broke out.  Heavy weapons were being fired from the direction of the town, lighter ones from just beyond the barn.  Off in the distance return fire could be heard.  He could hear explosions near the woods and in the field they had crossed this morning.  The firing got to be fairly close.  He began to get scared again.  The German line had fallen back.  They set up near the barn; explosions and more machine gun fire from both sides of the barn.  It grew more intense.  It seemed to go on a long time.  He was even more scared now than last night. Damn, he hoped artillery didn’t open up on this barn.  The sun was setting.  Voices.  He heard German voices.  They seemed very excited.  They were all around the barn.  Then, lots of gunfire.  It erupted from all sides of the barn, very close.  Machine guns chattered.  Bullets crashed through the barn.  Streams of sunlight appeared in the dust.  The gunfire wouldn’t stop.  The explosions continued.  Some right next to the barn.  Shit, he was going to get blown up right here in this barn.  He let go.  His pants were soaked.  Then, impossibly, the gunfire and explosions became louder.  More bullets smashed through the barn and the battle swept past.  It was moving away.  The sounds were closer to the village.  Then in the distance, what was that?  He heard Americans shouting.  After an hour the shooting was much closer.  It was Americans.  They were cursing and shouting and surging around him.  The Germans were gone.   

He crawled out of his hole and stood up.  He walked to the body of John Turner.  John lay flat on his back.  His hands were folded across his chest.  The body had been searched, the pockets were all empty and turned out.  Oushel’s hands began to shake.  He sat back on the dirt and began to cry.  The barn door opened and three American doughboys walked in guns at the ready. 

He was directed to a wagon near the brook where several men were sitting at tables.  Other men were hurrying to and fro and the whole group looked important.  He didn’t like being around officers but he’d been told to report to the Major so he did.  The Major looked him over, looked at his pants.  Oushel’s embarrassment was evident.  The Major didn’t say a word.  Instead he pulled a bag of tobacco out of his pocket, rolled a cigarette, then handed it to him.  Oushel bent slightly to the offered match, took a long drag then stared at his hands.  They were shaking uncontrollably.  The Major poured a shot of whiskey. 

“Sit down soldier.  You look like you’ve had a long day.”  Oushel sat on an upturned ammo box.  “Okay, tell me what happened.” 

When he was finished the Major asked a few questions.  When Oushel finished answering he was told to get some chow.  Now, he found himself sitting on a half log bench with a pedal powered grind wheel eating from a borrowed mess kit. 

A man from Wisconsin was asking Oushel to tell his story.  Reluctantly he was obliging.  He came to the part about digging the hole in the stall then stopped.  What was that canvas thing he’d tossed into the next stall?  Now he didn’t want to talk to this fellow.  He wanted to see what he’d found in the stall.  He summed up the rest of the story with a short, “Then you guys came.”  Standing, Oushel made excuses about finding his weapon and wandered over to the barn. 

His rifle was near the corner under a pile of straw where he’d left it.  Then he went to the stall next to where he’d spent the day.  Searching the stall he finally found a small pile of canvas hidden in the shadow and picked it up.  It was a knapsack.  Its straps were rotted, the backpack itself having a large hole rotted in the bottom.  Lifting the strap to unbuckle the knapsack it broke in two under the stress of that small call to duty.  Inside he found black soil, rotting rags and a tube.  The tube was about twenty inches long and nearly black with filth.  It appeared to have a cap on each end.  He twisted the caps, but neither would budge.  Hearing his name called from outside he stuffed the tube in his inside coat pocket, picked up his rifle and rejoined the war.   

III

Jim glanced up from his reading.  Eve was still sleeping.  The narrative was exciting.  It was doubly so because he knew his great grandfather was part of this, and survived.  He returned to the history of the 32nd. 

A separate tragedy occurred with the mauling of D Company under Captain Walters.  D Company, already depleted from its hard work the previous month, was to separate from H Company and move to the north some two thousand yards.  There they were to pivot and attack from an offset northerly position.  However, in the darkness Captain Walters became disoriented and moved his company against the village of Cheveuges some three kilometers north of the objective and
behind enemy lines.  Dawn came upon the Company as they crossed an open field to the village.  Enemy artillery was brought down upon the exposed soldiers, killing eighteen men, including Captain Walters and injuring many more.  The remaining soldiers were forced to battle through the afternoon before being located and relieved by the remainder of the 126th.

The book then began to discuss the occupation of the abandoned city of Sedan.  Jim was stunned.  This one paragraph was the clue he’d been missing.  They’d been searching at the wrong village.

Chapter 33

The next morning they ate an early breakfast of coffee and toast.  Eve, having not had supper the previous night, drank an extra cup of coffee and ate an extra roll.  Jim teased her about a “minute on the lips, lifetime on the hips”.  She silently poked his stomach and said “…and what is it now, twenty pounds since you retired?”  Jim smiled and agreed he needed to get back in the gym when they returned home. 

After breakfast Jim unfolded the map on their table.  The village of Cheveuges was only three miles to the north.  They discussed their strategy for searching this town and its attending barns.  Having learned their lesson about the town hall they decided to first search the village.

Forty-five minutes later they were parking the car on one of the few side streets Cheveuges had to offer.  Moving the hundred yards to the north end of the village they began a systematic search to the south end.  There was a small bronze plaque mounted on the corner of a large, official building dedicated to the young men killed liberating the village in 1918, but it didn’t provide any details.  Looking closely Jim found a small manufacturer’s mark and could see that the plaque had been forged in 1954.  At the town offices there was another monument.  This one to the French partisan fighters who had fought the Germans in the second world war.  Jim and Eve took fifteen minutes to read the long citation, each using their pocket dictionary.

After walking about the village for the better part of two hours they returned to their car and began the road portion of their search.  They selected a road leading to the south and began to follow it out of town.  The town was very old and the buildings were of the traditional style, each half-timbered, with overhanging upper stories.  Most were homes, many with a storage barn or business attached.  A small pasture with twenty or thirty sheep edged up to the town.  The pasture stretched nearly a hundred meters then came to what could only be described as a derelict classic, garish, United States Route 66 style gas station.  The station was deserted.  Its driveway filled with cracks, each one sprouting weeds of various types.  The mechanic’s garage sat to the left of a large, round office area constructed of glass bricks.  The trim of the building and attendant concrete curbs once a bright blue, white and red was now faded and chipped.  Two gas pumps, their faces gone and internal mechanical parts rusting in the weather, sat on a blue concrete island under a free standing roof that extended from the building, over the pumps and beyond, nearly to the road.  Immediately past the gas station was a narrow strip of grass, then a large ditch with what appeared to be oil slicks on the water.  A concrete bridge with low sides crossed the ditch.  Just after the bridge the road tuned to the right and a large building with a collapsed northern wall stood near the curb as the street bent away.  Behind the decrepit building was a small orchard of apple trees and then a vineyard.  This clearly was the neglected end of town. 

They continued over the bridge, turned right and then accelerated through the gentle left curve from 50 to 90 kilometers per hour.  They drove completely to Cherhery.  They looked at the same barns they had seen the day before.  They drove back to Cheveuges and tried another road.  Then they did the same thing, on different roads, again and again and again. 

By mid-afternoon both Jim and Eve were tired.  The car seats had turned to wood.  They were bored with the French countryside.  Patience with even the tiniest affront had long ago been lost, and they were starting to snipe at each other.  They had approached four farmers and discussed their barns.  None of these farmers were as friendly as the ones they’d spoken with the last two days.  One had yelled in what some would call French, but it was probably a local dialect because to both Jim and Eve it sounded like it was half German.  They ate their lunch in a terrible café, served by a rude Francophile who had no use for Americans and didn’t appreciate a tourist’s dollar, or in this case a tourist’s Euro.  They had two glasses of wine with lunch and now Eve was sleepy.  The cheese they’d eaten at lunch didn’t seem to sit well with Jim, who was getting angry at Eve because she kept falling asleep.  After waking her up for the third time Jim decided to take one more look in the countryside to the southwest.  If he struck out there he was calling it a day and returning to their inn in Chehery.  Maybe they could salvage the evening.

They were exiting the village on the same road they had initially explored so many hours previous.  Slowing, they passed the broken down gas station and approached the small bridge.  This time, just before they crossed the bridge a flock of sheep, being driven to town from the opposite direction forced Jim to pull off the road onto the shoulder.  “Damn these stinking animals.” Jim muttered as he shut off the engine.  This had happened a few times in the past three days.  It had gone from being quaint to being a royal pain in the ass. 

As they waited for the sheep to cross the bridge Eve dozed.  Jim examined the orchard behind the half-collapsed building.  He tried to decide what kind of apple tree he was looking at and daydreamed about planting his own orchard.  Returning his gaze to the sheep he watched as the shepherd chased a small lamb.  The animal waited until the shepherd was within ten feet, would bleat and run fifteen feet further away.  The lamb was headed for the orchard behind the old building.  Meanwhile, the rest of the herd had decided the grass around Jim and Eve’s car was Grade A Choice and had surrounded the car. 

The shepherd continued to chase the lamb and Jim went back to his daydreaming.  He began to imagine what the collapsed building looked like when it was new.  Slowly it dawned on him that this building was an old barn.  This one was certainly different.  It had an overhanging roof.  Its internal structure was made of pillars, not timber frame.  And, it looked like the roof was of tile.  But, most importantly this building clearly was a two-story building, not a one story with a hayloft on top. 

“Eve, I think we’ve found it,” he whispered.  She didn’t move.  He reached over and shook her.  “Look” was all he said as he pointed out the window at the collapsing building just fifteen yards in front of their car.