Another flare popped, and then another, and the whole scene lit up, this puny French river valley, he and his three maquis racing uphill toward a treeline through a landscape of flickering shadow, as the descending parachute flares caught on the stumps of the so recently cut pines and threw blades of darkness this way and that, like scythes, the Germans still two hundred yards away but coming strong, the camouflaged Panzer-grenadiers racing through and past the confused young Luftwaffers, and now, suddenly, from the ridgeline, a long arc of tracer as the MG-42S tried to range the target.
We are screwed, he thought. This is it.
The bridge went.
It wasn’t the blossoming, booming movie explosion so familiar from the Warner Bros, backlog agitprop films, but more of a disappointingly insubstantial percussion, lifting a large volcano of smoke and dust from the structure in the aftermath of a flash too brief for anyone to see. Leets stole a moment in the fading parachute flare to examine his legacy: The bridge, as the dust cleared, was not downed, leaving a gap as if a mouth had been punched front-teethless, but the roadway span hung at a grotesque 45-degree angle, torquing downward, meaning the truss Leets had 808’ed had gone, but the other one held. It would take days to repair, or to detour around, and those would be days with no 2nd SS Das Reich at Normandy.
He stood, dumped a mag a man high at the nearest parade of SS Panzergrenadiers, and shouted to his guys, “Go, go, go, go!”
Franc took the first hit. He just slumped, tried to get up, then sat, then lay down, then curled up.
“Go, go, go!” screamed Leets, dumping another mag. He had three left.
Of the two maquis, Leon, the youngster, made it closest to the treeline, but then a new flare popped and the German fire found him and put him in a beaten zone, and no man survives the beaten zone.
Jerome didn’t make it nearly as far, and Leets was unclear, for he ran himself through a sleet of light and splinter as the Germans tried to bring him down, but in the second before he was hit he saw Jerome jack vertically from his runner’s crouch and go down hard as gravity took hold of his remains.
The bullet struck Leets in the left buttock, blowing through his hip. Man, did he go down, full of spangles and fire flashes and lightning bugs and flies’ wings. His mind emptied; all visible movement ceased in the universe, and it went silent — I am dead, he thought — but he blinked himself alive again and saw SS coming up hard in the light of a new flare, holding their fire, for they wanted someone alive for the info before the execution, and he cursed himself for throwing out the strychnine tablet he’d been issued.
The pain was immense, and he tried to make it go away by rushing a mag change, lifting the ever-loyal, faultless best friend of the Thompson gun, and running another mag, seeming to drive them back or down or whatever.
He was twenty-four.
He didn’t want to die.
He tried to get through another mag change but dropped the heavy weapon. He got a Gammon bomb out but couldn’t get the cap unscrewed. He pulled out his.45, jacked the slide, held it up stupidly without aiming, blinked in the bright light of another flare just overhead and squeezed off a few pointless rounds.
The gun locked back. He saw two Panzergrenadiers quite close with their fancy new rifles and was amazed that at this ultimate moment his lifelong interest in firearms reasserted itself, and he thought for just a second how interesting it would be to ring one of those cool babies out at a range, then take it apart lovingly, taking notes, figuring out what made it go, running tests on the ammo. It would be so damned interesting.
Then the two Germans sat down, as if embarrassed.
A wave of explosions wiped out the reality that was but a few yards ahead of him.
“There, there, Beets, chum,” said Basil. “The fellows are here with a stretcher. I see a bit of bone, but any horse doctor can set that.”
“Basil, I, what, get out of here, oh, for—”
But Basil had turned and was busy running mags through his Sten, as around him, the other maquisards fired whatever weapons they had.
Somehow Leets was on a stretcher and being humped at speed the remaining few yards to the treeline.
“Basil, I—”
“There’s the good chap. Beets, these fellows will take good care of you. Get Leftenant Beets somewhere to medical aid. Get him out of here.”
“Basil, you come, too, come on, Basil, we got the bridge, we can—”
“Oh, someone has to stay to discourage these fellows. They seem so stubborn. But I’ll be along in a bit. We’ll have that chat. Good luck, Beets, and Godspeed.”
Basil turned and disappeared back into the forest. For Leets, it became an ordeal of not passing out as the maquis heaved his sorry ass along a dark path until he seemed to be being slid into some kind of vehicle, and then he did in fact pass out. Neither he nor any other of the man’s army of friends, lovers, and acquaintances ever saw Basil St. Florian again.
On June 9th, 1944, Major Frank Tyne, U.S.A. attached to OSS, found a florist who would deliver, and he had a bouquet of mums and roses sent to Millie at 72 Grosvenor, Mayfair, office of Colonel David K. E. Bruce.
He got no response.
Finally, on the 11th, he got his nerve up, parked himself on her floor, and finally caught a glimpse of her rushing from one office to another.
“Millie!”
“Oh, Frank.”
“Millie, did you get my flowers?”
Millie seemed both nonplussed and busy. She was clearly anxious to flee but stayed and faced him with a somewhat tense, unpleasant face.
“Yes, Frank, I got them. They were very nice. Who knew there were florists in London in wartime?”
“Wasn’t easy to find one. Listen, Millie, I wanted to apologize about the other night. Really, I don’t know what came over me. I’m so glad I passed out before I did anything inappropriate. I’m just hoping you’ll see a way to forgive me. It would mean so much.”
“Frank,” she touched his hand. “It’s fine. Everyone had too much to drink. Please, don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks. Say, I was wondering if—”
“Frank, there’s so much going on now that we’re ashore. The colonel’s going to the front soon on instructions from General Donovan.”
“Yes, I know, I’ve heard—”
“So his scheduling is a nightmare.”
“Sure, Millie, maybe sometime.”
“Maybe. Say, what happened to Casey, if I may ask?”
“You didn’t hear?”
“Just rumors. Not happy ones.”
“No. They hit the bridge, did some damage, maybe cost elements of Das Reich a day or two, but they were wiped out, along with the French maquis group. Then Das Reich shot fifty hostages. So it was no good, really, a waste. OWI’s going to try to do something with Casey. Maybe a short little movie for the home folks, ‘The Heroes of the Bridge at Nantilles,’ something like that.”
“It’s so sad,” she said. “Sometimes there’s no justice in this world.”
Stephen Hunter would like to thank Helge Fykse, LA6NCA, of Norway, for information on German radio technology.