Built between 1875 and 1878, the fortress of Witry-les-Reims, named Loewendal by the Wehrmacht in 1914, had been but a part of the defensive chain of fortresses and batteries the Third Republic had thrown up after the Franco-Prussian War. Universal conscription had been introduced. Never again would la patrie suffer such a humiliating defeat, yet they had prepared for a style of warfare that would no longer be in vogue, and had done the same damned thing in this one with the Maginot Line.
‘In 1914, at the start of it in August, Hermann, there was a garrison of three hundred and seventy-seven. Bien sur, the magazine alone held 85,000 kilos of artillery shells for the thirty-one heavy guns above, a cavern so huge it defied reason. Tunnels and tunnels, and even a bread oven that could bake three hundred and fifty loaves a day. Czar Nicholas II was very impressed when he attended the grandes manoeuvres de l’Est on September 1901, same garrison size, same bread oven.’
Yet it, and other such forts, and there had been a lot of them taken, had only been turned against the French in the 1914-1918 war. ‘And assuming that my side would have rightly used those guns every day for 1,051 of them, we sent shell after French shell into Reims, a few of our own as well.’
‘Levelling more than 12,000 of its 14,000 houses, virtually all of the public buildings and enough of the cathedral, its repairs lasted all but to the start of the present hostilities.’
But entry here was absolutely forbidden, the road up and into it all having been closed off by a mountain of rubble.
‘Hidden in the back of that truck, Louis, our Anna-Marie wouldn’t have seen a thing in any case and would have only wondered what the hell was going on.’
Knowing as she must have, that there was an informant amongst them. ‘But they would have sought the heights elsewhere, Hermann, since those leaving the city and travelling east on the RD 380 would have told them of why there was such a traffic hold-up going west.’
‘Every incoming vehicle being torn apart in a desperate attempt to find her by a Standartenfuhrer and a Kriminalrat who should have known better than to broadcast what they were after.’
‘Though it will now be overgrown by forest, the lookout at Berru might be better. It’s about 7.5 kilometres from Reims and at an altitude of about 270 metres. Those comrades of yours also shelled the city from there.’
‘And with French guns, was it?’
‘There’s a magazine that would have held 65,000 kilos of shells and a bread oven that would have produced three hundred loaves a day.’
Dented, speckled by bird shot and rusting, the sign wasn’t any more than twenty-four years old, yet clear enough:
BERRU LOOKOUT AND BATTERY,
CONSTRUCTED BETWEEN 1876 AND 1881.
THIS WOODS AND ITS DEFENSIVE WORKS
ARE ALL PRIVATE PROPERTY
AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.
HUNTING AND TRESPASSING ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.
‘Messieurs … Messieurs, ecoutez-moi, s’il vous plait. Les bombardements de la Grande Guerre, n’est-ce pas? Les obus explosifs et des mortiers aux perforants.’
‘The armour-piercing ones, Louis, but he’s forgotten to include the grenades and land mines.’
‘Leave him to me, Hermann. We don’t have time to argue.’
Oaks, beeches, chestnut and pine, none probably more than twenty-five years old, grew in profusion, and through these and the underlying brush, a stone-laid trudge path brought instant memories of men slugging shells uphill and wounded down.
A stone lookout that no one had bothered to repair, and why should they have, nestled on high and might well have given a clear enough view and been used by that passeur, but Louis had gone back along the road a little.
The resident retainer’s house was on a postage stamp of a clearing, with woodpile, drive-shed, chickens, cow, goat, and he with one arm, the left. But the frayed bit of ribbon with its red-lined green moire and bronze palm on this bantam’s chest indicated a Croix de Guerre. Less than the five mentions a silver would have brought, but no matter since one was quite enough.
Full and broad, and not unlike Werner Dillmann’s, the grey and mercilessly tended moustache was given a decisive knuckle brush. ‘Me, Horace Rivet and former corporal in an army that was an army and didn’t run like those in this war, cannot let you pass, Inspectors. The wife will insist. She’s a Jouvand. Her father and mother are far worse.’
‘Are there others who would watch and report our trespassing if you did allow us to have a look?’ asked Louis, pleasantly enough.
‘They are all too busy at the harvest but will have seen that car of yours taking to this hill.’
‘It’s urgent. A murder inquiry. Your assistance is not only necessary, Corporal, it’s demanded under the law.’
Ah bon, firmness would be necessary. ‘Arrest me, then. If my boys were here, and not in the prisoner-of-war camps of that one, and let me tell you they and the others with them fought bravely, I would simply stand back and have them deal with you. It’s far too dangerous as the sign plainly states, or is it that you can’t or refuse to read?’
God would use the stubborn ones. ‘Like yourself, we were both soldiers and know well enough what to watch out for.’
‘Then you will understand perfectly that buried materiel can choose its moment even after the years of waiting.’
Which was absolutely true, given the recurring news reports of unfortunate farmers inadvertently hitting something or trying to dig it up. ‘That partner of mine is a Gestapo.’
He would toss the hand at such muscle, felt Rivet. ‘Even if he were that one’s Fuhrer, access would still be forbidden.’
Cheapness would allow Hermann to shine. ‘Would fifty francs help?’
‘Merde alors, what is this I am hearing from a Surete? The badge, Inspector. The number?’
A sigh had best be given, a hand tossed as well. ‘He’s one of Franchet d’Esperey’s men, Hermann. The Fourth Corps, but then the Third and Tenth joining them. The Battle of Guise, to Frenchmen; to yourselves, that of Saint-Quentin. Demoralized and discouraged, men like Corporal Rivet found in that new commander of theirs the necessary and fought bravely with both impressive courage and decisiveness.’
‘Dawn, 29 August 1914,’ said Rivet, ‘and the mist as thick as porridge. Nothing but fear in our hearts, the battle wearing on and on until, at about 1800 hours, the miracle. There he was riding that chestnut charger of his out in front and waving us on. The whole of the German line gave way as we drove them back.’
‘The British calling him “Desperate Frankie,” Hermann; his men, “the fire-eater.”’
‘Our right flank then digging in atop the Chemin des Dames, eh, Louis, to begin that terrible trench warfare you’ve been telling me about. Quit being so cheap. Here’s a thousand, Corporal.’
‘I’ll say I was in the shithouse.’
‘And the wife?’ hazarded St-Cyr.
‘No artichokes from Laon for four years if not eight, she’d tell you because of what those damned people from the Rhine and to the east of it had done to that beautiful city. No asparagus and strawberries from Chenay because of the battery there that was like this one? Had I not been in those “trenches” myself, I’d have wept like her and her parents, God rest them all.’
‘Give him 2,000 francs, Hermann.’
These two must really be determined. ‘No one comes here. Indeed, why should they, and yet suddenly there are others and then yourselves?’
Ah mon Dieu! ‘What others, Corporal?’
‘Perhaps a further …’
‘Here’s a 5,000-franc note,’ said the partnership’s banker.