“I watched from the choral pews in the balcony,” the vicar told me. “The colonel was with six or seven of his staff. They spread their maps over the communion table, shoving aside the goblets and candle holders, treating them as if they had no meaning. I thought I had left my anger on the road, with that German I had run my auto over. I hadn’t. Again, I was gripped by an unholy anger.”
Richman descended the stone steps from the balcony. The recon unit’s heavy and light armored cars were scattered about. “One had backed through the picket fence into the cemetery next to the chapel, pushing over headstones, some two hundred years old.”
The priest stepped outside, along the gravel path toward the cemetery. Wehrmacht medics were tending the wounded under a tent near the graveyard. Several of the injured soldiers had been quickly stripped of their uniforms and provisions.
“A small pile of clothing and weapons lay next to the tent. I looked left and right. Soldiers milled about. They saw my white collar and perhaps thought I was there to give last rites, and paid no more attention to me.”
They should have. The vicar removed a stick grenade from the pile of discarded clothing and weapons. Blood dripped from its wood handle. He quickly shoved it under his tunic and walked back to the chapel.
“I knew the colonel was standing under my stained glass window, and the realization of what I had to do crushed me. That window dated from 1770. It portrayed Christ as a shepherd gathering his flock, and at the edges were geometrical medallions, many quatrefoils and lozenges, in red and blue and purple and green. It was beautiful to behold, an inspiration to all my faithful, the pride of the parish.”
The vicar twisted the grenade’s handle, then launched it at the rose window. He missed.
“It hit the stone frame around the window, and fell back, landing at my feet with a soft plop in the grass. I was terrified.”
He snatched it up, wound up like a cricket bowler, and released it. This time his aim was true.
“To see the grenade smash through the window broke my heart.”
It did worse to the 14th Panzerauklärungsabteilung’s staff. Colonel Scheringer was killed instantly, as were three of his staff. Four others were wounded.
Still appearing to be his pious self and ignored by the soldiers who rushed toward the chapel to investigate the explosion, the vicar strolled into the weald.
“I hid in Agnes Smathers’ cellar. She is the woman to whom I regularly administer last rites. I’m pleased to report she survived the war and will probably outlive me.”
Other civilians called themselves to arms. Peter Rathbone was a beekeeper near Royal Tunbridge Wells. Dressed in his protective gear, he found a paper wasp nest under the eaves of his barn, tore it off with his gloved hand, walked fifty yards to an armored personnel carrier, shook it furiously, then tossed it into the open hatch.
His neighbors, with whom I spoke after the war, called it a foolish waste. A dozen Wehrmacht infantrymen were stung badly, but Rathbone paid with his life, shot in the back as he turned to run from the APC.
Wendell Thorley had learned his lesson about saving petrol the hard way. He was a machinist with his own shop and six employees. Because he was an essential worker, he was allotted extra ration points. Several months before S-Day, he had been stopped and required to prove his journey was necessary and that he was on the shortest route. He was on his way to the cinema. He was prosecuted, then acquitted by a compassionate judge. But the humiliated Thorley viewed the prosecution as a claim by His Majesty’s Government that he was not doing his part in the war effort.
From then on, he saved every drop of petrol he could, siphoning it from his automobile and storing it in a thirty-gallon drum. He swore he would put it to good effect some day. During the third night of the invasion, Thorley added five cups of metal shavings to the barrel, then rolled it to the petrol station near his shop. He left it near the pump, then hid in the glade across the lane. Next morning, four Wehrmacht motorcycle troops stopped at the station. The pumps were empty, but the fuel in the barrel smelled fine. They poured it into their tanks.
“I ran after them,” Thorley told me. “It took me a while to catch up with the buggers, but there they were, strung out along a quarter mile of road, each soldier kicking his starter or kneeling alongside his motorcyle, trying to find out the problem. Those shavings had stripped their pistons. I still laugh about it.”
The Moulten sisters would not claim to be as inventive. Edith and Edina Moulten were identical twins, Edith the older by seventeen minutes. They were widows in their late sixties who had taken to calling themselves by their maiden name after both husbands had perished, which they did within a month of each other. Both had silver hair and glittering, astute blue eyes. Their animation and their enjoyment of life and each other pared years away from them.
Edith was a telephone operator, an essential worker who was not moved north. Edina, who taught piano lessons in their cottage on the outskirts of Horsham, would not go without her. Both were secret port tipplers, drinking three or four glasses each evening after the last student departed. The sisters had seen the shortages coming and had stockpiled several cases of the fortified wine in their cellar.
A trap door under the throw rug in the sitting room led to the cellar. They hid their few silver serving pieces there. It was a cool place, ideal for storing summer fruit.
When they heard artillery, the twins climbed down into the cellar to wait out the danger. They could not pull the rug behind them over the trap door. Less than six hours later, the door was yanked open by a Wehrmacht infantryman.
“I have never been so frightened,” Edith recalled. I was interviewing them in their new flat in Horsham. “There he was, with a blackened face and big boots, his rifle pointing down at us. Edina here had taken to the drink a little early that day, so she fared better than I did.”
Edina gently slapped her sister’s knee. “A scoundrel, you are, sister.”
Edith went on, “They yelled ‘Rause, rause,’ at us. I don’t speak German, but I knew well enough what they meant. Edina and I started to climb up, and they pulled us the rest of the way through the door.”
“None too gently, either,” Edina clarified. “There were only two of them, both carrying rifles. Then,” she clasped the broach at her throat, “they threw me onto the sofa. I almost broke my leg.”
“You did not come close to breaking your leg, dearie,” Edith interrupted.
“Then the leader—he might have been a corporal or a major, I would not know—descended the stairs to the cellar and called out something. The other followed him down, and they opened one of our bottles of port. I could hear them chortling and carrying on.”
Edith’s voice broke as she added, “They just left us there, forgotten, two helpless old widows.”
Well, not quite helpless. The sisters acted with the special intuition twin’s share. They did not say a word to each other. Their piano was an upright on rollers. They leaned into it.
“I pushed so hard I thought my bridgework would pop out,” Edith told me. “But I knew we could move it, because every six months we did so to dust the floor.”
They rolled it three feet. Just as the piano reached the cellar, Edith threw the hatch into place. The twins pushed and pulled, and a pair of piano legs rolled into place on the hatch.
“We heard them yell, and we heard them hit the underside of the hatch with their rifle stocks. But they were trapped.”