Chapter Forty-Nine

⇐ ПредыдущаяСтр 49 из 53Следующая ⇒

Chapter Forty-Nine

“Paratroopers,” the newcomer breathed.

The men Genevieve could now see hanging from the domes that were their parachutes started to splash down in the water.

As they hit, their voices, quiet, startled, peppered the dark.

“What the hell?”

“Johnson, is that you?”

“Damn water. Wasn’t supposed to be no damn water.”

“Jesus, it’s sucking me down!”

“It’s cold as be-damned!”

They landed everywhere, in the water, in the weeds, in the eddies of silt that acted like quicksand. Their accents told her that they were Yanks: American paratroopers. Listening to them, watching them struggle as they landed, she realized that they were weighted down by their parachutes and packs and equipment. Many were trapped and sinking and would shortly drown in the murky waters and treacherous silt. Anyone who tried to go in after them would risk sharing their fate. Their only hope was to reach one of the paths that neither they nor anyone else could see. The paths that her childhood years in the marsh had indelibly imprinted on her brain.

Transfixed at the horror of the Americans’ fate, she couldn’t look away.

I have to help them.

If they could make it to her, to the path...

Cupping her hands around her mouth, she called to the closest of them, softly, in English. “Yank. This way.”

An indistinct, but distinctly American, voice said, “Look there. Is that a dame?”

“This way.” Careful to keep her voice low, she called again.

First one, then a second and a third started to flounder toward her. The silt sucked one of them down. He went under, resurfaced, splashed around.

“Help! I can’t get my feet under me.”

A buddy caught up to him, grabbed his arm. “Give me the Eureka!”

“Damned transponder’s not more important than me.”

“Sure is.”

To the newcomer, who stood closest to her—single file was the only way to traverse most of the paths—Genevieve said, “We have to try to get them out. Don’t step off the path, or you’ll be sucked in, too. But we need to find a branch, or something we can reach out to them if they can get close, to pull them in.”

He said, “Jacques has a rope.” Turning to the man next to him, Jacques, he said something, and a moment later a rope was produced from the pack the man carried.

“Don’t step off the path,” she warned Jacques, who was coiling his rope in preparation for throwing it. To the newcomer she said, “I’ll mark the paths. You start pulling them out.”

She left the other two men from her group on another path. Using their coats and a branch, they were starting to haul more paratroopers in.

As one of the Yanks was pulled out, she heard him say, apparently in answer to a question she didn’t hear: “Pathfinders. 101st Airborne. We’re first. We show the way.”

After that, more paratroopers came in waves. First by the dozens, then by the hundreds, then by the thousands, until they were falling out of the sky like a hard rain. The black marsh water looked like it was abloom with white water lilies as far as the eye could see. Gliders landed, too, towed in by aeroplanes and released to plow into the swamp like the unwieldy pieces of lumber they basically were. Their pilots and crews, too, floundered and risked drowning in the marsh. In the distance the relentless chatter of the German antiaircraft guns was answered by the ceaseless booming of the Allied bombs. But the Germans didn’t appear to know the paratroopers were there.

Genevieve worked tirelessly, marking the paths with tall sticks and bits of cloth sliced from discarded parachutes, leading the paratroopers and the glider pilots and crews to the railroad tracks that were the marsh’s high point and that, if followed, would take them to a road and their rendezvous point.

“Which way to Sainte-Mère-Église?”

“Have you seen the Eighty-Second?”

“The road’s how far away?”

She answered questions until she was too exhausted to answer any more. By that time, she’d heard enough to know that the code name for this particular landing spot was Utah Beach.

As the night ground on, her original team was joined by more and more of the local partisans as word spread about what was happening. They formed human chains and used ropes and branches and ladders and anything else that was available to pull the Americans out.

Emmy arrived at some point, bringing members of her network to help. Genevieve had heard that Emmy had been working in the vicinity since she’d parachuted back into France, so she wasn’t as shocked to see her as she might otherwise have been. The sisters, coming face-to-face on one of the marked paths, almost didn’t recognize each other, as both were covered head to toe in mud. When they did, they exclaimed in surprise and exchanged a quick hug.

“You shouldn’t be here! You shouldn’t have come back at all,” Genevieve scolded. “You’ve still got stitches. What happens if they break open and you start to bleed?”

“Don’t be such a worrywart. They’re coming out in two days. And what would Maman say if I let you do this by yourself?”

By 3:00 a.m. rumor had it that the Allied invasion force was massing off the beach.

As the hours ticked down toward dawn, huge waves of Allied bombers blanketed the sky overhead. The bombs spilling from their underbellies shook the ground, hurt the eardrums, lit up the night. At first Genevieve was alarmed, but they didn’t target the marsh. They attacked the German defenses, not only around Utah Beach, but along the entire Cotentin Peninsula, and the Germans fired relentlessly back. The noise was deafening. Shells burst in the sky like fireworks, lighting up everything, filling the air with the smell of ordnance and enormous plumes of smoke.

By sunrise the last of the paratroopers and the glider pilots and their crews had been pulled from the marsh and were tramping along the railroad track and the road to join their units. The partisans were starting to melt away. The bombing had slacked off, along with the corresponding antiaircraft fire. Meeting up with Emmy on the railroad track, Genevieve was so tired she barely managed a smile. They were both filthy and limping and stooped with exhaustion.

“Look.” Emmy took her arm, pointed toward the beach. Turning, Genevieve did.

It was low tide. Beyond the now scarred and broken concrete of the Atlantic Wall, three hundred meters or more of sandy beach were exposed, and the defenses the Germans had laid down in anticipation of what was coming were clearly visible. Farther in the distance, the invasion fleet floated offshore, stretching out along the horizon in a breathtaking, formidable lineup of gray and silver vessels. They glinted in the rising sun, which, despite the pall of smoke, still managed to shine through. Full squadrons of amphibious vehicles carrying tanks and other equipment bobbed in the surf along with landing craft loaded with infantry. They plunged up and down through the choppy waves as they headed toward shore.

The Germans opened fire with their big guns as the first of the landing craft neared the beach.

Emmy grabbed her hand. “We’ve done all we can. We need to go.”

Together they turned and headed toward the road, jogging, which was the best they could manage because they were too tired to run.

They never saw or heard the German shell that hit only a few meters away.

⇐ Предыдущая 44 45 46 47 484950 51 52 53 Следующая ⇒