D-Day Girls by Sarah Rose

Author:Sarah Rose
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2019-05-08T23:00:00+00:00

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Yvonne and Pierre hurried down the steps, across the lawn, back to their Citroën parked on a nearby corner. Should they drive away, they wondered, take advantage of the pass and abandon Pick and Mack? The Canadians could fend for themselves, feign their way out of the scrape, just as Yvonne and Pierre had. But if the boys were left behind, it would be suspicious. If they were all innocent, why wouldn’t their friends wait for them? And that tall blond Canadian spoke such truly awful French. Yvonne and Pierre could not, they reckoned, trade two men’s lives to save their own. But it was insane to stay at a Nazi control. They were in the enemy’s line of sight, with an incriminating package; that put four officers at risk rather than two.

There was no obvious answer: Yvonne and Pierre agreed to split the decision, to both stay and go. Pierre turned the key in the ignition, the Citroën sputtered and drummed to life, but he did not drive away. They sat idling at the corner, in view of soldiers, military trucks, and the whole installation. Their eyes stayed on the doorway of the brick-and-stucco town hall.

They would wait as long as seemed reasonable. The town clock above the entrance sat in a curved pediment, as if teasing the question: How long was too long to wait?

A few uneasy minutes later, German soldiers ran out of the municipal building.

Come back! They shouted. Revenez!

Pierre’s briefcase had been found.

He let out the clutch, stepped hard on the accelerator, and drove back through the town, while soldiers lifted their guns and took aim.

Three military cars gave chase out of Dhuizon. The Citroën raced past troops massed on either side of the road, trying to outrun the pursuit, blowing beyond the checkpoints. The tight village streets gave way to farms, mostly downhill toward a river.

Time bent and stretched, like the road. It felt suspended for an instant as the car took its head start to roar ahead of the Nazi vehicles. Along winding roads, as they clocked past fields bordered in poplars, the morning sun blinked through dark evergreens. Yvonne and Pierre took screeching turns, trailed by cars of Germans with machine guns poised.

Each mile under the chassis, the soldiers gained. The engine on Yvonne’s car had sat abandoned in a field near the demarcation line, a victim of weather and neglect, only to be coaxed back to life by an old mechanic doing his small part for the liberation. Survival was a matter of horsepower: The Wehrmacht’s Fords had petrol unadulterated by black marketeers.

Nearing the next town, Bracieux, the Nazis leaned out of their windows with Yvonne and Pierre in their sights and sprayed the car with bullets.

The windshield shattered, splintering into sharp webs, obliterating the contours of the road ahead. Yvonne slumped over onto Pierre’s shoulder. Blood pooled out from her collar, staining her brand-new Glengarry-check suit.

Unable to see, Pierre banked a turn just outside the town and lost control, turning off the road into the side of a small inn.

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