The Devils of D-Day Read Free

watched her walk across the yard and disappear through the
stable door. A cold wet drizzle was beginning to sift down from the evening
sky, and it would probably turn into snow in an hour or two. I left the farm
and began to trudge back down the road towards the Pont D’Ouilly ,
where I’d left my car.
    Along the road, it was silent and soaking and dark. I kept
my hands shoved deep in my overcoat pockets and my scarf pulled up over my
mouth. Way over to my right, I could hear the Orne rushing over the brownish granite rocks of its shallow bed, and on my left,
just beyond the hedge, reared the slabby blocks of
the cliffs that gave this part of Normandy its name – Swiss Normandy. The rocks
were jacketed in slime and moss, and laced up with hanging tree-roots, and you
could just imagine strange and malignant creatures lurking in their crevices
and cracks.
     
    I hadn’t realised how far I’d
walked along the road with Madeleine. It took me almost five minutes before I
saw my yellow car by the verge, and the huddled black bulk of the abandoned
tank. The drizzle was turning into large wet flakes of half-melted snow now,
and I pulled my coat collar up and walked more quickly.
    Who knows what odd tricks your eyes can play in the snow and
the dark? When your eyes are tired, you can see dark shadows like cats slipping
away at the corner of your field of vision. Shadows can seem to stand on their
own, and trees can seem to move. But that evening, on the road to Pont D’Ouilly , I was sure that my eyes weren’t playing up, and
that I did see something. There’s a French road sign which warns that the night
can deceive you, and possibly it did, but I still think that what I glimpsed
wasn’t an optical illusion. It was enough to make me stop in the road, and feel
a tight chill that was even colder than the evening air.
    Through the tumbling snow, a few yards away from the
derelict tank, I saw a small bony figure, white in the darkness, not much
taller than a child of five, and it seemed to be hopping or running. The sight
of it was so sudden and strange that I was momentarily terrified; but then I
ran forward through the snow and shouted, ‘Hey! You!’
    My shout echoed flatly back from the nearby rocks. I peered
into the dark but there was nobody there. Only the rusting
bulk of the Sherman tank, woven into the brambles of the hedge. Only the
wet road, and the noise of the river. There was no
sign of any figure; no sign of any child. I walked back across to my car and
checked it for damage, in case the figure had been a vandal or a thief, but the
Citroen was unmarked. I climbed thoughtfully inside and sat there for a minute
or two drying my face and hair with my handkerchief, wondering what the hell
was going on around here.
    I started the Citroen’s engine, but just before I drove off
I took one last look at the tank. It gave me a really peculiar feeling,
thinking that it had been decaying by this roadside since I944, unmoved, and
that here at this very place the American Army had fought to liberate Normandy.
For the first time in my map-making career, I felt history was alive; I felt
history move under my feet. I wondered if the skeletons of the crew were still
inside the tank, but I decided that they’d probably been taken out years ago
and given a decent burial. The French were beautifully and gravely respectful
to the remains of the men who had died trying to liberate them.
    I released the Citroen’s brake and drove down the gloomy
road, across the bridge, and back up the winding hill to the main highway. The
snow was crowding my windshield, and the car’s tacky little windshield wipers
were having about as much success in clearing it away as two
geriatrics sweeping up the ticker-tape after Lindy’s parade through Wall Street .
When I joined the main stream of traffic, I almost collided with a Renault
which was bombing through the snow at eighty-five. Vive la velocite , I thought to myself, as
I crawled back towards