"You won't take it," I said. "There will be plenty of money coming through on Krauts."
Then I told them where to put the two vehicles and where to set up shop and sent Onesime across the field to cross the two roads and get into the shuttered estaminet and find out what had gone through on the escape-route road.
Quite a little had gone through, always on the road to the right. I knew plenty more had to come through and I paced the distances back from the road to the two traps we had set up. We were using Kraut weapons so the noise would not alarm them if anyone heard the noise coming up on the cross roads. We set the traps well beyond the cross roads so that we would not louse up the cross roads and make it look like a shambles. We wanted them to hit the cross roads fast and keep coming.
"It is a beautiful guet-apens," Claude said and Red asked me what was that. I told him it was only a trap as always. Red said he must remember the word. He now spoke his idea of French about half the time and if given an order perhaps half the time he would answer in what he thought was French. It was comic and I liked it.
It was a beautiful late summer day and there were very few more to come that summer. We lay where we had set up and the two vehicles covered us from behind the manure pile. It was a big rich manure pile and very solid and we lay in the grass behind the ditch and the grass smelled as all summers smell and the two trees made a shade over each trap. Perhaps I had set up too close but you cannot ever be too close if you have fire power and the stuff is going to come through fast. One hundred yards is all right. Fifty yards is ideal. We were closer than that. Of course in that kind of thing it always seems closer.
Some people would disagree with this setup. But we had to figure to get out and back and keep the road as clean looking as possible. There was nothing much you could do about vehicles, but other vehicles coming would normally assume they had been destroyed by aircraft. On this day, though, there was no aircraft. But nobody coming would know there had not been aircraft through here. Anybody making their run on an escape route sees things differently too.
"Mon Capitaine," Red said to me. "If the point comes up they will not shoot the shit out of us when they hear these Kraut weapons?"
"We have observation on the road where the point will come from the two vehicles. They'll flag them off. Don't sweat."
"I am not sweating," Red said. "I have shot a proved collaborator. The only thing we have killed today and we will kill many Krauts in this setup. Pas vrai, Onie?"
Onesime said, "Merde" and just then we heard a car coming very fast. I saw it come down the beech-tree bordered road. It was an overloaded grey-green camouflaged Volkswagen and it was filled with steel-helmeted people looking as though they were racing to catch a train. There were two aiming stones by the side of the road that I had taken from a wall by the farm, and as the Volkswagen crossed the notch of the cross roads and came toward us on the good straight escape road that crossed in front of us and led up a hill, I said to Red, "Kill the driver at the first stone." To Onesime I said, "Traverse at body height."
The Volkswagen driver had no control of his vehicle after Red shot. I could not see the expression on his face because of the helmet. His hands relaxed. They did not crisp tight nor hold on the wheel. The machine gun started firing before the driver's hands relaxed and the car went into the ditch spilling the occupants in slow motion. Some were on the road and the second outfit gave them a small carefully hoarded burst. One man rolled over and another started to crawl and while I watched Claude shot them both.
"I think I got that driver in the head," Red said.
"Don't be too fancy."
"She throws a little high at this range," Red said. "I shot for the lowest part of him I could see."
"Bertrand," I called over to the second outfit. "You and your people get them off the road, please. Bring me all the Feldbuchen and you hold the money for splitting. Get them off fast. Go on and help, Red. Get them into the ditch."
I watched the road to the west beyond the estaminet while the cleaning up was going on. I never watched the cleaning up unless I had to take part in it myself. Watching the cleaning up is bad for you. It is no worse for me than for anyone else. But I was in command.
"How many did you get, Onie?"
"All eight, I think. Hit, I mean."
"At this range-"
"It's not very sporting. But after all it's their machine gun."
"We have to get set now fast again."
"I don't think the vehicle is shot up badly."
"We'll check her afterwards."
"Listen," Red said. I listened, then blew the whistle twice and everybody faded back, Red hauling the last Kraut by one leg with his head shuddering and the trap was set again. But nothing came and I was worried.
We were set up for a simple job of assassination astride an escape route. We were not astride, technically, because we did not have enough people to set up on both sides of the road and we were not technically prepared to cope with armored vehicles. But each trap had two German Panzerfausten. They were much more powerful and simpler than the general-issue American bazooka, having a bigger warhead and you could throw away the launching tube; but lately, many that we had found in the German retreat had been booby-trapped and others had been sabotaged. We used only those as fresh as anything in that market could be fresh and we always asked a German prisoner to fire off samples taken at random from the lot.
German prisoners who had been taken by irregulars were often as cooperative as head waiters or minor diplomats. In general we regarded the Germans as perverted Boy Scouts. This is another way of saying they were splendid soldiers. We were not splendid soldiers. We were specialists in a dirty trade. In French we said, "un metier tres sale."
We knew, from repeated questionings, that all Germans coming through on this escape route were making for Aachen and I knew that all we killed now we would not have to fight in Aachen nor behind the West Wall. This was simple. I was pleased when anything was that simple.
The Germans we saw coming now were on bicycles. There were four of them and they were in a hurry too but they were very tired. They were not cyclist troops. They were just Germans on stolen bicycles. The leading rider saw the fresh blood on the road and then he turned his head and saw the vehicle and he put his weight hard down on his right pedal with his right boot and we opened on him and on the others. A man shot off a bicycle is always a sad thing to see, although not as sad as a horse shot with a man riding him nor a milk cow gut-shot when she walks into a fire fight. But there is something about a man shot off a bicycle at close range that is too intimate. These were four men and four bicycles. It was very intimate and you could hear the thin tragic noise the bicycles made when they went over onto the road and the heavy sound of men falling and the clatter of equipment.
"Get them off the road quick," I said. "And hide the four velos."
As I turned to watch the road one of the doors of the estaminet opened and two civilians wearing caps and working clothes came out each carrying two bottles. They sauntered across the cross roads and turned to come up in the field behind the ambush. They wore sweaters and old coats, corduroy trousers and country boots.
"Keep them covered, Red," I said. They advanced steadily and then raised the bottles high above their heads, one bottle in each hand as they came in.
"For Christ sake, get down," I called, and they got down and came crawling through the grass with the bottles tucked under their arms.
"Nous sommes des copains," one called in a deep voice, rich with alcohol.
"Advance, rum-dumb copains, and be recognized," Claude answered.
"We are advancing."
"What do you want out here in the rain?" Onesime called.
"We bring the little presents."
"Why didn't you give the little presents when I was over there?" Claude asked.
"Ah, things have changed, camarade."
"For the better?"
"Rudement," the first rummy camarade said. The other, lying flat and handing us one of the bottles, asked in a hurt tone, "On dit pas bonjour aux nouveaux camarades?"
"Bonjour," I said. "Tu veux battre?"
"If it's necessary. But we came to ask if we might have the velos."
"After the fight," I said. "You've made your military service?"
"Naturally."
"Okay. You take a German rifle each and two packs of ammo and go up the road two hundred yards on our right and kill any Germans that get by us."
"Can't we stay with you?"
"We're specialists," Claude said. "Do what the captain says."
"Get up there and pick out a good place and don't shoot back this way."
"Put on these arm bands," Claude said. He had a pocket full of arm bands. "You're Franc-tireurs." He did not add the rest of it.
"Afterwards we can have the velos?"
"One apiece if you don't have to fight. Two apiece if you fight."
"What about the money?" Claude asked. "They're using our guns."
"Let them keep the money."
"They don't deserve it."
"Bring any money back and you'll get your share. Allez vite. Debine-toi."
"Ceux, sont des poivrots pourris," Claude said.
"They had rummies in Napoleon's time too."
"It's probable."
"It's certain," I said. "You can take it easy on that."
We lay in the grass and it smelled of true summer and the flies, the ordinary flies and the big blue flies started to come to the dead that were in the ditch and there were butterflies around the edges of the blood on the black-surfaced road. There were yellow butterflies and white butterflies around the blood and the streaks where the bodies had been hauled.
"I didn't know butterflies ate blood," Red said.
"I didn't either."
"Of course when we hunt it's too cold for butterflies."
"When we hunt in Wyoming the picket pin gophers and the prairie dogs are holed up already. That's the fifteenth of September."
"I'm going to watch and see if they really eat it," Red said.
"Want to take my glasses?"
He watched and after a while he said, "I'll be damned if I can tell. But it sure interests them." Then he turned to Onesime and said, "Piss pauvre Krauts, Onie. Pas de pistol, pas de binoculaire. Fuck-all rien."
"Assez de sous," Onesime said. "We're doing all right on the money."
"No fucking place to spend it."
"Some day."
"Je veux spend maintenant," Red said.
Claude opened one of the two bottles with the cork screw on his Boy Scout German knife. He smelled it and handed it to me.
"C'est du gnole."
The other outfit had been working on their share. They were our best friends but as soon as we were split they seemed like the others and the vehicles seemed like the rear echelon. You split too easy, I thought. You want to watch that. That's one more thing you can watch.
I took a drink from the bottle. It was very strong raw spirits and all it had was fire. I handed it back to Claude who gave it to Red. Tears came into his eyes when he swallowed it.
"What do they make it out of up here, Onie?"
"Potatoes, I think, and parings from horses' hooves they get at the blacksmith shop."
I translated to Red. "I taste everything but the potatoes," he said.
"They age it in rusty nail kegs with a few old nails to give it zest."
"I better take another to take the taste out of my mouth," Red said. "Mon Capitaine, should we die together?"
"Bonjour, toute le monde," I said. This was an old joke we had about an Algerian who was about to be guillotined on the pavement outside the Sante who replied with that phrase when asked if he had any last words to say.
"To the butterflies," Onesime drank.
"To the nail kegs," Claude raised the bottle.
"Listen," Red said and handed the bottle to me. We all heard the noise of a tracked vehicle.
"The fucking jackpot," Red said. "Along ongfong de la patree, le fucking jackpot ou le more." He sang softly, the nail keg juice no good to him now. I took another good drink of the juice as we lay and checked everything and looked up the road to our left. Then it came in sight. It was a Kraut half-track and it was crowded to standing room only.
When you set a trap on an escape route you have four or, if you can afford them, five Teller mines, armed, on the far side of the road. They lie like round checker counters wider than the biggest soup plates and toad squatted in their thick deadliness. They are in a semi-circle, covered with cut grass and connected by a heavy tarred line which may be procured at any ship chandler's. One end of this line is made fast to a kilometer marking, called a borne, or to a tenth of a kilometer stone, or any other completely solid object, and the line runs loosely across the road and is coiled in the first or second section of the trap.
The approaching overloaded vehicle was of the type where the driver looks out through slits and its heavy machine guns now showed high in anti-aircraft position. We were all watching it closely as it came nearer, so very overcrowded. It was full of combat S.S. and we could see the collars now and faces were clear then clearer.
"Pull the cord," I called to the second outfit and as the cord took up its slack and commenced to tighten the mines moved out of their semi-circle and across the road looking, I thought, like nothing but green grass-covered Teller mines.
Now the driver would see them and stop or he would go on and hit them. You should not attack an armored vehicle while it was moving, but if he braked I could hit him with the big-headed German bazooka.
The half-track came on very fast and now we could see the faces quite clearly. They were all looking down the road where the point would come from. Claude and Onie were white and Red had a twitch in the muscle of his cheek. I felt hollow as always. Then someone in the half-track saw the blood and the Volkswagen in the ditch and the bodies. They were shouting in German and the driver and the officer with him must have seen the mines across the road and they came to a tearing swerving halt and had started to back when the bazooka hit. It hit while both outfits were firing from the two traps. The people in the half-track had mines themselves and were hurrying to set up their own road block to cover what had gone through because when the Kraut bazooka hit and the vehicle went up we all dropped our heads and everything rained down as from a fountain. It rained metal and other things. I checked on Claude and Onie and Red and they were all firing. I was firing too with a Smeizer on the slits and my back was wet and I had stuff all over my neck, but I had seen what fountained up. I could not understand why the vehicle had not been blown wide open or overturned. But it just blew straight up. The fifties from the vehicle were firing and there was so much noise you could not hear. No one showed from the half-track and I thought it was over and was going to wave the fifties off, when someone inside threw a stick grenade that exploded just beyond the edge of the road.
"They're killing their dead," Claude said. "Can I go up and put a couple into her?"
"I can hit her again."
"No. Once was enough. My whole back's tattooed."
"Okay. Go on."
He crawled forward, snaking in the grass under the fire of the fifties and pulled the pin from a grenade and let the lever snap loose and held the grenade smoking grey and then lobbed it underhand up over the side of the half-track. It exploded with a jumping roar and you could hear the fragments whang against the armor.
"Come on out," Claude said in German. A German machine-gun pistol started shooting from the right-hand slit. Red hit the slit twice. The pistol fired again. It was obvious it was not being aimed.
"Come on out," Claude called. The pistol shot again, making a noise like children rattling a stick along a picket fence. I shot back making the same silly noise.
"Come on back, Claude," I said. "You fire on one slit. Red. Onie, you fire on the other."
When Claude came back fast I said, "Fuck that Kraut. We'll use up another one. We can get more. The point will be up anyway."