Night Soldiers

always been done there, since the time the village ancestors had slung muskets across their backs and gone off to fight as chasseurs, mountain troops, in the Grande Armee of Napoleon. Against the ancestors of the very Germans they were fighting in 1944.

You had to learn the mountains. The new recruits, installed on straw mattresses throughout the houses of the village, were certainly patriotic and surely brave, but they were flatlanders, ignorant of the ways of the high forest-the sudden blizzards, the white mist that struck a man virtually blind. They had to be trained, and the Cambras maquis were pleased to take on the training mission.

One day in late January, Daniel Vau and La Brebis took two of the new recruits-Christophe, the nephew of the old loon who’d built a house up on a neighboring mountain, and Fusari, a dark-skinned Corsican from St.-Die-out on practice maneuvers. The objective was to teach them some mountain lore and to familiarize them with the network of deer trails that ran through the forest between the road and the village. The day was crisp and cold, the sky bright, a good morning to be in the forest, and Daniel Vau and La Brebis traveled down the path at great speed, testing the stamina of their pupils by setting a fast pace and, consequently, leaving them far behind. A good lesson, let them struggle. They had to learn to be part goat in this region, it could well save their lives. The two maquisards would glide down a section of path, then wait for the other two, who would arrive panting and red-faced. Just as they came into view Daniel would say, “Rest period over. Time to go,” and set out again, leaving the novices to get along as best they could, leg muscles twanging from the shock of a downhill lope.

The German officer-no one really saw his rank-was bird-watching on his day off. Daniel and La Brebis came around a corner of the path and there he was, attended by a bored Feldwebel, probably his driver, who leaned against a tree and picked his nails while his superior alternately peered into the sky through binoculars and consulted a field guide on birds of the southern Vosges. He was in search of a species of mountain hawk often seen in the region, which concerned the villagers only insofar as it competed for the available stock of brown hare. The two Germans and the two maquisards saw each other at about the same moment and, for a long second, they froze and nothing happened. It took each of them some time to realize they were in the presence of enemies because they were engaged in innocent pastimes-simply not at war that day. It was less than strange to meet a French boy and girl on a mountain path and all would have been well but for the Stens. The officer, a little to one side of the path for a better view up through the pines, got a good look at the weapons, and it wasn’t very long before he came to understand exactly what they meant.

There followed a moment of comedy: the officer scrabbling at the flap of his holster, the Feldwebel attempting to grab his rifle-resting butt down against a tree-and knocking it over, Daniel and Brebis having the most difficult time of all, trying to struggle free of their slung weapons. It took them a hopelessly long time to do so and, in fact, they never did manage it. The officer drew his pistol, thumbed the safety off, shot each of them once, then ran away down the trail, the Feldwebel galloping after, dragging his rifle along the ground by its strap.

Khristo heard the shots and dove off the path, landing on his belly with the machine pistol pointing in the direction of the gunfire. Fusari he could not see. He heard, below him, the sounds of flight and a series of moans. It took him a minute to sort it out: someone had fired, someone else had run away. Since those who fled were headed downhill, toward the road, he assumed they were the enemy and that the moaning was coming from Daniel or La Brebis, one or both of whom were hit.

Both. He circled wide of the trail and came in from the flank; Fusari arrived from the other direction at about the same time. Khristo gestured down the trail and Fusari took off in that direction, crouched, moving quickly and gracefully. It was clear to Khristo that he was not new at this.

The guide to birds of the southern Vosges lay open on the ground, along with Daniel Vau’s Sten gun. Daniel lay flat on his stomach. He looked at Khristo, a plea in his eyes: please help me. La Brebis seemed worse off, lying on her back across Daniel’s lower legs, head hung backward, treading her feet like a nursing cat. She had covered her face with her hands and was moaning softly every few seconds.

“Be careful with her,” Daniel said.

“Are you hurt badly?”

He shook his head that he didn’t know. “She has my legs pinned,” he said. “It’s somewhere down there.”

“Is there a doctor in the village?”

“A midwife.”

He circled Daniel and knelt by La Brebis and gently pulled her hands away. It was very bad. She had been shot in the face. Just below and to the outside of the right nostril, a red bead of flesh extruded from a puffy circle shaded blue at its exterior edge. Suddenly, she grabbed hold of his wrists and gagged. He realized she was swallowing blood, shook one of his hands loose and raised her head. “Thank you,” she breathed.

“Can you spit it out?”

She tried but couldn’t manage, a string of red saliva hanging from her lower lip. He took his other hand back and cleaned her mouth, then wiped away the water that ran from her eyes. “It is the wound,” she said. “I do not weep.”

“I know,” he said. Very gently, he opened her mouth. There was a swollen ridge across the top of her palate. He reached around her head and probed gently in the hair at the base of her skull, looking for an exit wound, but couldn’t find anything. God only knew where the bullet was, somewhere inside her face.

He realized that Fusari was standing above him, breathing hard. “They’re gone,” he said. “I heard the car take off.”

Khristo nodded. It meant they would be back in force-perhaps in an hour or a little less. He said to Daniel, “I don’t want to move her. Is she crushing your legs?”

“I don’t feel anything,” he said.

“Can you move your feet? Your toes?”

“No.”

His heart sank. Fusari swore softly.

From the trail above him, he heard running footsteps. The sound of the shots had apparently reached them- the cold air carried sound much as water did.

Lucien-the American-and Gilbert came galloping down the path a few moments later. The former was pale and shaken. Gilbert carried a Sten and a tattered old book with its covers missing.

“What happened?” Lucien asked, breathless.

Daniel told him.

La Brebis laid her head back in Khristo’s arms. One side of her face had swollen so that her right eye was a slit, and she was beginning to struggle for breath as the damaged passages swelled shut.

Khristo spoke to Gilbert, who was hunting through his book, a medical manual belonging to the village for many years, used primarily to set broken bones and to treat burns. “Is there a doctor?”

“In Epinal,” Gilbert answered.

“You better get him,” Khristo said. La Brebis was dying.

Lucien spoke. “We must bring them down there,” he said.

“No,” Gilbert said. “It’s impossible. The schleuhs will be all over the place-and they’ll be here soon enough. They’ve seen the Stens.”

“Where is the truck?” Lucien said.

“By the logging. On the other side of the road.”

“Is there gasoline?”

“A little.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Did you not hear me?” Gilbert asked.

“It doesn’t matter. We’re going. Christophe and Fusari, take La Brebis. Gilbert and I will follow with Daniel.”

“Lucien,” Gilbert said, grim, “they’ll get us all.”

“No they won’t.”

Daniel said, “I am sorry, Lucien. We didn’t …”

They waited while Lucien ran back up the path and warned the village that a German search party would be