Codename Lightning Rod

1

The other Jewish soldier was saying his prayers, huddled against the cold. The gales of the days before had dropped the night before, so the team had been able to drape camouflage sheets over branches they’d found, but he’d gone outside his bivouac and was standing in long grass. Through gaps in his own camouflage sheet, Samuel could see the man’s shape, nodding over his prayer book, and, beyond, a dawn mist lying across flat northern French fields.

The Hebrew muttering continued, rapid and low, as if sending a coded signal at speed, not for interception. For a second Samuel felt he ought to join him, but he hadn’t said morning prayers since he was thirteen and he was afraid he’d embarrass himself forgetting the words. In any case, it would be hypocritical. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe in anything, but that he didn’t believe in a something that would come down and help them out here. A something that didn’t mind the thud of the guns that had already started, shelling Normandy from the land and the sea.

And the smell. Nothing had prepared Samuel for the smell. The sharpness of cordite that reminded him of firework night and those burning straw-filled Guy Fawkes guys. The sweet sickliness of unwashed soldiers and death. The memories of the last weeks that he didn’t want to face.

He roused himself and walked round in the grey dawn light, waking those who weren’t already awake. His NCO was already up and busy. A short, slight man, with the kind of confidence that made you feel safe just to stand next to him. Samuel watched as he made sure the men had something to eat. Sleep was always too short and army rations too awful. Cold, no fires that might be spotted by the enemy. No kosher available today either, for Natie when he finished up, closed the siddur he’d been reading from, put it to his lips, slipping it into his chest pocket. He seemed OK with that, as far as Samuel could tell.

While the sergeant supervised taking down the camouflage, Samuel sat on a groundsheet, leaning against a burned-out poplar, and took his map from the pouch on his belt. He had his own way of folding it, corner-folds like origami, that meant he could go quickly to the place he wanted, faster than concertina folds they’d taught back in training.

His orders were to stay just behind the front as it moved, searching for useful documents, code-books, technology to ship back to England. German tech was way ahead of the Allies and they needed to get to it fast. If the Germans didn’t get to destroy it all first. Or the liberated French decide to have fun, smashing machines, making bonfires of scientific papers.

There was a village further to the west and, according to a Resistance group in the last town they’d entered, a V1 rocket site nearby. Samuel’s orders were to get to such sites, ahead of Allied lines, and secure any intelligence, documents, machinery they could find before some idiot Brits or Yanks ruined them, but sometimes it wasn’t so easy to know where the front line was, and they found themselves frighteningly ahead of it, dodging snipers.

It had taken Samuel’s team over three weeks to fight from the beaches. They tried to use the smaller roads, to keep clear of the main fighting, but gangs of Germans had splintered from their units, firing on anyone they saw. Then there was blue on blue - too many Allied soldiers had already been fired on by their own side. It didn’t help that his team wore a motley collection, some assigned from army units, some navy, with a range of different berets and uniforms. He’d probably have shot at them himself. Then, the Yanks were mostly half-trained farm-boys who fired at anything that moved.

A week ago, Samuel had been standing beside a road, talking to the local mayor, getting info, when a US troop carrier drove past and an idiot soldier shot at the man as they went. Killed him outright. Furious, Samuel pulled out his Browning to fire back, but the carrier had already disappeared in a haze of dust.

The mayor lay in his own blood at Samuel’s feet. Where was Natie’s God then?

As the light began to rise, Samuel felt an anger welling up. He should be feeling hope, but hope hurt. He tried to push the anger away. But at least, he decided, anger made some kind of sense.

He forced the memory to a deep part of his mind. The other soldiers either hadn’t seen or said nothing. He was constantly amazed at what people were OK with. They either broke in pieces or just got on with life. He wondered what would make them angry. Victory was on the way, but he felt only a dark pessimism.

Samuel folded his map. They needed to find that V1 site. Stood and slipped Natie an apple he’d managed to skive off a NAAFI unit he’d found scouting for warehouse locations the day before, then checked the rest of his men had eaten, before he took his own thin slab of something that must once have been meat, processed into a shape that would have done better as a roof tile. A stale roll. Coffee that tasted like machine oil. The NAAFI unit had promised there’d be better food on the way, but then they’d said that the day before, and the day before that.

The NCO came over and said they were ready to move. The newly rising sun pushed through the mist and glittered on the camouflage covers as the men pulled them off their vehicles: a scout car, a jeep and a folding motorbike, and they set off towards the village and the German lines, beyond a low, grey ridge.

2

The village was deserted at first sight. It was hardly more than a hamlet, a scattering of squat buildings between tall hedges and stone walls, with small, suspicious windows and doors, shuttered from the world. Samuel motioned to his jeep driver to stop a hundred yards from the first house, at a bend in the narrow lane. The armoured car stayed well back. The jeep could reverse faster if shooting started - and often had.

A bird sang nearby, but nothing moved in the lane. Samuel remembered such places from holidays, before he was Lt Samuel Lewis. Young enough not to care too much about talk of war; old enough to visit relatives Switzerland, practising his French and German. His French was never as good as his German, which he got from hearing his grandparents speaking Yiddish, but he’d loved all languages, the buzz he got from learning that a strange jumble of vowels and consonants actually meant something to someone: bird, bread, gun…

Each of his team had a skill. Samuel’s was interpreting and analysing intelligence. His sergeant was the jeep driver and radio op. Sitting behind were two main riflemen for close action, room clearing and general complaining. In the armoured car, Samuel had a technical Navy specialist for seizing naval material, an RAF tech man to operate captured radios and equipment, and a runner to take docs to HQ on the bike.

Then there was Natie. When not ensuring God was on their side, Natie’s skill was blowing safes and finding booby-traps. Maybe it was all those hours spent dissecting obscure passages in the Talmud. A thoughtless moment searching an abandoned police station could set off a hand grenade under a book; a discarded football in an alleyway, that would blow a man’s leg off as he went to kick it; a pornographic picture lying ready to be picked up, on top of a wire linked to a fatal dose of gelignite.

Samuel told his sergeant to drive forward to the second house, a low, red-tiled building with a barn attached. He gestured to the men to stay in the jeep, and climbed slowly out. There was no sign of a V1 launch site, but they were often well concealed. It could be anywhere near this village, according to the intelligence he’d been given. All he could see was houses and trees. If German soldiers were watching them from hiding places behind the hedges or walls, they were being very patient.

The house shutters were closed, like all the houses, but Samuel could hear a soft lowing coming from the barn. No cows were going to be risked out in the fields today. He knocked on a wooden door, three times - un, deux, trois - then said “Trio” out loud, and hoped to God that he’d been given the correct code. And that the owner hadn’t already been betrayed to the local Gestapo.

No answer. No sound from inside. He knocked three times again, and was about to call once more. Suddenly the door opened a crack. Inside was darkness, but pointing straight at him were the barrels of a shotgun.

“Trio,” Samuel repeated. The two silver circles of the muzzle didn’t move. Behind them he could just make out a shadowy shape of a short person, possibly an elderly woman, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Anglais,” he said.

The gun didn’t waver. Was this person Resistance, as he’d been told was here, or the viciously pro-German Milice. Or a deaf-mute, who could shoot him out of nothing but fear.

“Where are the Germans?” he said in French.

“The other end.” The woman’s voice was low, scratchy. “They are waiting for you.” The muzzle pointed to Samuel’s left, towards the far end of the village street. then made a flat circle. “Go round. Go round them. They are too many.”

“How many?”

“Plusieurs.”

She went to close the door and he caught sight of her face. Maybe not so old, but lined with years of terror. How did these people live for four years without hope? Or did thy somehow have hope? In which case, how did they find it?

Samuel put his boot in the door and the shotgun raised again.

“And the launching site? Rockets? Sites de lancement V1?”

She hesitated. “Je n’en sais rien. I don’t know of sites.”

“A work place, maybe. Somewhere the Germans have been busy. Lorries?”

She looked down at his foot and he moved it away. “Beyond the far end. In the woods. Where the soldiers are waiting for you.”

“And before that. Any soldiers?”

“Peut-être.” She shrugged. Samuel began to speak, but she interrupted him. “Good luck.”

And she shut the door fast.

3

They drove slowly down the village street, the scout car keeping a hundred yards back. No Germans. Had they found a gap in the enemy lines or was this a trap? Samuel scanned the far end through his field glasses.

Then, as they passed one house, the door opened. He reached for the stolen German machine gun they’d mounted on the jeep, but it was just a farmer, who stood and gazed as they passed. Another door opened, then another. Men, women and children came out, at first nervously, then waving.

“They think we’re fucking liberating them,” said the sergeant, taking one hand off the wheel to gesticulate to them. “Get back!”

Samuel waved and called to them to stay inside, but instead they cheered. The children ran to the cars in excitement. The adults followed them. The children yelped in excitement and tried to climb in.

Samuel found himself shaking hands. “No, No,” he kept saying. “We’re not the main army. We’re not the Yanks. This is not the front line” But no-one was listening.

“They’re going to get themselves shot.” He turned to his driver, “Go faster.”

They sped up, beginning to leave the locals behind, distraught at being unable to celebrate properly.

At the end of the village, he told his sergeant to stop. The lane beyond looked empty, but there were plenty of trees and bushes to set an ambush.

The sergeant looked behind them. “Oh, shit.”

Samuel turned. Far from lagging back, the bolder villagers were following them. Some of the men carried guns. Others, long knives.

A farmer caught up and insisted on shaking hands. His hands were calloused and greasy and he held a rusty World War One Lee Enfield. Samuel wondered what dead British soldier it had belonged to.

Samuel slapped at a mosquito on his neck. The Germans had flooded the marshland of the peninsular to act as a natural defence, and everyone was scratching at bites all the time. He could see a newly-laid concrete road through the undergrowth, wide enough for large vehicles. ““V-1? And there are Germans there? Guards?”

The man nodded enthusiastically. The other villagers were keeping their distance.

“Stay here,” Samuel said firmly. “Restez ici. Patience”

He climbed out of the jeep, motioned to one of the main riflemen to come with him and started down the trail on foot. A bird sang beautifully above, a melodic trill, followed by a brisk chattering. Samuel couldn’t see any enemy troops. He advanced a hundred yards with the rifleman, then beckoned to the jeep and scout car to join them. He continued like this, a stretch at a time, until he reached the edge of the wood. There was a rise in the ground.

He crept up to the top of the rise and peered over. A house stood two hundred yards away, under the last of the trees, dark and squat, with tiled roof. But there was something wrong with it. The walls too neat, largely made from breeze-blocks. The windows looked odd. More like gun-slits.

It was a fake, designed to look like a forester’s cottage to hide the launch site from the air. It didn’t look completed. There were also concrete bunkers and storehouses, half-dug into the earth for concealment. Building machinery scattered around, covered in camouflage netting. Samuel could see parts of what were presumably going to be the metal rails of the launch slope, whose supports already rose from the ground, half-constructed..

By this time they’d been joined by his sergeant, the farmer and the mob of locals. He motioned them urgently to stay silent.

“They don’t escape,” hissed one of the men. “No prisoners.”

Samuel tried not to think what these Germans had done to the villagers in the past four years. Maybe not these Germans, but no matter.

He could see no guards outside a guard hut. Behind sandbags stood a heavy 2cm mounted machine gun that could mow them down in seconds, but it appeared unmanned.

According to his intelligence there could be up to twenty men at a site if it was being prepared for frequent launches, but none visible.

The sergeant grunted. “Withdraw and wait, sir?”

“Try telling that to this lot. They think we’re the eighth army and I’m Patton.”

“And so, probably, do the Krauts, sir. And we’re not.”

Samuel said nothing for a minute. The French behind him were getting restless. He grew depressed. Bloody French. Why should he have their blood on his hands? He’d seen more than enough bodies.

He clicked off the safety catch of his Browning.

“Sir?” said the NCO.

“I thought I’d have a dekko. If they really do think we’re the eighth army. Stay here and keep the locals happy.” He turned to the nearest farmer and spoke in French. “If your people move a centimetre closer, I’ll shoot them myself,”

“With respect, sir,” said the sergeant, “I’m coming with.”

Samuel didn’t mind dying, in fact rather looked forward to it, a good way of erasing recent memories, but he liked his sergeant, a slight but tough young man, about the same age as he was, but angrier. “I said, stay.”

“If you’re going to face the Court of Inquiry, sir, I’m going to be there too.”

Samuel argued, but the NCO didn’t budge. So, he ordered one of the riflemen to keep watch and stood slowly, and the NCO stood up next to him, with his Thompson sub-machine gun.

They walked slowly through the trees to the perimeter. No shots rang out.

Samuel reached the sandbags. The 2cm had been abandoned. No guards. They must have left fast for the gun to have been left behind.

Beyond the emplacement Samuel and the sergeant passed a long bunker with V-1 wings and fuselages inside, then reached the fake forester’s cottage. He looked back. The French were where he’d left them, watching impatiently.

Still no movement or sound from the main building.

There were two doorways, large and small. Neither had doors. Samuel flattened himself beside the larger doorway, which was the size of a barn entrance, and looked inside. This was the prep area. Tool benches with tools, pumps and V-1 parts lay around.

But no-one visible.