One Day in Oradour (16 page)

After waiting for a few seconds to allow the smoke bomb to fill the nave, Dietrich gave the order for his soldiers to storm in and open fire. The black smoke which billowed out of the door as the men wrenched it open mingled with the sounds of the chaos inside.

‘Quick! Quick!’ Dietrich roared at his men. The sooner they could shut up that pathetic shouting and screaming, the better.

He watched the soldiers disappearing into the gloom. Then, satisfied that his orders would be carried out as he wished, he passed back control to the platoon leader. He needed to move on. He needed to make sure that the gunfire he could hear from around the village meant that his grisly game was being played out.

Dietrich stayed only a few minutes at the mill barn. All the men inside were dead and the soldiers had begun piling straw and wood on top of the bodies, ready to set them alight. Likewise the men in the barn further up the road, and in the blacksmith’s workshop. So far so good.

He walked on up the hill, heading next for the Joubert barn. Near to the junction with Rue de la Cimetière, Dietrich heard a commotion in one of the terraced houses to his left. The troops who were not assigned to the church or to one of the six other key targets around
the village had been ordered to continue checking the rest of the buildings for fugitives, then to set fire to each building once it was confirmed as clear.

He ducked his head inside the doorway. It was a tiny, modest home, with a long narrow hallway and just two rooms leading off it. A blond-haired teenage SS soldier was standing blocking the far end of the hallway, near the bottom of the stairs. He was pointing his rifle into a tiny cubby hole under the stairs and shrieking, ‘Out! Out!’

‘Who’s in there?’

The soldier jumped, alarmed at Dietrich’s voice.

‘Just shoot them, you fool!’

‘I, I can’t, Major. They’re…’

Dietrich had no time for this. He stormed down the hall, taking his revolver from its holster and pulled the soldier out of the way. Cowering in the cramped little cupboard was an old couple, the man shielding his wife’s head with his hands.

‘Please,’ begged the old man, his voice barely audible.

Dietrich fired two shots and put his revolver back in its holster. Without a trace of emotion on his face, he stepped back and slammed the cupboard door shut.

He looked at the young officer, who was leaning with his back against the wall and snivelling, with
complete disgust. He began to march back down the hallway towards the front door, but as he drew level with the soldier, he turned and shoved his face into his, their noses almost touching.

The soldier felt Dietrich pressing something into his chest. He was convinced he was about to die too.

Dietrich glanced up at the Death’s Head badge on the soldier’s cap. ‘You don’t deserve to wear that badge,’ he sneered. ‘You’re pathetic. I should shoot you, too, for disobeying my orders.’

A trickle of sweat ran down the side of the young soldier’s face and his lips trembled.

‘Now, can you manage to torch the place, or do I have to do that for you as well?’ continued Dietrich, the sarcasm dripping from his every word.

The soldier rapidly nodded his head, his knees weak, and with one last sneer, Dietrich was gone, letting the box of matches that he had been pressing into the soldier’s chest fall from his fingers onto Ethan and Rachael’s floor.

At the Joubert barn, Leon and the others had been trying to stay calm, despite the machine guns pointing at them from the barn door. The soldiers outside certainly seemed relaxed. They were laughing and joking and Leon began to allow himself to believe the story they
had been fed. Maybe Major Dietrich had been telling the truth. Perhaps they were just keeping the men there while they searched the town one last time. If the Germans turned up no evidence, proved that the Mayor was right to say that they were innocent, maybe they would be released.

But then came the explosion from the church. Leon’s first thought was of Sylvie and the children. ‘Oh my God,’ he cried out aloud. ‘My family’s in there.’

He turned to Guy, who was standing next to him, looking alarmed, his hands above his head.

‘What are you doing?’ Leon asked, not understanding.

Without taking down his hands, Guy nodded his head towards the barn entrance.

Leon turned and looked straight down the barrel of one of the two machine guns, now being made ready to fire. He opened his mouth, and the last thing he noticed before the bullets started to fly, was that the guns seemed to be aimed rather low.

The initial blast of bullets which sprayed into the crowd of sixty terrified men huddled together in the Joubert barn all came in below waist level. Crying out with pain, one man after the next fell to the floor, clutching at their legs.

Next to Leon, Guy had been hit by a bullet in the
wrist as he gave up his sign of surrender and dived to the ground. Untouched, Leon dropped behind him onto the floor, face down, and was rapidly hidden by falling bodies.

The shooting continued until all sixty men were felled.

‘Why are they doing this?’ Leon kept asking himself. ‘Why aim to wound, not kill?’

When finally the firing stopped, Leon dared to lift his head. Through the tangle of bodies he could just see the machine gunners standing up and lifting their guns to one side. Then the cruel reality of the SS plan hit home.

Two soldiers entered the barn and began scattering straw and firewood then covering it with oil. Meanwhile, the remaining soldiers from the platoon, some carrying rifles, others revolvers, picked their way through the heap of bodies, shooting anyone they thought had remained unscathed.

Leon felt a boot pressing down on his back and had to hold his breath so as not to cry out.

Diving for cover, one man had fallen across Guy Dupont’s legs. Guy glanced down and recognised him as an old friend named Gerard, someone he had grown up with. One of the SS officers saw Gerard, too, and saw that he was unhurt. He killed him with a shot to
the head, and Guy cried out as he felt the bullet pass through his friend into his own thigh.

More shots were fired. The body in front of Leon went limp. He was certain that he would be next, but his own body was so deeply buried under others that the soldiers did not see that he was still unmarked.

When the soldiers were satisfied that no one could move, they ignited the bonfire that they had created.

Trapped beneath the weight of the bodies above them, Guy and Leon could feel the fire beginning to singe their clothes. Guy’s hair caught fire and he had to fight hard to free his hands in order to smother it.

It was at that moment that Major Dietrich arrived at the Joubert barn. Leon could hear the soldiers joking and laughing with their commander, clearly pleased with their results.

‘Pigs!’ one of the injured men screamed in response.

‘Can you move, Guy?’ Leon whispered to his neighbour.

Guy coughed as the smoke began to fill his lungs. His eyes were streaming but he nodded.

‘Quick, try to get up, while they’re distracted,’ said Leon. ‘I’m not going to let them burn me alive.’

As quietly as they could, and masked by the noise and smoke of the rapidly spreading fire, the two men wriggled free and crawled to a side door. Previously
guarded by one of the soldiers, the door was now unattended.

Leon and Guy staggered out into the yard beyond, and were amazed to find that they were not alone. Four other men stood there, all but one of them with injured legs or arms, wildly looking around for a way out.

‘Quick, over here,’ hissed one of them, who was bleeding from his left arm. He had found a small hole in the crumbling far wall and was rapidly pulling at the loose stones to make the opening big enough to crawl through.

The others helped, and soon all six men squeezed themselves through into the garden on the other side.

‘I can’t run,’ whimpered the last man through, collapsing onto the grass on the other side of the wall. Of the six, he was the most badly injured and was bleeding profusely from both legs.

‘Get in here!’ said Guy, pointing to some rabbit hutches lined up along the wall. ‘They’ll never look for you in there. Wait it out. We’ll come back for you when it’s all over. I promise you, my friend.’

The injured man climbed into the hutch and Leon covered it loosely with a tarpaulin which had been thrown over an old tractor, parked next to the barn.

Then the remaining five crept cautiously along the back wall of the barn.

Guy was limping badly. ‘I think we should make a dash for it, across to the Peyrilhac road,’ he whispered to the others. ‘The smoke from the fire will give us some cover. It’s blowing that way. Then we can head over the field behind the mill to the river. We can crawl if we have to. The grass is long enough to hide us.’

The others nodded. One by one, the first three darted across, and ran down a narrow alley between the houses, keeping lookout for one another to make sure they were not spotted.

Only Guy and Leon were left.

‘I’m not coming with you,’ said Leon flatly.

Guy looked at him, wide eyed.

‘My family and I always said we would meet at the woods, behind the cemetery, if the Germans ever came. I might be the only one left alive, but I have to try to get there.’

‘It’s too far,’ whispered Guy. ‘You’ll never make it.’

‘I have to try,’ Leon repeated, taking his neighbour’s hand in his. ‘And you must go. Good luck to you, Guy.’

The two men nodded at one another and shook hands, exchanging a brief, nervous smile, then went their separate ways.

Leon watched as Guy made it safely across the street and disappeared down the alleyway. The ground where he had been standing just a few moments before was stained with blood and Leon swallowed hard, full of admiration at the bravery of his friend. He had lived next door to him for four years and had always thought him a friendly enough chap, but quite unremarkable. He was just an ordinary man, yet here he was, in the midst of a nightmare, acting so courageously. ‘Please God,’ Leon prayed silently, ‘don’t let him collapse before he makes it to the river. Give him a chance.’ Then, as the image of Alfred sitting by that tree in the woods came back into his mind, he added, ‘And please, I beg you, give
me
a chance. Help me find my son.’

The heat from the fire inside the barn was now so intense that Leon could feel it radiating through the stones of the wall behind him and thin fingers of smoke were beginning to creep through the cracks in the
mortar. The air was rank with the burning smell and, as the breeze changed direction, the road temporarily cleared and the smoke began wafting instead across the garden into which Leon and his companions had first made their escape from the barn.

This was Leon’s chance. It was now or never. Holding his breath he ran straight into the swirling grey fog, darting quickly across the end of Rue de la Cimetière and down an alleyway into the open space which lay in between the rear gardens of the buildings which lined the fairground. From there, he could sneak along the backs of the gardens and come out through one of the side alleyways further up on Rue de la Cimetière, hopefully away from danger.

As he emerged from the worst of the smoke, he looked across the open space in front of him and recognised the back wall of the Mayor’s house. He sprinted over and, keeping low, ran along the wall and down the side passageway of the house. This led straight on to the fairground and Leon flattened himself against the wall to peer cautiously around the corner. He could see the well, where Sylvie and the children had waited for him earlier when they had tried to make their escape. The same German trucks were still parked there and Leon could see that they were unmanned. To his left he could make out soldiers going in and out of the houses on
the other side of the field, still searching for survivors, some carrying petrol tanks ready to begin torching the buildings. But there was no one to his right.

Leon decided to cross the road again and head for the cornfield on the other side. There was a gap in the buildings there and only a small low fence which he would have to vault over. He knew he could do it and he had to be safer in the field than running up the road where he would have no cover at all.

He took one last glance to the left to check that no one was looking his way, and he ran.

From his hiding place in the cornfield, Alfred could hear the shooting at the Joubert barn and the screams and desperate cries under the gunfire. He covered his ears and screwed up his eyes tight to try to shut it all out. But try as he might, the noise still seemed to creep through his fingers, seeping into his brain, and he began to realise, from the pattern of sounds, that the same horrible things were happening all over his village.

He thought about his family. He wondered where the soldiers had taken Christelle and Sabine. And he thought about his friends, Ethan and Rachael, Patric, Jean, Pierre, Monsieur Lefevre and old Monsieur Demarais. Were they safe? Had they been shot? Were they lying somewhere, frightened, like he was?

Every so often, he dared to raise his head to peep out over the top of the corn. The cornfield sloped gently down towards Rue de la Cimetière, so while the corn was long enough to hide him while he lay flat, if he was careful he could lift himself up a little and get a clear view of the road and the entrance into the fairground through the gap in the buildings. Once or twice he had caught sight of some soldiers. They seemed to be working in pairs, and Alfred wondered if they were taking over all the houses and throwing people out, like they did in Charly, or whether they were looking for something. But why the shooting? What was that big explosion and what were they burning? It was all too much for him to understand.

The vile fumes from the Joubert barn were starting to stick in Major Dietrich’s throat and make his eyes water. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the dirt and sweat from his face then threw it onto the floor. He didn’t want to arrive in Scholz’s office in Limoges covered in soot and grease and with his uniform stinking of smoke. He was ready to move on. His work here was done.