‘The Allied landing in Provence, 15 August,’ Nikola went on. ‘That was what decided us. Two days later we assembled. We entered the town, the United Resistance of the Secret Army and the FTP. This was our liberation at last.’

Chapter Twenty-eight

At the time he hadn’t been so cynical. When he’d marched into Lepech Perdrissou with his guys behind him, he’d been proud of them and proud to be a Frenchman by adoption. They’d raided a youth work camp up in the mountains and taken a big haul of clothes, so they weren’t dressed like Rag, Tag and Bobtail, as they normally were. They’d sewed flashes onto their tricolour armbands: FFI, Forces Françaises de l’Interieur. They looked like an army, waiting to meet their returning brothers in the Free French. And they’d show them that they hadn’t just sat there passively under German rule for four years. They marched down the rue de Paris and formed up in the Place de la Republique, and it was a great moment. They arrived at the same time as Group Noix. In order to avoid quarrels about who should head the parade, it had been agreed that the FTP would approach from the other side, marching up the rue de Toulouse, and that they would arrive in the Place simultaneously. The gendarmes had made themselves scarce. They knew what was going to happen and didn’t want to stop it. Gargaud didn’t appear.

Vernhes made a speech, flanked by members of the Committee of the United Resistance, announcing the deposition of the mayor and the establishment of the Fourth Republic, to ecstatic cheers.

Afterwards Nikola had thought a lot about what had happened and he’d remembered the surge of annoyance that he’d felt when the FTP had placed themselves too far over in the square. Even at the time he’d thought, contemptuously, that they looked as if they were ready to make a quick getaway. The noise of engines at the end of the speech was like a dream of thunder; you wondered if you’d really heard it. Then you knew you had. The townspeople had evaporated. One minute they were standing there applauding, the next there was not one of them to be seen, except an old girl desperately trying to reach a shutter on an upstairs window that kept evading her reach.

Nothing for it, they couldn’t just run away after marching in so proudly. The Germans were up on them fast and in force. They received fire at the entrance to the village and responded at once. The shoe mender’s house, oppose Dr Maniotte’s, was targeted and a fire started. Very rapidly he recognised that the situation was hopeless. They were being pushed back towards the centre, rounded up.

Where, he asked himself, then shouted the question aloud, Where are the fighters of the bloody Group Noix? None of them were to be seen. He rallied his men, the ones close enough to him to hear and obey. He wouldn’t let them be herded into the square, like a troop of cattle to the slaughter. He saw that Henri still going strong as they ran down one of the narrow alleys where no vehicle could follow them, over a wall into a back garden. Through the cabbages, into the next. They could run more freely here, with houses between them and the German armour. Finally, over the last wall and into a green orchard where two sheep huddled together in one corner under arthritic apple trees, laden with ripening fruit. They were out of the town now. Their trucks had been left on the road to Racines and couldn’t go back for them. The Germans would certainly have taken them, so there was no alternative but footing it into the forest to count their losses.