“We’re here to see your grandfather,” the corpsman said in French. They looked like visitors, and each of them was wearing a small backpack with the medical supplies they needed. The nine Resistance fighters they were coming to see had been injured in an explosion when they blew up a train carrying German troops two days earlier. Many of the German soldiers had been killed, along with several officers. Two of the Resistance fighters were gravely injured. They had been supplying vital information to the British, and had to be gotten out of France as quickly as possible, but several of them were too damaged to transport, and would surely be tortured and killed if left behind. Their leader was critically wounded, and he couldn’t be moved.

The young man led the way to a shed behind the barn as the visitors threaded their way through the livestock in the front yard. All of them were on the alert for any unexpected, suspicious movements, but there were none as they walked into the dark, dusty shed, cluttered with rusting farm equipment. The young Frenchman was quick to push away the dirt on the floor, and a trapdoor appeared. The two corpsmen silently helped him, and all of them disappeared below it. The men put the trapdoor back in place over their heads, then descended a staircase down a narrow tunnel, and they found themselves in a well-lit room filled with men. There was another room beyond it. The air was stale and heavy with cigarette smoke and sweat. A generator was keeping the room lit, and there were air vents above them, concealed by bushes on the farm. It was a serious operation, and looked astonishingly efficient. It had been a command post of the Resistance for the southern region for most of the war, and the Germans had never found it, although they had tried.

There were a dozen men in the room, and two women, and one of the women explained in better than adequate English that the most injured men were in the room beyond, and one of them had been unconscious since that morning. They had to be in good enough condition to move on by the next day. Six of the men in the main room and one of the two women were identified as the victims of the explosion. The nurses examined them immediately and found them all to be suffering from severe burns under their clothing—burns that hadn’t been cleaned or tended to, for lack of anything to dress them with. None of them complained as the two nurses and one corpsman treated them. One of the men had lost a finger, which was an ugly wound.