The ground shakes beneath Owen as the eighty-eight blasts shells into the village a kilometer away, twenty a minute, searching for the tanks hidden in the narrow streets, the alleys and the yards.
Owen peers over the ditch. Brings his fieldglasses into focus. He scans. Two hundred yards away across an open field, a truck sits parked in the shadow of a farm compound. A single soldier smokes a cigarette, his rifle leaning against the truck's bumper.
The eighty-eight pounds on.
Next to the farm there is a copse. Owen focuses the glasses beyond the truck and its lone guard. Smoke drifts through the trees. There it is.
The eighty-eight blasts again, and the smoke seems to shimmer.
Satisfied, Owen turns to his men.
"Enemy eighty-eight hidden in the trees, three hundred yards away, south-south-east. One truck and driver in the shadow of a farmhouse wall, two hundred yards. We use the access road. Stay low, use the bocage, watch for movement, watch for mines. Dee, you're on point."
Dee nods and sets off, moving low, his .303 at the ready. The platoon follows, sticking to the shadows of the hedgerows wherever they can find them, keeping low. They reach the intersection where the dirt lane to the farmhouse leaves the gravel-strewn road, and Dee raises a hand. Peers towards the farm.
Owen joins him. "Anything?"
Dee shakes his head.
"What would you do?" Owen asks.
"I'd have mines in those fields, for sure. And I'd put an MG3 nest up there in the brush somewhere. Field of fire straight down this road, camo'ed," says Dee. "But only if I had the time. And the men."
"Only one way to find out," says Owen.
"I ain't going across no field," says Dee.
"So we take a walk up the garden path," Owen says, clapping him on the shoulder. He turns to the men, "Two on point, advance recce, follow on our signal. And if they get us, you'd goddamn better get them."
He takes a breath. Nods to Dee. In one fluid movement Dee rises and sprints across the gap, and even before he's reached the other side Owen has rolled into position, his Thomson trained down the lane. Dee comes up from his roll in the long grass, his .303 on the laneway, searching for a target.
None appears. No fire comes.
Owen rises and moves forward, gun at the ready. On the other side of the lane, Dee follows.
Owen's boots pad the dirt. He wipes the sweat from his brow.
They steal forward, finding whatever cover they can, and when they approach the shuttered farmhouse, there is no response. No guard, no snipers, no machine-guns. They take cover beneath the sill of the window and signal back down the laneway. The platoon steals forward, boots scuffing on the gravel, the sound masked by the boom of the gun in the woods, and joins their leaders by the farmhouse door.
Owen signals his instructions, and while two men go to silence the truck driver the rest turn their attention on the front door.
Owen reaches for his bayonet and runs the blade slowly down the gap between door and jamb. Finding no resistance, he runs the blade upwards, and finds the latch. He lifts the sash with the blade, eases the door open, and, signaling to the platoon to wait, slips into the house.
Inside, the house is dark, with just the sliver of light from the open door upon the rough floorboards. Except... Owen sees the line of a hallway leading from a corner of this room, framed by a vague, flickering glow against the wall behind.
He moves towards the source of the light, and in the darkness kicks what must be a chair, wood scraping on wood, seeming unbearably loud.
He stops. There's a movement in another room, and the faint glow that had shown him the way vanishes. He's sure he heard a faint metallic... click.
He waits, and within twenty seconds his eyes adjust to the gloom and he can again see the corridor. He puts the first pound of pressure on the trigger of the Thompson, closes the door with his heel to cut the light source behind him, and creeps into the hallway.
Three doorways lead off the corridor, one left, one right, one straight ahead. All are closed. Owen stays close to the wall, putting as little pressure on the floorboards as he can. He reaches the first door, turns the handle, pushes it open, leaning back so anyone firing through the space would hit nothing but air.
Nothing happens.
He turns to the second doorway. He readies the gun in his right hand, and with his left, twists the handle and allows the door to swing open.
Silence. He swings the gun up and through the doorway, and finds himself pointing at an empty bedroom.
He takes a breath and turns to the last doorway, heart pounding. He flattens his back against the wall, raises the gun, ready to fire, and turns the door handle.
The door opens with the same metallic click. The hinge creaks. He squeezes the trigger to the point of fire. A figure moves. Owen pulls the trigger, but as the command travels from his brain to his hands he hears the words "Non, monsieur", and he shifts his aim and releases the trigger.
The single shot buries itself in the wall five inches above the man's head. Owen looks at him. In his late forties, the man is small and round, and looks terrified. But not for himself.
There, huddled around a table, staring at him, are three women, one older, the man's wife, and two teenagers. Dee arrives in the hallway at a run, but Owen holds up his hand to stop him.
Dee comes to Owen's shoulder and looks at the scene before him. The man, terrified. The girls nervous. Their mother defiant. And on the table before them, a small cake, with a single unlit candle in the top of it.
"Birthday," says Owen. "Birthday?" They look blankly back at him.
"Un... anniversaire," says Dee. "Anniversaire?"
The man nods. The wife looks defiant. But the youngest girl simply says "C'est l'anniversaire de mon papa."
Owen stares at them. "It's this guy's birthday," says Dee.
Owen doesn't know what to say, but he drags out a mangled "Happy birthday". The farmer doesn't understand the words, but he feels the tension go out of the situation, and he smiles. "Merci, monsieur."
"Have you got a cellar? Ask them if they have a cellar."
"Cave? Vous avez un cave?" says Dee, speaking the French as if it were English, but the man shakes his head.
"Attic?" says Owen, moving to the window.
"Grenier?" says Dee, and it takes the man a moment before he understands, and he rattles off instructions to the women, and his wife retorts but does what she's told, and together they round up their girls and leave the room, Dee admonishing them to be quiet. Owen hears a trapdoor swing open, and the civilians scramble into the roof, and Dee joins him at the window.
"We got a plan, sir?"
"We're going into those woods and we're taking out that eighty-eight," says Owen, his mouth dry, the words catching in his throat.
"Sir," says Dee, heading for the door. He stops at the hall and turns.
"Happy birthday, sir," says Dee, and grins. "Happy goddamn birthday." Then he walks away.
Owen looks down at the birthday cake.
He begins to tremble. He bites his hand to stop the tears. He sinks to the floor, clutching his knees. A part of him, watching from high above in a corner of the room, tells himself to control his breathing, to make sure he does not hyperventilate, and he follows those orders.
He comes back to himself. Pulls himself together. Stands up. Without giving the cake a further glance, he walks out of the room, ready to plan the attack.
*****
After the battle the farmer's wife is the first to emerge from the attic. Her eldest daughter makes to follow, but her mother hisses "non!" and the daughter remains.
The woman picks her way through the debris, past the crumpled bodies and the bullet-flecked walls, treading carefully amongst the fallen chunks of plaster and the smashed and splintered furniture.
She makes her way down the hallway towards the back room, where dust hangs in beams of bright orange late-evening light.
She steps through the doorway.
A hole has been blown in the wall. Rubble lies in the farmyard beyond, scattered amongst and over a half-dozen dead Germans. The late evening sun streams through the gap, and there, seated at the table, covered in blood, and grime, and dust, exhausted but alive, is Dee, his arms on the table, his head upon his arms. There too, his gun leaning against his chair, sits Owen, staring into space. He seems to come to, aware that someone is there. He turns. Meets the woman's gaze.
They stare at each other for what seems like forever.
She breaks the gaze and goes to the dresser by the back wall. She opens a drawer and takes out a knife. She comes to him. Stands over him, the knife in her hand. He looks from her expressionless face to the knife, and back again, too tired to respond.
The eighty-eight is no longer firing, and from the main road comes the rumble of passing tanks.
She pulls the dust-covered birthday cake towards her, raises the knife, and cuts the cake into six slices.
She smiles. When his grin comes it is rueful, but it still feels like a smile.
The woman slides the plate before him.
Owen takes the cake.
