The Caves of Périgord: A Novel

Prisoners would be taken and treated decently. The wounded could be left in the knowledge that the other side would look after them, if possible. He missed the sense of organization that came with being part of a battalion, a brigade, a division, an army. And he fretted under the knowledge that he was utterly responsible for the safety and food and supplies for the almost demoralized pack of French boys around him who had not the slightest sense of a discipline he could rely on. And he was also responsible for the reprisals the Germans would take, the burnings of farms that fed them, the shooting of men and women who helped him.
    He had known about this, even been trained for it. But what Manners never expected was that the sense of a modest victory over the German train networks and their patrols should now strike him as so hollow, a success that would unleash upon him only the new pressure of reprisals and German reinforcements. The better he did, the worse it would get. And there would be no Afrika Korps rules here, no prisoners taken, and no wounded could be left for the Gestapo to torture. He didn’t even feel much confidence in the other trained members of the team, despite the way François had staged the ambush. François had been late to the rendezvous, and was now snoring beside him, one arm flopping casually on the captured German machine gun. He should wake him. There was much to do. They had to meet Berger today, contact the radio operator, arrange another parachute drop, organize some food for the men, and then march again all night to hit the railway line that connected Brive and Périgueux. A good twenty miles north of the last attack, it would serve to spread the German search.
    “We should have been ten miles north of here by now,” said McPhee, sitting up and shaking his head from his brief sleep. “The Germans will be all over these roads tomorrow.”
    “Today, you mean,” said Manners. He shrugged. “Untrained troops, a night march. You can’t expect too much. The boys are cold and hungry and frightened.”
    “They’re not the only ones,” grunted the American. “How much plastic we got left?”
    “About twenty pounds. Enough for one good attack on a junction or a lot of little rail breaks.”
    They watched the first glow of dawn through the cave mouth, the sudden gleam of a lazy curve in the river, the silvering frost on the grass. Behind them, the click of a petrol lighter, a sudden soft glow, and the whiff of tobacco. François had woken.
    “You’ll kill us all, with those smokes of yours,” grumbled McPhee, standing up to stamp his feet and rub some warmth back into his arms. “You just lit up the whole cave. Half the German army just pinpointed us.”
    “I lit it under my jacket,” François said reasonably. “And there are no Germans here.”
    “No food either.”
    “But breakfast is just over the hill—a farm I know well.” François went outside to piss, standing with his back to them, his arms braced on his hips, puffing plumes of smoke into the lightening sky as he released a long stream to salute the dawn. Manners shivered, as some thought suddenly ran through his head that he had seen this sight before, that men had stood at the mouths of caves and pissed into the dawn light since the days when they had first come down from the trees and learned to stand. It was eerie, as if someone had walked on his grave. These caves were spooky places.
    “We can’t all go to your farm. There are twenty of us now,” objected McPhee. “Too many of us to feed.”
    “You don’t know the Périgord,” François grunted over his shoulder, and turned, buttoning his trousers. “They’ll feed us all, warm milk straight from the cow, some chestnut bread and goat cheese. But we don’t all go at once. We three go first with Frisé, then Manners and I go on to meet my brother and the radio operator. McPhee, you and Frisé then take back some milk, and bring the boys to the farm, no more than four at a time. Then we all meet tonight at the big Rouffignac cave. I know that area. There are good plateaus for parachute drops, a lot of woodland to train the boys in the Barade forest, and not enough roads for the Germans.”
    “What about food?” Manners asked.
    “A lot of small farms. We’ll be fine,” said François. “Now let me have one more cigarette and then let’s get that milk.”
    “What are the chances that someone among those small farms will tell the Germans, or the