When she finally found a set of stairs that led down, her steps faltered. “Allo? Bonjour? Is anyone down there?” She was shivering violently. Only silence answered her call.
She took a deep breath, then plunged down the stairs. And there she found the cells. She increased her pace, wanting to see them all to be sure. They were empty. Every door was thrown open.
She spun around, anxious to be free of this place. Had Pierre and Lieutenant Fitzgerald been put in one of these cells? Had she come this close only to find them gone? Then something caught her eye. She stepped into the cell on her right. In the plaster above the built-in cot she read three words: I am afraid. She turned slowly, her eyes searching. There was another inscription near the hole in the floor used as a toilet: Never confess.
She went quickly to the next cell. She found more words, only this time longer, and written in pencil. She shuddered when she saw a woman’s name: Yvette Mari-Jo Wilbort. What followed was a verse from the famous French poet, Alfred de Vigny.
Wailing, pleading, crying—these are the coward’s call.
Assume your heavy and onerous burden,
The one that fate has cast your way.
And then, like me, suffer and die in silence.
Bile rose in her throat, and she felt like she was going to suffocate. But she had to know. Almost running, she went from cell to cell. Two cells from the stairway she found what she was looking for. This time the words were scratched deeply into the plaster with something dull, perhaps a spoon handle: June 20, 1944. Pierre LaRoche. Farewell, my beloved Monique.
She was still sitting on the stairs three minutes later, weeping quietly, when the floor over her head creaked. She jerked up, heart exploding into a thunderous pounding. Heavy footsteps crossed the floor, coming down the corridor toward the stairs. She leaped to her feet, shrinking back against the wall. In her haste, her own feet scraped heavily across the cement. The other footsteps stopped, then broke into a run.
“Halt! Who goes there?” It was said in French, but with a heavy German accent.
Her heart plummeted. She looked up, frozen in place. A dark figure filled the doorway at the head of the stairs. She could see the German luger in his hand.
“Stop where you are, Fräulein.”
Her legs were suddenly weak, not just with fear, but because she had recognized the voice instantly. Standing above her was Colonel Horst Kessler, most recently the commandant of the Gestapo unit stationed in Strasbourg.
“Stop here, Frau LaRoche.”
Monique stopped, her hands still resting on her head. Without a word, Kessler had dragged her up the stairs and back into the main office. Now he let go of her arm, but he kept the gun pointed at her.
“Please, do not move.” Kessler stepped away, moving toward a filing cabinet behind an overturned desk. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked the case. Bending down, he opened the bottom drawer and withdrew a black briefcase. “Very foolish of me to go off and leave this,” he explained as he came back to her. “Now, please, out the back door and into my car.”
“Is my husband still alive?” she asked as she started walking forward again.
When he didn’t answer, she half turned her head. “Have you no humanity at all? Would it jeopardize the Third Reich to tell me if you shot my husband?”
“Eyes front,” he barked. He jabbed the pistol against the small of her back. As they approached the door, he pulled her to a stop. “Moment mal.” He stepped around her, opened the door a crack, and looked outside. Satisfied, he motioned to her. “Into the car. Quickly.”
They drove for several minutes before he spoke again. Kessler’s driver often had to slow almost to a crawl to get through or go around the rubble in the streets. Once he even had to back up and find another way. Kessler sat in the front seat beside him, but turned so he could keep his pistol trained on Monique.
“You knew about the American flyer hidden in the barn, didn’t you?”
She looked away.
“To aid an enemy combatant is high treason. The penalty is death by firing squad.”
“And the torture? What about that? That is forbidden by the Geneva Convention.”
He shrugged. “War is war, madame. Be grateful that things right now are such that you will not be joining your husband in the mass grave we have dug. But you shall spend the rest of the war in a work camp, paying for your crimes against the state.”
“Which won’t be long,” she said, head up, eyes defiant.
His eyes were glacial, and his smile was little more than a thin hard line. “You and your little son,” he said easily. “So brave. So innocent.” His voice was cold. “‘A tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’”
She felt her stomach lurch.
He laughed aloud at her expression. “Does it surprise you that a monster such as myself quotes Shakespeare?”
She turned away, not wanting him to see her reaction. He hadn’t said “the mass grave we dug,” but “the mass grave we have dug.” That suggested its purpose was not yet fulfilled. Not daring to hope and yet unable not to, she closed her eyes, determined to say nothing more.
“Colonel?” The tightness in the driver’s voice brought Monique up with a jerk. They had left the part of the city that had been bombed and were moving faster. They had just turned a corner into a broad boulevard when the driver lifted his foot off the gas pedal and the car rolled to a stop.
The tableau before Monique would be forever fixed in her mind. Four heavy German transport trucks were parked along the curb. Soldiers in German uniforms were lined up in front of them, hands high in the air. Ten feet in front of them, American soldiers had their weapons trained on them. Behind them, stretching back along the boulevard as far as she could see was a column of heavy armor, tank after tank after tank. Jeeps and armored personnel carriers were parked alongside them. The lead tank, the only one she could see clearly, had a big white star painted just below its cannon.
“Back! Back!” Kessler screamed at his driver.
There was a grinding of gears, and the car careened backward, throwing her to one side. “Halt!” She couldn’t tell who had screamed it. Men were running hard toward them.
“Go! Go! Go!” Kessler screamed, dropping into a crouch on the floorboards.
But it was everlastingly too late. A burst of machine gun fire exploded from the lead tank. Bullets blasted into the pavement to the left of the car, ricocheting away with angry snarls. Not waiting for orders from his commander, the driver slammed on the brakes and threw his hands in the air. “Ich ergebe mich! Ich ergebe mich! I surrender! I surrender!”
One of the American soldiers opened the car door and said something to her. Monique couldn’t understand him, but it didn’t matter. With tears streaming down her face, she clambered out of the car, then threw herself into his arms, laughing, crying, and shouting for joy. Suddenly, all around them, the buildings began to disgorge their inhabitants. Men, women, and children flooded the streets, yelling and shouting and waving their arms. “Yankee! Yankee! Les Américains! Les Américains!”
In moments, the GIs were swarmed. Grandmas fell at their knees and kissed the soldiers’ hands. Old men wept unashamedly. Little children were lifted up to sit on the tanks and Jeeps. Young women kissed their liberators joyously. Stunned, but equally joyous, the GIs kissed them back.
It was almost an hour before Monique saw a small group of US soldiers coming toward her. She was sitting in Kessler’s staff car. Kessler and his driver, of course, were nowhere to be seen. As the Americans drew closer, she saw that the man in the lead had three stars on each shoulder. A young man in a French uniform walked behind him.
She stood, shutting the door of the staff car behind her, her hands trembling.
“Mrs. LaRoche?” the man said, saluting her. The French officer translated quickly. “I’m Lieutenant General George S. Patton, commander of the US Third Army. We have all the prisoners unloaded from the trucks. We’re giving
them food. Would you like to come with me?”
When she heard the translation, she could only nod. As she fell in behind them, her vision was so blurred with tears that she had to reach out and lay her hand on the arm of the young Frenchman.
The prisoners were in the shade of the trees that lined the boulevard. As she saw them, milling around folding tables, still fifty or sixty feet away, her step slowed.
“It’s all right, madame. We will go slowly. Take your time.”
But at that instant she heard a strangled cry. “Monique?”
A figure was moving toward her in a hobbling run. His hands were swathed in bandages, and his nose had been broken.
“Pierre?” Monique cried out.
“Ma chérie! Is that you? Can it possibly be you?”
With a strangled cry of joy, Monique flung herself across the grass, skirts billowing, hair streaming behind her. As she threw herself into his arms, all around them everything came to a halt. French, German, American—everyone turned to witness this momentary deliverance from war, this miracle of love and faith and courage. And all around them, both jaded Parisians and hardened combat veterans were suddenly finding it equally difficult to see.
Chapter 48
Soldier Summit, Utah
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
“Amazing!” Rick said, his husky voice tinged with awe.
I could only nod. My throat was too choked to get anything out. We were still parked beside the service station on the top of Soldier Summit.
I laid Grandpère’s envelope aside and took the paper Rick had printed from the woman’s computer. Clearing my throat, I read it as best I could. “‘After four years of German occupation, largely due to the success of American Forces under the command of General George S. Patton, US Third Army, on August twenty-fourth, 1944, the first of the Free French, British, Canadian, and American forces rolled into Paris. By midnight, virtually every church bell in Paris was ringing. After four years of occupation, Paris was free.’”
“And she was there,” Rick said.
“Incredible,” I whispered. “I never personally knew my great-grandmother,” I said, picturing her as I had seen her in Grandpère’s photograph. “She died when I was a baby. But Great-Grandpère Pierre lived until I was about six. He came out from Boston several times and stayed with Grandpère and Grandmère. I don’t remember much from those visits, but I do remember his fingers. They were stubby, twisted things with no fingernails. The knuckles were all swollen and deformed. Mom thought the Germans had broken every bone in his hands trying to get him to talk. She also told me that he never took off his shirt in public because of the scars on his back.”
The car was quiet for a moment. Then I picked up the last few pages from Grandpère.
A few postscripts.
When Colonel Horst Kessler, commanding officer of the Gestapo in Strasbourg, France, was told to transfer his prisoners to Gestapo headquarters in Paris, the name of First Lieutenant Arnold Fitzgerald of the United States Army Air Corps was not on the list.
Once the war ended, my father and mother began an inquiry. When they were finally allowed to see the records of the Strasbourg Gestapo office, Lieutenant Fitzgerald’s name was not found anywhere. Nor was there any record of an American pilot being captured at that time.
However, the same woman who told my mother about my father’s transfer to Paris later testified that she overheard some of the soldiers saying that Colonel Kessler had tortured Lieutenant Fitzgerald for information concerning the design and performance of his aircraft. He died under interrogation. The soldiers had been ordered to bury the pilot in the Strasbourg cemetery in an unmarked grave.
The news was a devastating blow to me and my parents and my friend, Louis. Though we had only known Fitzgerald for two days, we had established a lasting bond with him. My mother especially grieved over his death.
Due mostly to the tireless efforts of my father and mother, the body of Lieutenant Fitzgerald was eventually exhumed by French authorities. Once they had confirmed his identity and the cause of death, his body was returned to his family in Nebraska.
Colonel Horst Kessler was brought before a military tribunal in 1948 and charged with war crimes, including the murder and torture of an American pilot—a combatant who is protected under the articles of the Geneva Convention—and the torture and execution of French civilians.
My father, mother, and I flew back to Germany to testify against Kessler. This was very difficult for my mother because she had to face him once again in the courtroom. After nine days of testimony, including that from the housekeeper, Kessler was pronounced guilty on all charges and sentenced to life in prison. He died in 1951, reminding us once again that there is evil in the world, but eventually, under God’s watchful eye, justice and truth will prevail.
May these things which I have shared with you stay with you in the hours and days to come, providing you strength, hope, and inspiration.
With deepest affection,
Grandpère
Part Eight: Partnership
Chapter 49
US Highway 6, between Price and Provo
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
After I finished reading Grandpère’s writings, we all fell quiet. My mind and heart were both full of memories and histories, and when I finally roused myself back to the present, almost an hour had passed. We were still in Spanish Fork Canyon. I turned to Rick. “Now that you’ve had a chance to think about all we read, tell me what you’re thinking.”
He gave me a quick look. “So what about the FBI?”
I wasn’t expecting that, but I had made up my mind already. “Call them right now.”
“Can’t right now. No cell phone coverage yet.”
“Then as soon as we’re out of the canyon. Set up a meeting for first thing in the morning.”
“Good for you, Danni. I think your grandfather would be proud.”
“It’s not just him I’m thinking about.”
“Monique?”
“Yes. If she can take on the Gestapo, I’m ready to hand El Cobra a few surprises.”
“Like what?” Cody asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I need to think about that. And right now, my brain feels like dried mud.”
“I’ve also got to call Dad and give him our new numbers,” Rick said. “Why don’t you try to get a little more sleep? We’re still about an hour and a half from Salt Lake. I’ll wake you up when we get closer.”
I squinted at him, giving him a warning look. “I’ll try, but you’re not forgetting about stopping somewhere to get some clothes, are you?”
“You think I have a death wish?”
“Good,” I murmured. I was surprised how good it felt to relax and how quickly I fell asleep.
I came awake with a start, groping wildly for a grip on something. My brain finally registered that I was in the front seat of Rick’s 4Runner. I noted that the sun was still up, but getting lower in the sky. And when I heard a cell phone ring a second time, I came fully awake and sat up.
“Mornin’, sunshine,” Rick said with a grin.
“Feel better?” Cody asked.
“No. Worse.”
Rick pressed the answer button on his throwaway phone. “Hi, Dad.” Pause. “Yeah. We’re passing through Utah Valley now. We’ll be in Salt Lake in about an hour, depending on traffic. Glad you got my message. I was—” He stopped, nodding. “Yeah, there are some dead spots along that stretch. Did you get my earlier message about what El Cobra said about Aunt Shauna and the girls? Good, good.” Long pause. I could hear his dad speaking Spanish. “Great!” Rick said when he finished. “Hold on, let me tell Danni.”
He moved the phone away. “Dad has Aunt Shauna and my sisters with him. He’s bringing them to my Uncle Fernando’s house in West Valley City. They’ll be safe there. That’s a huge relief.”
“I’m so glad.” El Cobra’s threat was probably an empty one, but I didn’t want to be wrong.
&nb
sp; Rick got back on the phone. “How far behind us are you?” Brief pause. “Oh, okay, that’ll work. We’re gonna make a short stop to get Danni and Cody some clothes, then we’ll find a motel. I’ll call you with the number and address as soon as we get it.” More from his dad. “No, no. Danni’s got some cash”—he shot me a quick look—“from a family fund.” Then his eyes widened. “What? Why not?”
He put his hand over the phone and said, “Dad says we can’t pay for the motel with cash.”
“Of course we can. Everybody takes cash.”
He waved me to silence. “Okay. Understood. Listen, Danni’s made up her mind. I called the FBI and have an appointment with the agent in charge tomorrow at nine. What’s that? Sorry, Dad, you’re breaking up.” He pressed the phone more tightly to his ear. “Oh, that. No. We didn’t tell him what it’s about, only that it’s important.”
This time even I could hear the static. “I’m losing you, Dad. Call us when you get out of the canyon.”
He tapped one of the keys, then put the phone back in his pocket. “He just passed Soldier Summit, so by the time he takes the girls to Uncle Fernando’s he’ll be probably three hours behind us.”
“Why can’t we pay cash?”
“He said that most motels require picture ID and a credit card as a way of discouraging drug dealers and others from falsifying their identities. He said to call him when we find one, and he’ll call in with his credit card and tell them we’re coming.”
“He’s not paying for this, Rick.”
“Are you kidding? When the pouch is generating cash faster than you can spend it?” He laughed. “You can pay him back. He knows your dad is good for it.”
“And speaking of cash,” I said, “who authorized you to say that our shopping stop was going to be ‘short’?”