plane skimmed overhead at less than 100 metres. Its noise made Rouen’s anti-aircraft guns and flak batteries begin blasting chunks of exploding metal into the sunrise.
*
France had long feared invasion by Germany. The ability to blow up bridges quickly in front of an invading army was crucial and a law dating back to the 1870s meant that every bridge in France had to be fitted with a mining pan. This large metal shelf was designed to be loaded with explosives beneath the bridge’s weakest point.
Marc and Luc had no problem identifying the pan as they crept down an overgrown embankment next to the riveted iron bridge, with packs full of plastic explosive on their backs. Unfortunately, the sun was determined to keep rising and four German guards were now stationed up on the road, less than 5 metres away.
The Germans were having a conversation about sex, joking about each other’s wives and the youngest of the quartet being a virgin. The mix of teasing and laughter was lively enough to mask sounds the boys made below. Luc was stronger than Marc, so he clambered 3 metres up into the bridge’s iron framework.
A truck rumbled overhead as Luc found a footing next to the pan, which was crusted in thirty years of rust and bird crap. Marc passed up a large rectangular charge first. This comprised two dozen sticks of dynamite with a wired mining detonator at its core. After this, Marc gave Luc balls of plastic fitted with sympathetic fuses that would be set off by the dynamite blast.
Luc put most of these on the pan, but also reached around and placed a couple on the surrounding beams. Marc was passing up the final three charges when a bearded guard stepped up to the edge of the bridge and whipped out his penis to urinate.
Marc ducked under the bridge, but Luc couldn’t move without making a clanking noise. A slight breeze blew the urine against a beam above Luc’s head and sent a fine yellow mist into his face. When he turned away, it drizzled through his hair and down the back of his shirt.
By the time the guard shook off Luc was soaked. As the German headed back, Marc gasped with relief, then reached up to Luc with the last of the explosive. But Luc was so furious that he jumped down.
‘That’s plenty,’ he spat.
While Luc crawled up the embankment in a vile mood, Marc kicked the last balls of explosive under the bridge, then knelt down to complete the final wiring.
As they planned to blow the bridge when a tank – or better still two tanks – rode across, Marc had decided on a wired electric detonator. This gave him precise control over the explosion, but the significant disadvantage of having to hide a trail of electrical wire in the undergrowth as he crawled up the embankment to a safe spot 60 metres away.
Luc sat in tall grass unbuttoning his sodden shirt as Marc arrived. Marc was relieved that they’d completed the riskiest part of their job and couldn’t hide how much he’d enjoyed seeing Luc get pissed on. To avoid Luc catching his smirk, Marc looked towards a position further from the bridge to see how PT and Michel were getting on with setting up the little artillery gun.
‘If you say one bastard word to anyone about this,’ Luc warned, as he wagged his finger ominously.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As Henderson predicted, British intelligence had received dozens of radio messages about the 108th’s move west. At the Bletchley Park code-breaking centre in southern England, teams of women transcribed coded Morse signals sent on the battalion’s radio frequencies, then fed the results into a mechanical computer that filled a large hall.
Once the 108th’s daily code was cracked, thirty-four American Mustang spotter planes were dispatched into the air over France. These lightly-armed aircraft could radio information on German movements to British Tempest fighters armed with tank-busting rockets. Most dramatically of all, a planned raid on German industry was postponed and eighty Flying Fortress bombers were diverted to attack the fuel depot south of Rouen.
As Henderson reached the workers’ entrance at the side of the Gare de Rouen train station, the sun was up and a thousand bombs had pounded the city. Most landed to the south, damaging crucial roads, destroying a bridge and hitting vehicles belonging to the 108th. But high-altitude bombing was rarely accurate and there were fires all over the city.
Even with the Nazis’ grip on France slipping, resistance groups