10.
~ Arthur had to wonder why the Nazi forces were retreating so quickly. Every village the invasion force seemed to enter, the Nazis had just left. Some of them just a few hours before the Americans or British troops rolled in.
The France he saw as a boy was not the one he remembered. War had ravished this lovely country leaving building into rubble. Beyond all hope of rebuilding.
Some churches, he remembered, were a least 800 years old. Things no man had any right to destroy, were carelessly burned and treated with such disrespect, that Arthur hated the enemy even more.
From the buildings that still stood, people looked at the sight of the healthy, fearless looking Americans. They had and lived for 4 years of Nazi occupation and knew better then to resist. Instead, they hung white flags out of windows and prayed they would be left alone.
It was a sober thing to see the haunted looks of people as they drove past. Some of them happy to see their liberators, most too worn down by war to care.
Arthur rode with his new Lieutenant, a happy go luck man named Dax as their Jeep drove recklessly through the muddy roads. He looked over the windows with white bed sheets hanging out.
"What does it mean, Sir?" Dax asked him.
"It means they surrender." Arthur said sadly as a little girl with dark hair looked at the passing convoy with large, scared eyes.
"Were here to help them." Dax said obviously confused.
"I'm sure the Nazis said the same thing." Arthur commented dryly.
~ The Red Cross followed the advancement a few days later. Ariadne much preferred this part of her work then picking up the broken and bleeding. All around her were children. Wanting to touch her uniform, smell her hair and stay close to her as she helped to exam the young ones for signs of illness. Malnutrition was the most common problem. Many of them so hungry that their teeth were rotting.
The little boys and girls would look up at her with big eyes as she brought them food and told them in French that everything was alright now.
The children and adults happily told her all about the occupation. About how the Nazis forbid them from even hunting in the forest and how food had run out. How they had lost family, not not bullets, but from starvation.
"The American's are here." A dark haired little girl with big eyes chirped up at her. "They are so handsome and strong." She told the Senior Nurse.
"Yes." Ariadne said remembering how a house had fallen on her mysterious Lieutenant. "Yes they are."
~ "There are rumors of a compound." Cobb said to the convoy that had stopped at a village just a few miles away from Paris.
"Compound?" Dax asked. Arthur ignored him. He liked Dax enough, but the young Lieutenant was too green. Too happy to be in the war.
"Prisoners?" Arthur asked.
Major Cobb nodded.
"Some of them are our own, but most of them were captured before they could be evacuated from Dunkirk." The Major said.
Eames stood up and suddenly looked interested.
"My boys." He said soberly.
"We think so, yes." Cobb said.
"How creditable is you intelligence?" Arthur asked the Major. Cobb nodded to a thin looking man in rotted clothing. A local.
"He was responsible for bringing in food for the prisoners." Cobb said. "Were still waiting for orders to check out the possible existence of a compound.
"Sir." Arthur said bringing Cobb's attention to him. "With all due respect, by the time those orders go through, those men will be dead. They waited years now, they should have to wait one more day."
"Right." Eames said looking over the map. The idea of his fellow comrades being held in a camp made him look reckless and angry.
"We can do recon." Dax suggested helpfully.
Cobb looked at Arthur. The old friends knowing exactly what the other was thinking.
"Alright." Cobb said softly. "Arthur, you take Eames and Dax with you. Keep your party small. Less then 20 men."
"Thank you , Sir." Arthur said almost flying out the door.
It was an easy matter to find volunteers willing to join the recon. Arthur planned to not only find out if the compound was there, but he planed to free the men trapped there. If his superiors came down hard on him for it, that was fine. It was war time and they knew he was too valuable an officer to do much more then yell at.
The small band of 20 men went on foot through the dense forest. Not taking the worn jeep trail that was no doubt used by the Nazis.
It wasn't a compound at all. It was little more then hastily constructed barracks with barbed wire fence and razor wire on the tops. There were guard towers at every end and as Arthur and his men crouched in the mud, they could see the guard house was alive with activity.
"What are they doing?" Dax asked as Arthur spied on the guard house with binoculars.
"Their burning documents. They must know were coming." Arthur said.
"We have to move." Eames said readied his weapon.
Arthur put his hand over Eames' rifle.
"We don't want to lose the initiative." He whispered. "Right now, we have the element of surprise. We need to take out the guard towers before the raise any alarms."
"Right." Eames said. "The Lieutenant still looking ready for a fight."
"Why is he so crazy?" Dax asked as Eames left to tell the other men what was happening.
"He was at the Dunkirk evacuation." Arthur said looking back over the guard towers.
"Bull shit!" Dax laughed.
Arthur turned to his new Lieutenant.
"Why don't you ask him about it?" Arthur challanged.
Dax still smiled.
"What to we do sir?" He asked.
"We take out the guard towers. Take them all out at the same time and storm the guard house." Arthur said.
"Sand bag them?" Dax laughed.
"Primative, but I think it will work." Arthur said.
There was a skinny little privet in their company. No one knew how he had survived basic training, but he dug a hole under one of the towers quickly and scurried under it.
"Like a damn rat." Dax laughed as the unit watched the skinny privet set charges under one guard tower, scurry out from his hole, dig a new one under a new tower and do the same thing. It took the better part of an hour before the small privet, now the hero of the unit scurried back to them.
"Here, Sir." The small privet said handing his Captain the detonator.
"I won't hear of it." Arthur said with a laugh as the Privet looked pleased with himself. Covered in dirt and a happy smile on his face.
The men were all holding back laughter as the skinny Privet detonated the bombs.
With a loud bang, the towers fell. Angry guards fled from the guard houses as Arthur and his men lead a decisive strike from their hiding places.
It was remarkable that with only twenty men, they were able to secure over forty guards.
"Sir, the barracks!" Dax shouted as Eames had made for his captured comrades right after shooting the guards dead.
Arthur watched as human shells walked out of the barracks and into the floodlights, from the fallen towers.
"There are more in there that can't move." Dax was saying. "How are we going to get them out?"
"Don't worry about that." Arthur said.
The Captain knew that when the bombs blew, it would alert Cobb. Sure enough, the Major was quick to roll in with jeeps and trucks all filled with men ready to fight.
"What happened to recon?" Cobb asked playfully.
~ "Completely unacceptable!" A gruff Colonel shouted at Arthur.
The Captain stood at attention as the highest ranking officer, Colonel Nathaniel Burch, walked around him. Appraising an officer who had so brazenly stormed a Nazi compound without orders.
"You were ordered to verify the possibility of of a P.O.W camp and report back to your superiors. Not to lead a charge and blow the damn thing up. You actions probably alerted half of Europe as to our current location, not to mention the fact that we are not prepared to handle the wounded men you brought out." He said.
Suddenly, Arthur felt all his actions were less heroic and more foolish.
"Sir, permission to speak." Arthur said solemnly.
"Denied." the gruff Colonel barked at the Captain.
"The only reason you are not in the brig is because of an outstanding recommendation from our excellent leader, General Dwight Eisenhower. That and you managed to prevent the guards from destroying critical information on the German's retreat." The gruff Colonel spoke very quickly as Arthur tried to keep up.
"Now, if this information is accurate, and we think it is, we will need to move out if we are going to cut the retreating army off. We may take Paris ahead of schedule." The gruff Colonel said.
"As for you, I'm made to understand that you understand German and French. A lot of the messages here need translation." He told Arthur.
"Have a lovely night." The Colonel said leaving the Captain with a stack of paper work to translate.
~ Ariadne was shocked as the Red Cross trucks reached a small village. Half of the army was still there and a skinny privet told them the bad news.
Over 500 men had just been freed from a camp and were waiting for aide from the Red Cross. About 300 of them were spread out on the floor of a bombed out chapel with no roof.
All of them too sick to do more then wait to die.
"We are not set up for this level of triage!" Doctor Kikie barked at the skinny Privet. Ariadne was taking vitals. So many of the men were near death. Their skin waxy and pale. They were barely breathing and some were coughing up blood and had bloody stool.
"Tuberculosis and Typhoid." Ariadne said covering her face with a mask.
"Start pushing fluids on the Typhoid." The Doctor ordered as Ariadne prepared a mixture of salt and sugar that would help stop the diarrhea.
"What kind of idiot lets all these men out of a P.O.W. Camp with no support to care for them?" Doctor Kikie barked as his meager medical staff told the worst of their patients to drink the salt and sugar compound.
"Some of them would have died if they had waited another day." Ariadne told the Doctor a few hours later. After the bedding were changed and washed. After the bloody stool had eased. The village woman helped her and the other nurses care for the men.
They brought their meager foods out and helped to nurse the dieing back to life.
"I heard from that skinny privet that our boys will be taking back Paris in a few days." The Doctor said. He was exhausted and resting outside as the nurse hung sheets out to dry.
"That's good. We can take these men there." Ariadne said.
"Who knows what they'll find in Paris." The Doctor said.