Hello everyone! The train heist finally arrives - I hope it was worth the wait. :-)
This is a short chapter, but with a lot of historical information, so there will be lots of notes below.
As always, a great, big, enormous thank you to everyone who has followed, read and/or reviewed. You are awesome, and deserve pie.
Chapter 19 - April 9, 1944 - Orval Abbey, Belgium
The chapel was small, but high-ceilinged - tan sandstone that caught the golden evening light. Stevie sat in the back with her feet on the pew, knees pulled up. Her sketchbook was open, and the soft scratching of her pencil filled the otherwise silent space. For a while, Dernier had been in the chapel with her, praying his rosary in a soft whisper close to the tabernacle.
"Does it help?" she had asked him, as he left.
"A little."
She wasn't sure how long she had been there when Bucky came in, crossing himself briefly before he sat beside her, leaning over to see what she was drawing.
"So, how many have you gotten?" he asked.
"Forty eight," she said. Forty eight of the hundred-sixty-two. Before she had left the factory, before she blew it up to make a grave for them, she had looked each man in the face. So that she could do this. So that she could remember them.
Bucky nodded, and waited in silence a few more moments.
"You can cry, you know," he said. "I won't tell anyone."
"I'm not going to cry for them," she responded sharply. "I'm going to avenge them."
His green eyes were serious. "What do you need?" He asked. "What can I do?"
Stevie looked down at the faces in her book. "I...just talk to me. About something...anything that isn't...this."
"Well, as it happens," There was a rustling of paper as Bucky pulled something from his pocket. "I have some reading material I've been meaning to catch up on."
Stevie scooted around so they could sit back to back, and Bucky began to read Action Comics #64. He did all the voices, the sound effects, the descriptions, just like he had when they were kids. And if he heard Stevie sniffling from time to time, he didn't mention it.
April 14, 1944
Stevie slapped a copy of De Vrijschutter down on a table in front of Lieutenant Falsworth, who paused with his morning cup of tea halfway to his mouth.
"Have you seen this?" She asked.
"Hm?"
She pointed at an article, written in Flemish "The monks in the printing room told me what it says. The Germans are sending Jews to camps in the East and killing them - hundreds of thousands, at least."
Falsworth set his cup down with a little clink.
"You were with intelligence," Stevie continued. "Did you know about this?"
"Yes." In Falsworth's dark eyes, there was something that might have been...shame? Regret? He looked out of one of the refectory's narrow windows at the ruins of the old chapel down the hill, stained gray with smoke.
Stevie nodded. "We'll have to talk to the Colonel immediately, plan an extraction - "
"Captain," Falsworth interrupted. "I know you hate being told that things are impossible…"
"Colonel Phillips told me the same thing before I went in to the rescue you Lieutenant," she said.
"True," he responded. "But this is different. This wouldn't be a few hundred soldiers walking a few hours to safety. You would have to get several thousand people, most in horrible physical condition, out of the middle of occupied Poland."
Stevie looked away. There had to be some way to save them. Something she could do.
"I'm sorry, Captain," Falsworth said, touching her hand softly. "There are some things even you can't fix."
"No," she said.
The despair that she had felt in the factory, that she had buried inside herself, hardened within her into a hot coal of anger. She reclaimed the newspaper, rolling it up into a tube.
"There's a way. We can save some of them." She tapped the newspaper briskly against the table. "Get the others, Lieutenant. Strategy session in five."
April 17, 1944 - Boortmeerbeek, Belgium
Once again, Stevie waited on her motorcycle. This time, it was Bucky on the seat behind her - he had absolutely refused to go along with the plan any other way, even when she had accused him of being insubordinate.
"You can take me along on the bike, or you can send me back to the Colonel in a sack," he had said.
She had been sorely tempted to take him up on that.
It was hard to see the track from where they were hidden behind a large yew hedge, but they could hear the train rumbling like distant thunder, and soon the glow of its lights cut through the night, silvering the leaves.
"Alright," she said. "You jump first. I jump second - "
"Get to the engineer, stop the train," he continued. "You only went over it forty-seven times."
His arms were wrapped around her waist, strong and solid.
"Well then, let's get on with it," she said.
The train rushed past them, the sound of it hitting them like a physical wall. It was all freight cars, Stevie saw. No passenger cars. They were stuffing people in there like...like cattle. Like cargo. She pulled out onto the gravel track that ran beside the tracks and opened the throttle, matching the train's speed. A guard on the footboard between two cars saw them and began to cry out, and Bucky leapt on him like a panther. A moment later, Stevie sprang from the bike herself, catching the edge of the car's roof and pulling herself up as the motorcycle spun out on the gravel below.
She ran in a half-crouch along the swaying train cars, smoke in her face, Bucky at her heels, jumping the gaps between cars with hardly a thought until they reached the locomotive and swung in through the windows. There was a guard on the footplate, but Stevie knocked him down with a brisk uppercut. In the fiendishly hot cab, two sooty men were looking at her with surprise.
"Stop this train," she said in French.
The engine driver burst into a wide grin beneath his grey mustache.
"Oui, madam!"
As the train was screeching to a halt, the Howling Commandos rushed out of hiding to engage the guards. Stevie and Bucky leapt to join them, Bucky picking off guards with his pistol, Stevie striking out with her shield at any who got close. It was over in less than a minute.
The engineers brought out crowbars to help the Commandos break open the cars - but Stevie didn't need them. She tore the bolts off with her hands, letting the other Commandos help the passengers out as she moved from car to car.
"Courez!" She called to the prisoners as they staggered from the train, clinging to each other, staring at the Commandos with a mixture of wonder and fear. "N'arrêtez pas! Courez!"
The Commandos regrouped on a hill near the railway - all but Dernier and Jones, who were setting charges under the train cars. The prisoners were dispersing in all directions, going to ground like fleeing hares.
"Be honest with me, Lieutenant," Stevie asked. "How many of them will make it?"
"Of the six hundred odd here," Falsworth said. "Maybe half. Maybe less."
Stevie nodded.
"But they have a fighting chance," he continued. "And that's more than they had before."
"Well then, that'll have to do," Stevie said. "For now."
Dernier and Jones had finished and were coming up the slope, unrolling a wire behind them.
"All done, Captain!" Jones said, white teeth shining in a wide grin. Stevie was happy to see him smile again after the horrible day at the factory.
I hope the war doesn't kill that smile.
"You know, I've been told that these days the Germans can repair a damaged rail line within hours," she said, raising an eyebrow at the two men.
"Hmm," Jones replied, as Dernier hooked the wire up to a detonator. "Is that so?" He elbowed Dernier lightly, and the older man, with a chuckle, pressed the button.
The train lifted off the rails, bucking and twisting like a massive serpent, before crashing back onto the twisted wreckage of the track. The prisoners, who had crouched in fright at the explosion, began to cheer.
"We'll just have to see how those bastards like that," Jones said.
"Alright, fellas," Stevie said. "Let's get out of here."
Stevie never lets anything keep her down for long. Like this chapter? Hate it? Want to correct my train terminology or French vocabulary? Let me know in a review! And now - historical notes time!
This chapter is based on an incident called "The Attack on the 20th Convoy", in which a train bound for Auschwitz was stopped by three young members of the Belgian Resistance. In an insane act of derring-do, the students - armed with one pistol between them - used a red lantern to mimic a danger signal and stop the train. They then opened one car, freeing 17 prisoners. The three students were named Youra Livchitz, Jean Franklemon and Robert Maistriau. Youra was eventually captured and executed, but the other two survived the war. Welcome to the Historic BAMF's Club, gentlemen. Any time you feel like a situation is hopeless, remember that three boys went up against actual Nazis armed with one pistol and a lamp - and succeeded.
(The engine driver was also sympathetic to the cause, and even after the attack he drove the train as slowly as he could, enabling at least 200 more prisoners to jump from the cars - of whom about half were eventually recaptured.)
De Vrijschutter was a real underground newspaper, though not published at Orval Abbey, and it really did report on Nazi death camps as early as 1942. In 1943, another newspaper, Front de l'Indépendance, sent a correspondent to gather information about the camps - another Historic BAMF named Victor Martin. He went to Auschwitz as a "researcher" and saw the crematoria there before being arrested. He escaped and reported his findings to the Resistance.
So why didn't the Allies do anything about Auschwitz and the other camps? For the reasons Falsworth gave Stevie in this chapter. Sadly, liberating the camps just wasn't possible until the Allies actually took the surrounding area.
Enough action - it's time for some fluff. Next chapter - Stevie learns to dance!