Resistance Read Online Free PDF Page A

hesitated.
    Foolish, he thought, lying on the frozen ground, these moral quandaries. Hadn't there been thousands of men making love that night, simply to say they were alive?
    He imagined his hand sliding up Stella's bare leg, under the parachute skirt.
    Was it possible there were people on the ground when he gave the order to jettison the bomb load? It looked like farmland, endless fields, but the cloud cover was so thick he couldn't really tell, except when he came in low, and saw patches of field. The bombardier said it was just field. There wouldn't be people on frozen fields in December. Couldn't be.
    He should have kept one canteen.
    He drifted, dreamed of parachute silk. He was unwinding a woman and she was smiling, looking at him. He was on his knees, unwinding, but there was so much silk, endless layers …
    He came to sharply. He had heard something, he was sure of it. Footsteps. Not in the dream.
    He propped himself up, lay perfectly still. The sound was faint, not a crackle, but a soft step. There. He heard it again. Coming toward him from the pasture. He could see no one through the trees.
    He looked around quickly, searching for cover. If he could hide, he could see who the footsteps belonged to before revealing himself. There was a tangle of brambles twenty feet away. It was dark enough that he couldn't see inside it. He dragged himself as fast as he dared, not wanting to make any noise. The brambles were hard, thorny. He turned, went in flat on his belly.
    No voices. Only one set of footsteps.
    Closer now. Definitely closer.
    He wondered if he should pray. They joked about it; they called it foxhole religion. Men long out of practice, straining to remember words, fragments, sentences, get it right.
    He thought he saw a figure.
    The Focke-Wulfs were everywhere. The fight field was exploding, smoking. A B-17, cut in half by flak, the nose spinning, tumbling out of control, the tail floating, drifting as in flight, and in the tail, the gunner was still firing …
    Ekberg screamed. His hands were frozen to the guns. The screaming of the men and the screaming of the plane. The noise, deafening, Vibrating, was in the head, in the bones.
    Was it possible, going home across the Channel, nearly out of fuel, to bounce the waves and make it? Peterson had claimed it.
    A German had miscalculated the clearance, collided with a bomber. The fighter cartwheeled, plummeted, away from them toward the ground.
    FWs at twelve o'clock. Count the parachutes. Where did the gunner's dick go? Parachute silk stained with blood. It was Frances who raised him, and he said goodbye to Matt. He was on his knees now, unwinding a woman, and she was smiling up at him. But there were layers, endless layers …
    When the boy returned to the clearing, there were fewer people, an impending sense that soon the Germans would be there. No one wanted to be near the plane when the Germans discovered it. Jean had gone back to the school for his coat and dinner sack and had come on foot this time, not wanting a bicycle, however well hidden, to be traced to him. If he were caught in the wood, trying to find or help the Americans who had fled the plane, he would be sent away to the camps. He was sure of that.
    He slipped into the wood unnoticed, at the point that he had memorized. In the pockets of his jacket, he had hidden bread and cheese and a small bottle he filled with water. The word had gone out that all children were to return to their lessons at once; those who did not would be punished. He could imagine the round red face of Monsieur Dauvin, his teacher, his skin becoming even more blotchy with his fury when he noticed Jean's vacant desk. He had told Marcel to say that he was sick, but he knew such a lie soon would be found out and would probably compound his punishment. He ought to have said nothing to Marcel, for now Marcel, too, would be caned.
    He knew the wood well. He doubted any boy in Dela-haut knew it better. His own house, his father's