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“He wasn’t even that bad.” Another wave of self-loathing rolled over Matthew. “Just an arrogant bastard, nothing more.”
“Then remember that for next time.” Guy gave him a brief smile, a humorless twisting of lips in a face marked by weariness. “He probably wouldn’t have given you anything, anyway. Arrogant bastards usually don’t.”
That evening, by the light of a smoking oil lamp, Matthew tried to write Lily. He hadn’t written her since the day before he’d dropped down in that muddy field a fortnight ago, although it felt like an age, a lifetime lived in days and weeks, sometimes in minutes.
He raked a hand through his hair, his eyes gritty with fatigue, his body grimy with both mud and sweat; he hadn’t had a proper wash since Leicestershire. Although vague rumors had begun circulating that the 508th might be shipped back to England on leave sometime in the next few weeks, Matthew could barely imagine it; England felt like another universe.
And while part of him relished the thought of clean sheets, a hot, or at least a warm, bath, and, most of all, Lily, part of him didn’t want to go. Here in Normandy, as the Allies pressed forward, he was closer to finding his family, or at least finding out what had happened to them. Leaving felt like defeat, a personal one he couldn’t stand.
For a moment, Matthew looked up from his blank page, his gaze unfocused. He wasn’t naïve. He knew it was likely at least some of his family members had died in the war—from bombing, illness, starvation, or simply being killed. It was more than likely.
Rumors, most too vague to be trusted or believed, had started drifting through the rest of the world like vapors of smoke—stories of Jews rounded up in ghettoes, denied basic food, water, and clothing, living in virtual prisons.
Then, later, there had been stories of Jews being shipped east on trains, to populate Poland, or even somewhere more distant. When Matthew had first enlisted, a story had broken in the US newspapers that Jews in Russia and Lithuania were being summarily executed. While the stories had chilled him, they’d always brought a treacherous, shameful relief.
At least it’s not German Jews, Matthew had thought, utterly ashamed of his thinking, yet unable to keep himself from it. They wouldn’t do that to German Jews. Then he remembered the look of savage glee on the stormtrooper’s face as he’d kicked his father to death.
Now a shudder ran through him at the prospect of what might—or might not—await him back in Fraustadt. Had his mother been clever enough to hide Gertie? She’d been such a tiny thing, with her dark eyes and hair. Such a tiny, little slip of a girl, although she’d be sixteen now, practically a woman. Where was she? What had happened to her, to all of them?
He thought of Franz and Arno, mere boys, just twelve and fourteen when Matthew had left, six years ago. They were young men now. Young Jewish men in a country that had chosen to despise them.
Matthew glanced down at the blank page again, and wrote Dear Lily.
He stopped, unable to think what to say next. In the months of their letter writing, neither had ever said very much. Lily had taken him through her days, expressing shy pleasure at small moments—a crocus poking through the shattered bricks of a bombed-out building, a seaman who had been missing, presumed dead, only to be found alive hanging on some wreckage—and Matthew had done his best to communicate about his life, although both the secrecy and monotony had made it difficult.
In the end, though, he didn’t think it mattered. Lily could have written about anything at all and he still would have eagerly devoured her words. Her gentleness shone through even the most mundane of letters, and that was what had drawn him to her in the first place. Sophie’s alluring boldness and charming manner had put Lily’s quiet nature into stark relief; Tom had called her mousy, but Matthew recognized her for what she was. Kind.
Now he pictured her—her brown eyes as soft as pansies, her light brown hair curling about her small, homely face. He could see her slightly crooked front tooth and the freckles on her nose that he didn’t think she liked. He remembered how sweet her kiss had been, hesitant and yielding all at once.
How could he tell her about any of this? When I interrogated a man today, I felt as if I could throttle him with my bare hands. I saw a dead German lying in a field and I thought—“Good”. I want to go home, but I don’t think such a place exists anymore, anywhere. I know this war will end one day, but I’m afraid it never will for me.
With one hand, Matthew crumpled the nearly blank page into a ball and tossed it onto the floor. Then, by the light of the oil lamp, with its greasy smoke curling upwards towards the ceiling, he smoked silently until the flame had gone down, sputtered out, and then was dark.
Chapter Eighteen
July 1944
The beach was a scar. It had been over four weeks since the D-Day landings, and the twisted metal skeletons of wrecked tanks and Jeeps were still strewn across the grimy sands of Utah Beach. Matthew gazed out at the litter of abandoned equipment and vehicles, and then at the metal cages that zigzagged across the hills and held thousands of German prisoners. Here were the vestiges of victory, the price of war. He looked at it all and he did not know whether to feel triumphant or defeated.
He’d been rattling in the back of a truck for several hours, across ravaged countryside towards the beaches that had borne the brunt of the assault, and then back to England. The rumors had been true, and the 508th were being shipped back to be refreshed and restocked. From the two thousand that had dropped into France just over a month ago, only a thousand remained.
In the last few weeks, as the 508th had reorganized and continued operations to secure the peninsula, Matthew had interrogated dozens more prisoners, most of them tripping over their words in their eagerness to be helpful to the Allies. It had become painfully clear to the Axis forces that they were losing, and the average German soldier wanted only to go home.
One medic had drawn Matthew a map of all of Normandy, with the positions of German forces and weaponry. Another officer had been able to give approximate numbers of all the troops positioned in northern France. While Matthew was glad of the information, it hadn’t assuaged the sense of vengeance he’d felt burning through him when he let it. At least he’d learned to hide the strength of his feeling; he’d never lost his composure with another POW the way he had with Hahn. He’d never written Lily, either.
Now he glanced at all the prisoners in their cages waiting to be processed and he wondered who they were. His countrymen, certainly, and some might be former school mates, friends, neighbors. How many of the blond, blue-eyed boys he’d gone to the gymnasium with had ended up as Nazis? Where were they now—here?
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p; At least this distant curiosity was better than the rage he’d first struggled with, and that he knew others had felt. He’d heard stories, over the last few weeks, of revenge enacted by his fellow soldiers. A division of paratroopers had massacred thirty captured Wehrmacht officers in an abandoned village. A private had shot two Germans in the head after they’d surrendered, and no one had said a word.
Matthew had heard such stories, and he’d felt pity for both the soldier and the captive, the killer and the killed. War was grim, grimmer than he even realized, or wanted to think about, or write to Lily.
And yet he wanted, needed, to go back to England and see Lily, and yet he was afraid to do so. Afraid of what she might see in him, what was surely growing in him like a canker.
The beach was strangely quiet, almost peaceful, as Matthew walked across it towards the tank landing ship that was taking the 508th to Southampton. He’d been given five days’ leave and he intended to spend them in London, before he had to report back to duty in Nottingham.
He had no idea what the rest of the war held for him, if he would be put on active duty in England, interrogating prisoners of war there, or if he would go with the 508th back to France, into Germany and the end of the war. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure what he wanted, and then he felt a curdling rush of shame that he could have been conflicted for a moment. He had to get back to Fraustadt. He had to find his family.
