Sector Eleven

The farmhouse had served as a battalion post for three days before it was abandoned; whoever left did so in haste. A half-eaten meal of sausages and cheese remained on the table. Grease-pencil markings sprawled across maps on the wall. Two bicycles stood by the door. Under the table, an officer's spare boots lurked. A cup of coffee sat half-drunk and cold.

On the wooden desk, a wire ran out through a broken shutter into the night. A field telephone.

Lieutenant Édouard Moreau had been there alone. Separated from his unit, his men deserted when German aeroplanes bombed their regiment to pieces. They couldn't stand it any longer. There were no orders, no commands. He had tried to rally them, but they were terrified. He found the farmhouse and waited. No one came. Time crawled by. Six hours.

He heard Panzers rolling down the wheat fields. German soldiers crossed the golden wheat in grey uniforms. The tanks rolled onto the roads, heavier, stiffer—metal monsters breathing from the mechanical depths of whatever German hell had birthed them. Moving south and in every direction, they sounded like machinery that knew its path.

Edouard's company had dissolved four days ago when the orders from Paris never came. He couldn't ask his men to hold a position that was already lost.

He cranked the field telephone. Any orders from General Headquarters that would make sense. Someone had to answer. It was static for a long time. The sounds of German infantry and their shouts came closer. Much closer. He breathed, glancing at the window, trying to hide in the shadows so they wouldn't see him. A connection. A final click.

Relief washed over him.

A voice spoke urgently, sharply.

'This is Lieutenant Jean Moreau, command post, sector eleven at Verdun. Who's on the line?'

Edouard's grip tightened on the receiver. 'Lieutenant Moreau,' he nearly smirked. 'This is Lieutenant Édouard Moreau, 47th Regiment. Does Paris have new orders? Report, now.'

'Moreau?' the voice crackled. 'Too many Moreaus in the army. At least there aren't many Jacques.' Edouard chuckled, surprised by the humour from Headquarters. 'Bad line. Wrong exchange. What's your situation?'

'The Germans broke through,' Edouard said. 'My unit shattered.' The voice sighed from the phone, as if understanding Edouard's frustration. 'No orders. The roads are full of soldiers and civilians, all moving south. It's not a retreat.' He paused. 'It's a flood.'

'Which direction? Where are they coming from now?' The voice asked.

'From the north and east, through Belgium,' Edouard said, his voice hurried. 'Through the Ardennes—'

'The Ardennes?' The voice sharpened. 'No armour makes it through that forest. You must mean the Argonne—'

'No. The Ardennes. They've brought tanks through the forest.'

The voice laughed. 'Tanks? How many?'

'Hundreds,' Edouard said coldly. 'Columns moving forty miles a day, coordinated with dive bombers. By the time the tanks arrive, nothing is left to resist them. I need orders, sir.'

Silence. Much longer this time.

'Hundreds?' Flat. Then, clipped: 'Who's commanding? How are these Germans advancing when we hold the Somme and the Marne? What are Foch and Joffre saying?'

Edouard stopped. For a second, he wondered if he was talking across centuries. Or speaking to the Devil on the phone.

'Joffre's been out since 1916,' he said. 'He's dead. So is Foch.'

The voice came back faster. 'It's 1916 now. Joffre commands. Where is Pétain?'

Édouard felt history moving backwards. 'Who did you say you were, and what year is it for you?'

The voice snapped. 'Lieutenant Jean Moreau, 22nd Infantry, Sector Eleven, Verdun. What do you mean Joffre hasn't commanded since 1916? What's the date where you are?'

Edouard breathed. 'June 12th.' He paused. And said the year.

1940.

The line hissed. 'Say that again.'

'1940.'

Silence. Then Jean said, slowly, 'That's twenty-four years from my time.' He pressed sceptically, 'Do you take me for a fool? Are you a German spy making this up?'

'I could say the same to you, Lieutenant.'

Silence pressed on. Then Jean breathed into the telephone. 'At least you sound French. Otherwise, you wouldn't be challenging me.' A pause. 'The war. Did it—'

'It ended,' Edouard said. 'Two years after 1916. We won, but at enormous cost.' Quieter: 'The Germans are back.'

A soft chuckle. 'They never give up, do they? Through the Ardennes.'

'Yes.'

'In 1940?'

'Yes.'

'Who commands now? If not Joffre.'

'Gamelin commanded. He was sacked two weeks ago. Paris is nearly lost. The government has fled to Bordeaux.'

'Gamelin?' A confused pause. 'The Government fled to Bordeaux? Clemenceau would never allow that. And Gamelin—the staff colonel on Joffre's headquarters?'

'He rose after the war. Commander-in-Chief. Now it's Weygand.'

Jean said nothing for a long time. Edouard could imagine his thoughts. France had put in charge men who spent the last war behind desks. They ate fine duck and pastries while others starved in the trenches. Shielded from horror. The fighting men of Jean's generation perished at Verdun and the Somme. Those who lost the will to fight took their place.

'Cowards,' Jean said. 'They only dined on food we could dream of, eating grapes and cheese with wine from Bordeaux while the rest had to drink their own piss to survive.' Edouard heard a spit. 'And you tell me Weygand commands the army now?'

'Weygand,' Jean said, processing. 'Foch's chief of staff. If anyone can hold the army, he can-'

Edouard breathed.

Jean heard it. 'What? Tell me.'

'He couldn't stop it either. He said there were no ships to evacuate to Algeria. He refused every option.' Anger in his voice. 'He gave up.'

'Since when does Foch's Chief of Staff surrender to the Germans? A lie,' Jean said.

'Weygand gave up.'

'And Pétain,' Jean's voice crackled, hope rising when he said it. Edouard had lost hope in every one of France's commanders. Even Pétain. The man who saved France at Verdun against the German onslaught. 'Pétain is here—he's holding Verdun. He'll have a role, surely if Pétain has command—'

'Pétain isn't commanding the army, Lieutenant.'

'Then where is he? At the front? The border?'

'He fled with the government.'

'Doing what?'

'Negotiating with the Germans for peace.'

The silence after that was the longest. Outside, Germans crossed the fields in droves, horses and numbers Edouard could not describe. Worst of all, they ignored the farmhouse entirely. They hadn't even bothered to come inside.

'Then Pétain betrayed us,' Jean said quietly. 'The idiots won after all.'

'Never mind that,' Jean said.

'Where are you from?' His voice had changed. Still an officer's voice, but something deeper moving underneath. Curiosity.

'Lyon.' Edouard had forgotten where he had come from weeks after he had been dispatched. Lyon was a memory to him now. The Germans had taken over everything. Maybe even as far as Lyon.

'Which department?'

Edouard answered. Jean's breath came harder.

'I was born there. That street—I'd recognise it any time of day.' He stopped. 'How old are you?'

'Thirty-one.'

'I'm twenty-six. That can't be...' Jean's voice trailed off.

'There's a woman,' Jean said slowly, as if approaching something fragile. 'In Lyon. My wife. Hélène. Do you know her?'

'I know.'

'How?' Straight through. Demanding.

'She keeps a tin box,' Edouard said, his breath shaking. 'On the shelf above the kitchen window. Your letters...Jean. They're in it. Every single one from the war.'

Jean paused. 'You speak as if I'm dead already.'

'You are.'

Jean said nothing.

'Hélène—my mother. She dated all your letters in her own hand. Not the date you wrote them—the date she received them. She would know when they arrived.'

'And she didn't read them?'

'She did. And she waited for you.'

'Describe the box.'

'I bought it at the market in Indochina when I travelled there,' Jean's voice quieted. 'An elaborate red box, full of designs I couldn't fathom. I gave it to her as a treasured memory. I told her to put things in it. I didn't say what.'

'She chose letters.'

'Yes.' Jean's voice choked. Wonder and grief arrive at once. 'She would.'

'Who are you?'

'I think you already know.'

'Tell me.'

'My mother is Hélène Moreau. She was going to tell you of her pregnancy when you returned. Saving it for your next leave—for the kitchen table.' Barely. 'She never got the chance.'

The line crackled.

'I knew she was going to tell me something,' Jean said. 'I thought a ring.' He stopped. 'A boy?'

'Yes.'

'You're that boy, aren't you?'

Edouard said nothing.

'Is Hélène happy? Does she remember me?'

Edouard thought about his mother the day the war was announced. She had roared with tears of sadness, crying and threatening to commit suicide that day. She had lost one husband. She couldn't bear to lose another son. Édouard had to leave because the army needed men to fight. She had then slammed the door as he left.

'She made a good life,' he said. 'But it cost her everything. She never remarried.'

'She didn't remarry?'

'She always remembered you.'

'Good.' A pause. 'What is his name? The boy?'

'Edouard.'

'Edouard.' His father said his name. 'That's you, isn't it?'

'It is.'

'Her father's name,' Jean said quietly. 'Of course. The old man could never stop haunting me in my dreams.'

'I need to tell you something,' Edouard said. 'About sector eleven. You'll all die. Request a transfer—get away from there before—'

'Before July,' Jean said.

'You must.'

'I have eighty men in my section,' Jean rasped. 'If I leave, what happens to my men? On my left? Their left? You pull one stone from this fortress and the whole thing falls, and we have the Germans marching to Paris. These men will not see the next sunrise if I leave them. They have sons and daughters too.'

'I'm asking you to live—'

'You're asking me to abandon my men. Could you have abandoned yours?'

Edouard thought of his regiment—proud enough when the war had started, fled when the Germans came. It had been too much for them.

'I don't think so.'

'Then you understand.'

'But you're my father,' Edouard protested. His voice broke slightly. 'I have never spoken to you. I grew up with a photograph and a tin box of letters and Mother telling me stories—'

'Edouard.' His father's voice in his ears. For the first time.

'You will not cry.' The authority of a man who had refused to break for months in conditions designed to break men. 'Not when the men in my section hold the same dream every night. They do not cry because the man beside them needs them standing. That is the only reason.'

A pause. 'I want to say something. I don't know what God has done on this line tonight. But I am glad of it.'

Then Jean's voice went harder. The pride of a soldier of France. 'If the Germans take France, you will never accept it. Resist. Make every day of occupation cost them. We once ruled Europe—Europe trembled when the Emperor ruled us. And now, because of old men in chateaux afraid of radios, because of generals who haven't looked at a new map since the last war, because Pétain, our Pétain—'

He stopped himself. His father had invoked God, Napoleon and the honour of France. Then set it all aside because his son was on the telephone. In France, the calls for peace had been more prominent, and war had been shamed. And yet here was Jean—a man who had never embraced defeat.

'What do you look like?' Jean asked.

Edouard let out a surprised laugh. 'What?'

'Your mother or me? Or that old grandad of yours, he's still a right old bastard.'

'The old bastard still misses you. Insults you in his sleep.'

A harsh laugh came through the telephone.

'I have her nose,' Edouard said. 'Your jaw, apparently. And Grandfather's eyebrows.'

'My jaw is nothing special. And why in God's name did you get his eyebrows? The man looks like a plank with a fish attached! Your mother's eyes were perfect.'

'She seemed to think otherwise.'

Jean laughed harder. Unguarded and warm—the laugh of a man who had seen misery and death at Verdun. The laugh Edouard would remember for the rest of his life.

'I am already dead,' Jean said. Switching from laughter to plain logic without drama. 'You told me. July 1916. It's May already, and it's already cold here. No warmth. The only question is whether it meant anything.'

'It meant something—'

'You are here. Thirty-one years old and alive. My flesh and blood. If you survived, my death was worth it.'

'No—'

'I am a dead man, Edouard. You can't change what is written.' Edouard could feel the sadness coming through. 'And those men? Pierre dreams of his wife every night, Robert misses his girlfriend, and Fremont wishes he could see his baby. They're freezing to death while those Germans launch gas attacks after us, shell us in the morning too.'

'And even if you saved me, would it be worth it? In this wretched war, I'd still end up buried as a corpse in the mud. My bones picked clean by rats.'

'But—'

'It is my final order.'

'And I will meet you in Heaven—you have my word. And your children,' the warmth returned. 'I'll come as a ghost to haunt them, but I will protect them. The dead keep their promises.'

'I cannot hug you,' Jean said. 'I'm sorry I was not there for you. You deserved better.'

'It wasn't your fault—'

'Let me say it.'

'I am your father, and you will heed my command.'

'Yes.'

'Survive. Get the Germans out of France, however long it takes. Don't let my line die. Have children, and tell them about me—not the name on the gravestone. Me.' His voice echoed. 'Tell them I laughed, I travelled, that there was a corporal who sang badly when the shelling got heavy and we laughed, tell them there was a boy of nineteen who carried a photograph of his dog that had died in the trenches, tell them I was happy before all this. I had a future. I was happy.'

'I'll tell them.'

'Bring them to Verdun. Bring Hélène—I bet she's still as beautiful as the day I married her. Tell her you talked to me. I am proud of her. Proud of the brave son that carries my legacy. That I will wait for her in Heaven.'

'Bring her to sector eleven. Make her stand.'

'And?'

'She will know. And I will know.'

'I'll bring her.'

'I will leave you a letter tonight when I go back to my men. I'll write it, seal it in oilskin, and bury it deep in sector eleven. Where the shells haven't reached.'

'Father—'

'When France is free, ask for my name. Ask where Sector Eleven was. Where Lieutenant Jean Moreau stood. And then look.' A breath. 'You'll find it, if you know me well enough to think like me.'

'I know you,' Edouard said. Without hesitation.

'Good. That letter is for Hélène. She needs to know I found out—that I didn't go without knowing about you. Give it to her and let her be. She'll want that.'

'I know. She always liked to receive things privately.'

'Of course you know. She raised a fine son.' A pause. 'At least she wasn't your grandmother. You'd have hated her guts. She was an old battle-axe for a reason.'

The shellfire on Jean's end shifted—a loud boom, voices screaming, rumbling through the telephone. A runner's voice, whistles blowing. 'As for me,'

'I go to God.' The most peaceful thing Edouard had ever heard. 'Bring your family to sector eleven. Bring your wife, if you have one. Bring Hélène. She will know. I will know.'

A pause.

'And Edouard?'

'Yes, father?' He had longed to say those words for a long time.

'Don't let the Germans touch that letter. Or I swear I'll drag them to the depths of hell for it.'

'They won't touch it.'

'Good.'

Underneath the static and shellfire, Jean said one last thing. 'I'm glad it was you. My death was worth something in the end.'

Edouard couldn't believe it—that he had argued and wept to a ghost on a telephone line in an abandoned farmhouse, long after any sensible man would have gone south and fled.

'Tell Hélène I miss her quiches.'

'And eat something. A soldier of France shouldn't starve. I will keep my promise, even dead, I'll come to see you and your children. We'll meet in the Kingdom of God, Edouard.'

'Don't try to change history. If I'm fated, then that is fate.'

'I never got to see you. I always stared at your photo when I was small—'

'Well, you've got to talk with me.' A loud boom crackled. 'But don't be stupid! Now eat and leave me alone, Edouard! You are mine. Now go!'

'Father—'

The line went dead.

Edouard sat for a very long time. He thought about all the stories his mother had told him about Jean Moreau. Countless hours staring at photographs, wondering if his father would come from the dead and touch him. He thought about all the conversations they could have had, and wondered about his mother and grandfather. He breathed deeply. He would find the letter. However long it took.

He put the telephone down. The food was still there. Not rotten. He ate all of it. Because his father told him to.

He picked up his pack. At the door, he stopped. The Germans hadn't bothered with the farmhouse anyway. They would be near Paris soon. He turned back to stare at the telephone on the desk. The wire running out through the broken shutter into the dark.

'I'll find it,' he said. To the wire. To the ground at sector eleven, a hundred kilometres away at Verdun. 'And no damn German will touch it.'

He slammed the door and walked out through the flattened gold fields.

He would go south.