window frames, curtains, roof tiles, and even more bricks.
We hurried to the doorway. Frank was cowering behind a plant pot, his eyes wide, trembling. Debris was still falling from the sky, including a huge metal cylinder that looked like an old-fashioned kitchen stove. It bounced and bounded over the cobbles and slammed into an office doorway across the street.
“Jesus,” said Corporal Little, who never blasphemed. “What the hell was that?”
I looked down toward Schildersstraat. Through the gradually clearing smoke, I could see that No. 71 had been completely demolished, along with three or four houses on other side. The whole intersection had been reduced to mountains of rubble, and bodies were lying everywhere—a young woman in a black coat, with an overturned baby carriage—an elderly couple whose heads had both been blown off—six or seven nuns who must have been walking on the opposite side of the street, lying on top of each other like dead pigeons. The cobbles were strewn with body parts and blown-apart sofas and a black Citroën taxi that looked like some surrealistic panther standing on its hind legs. All of the windows within a hundred-yard radius had been blown out, and in some houses, fires were blazing.
I walked slowly down the street and stood on the edge of the crater that had been No. 71. The crater was almost twenty feet deep, as if the house had been hit by a meteor. I was still deaf from the double-blast, so it was like walking through a silent movie, with the rain falling, and people running in all directions.
I turned around. Corporal Little had been following me, with Frank. He said something, but I couldn’t hear what it was, and then he shrugged. I knew what he was trying to tell me, though. If there had been Screechers hiding in the attic, they had been obliterated, along with the rest of the house, and the young girl’s grandfather, and the young girl herself, with her white linen cap and her mop.
For the first time since we had landed in Normandy, I felt that I wasn’t the sole representative of the Angel of Death.
I’ll Be Seeing You
“So what’s the plan now, sir?” asked Corporal Little.
“God knows,” I told him. I was still half-deaf.
We were sitting in one of the dank stone alcoves in De Cluyse cafe on Oude Koornmarkt, eating chicken
waterzooi
and potatoes. The café was converted from a thirteenth-century cellar, and it was lit only by candles in small glass jelly-jars. It was so cold that we were both wearing our overcoats and mittens, and our breath was smoking. Frank was lying under the table, making disgusting noises with a pork knuckle.
“I mean, supposing those other two Screechers weren’t hiding in that building at all? We only have that Hauser guy’s word for it, after all.”
“Well, you’re absolutely right, Henry, but it’s going to take days to clear all that rubble, and even then we may not know for sure.”
“What do you reckon it was? Gas main?”
I shrugged and said nothing. But I had guessed what it was, the instant I had heard that distinctive double-bang. The house in Schildersstraat had been hit by the first German V-2 to strike the center of Antwerp. The first bang was a sonic boom, as the rocket came out of thesky at over three times the speed of sound. The second was over a ton of high explosive.
Six days before a V-2 had hit the village of Brasschaat, about eight kilometers to the northeast of Antwerp, and all of us officers in 101 Counterintelligence Detachment had been briefed that this was probably a “range-finding” shot, with more V-2s to follow.
The stovelike object that had bounced along the street had confirmed it for me. It was the rocket’s combustion chamber, which weighed over six hundred kilos and almost always survived the explosion.
I lifted up a scraggy piece of chicken leg on the end of my fork, with a shred of wet leek hanging off it. “What do you think they fed this on? Newspaper?”
A second V-2
We hurried to the doorway. Frank was cowering behind a plant pot, his eyes wide, trembling. Debris was still falling from the sky, including a huge metal cylinder that looked like an old-fashioned kitchen stove. It bounced and bounded over the cobbles and slammed into an office doorway across the street.
“Jesus,” said Corporal Little, who never blasphemed. “What the hell was that?”
I looked down toward Schildersstraat. Through the gradually clearing smoke, I could see that No. 71 had been completely demolished, along with three or four houses on other side. The whole intersection had been reduced to mountains of rubble, and bodies were lying everywhere—a young woman in a black coat, with an overturned baby carriage—an elderly couple whose heads had both been blown off—six or seven nuns who must have been walking on the opposite side of the street, lying on top of each other like dead pigeons. The cobbles were strewn with body parts and blown-apart sofas and a black Citroën taxi that looked like some surrealistic panther standing on its hind legs. All of the windows within a hundred-yard radius had been blown out, and in some houses, fires were blazing.
I walked slowly down the street and stood on the edge of the crater that had been No. 71. The crater was almost twenty feet deep, as if the house had been hit by a meteor. I was still deaf from the double-blast, so it was like walking through a silent movie, with the rain falling, and people running in all directions.
I turned around. Corporal Little had been following me, with Frank. He said something, but I couldn’t hear what it was, and then he shrugged. I knew what he was trying to tell me, though. If there had been Screechers hiding in the attic, they had been obliterated, along with the rest of the house, and the young girl’s grandfather, and the young girl herself, with her white linen cap and her mop.
For the first time since we had landed in Normandy, I felt that I wasn’t the sole representative of the Angel of Death.
I’ll Be Seeing You
“So what’s the plan now, sir?” asked Corporal Little.
“God knows,” I told him. I was still half-deaf.
We were sitting in one of the dank stone alcoves in De Cluyse cafe on Oude Koornmarkt, eating chicken
waterzooi
and potatoes. The café was converted from a thirteenth-century cellar, and it was lit only by candles in small glass jelly-jars. It was so cold that we were both wearing our overcoats and mittens, and our breath was smoking. Frank was lying under the table, making disgusting noises with a pork knuckle.
“I mean, supposing those other two Screechers weren’t hiding in that building at all? We only have that Hauser guy’s word for it, after all.”
“Well, you’re absolutely right, Henry, but it’s going to take days to clear all that rubble, and even then we may not know for sure.”
“What do you reckon it was? Gas main?”
I shrugged and said nothing. But I had guessed what it was, the instant I had heard that distinctive double-bang. The house in Schildersstraat had been hit by the first German V-2 to strike the center of Antwerp. The first bang was a sonic boom, as the rocket came out of thesky at over three times the speed of sound. The second was over a ton of high explosive.
Six days before a V-2 had hit the village of Brasschaat, about eight kilometers to the northeast of Antwerp, and all of us officers in 101 Counterintelligence Detachment had been briefed that this was probably a “range-finding” shot, with more V-2s to follow.
The stovelike object that had bounced along the street had confirmed it for me. It was the rocket’s combustion chamber, which weighed over six hundred kilos and almost always survived the explosion.
I lifted up a scraggy piece of chicken leg on the end of my fork, with a shred of wet leek hanging off it. “What do you think they fed this on? Newspaper?”
A second V-2
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