“What? But…” Tom sputtered as he shook his head. “Why did you never tell me? Or anyone?”
“Because of the reaction you just had.”
“Why should I believe you?” Tom asked, sounding belligerent, and Matthew sighed. Another reason he had kept his identity unknown. Those born in Germany had been advised to by their instructing officers. People were suspicious, and stupid.
“Because I was just shot at by three German soldiers,” he answered. “And I threw a grenade at them.”
“Even so—”
“Don’t believe me, then,” Matthew cut across him. “But we’re going to be gutted like two fish out here if we don’t keep moving and find the rest of our platoon. Let’s keep walking, Lieutenant.”
Silently, looking aggrieved and still suspicious, Tom fell into step beside him. It was one of those absurd twists of fate that Tom Reese, of all people, should be the first man he found here. Despite the time they’d spent together in London, Matthew didn’t think Tom would call him his friend, and nor would he call him his.
When he’d first encountered him on the ship over, Matthew had seen the advantages of aligning himself with Tom’s obvious Americanness. He was an utterly open book, simple, really, in his brash way. To Matthew, Tom Reese seemed entirely American—blond, brawny, with his loud laugh and wide smile, and an “aw shucks” manner that charmed some and annoyed others. If Matthew stayed in his shadow, his own otherness might be noticed but not questioned.
But he and Tom had never been natural allies. Tom didn’t understand him and had, on some level, always distrusted him, while Matthew had struggled with a weary disdain for Tom’s easy shallowness, sometimes swallowed by a shameful envy for the simplicity of his life—a farm in Minnesota, parents who were a bit taciturn and stern, an older brother who had outshone Tom on too many occasions. Such little problems; to Matthew, worrying about such things felt like a luxury, but he knew that wasn’t fair.
Still, he and Tom had never truly been close, no matter their relationship with Sophie and Lily, who were as different from each other as they were. Yet now they were here, and at least for the immediate future they had to work together. Their very lives were at risk.
“Is West like you?” Tom asked after about fifteen minutes of walking in silence, the only sound the rustle of their footsteps on the fallen pine needles.
“Yes.” Guy West was another Ritchie’s boy, as they were known, having gone through the training at Camp Ritchie in Maryland to become interrogators of prisoners of war.
“Are there any more?”
“Not in our unit, not that I know, but across the whole army? Thousands.”
“Why do you keep yourselves so secretive?” Tom demanded. “Make everyone suspicious? You both seemed pretty off to me, you know. I told Sophie so, and she agreed.”
“We don’t mean to.” Matthew felt suddenly incredibly weary. It was early morning, and he hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. His muscles ached, his jaw pulsed with pain from clenching it, and they were no nearer finding the rest of their platoon. They might be miles away. They might never make it there.
“It’s damned strange,” Tom said in the tone of someone making a pronouncement, and Matthew simply shrugged. He had no answers to satisfy him. They kept walking.
An hour later, both of them becoming hot and sweaty under a rising, boiling sun, they heard voices and ducked into a hedge before they realized it was women—two tired-looking women with kerchiefs over their white hair. Matthew decided to take a risk, and stepped out into the road, his hands in the air, explaining in clumsy, schoolboy French who they were.
The women exclaimed over them, throwing up their hands and then kissing their cheeks, before they told them what the next village was, and consulting his map, Matthew realized they’d been dropped nearly twenty miles off course. Who knew where all the others were?
They walked all day, seeing no one, not a German, not a French villager, and not an American paratrooper. It started to feel as if they were the only soldiers who had been dropped into France, the only people left alive. Maybe all the Germans had packed up and gone away. Maybe all the Allies had been killed.
All day neither of them spoke; Matthew was too tired and Tom had lapsed into a sullen silence, shooting him darkly suspicious looks that Matthew supposed he was meant to take note of. Did Tom still not believe him? The idea was ludicrous—and pointless, because they were alone.
That night, they slept in a barn, taking turns to keep watch until, from sheer exhaustion, they both fell asleep against a bale of hay.
They woke to another pinkish dawn, the only sound the lowing of cows, as peaceful a morning as one could possibly wish. The sea assault must have happened by now. Had it been a success? Were their troops pouring into France even in this very moment? In the still silence of a summer’s morning, golden sunlight filtering through the cracks in the wooden planks of the barn, it was impossible to imagine.
As they were making to leave, a farmer came into the barn, seeming remarkably unsurprised at the sight of them. He gave them a craggy smile, along with a slice of bread with fresh butter and a cup of warm milk, before sending them on their way.
They walked for two more days, sheltering the next night in another barn, another farmer granting them food and kindness, before they finally heard the strangely welcome sound of shelling in the distance. Both of them came to a halt, the whistle and thud of bombs both familiar and strange. This was finally real.
“They did it,” Tom said, his voice somehow managing to sound both wondering and flat. “They came.”
“We need to be careful,” Matthew replied. They’d been walking along a narrow, dirt road, the isolation they’d experienced over the last forty-eight hours lulling them into a certainly false sense of safety that was now obliterated by the sounds in the distance, the reality of war.
“They’re miles away,” Tom scoffed, taking a cigarette out of a pack in his breast pocket.
“Don’t,” Matthew said, but Tom just raised his eyebrows and stuck the cigarette between his lips.
Matthew wasn’t sure what happened next—a flash of something in his peripheral vision, a prickling on the back of his neck—but before he even knew what he was doing, he grabbed Tom hard by the shoulder and hurled him flat onto the ground. A crack sounded and a bullet lodged into the pine tree Tom had been leaning against, right where his head would have been.