Page 9 of The Secrets We Left Behind
She counted them slowly in her head, trying to keep up with their movements and struggling once they started to stand in front of one other. “There has to be almost a hundred men there!”
“I lost count at ninety,” Adelaide said. “Why would an entire regiment be here in Le Paradis, without any backup? Where is the rest of the army?”
“I don’t know, but they’ll all be taken prisoners of war now,” Elise told her. “They’ll spend their days in a camp until the war is over.”
It had been her worst nightmare, worrying whether Louis could be taken and end up in an enemy prison camp, but in the end she’d decided that it would have been a better fate than death on the battlefield. At least he would have had a chance at surviving if he’d been captured.
Elise was just about to let the soft fabric go, not wanting to watch as the men were rounded up and marched off, when Adelaide’s hand gripped hers.
“Look,” Addy whispered.
Elise tightened her fingers against her sister’s, not breathing, not blinking as she stared at the scene unfolding in front of them.
The German soldier, the one who’d strode forward originally and marched the British troops out, was gesturing to his men. She wasn’t certain, but she thought his uniform was that of an SS officer, and she watched in horror as a handful of the Nazis lifted their weapons. They all had their backs to her, but she saw the lift of their arms, knew exactly what they were about to do. She strained to see the officer’s face, but couldn’t.
“They’re machine guns,” she whispered.
“Feuer!” The order was yelled so loud that they heard it from their window.
Fire.
“What did he say?” Adelaide gasped. “What does that mean?”
Elise’s hand flew to her mouth, unable to answer her sister, a silent scream choking her while she watched the surrendered soldiers, their bodies ricocheting and falling as they were machine-gunned at close range.
“It’s murder!” Adelaide cried. “We have to do something! Elise! We have to help them!”
Elise let go of the curtain then, shutting her eyes, trying to block out the images that she knew she’d never forget for as long as she lived. When she opened them, fear at what they’d just witnessed had her heart racing. What they’d just witnessed went against the simplest rules of war.
“Elise! We have to do something!”
“No,” she said firmly, pulling her sister away from the window. “We do nothing. We go about our evening, we cook dinner, that’s it.”
“You can’t mean that.” Adelaide’s eyes were wild, tinged red and staring.
“If they know we saw that, what do you think they’ll do to two women on their own?” Elise asked. “If they do that to men who’ve surrendered, do you think they’ll even hesitate to rape us and steal all our food? To murder us, too? They’ll see that pretty face of yours and—”
“Enough,” Adelaide said, her hands over her ears. “Stop, please just stop.”
Elise opened her arms, drawing her sister in and holding her. She pressed a kiss to her blonde hair, wondering at how she was barely three years older than her, but felt more mother than sister sometimes.
“This is war, Addy,” she whispered. “Nothing is fair, nothing is just. But we have to be careful if we want to stay alive.”
“I thought it would be over soon. I thought we were going to be safe,” Addy sobbed.
So did I.Elise nodded, knowing she should be soothing her sister with calming words, but not even knowing where to start.When she finally let her go, she stepped toward the window again, braving one last, final peek. Elise froze. There was movement. Not all the troops had been killed.
She pressed herself against the wall, fingers trembling as she kept the curtain parted just enough to watch, not wanting to be seen, not after witnessing such a violent massacre. Was she imagining the movement?
No.She wasn’t imagining anything, because it wasn’t only her who’d seen them.
Elise could hear shouts, but they meant nothing to her in German, and suddenly those British troops that had survived, who were staggering to their feet or writhing on the ground, were being roughly pushed and kicked to get them to move. As she watched, she saw them being yelled at, presumably to empty out their pockets, which they did, some of them bleeding and stumbling, and suddenly they were all marched away.
“What if someone’s still alive down there in that pile?” Addy asked from behind her.
“They’ve taken all the live ones,” Elise replied, taking a few deep breaths to calm herself before she turned. The urge to vomit was overwhelming now.
“Do you think they’ll kill them too?” Adelaide whispered.
