I Survived the Battle of D-Day, 1944 (I Survived #18) Page 5

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Maman said calmly. “Who are you looking for?”

  Mr. Leon, of course.

  “You know who,” Stroop answered. “The resistance leader who somehow rose from the dead.”

  Paul’s mind was swirling. How did Stroop find them? How did he know Mr. Leon hadn’t died in the river that day?

  Maman stepped back. “I have no idea who you are speaking of.”

  Without a blink, Stroop gave Maman a vicious smack across the face.

  And there it was, that cruel smile.

  Paul gripped his bucket. And with all the strength he could muster, he lifted it up, and slammed it against Stroop’s head. The Nazi fell to the ground, dripping wet and bleeding.

  Paul and Maman took off around the side of the castle. Stroop shouted after them, and bullets flew through the air.

  Paul looked around, searching for a hedgerow to hide in, a secret path that would lead them to safety. But he didn’t know the land on this side of the castle very well. It was Maman who gripped his hand and led him around a corner, then through a doorway. They heard gunshots echoing from inside the castle, and Paul’s knees went weak as he thought of Victor.

  But he and Maman kept running. They rushed up a narrow stone staircase, higher and higher, higher and higher, their boots echoing on the stones.

  They ran until they could go no higher. They had reached the castle tower.

  It was small and dark. Paul and Maman huddled together.

  Seconds later Stroop appeared, panting.

  He stared at them, gripping his gun. His face was smeared with blood. But again, there was that smile, jagged like a crack in a frozen puddle.

  “Why are you doing this?” Maman said, stepping in front of Paul. “The Allies are here. The war will soon be over. Haven’t you caused enough misery? Enough suffering? When will you stop?”

  Maman’s voice was clear and strong.

  For a split second, Paul thought he might have glimpsed the tiniest flicker of doubt on Stroop’s face. But then Stroop lifted his gun.

  Maman grabbed hold of Paul. And at that same moment, a great winged creature swooped into the tower.

  With a piercing shriek it attacked the Nazi.

  “What is this?” Stroop screamed. “Help me! Help me!”

  The creature clawed at Stroop’s hands until he dropped the gun. It hissed and shrieked and flapped its wings.

  Whoosh! Whoosh!

  Stroop staggered back in terror until he hit the tower wall.

  The old wall had somehow held itself together for a thousand years, through centuries of wars and storms and endless dark nights. But it was at this moment that the wall finally crumbled.

  The wall seemed to fall apart in slow motion, stones tumbling outward.

  Stroop teetered on the edge. Then he was gone, too.

  The Nazi’s screams rose through the air and Paul covered his ears. He had heard enough deathly sounds.

  Moments later Victor appeared in the doorway, breathless, holding his gun.

  He rushed over to Maman and Paul, moving with great speed for someone who had recently been shot.

  “What happened?”

  The answer landed at their feet.

  The brave winged creature looked up at them with her gleaming gold eyes.

  “Coo-roo, coo-roo.”

  FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

  OCTOBER 3, 1959

  LE ROC

  “When’s he coming, Papa? When’s he coming!?”

  Paul smiled. His six-year-old son, Jacques, was as excited as he was. They were having a special visitor today, someone who Paul hadn’t seen since the war.

  Paul’s wife, Valerie, scooped Jacques up. “Let’s go to Grandma and Grandpa’s,” she said to him. “Daddy needs some time alone with his old friend.”

  Paul walked to the porch and watched them disappear down the winding road.

  “Don’t let your friend leave without meeting me!” Jacques shrieked.

  Paul smiled and sat down on the porch.

  He breathed in the familiar smells of sweet grass and apples and that hint of salt from the sea. There was nothing better.

  Paul had traveled some. He and Valerie had visited Victor in Texas twice.

  But Le Roc was his home.

  It had changed in the fifteen years since the war.

  Most of the town had been destroyed in those terrible weeks after D-Day. The Allies dropped thousands of bombs to try to stop the Nazi troops, to destroy their supplies and weapons. They tried to spare the people of Normandy. But by the time the Nazis finally fled, thousands of French people were dead.

  It wasn’t until the following September that World War II finally ended.

  Paul stood up and looked down the road again. He checked his watch.

  This special visitor would arrive any minute.

  What would it be like to be together again after all this time? Would seeing him bring back all those years of fear and pain?

  Even now, memories came back to Paul out of nowhere — those men dying on the beach on D-Day, the bombs raining down as he and Maman huddled together in their basement.

  But of course there were happy memories, too.

  Like when Mr. Leon finally returned to the Castle Le Roc. He’d been injured in an Allied bombing, but somehow made it back. He was bruised and bloodied but amazed to hear the story of Ellie and Stroop. It was a story far better than any legend of a dragon.

  Paul smiled to himself, thinking of how much Jacques loved that story. There was only one story he loved more. It was the story about how Papa — Jacques’s grandfather — got home after the war.

  “You really walked for four months, Grandpa?” Jacques would ask, stroking his grandfather’s snow-white beard. “Didn’t your feet hurt?”

  “I had to get home to my boy,” he’d say, glancing at Paul. “And to your grandmother,” he’d add, smiling at Maman. “For them I would have walked to the moon and back.”

  Jacques would lean forward. “Grandpa,” he’d whisper. “You can’t walk to the moon.”

  Paul had tried not to think too much about the war after Papa came home. Life moved forward. Papa got stronger after his years in the prison camp. They rebuilt their house. Time passed. Paul went to college and met Valerie. They moved back here and had Jacques. Paul tried his best to forget the past.

  But then, a month ago, the past arrived in a letter for Paul.

  My old friend, it began. My name is Gerry Goldman, but you will remember me as Gerard Drey …

  Paul’s hands had started to shake when he read that, and Valerie had to finish reading the letter for him.

  “My parents were murdered by the Nazis,” Valerie had read aloud. “But the day before my parents were arrested, they managed to get me into the hands of the Le Roc resistance.”

  Into the hands of Maman, Mr. Leon, and the others, Paul would learn. They’d rescued Gerard and three other Jewish children from Le Roc. They’d hidden them at the castle. And then somehow they’d gotten them to a village in the mountains where dozens of Jewish children were hidden throughout the war.

  Maman had never told this to Paul — it was the one secret she’d never shared. She later explained it to Paul, tears brimming in her eyes. “We were never sure if Gerard survived the war.”

  So many Jewish people didn’t.

  But Gerard had made it. And after the war, his father’s cousins tracked him down and took him to America.

  As Gerard’s letter explained, he went on to live a happy life. Over time, though, his memories of his childhood in France had dimmed. The loss of his family was so painful. Like Paul, he’d tried his best to forget those dark years.

  “But I’ve never forgotten you, Paul.”

  This visitor Paul was waiting for now — it was Gerard.

  Paul paced back and forth on the porch until the sound of a car sent him rushing to the steps.

  And at last, there he was: his best friend. Gerard was tall. His curls had gone straigh
t. But there was that lopsided smile. They stood on the porch and stared at each other, tears running down their faces. Within seconds, the long years between them disappeared.

  They talked and talked, and then Maman and Papa and Jacques and Valerie came home. And they talked some more.

  They told Gerard all about Victor, the castle, and the death of Stroop. Gerard showed them pictures of his wife and daughters. Valerie cooked lunch and they polished off a whole plate of madeleine cookies, still Maman’s favorites.

  And then, when the plates were scraped clean, Jacques grabbed Gerard’s hand and said, “Let’s go outside!”

  Jacques dragged Gerard past Maman and Papa and Valerie and out they went into the sunny afternoon. Paul started to follow them, but then he remembered something. He went to his closet and opened a box. He took out a treasure he’d been saving for exactly this day, should it ever come.

  That old brown soccer ball.

  It turned out that Boris, the old leatherworker, was in the resistance, too.

  Paul went outside and kicked the ball to Gerard. He stopped it with his foot and stared at it like it was another long-lost friend.

  He tapped it gently to Jacques, who kicked the ball with all his might.

  Thwack!

  It sailed through the air and disappeared into the hedgerow.

  “I lost it!” Jacques cried, a worried look on his face.

  “No, you didn’t,” Paul said.

  Because of course Paul had learned that many things could be found, if you knew where to look.

  You could find a safe place, inside the walls of a ruined castle.

  You could find courage, inside a heart pounding with fear.

  You could find hope, coming across a foggy sea.

  Jacques rushed up and down the hedgerow, biting his lip nervously as he peered inside the twisted branches.

  Finally he pointed. “I see it,” he exclaimed. He pulled the ball out, hugged it tight, and then dropped it on the ground. He gave it a powerful kick, and the ball went sailing across the yard.

  Paul looked at Gerard and smiled, wiping away his last happy tear of the day.

  “Race you,” Paul said to his old friend.

  And they both took off through the bright green grass.

  Dear Readers,

  This past July, my husband and I stood on one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen. It seemed to stretch out forever, miles of white sand where kids were making castles and dogs were chasing balls.

  Standing there, under a bright-blue sky, it was almost impossible to imagine that this was the same blood-soaked beach — code-named Omaha — I had been learning about as I researched this book. I tried to imagine what it had been like for the American soldiers who attempted to come ashore on D-Day. I had read so many of their interviews and letters that I could almost hear their voices whispering to me as I walked the beach.

  Right here is where my friend died.

  Over there is where a boat filled with soldiers exploded.

  The whole ocean seemed to be filled with blood.

  More than three thousand men were hurt or killed on that beach. And truly, their spirits seemed to be all around. Being at that beach and thinking about all those who died broke my heart.

  But being in Normandy was inspiring. Because the people there continue to honor the soldiers — American, British, Canadian, and others — who risked and lost their lives to free the French people from the Nazis. In almost every town there is a museum, or a statue, or a memorial. There are streets named after American soldiers. I will never forget my day at the cemetery that sits right above Omaha Beach. There, in simple graves marked with Christian crosses and Jewish Stars of David, lie 9,385 of the men killed on D-Day.

  Writing about D-Day was often sad. And extremely difficult. Because of course it’s not just the story of one day, one battle.

  It’s the story of one of the biggest, most complicated and tragic events in all of history: World War II. My books are historical fiction, which means the facts are true and the characters are fictional.

  But as I created Paul’s world, I wanted to give you a real idea of what it must have been like to live in a French town taken over by the Nazis. I based all of Paul’s experiences on those of real people I discovered in my research: Finding a paratrooper in a tree. Hiding an Allied soldier. Having a mom in the resistance. Coping with the fear that a Jewish friend might be taken in the night. Having a very creepy castle in your town. These are all experiences that real kids in Normandy had during World War II.

  And trying to weave all that together into an interesting story was hard (just ask my super-kind editor, Katie, and my husband and kids, who kept encouraging me, and my dog, Roy, who, as always, was by my side at all times). I kept writing drafts. Then starting again … and starting yet again. And eating bags of pretzels and bowls of ice cream, and starting again.

  The story just wasn’t working … until the pigeon.

  I actually met a pigeon during that summer trip to Normandy. I was doing work on a little terrace. And this fat pigeon kept coming to visit me. It was very beautiful and there was something very smart and fascinating and funny about it. I even spent time trying to get a picture of it, which I finally did.

  That pigeon found its way into my heart. But I wasn’t thinking about it as I was writing all those drafts. Until one day it came to me: carrier pigeons! I remembered that pigeons were a HUGE part of World War II. The Allies used 250,000 pigeons to carry messages. Back in 1944, the clever birds were often far more reliable than a radio or a telephone.

  Ellie enabled me to add a little bit of lightness to the dark story of war, Nazis, and the resistance. And once I added her, the book seemed to work.

  I hope you agree. And even more, I hope reading my one small story makes you hungry to learn more on your own.

  Au revoir (that’s good-bye in French),

  Did D-Day end World War II?

  No. But it was a huge step that helped the Allies on their path to victory over the Nazis. The invasion was part of a larger mission called “Operation Overlord.” The goal of the mission: free Europe from the Nazis. On D-Day, the Allies succeeded in smashing through Nazi defenses.

  In the weeks following the invasion, the Allies poured hundreds of thousands of troops, weapons, tanks, and supplies into Europe. By September, most of France was free. But the fighting and killing went on and on, and not only in the countries around France. Some of the biggest battles in World War II happened far to the east, in and around Russia.

  And Germany wasn’t the Allies’ only enemy. As the Nazis were conquering countries in Europe, Japan was invading countries in Asia and islands in the Pacific Ocean. There were battles not only in Europe but also throughout Asia, the Pacific Ocean, and northern and eastern Africa.

  The war finally ended in September of 1945. More than 60 million people died in battles and from diseases connected to the hardships of war.

  How did the Allies keep D-Day a secret from the Germans?

  D-Day was doomed to fail unless the Germans were taken by surprise. During the year of planning, the planners kept the time and location of the invasion a total secret. Even Allied soldiers didn’t know exactly where they were going until the morning before. The Allies also tricked the Nazis. They wanted to make the Germans believe that the invasion was going to happen farther south. In the months before, they created fake coded radio messages they knew the Nazis would hear. They created fake airplanes and blow-up rubber tanks that made it seem they were about to attack farther north. All of the secrecy and tricks worked.

  Is it true that Jewish children were hidden from the Nazis?

  Between 1939 and 1945, the Nazis murdered 6 million Jewish people in Europe. Most were forced from their homes and sent to concentration camps, large prisons where they were worked to death, shot, or killed with poisoned gas. A small number of Jewish people were saved by heroic neighbors and others who hid them and helped them escape. They did this even
though they and their families would have been killed or sent to concentration camps if they had been caught. The story of Gerard is inspired by several stories I read about real French Jewish children who survived the Holocaust.

  Is Le Roc a real place?

  Le Roc is a fictional village. But it was inspired by the many I visited while researching this book. These villages are quiet and beautiful. They are crisscrossed with hedgerows, which Normandy is famous for. The hedgerows were planted centuries ago to be walls between fields and pastures, to keep horses and cows from escaping, and to help keep water from flooding the fields.

  During the war, the hedgerows caused problems for the Allies. Paratroopers and gliders crashed into them. The Nazis used them as places to hide before sneak attacks. As I explored Normandy, I kept imagining how a kid like Paul might have discovered secret paths and openings in the hedgerows. I knew they would be an important part of the story.

  Did many French people die during Operation Overlord?

  Yes. The French suffered terribly in the Allied bombings in the weeks that followed D-Day.

  Despite the losses caused by the bombings, most French people felt enormous gratitude toward the Allies. They hung American flags in front of their houses. They forged lifelong friendships with the paratroopers they rescued from trees, or the troops they sheltered in their homes. Overall, the French people understood that men from across oceans risked their lives to save France from the Nazis. And they have never forgotten.

  D-Day was the largest invasion by sea in the history of the world. In one day, approximately 150,000 soldiers, mostly from the United States, England, and Canada (the Allies), crossed the English Channel in thousands of ships and planes to attack over 50,000 German troops in Normandy, an area in the northwest of France.

  Their plan was to land at five beaches along France’s north coast in a region called Normandy. The invasion took months of planning, and up until the last minute, many thought it would fail.

  They were wrong.

  Here are the key events of June 5–6, 1944: