Shadows of Yesterday

Chapter 9

Lucien Bouchard knew the Germans were coming by the dust that rose from the road. Two weeks before it was a country lane. Now it was crammed with people hurrying nowhere. Parents led bewildered children; the old hobbled on canes. Bicycles kept to the side of the road, suitcases strapped to handlebars. Men pushed wheelbarrows, home to toddlers or overflowing with belongings—although an elderly woman rested in one, frail and frightened. An occasional motor car inched forward, taking its occupants as far as petrol allowed, some with a mattress strapped to the top, a shield from shrapnel, a bed when needed. The swollen tide flowed forward, fleeing death and destruction, searching for safety that didn’t exist.

Tournai lay to the southeast, near the border with France. A commerce center since Roman times, sprinkled with Medieval cathedrals, much of it lay in ruins, pelted by German bombardments. Smoke spiraled from flickering flames, occasional explosions answered by gunfire. The fighting was ending. Allied soldiers scurried across farm fields.

The British and French had come first, thrusting into Belgium when the Germans invaded. Little more than a week before, it now seemed a lifetime. Tournai was a strategic location. The Allies occupied the city, a proven strategy in the last war. But the Germans weren’t fighting the last war, they were fighting a new one. They swept through Belgium and northern France as the Allies fled in confusion.

Lucien Bouchard lived in a stone cottage, four rooms and a bath, fifty meters from the road. Perched beside a stream spanned by a stone bridge built fifty years before—it sat near a tiny village a few kilometers from France. At first, he wanted to run with the rest, but saw no reason why he should. The Germans wouldn’t bother him. He was a farmer nursing a small plot of land. Other than some chickens, he had nothing they would want. He didn’t fear them, he had no reason. The dreams most men have had already left him, no longer within his grasp. Tomorrow was insignificant, the same as yesterday, offering no promise, no light—only the darkness that came with the day before it. Most could see that in his eyes. He was sure the Germans would, too.

He sat by the window that faced the stream, watching the sun as it started to set, a half-empty bottle of whiskey beside him. He took a swig and felt the fire trickle down his throat. To the northwest, a remnant of the last war remained, a French troop truck damaged by artillery over twenty years before. It had rusted, its hood smashed, its tires rotted. Vines had grown around it, invading the interior through broken windows. For a moment, he marveled at man’s determination to destroy each other. How many millions would die in the new war, forgotten like those in the last?

The Germans would come, filing down the dirt lane or crossing his farm to get to the highway. They would force the refugees from the road with tanks, trucks, and motorcycles. And once they passed, the long lines of refugees who had searched for safety and hadn’t found it, would go back to their homes, finding some damaged, some not, but none quite the same as when they had left. All had been violated, losing more than freedom, and an aura of defeat drenched the countryside like a pelting rain from pregnant clouds.

He hadn’t expected the knock on the door—he thought the Germans would kick it down. He turned, waiting for them to barge in, weapons drawn. Would they shoot him, assuming a broken man might find the courage to fight his last battle? Or would they eye him with disgust. But seconds passed and the door never opened. He put the top on the bottle, rose from the chair, and crossed the parlor, past the fireplace smudged with soot.

“What do you want?” he called.

“Dr. Bouchard, we need help!”

He hadn’t expected the language—English—or the title, which no longer applied. He opened the door and squinted in the sunlight, the orange sun sinking in the horizon. A British sergeant stood on the stoop.

“I’m just a farmer,” Lucien told him. “I can’t help you.” He started to close the door.

“You must,” the sergeant insisted, blocking the door with his boot. “We’ve no one else to ask.”

Lucien hesitated. “Shouldn’t you retreat?”

“We’re the last to leave. One of my men is wounded. A lady from the village said you’re a doctor.”

“I once was,” he replied, the admission painful. “But no more.”

“If you don’t come, a good man will die,” the soldier said. He lowered his rifle. Not enough to threaten Lucien, but enough to remind him that he should do as asked.

“I want to be left alone,” Lucien muttered, eyeing the g*n.

“Don’t we all?” the sergeant asked. Defeat was drawn on his face—with a tired look of despair. His left sleeve was stained with blood, maybe his own, maybe not. He must wish he was elsewhere, as a million others did.

Lucien relented. “I’ll just be a minute.”

He still had his doctor’s bag, although months might pass before he touched it. Why try to be what he never should have been? He went in the bedroom closet and retrieved it from the shelf where it stayed hidden among a stack of outdated medical journals.

“Hurry!” the soldier called from the doorway. “We don’t have much time.”

The sergeant led him to neighboring fields, humanity clogging the road. British and Belgian soldiers moved around them, leaving abandoned equipment—backpacks, guns, even a few vehicles, their tires flat or their petrol tanks empty. The soldiers hurried, knowing they would fight again if they escaped. But the refugees moved slower, running away but not knowing where. They used the road; the soldiers fanned across the fields. The road wound south, into France; the soldiers went west. Why west, Lucien wondered, when they could go south, into France? And then the answer came to him. The Germans were to the south. Just as they came from the north and east. The Allies had to go west, to the coast, if they hoped to escape. Belgium was lost, and each day that dawned would be harder than the last.

Just past his barn, an old stone building with red tile roof like his house, and close to the coop where he kept his chickens, three British soldiers scanned the terrain, rifles ready. They sought survival; dreams of conquest had long gone.

A fourth soldier lay on the ground. He was young, his eyes closed, his helmet beside him. A woman in a brown skirt and beige blouse knelt over him. Slender with brown eyes, her blonde hair was marked by brown strands that the sun hadn’t found.

“He needs you, Dr. Bouchard,” she said as he approached. A splatter of freckles dotted her cheeks, faded but still there.

He wondered how she knew his name, her face a mystery. “What’s your name?”

“Camille.”

“Camille who?”

“Just Camille.”

“Shouldn’t you flee with the others?” he asked. She must be from Tournai, a former patient.

“I’ve been running my whole life.”

He wondered what she meant. Maybe we all spend our lives running from something, hoping it doesn’t catch us. Or maybe we only think something is trying to catch us. Lucien didn’t reply. He bent over the wounded soldier, shot in the left thigh above the knee. He was losing blood, his trousers wet, the green stained crimson. Lucien cut away his pants and cleaned the wound the best he could. He wrapped gauze around the soldier’s thigh, tying it tightly to staunch the flow of blood. He made no effort to remove the bullet—it wasn’t the time or place.

“Be careful moving him,” Lucien said, looking up.

The sergeant scanned the terrain, fleeing soldiers growing smaller in the distance, and turned to Lucien. “Take good care of him.”

“You can’t leave him,” Lucien protested.

“We have no choice,” the sergeant said as he raced through the fields with his men.

“He needs a surgeon,” Lucien called.

The sergeant turned and pointed east. “The Germans are coming.”