writefrance

The Falaise Gap by Robin Hooppell

The fewer the syllables the better. Fuhrer is more powerful than Deputy Fuhrer which in turn is more powerful than Uberstormfuhrer. The responsibility diminishes at each further qualification of the noun. One day in 1944, and probably for one day only, Uberstormfuhrer Rhinegold Fritzle, tank commander, posed standing exactly where I am sitting.

That is precisely in the centre of what is now, but not for much longer, my lawn. With the sun in his young face the shadows about him show the time of day – early afternoon. Rhinegold, good looking in much the same way I was at his age, was staring west towards the sound of the big guns destroying Caen.

A day or two later, maybe a week at most, he would have seen a line of tanks breast the hill less than a mile away, and thousands of Canadian and Polish infantrymen intent on cutting a path through him and the village of Versainville to Berlin, and Warsaw beyond. The few hours warning he had would not have helped steady his mind. This now pleasant