Free Northern Girl by Fadette Marie Marcelle Cripps

Whenever they drank, which was often, neither Madeleine nor her mother dared go near the table to clean it, for fear of being ridiculed. Or, in Madeleine’s case, constantly fondled on the bottom, to the childish amusement of the soldiers. Any cleaning was always left till the following morning, when the Germans went out.
    Madeleine, who was still awake, was lying there that night, listening to Papa’s snoring and wondering how Maman could sleep through it, when she was nearly thrown out of bed by the explosion. It was so powerful that she heard the windows at the back of the house shatter.
    She shot out of bed and ran downstairs barefoot, where she found Dominic struggling into his coat shouting, ‘They’ve gone! The bastards have gone!’ Then, pointing to the glass on the floor, he called to Madeleine over his shoulder while bolting for the front door, ‘Mind where you put your feet!’
    ‘Gone …? Gone where?’ Madeleine was confused. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, but Dominic had already disappeared.
    Maman and Papa arrived downstairs, both with their coats on over their nightclothes, Maman demanding,‘What’s going on? What was that noise?’ Her voice trembled with fear.
    But Papa guessed what had happened, and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder before going outside to join Dominic.
    Madeleine and Maman stood holding each other and shivering, not only with cold, but fear, and Maman asked, of no one in particular, ‘Where are they … where are the Germans?’
    ‘I don’t know, Maman,’ Dominic said from outside. ‘They’ve gone.’
    The second explosion knocked them all off their feet. Madeleine and Maman fell to the floor, still entwined. They called out to Dominic and Papa, who were now nowhere to be seen. And the front door swung open, revealing a sky red from billowing flames rising from a pall of smoke and dust near the church.
    ‘ Oh non! Oh non! ’ Maman sobbed. ‘The church … they’ve blown up the church!’
    ‘No, Maman, it can’t be. Who would do that?’ Madeleine reassured her.
    Maman said with unconcealed venom, ‘ They would … that’s who!’
    Madeleine shook her head in disbelief. ‘They wouldn’t … Surely, Maman, even the Germans wouldn’t do that!’
    Papa and Dominic were gone for at least twenty minutes. Then they suddenly appeared in the doorway, their silhouettes black against the glow, staring at the flames. Madeleine, shivering, went up to her papa, andhe turned and put his arm around her, saying gently, ‘Those explosions … it was the church and …’ He looked at Madeleine, sadness in his eyes, before adding, ‘and the school.’
    A sick feeling rising in her throat, Madeleine immediately turned to Maman, begging her with her eyes to say it wasn’t true.
    Maman, unable to speak, took her hand and said nothing.
    ‘But the nuns! The nuns are there …! Sister Therèse! ’
    Madeleine made as if to run to the school, but Dominic grabbed her and held her back, saying, ‘There is nothing we can do. The gendarmes are dealing with it. They asked us to leave.’
    Madeleine ran upstairs, and opened all the bedroom doors, one after another. She needed proof: proof that the Germans had left. And when she realized that all their equipment had disappeared, she gripped her head in both hands and screamed through her tears. ‘Their stuff! It’s gone! The bastards have gone!’
    They never found out whether the soldiers who set the charges had known that the nuns were still in the school. But Sister Matilde lived long enough after the explosion to tell the village priest about the family who’d been hidden there. The family had gone to the nuns after one of their cousins had been arrested by the Gestapo: he was suspected of being in the Resistance. This family of five, including three children, had apparently been at great risk from the Nazis, andunable to go to the gendarmes for help, as there was rumoured to be at least one collaborator at their