While his wound was being attended to, he told his story. When he had finished, the faces of both Barbut and Auguste were grim. So they are waiting for reinforcements before launching an offensive against us, are they?
But the English will try to stop them getting here. And you say the English plan to attack the airfield tomorrow night? Now we must change the timing, and hope that the Navy will have a craft to spare at such short notice. Louis, do you know at what hour the English commandos will make their attack on the enemy troop train tonight? Then we must start moving down from the hills as soon as it is dark.
It may be that the Germans will muster sufficient troops from elsewhere to attack us here; we must be gone before daybreak tomorrow. We will move into our positions closer to Istres and be ready to carry out our diversionary raids tomorrow night.
But first, let us return to our headquarters; there are things we must see to. Even in broad daylight it was a ghostly place, perched on its spur in the hills. On a crag above the village a ruined castle stood; it had once been the home of a despot whose main amusement had been to kidnap local peasants and force them to leap to their deaths from the clifftop. Its advantage as a Resistance base was that the approaches to it could be held against an army.
After conferring for a few moments with Auguste, Etienne Barbut went into the deserted cottage which was used as an HQ building and wrote something on a scrap of paper. Emerging, he went round to a shed at the back of the building and selected a grey and white pigeon from among the dozen or so that roosted inside.
