The Fisherman

Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, Cinq…

The Fisherman felt the cold water of the channel still clinging to his catch’s smooth scales. It was healthy, meaty—a good day's catch. His little woven carrying basket sat full when the Fisherman carved his path back to his humble home through the sandy beaches of the Norman shore like he did every day when the sea lay calm.

“Achtung! Achtung!”

The call rang out the moment he crested the steep hill. Since when were they here, so close to his home? Carefully, he set down the basket of fish and raised his shaking hands. They spoke in rapid German and the Fisherman fought the urge to spit. In the distance, he heard men digging, and pickaxes on stone.

At least two of them ran forward.

“Sprechen Sie deutsche?" The approaching man said in heavily accented German. Eastern, far eastern, if the fisherman had to guess.

“No, no. Only French,” The Fisherman said, mustering as much defiance as he could find in his aging bones. Some grumbling followed and one of the pair ran back toward whence they came. A few moments later, more returned. It was a lie—he picked up enough of their foul tongue to converse in a past life, but he wasn’t going to give these ones that satisfaction.

“Careful, land mines,” the newcomer said in broken French.

A shiver went up the Fisherman’s back. Instinctively, he rooted himself to the ground. Neither side said anything, leaving only the lapping of waves from beyond the cliffs and the chirping of birds to fill the void. It wasn’t enough for them to take his land, must they poison it too?

“Those fish, they look good. They're yours?”

“Yes, my fish,” the Fisherman said, keeping his words simple. He knew these men; he’d faced their likes before. Maybe not personally, but he knew the evils they carried in their blackened souls. They would shoot him without hesitation and face no recourse. “Good fish,” he added hastily.

A jumble of German and another language he could not quite place followed. The Fisherman waited to hear a holster unclip.

“We buy fish. Good price.”

“You buy fish?” He repeated, not quite understanding nor believing.

“Yes we buy. Camp wants fish. We buy fish. You take Marks.”

It was not a question. The Fisherman exhaled and held the basket out before him.

“I lead you out,” the man said after the money changed hands, and the Fisherman returned to his well worn path home.

“Go home. Tomorrow, you bring fish. We buy fish.

The Fisherman nodded slowly and departed, mind racing.

***

”Uncle! I was worried about you,” The Fisherman’s nephew shouted when he finally walked back through his door, basket empty. The Fisherman said nothing.

“Uncle?”

“Is what you found still hidden in the barn?” The Fisherman finally asked his nephew, ignoring the lad’s worry. There were more important matters at hand. He stopped his pacing. The Fisherman was all the boy had left in this world. What else could be more important than making him feel safe within these walls?

“Yes, I’ve taken good care of him,” his nephew said, and the Fisherman could hear the pride in his voice. The lad listened well.

“And no one saw you find it?” His plan came together at that moment. He paced the familiar space between the door and his chair besides the fire. It would be dangerous, but the world was already dangerous. He had to return anyway; without fish, the two of them would go hungry as certainly as they’d be shot if the invaders discovered what they were doing.

“No, no one. I was alone in the Bocage.”

“Listen and listen closely. We need to help your parents. Can you be brave for me?” the Fisherman choked on the request. He promised he’d keep him from this, but it was impossible to keep his nephew safe and hidden when the wolves were already at the door.

The boy nodded.

“I need to hear you say it.”

“Yes, I can be brave.”

“Good,” the fisherman said, and explained all that had transpired that morning. “When we reach the entrance, squeeze my hand. I need to keep my focus. These are dangerous men. Keep quiet, but keep your eyes sharp. I’m trusting you. Your mum and dad are trusting in you.”

“I’ll do good, I promise!” His nephew pleaded, and the Fisherman wished he had not been charged with protecting such a brave child.

***

Day after day, they visited the encampment, and day after day the soldier who spoke broken French guided them through different paths through the mines.

Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, Cinq…

Their process seemed to be working, but the Fisherman knew they needed more. They sat on the small dock casting out into the channel, a cool salt breeze on his face, and the Fisherman felt his nephew’s absently mindless kicks knock against the pylon as he waited for the fish to bite. There was peace here, even when the war surrounded them on the beaches, on the cliffs, in the sky with the birds, and below the waves with the fish. The Fisherman hoped his nephew might one day sit here with his son, or nephew, or daughter, or anyone else he loved, and find such peace.

“They’re going to let us inside the wire. When we pass beyond the fence, squeeze my hand. When we pass the first…anything, do so again,” he said returning to the present.

”Okay Uncle. Oh, I got one!”

The Fisherman’s lip trembled, and he felt a dryness at the back of his throat. Was this worth it? Or was he condemning another generation of innocents to The Fisherman’s fate?

Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, Cinq…

He heard their cursed tongues all around him quiet as they passed, and felt the gentle crunch of the sandy path below his feet. Thankfully, his nephew said nothing. It was hard to count when the Fisherman imagined all of the rifle sights trained on him, on his nephew. He waited for the bullets to rip his flesh from his weary bones. Maybe that would be a blessing? Oh brother, what horrors befell you? When we meet again, would you curse me or thank me for granting your son such a quick death?

…Dix-Huit…Dix-Neuf…Vingt…

***

”Shoot him! Shoot him!”

The cannons roared in the distance, drumming their dreaded tattoo. Storm clouds and smoke mixed in a dreadful fog and he tasted brass and blood in his mouth. He held Henrique’s lifeless body, willing the mud away from his already cold and white face. But no, it was not Henrique, it was his nephew that he held, and he was no longer in the trench but along the path lined with tall grass along the cliffs he’d walked so many times before.

The Fisherman awoke in the darkness choking down a scream. He lay there counting until sleep overcame him once again.

Un, Deux, Trois, Quatre, Cinq…

***

They sat in near darkness—he had instructed his nephew to keep the fire low in case any patrolling eyes peered through the window.

“No, that can’t be right, we’ll have to hope they take us by these two bunkers again tomorrow–”

The scratching of the pencil stopped; his nephew must have paused.

“Do you hate them, Uncle? They seem nice.”

The question took him aback. No, the boy was too young to ask such questions—questions he’d hoped would wait till he was a little older. The Fisherman sighed. At least it was better than questions of home, of his parents. Those would be harder, much harder. He told Philipe to run, and his foolish brother ran in the opposite direction. There was honor in that, the Fisherman understood. Honor and stupidity. The fisherman leaned back in his chair. He still heard the faint sound of scratching as the boy drew. “Please, set that down, and listen.”

The boy did as he was told. The Fisherman continued. “There was another war once, before you were born. Us and them… when you’re older maybe I can explain. It was terrible. War is terrible. You understand war, yes?”

The boy shook his head.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“I was a young man then, full of love and grand ideas. I loved to read poetry once—I know it is difficult to imagine,” the Fisherman laughed. “France called upon our love and hate and I answered. What I found was no love nor hate, simply…” the Fisherman paused, thinking of the words a boy of ten would comprehend. How could he when he lived it and struggled to understand it himself? “Well the ground shook and the world ended. We chased them out, and in doing so, I stopped loving. There was no poetry in life anymore. I knew they would be back though, such is the way of things. Your father understood—understands,” he quickly corrected himself. He didn’t know what happened. He could guess but didn’t think he’d ever truly know what happened to the boy's father. “Do I hate the men we see everyday? The ones who treat us with kindness, pay for what they could take, those men? Yes, I hate them. I hate them all, and I hate that I must hate them for everything they’ve taken from us.”

Despite the Fisherman’s efforts, he felt his anger rise and the tears fall. He thought of sitting on the dock, of the warm sea air, of his nephew’s joy in pulling a fish out of the water—all the things he hoped for him.

“Then I hate them too.”

Any semblance of strength the Fisherman had crumbled. His Nephew wrapped his arms around the Fisherman. For one so small, the weight of him felt like an anchor on the Fisherman’s chest.

“No, my boy. Let me hate them. That is something you should not carry. This will come to pass. When that time comes, remember, remember always, but never seek to hate. Let that not be your burden to carry.”

How long passed in silence, the Fisherman did not know.

***

The evening air in the barn was warm. Spring was near. The radio messages said the world was changing. He felt it. From within where they hid it in the rafters, he heard the fluttering of pigeons' wings against its cage. His nephew brought it down and, very carefully, they tucked the papers into the small sling attached to the pigeon's leg.

They undid the latch of the cage, and released it into the evening. The Fisherman stood there for a moment. He wasn’t a religious man, God had been blown out of him at the Marne, but in that moment he prayed. Whatever his fate may have been, it did not mean his nephew’s needed to be so dark.

“Come, let us sit and enjoy life for a moment.”

He would pour them some Calvados and savor this morning’s bread. His brother would understand, wherever he was. Of that, the Fisherman was certain.

***

Ten years had passed since that gloriously hallowed day, and the sailors consumed the appropriate amount of Champagne and Ale to mark such an occasion. She set her pen on her notepad, not bothering to take down some of the more…colorful comments he previously made about her dress.

“My goal here is to get down as many of these stories as I can. The years go by so quickly, and well, dead men tell no tales and all that. So, you said you had a story you wanted to tell me?” the Reporter said.

“Aye I do,” he said, medals dangling on his dress uniform.

”Excellent. During the landings, what was your duty, Captain Weld?”

“I captained HMS Ajax tasked with silencing the Longues-sur-Mer battery. Krauts had dug in something right nasty up there. Big naval guns and all that.”

”And obviously you succeeded?” She wrote frantically as he spoke.

“Not once did those guns truly trouble the boys.”

“Impressively done by you and our lads.”

“No ma’am. We cannot take all of the credit.”

The captain pulled something from his breast pocket; it looked like a worn handkerchief. Slowly, deliberately, he unfolded it on his knee.

She examined a paper he laid so lovingly on his thigh.

“What’s these measures?” She said, pointing to numbers around each line and bunker in no discernible measurement, at least none she could derive.

“Those ma’am, those are footsteps.”

She looked at him, confused.

He continued, “Funny, my aide tried to bin this. You see this here, this is the most accurate map of a position I’ve ever received. Let us give Fritz and Hans a right drumming, and kept those guns off our boys on the beaches. But this map…Not even our Recce boys could produce something so fine. You know it’s sad, never learned the chap’s name, but the kraut POWs said...well, it’s mental really. They said the Fisherman was blind as a bat.”

”How’d you get such a thing?”

Captain Weld smiled, “I told you I had a story for you.”

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A/N:

In March, I had the trip of a lifetime with my family to the beaches of Normandy, capped by a bespoke tour of the American sectors by our lovely guide Eric, who’s been doing tours for twenty years and has forgotten more about the Normandy landings than even Eisenhower ever knew.

Every once in a while, the stars align to chronicle something truly special. The above is a true story, pieced together by Eric from twenty years of guiding and studying the Normandy invasion, written down by me for assumedly the first time to the best of my ability. As with any purely anecdotal story, I had to take some creative liberties. We do know that during the invasion, Bombardment Group K led by HMS Ajax engaged their targets with astounding accuracy, supposedly scoring direct hits on two of the four German guns at Longues-sur-Mer*. In the following years, gunnery officers praised the astounding accuracy of maps drawn and provided by members of the French resistance carefully smuggled back to England–some accurate down to the number of paces in between landmarks. According to some German POW accounts (I use German in here and in this story for sake of simplicity. Most of the garrison at Longues-sur-Mer were Czech and Russian), the only locals regularly allowed inside the batteries perimeter were a blind fisherman and his young ward.

So is the story of the Fisherman of Longues-sur-Mer true? Or, like Band of Brothers, is it a conglomeration of tiny little anecdotes woven together in an attempt to make sense of millions of untold heroic moments carried out by the British, Scottish, Canadian, American, French, Polish, Norwegian, and countless other allied men and women that contributed to the defeat of Nazism? Was this man, some overly patriotic resistance member full of love of country? Or was he simply upset they stole his catch?

To which I posit, does it matter?

WC: 2500