After a thorough search, André stumbled sadly out to the courtyard and around the scattered manure pile, toward the group at the gate.
He was greeted by a shout from a jeep which had driven up. “Hi, there. You—boy!”
An American lieutenant sat at the wheel, with the two Nazi officers crammed rigidly in the rear seat. An American with a Tommy gun perched backward on each of the front mudguards, and the German driver, his arm in a sling, shared the front seat with the lieutenant.
Impatiently, the lieutenant asked André whether he knew where the nearest U. S. headquarters had been set up.
André pointed up the road and replied, with some pride, that there was an 82nd Command Post in his own house. “It’s a little more than a mile up that way,” he said.
The lieutenant grinned. “Well, hop in and show us the way.”
André stood stubbornly firm. “But Lieutenant,” he protested, “I came with Victor. He’s an old man. I can’t leave him here.”
“Get in,” snapped the lieutenant. “You can find him later. There’s a war on.”
“As if I didn’t know,” André thought crossly.