Coming in November: The Train to Calais

In order to get myself back into the proper mindset to begin writing the second COMMANDO novel, I decided to light the fuse by writing a short story set during the three months separating the two novels. The Train to Calais tells the story of an attack by French partisans on a German train on its way to Calais. Chenot, Bouchard, and Marie, first encountered in Operation: Arrowhead, are the main characters, accompanied by a number of other partisans.

In 1941, especially up north and along the "Atlantic Wall", occupied France was not a friendly place for anyone trying to oppose the will of the Reich. While there were growing organizations of resisters within the Vichy-governed "free zone" to the south, up north any resistance was hunted and eliminated by the Nazis with extreme prejudice. Not only was the presence of German troops pervasive, but the populace in the occupied areas (and only to a slightly lesser degree in the south) knew that collaboration with the partisans would result in swift reprisals, often far out of proportion to any losses suffered by the Germans. With such barren soil, the flower of armed resistance found little sustenance, and most of its seeds failed to take root.

In this short story, I tried to look at a day in the life of a partisan band, fighting for what they believed in, while at the same time knowing that, not only were they doing little to disrupt the overall operation of the Nazi war machine, they were also earning the enmity of those they were trying to liberate from the Germans.

The Train to Calais is a short story of approximately 8,400 words. It'll be available in early November via Kindle Direct Publishing for $0.99.