The sound of gunfire was different now.
Measured. Purposeful.
Not the frenzy of war, no longer the cacophony of resistance, but the cold inevitability of reckoning.
Eighteen hours had passed since Berlin had issued its final ultimatum to the French Armed Forces.
Six remained.
Outside the barricaded Hôtel de Matignon, where De Gaulle and his loyalists had entrenched themselves behind sandbags and steel, the men of the 12th Armored Infantry Division, or what was left of them, stood in a line that no longer faced the enemy.
They faced their own.
"Captain, this is madness," said Lieutenant Baudin, cradling his Mas 49 rifle like a man holding an heirloom about to be broken.
"Less than a week, that is how long it took the Germans to push to Paris. What good is this now?"
Captain Marchand didn't answer at first.
He simply looked toward the palace, where the tricolor still hung, limp and rain-soaked, over a building that might soon be rubble.
