Behind Hitler's Lines (6 page)

In the stationmaster's office he saw three Americans in identical jumpsuits. They gestured and pointed him to the men's room to change. His new comrades weren't like any GIs he'd seen before—one spoke with a European accent— but on the train to Middle Wallop they brought him into their conversation, which he perceived to be that of college guys after mentioning his scholarship to Notre Dame. Like Joe, none of them had seen much of England except its woods and weeds, so they all felt like tourists for the first time. The towns en route were drab and beleaguered by war, but the Americans felt vital, confident that this war's course could be changed to their expectations. Among the passengers they seemed to be the only ones enjoying themselves as the musty coach rocked along.

It stunned Joe when the man with a foreign accent leaned over and whispered, “You from the 101st?”

“Can't tell ya.”

“Hell, we saw the markings on your jeep.”

“Where you from?”

There was no answer, but it was the fledgling OSS, predecessor of the CIA, as Joe would learn years later.

At the Middle Wallop station they were collected by an RAF airman, who drove them to his base. Joe wasn't sure, but it looked like the airfield where he had done his standing landing for the British. The four were received fraternally. “Ah, come in, lads,” a lieutenant greeted, and led them to a secure map room. “I'll take Beyrle first. You other gentlemen can wait in the canteen.” They departed. “Corporal Beyrle— am I pronouncing that right?” he began pleasantly. “I'm sure you've been a good American soldier. Now we'd like you to do some good work for the Allies. We have friends over in France. True friends. They perform indispensable tasks, especially in keeping us informed about what Jerry is up to. These courageous people are called the French Forces of the Interior: FFI for short. Ever heard of them?”

Joe had not. Papers back home ran apocryphal stories of the brave French resistance but said nothing of how they were cagey polypolitical cobelligerents whose principal value to Eisenhower was real-time, on-the-ground intelligence about German forces—increasingly vital intelligence as time tolled down to invasion. In return for their services, the FFI wanted money as much as demolitions for sabotage. Money to bribe gendarmes, government clerks, truck drivers, and switchmen on the railroads—even money for select Germans whose loyalty to Hitler was tepid and who found the good life of occupying France a bit costly for their military pay.

That thoroughly interested Joe from his worm's-eye perspective of the war. Speaking to him was this Allied officer, explaining matters Joe imagined were known only to generals. As always there was nothing like being Best Informed.

“Yes,” the lieutenant continued, “so we must deliver rather large quantities of money to the FFI. Gold, actually. That's what they prefer. How do you suppose we deliver it?”

“Parachute, sir?”

“Quite. Now we'd like for you to do that. Be a paymaster, as we call it. Give it a go?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Fine fellow. Now, it's all very simple. And not much risk, I'd say. We've been doing it for years. Here's this bandolier.” With both hands the lieutenant hefted it. “It contains rather much more than you and I together will likely make in our lifetimes. So please don't lose it, will you? Just strap it on, fly off, jump out, and become an honored guest of the hospitable French.
Voila”
Before continuing, he handed Joe a receipt for the bandolier, its contents, and a .45-caliber automatic with holster. “Now, we certainly expect those who greet you to be the Frenchmen intended. To verify that, your challenge is ? breezy night'—in English of course. You don't speak French, do you? The appropriate answer will be ‘Yes, let's go sailing.’”

“Sir, what if that's not the answer?”

“Well, if he answers in German, you might try bribing him with some of that gold!” The lieutenant managed to make Joe join him in a laugh, then started speaking quickly: “You have your dog tags, so you're entitled to prisoner-of-war status. This hasn't come up at all, Beyrle. Our chaps always come back complaining that they couldn't do any shopping. Beautiful tapestries where you're going.” He tapped the map near Alengon, at the southern border of Normandy. “And don't worry about getting back. The FFI handles that admirably.

“Now, off to the canteen with you. Ask the next chap to come in, please.”

THE FLIGHT BRIEFING
was also genial, and the drop plan perfectly simple. If the pilot saw a certain pattern of lights below, the first jumper would go; if not, he stayed in the plane, which would fly on to the next jumper's site. This would be repeated three times before the plane dodged back to England, carrying any jumpers whose drop had been aborted.

Putting on the bandolier was enough to make Joe's knees bend. He was worth several hundred thousand dollars, a million today, and it felt like all pennies. If being rich weighed a
man down this much, Joe didn't mind being poor. What he felt most was relief and excitement. The brandy guilt was behind him; instead he was still very much in the Currahees, indeed now representing them as a star parachutist. Sure there was danger, but danger was the elixir of youth.

An hour after moonset Joe and his perdu comrades climbed into a Lysander, a single-engine British airplane with its machine gun removed to accommodate three jumpers jammed together like a bobsled team. Joe was the only one burdened by a bandolier, and though the plane had been stripped of any unnecessary weight it nevertheless seemed overloaded while taking off.

The route was southwest across the mouth of the English Channel, which was surging with whitecaps. The Welsh pilot hummed as he dove and wove to avoid radar detection. The Luftwaffe had nearly abandoned these skies, yet he zigged zagged, and rose a few times but came right back down to wave-top altitude as if a Messerschmitt were pursuing him. He was good, better than the jumpers' stomachs. One man (Joe suspected he was hungover at takeoff) popped an airsickness pill and managed to slump into sleep.

For the other two, bladders filled distressingly during the two-hour flight. Only a pee tube, venting into the slipstream, had been provided for relief. In the cramped darkness the small hose was passed around. When it reached the man beside Joe, a kink had formed, causing his urine to backflush. The wet and stench added new discomfort to the longest of Joe's sixty flights, in the noisiest, most rattling airplane he'd ever flown in, and never had he waited so long before jumping.

Paddling his thighs in anticipation, he thought of people he wished could see him now. Not his parents—they'd worry too much—but the sisters and kids at Saint Joseph's, Jack and Orv back in Wiltshire (probably out on a night exercise themselves), Wolverton, Sink… Currahees, Screaming Eagles… Gee, it occurred to Joe, he might be the first of them all to get into France. That would be hard not to tell Jack and Orv when he got back. And he would get back, of course. He was
twenty, indestructible, and besides, the RAF said this would be a piece of cake. He hoped not too easy. He remembered Hollywood movies where Nazi sentries were garroted in the dark. He'd learned how to do that at Toccoa, something daring, something dangerous, what being a man was all about at his age.

But first what must be done was what he did best—if this plane would ever stop weaving. At last it did and Joe grew tense, professionally tense. The pilot gestured for him to hook his static line onto a thick cable running across the top of the jumpers' compartment. They roused and patted him on the butt. Through the open hatch by his feet was France, under no moon, perfect for the pilot to see a lamp pattern below. Joe looked up at him for the jump signal. It was a downward-thrust index finger and the inaudible cry “Go!” A step through the hatch and Joe was blown into the dark. And into history as the first American paratrooper to descend on France—and high among the ones most welcomed by the French.

Joe yelled, “Currahee!”
Pop.
Opening shock wasn't bad leaving him just bouncing a little in the night. The only sound was from the Lysander veering away. Jump altitude was a thousand feet. The drop-zone lamps, which he'd never seen, were already extinguished. All there was to steer toward was one of the pale patches on the ground. The darker stuff was trees. Joe tried to sense wind direction and slip against it, but there wasn't much wind, so he prepared for a neutral landing and just went limp. The best way to land on unfamiliar terrain was like a rag doll.

At the last moment Joe worried about injury, imagining himself spending the rest of the war hidden by the FFI while his broken leg mended.

The ground came up like an elevator.
Thud,
a heavy landing—all that gold—on a hard meadow with knee-deep grass. The canopy descended on him while Joe broke out of the parachute harness. He was down, safely down, the first step—the longest one—taken. The next was upon him as he unholstered his .45 because figures hurried across the
meadow Despite feeling foolish, he hollered, “A breezy night!”

A voice in Oxford English answered, “Yes, let's go sailing.”

Someone gathered up his chute as Joe was silently led away through trees. Beyond the grove they arrived at a large hay shelter where kerosene lamps were lit, the same that had marked his drop zone. In the unsteady light Joe looked around at his reception committee. They were five men and a woman who, with her lover, was there to do a distracting scene if a German patrol happened by.

Naturally the French were glad to see him, especially his bandolier, which had been promised by the British but delayed. The FFI leader had lost three fingers to Rommel's panzers in 1940 but was still able to do a quick count of the gold. Satisfied, he pulled bottles of red wine out of the hay. Only he spoke English. Recognizing Joe's accent he was pleased to tell the others that their paymaster was an American, the first they'd ever met.

So too for Joe; except for the British, they were the first foreigners he'd ever met, and it occurred to him why he had been picked as a paymaster—to show the flag to the French resistance, let them know that America was in the war with them too. Representing America was headier than his second jelly jar of red wine, raised by his hosts in toast to Allied victory. Here he was, treated like a hero, and all he'd done was jump. It reminded him of his little speech last year at Saint Joseph's.

The FFI reassured him that now he was in their hands and they'd handle things from here; so feeling pretty safe and secure, Joe slept like any tired GI. The next morning (awaking in a bird-shooting blind) he began to reflect on how unexpectedly he had been brought into this war that meant everything to his families. All three of them: his parents, his army, and his nation. Clearly his army parents considered him expendable, a youthfully ignorant courier, chosen from on high by those who would trade his life for the likelihood of an important delivery. Yet no one had forced him. Far from it. Bring on
more. Bring on more adventure because this sure beat humping the English countryside carrying a ton of radios.

Joe was now in the FFI network. Western cloak-and-dagger doctrine prescribes that an infiltrator-agent should stay in one location for minimum hazard of discovery. But the French constantly moved him, on roads, all back roads, in vehicles subject to search at German checkpoints. Frequent movement was a way the FFI distributed risk by requiring that a host harbor an agent only one night. The next morning he'd be gone and so too his host's exposure to the Gestapo.

That's the way it worked with Gallic guile. At daybreak Joe was alone and edgy till a retarded farmhand arrived in a one-horse cart, dressed him in peasant clothes, and handed him a brief note instructing him to also act mute and retarded. The farmhand then burned the note. He spoke no English, so the two sat silently for a clopping ride of several hours to a house far out in the countryside where the proprietress prepared a ravishing brunch of ham and eggs, croissants, cafe au lait, and red wine.

After a nap he was handed a one-sentence note and put on a horse, which carried him for hours on game trails to a small hunting lodge deep in a forest. The horse knew the way from repetition, a perfect agent for the FFI. If Joe were nabbed, he wouldn't know his destination and the horse wouldn't say. The note, nevertheless, said to shoot the horse if Germans were closing in. There was only a caretaker at the hunting lodge. With nothing to do, they listened to the BBC describe the Allies' slow advance on Rome. Joe helped him with the English and in return was taught a few French phrases that might come in handy if he met Germans.

The next morning Joe was transported somewhere else, the beginning of more moves than he can remember. Several times he was buried in hay with a clothespin on his nose to stifle sneezing. He still had his .45 but felt unready to use it; the foreign strangers who were his only protection were unarmed; it was their game Joe was playing, and they'd said nothing about shooting his way out of a tight spot. It seemed
in some ways there was almost an arrangement being observed with the enemy, that the French and Germans were occupied in matters that didn't much involve each other. At one halt he heard German spoken. It startled him to hear his family language in such a different context. He could make out some bilingual banter, and that his cart driver didn't sound tense or the German soldier threatening.

It was difficult to keep track of time, but it was probably about a week till one night Joe's cart halted in the woods next to a long narrow field of mown hay. His escorts fanned out, apparently to secure the field, but it had so many dips and rolls that he didn't expect this to be the exfiltration site. However, after midnight, under a quarter moon, a dark Ly-sander glided in as if the hay field were Heathrow Airport. Joe guessed, correctly, that this was the paymaster system: jump in new ones, then pick up returnees before flying back to England.

There were no ground lights, so the pilot had obviously landed here before. Out of the woods came a big wagon drawn by two horses. Off came the hay, revealing a huge vat, maybe a wine vat. Four Frenchmen took hoses from the pilot and began refueling the plane. No doubt some of Joe's gold had gone to buy gas on the black market. That made him uneasy about the quality of the gas. But if the pilot would fly with it, why worry?