Behind Hitler's Lines (7 page)

He had expected to be snatched off the ground in seconds, but there were long minutes before the engine coughed and turned over, during which the pilot had an amiable chat with his fuelers and exchanged something for wine. He finally climbed into the cockpit, gave a V for Victory and thumbs-up. From the woods a Norman cheer erupted that made Joe jump as he crouched in the brush. But if this was the way the French did things, why worry?

They had gotten him this far. He hugged the men who'd delivered him, received kisses in return. A bottle of cognac was shoved into his hands, then he raced for the Lysander. From woods on the opposite side of the field another American, also with a bottle, sprinted for the plane.

The exfiltrators sipped cognac during the flight home, which was direct, as if the Lysander were just a lagging aircraft from one of the increasingly frequent bombing raids on northern France. Guardedly the Americans probed each other about their time with the FFI. The other man talked like a demolitions specialist, joking about how his leg bag had been so full of explosives that he felt like a parachute bomb. Though the cabin was dark, Joe noticed how the man, presumably from the OSS, kept glancing his way as if trying to place him, at least by his voice. But then clandestine protocol was respected, and for the last hour of the flight the topic was girls of the FFI. Was there a love scene set up at your DZ? Joe asked. Oh, yeah, his companion said, nodding. That's standard FFI procedure.

Like a homing pigeon, the Lysander landed at the same RAF base from which Joe had departed. He was immediately separated and debriefed by a British lieutenant, who concluded by sternly warning Joe not to indicate to anyone in any way where he had been or whom he had seen. This routine admonition affected Joe unusually, forcing him to reconsider himself no longer as Jumpin' Joe but as someone holding secrets that could change, even end, other people's lives. This induced in him a subconscious defensiveness about the possibility that unknown enemies might try to search through his mind; it was an inchoate fear, different from that of impending combat for which months of intensive honing had prepared him.

IN THE FOLLOWING DAYS
the whole paymaster experience, carrying with it his secret fear, became a dormant memory like last night's dream—a short, strobelike interlude between the hectic time before and after—so Joe found the debriefer's orders easy to follow. Gone was the urge to share his foreign adventure with Bray and Vanderpool; he would keep it to himself like some attraction for a girl he didn't want them to know about. Wistfully he looked back on France as an experiential vacation, a romantic getaway from hard-time soldiering.

Surely if another classified jump came up again, he'd volunteer with gusto. That seemed improbable, and after his solo Joe stepped back into a half-million-man chorus preparing for the premier performance of World War II.

EXCEPT FOR JACK AND ORV, THERE WAS LITTLE CURIOSITY
about Joe's absence. It was nothing unusual for a radioman to be pulled out for days of specialized training, like how to guide fighter-bombers onto targets because the 101st would have little of its own artillery available when they first met the enemy. Such training would have been excuse enough for Joe, but division G-2 went further. Realizing that Joe's absence might be open-ended, they provided a cover story that Bill Beyrle, stationed with the air corps in Kent, had taken seriously ill, so Joe had been granted emergency leave to see his brother. Upon his return from France, Joe deflected questions by asking them.

“Yeah, Bill's okay now. What's been going on in I Company?”

From everyone the answer was exercises like tactical drills, maneuvers, and night movements after company-size jumps, followed by critiques, cleaning equipment, and preparation for the next drill, maneuver, et cetera, to the point where a graffito went up in Ramsbury latrines: “One more exercise and we'll be too tired to make it over the Wall!”

That's what all the Screaming Eagles' preparations were for—to vault what Hitler called the Atlantic Wall of Fortress Europe. No one expected an easy landing. Indeed, German radio made specific reference to the 101st, how a warm welcome awaited them if they survived parachuting into minefields,
plus acres of sharpened stakes known as “Rommel's asparagus” to impale gliders. Never had an invasion been so taunted by those defending against it.

But the taunters had immense problems themselves, starting with where was Rommel to plant his asparagus and sow his mines? Between Spain and the tip of Denmark were sixteen hundred miles of potential invasion sites. To defend that span Rommel and his boss, Gerd von Rundstedt, had thirty-five divisions of widely varying strength. Rommel wanted them all, especially panzers, close to the coast, where they could go into action with much less interference from the Allied fighter-bombers that now ruled the sky.

Rommel knew the fighter-bombers could paralyze movement on the ground, for he had suffered their devastation in North Africa. Rundstedt had had no similar experience and wished to concentrate most panzers well back from the coast to counterattack when the invasion site was confirmed (a preliminary Allied feint was anticipated). Moreover, Hitler reserved unto himself the decision of where and when four of the ten panzer divisions in France would be committed. Consequently, German deployments on and behind the Atlantic Wall were a compromise between contrary defensive strategies.

Even if Rommel had commanded all thirty-five divisions, the Atlantic Wall, like the Great Wall of China, was too long to be impregnable for its entire length. Hitler, Rundstedt, and Rommel knew the Mongols were coming, but where? A wily deception plan, featuring a phantom army, commanded by Patton and apparently poised to strike across the Strait of Dover, kept the German high command befuddled.

Currahees were also guessing, but because of huge bets placed on where they would drop. Otherwise location didn't matter much. They were the Mongols, ready to breach the wall anywhere. All they had been told was that the 101st would go in ahead of amphibious forces and hold off counterattacks against the beachheads. Yeah, we can do that. Let's get on with it. What are we waiting for?

Of more immediate concern in I Company was repercus-
sions from the brandy heist. During Joe's absence, the heat was on. An eminent earl had raised it to the point that General Taylor was obliged to admonish Sink to recover the brandy or hang the thieves. Briefly the 101st's intelligence resources turned from the Atlantic Wall to domestic sleuthing.

A noose tightened on Duber but, aware of Sink's fondness for fine spirits, he found a loophole by approaching a trustworthy officer with this proposition: if the heat was turned off, two cases of brandy would be found under the canvas of Sink's jeep trailer. Through intermediaries the deal was cut. Duber sensed that no enlisted man in I Company seemed to be in better favor with Wolverton than Beyrle, no one less likely to be punished if something went awry in transferring the brandy; furthermore, Beyrle would be the last man to squeal on his buddies if the deal turned out to be a trap.

But Joe, remembering his trepidation when summoned for his unexpected interview at Littlecote, was not an easy sell this time. If another paymaster opportunity came along, he was not about to jeopardize his favor with Wolverton. So Du-ber's offer of prime venison cutlets was declined (Joe had had better in France). Okay, what about four bottles of the brandy? No thanks, Sarge. Joe still had the two that had been his reward for standing guard during the heist. They might be worth hundreds of dollars—as Duber averred—but a price could not be established while no one dared put Napoleonic brandy on the market. When Sink gets his cut that's going to change, said Duber. Maybe, said Joe, and he took the offer back for consultation with Jack and Orv. They both advised him to pass. Duber had too many irons in too many fires, and it was always someone else who got burned.

So Joe declined again, but Duber took that as an objection, not final rejection. He claimed to be a trustee—at what level, no one knew—of the invasion-site gambling pool. For transferring the brandy, he would let Joe in on how the betting was going, very confidential, very valuable insider information. This appealed to Joe's bent to be Best Informed, and he proposed that if Duber put in five hundred of his own money—but as Joe's bet—then he would participate in the transfer.

This counteroffer revealed his Class Shark trait, but compared with Joe, Duber was a great white and glided to another inducement: he would give Joe a secret weapon—a crossbow— easily fitted into a leg bag. That was enticing. Already the Screaming Eagles were arming themselves for the invasion with personal weapons like shotguns, six-shooters, and German machine pistols.
^*
Joe asked for time to think about the crossbow.

A significant part of the 101st's training in England had been devoted to operating French civilian vehicles and German weapons, even tanks. Paratroopers were expected to capture such munitions in the enemy rear, then use them till resupplies arrived amphibiously some thirty-six hours after jumping. Till then, the Screaming Eagles' logistics were in their leg bags and whatever they could seize (“liberate” was the term, as “requisition” was in England), most important, German weapons and ammo.

This expedient was debated at division headquarters. Do we really want our men firing German weapons in the dark? How will anyone know friend from foe? The problem was a factor in a command decision that in the dark no one should fire
at all
unless fired upon by an identifiable foe. The preeminent factor was to conceal planned drop locations. Widely dispersed beyond the DZs, hundreds of mechanical puppets were to be parachuted into Normandy. Hitting the ground they set off loud bursts from firecrackers, hopefully drawing Germans into a wild-goose chase, while Screaming Eagles assembled and organized on relatively silent DZs
^*
So Sink's
policy was to stay silent, stay concealed for as long as you can. Till situations sorted out in the morning, the approved weapon was your hand grenade.

Currahees were skeptical and felt unreasonably constrained if they had to wait hours before pulling a trigger. They had a particular fondness for the enemy's Schmeisser submachine gun; its rate of fire was so fast that it went
burrrrp
while a hundred rounds filled the air in a few seconds, hence the Americans called it the burp gun. A model of German engineering excellence, it was a Mercedes compared with crude Model T's like the Sten and the tommy gun. No one could wait to capture a burp gun. Somehow Duber already had one, dismantled and concealed in his footlocker. It could be Joe's for transferring the brandy, but again he passed.

The “don't shoot unless fired upon” policy was not pronounced till the eve of D Night, but much earlier most Screaming Eagles comprehended the value of a well-aimed silent weapon, no matter what its rate of fire. Consensus had developed that initially they would be fighting singly and in the dark, when a firearm gave away its origin much more than by day when a thousand weapons were crossfiring. The troopers deduced their jump would be at night because the amphibious invasion would have to be at dawn so that legs like the Keystone Kops could locate their objectives.

So, while declining the burp gun, Joe remained curious about a crossbow. Did Duber have one? Yes. Did he know how to use it? Not yet, but he was practicing. Joe said let him know when a crossbow was as good as the silencer on his deer slayer.

Duber was persistent, but he was down to his last fillip. How was Joe dealing with censorship? Were the folks back home reading what he wanted to tell them? Were there some confidentialities he'd rather keep from Blue officers?

All mail—V-mail it was called, letters on special folios that could be photocopied for minimum bulk—was censored by officers whose unwanted duty was to expunge references to unit locations. A trooper's letter that mentioned pubs meant
head scratching for his platoon leader because it was supposed to be a secret, despite the taunting of German radio, that his unit was even in Great Britain. Hundreds of V-mails like that kept censors reading late by lamplight, often with embarrassment. If the officers didn't know their men already, they surely learned more than they wanted to after reading love letters. When they sent men into combat, it affected them, sometimes acutely, knowing the names and feelings of loved ones they had never met but would never forget.

To have an officer figuratively reading over his shoulder was not disturbing for Joe, so Duber's last enticement of bypassing censorship fizzled. Unlike most of his buddies, Joe didn't have a girl waiting for him back home, so he never gave a censor cause to blush. Dating had been too expensive while the Beyrle family was down and almost out before the war. In England, camaraderie was stronger for him than companionship, though after his paymaster adventure there had been a lass named Greta of the Auxiliary Territorial Service who took a fancy to him. He never mentioned her in any letters to his parents. Joe only suggested that he was chased and no longer chaste.

Letters from home (also by V-mail) were not censored, and for Joe they were an increasingly remote connection with the past. Whatever was back there had already exerted its influence, a vital impulsion but expended, a booster rocket that had done its job. Now, to finish the job, whatever it entailed, was the be-all and end-all for Joe and those around him, no matter how much they joked or pretended otherwise.

The paymaster experience had sparked his sense of being special, as part of what mattered most. It had developed an expanded and novel perspective of the war, a vague but keen appreciation of components previously beyond his ken. Joe declined Duber's blandishments because he wanted to remain eligible for more uniqueness—someone else would have to carry out Sink's conditional return of the brandy.

Duber recruited Jack Bray, leaving Joe nonplussed. He had acquiesced to Jack and Orv in turning down anything Duber offered. Now here was Jack picking it up like a girl Joe was
no longer interested in. Okay, buddy, what's going on? Well, Jack said, this was an investment. Four bottles, sure to appreciate, were worth the risk. Yeah, he had counseled Joe otherwise, but… hell, this is going to be fun! Joe, you got in on the fun (and the reward) when you stood guard for the heist. On a maneuver while Joe was away, Duber had poached game in Sherwood Forest, gotten caught, and told the sheriff of Nottingham that he was America's Robin Hood—and he got away with it. Duber was a proven winner. His plan for the brandy transfer was simple, the odds very good.