MATT HELM: The War Years (11 page)

His lips twitched as he saw the funny side of it, then he was laughing as loudly as the rest of us.  I imagine part of it was simply the release of tension at the end of a mission.  We stopped by the infirmary and waited while Daryl's shoulder was properly sterilized and re-bandaged.  Then we drove back to the camp and got drunk, along with the rest of the group.  After all, Daryl was our first casualty.

Two weeks later, Stella went out and didn't come back.  Mac broke the news to us one night in the canteen.  Even then, he didn't provide us with details, except for one.  "I thought you'd all like to know - she did her job and made the touch.  She just ran into some bad luck trying to get clear."

That night we all had a drink to Stella's memory.  Nobody got drunk.

During the following year, the air war intensified, and our services were requested in the rescue of important prisoners - important in the sense of the information in their heads - as well as the capture of Germans with important information in
their
heads.  After the success of the mission in which Daryl got injured, British Intelligence considered us their own private little information-retrieval service for a while, until Mac disabused them of the idea.  There weren't many instances when someone was a sitting duck as our General had been, and Mac refused to accept suicide missions that had no chance of success.  He didn't have so many agents that he was willing to expend one fruitlessly, and apparently his authority came from high enough up that he could make it stick - which didn't make us any more popular with the intelligence outfits.

After all, he explained to us on more than one occasion, we were trained for a specific purpose.  We weren't the search and rescue boys, a commando outfit or an intelligence agency.  Our unit was created to do the jobs that nobody else wanted - to get our hands dirty face-to-face with a specified enemy.  Finding those kinds of people wasn't easy.  If you look, there's evidence that, in most modern wars, the average soldier simply shot his gun in the general direction of the enemy and when given a clear shot at an individual, couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger.  Most casualties of war came from the long-range weapons, when you couldn't see the face of your opponent.  There were always exceptions, of course; otherwise Mac wouldn't have found enough recruits to form his unit.

Actually, I think he accepted some of the early missions - like my first one, where we actually went in and did the whole job - just to give us some on-the-job-training.  He didn't trust an outsider to protect his new people until they graduated, so to speak.  Regardless of all the training, no one was really considered a graduate until they actually pulled the trigger, figuratively speaking of course - it could be a knife or garrote or your hands.

We lost one of our group that way.  His name was Mark and he was a pain in the ass all through training.  He was the gung-ho type, with the movie soldier syndrome.  You know what I mean.  He considered everyone with perfectly legitimate fears, if not a coward, then certainly lacking in the manly attitude.  I'll admit I was prejudiced - he was one of the ones who laughed at my reaction to parachute training.  He was the first to belittle someone for a bad score and the first to brag on his own good scores - and they were very good.  He was a natural at any weapon and hell on wheels at hand-to-hand.  There was more than a touch of bully in him and we were all just as happy when he was sent out on his own and not paired with one of us.  Vance went along to chaperone and told us about it later.

It wasn't a high-risk operation, as the French underground did all the work.  All Mark had to do was lie down on the ground about three hundred yards back and pull a trigger.  It was broad daylight and the target was just standing there.  Vance was lying beside him, ready to make sure if Mark missed.  The first time you have a real person in your sights instead of a paper target, its easy to get a little excited and rush the shot or shake just enough to pull the bullet off course, which is why we always had company on our first missions.  Anyway, Vance waited almost too long, giving Mark the benefit of the doubt.  Then, he heard a choking sound and saw the barrel of Mark's rifle tilt down.  Looking over at him, Vance saw that Mark was crying.  He simply couldn't pull the trigger.  He wasn't a coward - he was later awarded a Silver Star for bravery under fire, once he was reassigned to a combat unit where his talents were more appreciated - he just couldn't kill someone in cold blood, something no tests, interviews or training can determine.

Mark, of course, never came back to our base.  His things were collected and forwarded to the appropriate unit.  Most of us, including Vance, didn't fault him, and those who hadn't yet had the chance to prove themselves were very quiet for a few days.  It happens.  Fortunately, Vance was able to make the touch and nobody died because of a failed mission.

Ironically, a lot of our missions were like Mark's, especially while we mostly operated in France.  Mac was willing to lend a hand when a back-up man who was handy with weapons was needed, so long as the primary risk was taken by others.  I spent a lot of time totally removed from the action, waiting for my target to appear, pulling a trigger, and quietly disappearing while all hell broke loose below me.  Most of the time I had no idea why I was pulling the trigger or even whom I was shooting.  We weren't exactly inundated with information, if you know what I mean.

Chapter 12

Our little group would expand and contract as the war went on, new recruits added and experienced agents dying or being captured - a grim reminder that even a safety zone of three or four hundred yards often wasn't enough.  And then there were the times when the long rifles wouldn't get the job done and we had to go in and get them up close.

It was on one of those missions that I got shot the first time.  The nice open targets were getting scarce.  You can always overdo a thing and it doesn't take large numbers to make an impact.  If a doctor discovers five patients in one town who die of arsenic poisoning, it's a pretty good bet that a source of contamination exists.  If the same type of engine falls off the same type aircraft three times in 200 sorties, you ground the planes until the manufacturing defect is fixed.  Likewise, if a few high-ranking officers in critical positions inexplicably fall down dead just at the wrong - or right, depending on your viewpoint - moment, you start issuing orders to stay out of well-lit windows and don't take walks in the open.

I don't really think the Germans suspected the existence of a group like ours that early on - it was probably put down to the copycat theory.  A good idea is a good idea, no matter who originated it.  Actually, as Mac observed when he told us of the orders, it probably hindered the German efforts in
France as much, or more, than the actions which necessitated the orders.  As he put it, a little paranoia was good for their nerves - good for our side, of course.

It did make our job more difficult, so our tactics changed to fit the new circumstances.  Ironically, it was another partnership mission with Daryl, another General who was the target, and another blunder on my part, which got me shot.  Well, bad luck had a lot to do with it.  And good luck allowed me to survive it, so it evens out.

We had infiltrated a small town just outside Paris, a favorite place for German Generals to spend a few days on vacation.  We were hidden for two days in a small French café that served bad enough food that the Germans avoided it - letting the Resistance use it for a meeting place.  When we got word that our target had arrived and which chalet he had selected for his stay, we moved in.

The plan was to hide in his chalet - the Germans had almost no security at that time, being arrogantly sure that they were safe that close to Paris - and take him as he came in, drunk and with a female companion in tow.  A pretty young French girl  - so we were informed - with Resistance sympathies had been selected for the purpose.  She was to flirt with him, get him drunk and get herself invited to his chalet.

I don't know what went wrong - maybe the girl wasn't pretty enough, or maybe he just ran into some old friends and put friendship above sex for that night.  In any case, the door opened and he came in and saw me standing there with a gun, which was part of the plan.  I was the distraction.  He was supposed to see me and, while his attention was diverted, Daryl would step out from behind the door and slit his throat.  That's often why partnerships are used, that and the fact that the partner creating the diversion is available for backup, if needed.  The plan worked perfectly up to that point and Daryl performed on schedule.  However, as the General fell, his two friends, who had also seen me, burst through the doorway, struggling to get their pistols up to fire - at me, of course.  Daryl was hidden from their view by the door and all they saw was the General being jerked backwards.  I was the one with the gun, the natural target.  They were fairly slow getting their pistols into play - it's not easy getting a gun out of those leather holsters they wear - and I already had mine pointed at them, but I hesitated just long enough for one of them to get off a shot before I killed him.  I felt a hammer blow in my chest, but the other one was bringing his pistol up, so I shot him in the head.  Then I looked down and saw the round hole in my shirt, with a little blood around it…

Okay, so it was stupid, but if you're a man with a gun who's had any training at all, you don't take any hasty shots toward your partner's position.  You get the permissible sectors of fire clearly set in your mind first thing; you remind yourself firmly that shooting in
that
direction is simply not allowed.  Just as the AA guns on a warship are blocked so that the ones aft can't blow the heads off the guys serving the ones forward if somebody gets excited, so each member of a good hunting partnership, whatever the quarry, establishes certain limits for himself beyond which he
must
not fire, at least not without thinking it over and being very, very careful.  The problem is that when you really
need
to fire in that direction, the warning signals scream in your brain -
danger bearing, danger bearing
- like klaxons going off in there and red lights flashing, make you take a moment to think it over and wait for a safer shot - which may be too late.  That's one of the reasons I prefer a lone-wolf operation - I may not have someone watching my back, but at least I don't have to worry about whom I shoot.

Daryl looked at me and asked, "Are you all right?"

Well I was still standing, if a little in shock, so he hadn't hit my heart.  And if I had internal bleeding, I figured I might as well bleed to death in a safe place, which this wasn't going to be in a few seconds, so I nodded.  "So far, at least.  Let's get out of here."

We were lucky, as no one - at least no one who'd talk to the Germans - saw us as we made our way back to the café.  Daryl had to help hold me up the last few steps, as I was beginning to feel weak from the pain.  It's funny how a bullet always hurts more five minutes later than when it first goes in.  Adrenaline, I guess.

I was lucky enough that nothing important had been damaged and there was not much internal bleeding, so with a little disinfectant and a bandage, I stayed alive long enough for a doctor back in London to remove the bullet and patch me up.  There wasn't even any infection to worry about, just some bruised feelings - I got essentially the same lecture from Mac that Daryl had received on our first mission together.  Well, he might be a bastard, but at least he was a consistent bastard.

.

Mac didn't put much stock in physical condition.  He believed a man's mental condition is what counts and his policy was to get a man back into action as soon as possible and not let him spend too much time pondering his wounds.  Two weeks later he sent me back across the Channel with Vance.  I had a half-healed bullet hole in my chest, and Vance had his arm in a sling.  Mac figured it made our impersonations of German soldiers on convalescent leave much more convincing, and there's no evidence that it affected our performances adversely.

Chapter 13

In the early part of 1944, about six months after I took that first bullet in the chest, I was sitting in Mac's office listening to the most godawful, beat-around-the-bush briefing I had ever heard from Mac.  Normally, he was not one to waste words explaining a mission.  I mean, the facts of life had been pretty well taken for granted by then, especially among us senior agents - anyone who had survived the first year working for Mac was, by definition, a senior agent.  After the first few months I pretty much ran my own shows and, although I had been in charge of two team efforts, I was mostly used in a lone-wolf capacity.

Of the original nine members of my training class, only three were still on active duty with us.  Stella had been the first to die, of course, and Mark was the only one of us that never "graduated."  However, in late 1943 we lost both Gene and Derek on a botched joint mission.  They managed to get into position and make the touch, but the reinforcements didn't arrive.  British intelligence had set up a rescue mission in conjunction with the French Resistance.  One of BI's people had been taken prisoner and they wanted him back - he supposedly had some vital information our side needed, but had been foolish enough to be captured alive.  Our part of the mission was to take out the two guards on the roof of the building in which the British agent was being held and, when the assault force attacked on that signal, provide back-up firepower.