CHAPTER TWO
SERGEANT DUBER APPROACHED HIM SLYLY. HOW WOULD JOE like some brandy—really good brandy? The offer didn't appeal. A couple of pints of bitter at village pubs like the Bleeding Horse or the Bell, Crown & Anchor were enough alcohol for Joe after training six days a week, and some nights, in Wiltshire County and beyond. Nonetheless he was interested because of previous collaborations with Duber to improve I Company's chow, especially in the field.
Duber was a crack marksman, able to drill some lord's hare with a single shot from his carbine fitted with a silencer he'd obtained from no one knew where. For further fare he had called on Joe, trained in demolitions at Fort Benning, to help him fish the streams as I Company marched and countermarched through battalion maneuvers. Duber gauged the depth of dark eddies, then stated an amount of explosive. It was for Joe to prime and toss it into the stream with a waterproof fuse.
The detonation was like a depth charge and usually produced a shell-shocked trout, which Duber scooped up in his helmet. At the next break fish was frying for a select group in company headquarters. Deer were also Duber's prey but the most dangerous because they were in the inventory of vigilant British game wardens. By Sink's orders, Lieutenant Colonel Wolverton was obliged to fine each man in his battalion a pound sterling for every deer that fell to Blue bullets. However, before their collective punishment could be imposed milord's game warden had to produce evidence that his game was not just missing but had been shot.
What Duber did best was make things disappear. He could skin a stag, gut and bury it almost before the carcass cooled. Venison made great sandwiches to supplement K rations, appreciated by Captain Shettle and once even served to Wolver-ton, who was pleased enough to not ask about its origins. So, when approached with the question of brandy, Joe harkened to Duber, almost twice his age and respected additionally for having survived Currahee training that had washed out a third of Third Battalion's youthful candidates at Toccoa. His proposal was enticing:
“Listen up, Beyrle. So what if you don't drink much? You get two bottles for trading. Napoleon's brandy—I'm not shitting you—worth hundreds of dollars per bottle. Hundreds, Joe, more than two months'jump pay—and all you have to do is stand guard while I requisition it.” This, said Duber, was a guarantee, not a gamble.
Shorty, the professional gambler, presently a stockade inmate somewhere in Britain, had convinced Joe to bet on himself, thereby adding the personal factor to an equation of chance, and always review the odds before a gamble. So before participating in the brandy requisition Joe asked Duber to describe the plan. He readily did, a reassurance but with a rebuke—he was doing Joe a favor by bringing him in, a favor for his contribution to pirate fishing.
Duber explained that for generations the earls of So-and-So had owned the estate on which men of I Company were now billeted. The manor house contained a wine cellar where famous liquors had aged for at least a century. When British authorities required the present earl to accommodate Americans, he had prudently removed his most valuable possessions, such as the brandy.
Upon evacuating, the earl had dismissed most of his staff. They were heavyhearted, having to find odd jobs around Ramsbury or being vacuumed up by conscription. Duber had met the out-of-work wine keeper at a pub, bought him some bitter, and learned of his unhappiness. A carton of Lucky Strikes was enough for him to divulge the location of milord's brandy trove—buried under hay in one of the manor barns. With that information, Duber said, the heist would be “easy as spitting.”
Persuaded, Joe stood watch at twilight as a jeep coasted down to the barn. Four men piled out. Their silhouettes scampered between barn and jeep, careful to suppress clinking of bottles. Three men packed hay to cushion the glass, then climbed aboard to surround and protect the load. Duber quietly started the jeep and rolled away at a walking speed.
There was no immediate outcry. The earl, now living outside Wiltshire County, raised it at a high echelon, several removes from the concern of Wolverton, who had implemented two unwritten rules: (1) do your major drinking on pass to larger towns like Swindon; and (2) while in Ramsbury behave as if at home—that is, with your parents watching.
Wiltshiremen appreciated Wolverton's policy, and there was never much trouble, though there wasn't much to eat or drink either because both food and alcohol were far more tightly rationed than in the States. Petrol was even more precious, so that horse carts far outnumbered cars on lanes, called roads, which were designed for scenery rather than speed. Though GIs chuckled, locals thought it not funny at all for British officers in uniform and businessmen in suits to decorously ride bicycles.
GIs were not the only strangers in town. Three years earlier, ruthless bombing of English cities had forced evacuation of tens of thousands of the aged and underaged. Over a hundred were quartered in Ramsbury, along with young women placed by the Ministry of Labour to do farmwork, previously the occupation of Wiltshiremen now overseas. Additionally there were uniformed women doing administrative jobs for the Auxiliary Territorial Service, a factotum wartime agency. They came from every class and social background less welcomed by the natives than were the Americans, whose presence had resulted in a famous British saying about their GI tenants that they were “overpaid, oversexed, and over here.” To which there was a less well known American retort: “You're underpaid, undersexed, and under Eisenhower.”
What cultural friction the Blues experienced was more within the U.S. Army. Though large-scale maneuvers took them farther and for longer periods away from Wiltshire County, they had made necessary adjustments with then-hosts, which were not disrupted before regrettable incidents occurred when the 28th Infantry Division of the Pennsylvania National Guard moved in near Ramsbury. Their scarlet shoulder patch—to become known as “the bucket of blood” after horrific combat—was the icon of Pennsylvania, a keystone, so Duber labeled them Keystone Kops. They probably would have been tolerated had they not hustled girls whom Blues considered proprietary. Competition immediately flourished, and the legs turned out to be as clever as they were presumptuous.
While Third Battalion was participating in an invasion rehearsal, measles broke out among the female population of Wiltshire County. British authorities requested assistance from nearby 28th Division medics, who obliged and, with all professional gravity, concluded that because most local lasses had had contact with Blues, it would be prudent for a quarantine to be imposed between the two. Wolverton was in the field, so the medical recommendation went up to Sink, who, in probably his most unpopular command decision, acquiesced to a thirty-day quarantine.
This struck Jack Bray hard. He took his pleasure quietly, assuredly. There was a Swindon girl with the same tastes, and they had melded with none of the abruptness of a wartime romance. Now she was off-limits! He was quarantined! Something had to be done, and it was for Joe and Orv to help him do it, as Keystones were reveling in pubs once the preserve of Currahees, buying drinks for Blue girls. Only two factors worked in favor of the paratroopers: for the legs, new acquaintances had not yet taken firm hold, and the 28th Division also had a full schedule of training and maneuvers. If certain pubs could be denied to them, the thirty-day quarantine would expire before the fairest of Wiltshire were won over by Pennsylvanian treachery.
Joe and Orv consulted Duber, who, though he had a wife in the States, was courting a lady of Swindon and was said to be engaged to her. As in his fishing technique, Duber believed in demolition solutions. The quarantine called for smoke grenades. Designed to guide resupply parachute drops and air strikes, they produced voluminous smoke in a variety of colors. The Keystone color was red, but Duber felt green would be better—the signal to go (and don't come back). He directed that Orv, Jack, and Joe hit three pubs simultaneously. They knew the proprietors and felt bad about anonymous bombing, but when Keystones piled out of every door and window, that was compensation. The girls, now changing hands again, were initially angry, suspecting Blues and no one else. But a short time healed. Bray's lover was the first to forgive and led a movement back to the paratroopers.
Joe had been a reluctant smoke grenadier, but to support his tripod of buddies he'd joined the fray. For a GI, Joe was more serious than most, while Jack was the leading fun lover. He had fun training, and fun afterward, and he thought even war would be fun. Joe hadn't had much fun in his life except with family and in athletics. Coming at fun from different directions drew them together.
Orv fit somewhere in between. He'd had a serious girlfriend back home and wrote to her steadily, but she jilted him before the 101st went overseas. That was as serious a tragedy for Joe as when his sister had died of scarlet fever. He and Jack mourned with Orv, trying to direct him toward local girls but mostly watching him because they cringed to see him change very much, as vicariously they were much a part of him, sharers of experiences and what was to come. Joe, Jack, and Orv were a trinity, three in one and one in three. There were pairs like that and a few quartets—the largest such group a squad of twelve—with overlapping bonds of different strength and codependence.
The communication squad of company headquarters was where the three worked under Sergeant Todd, closely integrated with officers. Because of his build and stamina, Joe carried Captain Shettle's radio, a forty-pound SCR 300, plus a small walkie-talkie. Joe knew his job and liked it for keeping him Best Informed about I Company in the field. Being around headquarters also kept him current with the concerns of Wolverton, Sink, and even some of the commanding general, Maxwell Taylor. What concerned them all was lack of jump training. Scarce aviation fuel was the reason, and balloons became an expedient, “barrage” balloons levitating all over Great Britain to snarl German bombers.
It was widely though not officially recognized that Joe had done a lot more parachuting than most paratroopers. Back in Georgia he had jumped illicitly for others who were afraid that a bad landing would result in injury that could put them out of the Airborne, reducing them to legs. Such worriers paid Joe five bucks per proxy, a reward for what he would have done for free because he loved to jump. Impersonation at Fort Benning was easy because jumpers had only numbers on their helmets, not name tapes on their chests.
Joe made over a hundred dollars that way till his shambling gait became familiar to the parachute-school cadre (not part of the 506th). One day a cadre jumpmaster consulted his manifest, stopped in front of Joe, and asked if he had a brother going through the school. Joe sounded off, Yes, Sergeant, he did, that his was an Airborne family. Good, said the jumpmaster, knock out twenty-five push-ups for your brother and twenty-five more for yourself. This was a tip-off that Joe was under suspicion; it took Jack and Orv to convince him to give up proxy jumps, so as not to risk splitting the triune by way of either a broken leg or a court-martial.
Now, for approved jumping, he began to be split from his best buddies. Based on sub-rosa reputation, Joe was selected to experiment with new techniques of putting a paratrooper on the ground with more equipment within reach. The 101 st's planners reasoned that if each jumper could drop something ahead of him, something tethered, his payload could be increased significantly. This load carrier became known as the leg bag. A yardlong sack of strong canvas, holding up to 125 pounds of gear, ammo, demolitions, anything, it was wrapped around the jumper's leg. After opening shock he was to pull a cotter pin, dropping the bag on a thirty-five-foot tether. Because it hit the ground before he did, the additional weight would not make his landing harder.
A valuable innovation, the leg bag, but one that Joe demonstrated was unworkable after many balloon jumps. The problem was the standard landing method, called the British tumble, which all paratroopers had been taught. With two years' head start on the U.S. Airborne, the British had favored a landing where the jumper tucked his knees, then rolled like a tire bouncing on the ground. Joe could do the tumble in his sleep and in any direction, but with a leg bag ahead, acting as an anchor on the ground, he couldn't tumble at all. Division observers watched him in jump after jump. Wherever he tried to tumble, his leg bag jerked him back. He arose slowly, feeling fortunate, like a test pilot who'd completed something as dangerous and problematic as it was necessary.
After a particularly violent land-tumble-jerk, an officer from division G-3 went over to Joe, helped him to his feet, and murmured instructions for the final balloon jump of the day.
“Beyrle, when your feet hit this time, just kind of collapse. Relax and crumple, don't tumble.”
Joe did, landing as close as he could to his leg bag. They both stuck like darts on a board, the tether slack in between. Consequently the British tumble was discarded in the 101st, to be replaced by what became known as the PLF—parachute landing fall. Joe practiced it day after day till G-3 decided he was ready to demonstrate the PLF for the British, sort of a courtesy, saying thanks for pioneering in this field, but, respectfully, we are bent another way.
In a demonstration at an RAF airfield, Joe did PLFs forward, backward, and to both sides, with leg bags. He sensed a certain rubber-meets-the-road stardom and for his final jump showboated with a “standing landing,” outlawed in the 101st but admired by the British. With the parachutes of the twenty-first century, a standing landing is easy, but in 1944 the jumper had to judge very accurately how fast the ground rose, chin on his risers, then release them at just the right moment so that his body weight bounced up exactly enough to counteract the rate of descent. It all happened in a moment when Joe landed on his feet with no more impact than stepping off a curb. The Brits loved it. Wolverton heard about it.
ON A MISTY MORNING in April 1944 Sergeant Kristie looked at him warily and muttered, “Get in that jeep, Beyrle. Report to Wolverton at regimental HQ.” It was a long drive to Sink's headquarters, an ivy-walled manor house in Littlecote, giving Joe time to nervously speculate about the summons. Smoke grenades? No, Joe was never implicated. But the brandy? Civilians, acting like detectives, had been browsing around Ramsbury, and Duber was unusually silent. Joe's orders were to report to the CO himself, not to his first sergeant as an enlisted man normally would. He sensed this would be face-to-face, only his third time with Wolverton.
The first had been more than a year earlier in North Carolina, at a camp named for PFC John Mackall, the first U.S. paratrooper killed in combat, a member of the 82nd Airborne Division, already fighting in the Mediterranean theater. At Camp Mackall, Wolverton had struggled with the perpetual problem of paratroopers: assembling after being scattered in a mass drop. Flares and smoke grenades were one way to guide them, but he needed something audible. Combining a classic instrument of war with the most advanced means of warfare, Wolverton came up with a way to sound the call. It was a bugler named Ross.
Joe knew him; all the Blues did because of the innumerable mornings Ross had woken them at reveille. He blew loud enough to be heard a half mile away. Wolverton's idea was for him to blow assembly (the traditional bugle call that draws racehorses to the starting line) after a battalion-size drop, then everyone would head for the sound, whether in daylight or darkness.
But Ross blew a lot better than he jumped. He had been tucked in Wolverton's stick with orders to follow the CO's canopy down to the ground, then start bugling. But he kept his eyes closed till his chute opened, then couldn't find Wolverton's among dozens in the sky, then got caught in a tree a quarter mile away, where he frantically started bugling— and as planned, everyone headed in his direction.
That was the opposite direction from where Wolverton had landed and the battalion was supposed to assemble. When Joe got there Wolverton was beside himself, but with few others, while a hundred Blues helped Ross out of his tree. When Sink heard how the experiment turned out he sent a memo down suggesting that Wolverton either learn to bugle himself or try a drum.
Joe's first occasion with Wolverton was at the end of Third Battalion's 142-mile forced march in December 1942. The Currahees were to move from Toccoa to Fort Benning, on the opposite side of Georgia. They had taken a train to Atlanta when news reports—all grim and disheartening in those days—carried a Japanese boast that their army had set a world record for endurance by marching 130 miles in eighty-five hours while whipping the British in Malaya. Those numbers rang Sink's chimes. He ordered Wolverton to break the record and made sure there was plenty of press coverage.
With full combat loads, including mortars and machine guns, the Blues indeed beat the Japs by several hours, Wolverton leading the whole way, at the end shod in only socks after swollen feet had herniated his boots. Only eleven of the seven hundred Blues who'd set off in the rain from Atlanta failed to complete the march. Blues knew Wolverton was proud of them but also that he was less talker than walker, a foil for Sink whose strong craggy face and Clark Gable mustache seemed designed by Hollywood for a “full bull” colonel's role.
Wolverton had given Joe a pat on the back for assisting Bray across the finish line, but this summons at Littlecote was unlikely to be a reminiscence. The CO was in the midst of training and planning for the invasion of Hitler's Europe. It was hard for Joe to imagine what possible interest Wolverton would have in him, a lowly tech-5, equivalent of a corporal. The only possibility was chilling: warm, ancient brandy.
Values clashed traumatically in Joe as he straightened his fatigues in the orderly room. He would not draw in anyone from I Company and was steeled to accept Wolverton's penalty for remaining silent. Unless it meant expulsion from the Airborne. Joe was inveterately stubborn but not sure if he could accept that ultimate punishment. It would be the excruciating test between pride and loyalty. He'd do anything to avoid it, call upon Wolverton's sense of soldierly honor as best he could and if he could find the words.
Like a criminal about to receive sentence, he knocked on the door, was admitted, and snapped his battalion commander an Airborne salute. Wolverton looked like a lumbar support when seated at his desk. He was short and, despite paratrooper fitness, appeared more fit for logistical staff than leading men into combat. He returned Joe's salute, gestured for him to sit down, then nodded to a civilian seated next to him. Joe suspected he was a local constable, but he spoke American English.
“I hear you're called Jumpin' Joe,” he said as an icebreaker. “Why do you like to jump?”
“Fifty bucks, sir.” That was the monthly premium for enlisted paratroopers.
“What else?”
That would take a long explanation, and Joe was never long on words. Neither was Wolverton, but he provided an answer. “There's nothing like the blast, is there, Beyrle? The opening shock, the coming down.” He shoved Joe's brief military resume over to the civilian for his next question.
“I see here you had a classified jump. What was that about?”
“Sir, I was in a squad-size drop into Panama to test the range of walkie-talkies in the jungle.”
“Fun?”
“No, sir. The bugs ate us alive.”
“Glad you're in the ETO instead of the Pacific?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many jumps have you had?”
The official number was right in Joe's file, so the question seemed to lead to his unauthorized proxy jumps. Joe did not try to dissemble. “About forty, sir. Maybe fifty, counting balloon drops.” Among real paratroopers, the latter was considered sissy because there was no opening shock.
“Quite a few more than average,” the civilian noted. Wolverton nodded. “Would you be interested in another one? Sort of like Panama.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You'd be going to where brandy comes from. You know where that is?”
“France, sir.”
“That's right. And you'd be going solo. Think it over.”
He didn't need to. “I volunteer, sir.”
“Currahee,” said Wolverton—high praise from him— “there's a jeep outside. It'll take you to division G-2.” Joe rose to salute. “You know where I remember you from, Beyrle?”
“At the end of the march, sir?”
“No, after that, at Camp Mackall. “Assembly—ta-ta-te-da” Joe grinned. “Ever see Ross?”
“I think he's carrying a mortar in G Company, sir.”
“I'll see you again, trooper. Don't worry about anything while you're gone.”
That was reassuring. Whatever Wolverton said, he meant, and he never promised what he couldn't personally deliver. But how could he this time, Joe wondered as he began his second jeep ride of the day. His destination was division headquarters about fifty miles away at Greenham Common, near Newbury. There Joe saw more officers than the total number he'd seen so far in the army. At Greenham Common, captains were like privates, majors like sergeants, and lieutenant colonels like Wolverton scurried around like somewhat important clerks. Joe even got a glimpse of the division artillery commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe.
In the G-2 (intelligence) office no one knew why Joe had been sent for; eventually a major appeared to ask about his background, as if Joe were being considered for a security clearance. This was the pretense for a sizing-up, a checking-out for general steadiness. Joe had it; he spoke slowly while keeping eye contact. Now, what about his German name? How close were his ties to Germany? The question offended: both sides of his family were devoutly Catholic and American. There had been a Berlin, Michigan, but during World War I German-Americans, like the Beyrles and Schmidts, had changed the name to Marne.
Joe's interview was interrupted by a phone call, then quickly ended. A lieutenant from G-2 drove him back at top speed to Ramsbury, telling him to pick up just overnight stuff as if for a weekend pass. I Company was out in the field as usual, so Joe didn't have to do any explaining. At even higher speed honking most of the way, the lieutenant drove him to the Hungerford railway station. The jeep sped off, then hit the brakes. The driver had forgotten to give something to Joe, something important. He went into reverse, tossed Joe a bag, and was gone. Inside were new coveralls, called a jumpsuit, dark but otherwise the same as paratrooper fatigues. Joe was elated to have them, as his fatigues were tattered from training.
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?
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.