Behind Hitler's Lines

by Thomas H. Taylor

  The Gestapo were appallingly different, their very name uttered quickly and quietly. Joe asked more about them, as he felt responsible for their present focus. He learned they were despisedly professional as well as sinister, most of them police officers before the war, now with five years of international experience. In Normandy the Gestapo studied the flow of money and transients in the province. Their principal means were records of the French police and co-optation. For that reason the FFI dealt with local gendarmes only through intermediaries. In Camille's plans, all gendarmes were considered Gestapo auxiliaries: bribe them if possible; kill them if necessary.

  The Gestapo's duties in France were far more immense than their manpower. Rounding up Jews and other “vermin” was the task for which they evinced the most enthusiasm, but the Gestapo (an acronym for Secret State Police, an arm of the SS) was also responsible for Rommel's rear-area security and counterespionage, normally military functions.

  Corpulent Hermann Goring was godfather of the Gestapo, whose original success was to ferret out Communists in Germany. Moving up as Hitler's deputy in 1934, Goring turned over the Gestapo to its wartime chief, thirty-five-year-old Heinrich Himmler, a prim, pedantic headmaster and professor of agriculture. At all concentration camps—the Gestapo ran them—Himmler directed that there be an herb garden. His eleven-year reign of terror, carried out by twenty thousand secret policemen, would cover Europe to the Volga. His was the key instrument of Nazi power, the knife at the throat of every German, the scourge of conquered peoples, the flywheel that kept Hitler's war machine functioning to the end.

  The Gestapo's charter in France was Himmler's 1941 decree, titled Nacht undNebel (“Night and Fog”), which stated “Measures [to date] taken against those guilty of offenses against the occupation forces are insufficient, and even penal servitude or hard labor sentences for life are regarded as signs of weakness. An effective and lasting deterrent can be achieved only by the death penalty or by actions which leave the family and population uncertain as to the fate of the offender.”

  Himmler's frustration, expressed in Nacht und Nebel, was because hostage taking had not worked well in occupied France. Indeed, in Camille's opinion, it had helped FFI recruitment. If a Norman feared a midnight knock on the door, Camille could rusticate him as proprietor of a country safe house like those that had harbored Joe; thus a fugitive and a potential hostage found shelter together. What infuriated Camille now was that Himmler's intimidation might be succeeding through the heat applied after discovery of Joe's drop site.

  The Gestapo's unblinking eyes scanned the entire Atlantic coast, too wide a panorama for constantly detailed surveillance, so it took an incident, some evidence of underground resistance, before they focused on a locale. The evidence of Joe's jump near Alengon was such a precipitator. Though san-itizing the drop site was not his responsibility, he faulted himself for not avoiding the trees, thus bringing Nacht undNebel upon his hosts. He needed no instruction that Nazis were as bad as anyone in the world, but up till then they'd been simply the enemy, rather than perpetrators of terror and torture. Now Joe heard Camille's reports on the Gestapo, and his offer of a “kill pill” for the possibility of capture. Joe asked instead for the burp gun he had previously declined.

  With the heat on, movement to exfiltration was slower, the stops longer. In transporting Joe, the FFI took any encounter with Germans as a failure of their intelligence sources, their strongest and utterly vital asset. Someone had not posted himself as a lookout on schedule, or had left her watch early. Or the bought corporal at the Germans' motor pool had not, as promised, reported the departure of several vehicles, his quid pro quo for a gold coin. Camille had led the corporal to believe that his bribe was from black marketeers wishing to move contraband on the roads.* If his officer discovered that treachery, he would be demoted and packed off to the Eastern Front; however, if he had knowingly been an accomplice for the FFI, his penalty would be execution, either by interrogative torture or firing squad, with his company formed up to witness.

  When they torture their own, Camille had informed Joe, the Gestapo use whips and cords. For French victims, they start with things that burn the skin. They have written instructions for what to use on different people. Obviously it's different for males and females, he noted, downing another jelly jar, and who do you think holds out longer? Not us but the women, once they get through the initial humiliations. What do you think, Joe—is it because nature endows them for the agonies of childbirth?

  “I've tried very hard to obtain the torture instructions,” Camille said “but we haven't yet been able to bribe a Gestapo.”

  “Why do you want their manual?”

  “It helps to know what they'll do to you. You're better prepared to hold out as long as possible. We pledge ourselves to four hours. Could you do that, Joe?”

  “Hell no. My body'll look like a Swiss cheese before they get it.”

  JOE WAS THINKING THAT way when his cart made an unexpected halt. Stuffed under hay with his clothespin and burp gun, he heard imperious German commands. That was unnerving for him, but the French had always demonstrated an effective sense for what worked. Laugh it up, play the drunk or the flirt as necessary. Other times be very correct and respectful—that always meant a German officer was present at the checkpoint. No bilingual joking by his driver this time, only short, polite answers. And a long, quiet pause.

  Joe listened for one word Merdel, the emergency signal to burst from the hay firing his burp gun. Waiting for the probe of a pitchfork, he strained to hear what the driver would say now. What he heard was a German curse, a resounding slap, the horse neighing from pain and surprise as the cart jerked forward. The driver said something servile, clucked, then the cart creaked and slowly moved on.

  At the next safe barn, Joe came out sneezing. His driver apologized as if Joe were a mistreated dignitary and congratulated him in a way he couldn't understand till shown two small gold coins. Joe had brought them from England and another of his coins had just bribed his way through the unexpected roadblock.

  That outcome was rewarding, but being behind enemy lines had definitely lost its appeal. The powerlessness, more than the danger, grated on Joe. It was hard to be clandestine cargo when he was a soldier longing to do what training had taught. On his last day he was moved nearly thirty miles. Itching from hay, this time Joe was glad to exfiltrate. Darkness came very late, with the Lysander right behind it; he was the only agent to be recovered. The FFI departure committee was grim and their kisses hasty. No cognac this time, no one to talk with in flight. As he snuggled behind the cockpit, Joe wondered about the two jumpers who had accompanied him outbound. They'd probably exfiltrated earlier while Joe was delayed by the Gestapo dragnet. Or had they been caught in it? How could he find out? Reluctantly he realized that he probably never would.

  The RAF debriefing was brief—obviously much more was now in the wind than single parachutists supporting the FFI. Joe was sent off with thanks but no transportation and had to hitchhike to the railway station. That didn't bother him; he had a greater gratitude, for it was certain that his next jump into France would be with six thousand Screaming Eagles.

  He'd missed the 101st's final dress rehearsal, called Exercise Eagle. Vanderpool said he was one lucky guy: five hundred troopers couldn't jump because their planes didn't even find the DZs at night. There were also four hundred jump casualties: broken bones, sprains, and cuts from farmers' barbed wire. And that wasn't even under fire.

  “We'd better go soon, Joe,” Orv said, “or there won't be many of us left.”

  *In armies other than the Wehrmacht, a machine pistol was considered a carbine in the shoulder-fired species of submachine guns, Sten guns, and tommy guns. Hitler, as a corporal in World War I, had had a bad experience with carbines, so when he became fiihrer of the Third Reich, he banned them. That didn't at all alter the Wehrmacht's need for a rapid-fire assault weapon; technically theirs was a folding-stock carbine, but they were compelled to call it a
machine pistol.

  * The firecracker paratroopers and unintended dispersal of real ones thoroughly discombobulated German intelligence, which reported on the morning of June 6 that 94,000 Allied paratroopers had landed in Normandy the night before—more than seven times the actual number.

  * Most important transportation targets, like this railroad junction outside Argentan, were “dual-targeted” by the Allied high command—that is, assigned to the FFI as sabotage missions but also struck by bombers. This redundancy policy exasperated the FFI, who would risk lives, and often lose them, hitting a target that subsequently was obliterated by heavy American or British bombers. Because the FFI received missions through well-established British channels, of which the paymaster system was a part, guerrillas like Camille blamed the British.

  * Dieppe (August 1942) was a raid in force, meaning a short heavy strike with a scheduled withdrawal rather than the objective of holding ground permanently. As such, Dieppe was the largest raid in history and probably the least successful, though British commandos and American Rangers significantly contributed. The Canadians sent 5,000 of their best men across the Channel to Dieppe and returned with but 2,200. The raid was an experiment to test the prevailing Allied thesis that a sizable port must be seized by direct assault immediately, as had been accomplished in North Africa. The well-learned lesson of Dieppe was that, in the face of Rommel's defenses, the way to success was to first seize beaches before attacking ports. That was done to perfection in Normandy; the port seized was Cherbourg.

  * The FFI were major players in the black market, though of course they never identified themselves as members of the resistance when they approached Germans with bribes. However, a nonperformance, like that of the motor-pool corporal, resulted in effective blackmail when the FFI informed him of the true source of his bribe.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  D NIGHT EVE

  THIS TIME DUBER WAS MORE PROBING. “BEYRLE, HOW THE hell did you get two leaves when nobody else gets any? You're a sergeant, and the colonel can't even take one.”

  It was gratifying to see Duber suspicious that someone might be in on a deal that didn't involve him. His curiosity peaked when Joe casually changed his invasion bet from Pi-cardy to Normandy. Could he have penetrated the ultimate secret? Secrets abounded, real secrets and not-so-secret secrets. Though Duber was now secretly married to a local woman, he also had hustled Greta, the ATS girl. He lost out to equally interested Currahee officers with whom she appeared at Red Cross/USO dances. On the arm of two majors, she turned up at a big party in Newbury where Yehudi Menuhin played “Turkey in the Straw” as an encore. Despite these attentions, Greta seemed to have time for Joe, a high sign he deflected because there was something about her that said stay away. The paymaster debriefings had emphasized not getting too close to any civilians, and grimly illustrated posters admonished, A SLIP OF THE LIP MIGHT SINK A SHIP. Standard warnings like that were ignored like familiar furniture.

  Imminent combat absorbed attention so extensively that even officers became lax about counterespionage until they were “bigoted.” A bigot was the code name for anyone who knew the location of invasion landings or objectives. Of course Eisenhower was the first bigot; after him those shiveringly im-portant secrets sifted down in tight, controlled steps through the highest ranks, not to reach the lowest till they prepared to board ships, planes, or gliders for the great crossing to France. When that would be, not even bigots knew. It all depended on a weather window. Ike himself could not predict exactly when the invasion would go through. Movement of millibars over Greenland was as important as the movement of panzer divisions in France.* Thus Allied plans, extremely detailed, did not include the vital date on which they were to be carried out, instead designating it as “D,” from which the term “D Day” became immortal.

  About two weeks after Joe's second paymaster jump, Third Battalion moved out to a marshaling area near Exeter to be locked up with no outside contact, there to be briefed on the purpose of Exercise Eagle, about which Orv had reported so bleakly.

  “Remember what you did, what you were to accomplish,” Wolverton announced solemnly. “That's what we'll do in France. The operation is called Overlord. Our part in it is called Neptune because we'll be protecting the amphibious forces.”

  Two days later, under even tighter security, the Currahee enlisted men were bigoted, then confined like prisoners. It seemed that if all the MPs guarding them would ship out for France, Ike might have an extra division to hit the beaches on DDay.

  Screaming Eagles were to jump into action hours before the landings; D Night it was called unofficially, and D Night objectives came as a surprise to many. Most bets had been on an invasion east of Normandy, but thanks to Camille's tip, Joe had a winning wager because Normandy is such a big province. Duber approached him as soon as I Company was bigoted.

  “Good guess, Joe, but sorry, you can't collect right away. This whole Overlord-Neptune thing could be to fool Rommel. Bets will be paid off if we actually jump on Normandy.” Joe began to exhibit his Most Obvious Temper. “Not my policy, trooper,” Duber said. “It's the guys running the casino.” He held up his hand. “I know you're pissed, but I'll make you a side bet, double or nothing. I think Normandy is just a feint.” Duber threw out his left, quickly pulled it back. “To see what Rommel does. We're going in somewhere else, pal.”

  The Class Shark took him up: a thousand dollars if they indeed jumped into Normandy. Collection shouldn't be hard because Joe and Duber were assigned to the same D Night stick. Macabre joking like that became common between creditors and debtors, how the former if necessary would heroically save the lives of the latter in combat.

  At Exeter there was but one more rehearsal, a full-dress battalion tactical jump that didn't go much better than Exercise Eagle. The 101st didn't participate in the worst rehearsal snafu, a practice amphibious landing at Slapton Sands. Recon-noitering German torpedo boats slipped in and sank several ships with great loss of life. There was no official word about Slapton Sands; Screaming Eagles learned about it through the grapevine. What it told them was that Rommel knew the invasion was coming but not when or exactly where.

  The grapevine constantly carried negative information, so officers were constantly admonished to ignore it. Naturally Currahees didn't, but when rumors circulated about how final rehearsals for Operation Overlord had been botched, the negativity was shrugged off. In bull sessions they reasoned that their job was doable—not that they understood everything, but they knew enough so that if they landed anywhere near their objectives, those objectives would be seized. Yes they would, no matter how many Germans stood in the way.

  At the same time, what the Currahees would do, they real-ized, was but a small patch in the stupendous parquetry Eisenhower had put together. That was Ike's ultimate talent, demonstrated from 1943 to 1945, for which the world owes him ultimate homage. Neither Joe nor his buddies knew anything about Ike except that he had come up from the Mediterranean Theater and had a German name. That seemed ironic, and they wondered if it did to the Germans too.

  Ike was a principal archangel, God being Roosevelt. As remote as he was, Eisenhower came down to the 101st several times, including a last visit as they loaded up on D Night. His British air adviser had told him that 80 percent of them were being sent to certain death. Paratroopers are picture takers. From D Night the most famous of their photos was of Ike speaking with vehemence to a Screaming Eagle lieutenant as blackface troopers listen with intent seriousness but scant worry. Depicted is the paradox of the Allied supreme commander, visiting to encourage his men and instead finding encouragement himself*

  The other big-name generals were better known to Screaming Eagles than Eisenhower. Omar Bradley had commanded the 82nd before it split into the 101st, so Bradley was okay even if he was a straight leg. He'd lived up to his nickname, “the GI's general,” and they were glad he had overall command of the American half of the invasion. He'd know what the Airborne could do and the kind of sup
port they'd need to do it. Joe had heard of “Blood and Guts” Patton but in a negative way because Ike had relieved him for slapping a GI in Sicily.

  The other celebrity general was Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, the overall Overlord ground commander. The British put titles before a man's name, like Sir or Earl or Duke, but also after his name if he had won some famous victory. For that reason Monty—a nickname as well known as Ike—signed himself “Montgomery of Alamein.” In Rams-bury, Third Battalion had been shown a British-produced documentary war movie, Desert Victory, about how Montgomery finally routed Rommel in the desert at El Alamein. Jack liked the film so much he asked Joe and Orv to see it again with him. This was after the second paymaster jump, and Joe declined because he was separating war movies from war experience in his mind. Clips of German POWs, hands on head, jarred with his memory of German voices snarling behind guns. To capture those guns and the men who held them, he had come to realize, was not going to be the romantic adventure that Jack looked forward to. There was no one to dissuade him, for there were no combat veterans among the Currahees.

  At Exeter came the last sign that combat was nigh—the issue of live ammunition. In exercises, maneuvers, and rehearsals there usually weren't even blanks because it was feared that if civilians heard what sounded like torrents of gunfire, they'd think the Germans were invading England. So if a trooper carried a rifle, he went, “Bang-bang.” If he was a machine gunner, he went, “Duh-duh-duh-duh.”