Behind Hitler's Lines by Thomas H. Taylor Read Free Book Online Page A

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 aman 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 wastwenty, 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