OPERATION JEDBURGH

The Jedburgh operation was one of the biggest and most successful ever mounted by OSS. It was a joint British-American venture and its purpose was to provide liaison between the resistance movements in France and the Lowlands, and the invading Allied armies.

The story of the Jedburghs differs from the other stories in this book in that the name of the principal participant is not a real name. William Wheeler will not be found in the list of Jedburghs who jumped into France. Nevertheless, every incident of Wheeler’s training and of his mission is a real incident, just as the names of other Americans mentioned in his story are real names. Wheeler affords the best means of conveying the quality of life with the maquis, which both the authors themselves saw at first hand in France.

The formula for the Jedburgh operation—an English or American officer, a radio operator, and another officer of the country in which the operation was to take place—was found to be a good one, and served as a model for a number of other operations in aid of the European resistance. For that reason it is an excellent example of the sort of thing OSS did in the resistance field.

Lieutenant Wheeler was very, very frightened.

There he was, William G. Wheeler, American, sitting in a large British plane flying over France, and some hours or minutes from jumping behind the German lines, into German-occupied territory. This is silly, he thought, just plain silly.

He sat on the floor, his parachute bunchy behind his back, squeezed against his French partner on one side, and his American radio operator on the other. Stretching far back into the dim recesses of the huge plane were 15 other men, wild Frenchmen of a coup de main party being dropped into the same area of France.

The plane reared like a startled horse. Light, just visible through the cracks in the jump hole, swept over the plane, disappeared, came again. Something swooshed past and exploded, and the plane bucked. Lieutenant Wheeler’s French partner nudged him. “Le flak,” he said calmly.

Lieutenant Wheeler was very frightened indeed.

Later—Wheeler had no idea how much later—the plane slowed down and circled. The despatcher, an RAF sergeant, talked into the intercom. Then he and another man, who seemed to materialize out of the darkness, pulled off the cover of the jump hole. Over his French partner’s knee, Lieutenant Wheeler glanced into the open hole, and glanced quickly away again. Down there, some thousand feet below, was France, occupied France. The cool air rushed up into the plane. The despatcher pushed three bundles through the hole, and they disappeared with sickening suddenness.

The plane circled again.

“Action stations,” roared the despatcher.

Wheeler’s French partner nudged him again, grinned, then sidled up to the hole. He put both hands on the edge, and swung his feet down over the side. Wheeler hunched beside him, his knees touching his partners back. Hope I’m hooked up all right, he thought, and reached up to feel the static line behind his neck. Try to remember everything. Hold straight, head on chest, legs together, pull the webs, don’t reach out for the ground, push even, hold straight, legs together.

“Running in.”

Try to do it right. Hope it’s OK down below. Keep your head down, legs together, control the chute, jump rigid.

“Number one. GO. TWO, GO.”

Then that queer, unbelievable feeling, as the 130-mile prop-wash took him in a rush, and turned him over, before the chute had opened. The sharp flat crack of the chute, the tug, and Oh, lovely, lovely with the chute open, and the gentle swaying in the cool moonlit air of France.

Automatically, Wheeler grasped the lift webs, and pulled down hard. The swaying lessened. He had time to look around him. Below and well off to the right, he saw another chute, his partner’s, dim in the moonlight, then more chutes above, and to the left. On the ground, far to the left, were three large fires, and little figures scurrying on the ground. Those are French people, he said to himself, that’s the maquis, this is France, this is it, this is what I’ve waited for so long. I wonder where the Germans are. Those fires seem awfully big.

Then right below him long before he had expected it, he sensed rather than saw the ground, and his feet hit it hard, and he rolled over on his side, hitting his head against something, and lay there for a few seconds, on the ground of France.

It seemed very still at first, entirely still, cool with the bright stars and the moon of France above him. Then he heard sounds, the high chirping of insects, the distant barking of a dog. Then voices, far at first and then nearer. He got to his feet.

“Oui, foutre alors, c’était bien sûr par ici.”

“Americain,” said Wheeler, in his high-school accent. “Je suis Americain.”

Somebody, redolent of wine and sweat, grabbed him and hugged him. Somebody else grabbed a hand and began patting him affectionately on the head. Lieutenant Wheeler, an OSS Jedburgh man, was in the maquis of France.

Some 10 months before that night, in the training area of a camp in a Southern state, Lieutenant Wheeler had been sitting in a jeep by the side of a dirt road, his feet up on the hood, languidly smoking a cigarette. He had been instructing his platoon in the placement of the antitank gun. They had not seemed noticeably interested in his little talk. They were bored. So was Lieutenant Wheeler. The merciless Southern sun beat down, and he could feel the sweat trickling down his chest under his fatigues, covered with the red filmy dust he had come to hate. In less than ten minutes he would have to instruct his platoon in the drill of loading and firing the antitank gun. He hoped the sergeant knew something about the drill; he certainly didn’t. God! he was bored.

A jeep came bouncing down the road. It stopped, in a red cloud of dust, beside Lieutenant Wheeler’s. Another lieutenant sat beside the driver.

“Hey, Wheeler. You speak French?”

“Yeah, a little. Four years at college. Why?”

“There’s a major up at headquarters. Looking for company grade officers who speak French and are willing to volunteer for hazardous service behind enemy lines. That’s what he said.”

“So what? Do I look like a dope?”

“You want to get out of this firetrap, don’t you? OK, here’s your chance.”

The lieutenant grinned, and drove on.

Wheeler climbed wearily out of the truck, and stretched.

“All right men, everybody over here,” he called.

Now, what was that damn drill? God! How bored he was.

Some weeks later, Wheeler was in Washington. He had put his name down on the major’s list, and had almost forgotten all about it when he received orders to report to something called the Office of Strategic Services.

In February, 1944, in the foggy, creeping cold of an English winter, a British army truck turned in at the main entrance of a huge English country estate. For more than a mile the truck rolled through the park, which even in winter and in wartime retained some of its lush, manicured neatness. Then, before a huge brownstone house, the truck stopped.

Wheeler jumped out first. In the six weeks he had been in England, he had seen other English country houses, but this was really something. Wheeler whistled.

“Some dump,” he said.

The “dump” was Milton Hall, a fantastic Elizabethan pile, country seat of an old, aristocratic, and formerly exceedingly rich English family. It was one of those enormous private houses which, dotted about the English countryside, put the feeble efforts of America’s millionaires to shame. Almost without effort, with the addition of a few huts and outbuildings, Milton Hall swallowed the 240 men—American, English, French, Dutch, and Belgian—of the Jedburgh operation, together with what the British called “the permanent party,” the instructors, batmen, cooks, drivers, who had been collected together to run the operation and to serve it.

Wheeler had spent some time in another big country house, run by the British. Here he first experienced British army rations, which neither he nor his friends admired. Then he had gone to a British parachute school in the north.

Some of the other men were Fort Benning paratroopers who had completed the long, difficult American parachute course. When these men learned that the course for Wheeler and the others, who had never jumped before, was to last three days, they were incredulous. Three days! It was six weeks at Benning before your first jump. The paratroopers had taken a certain sadistic pleasure in describing the horrors of jumping; three days—it was murder.

Bill Wheeler had a little difficulty sleeping before the day of his first jump, but he was not really nervous until he had put on his parachute and climbed into the basket of the balloon. When he saw the instructor give the signal, and the balloon began slowly to rise off the ground he wished he were somewhere else, anywhere else. He could feel the gentle swaying motion as the balloon rose slowly. He had been told it was best to keep his eyes on the bottom of the balloon. Men who looked through the square jump hole in the basket sometimes refused, and refusal was the final shame. He tried to keep his eyes fixed on the netting around the balloon’s gray belly, but somehow they slid down, and he glanced through the hole. Quickly he looked away again. Through the hole he had caught a glimpse of the green field below, and the tiny men, and nothing between him and the ground but air. Suddenly the rising motion of the balloon stopped. Bill glanced at the other four people sitting around the edges of the little basket. Their faces showing a curious, glazed solemnity.

“NUMBER ONE,” shouted the instructor. Someone wriggled up to the hole, 700 feet above the ground, and stuck his legs out in the open air.

“GO!”

The man disappeared. The static line was taut for an instant, and then it flapped loosely against the side of the hole. It was like a hanging, Wheeler afterwards remembered thinking.

“NUMBER TWO.”

That’s me, thought Wheeler, and somehow against every instinct he found himself sitting on the edge of the hole, with nothing at all below him, for 700 feet.

“GO!”

“My God,” Wheeler had just time to think, as he fell free, rushing through the air for 140 feet, “it’s not going to open.” Then suddenly he found himself floating lazily above the English countryside, his parachute flapping gently above him. He put out his left hand when he landed, and the instructor told him he might have broken his wrist, and gave him hell. But Bill Wheeler was happy. He had made his first parachute jump.

The next two jumps from a plane had been easy by comparison; he knew what it was all about, and there hadn’t been that terrible wait for the balloon to gain height, and the prop-wash had opened his chute immediately. At any rate, here he was now, a qualified parachutist, and a Jedburgh, which was something pretty dashing to be, and arriving at Milton Hall, where he had been told he would stay till he went into the field, with no more chivvying about from place to place. Milton Hall didn’t look too bad, better than that damn dusty hot camp in the South, anyway.

It was at Milton Hall that Bill Wheeler first found out what he was expected to do. He had had a pretty shrewd idea before, but now it was definite. He was a Jedburgh, and at last he knew for sure what a Jedburgh was. The English colonel in command of Milton Hall made a little speech.

The colonel started his speech by remarking that the Jeds were an international unit, a fact quite obvious to his audience. Of the 80 or 90 Americans in the place, about half were officers from second lieutenants to majors, and half were enlisted radio operators. There were about the same number of English, divided about the same way. Then there were French, Belgians, and Dutchmen, mostly officers, the great majority French.

The colonel then said something about the maquis. Wheeler had heard of the maquis, though he knew very little about them. He knew that there was some kind of resistance movement in France, and particularly after he had talked with a few of the Frenchmen, he knew that the French hated the Germans in a way that Americans had never learned to hate.

The plan was simple, as outlined by the colonel, and just about what he had expected. Teams of three were to be formed, consisting of an American or British officer, a French, Dutch, or Belgian officer, and a radio operator. These teams of three were to be parachuted ahead of the advancing Allied armies once the invasion of the continent had begun. They were to jump in uniform to the forces of the resistance, and to form the link between the resistance and the Allied command, so that the resistance forces could be integrated with the plans of the regular armies. They were to call for drops of arms and supplies, show the maquis how to use their arms, and then accompany them, and if necessary, lead them, into action against the Germans, following whatever instructions they received on their radios from London.

So that’s the act, thought Wheeler, when the colonel had finished his little speech.

“Any questions?” asked the colonel.

“Yes sir,” came an unmistakably American voice. “How many Germans are there in France?”

“Not many over half a million,” said the colonel, in his weary English accent.

“Oh, that’s all, huh?” muttered the American. Everyone laughed. Wheeler laughed too. All the same, he thought, more than half a million Germans is a lot of Germans.

There were times when Wheeler, who was cursed with an imagination, would awake in the room which he shared with four others on the top floor of Milton Hall, and stare into the darkness and think and wonder. What would it be like in France, in occupied France? How could he stay in uniform behind the German lines? What would it be like if he were caught, what would it be like to be tortured, to be shot, to wait to be shot? Somebody had said that Hitler had announced he would shoot any parachutist, in uniform or out, caught behind the German lines. Then there was gas. Nobody was to go in with a gas mask. The French didn’t have gas masks, and so it would be silly to have a gas mask when nobody else had one. Obviously you couldn’t put it on. Maybe Hitler would use gas against the maquis. It was an obvious way of dealing with them. What would it be like to die of gas? What would it be like to be chased by dogs? An agent who had made a speech at Milton Hall had been chased by dogs. What would it be like?

Sometimes at night Bill Wheeler lay and wondered, and was afraid.

But mostly he was too busy to be afraid. He was a trained infantry officer, but this fighting behind the lines was different, and there were many things he had to know. He had to know all the weapons—and many of them were English weapons, Stens, Brens, Enfields, two-inch mortars—which were to be dropped to the maquis; he could not train the maquis to use weapons he himself did not know. He had to know wireless. That was primarily the job of the radio sergeant, but suppose the sergeant were killed or captured or got sick or something. Laboriously he learned the Morse code, got himself up to 12 words a minute, learned how to set up and operate the little hand-powered, long-range set. Taught by a remarkably pretty girl in the uniform of the ATS, British equivalent of the WAC, he studied the codes he would use behind the lines. Once or twice he asked her to have dinner with him in town, but always someone else—usually a Frenchman—had gotten in ahead of him.

Then there were the “schemes” as the British called them—minor maneuvers designed to train him and test him. He learned how to live in the woods, he went on long marches with a full pack, he was even instructed, by the British colonel who commanded the school, in the art of slaughtering and roasting a sheep. He was taught the tactics of hit and run, the tactics of guerrilla warfare; later he was to discover that the ability to run could prove useful. He was busy, and for the first two or three months at least, he felt he was learning something.

It was in the evenings and on occasional week-end passes to London, that he got to know the other Jeds, and particularly the American Jeds, best. They were a highly individual lot, the Americans. Each had volunteered for “an extremely hazardous secret mission behind the enemy lines,” without the faintest idea what he was getting in for, which perhaps explained their individualism. They were entirely uninhibited. Two or three times a week, lectures were given in the main lecture rooms of Milton Hall. Often they were given by British or American agents, men who had been in occupied Europe, who knew the ropes, who could tell them what it was to be behind the lines, what the resistance consisted of, how to fool the Gestapo if you were caught, and how to avoid getting caught. These men were listened to with respectful attention. Occasionally, however, some pompous fool whose principal purpose was to impress everyone with his own importance would take the stand. The Jeds would be corralled in to listen to him. Somewhere the Americans had learned a method of dealing with such people. No one knew where it had begun, or how, but it became a tradition, and it was certainly effective. When the speaker made some peculiarly ludicrous remark (usually something to the effect: “I wish with all my heart and soul I could be with you boys, but alas, I am chained to my desk”) the American Jeds would go into a routine which never failed to amaze and delight the more circumspect Europeans, and particularly the British. One Jed would murmur under his breath “Fifty-five.”

Another would follow, more loudly, “Fifty-six.”

With rising crescendo, the Americans in chorus would shout, “Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, FIFTY-NINE, BULL—,” and the chorus would be followed by an unprintable four-letter word, loudly and clearly pronounced.

They were a mixed lot, the American Jeds, from all parts of the Union.

There was big, good-natured John Bonsall, for example, highly intelligent and dependably steady, who was killed in France at the end of August. There was Paul Cyr, of Vermont and Indiana, young, uninhibited, full of a bouncing enthusiasm, whose sense of drama so carried him away that when he was telling a story he would pace up and down acting out the individual parts. He was the first American Jed to jump in France, and his intensely dramatic descriptions of his experiences, in which he would fight over again desperate hand-to-hand battles, later made him famous. Douglas Bazata was another, a red-haired soldier of fortune, whose habit of calling colonels “Sugar,” and whose esoteric double-talk constantly amazed and confounded the British. In France Bazata’s peculiar sense of humor sometimes carried him away. On one occasion he and his partner were in a heavy concentration of Germans. They had had to get out of uniform. Dressed as peasants, they were trying to escape from a field surrounded by Germans by crawling along, picking mushrooms as they crawled. On the edge of the field, Baz saw a German standing sternly with his legs far apart. The temptation was too much for him. His partner was horrified to see Bazata crawl through the German’s legs, and even more horrified to hear him saying in English, clearly and politely, “Excuse me.”

There was Bill Colby, who later took a group of skiers to harrass the Germans in Norway, and big, tough, black-haired John Gildee, who was one of the first to jump into France, and who was later wounded on a mission behind the lines in Siam. There was Hod Fuller, the oldest of the Jeds, Harvard man and gentlemen adventurer, who had sailed the world in a small boat, fought with the French before the fall of France, and fought with the First Marine Division on Guadalcanal. There was earnest, intelligent Charley Brown of New York, and cheerful, very personable Walter Hanna of New Mexico, who had a close shave in the south of France. There were West Pointers among the Jeds: Bill Pietsch, who married a beautiful Russian girl in Paris after his mission, and Cy Maniere, who was captured by the Gestapo in civilian clothes and who, by his own remarkable presence of mind and by magical good luck, lived to tell the tale.

Wheeler liked and got on with the Americans, and some of them became his close friends, but at first he was suspicious of the English. The first English colonel commanding Milton Hall had tried to run the place like a guards battalion. He was a strong believer in morning parades, roll calls, discipline, and no whistling in the halls, and when, perhaps with good reason, he eliminated many of Wheeler’s American friends, it did not sit too well with the Americans. Colonel Musgrave, who succeeded him, did an excellent job in the most difficult command a lieutenant colonel had ever had, the tension between the English and the Americans died down, and Bill Wheeler, who shared his room with two Englishmen, came to like and admire many of them. There were some he didn’t like—a bustling little major in particular, who was inclined to throw his weight around and pull his rank—but on the whole he liked the English and they liked him.

There had been some Frenchmen in Milton Hall from the beginning, but not enough to go around. Then in March they came, a big group who had been through the African campaign, most of them St. Cyr men and professional soldiers, first-rate officers whose job was fighting. In March the mating season really got under way.

It was obvious to Wheeler, as it was to everybody, that certainly his happiness, and possibly his life, might depend on the other men of the three-man team. At first there had been some attempt to assign partners, but this never worked, and in March, Colonel Musgrave announced that in future partnerships would be made by mutual consent. A furious and occasionally embarrassing bout of political maneuvering for good partners followed. Men would get “engaged” only to have the engagement broken in a fit of pique the next day. Some fickle and flirtatious souls would get themselves engaged secretly to two or three others, just to be on the safe side, and much mental anguish on the part of the jilted inevitably followed. The engagement became a marriage when it was solemnized by Colonel Musgrave’s approval and publication in daily orders. Even after a marriage was solemnized, there were occasional divorces. This system of voluntary partnership led to complications, but it was proved the best. It was better to be divorced at Milton Hall than in the field.

Bill Wheeler had thought he could speak French, or at least get along all right. He’d had six years, two at high school and four at college, and he’d always got pretty good marks. That was some years ago, but what the hell—it would come back to him. When the French began to arrive at Milton Hall in droves, he was horrified to discover that the language they spoke with such dismaying rapidity sounded to him like a confused babble. In this he was not alone. At first a high proportion of both the English and the Americans conversed with the French largely in sign language. This didn’t bother most of the Americans at all. In sign language they would propose to a Frenchman, and with much posturing and gesturing their suit would be accepted. But Wheeler was shy in a way, and he was slow to get engaged. It worried him, as the marriages were constantly announced in daily orders, and still he had no partner.

Most of the Americans played poker, for stakes which horrified the comparatively poverty-stricken Europeans. Wheeler liked bridge though, and played a good deal with the British and French, for the impressive stake of threepence per hundred points. He played a good game, and perhaps it was that which impressed René. At any rate, after a couple of rubbers René looked at him, and said, “Alors, un coup?” and made the unmistakable French gesture for drinking.

They went to the bar, and ordered a glass of the watery English beer.

“Alors,” said René, “Vous cherchez un partenaire?”

“What?” said Wheeler.

He got it the second time.

“Oui,” he said.

Wheeler was lucky in René. A St. Cyr graduate who had escaped from occupied France and won the Croix de Guerre fighting with the Free French in Africa, René was tall, dark-haired, with a long intelligent nose and the slightly liquid brown eyes and olive skin of a Frenchman from the south of France. Very calm and quiet for a Frenchman, he had an imperturbable sense of humor, and a desire to kill Germans, freely expressed, which sometimes gave Wheeler pause.

Together René and Wheeler went in search of a radio operator. They found Sergeant Bob Williams, 20 years old, with the biggest collection of pin-ups in Milton Hall. Wheeler sometimes thought that the sergeant might more appropriately have stayed home, to sip sodas in the local drugstore with a bobby-soxer, rather than jumping behind the enemy lines in France, but, as Wheeler found out, Bob Williams knew his business of radio inside out, and he was a good man to have along.

At any rate, Jed Team Alexander was born. There it was, published in daily orders—Team Alexander: Capitaine René Gramont, Lieutenant William Wheeler, Master Sergeant Robert Williams.

The drizzling March gave way to May and the lovely English spring. The men trained in teams now. René and Wheeler and the Sergeant worked together every day. The two officers came to know, and like, and trust each other. Wheeler practiced his French on René, and although it was still halting and ungrammatical and full of direct translations from the English which sometimes caused René to double up with laughter, it improved, and Wheeler was able to understand most of what René said.

May passed into June, and the planes roared daily overhead. The invasion must come soon; or maybe they had it called off for this year? Maybe something had gone wrong? The Jeds, waiting, became more restless. Then suddenly there it was. In the papers, on the radio. It had come at last. Team Alexander was still in Milton Hall. One or two familiar faces disappeared. Paul Cyr’s bed was empty one morning, then John Gildee’s. A few of the English, a few of the French suddenly were missing. But Milton Hall seemed as full as ever.

It was changed though. There was a tension. Men would be called to Colonel Musgrave’s office, and would come downstairs to the bar, looking serious, trying not to look frightened, saying nothing. But for six weeks after D-Day, few men left, there was no real gap in the ranks. Life went on at Milton Hall. The Americans played their poker for higher stakes than ever. The local pub seemed to be more full of thirsty Jeds than before. The training continued, but with Cherbourg falling and the Germans counterattacking on the beach head, Wheeler and his friends were becoming a little tired of schemes. June passed into July, and a few more teams took off, but Team Alexander stayed on at Milton Hall.

Wheeler had just come back from a run. He had taken a bath, and was climbing into his underclothes. A British sergeant came into the room.

“The colonel wants to see you right away in his office, sir,” said the sergeant. “You and Captain Gramont.”

Wheeler could feel his heart turn over. Maybe this was it. Maybe it was something else, though. Maybe the colonel wanted to see him about something else.

Three nights later, Bill Wheeler was floating down through the cool night air onto the ground of France.

Lieutenant Wheeler was asked to write a report on his mission when he got back to London. He found it very difficult, and he couldn’t remember just when things had happened.

“We encountered some antiaircraft fire during the flight,” he wrote, “but were dropped successfully on the D.Z. at 0130 hours. The next day, having met the leader of the maquis …”

The two men who had found him seemed to regard Wheeler as their personal property. The man who had hugged him was short and fat and breathed heavily. He wore a beret, a shirt made of brown parachute silk, a baggy pair of pants, and heavy farmer’s shoes. With his stubble of beard and the red bandana round his neck, he looked in the bright moonlight very much, thought Wheeler, as a maquisard ought to look. The man who had patted him on the head was taller and thinner and said very little. He would smile and nod his head vigorously when his fat partner said something, but he left the conversation up to him.

Wheeler was conscientious and remembered his training. He knelt down, and carefully he began to roll up his parachute so that he could hide it somewhere. The fat man laughed and would have none of it. The fat man talked very fast, and with a curious accent quite unlike René’s, full of rolling guttural r’s and e’s at the ends of words, which made his French sound more like Italian. Wheeler hardly understood a word. At first the fat man babbled gaily on, and then he saw that this American was looking bewildered. Quickly he adapted himself to the situation.

“Moi,” he said, pointing to his large chest, “Moi, Jacques.”

“Oui,” said Wheeler, and smiled.

“Lui,” said Jacques, pointing to the tall silent man, “Louis.”

“Oui,” said Wheeler. The tall man nodded vigorously, grinning.

“Vous?” said Jacques.

“Bill,” said Bill.

“Beel,” said Jacques. “Vous et moi, Beel et Jacques, amis.”

“Beel et Jacques et Louis, amis. France et I’Amerique amis.” He withdrew a bottle from somewhere in his capacious trousers.

“Un coup?” he said.

Bill had a coup, the first of a long series. He had made his first friends in the maquis of France.

By the time Wheeler crawled into bed that night, he had had a number of coups. He was slightly bemused, but happy. The whole thing had been very surprising. The bed in itself was surprising—he had expected, as he had been taught at Milton Hall, to creep off into the woods somewhere, lugging his heavy pack. Instead, Jacques and Louis had convoyed him triumphantly to the place where the fires were lit. There were a great many people, all talking noisily and giving each other orders, most of whom seemed to have a strong desire to kiss him. Then Jacques and Louis had led him, and René and the Sergeant and some very young maquisards, to an old truck. It was a very old truck, but still, there it was, a truck, very surprising. Louis had started a large charcoal fire in the truck, and they had waited while the fire got red hot. Then they had started off, with Louis driving and Jacques sitting beside him and the rest of them all piled in the back. After a few minutes Jacques had stuck his head out and shouted, “Alerte.” Louis had put off the headlights and one of the young Frenchmen had pointed a Bren, the British light machine gun, forward over the top of the canopy and everyone else pointed whatever weapon he had over the side. Louis had stepped on the gas or stepped on the charcoal or whatever it was, and the truck had rattled and banged and roared through the main street of a village, and across a main road. Nothing happened. On the other side, Louis had put on his headlights again, and everyone had relaxed, and the truck had wheezed slowly round corners and up hills on a terrible road, and then there they were at a big house in a clearing. There were a great many people in the house, and although it was now three in the morning, everybody felt very gay and quite a party started up. On a big table there were delicious ham and wonderful light omelettes and crisp salad and a bottle of red sourish wine for everyone. There was a lot of kissing and speech-making. Someone had made an incomprehensible but moving toast to America, and then everyone had looked at Wheeler. Bill got up and waved his glass about and said, “A la France,” which seemed to be adequate, as everyone clapped and two girls kissed him again.

Then he and René had been shown to a room on the second floor of the large farmhouse. There were two beds in it, with rough woven sheets—sheets even, thought Wheeler. This was better than a foxhole. This was a pretty good way to fight a war. He and René undressed by the light of a candle. As René crawled into bed, he said, “Alors, Beel, tu aimes la France?”

“Oui, j’aime la France beaucoup,” said Bill, and he went on unlacing his high paratroop boots. Yes, he liked France. He pulled off the boots, and kicked them in a corner. He yawned, and got into bed. It was the last time he was to take off his boots for many days.

Wheeler was usually a sound sleeper. He never really woke up, he said, until after his second cup of coffee and his second cigarette. Three hours after he had gone to bed, however, he suddenly found himself wide awake. Somewhere, quite near, he heard the sound of firing, on both sides. Long bursts, very rapid fire; he had never heard firing quite like it. René was awake. René had fought in Africa, and he had heard those long rapid bursts before.

“Mitrailleuses boches,” he said.

“Perhaps,” said Wheeler in his bad French, “It is practice with guns the maquis have taken.”

“Perhaps,” said René, “but all the same it might be wise to dress ourselves.”

As Wheeler was putting on his boots, a very young maquisard flung open the door of the room.

“Les boches” he said, and ran down the corridor.

“God damn these boots,” said Wheeler, struggling with the laces. For some reason the laces didn’t seem to want to go into the eyelets. The firing seemed nearer now, the rapid fire of the German MG34s interspersed with the slower firing of the Bren gun.

René was dressed before Wheeler, but, with admirable calm, he waited. Wheeler, dressed at last, buckled on his .45, and grabbed for his carbine. Downstairs, they found Jacques and Louis and another man, wearing the well-fitting jacket of a French uniform, with the three gold stripes of a captain on the shoulder, and moth-eaten corduroy trousers.

“Bonjour,” said Jacques.

“Bonjour” said René.

“Allow me to introduce you,” said Jacques, in his rich Midi accent, “to Capitaine le Chat, the chief of our maquis.”

“Ravished to make your acquaintance,” said René.

“Bonjour,” said Capitaine le Chat. He was thin and awkward, with strange yellow eyes.

“Bonjour,” said Wheeler.

They all shook hands with each other, even Louis, the silent one. The firing had died down a bit, but all the same it seemed to Wheeler a queer time for all these formalities.

“We have a bazooka,” said the chief, addressing René in French.

“Bon,” said René.

“We have the bombs,” said the chief.

“Bon.”

“But we have no one who knows how to make the machine work. You have come to instruct in such arms. There are four German trucks about a kilometer from here. Perhaps now would be a good time to begin the instruction.”

“Bon,” said René. He grinned at Wheeler. Wheeler felt a little queer. He had never, after all, heard a shot fired in anger until that morning.

It was all very confusing. From somewhere, about 20 Frenchmen appeared. Most of them were boys in their teens, with the Cross of Lorraine sewn on their threadbare coats, carrying arms which ranged from Bren guns to nineteenth-century pistols. A blond young man, who could have been barely 20, seemed to be more or less their leader. The trucks were, he said, about a kilometer along a dirt road, and at a cross roads around a bend.

Jacques went along, followed by the faithful Louis. Jacques stuck close to Wheeler, whom he still regarded as his personal property. He carried the bazooka, which he patted affectionately from time to time, whispering encouragingly to it, and Louis carried the bombs. Jacques had forgotten the careful monosyllablic conversation of the night before, and he chatted gaily on in his incomprehensible accent. Wheeler smiled and nodded and said, “Oui,” from time to time, and that seemed to satisfy him.

This was certainly different from any patrol or approach march Wheeler had known in his training at Milton Hall or in the camp down South. The men walked down the road, bunched up, talking excitedly to each other, as if they were going to a picnic. The firing had died down. Now there was only an occasional rifle shot. Still, thought Wheeler, there are Germans about. René seemed worried, too. He said something about taking cover to Jacques. Jacques bellowed. Then everyone stopped in the road and there was an argument. The blond leader said something about it being unnecessary to take cover, that he knew where the trucks were, and that it was necessary to see ahead. René said, “Alors,” and Jacques said, “Alors,” several times, and shrugged his shoulders. In the end, the blond young man and four others stayed in the road, and Wheeler and the others plowed through the woods at the side.

The men had stopped talking now. Jacques turned round and said to Wheeler behind him, “One approaches.” Over Jacques’ shoulders and through the green pine branches, Wheeler saw the blond young man turn, and put his fingers to his lips. It was all queer and unreal to Wheeler, like playing Indians when he was a child. The blond young man turned round again, moving forward with exaggerated stealth, like a boy playing a game. There was a sharp crack, and he straightened up, looking surprised, turned round once, and fell hard on the ground. There were three bursts of machine-gun fire, very near, and the three other men fell down. The fifth, in the rear, jumped into the bushes, as Wheeler had seen a startled deer jump in Maine. Somewhere off to the right there was a whistle, and the sound of a German voice, and then more firing from an unexpected direction. Then more. He could hear a buzzing sound, like bees. Then a whoofling noise and a crash, quite far away. Mortar, he said to himself, pleased to recognize the sound.

Wheeler felt very excited, not frightened exactly but excited. Nothing in his training seemed to cover this, and he had no idea what he ought to do. He looked at René. René looked puzzled. It had not been like this in Africa. “What kind of a whore of a battle,” he heard René mutter. Then Wheeler felt Jacques’ hand on his arm. “Viens, mon petit, il faut qu’on foute le camp,” Jacques said. Wheeler had never heard the phrase before, but when he saw Jacques drop the bazooka and run, he guessed the meaning. Louis ran after Jacques. The other men seemed suddenly to have disappeared. Wheeler looked at René, and René nodded. Together they ran after Louis and Jacques.

“We were then successful,” wrote Wheeler in his report, “in re-establishing contact with Captain le Chat.…”

He knew it was some days after that first morning that he was sitting in the barn, but he couldn’t remember how many days. He and René and Jacques and Louis were in the barn, and three or four others. They had been moving about a great deal. The Germans had moved two divisions, largely Polish and Cossack troops, into the area, determined to wipe out the maquis. It was heavily wooded country, and it was surprisingly easy to hide in the forests. The second day they’d got hold of a gazogene truck, but they’d had to ditch it and run when they met a German column coming the other way. Then there was the other time when they got out the back door of a café as a German patrol came in the front. Jacques and Louis and two others had killed six of the patrol later, but mostly it was more running away than fighting. It had been sort of exhilarating in a way, but it was tiring all right, and there was the nervous strain, the feeling of being surrounded.

Wheeler was tired as he sat in the straw of the barn, tired and very worried. His feet ached and the paratroop boots were wet and scuffed. His back hurt. He had had a pack of Chesterfields in his emergency kit when he started out with the bazooka, and somewhere Jacques had found a few packs of Gauloises. Wheeler rationed himself to one Chesterfield and one Gauloise a day. He had had his ration, and now he was desperately tempted to have just one more. He was tempted to try one of the Benzedrine pills in his emergency kit, too. René had had one, and he had been full of life for a few hours, but then terribly tired and depressed when the effect wore off. Maybe better not. He yawned, and shifted himself on the pile of hay. Worst of all was the worry about Bob Williams.

Where in hell could Sergeant Williams have got to? Yesterday Jacques had sent someone off to look for Capitaine le Chat, and to ask about the jeune parachutiste americain, but how in hell could anyone find them around here, with the Germans all about. Maybe Williams had been caught. He was in uniform. Maybe he’d be all right. Still, he had the code books and the radio and everything, and what good were they without the radio? A Jed team without a radio was pretty useless. Maybe it was his fault. After all, as an American, Williams was perhaps pretty much his responsibility. He hadn’t seen him that morning when they had gone off with the bazooka. Williams was so young, perhaps he’d done something foolish and got himself killed or captured.

“Alerte,” whispered Jacques, poking his head into the barn.

God, here we go again, thought Wheeler. He grabbed his carbine, and as he heard the sound of a motor, he dug himself into the straw, side by side with René. Louis had jumped behind a barrel in the corner, and the other men had hidden themselves. Jacques had gone outside again, and was probably behind some bush with a Bren.

He could hear the sound of a car laboring up the little slope towards the barn. Outside, it stopped.

He heard Jacques shout, “Le patron.”

There were confused sounds of greeting outside. Then a vaguely familiar figure in uniform jacquet and corduroy trousers appeared in the doorway.

“Well,” said Capitaine le Chat, “how goes it?”

Over his shoulder Wheeler saw the grinning, 20-year-old face of Bob Williams.

“Hiya, Lieutenant,” said the Sergeant.

Thank God, said Wheeler to himself.

“Hi Sergeant,” he said.

There was much handshaking all round.

“Well,” said Le Chat, “I believe our annoyances are almost terminated.”

The Sergeant whispered to Wheeler, “This Captain Cat is really quite a guy.”

As Le Chat had said, their annoyances were very nearly terminated. The enemy divisions, satisfied that the maquis had been destroyed, had withdrawn.

The maquis had not been destroyed. It had killed a considerable number of Germans for every dead maquisard. But it had been scattered, and disorganized, and some of its arms had been taken. What arms it had, had been provided through the medium of a British agent whose responsibility was an area comprising three departments. Although, as Wheeler was delighted to find, the Sergeant had been able to save not only the radio and code books but most of his and René’s personal belongings, the Germans had found the reserve stock of arms in the big farmhouse, and they had taken it.

“Reorganization is necessary,” said Capitaine le Chat.

He looked at René and Wheeler.

“Arms are necessary,” he said.

“Some five days after our initial request, our dropping field was serviced. The drop occurred at approximately 0230 hrs.…”

This was the second night. For three days they had listened to the BBC, hopefully, after they had sent the message to London. Then suddenly, there it was, the signal, on the first afternoon broadcast to France. “Romeo a trompé Juliet, ce soir, dix fois. I repeat, Romeo has fooled Juliet tonight, ten times.” Ten planes would come that night, and on the prearranged field.

Le Chat was pleased. He was a curious man, clumsy, self-conscious, not gay and easy like most of the French, but with an enormous force. He never said much, and on this occasion he said nothing, but it was easy to see that he was pleased. The word spread quickly: “Une parachutage ce soir.” It was an occasion for rejoicing. The talk at the new headquarters, another big farmhouse, was deafening. Everybody, it seemed to Wheeler, was shouting orders at everybody else. Jacques would shout orders to Louis, and Louis, talkative for once, would shout orders at somebody else. Le Chat had said little or nothing. Then he glared around the big room, with his yellow eyes.

“Alors,” he said, very loudly.

The chattering died down. There was silence.

“Qui commande ici?”

“Vous, Le Chat,” said Jacques.

“Vous,” said everyone else; “C’est vous, le chef.”

“Alors,” said Le Chat. Quickly, clearly, he gave orders, for the trucks to transport the supplies, for the guards around the fields, for the handling of the lighting system, for the whole complicated business of receiving supplies by parachute in enemy country.

That first night it rained, and there was a wind. There was no moon. The men waited, shivering, until five in the morning. No planes came.

The next was better. There were some clouds, and a bit of wind, but the moon showed most of the time. Still, it was after two.

“They are not going to come tonight,” said Jacques, lugubriously.

Some of the men had gone to sleep in the grass. Wheeler hoped that the guards were not asleep. The fires were big, and this was the second night, and the Germans did not like parachutings to the maquis.

Wheeler sat down beside René and leaned his tired back against a tree. He fumbled for one of his last precious Chesterfields, and lit it.

René said, “Ecoute,” and nudged Wheeler’s arm.

They both stood up.

Far in the distance, they could hear the throb of a motor.

“Perhaps a truck,” said Wheeler.

“No,” said René, “it is a plane.”

The field was suddenly awake. Men were piling more wood on the fires, and the man with the blinker light was excitedly flashing the signal, two short blinks, one long, in the general direction of the sound.

The throbbing died away. For some minutes there was silence.

Then there it was again, faintly at first, then louder, much louder. Then it was directly overhead, the great bulk of the bomber showing dark against the sky, the moonlight shining on its wings. The men on the field jumped up and down and yelled and waved. The man with the blinker light was flashing the recognition signal furiously. Wheeler grabbed his arm. “Slowly, slowly,” he shouted above the roar of the plane’s motors. The roar died down again, until it was a faint distant pulsation in the night.

“Damn that little man with the blinker,” thought Wheeler. He was blinking too fast. Maybe they won’t drop now. Then there was the plane again, just overhead, looming huge and black and powerful.

Just over the fire, the first container came out of the belly of the plane. They could hear the crack as the parachute opened. Then another container and another, 12 in all, swaying down in the moonlight. Wheeler thought he had never seen a more lovely sight. There was a crunch as the first container hit the ground. Crunch, crunch, crunch, the others followed. It was a good drop, the first container not more than two hundred yards from the light.

Not all the planes were as good. One dropped its containers almost a mile away, in the woods. It was nine in the morning, and broad daylight, before the last gazogene, piled high with the long round metal cylinders, chugged its way up the dirt road to the farmhouse.

Captain Gramont and Lieutenant Wheeler and Master Sergeant Williams of “Team Alexander” were the heroes of the hour. Team Alexander had arrived.

“Shortly after the landings in the south, a very large force of Germans, estimated at almost 30,000, arrived in our area, attempting to escape from France. This resulted in a close escape for Captain Gramont and Lieutenant Wheeler; one maquisard accompanying them was lost.”

For more than two weeks, Team Alexander had been living what René called “la vie bourgeoise.” The Mission Franco-Americaine, as it was now importantly called, had a headquarters of its own, a farmhouse so large that it almost deserved the title of château, and a car. The enemy divisions which had attacked in the area had disappeared, and now the Germans firmly held only the three large towns in the department. They held, far less firmly, and subject to frequent ambushes, the roads which connected these towns. The rest was maquis country.

It always surprised Wheeler that the car would run at all. It was an old Citroen, and it ran on alcohol, quite well, too, once the motor was warmed up.

Jacques and Louis were now part of the Team Alexander. They had no exact position, although Jacques often referred to himself importantly as “secretaire de la mission.” Louis always drove, and when the car broke down, as it did every few miles, he would fix it, miraculously. He drove ferociously, careening wildly along the dirt roads, urged on by Jacques.

Wheeler never thought of them separately; they were always together, Jacques and Louis. They made a strange pair, short, fat, gay, red-faced Jacques, talking interminably in the thick Midi accent which Wheeler was just coming to understand, and tall, thin, monosyllabic Louis. But he liked them both, and both he and René depended on them. They knew the country, and they knew the maquis, far better than René. They were good friends to have.

At first they had been very careful in the Citroen. They always stopped before any village to ask if there were any Boche. They carried a Bren gun stuck out the side of the Citroen, and they always roared across the big roads used by the Boche. Once they had crossed 50 yards in front of an oncoming German column. It had been so quick and so surprising that neither they nor the Germans had fired. Now they were more confident. They had painted a big American flag on one side of the car, a French flag on the other. They still crossed the main roads at top speed, but it seemed silly and overcautious to stop and ask whether there were Boche in a village they’d been through a dozen times. There were rumors that the Germans were coming up in force from the south, but the maquis was always filled with rumors.

They were bound now for St. Martin, to meet the commander of a maquis company at a café, and talk about a training cadre Wheeler and René had started. Jacques, always provident in such matters, had put some cheese and a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine in the car. As Louis drove, Jacques and René and Wheeler munched cheese sandwiches and tried to gulp the wine quickly, without letting the bottle break their front teeth. Wheeler was thoroughly enjoying himself; he was sorry that the Sergeant had had to stay back at the house, encoding and sending a message about the German dispositions in the area and the results of an ambush two nights before. These trips in the old Citroen had a curious recall value for Wheeler; he felt as though he were back in college, banging about in his old Ford with a few friends. It was not as he had visualized life in the maquis.

It was midsummer, and the country was very lovely. This was maquis country all right, with the heavy forests, mostly pine, and the steep ravines and hills, so much wilder and less cultivated than he had imagined France, so different from the France of long straight roads lined with poplars which he remembered from his geography book in school.

The village of St. Martin was right around the next bend. You took the turning, and there you were right in the center of town. St. Martin was quite near the Route Nationale, and Wheeler thought of checking up about Germans before they got to the town. They had been there three days before though, and had had a couple of aperitifs in the café in the square. Wheeler didn’t want to seem like a nervous old maid.

Louis slithered the car around the bend, and there they were in St. Martin.

Wheeler never could remember just exactly what happened then.

He vaguely remembered seeing figures in gray-green uniforms running across the end of the street, and then almost immediately the rip and tear as machine gun bullets bit into the body of the car. The Germans must have heard the car coming—they must have been warned. He remembered falling out of the door of the car after René, and Louis stumbling out of the driver’s seat. He didn’t remember seeing Jacques at all. He remembered running after Louis around a house, and then across a little alley, and the singing of bullets as they crossed the alley. Then they ran up a wooded hill beside the village, and across a small field on the other side and he heard the bullets again, and then into another woods. There were guttural shouts from the village and the sound of motorcycles starting up.

They had run for perhaps two miles, when, on a little road ahead, they saw a motorcycle. Wheeler was the last to throw himself into a small copse, and just as he did so, he saw the white face of the motorcyclist turned toward them, 200 yards away. He lay in the bushes and panted, his body aching with exhaustion, the green foliage in front of him swimming before his eyes. From what seemed far away, he heard Louis whisper, “J’espere que—,” and then stop, panting. He knew what Louis hoped; there were only three of them in the copse, he and René and Louis.

Wheeler lifted his head and crawled a few feet and looked out through the bushes at the road. There were two motorcycles now, and just as he looked, he saw one of the men pointing in their direction. René had seen it too; he heard René swearing under his breath. Then almost immediately he heard the sounds of German voices and of men walking, and then he could sense rather than see movement in a woods on the right of the copse, almost 300 yards away across a field of stubble and light brush. Then more movements on the other side, in a woods perhaps 200 yards away.

Suddenly what had been unreal to Wheeler became real. He had been so tired that he was glad to lie in the underbrush and get his breath. It had been like one of those tiring schemes in Milton Hall. But now suddenly it was real. “God,” thought Wheeler, “we’ll never get out of this,” and then he was desperately afraid, afraid as he had never been before, with the fear of death, with his throat tight and the sweat running on his forehead. He heard Louis and René talking in low tones. The night would come soon, and then, said Louis, they would try to get away. It will be moonlight, said René, and Louis said yes, but he hoped there would be clouds. They spoke calmly, and hearing them Wheeler was not afraid any more. We must place ourselves in positions, he said, and the others agreed. Louis had the Bren gun with two clips, and René had a Sten with 40 rounds, and Wheeler had his carbine and his .45. They placed themselves in positions covering the fields around the copse.

“Attention,” said René.

From the most distant woods a man had emerged and he was gesticulating. He dogtrotted towards the copse, and 10 or 11 others came out of the woods and ran after him. A machine gun started firing a little from the right, and they could hear the whine of bullets near them.

Wheeler brought his carbine up to his shoulder.

“Attendez,” said Louis. Wheeler, beneath his fear and his excitement, felt a tiny twinge of irritation. He knew enough to wait without being told.

The man who was in the lead was now perhaps a hundred yards away. He stopped for a moment to wave on the men who were straggling behind him.

“Maintenant,” said René.

Hold your breath, thought Wheeler. Squeeze, don’t press. He squeezed the trigger.

The man in front fell down. René’s Sten fired four or five rounds and then jammed. “Putain de Sten,” muttered René. Louis’ Bren was firing and kept firing. Wheeler, elated, picked another target, and fired again.

Three of the men had fallen. The others turned and ran back toward the woods. Louis and Wheeler each got one as they ran.

“Putain de bordel de Sten,” said René again.

The machine-gun fire from the woods stopped.

There was a silence. All three of the men in the copse were breathing heavily. Wheeler noticed that he was shivering as though he were cold, but he felt more elated than afraid.

“I do not believe they are regular fighting troops,” said René.

“Also I think we have killed the officer,” said Louis. “Monsieur the American killed the officer.”

Wheeler felt very pleased.

“Perhaps they will not wish to attack once again,” he said in his bad French.

“Perhaps,” said René. “I hope they do not have a mortar.”

“I hope it is a dark night,” said Louis.

Dusk came, and they could sense movement in the woods, and then night. It was a beautiful night, with the bright French moon shining mercilessly.

“Putain de lune,” said René.

“We must await a cloud,” said Louis.

They waited, watching on all sides.

“Look,” said Louis, from his side. “Fire.”

As he spoke, there was a sputtering flame from the side Wheeler was watching. Phosphorus bombs. They were trying to light the shrub and burn them out. There were more phosphorus bombs. They could smell the acrid chemical smoke mixed with the clean smell of a brush fire, and the flames were burning fiercely. The night was brighter than ever.

Louis swore obscenely under his breath.

“Whore of a moon,” said René again.

Wheeler looked up at the moon. Near it he sensed a darker patch against the dark of the sky. He leaned over and shook René’s arm and pointed upwards. The cloud moved very slowly. It was not a big cloud, but quite dark. Wheeler’s legs felt suddenly weak as he watched it edge slowly over the face of the moon.

“Now,” said René.

They ran, tearing through the brush. Wheeler ran after the dim figure of Louis, ran faster than he had ever run in his life. They heard shouts and shots rang out, but it was dark and the shots went wild. They crashed into a woods, and ran on, the branches tearing against Wheeler’s face.

It was dawn when they got back to the farmhouse. The Sergeant was up, and excited.

“Gee, Lieutenant,” he said, “a lot of Germans have come up from the south.”

“We know,” said Wheeler.

“You saw them? Where’s Jacques?” he asked.

“We don’t know,” said Wheeler.

“The German force was too large for the maquis to halt completely, but there were frequent ambushes along the escape route, and a great many Germans were killed. Their progress toward the Belfort Gap was materially slowed, and the maquis activities in the area undoubtedly contributed largely to the subsequent surrender of the German column to the American forces.…”

It’s true, too, thought Wheeler, as he wrote, and then leaned back to admire the military style of the paragraph. The maquis did a lot, not that most Americans would ever believe it. He had been surprised when he got back to discover the attitude of most of the Americans who had been at the front to the maquis, or the Forces Francaises d’Interieure, as it was now called. “Damnedest bunch of clowns I ever saw in my life,” an infantry lieutenant had remarked at a bar. “Foolish French Idiots, we used to call them.”

Natural enough, Wheeler supposed. He could imagine how the maquis had seemed to the infantry lieutenant—a lot of oddly dressed ruffians who babbled in a strange tongue and kept getting terribly excited. Still, the maquis had done quite a job, a real job.

When the German columns came back, it had been very different from those first few days, when the Germans had kept them on the run. Now it was the Germans who were on the run. They had just one idea—to get out of France, to reach the Belfort Gap. Patton was far to the east of them, north of the Loire, and they had to get out before they were cut off.

Le Chat, or Captain Cat, as Sergeant Williams always called him, was in his element. Captain Cat was, as the Sergeant had said, quite a guy. Unlike most of the French, Le Chat was not given much to talk, but little by little his story came out. He was only 27, although Wheeler, who was actually a year older, always felt as though he were the younger of the two. He had been a regular army officer, an artilleryman, and he had been captured in 1940, and had escaped. Immediately he had entered what then hardly existed, the resistance. He had returned first to Alsace, his native country, but after a year or so the Gestapo had caught up with him, and he had escaped again and somehow made his way down south. He had started the first maquis in the department—it consisted then, some 18 months before D-Day, of six men, hiding in the woods, with one pistol. When Wheeler had jumped in, Le Chat had over 600 men. Now, late in August, it was well over a thousand.

Le Chat was not physically impressive. He was not tall, and his movements had a certain slow, self-conscious awkwardness. He had a thin face, with very thin lips, and a long nose. His eyes were extraordinary. They were yellowish, and they had a curious impersonal quality, like a cat’s; it was undoubtedly his eyes which were responsible for his nom de guerre. It was impossible to lie to those eyes. There was a slang word, “le cravate,” which was much used in the maquis. A maquisard would describe at some length the enormous number of Boche he had disposed of, and another would shout, “Le cravate,” and everyone would laugh. Le cravate was so general a custom that Wheeler learned to check any intelligence and double-check it before sending it back to London. But nobody indulged in le cravate with Le Chat. With him, they spoke the truth, and he spoke the truth always.

That was, perhaps, the source of his amazing strength in a world of cravateurs. The leader of a maquis had only the quality of his own character to maintain his leadership—there was no central government, complete with constituted authority, to back him up. In many maquis, chiefs were deposed with the regularity of South American presidents. But the leadership of Le Chat was never challenged. His orders were accepted without question, which was all the more surprising in that Wheeler soon got the impression that most maquisards spent most of their time shouting orders at each other and paying no attention whatsoever to the orders they received.

At first Wheeler had found Le Chat a cold and unprepossessing character, but he left France with what almost amounted to hero-worship of him. There was a quality of greatness in the man, the true quality of leadership, and also a sadness. The Germans had killed Le Chat’s mother and father, and his sister. Le Chat hated the Germans, but his hatred was never wordy and emotional. When Wheeler would argue, haltingly, that not all Germans were bad, Le Chat would say nothing. With a cold efficiency, and with the limited means at his disposal, he organized his men, not naturally given to discipline, until they had the discipline necessary to kill Germans.

When the German columns came through his area, Le Chat was ready. There was an ambush almost every day. “It is like shooting pigeons,” said René, and it was. The country here through which the main routes ran was hilly and wooded. The Germans could only take their punishment, and burn a few farms and villages, and push on. Every day the Maquis Le Chat piled up a score of burnt trucks and blocked convoys and German dead.

But the whole thing was vague in Wheeler’s mind—the ambushes, the strange feeling of freedom in the countryside where the Germans never came, off the main routes, the talk and the elation and the roaring about in civilian cars. It was all confused and vague, except for finding Jacques. That he remembered perfectly. He would never forget it.

It was in St. Martin. They were going through St. Martin to set up an ambush on the Route Nationale a few miles off. The Germans had withdrawn from St. Martin the night before. It was, said the maquis informant, “martyrisé,” and the people had taken to the woods. Wheeler had never heard the word before, and he did not entirely understand it. He understood it when he saw St. Martin.

Before they had left, the Germans had burnt the town. The café where he had had an aperitif was blackened, and the roof had fallen in. So was the church. Nearly every building in the little village was a ruin. Le Chat had arrived first, with his adjutant. He met Wheeler and Louis and René in the main square. His face was imperturbable as always.

“Look over there,” he said, and gestured towards a corner of the square, near the church.

There were six bodies, sprawled in queer attitudes on the grass. One of them was Jacques. At first it was difficult to recognize. The side of the face had been bashed in. Five or six shots had been fired at close range into his chest and stomach; the powder marks were visible. Jacques’ eyes had been removed.

Wheeler said nothing. He felt suddenly desperately sick. He looked at Louis. Louis said nothing either, but on his face there was a horror and hatred Wheeler had never seen before.

As Wheeler walked back towards the car, trying not to be sick, Le Chat stopped him.

“I am sorry, my friend,” he said, “but perhaps you know now why we do not love the Germans.”

“The military situation had swung in our favor. With the help of the FTP, Evremont was liberated, and a number of German prisoners were taken.…”

There was a Communist maquis in the region. The Maquis Le Chat was part of the AS or Armée Secrete, which was supposedly nonpolitical, but actually anti-Communist. The Communist maquis was part of the FTP, or Franc Tireurs et Partisans, which had come into existence after the German attack on Russia. The Communists were led by a man called Cesar, an ex-garage mechanic.

Neither Le Chat nor Cesar wasted any love on each other, but it had never, as it had in some departments, come to open conflict between them. They both sincerely hated the Germans, and they saw it as their first duty to kill Germans rather than each other. The Communists took the south of the department as their special province, and Le Chat took the north.

Wheeler saw it as no business of his to get mixed up in French politics, but before the liberation of Evremont, there were a number of conferences between Le Chat and Cesar, and Wheeler found himself a passive spectator at these conferences.

He rather liked Cesar. He was a man of medium height; with big rolling biceps and a nut-brown face. He had a broad; frequent, and pleasant smile, and twinkling blue eyes. Usually Cesar was nice to everybody. He was friendly and pleasant and used the intimate tu freely. Once or twice Wheeler saw him when he thought he was being crossed. His whole face would change. It seemed to become much darker, and his eyes and his mouth took on an expression of murderous obstinacy. Wheeler realized that Cesar would kill him without the slightest hesitation if he thought it necessary, but all the same he liked Cesar, who was in his way an honest man.

Cesar had an adjutant who was always with him, a Spaniard called Robert who had escaped from Spain after the Civil War. Wheeler did not like Robert. As he confessed to Sergeant Williams, Robert gave him the creeps. Robert had dank black hair and a dank sallow face, and the palms of his hands were always wet. Collaborators were the special province of Robert. When he spoke of his work of exterminating collaborators, Robert’s startling, wet, black eyes glistened with a strange, fierce delight. Robert definitely gave Wheeler the creeps.

At first it looked as though there would be trouble between Le Chat and Cesar about Evremont. Both wanted the honor of liberating the place, a town of about 20,000 in the center of the department. There were numerous conferences, and only when it became apparent that another maquis from another department, which had been wholly freed, was on its way to take part in the liberation, did Le Chat and Cesar get together. Wheeler had had no idea of the extraordinary sectionalism of France, the jealousies between departments which made the interstate frictions back home look like love feasts. As soon as Le Chat and Cesar heard about the maquis from the other department, they began to tu-toi each other, and the attack was fixed for the next night.

It wasn’t really much of an attack. Wheeler expected a big fight, with the Germans dug in and defending every inch of the ground. The fact was that the Germans were getting out anyway, and that the maquis gave them an extra push, which was the usual method of liberating a town. There was a tremendous amount of noise. The maquis never did learn to fire machine guns in bursts; René and Wheeler had never been able to do anything about their habit of keeping the finger on the trigger till the last round was fired. So the noise was terrific. The Germans fought back at first, and they had a couple of mortars, which added to the din. The attack started at six in the evening, and by midnight the last German had left, and the tricolor was floating from the top of the Hotel de Ville. Wheeler realized, when the dead were counted, that despite the noise it hadn’t really been much of a fight—six maquisards had been killed, and about twice as many Germans. However, by cutting off a side route, the maquis had taken 22 German prisoners. Before they had evacuated, the Germans had killed 30 political prisoners, most of them suspected of Communism.

The town went wild. The party started that night and lasted for days. It was Wheeler’s first experience of mass hysteria, and although he and Sergeant Williams, as Americans, were kissed by innumerable pretty girls, and were asked to make speeches, and were generally made much of way beyond their due, and although Wheeler sympathized with the hysteria of freedom after four years of Nazi rule, there was something about this insanity of a whole town that Wheeler did not like.

He remembered particularly the march of the German prisoners.

When he had first been told that the German prisoners were to be shot, it didn’t bother him. He remembered Jacques, and he remembered the burned towns and the hostages who were killed in little groups, a few at a time. René told him that Le Chat had not wanted to shoot the prisoners, but that Cesar and Robert, Robert especially, had insisted. He and René met Robert in the bar of the biggest hotel, which the Communists had taken over for headquarters, and hung with the hammer and sickle. It was the morning after the liberation.

“I hope,” said René, “that these Boches will have a fair trial before being condemned.” René was after all a regular officer and a graduate of St. Cyr.

“They have already had their trial,” Robert said, and drew his index finger across his throat, and smiled. Jeez, this guy gives me the creeps, thought Wheeler. Still, he remembered Jacques and the rest, and he supposed Robert was probably right.

The town was still en fête—as a matter of fact, the party lasted for three full days. The afternoon of that first day, René and Williams and Louis and Wheeler were drinking champagne in a back room of the hotel Le Chat had taken over. They heard a noise. The town had been noisy all day, with drunken citizens shouting and the maquisards firing their weapons with abandon. But this was a special noise, a long, triumphant roar. They went out to the street to see what it was all about.

It was the march of the prisoners to their execution.

It was a strange thing to Wheeler to see these men who knew they were to die in a little while. There were 22 of them in all, including one officer, a second lieutenant. He marched at the front, and the others marched in formation behind. Wheeler looked at them, fascinated, as they passed. They were almost all very young; most of them looked under 20. They looked very much like Germans; many of them had short-cropped blond hair, and they wore the gray-green sloppy uniforms and the black boots of the German Army. Still, Wheeler was vaguely shocked to find, they looked not only like Germans but like human beings. They had faces and the faces were different from each other and some of the men were short and some were tall, and some were more frightened than others. Wheeler saw one man who looked very much like the captain of the basketball team in his senior year at high school. There was something unreal and terrible in the thought that they would all be dead before the sun went down.

They were all frightened of course. The fear of death was on every face, and every face had the same gray pallor. Still, they held themselves upright, and marched. Wheeler saw that they were all in step with the officer who was leading. He noticed that René was standing at attention as they passed.

The crowd had no pity for them. Men and women, they crowded round, and roared, and there was hatred and triumph and delight on every face. The maquisards, guarding them with rifles and Sten guns, grinned back at the crowd. One woman, with a baby, crowded in near to the marching men, and held up the baby to see, and shouted, “Look, my little one, look at the dirty Boches who are already dead.” She spat in the face of one German as he passed. He continued to look straight ahead, and wearily, automatically, he wiped the spit off his face.

The column marched on down the street, amidst the roars of the crowd, toward death. A young maquisard came up to Wheeler and René.

“Well then,” he said, “you wish to see?”

“No,” said Wheeler, and he and René and Williams turned back into the hotel. Louis said nothing, but went off with the maquisard.

“I suppose it is necessary,” said Wheeler to René.

“Yes,” said René, “it is necessary.”

Louis had supper with them, and he described the execution. They had been lined up against the wall of the station, before a great crowd. Some of them had wobbled, but none of them had fallen down. As the order was given to the maquis executioners to raise their rifles, the German officer had shouted, “Achtung!” and every one of them had come to attention. Then they had been shot.

“All the same,” said René, “it is necessary to say that they are good soldiers.”

“Yes,” said Louis, “they are good soldiers, but better when dead.”

“The area was by now totally liberated. Since it was south of the Loire, however, and not in line with the route of advance from the south, the American troops, which had long been expected, never arrived. Certain French officers came, however, and the work of incorporating the Maquis Le Chat into the regular French Army was going forward as Team Alexander was recalled from the field.”

“Maquis d’octobre,” they called them, the French officers in well-fitting uniforms who had suddenly appeared on all sides, with stamped orders from Paris, when there were no more Germans in the area. Le Chat had been as rude to them as he could be without being court-martialed, but he was after all a regular French Army officer, and he had to take orders. He was now no longer Capitaine le Chat. Officially, he used his real name, and he had become Lieutenant Colonel Bonnard, with the Legion d’Honneur on his tunic. His maquisards still called him Le Chat.

He had a big office in a big château now, and his desk was cluttered with innumerable papers, mostly orders and lists and reports dealing with the incorporation of the Maquis Le Chat into the French Army. Before, he had never had an office or a desk.

Wheeler remembered saying good-by to Le Chat. There had been a big party the night before with a lot of wine and speeches and highly colored reminiscences. Team Alexander went to Le Chat’s office to say good-by to him. They all had hangovers, and they felt sentimental, and Le Chat was a little self-conscious and awkward as always, and the good-bys had been difficult.

Just before he shook hands with Wheeler for the last time, Le Chat had gestured toward his desk, piled high with papers. He had smiled his rare, crooked, very charming smile, and he had said,

“Eh, mon vieux, c’est pas une rigolade maintenant.”

It had not seemed a strange thing for Le Chat to say at the time, but now, looking back on it, it did seem strange, in a way. Rigolade was an odd word, difficult to translate exactly into English. Joke, maybe, or fun. “It’s not fun any more.” That was perhaps the closest to what Le Chat had meant.

Certainly it had not all been fun. Wheeler remembered those hours in the copse, and he remembered his exhaustion in the first days of running from the Germans. He remembered the execution of the Germans, and St. Martin, burned to a hollow shell, and he remembered Jacques, above all Jacques. It had not all been fun.

But so much of it had been fun, so much that was hard to put into words. There was the laughing and the wine drinking, and the gayety of his French friends, and the fun of banging about in civilian cars, and the sense of achievement when the planes came over and dropped the desperately needed supplies, and when they could get useful information back to London, but above all there was the sense of freedom behind the lines. It was a strange thing, that feeling of freedom. The French felt it too, the sense of relief, the lightening of pressure, as they got rid of the hated Boche, and for a while there was no government at all, and everybody just lived and did what they wanted to do. For Wheeler there had been a wonderful feeling of independence, an amazing independence for a junior officer in any army. He had been, for a while, completely his own man.

Wheeler had finished his report. He looked at a piece of paper on his desk. He had scrawled Things to Do on top, and there was a list: “Check 66–1, get physical, must see finance officer, get extra copies of return orders, get fingerprints retaken, get new-type identification card, uniform inspection 0900 hours tomorrow.” Well, he would be home soon, and he would have 30 days leave before he pushed off for China, so what the hell. Still, he could see what Le Chat had meant. It wasn’t fun any more.

Eighty-four American Jedburghs, forty-four officers and forty enlisted men, jumped sooner or later into occupied Europe. The great majority went to France, a few to Holland and Belgium. Some Jeds had a harder time than Bill Wheeler, and for some it was easier. Some found themselves in close concentrations immediately behind the German lines, or in areas where the maquis were thin and disorganized, and the Germans in control. In such circumstances a man has no alternative but to get into civilian clothes, and a number of Jeds did so. Some, like Wheeler, played the straight Jed role, as it had been envisaged by OSS and the British two years before, when the operation was first planned. Others worked with established agents already so thoroughly in control of the situation that the newly arrived Jeds could only be their assistants, accepting their command. A very few, through bad planning or the speed of the Allied advance, dropped in regions already cleared of the enemy. There was even one team which, dropped by error on the American side of the lines, was said to have been asked by a passing officer to drop in to the mess, any time.

One thing on which most, though certainly not all, of the Jeds would agree, was that the job was really much easier than it had sounded. This was due in large part to the remarkable degree of organization of the maquis, and to the special character of guerrilla warfare. Where a guerrilla, if he knows his business, will hit and run, an infantryman must hit and keep hitting. There was, moreover, the short duration of the campaign, especially in France. Most Jedburghs expected to be in the field perhaps till the next spring, and most of them were relieved in a matter of weeks. A British colonel had unofficially estimated that Jedburgh casualties would be over 40 per cent. Actually, of the 84 American Jeds, six were killed, two captured (and survived), and seven were wounded, two seriously, for a total casualty rate of less than half the estimate. Curiously enough, all these casualties came in August and after—by some miracle, not an American was touched in the first two months after D-Day. The casualties of the other nationalities, and especially of the French, were somewhat higher, but even so Jedburgh casualties were less than an ordinary infantry unit in action for a comparable length of time would have suffered. Speaking in averages, the job was less dangerous than the men had any reason to expect.

Was it a job worth doing? It is quite impossible to give any exact idea of just what the Jedburghs accomplished. Any list of Germans killed, bridges blown, trains derailed, intelligence passed back, and so on, would be ridiculous as reflections of their achievements. It is obviously to the men of the resistance alone that credit for such work should go. The American Jeds, were, after all, equal in numbers to only about half an ordinary company, and all the Jedburghs of whatever nationality numbered less than half a battalion in strength. Obviously so small a number of men could play no really decisive part. Even so the men of the resistance who knew the Jedburghs, and who received the vitally necessary plane-loads of arms through the Jeds, would themselves be glad to agree that the task of fighting the enemy within their country would have been more difficult had it not been for Operation Jedburgh.

By 1945, the Jedburgh operation was a thing of the past, and the Jeds were scattered to the four corners of the earth. Most of them went on to China for OSS, but some went on operations in other parts of the Far East, and some jumped again into Europe. They retained their esprit de corps, scattered though they were. Asked what his job was in OSS, a Jed would rarely reply, “I was a Jedburgh.” “I am a Jedburgh,” he would say, and he would say it proudly.