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

British briefer had advised, “Now, dear fellow, if they're Germans, it will sound like ‘vonderfiil vizard.’ You should then take appropriate action.”
    “Yes, sir,” Joe had replied. “What would that be?”
    Some of the silhouettes appeared to be in uniform, and allprickled with weapons. Appropriate action for the moment was not to go for his holster. A figure stepped forward, a woman, to say, “Do you have something for me?”
    That was good enough for Joe. He unsaddled the bandolier and gave it to her like the offering at mass. With that, as suddenly as they had appeared, ten Frenchmen disappeared into the woods, leaving him with two English-speaking guides. No wine this time. Grimly Joe was offered a burp gun, as if the three might soon be in action.
    A burp gun was better than wine, and he longed to take the weapon but couldn't figure out how he could explain his possession of it to Jack and Orv, and especially to Duber. So Joe declined the gun, indicating that his hosts' valor was all the protection he needed. Such sangfroid ingratiated him with the FFI. Once more he was taken to safe houses, fed, and bedded. He ate very well and slept very soundly.
    One morning from the foot of his bed he was awakened by a dog barking, one who didn't like strangers and hadn't been briefed that Joe was an ally. Bijou was the dog's name, like Joe a fugitive because she had bitten a German of the SS who had intruded on her mistress. Consequently Bijou had been marked for execution. She was hostile to Joe because of his black jumpsuit, a uniform the same color as that worn by the SS. For reasons he never asked, during this sojourn with the FFI Joe was never disguised as a peasant.
    One morning he woke to a serene view of rolling farmlands with squares of tidy trees. It was hard to comprehend that there was a world war going on, that he was behind German lines, especially when he was served breakfast in bed as if he were lord of the manor. If this was war, Joe wanted more of it. But he noticed something different in the eyes and attitude of the FFI. They were noticeably tense, more impatient. They had expected the liberating invasion by now. From large-scale maneuvers in England, Joe had sensed the Anglo-Americans were headed toward the Atlantic Wall like a locomotive; but to the French who had waited four years it was different, the occupation apparently a permanent humiliation, and they let him know.
    “We are called the resistance,” one of them said, “but our countrymen's resistance is weakening. There has been too much time for them to adjust to life under the Germans. Too many of us are adjusting to it. When are you coming?”
    “Wish I knew.”
    Between sleeping and eating there was a languid time for such talk in safe houses. When a guide's English was good he'd draw Joe out about Franco-American relations. Joe knew only about Lafayette and the First World War. The FFI tried to indoctrinate him, and he didn't mind at all even though European politics were way beyond his pay grade.
    But when the invasion? The recurring question was put subtly, put bluntly, put in every way. Joe wasn't about to tell them his guess, which was that they could expect to see him again in the next month or two; but he did divulge the latrine graffiti that said much more training would exhaust the Americans to the point where the Atlantic Wall would be too high. This went over well with the FFI, most of whom had been soldiers in the French army when it was blitzed in 1940. Okay, they liked to say, the invasion must be coming. Joe's question to them was where.
    Just prior to exfiltration, the local leader, Camille, made a pitch to him: Joe could play a much more important role in the war if he stayed in France rather than returning to England and the fate of infantrymen, most of whom, said Camille assuredly, would be killed during the invasion. It would be like attacking the German trench lines in World War I, when Camille's father and all his