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

uncles were mulched by machine guns.
    No, it would be
German
infantry slaughtered this time, Joe corrected him. Camille toasted to that but went on; French and Americans were the most freedom-loving people in the world and should be the closest allies, work hand in glove, forget the British. Joe liked to blow up things, didn't he? During his stay in safe houses he had provided the FFI some valuable instructions on how to mold charges (delivered by the OSS) for maximum damage with minimum explosives. He'd shown them that by packing a little nitro starch on the outsideof a railroad track the blast effect would also clear the opposite track like a bulldozer blade.
    Camille rubbed his hands. There was a railroad junction about twenty-five miles away that Joe should see and advise on how best to destroy it. * Stay with us a while longer, dear ally. You will never forget our hospitality, nor the hostesses of Argentan.
    Argentan? Joe perked up. Camille seemed to know some practical information. Might it include the location of the invasion? His answer came with a sigh as if it embarrassed him how ignorant Joe was of grand strategy. “But of course, my friend, the landings will come between the Seine and the Somme. Why else did the Canadians rehearse at Dieppe?” Then Camille commented on how Churchill sacrificed the French-speaking Canadians in a cold-blooded experiment. * So the location of the upcoming invasion could not be more obvious:
“Normandie, n'est-cepas? “
So apparent that Joe should support it from behind German lines.
    So it would be Normandy; he had it straight from the horse's mouth. Joe was wondering how to change his bet from Picardy and double it without arousing the curiosity of
    Duber, when someone interrupted Camille, causing him to bilingually curse.
    Word was that a German patrol had come across Joe's drop site and noticed the tree he'd torn up when landing. It had torn him up too, leaving multicolored bruises. The Germans had also discovered scraps of his jumpsuit, deducing that there had been an aerial infiltration. Joe was impressed by their sleuthing while Camille railed against the crew who were supposed to sanitize the site. They had reached it too late the morning after Joe's jump.
    The heat was on, in a way as it had been in Ramsbury, Joe thought at first. Things get screwed up and involved, but the Dubers of the world (Camille, evidently, was one of them) dodge or deflect bullets, and things turn out right. But now Joe heard a different chord being struck. Camille reported random arrests and interrogations, safe-house keepers declining his requests. French eyes and attitude now expressed hatred of the occupiers, whereas previously there had been nonchalant distaste. Before, the FFI had referred contemptuously to the Germans by their World War I sobriquet,
boche,
which Joe took as the GI equivalent of “clerks and jerks”— drones of the occupation administration.
    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 ofthe SS) was also responsible for Rommel's rear-area security and counterespionage, normally military functions.
    Corpulent Hermann Goring was