Liquidate Paris (12 page)

As usual, we lost all sense of time. We might have been in the battle for one hour or twelve hours. It always seemed to us neverending. But at last we were done with it, the Tigers came to a welcome full stop and a strange silence fell over us. The crackling and spitting of flames were all that could be heard.

We climbed stiffly to the ground, our throats and lungs raw with the constant inhaling of fumes. Porta, with his face as black as a coal-hole, almost instantly spotted a promising ruin not far off. Possibly that same morning it had been an inhabited house: now it was little more than a tumbled heap of broken bricks and charred wood. But Porta set off towards it with as much enthusiasm as if it had been the Ritz Hotel--and, as usual, his faith was justified. Porta's instincts never let him down where food and drink were concerned: he returned minutes later with his arms full of canned beer. He let the tins fall clattering and clashing at our feet, and without even pausing to recover his breath turned on his heel and set off again, shouting as he did so.

'There's a whole crate of it up there! It's Victory Beer, and you can take my word for it it's bloody good stuff... I've already downed a couple of pints!'

Little John gave a great war-cry of triumph and ran off after Porta. They came back carrying the crate between them, but before we had time to enjoy the results of their pillage we found that some trigger-happy fool was ploughing up the earth at our feet with machine-gun bullets.

'Bastards!' yelled Little John, as we dived for cover.

Heide yanked the pin from a grenade and flung it over the ridge towards the unknown attacker. Almost immediately following the explosion a khaki figure appeared on the top of the ridge, paused for a second, then rolled down towards us in a mass of flames. He was dead by the time he reached us, and he seemed to have been alone for we were not troubled again. Unfortunately, he had done the maximum amount of damage before he died: our precious cans of beer had all been punctured by bullets and the stuff was wasting away into the ground even as we looked at it. Porta walked over and gave the crate an almighty kick.

'That's the bloody war for you!' he snarled.

The Resistance workers of Caen had received an order to assassinate the Chief of the Militia, Lucien Briere, who not only worked in direct liaison with the German police but also had the effrontery to be a personal friend of the Head of the Gestapo for that area, Commissar Helmuth Bernhard. Briere had been responsible for the execution of a large number of Frenchmen.

It was a man called Arsene who volunteered to carry out the assassination. With three helpers he managed to enter Briere's house and offices in the rue des Fosses-du-Chateau and lob a handful of grenades into the living quarters of the building. Unfortunately the attempt failed to cause any serious damage and the four men were themselves lucky to escape without being identified. From that point o
n
the house was guarded day and night by members of the Waffen S.S., making any further attempts to assassinate Briere in his own home well-nigh impossible.

For the meantime the Resistance stayed their hand, endlessly discussing and endlessly rejecting new ways of carrying out their mission, until finally Arsene grew impatient and announced that he would do the job alone. When questioned as to the method he intended using, he merely shrugged his shoulders and declared that he would trust to luck.

In the event, he killed Briere in the simplest way possible, by walking up to him in the street and shooting him twice through the head. Briere obviously sensed danger the moment he saw Arsene coming towards him, but Arsene had no intention of failing a second time and the man was dead even as he turned to run. The street
was
fairly empty at the time. Those passers-by who saw the assassination take place prudently melted into the shadows. Of those who witnessed the deed from behind their bedroom curtains the vast majority were probably in favour of it. At any rate, Arsene had the time to take out his camera and calmly photograph the dead man before strolling off down a side street and disappearing from the scene.

Three days later Briere was given a martyr's funeral by his friends of the Gestapo. The whole of Caen turned out to jeer and cheer and to sing the Marseillaise. Arsene, although anonymous, was definitely the hero of the day.

IN THE STYLE OF HEMINGWAY

There was no continuous front line in Normandy. You could go out on reconnaissance trips for several hours and not catch a single glimpse of the enemy. You could still, at that late stage in the war, come across unspoiled villages where the inhabitants seemed almost unaware that only a few kilometres distant fierce fighting had wiped out a whole community and half an army.

It was night time when we drove into the village of Montaudin. We approached cautiously, because you never knew when you might be driving into a hornet's nest of enemy troops, but the main street was dark and deserted and there was no sign of anyone, either villagers or soldiers.

'Hey, look, a boozer!' hissed Porta, excitedly pointing ahead towards the one lighted building in the street. 'Let's stop off and see if they've got any grub going. I'm so bloody starving my belly's in knots.'

Porta was pretty persuasive once he got on to the subject of food, and besides, we were too tired to argue with him. We parked the Puma in the middle of the village square, like any peacetime tourists, and then, weary, dirty, and in incredibly bad tempers, we unwound our stiff arms and legs and staggered out into the night air. We had been on reconnaissance for two days and it was a weary, tedious work.

'I'm knackered,' grumbled Heide. He opened his mouth in a loud, crackling yawn, then turned and kicked one of the Puma's heavy tyres. 'Bloody car drives you bloody mad.'

'Where are we?' I said. 'Are we behind the lines?'

'Which lines?' said Porta, sardonically. 'Ours or theirs?'

'Either, so long as I know.'

The Old Man scratched the back of his neck, then pensively rubbed a finger up and down his nose.

'Your guess is as good as mine, but to be on the safe side we'd best leave our caps in the car. They're the only things that give us away.'

'I shall take my naga,' announced Little John, lovingly picking up the heavy Russian revolver that he had mysteriously acquired at some stage during the war. 'People aren't so friendly these days.'

'Let's all stock up,' I suggested.

We crammed our side pockets with hand-grenades and stuffed revolvers in to our breast pockets, and then the Legionnaire, gun in hand, kicked open the door of the inn and led us through. One dim light was burning, high up in the ceiling, and the place seemed as deserted as the street outside.

'Salut, patron!' cried the Legionnaire, in his best French. 'Y a des clients!'

I became suddenly aware that Heide was clutching my arm and pointing ahead with trembling finger. I followed his gaze and swallowed a yell of horror. Through the gloom, I could make out the shape of a vast figure slouched at the bar, one arm flung out, its head resting on an overturned whisky bottle. It was, unmistakably, an American. Drunk as a lord, but still an American. Heide's fingers twitched nervously on my arm.

'Let's get out of here!' he hissed.

'Balls!' said Porta, loud enough to wake the dead.

'But it's a Yank----'

'I don't care if it's bleeding Eisenhower himself, I ain't leaving this place till I've had some grub!'

'But we're behind the enemy lines----'

'How do you know?' demanded Porta, fiercely. '
How do
you know that great lump of fat over there isn't behind
our
lines?' He took hold of Heide and shook him till his teeth rattled: Porta could be very touchy when thought his food was in jeopardy. 'Chances are it's him that's gone wrong, not us.'

We looked at the American. Our shouting and mumbling had disturbed him and he was now snoring lustily With his mouth drooping open.

'I'm going to eat,' said Porta, very firmly.

The Legionnaire nodded and called once again to the patron. Creaking stairs away to our right marked the passage of the landlord from his bed. A stout, middle-aged man appeared, yawning
and
red eyed with a greasy dressing-gown draped round his shoulders. He took one look at us and raised his eyes heavenwards in supplication.

'More Americans! God grant me patience!'

'Patron,' said the Legionnaire, smoothly, 'excusez le derangement, mais est-ce qu-on pourrait avoir une soupe genre bouillabaisse? Si vous manquez de personnel, on est la pour le coup de main.'

(Forgive us for disturbing you, but have you any food going? Perhaps a thick soup, something on the lines of bouillabaisse? If you haven't any staff available, we don't mind giving a hand.)

The man stared at him with open mouth.

'You're French? I thought you were more of those damned Yankees.'

'I'm French,' lied the Legionnaire, blithely. 'My friends are German members of the Foreign Legion, all of us. We're
en route
for Paris.'

The landlord thrust his feet into a pair of tatty bedroom slippers,and padded towards us down the creaking staircase, his face a-beam.

'Vla des Francais!' he shouted, to those on the floor above. 'Vive la France! Come on down, everybody!'

With the swift movements of a professional barman, the landlord produced a row of venerable and dust-covered bottles. Instinctively, the sleeping American opened an eye and looked round, his nose evidently hot on the trail of more drink. His moustache was soaked in whisky, and if you'd thrown a lighted match at his uniform he'd have gone up in a sheet of flame faster than any petrol tank. He caught sight of us and lifted a limp hand.

'Hiya, Mac! Got any Scotch on ya?'

He didn't wait to hear our reply; merely gave us a charming smile and fell back among the pools of whisky.

'Completely stoned,' said the landlord, indifferently. He spent the entire afternoon and half the evening drinking with a couple of his mates. They arrived here yesterday morning and I don't think they stopped drinking once.'

'Disgusting,' said the Legionnaire. 'What--er--'happened to his friends?'

'Gone. Got into a jeep and went off without him. This one's been flat out ever since.'

We all solemnly regarded the American. He lay grunting and snuffling like a walrus, but the combined weight of our disapproval evidently penetrated his fuddled brain. He opened his eyes. Both were bloodshot and horrible to look upon. Very slowly, and with immense dignity, he rose to his feet and began pounding on the bar.

'Landlord! Where's that damned Scotch I ordered?'

The landlord shrugged his shoulders.

'What did I tell you? I think all Americans are alcoholics.'

'It's disgusting,' said the Legionnaire, again.

We all solemnly hypocritically agreed. The American began lurching puppetlike towards Barcelona.

'You know something, Mac? You've got a damned ugly face... looks like a Kraut face to me. You know that? You look like a lousy Kraut.'

He gave a deep bellow of laughter and fell to the ground, where he rolled over on to his back and commenced singing 'My Old Kentucky Home'. The landlord beckoned us past him and up to the bar.

'A case of D.T,s, I shouldn't wonder. He's a war correspondent. They're always the worst kind. Anyway'--he laughed, darkly--'he won't be doing any more corresponding yet awhile. He smashed up his typewriter after he'd gone through his first two bottles of whisky. Said it couldn't spell, I ask you! Said his typewriter couldn't spell... And they cost money, you know, typewriters do. I tried to put it back together, but he's a big bugger, he made a thorough job of it, I'll say that for him.'

He was a big bugger. Almost as big as Little John. I shouldn't personally have cared to cross him, and I smiled ingratiatingly as he sat up and waved towards us.

'Have a drink, pal! Have a dozen drinks! Have 'em on me... Say, Mac, you know who I am?' He swivelled round on the Old Man. 'Not giving away any secrets, mind, but I'm a pretty important guy... just pretty damned important, that's all, and I have to get to Paris before the war comes to a lousy end... Did anyone ever ask you, pal, whether it's difficult to die?' He cocked an inflamed eye in my direction. I shook my head, mesmerized. 'Well, I'll tell you, 'cos I've been wondering 'bout it quite a lot these last few days and I reckon I've come up with the answer.' He leaned forward, confidentially. The answer is simply: no. Just no. How's about that? It's more damn difficult to live than to die, that ever strike you? You bet your sweet life it didn't, I'm the only thinking guy in this whole damn outfit... Hey, you over there! Big boy!'

He beckoned urgently at Little John and Little John stood staring, fingering his naga and doubtless wondering whether it would be a good idea to give this tiresome Yank a bat over the head and be done with it. .

'Come here and I'll tell you a secret... C'mon, I mean, it! I know a man from Alabama when I see one and don't you try to tell me you're not from Alabama 'cos I won't believe one damn word of it... come on over here and I'll take you into my confidence.' Little John moved a few paces towards him, his hand in his pocket. 'You ever eaten a Negro for dinner?' asked the American. 'I'll bet you have, you old nigger-hater, you! Now, you just listen to me and I'll tell you where to get the hard stuff from.' He dropped his voice to a loud, stern whisper. 'Behind the bar, third shelf to the left of the looking-glass.'

Little John jumped round as if stung, made a sudden dive over the counter and swept a vast paw along the bottles on the third shelf.

'Whisky!' he shouted, as if he had discovered a gold mine. 'Enough to float a battleship!'

'Never mind the drink,' grumbled Porta. 'What about
my
food?"

A couple of disgruntled women had appeared at the foot of die stairs. The landlord beckoned to them and pointed towards the kitchens.

'Out there. Come and tell me what you want.'

Porta was out in the kitchen like a shot, and after a moment's hesitation I followed him, interested to watch the preparation of his famous bouillabaisse which he was always on about.