Behind Hitler's Lines Read Online Free PDF Page A

farmsteads and the reticulation of the landscape by mile after mile of neat stone walls. Everything, even the trees and streams, seemed older, more in order. Everything, including rabbits and deer, belonged to someone here; there were no vast tracts of federal land like Toccoa and Fort Ben-ning. Bemused, the troopers debated whether it was preferable to have their parachutes dragged by wind into a high wooden fence back home or a low stone wall in the Midlands.
    “Hey, Joe,” Orv once asked, looking up from a letter he was writing, “is Wiltshire a county or a state?”
    “It's called a county, but it's like a state back in the States.”
    “Oh.”

CHAPTER TWO
JUMPIN'JOE
    SERGEANT DUBER APPROACHED HIM SLYLY. HOW WOULD JOE like some brandy—
really
good brandy? The offer didn't appeal. A couple of pints of bitter at village pubs like the Bleeding Horse or the Bell, Crown & Anchor were enough alcohol for Joe after training six days a week, and some nights, in Wiltshire County and beyond. Nonetheless he was interested because of previous collaborations with Duber to improve I Company's chow, especially in the field.
    Duber was a crack marksman, able to drill some lord's hare with a single shot from his carbine fitted with a silencer he'd obtained from no one knew where. For further fare he had called on Joe, trained in demolitions at Fort Benning, to help him fish the streams as I Company marched and countermarched through battalion maneuvers. Duber gauged the depth of dark eddies, then stated an amount of explosive. It was for Joe to prime and toss it into the stream with a waterproof fuse.
    The detonation was like a depth charge and usually produced a shell-shocked trout, which Duber scooped up in his helmet. At the next break fish was frying for a select group in company headquarters. Deer were also Duber's prey but the most dangerous because they were in the inventory of vigilant British game wardens. By Sink's orders, Lieutenant Colonel Wolverton was obliged to fine each man in his battalion a pound sterling for every deer that fell to Blue bullets. However, before their collective punishment could be imposed milord's game warden had to produce evidence that his game was not just missing but had been shot.
    What Duber did best was make things disappear. He could skin a stag, gut and bury it almost before the carcass cooled. Venison made great sandwiches to supplement K rations, appreciated by Captain Shettle and once even served to Wolver-ton, who was pleased enough to not ask about its origins. So, when approached with the question of brandy, Joe harkened to Duber, almost twice his age and respected additionally for having survived Currahee training that had washed out a third of Third Battalion's youthful candidates at Toccoa. His proposal was enticing:
    “Listen up, Beyrle. So what if you don't drink much? You get two bottles for trading. Napoleon's brandy—I'm not shitting you—worth hundreds of dollars per bottle.
Hundreds,
Joe, more than two months'jump pay—and all you have to do is stand guard while I requisition it.” This, said Duber, was a guarantee, not a gamble.
    Shorty, the professional gambler, presently a stockade inmate somewhere in Britain, had convinced Joe to bet on himself, thereby adding the personal factor to an equation of chance, and always review the odds before a gamble. So before participating in the brandy requisition Joe asked Duber to describe the plan. He readily did, a reassurance but with a rebuke—he was doing Joe a favor by bringing him in, a favor for his contribution to pirate fishing.
    Duber explained that for generations the earls of So-and-So had owned the estate on which men of I Company were now billeted. The manor house contained a wine cellar where famous liquors had aged for at least a century. When British authorities required the present earl to accommodate Americans, he had prudently removed his most valuable possessions, such as the brandy.
    Upon evacuating, the