I'm to stay with them, Gabriel tells me, until the snow thaws in the high mountains. Then they will help me cross over into Spain. Until then, they have work that I can do to help them.
Robert is the commander of our Maquis group He speaks fairly good English. He tells me he's a lawyer from the town of Eauze and has been in the resistance for two years, most of them spent hiding from the Germans in these pine forests. I count twenty six guys in his group, including a few really tough old birds with rosy cheeks who can hike longer and carry heavier loads than many of the younger men. Practically none of the group speaks any English, and I can understand only a few words of French, but they are friendly toward me, smiling and nodding each time our eves meet. They know these deep forests the way I know the woods back home: all of them were born and raised in this area and knew each other before they joined the Maquis.
It's a tough, dangerous life. Most of the time, I have no idea where we are. We are constantly on the move, making camp twice a day to eat and sleep, but never staying in any one place longer than a few hours. The Germans are always hunting for us, their Fiesler Storches skimming in low over the forest while we rush for cover under the biggest trees we can find. We're well-armed-British Sten guns, Spanish .38 Llama automatics-and I'd love to fire off a couple of bursts at one of those damned Storches, hit the radiator in its belly, and bring it down. But if the pilot radioed our location, we'd have the German air force bombing hell out of these woods in fifteen minutes. Of course, we never know for sure when we've been spotted by one of these recon planes, and our position reported. So, we stay as alert as deer, knowing that every step can lead to a German ambush. It has happened before in these woods, although it has usually been the Maquis, not the Germans, who have staged the ambushes-getting the drop on a German foot patrol, or wiping out a small motorized convoy.
The Maquis hide by day and hit by night, blowing up bridges, sabotaging rail lines, hitting trains carrying munitions or military equipment. Through the French underground, dozens of Maquis contingents like ours, hidden in the forests and mountains, are wired in to most of the towns and villages in southern France. Their people in the marshaling yards and train depots keep them fully informed on the latest movement of troops or munitions. But it is tricky because every village has its informers or double-agents. And from time to time, assassinations are carried out against these people, supporters of the pro-Nazi, Vichy French government. I wonder whether there are any double-agents in our group. Running around in the French woods in civilian clothes is not exactly safe duty for a downed American flier. If I were caught, I'd probably share the same fate as any of these Maquis-turned over to the Gestapo for torture-questioning, then shot. Traveling around with the Maquis, the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war would not apply to me. But I need these guys if I'm to get out across the Pyrenees.
I'm not included in any of their nighttime operations. They are a close-knit bunch, and I'm definitely an outsider. Most of the time I don't even know what they are up to. I'm left behind with an old man who's the cook and a few others guarding the camp. My first day with them, for example, I led a tethered cow, which a couple of the guys had "borrowed" from a farm, while we hiked to a new camp. Later, I helped in the butchering, which somehow amused the Maquis. I'm the first American pilot they've encountered, and they're curious about what I think of the German air force. I tell them that the FockeWulf 190 is a damned good fighter, probably on a par with our own P-51 Mustang; but the Mustang using 108-gallon wing tanks, can escort bombers and dogfight deep into Germany, and that is a tremendous advantage to the American daylight precision bombing campaign. Although our intelligence has warned us that the Germans have recalled their best fighter pilots from the Russian front to fight against us over Germany, I tell them that the difference between the respective fighters is not nearly so important as the difference between the abilities of the pilots flying them, and that so far, the Americans have proved their superiority with a ten-to-one kill ratio.
Robert translates this, and everyone is smiling and nodding at what I've said, except for one moonfaced guy I didn't like the first moment I saw him. This moon-face I don't like or trust. He asks a question in French that causes Robert to frown and argue with the guy for even asking it. Finally, Robert puts moon-face's question to me in English: "If you Americans are as good as you say, then why do we see American planes falling out of the sky like hailstones- and why are you here with us?"
The son of a bitch!
We eat under the trees, our table a long board. They've made a huge kettle of beans and beef, from the cow we slaughtered. I look down the table and see moon-face stuffing himself with stew, his beret pushed down to his eyebrows. I get up, walk over to him, take off his damned hat, and put it down on the table. He's furious. He reaches to his belt, takes out his Llama pistol, cocks it, places it next to him on the table, and puts on his hat. I get up, pick up a Sten gun, unlock the safety, and stick the barrel against moon-face's nose. One flick of the trigger would fire off about thirty rounds. Moon-face turns chalk white. I grab the beret off his head and slam it on the table. The others choke not to laugh, because moon-face is a general pain in the ass, but finally everyone explodes. Moon-face manages a sick smile. His hat is on the table, and it stays there, too.
Robert invites me to take part in a supply drop operation. We walk for hours in the dark, and it s well past midnight when we stand in an open field, looking up at the sky. The guys light flare pots to illuminate the field. It's cold and overcast, and I hear the drone of a four-engine RAF Lancaster. The bomber makes a low pass while one of the Maquis signals with a flashlight. Then the Lancaster circles to the west, gains altitude, and on the next pass overhead, drops a fifteen-hundred-pound canister that floats down to us under two billowing parachutes. It lands with a thud. We rush to it, gathering in the chutes and hoist the canister onto a wagon pulled by two oxen. The drop operation takes less than five minutes.
An hour later, we are crowded inside a barn working by lanterns, as the canister is opened. We separate the contents: Sten guns, 38 Llama pistols boxes of ammunition, packages of counterfeit franc notes, bread and meat ration stamps, bundles of plastic explosives, and all kinds of fuses and timing devices. I tell Robert: "I can help you with this stuff." As a kid, I helped Dad shoot gas wells with plastique explosives. To me, sears and fuses are a piece of cake. There are printed instructions in English attached to the fuse packages, but first the weapons caches have to be hidden in various haystacks and root cellars around the countryside. I'm put in charge of the explosive fuse devices. I take them with me back to camp and show Robert how to set them for different timings-two, four, six, or eight hours. And that will be my assignment for as long as I'm with these guys: Maquis fuse man. When they see I know what I'm doing, I'm put in charge of cutting up cords of plastique and attaching them to fuses-a terrorist bombmaker. The work is fun and interesting.
The Maquis live off the villages not off the woods. The villages are dangerous, crawling with Germans and Vichy police, but guys slip into town to buy food, cigarettes, and medicine, using phony ration stamps and money. I'm amazed that no one is ever caught, or if they are, maybe I'm not told about it. But on a very wet afternoon in late March, Robert takes me aside to tell me that I'm to accompany two of the guys into town. He grins and slaps me on the back. "Don't worry," he says. "Just stay with the men." Then he turns his back and walks away. I'm not happy about it, but the two guys I am to accompany start walking into the woods, and I hurry to catch up.