Ordinary Heroes (16 page)

Martin had turned back to us with a finger to his lips, inasmuch as we were leaving the Comtesse's lands. I still had little idea where we were headed. Martin would brief us only when we'd made camp for the night. For the time being, he wanted to use the weakening daylight to move ahead. We proceeded due north, across adjoining farms. Knowing the fence lines and the old paths, Henri led us along at a good pace. The rains held off while we hiked, but the ground everywhere was soft and in the lowlands we splashed through standing water, soaking my wool trousers and the socks inside my shoepacs.

As darkness encroached, I was certain we were behind Nazi lines. Martin, Biddy, and I were in uniform and stood at least a chance, if captured, of being taken prisoner, rather than executed. The Frenchmen with us were all but certain to be shot on the spot. But there was no sign of Germans. In these parts, the locals were firmly committed to the Free French, and Martin regarded his intelligence on enemy positions as virtually faultless. Nonetheless, whenever possible, we remained on the other side of the shallow hills, so we were not visible from the road, and ducked into the trees if we were near a wooded draw. When there was no choice but to cross an open field, we ambled along in pairs, as if we were hikers.

At one point, as we stopped briefly to refill our canteens in a spring, Martin came back to check on me. Gita and Antonio were on lookout at the perimeter, apparently enough security for a quiet conversation.

"Holding up?"

I was hardly laboring with a full pack. I had a bedroll, a canteen, a bayonet, and ammunition, but I hadn't been out on maneuvers since basic and Martin was right to suspect I was tired. I told him I was fine.

"Nothing like this in the past, I assume?" he asked.

"I was trained as an infantry officer, but aside from exercises, no."

"You'll have an exciting time. You'll be thanking Gita for suggesting this." He waited. "She seems to have taken a shine to you."

"Has she? I'm honored. She is very charming." Then as the only avenue to approach the lingering question, I added, You have a charming woman.

"Oh, yes," he said, "very charming. Only I doubt that Gita would agree.

"That she's charming?"

"That she is my woman. Candidly, I wonder if Gita would ever choose but one man. Besides," he said, "she is much too young for me." He had raised his eyes to her up on the hill, where the wind tossed around the kinks of dark gold hair that escaped her helmet. "I have only one thing I want for her, really. Most of all, Dubin, I would like to see her safe. That would be my last wish. Were I permitted one. I owe her that." Catching Martin's eye as we were looking her way, Gita knotted her small face in an open frown.

"There, you see. She is always displeased with me." His glance fell to the ground. "Does she speak ill of me?"

I didn't understand the crosscurrents here, only that they were treacherous.

"On the contrary," I answered. "She is your admirer.''

"Surely not always. She calls me a liar to my face."

"Does she?" I felt certain that Martin knew exactly what Gita had said to me the last time I was here. "It is the nature of this life, Dubin. Somewhere, buried in the recesses of memory, is the person I was before I was Robert Martin." He pronounced his full name as if it were French: Ro-bear Mar-tan. "But I was trained to tell every tale but his. And it suits me well, Dubin. No soul in war is the same as she or he was before. You'll learn that soon enough."

He took a tiny humpbacked metal cricket from his pocket and gave its twanging steel tongue two clicks, calling an end to our respite. Scampering down from the prominence, Gita fell in at the head of our column but shortly worked her way back to me, as we were weaving through a small woods. She had heard her name and wanted to know what Martin had said. I tried to satisfy her with the most neutral remark I remembered.

"He told me he hopes you are safe. When the war ends."

"He lies. As always. That is not what he hopes. He would much prefer we die side by side in battle. Tellement romantique."

Long ago I'd learned not to be the messenger in couples' disagreements, a lesson originally taken from childhood. The more I heard from both Gita and Martin, the less sure I was of the dimensions o
f t
heir relationship. Nor did it seem that it was very clear to either of them. I was better off with another subject and asked her about Bettjer, the radioman, whose absence I had noticed.

"Peter? Peter is no good anymore. For some, bravery is like blood. There is only so much in your body. He was very courageous, very bold, but with a month to sit and think about all he has survived, every fear he did not feel before has rolled down on him like a boulder off a mountain. He will drink three bottles of cognac in the day we are gone. Ainsi va la guerre," she added in a tragic tone. So goes war.

This discussion of Bettjer and his anxieties somehow became a gateway to my own worries. I had felt my nervousness growing as we tromped along. Now, with the description of Bettjer as unmanned by fear, I was attacked full-on by shrieking doubts. Apparently, I did a poor job of concealing them.

"This is bad talk," said Gita. "I should have told you something else. Martin will watch out for you. He watches for all of us. And there is no need for you to be in the midst of things when the operation starts."

"If I can be helpful, I would like to take part. I'd feel as if I were a child, merely watching from safety."

"That is for Martin to say. But if so, you will do well, Dubin. You are a man of principles, no? Principles are the main ingredient of courage. A man with principles can get the better of fear."

"I thought you doubted the existence of principles."

"Touche," she answered, and gave me a fleet impish smile. "I do not doubt the power of principles, Dubin. I say only that it is an illusion that they are the first thing in life. It is an illusion we all crave--better principles than the abyss--but an illusion nevertheless. Therefore, one must be careful about what he deems issues of principle. I despise petty principles, obstinate principles that declare right and wrong on matters of little actual consequence. But there are large principles, grand principles most men share, Dubin, and you have them, as well." She showed a tidy smile, and actually patted my hand in reassurance.

Ahead, Martin had halted at the edge of another open field. He clicked the cricket again as a signal for silence, and Gita dispensed a quick wave before moving toward her assigned place at the head of the line. Antonio fell in behind me. We both watched her dash away, her legs tossed outward with unexpected girlishness, as she drew abreast of Martin. She was extraordinary. No doubt about that.

"What is she to him?" I asked Antonio suddenly.

He gave a rattling laugh and shook his long hair, as if I had asked an eternal question.

"I think she is his glory," he answered. "I think when he looks at her he remembers what he once believed."

Chapter
10.

LA SALINE ROYALE

November 5, 1944

Dearest Grace--

Tomorrow I will see my first action. It is too complicated to explain why (and the censors would black it out anyway). But please focus on the word "see." I am going only as an observer, for one day, and by the time you receive this, I will be back and safe and will have written you to say so. I'll mail both letters together, so you never have occasion for concern. I feel as I have always imagined I would in this circumstance, as if my skin might not contain me, and thus I doubt I'll sleep. But for better or worse, I remain eager.

We start very early in the morning, so I will close now. Just to let you know how much I love you and am always thinking of you.

David

November 7, 1944

Dear Grace--

Back at HQ and safe. I am much too disappointed in myself to say more. Will write further later in the week.

David

La Saline Royale, the royal saltworks, had been opened in 1779 to put an end to fractious competition between bishops and lords fo
r c
ontrol of what was then a precious commodity. The King declared himself the owner of all the salt in France and auctioned it to European merchants from open-air barns here in Marsal, where the prized granules were mined.

After invading France, the Nazis had commandeered the saltworks, whose long radiating shafts made it ideal as a munitions dump, eventually becoming the largest in the Lorraine. The works had been built like a fortress, surrounded by both twenty-foot walls of limestone and brick, meant to repel thieves, and the river Seille, which formed
a v
irtual moat at the northern border. With the armaments, mostly large-caliber artillery shells, stored more than six hundred feet under the earth, they were invulnerable to air attack, and a German garrison was stationed in the former mine offices as further protection.

Martin and his OG had been dispatched to this vicinity in early September to destroy the dump, but the operation had been put on hold when the pace of combat slackened. Now, Martin said, London wanted the mission completed. The Germans had fortified their stores in the interval, making La Saline Royale an even more inviting target.

We were gathered probably a mile from the salt-works, inside a small shepherd's but in the field of a farmer who was a member of a local resisters' unit, or reseau. Sitting on the dirt floor, the six of us listened as Martin illustrated the operation's plan beside a Coleman lantern. From his field jacket, Martin had removed a pack of playing cards, peeling a backing off of each one and laying them out in rows, until they formed a map of the saltworks and the surrounding area. Biddy and I grinned at each other. The OSS's ingenuity was equal to its legend.

There were two breaches, Martin said, in the salt-works' fortifications. The only formal approach was from the north to the massive iron front gates, behind which the German troops waited. On the west, the walls parted a few meters where a railroad sidin
g r
an down into the mine. Laid for the shipment of salt, the tracks continued to be used to deliver and remove armaments, and emerged on an angled treitle over the Seille, meeting the railhead on the western bank.

A ground assault against the railroad gate also appeared unpromising. Fording the Seille without bridge work was nigh impossible. `Seille, means `pail,' the name drawn from the depth of the narrow gray river below its steep banks. Even in a season of record floods, the waters remained a good ten feet under the stone retaining walls, which were overgrown with moss and creepers. Worse, where the tracks passed through the mine wall, crews manned two MG42 high-caliber machine guns. Nonetheless, Martin laid his pencil tip there on the map and said this opening would be the point of attack for our party of seven.

"Merde," said Henri.

"Tu perds la tete," said Christian to Martin jovially. You've lost your mind.

"There is a way," said Martin, and in the sallow lantern light, looked about the circle like a schoolmarm to see if anyone who did not know the plan could guess.

"By train," I answered.

"Bravo, Dubin."

My clue was Martin's background. Members of his former union, the International Transport Workers
,
were so thoroughly committed to resistance that before D-Day the Germans had been required to take over the French railroads, importing nearly 50,000 rail men from Germany. As the Allies advanced, however, most of these civilian crews had been shipped home, or had simply deserted. While the rail yards remained heavily patrolled, the Nazis had had no choice but again to let Frenchmen run the trains in the corner of France the Germans controlled.

This evening, mechanics at the yard in Dieuze, a few miles farther east, would conclude that the arriving locomotive on a Nazi supply train needed repairs. It would be steered toward the mechanical facility at the distant side of the yard, and would slowly roll right through. A mile farther on, Antonio would board, replacing the engineer and the rest of the crew, and steam off toward the dump. In the morning, after the operation, the local reseau would tie up the crew members, leaving them in the bushes along the right-of-way, where, upon discovery, they would claim to have been set upon by dozens of saboteurs many hours before.

Martin expected no trouble with any of that. If there were to be problems, they were more likely to come at La Saline Royale. If the Germans here realized what was happening, they would blow or blockade the trestle leading to the mine, so stealth was essential. There were two guards at a switching point, set up roughly a mile and a half from wher
e w
e were now, to keep unauthorized traffic off the spur. They had to be quietly subdued. After that, a distraction on the other side of the works would obscure the sounds of the approaching locomotive. That was Henri and Christian's task.

"Ever seen one of these?" Around the circle Martin handed an object about the size of an apple, Army green, with yellow stenciling that said M. From the ring on top, I could tell it was a hand grenade, but twice as big as any other I'd seen.

"It's called a Beano. I have damn few left, too. Like a grenade but with one great advantage. Blows on impact. No one kicks this out of the way or throws it in the river. And if you have to hold on to it after you pull the ring, you can. I wouldn't walk around with it in my pocket, mind you, but I've carried one along for several minutes."