Alfie Swann had twice jumped into combat with England’s First Airborne Division. First had been in Normandy where things had worked out relatively well. They’d accomplished most of their D-Day objectives and had stayed together as a cohesive unit, unlike America’s two airborne divisions, the 82nd and 101st, which had been scattered all over by a number of factors beyond their control, and had suffered enormous casualties. The paras of Britain’s First were sad that it happened to the Yanks, but happy it hadn’t happened to them.
However, their turn for disaster came when they jumped east of the mouth of the Seine. The krauts had been ready for them and antiaircraft tracers and machine guns had lit up the skies. Telephone poles and other obstructions had been planted in fields and connected by wires to impale and hang up paratroops or cause gliders to crash with appalling loss of life.
Alfie had been lucky. He’d made it to the ground unscathed. So many of his mates had been killed or wounded. He’d connected with some other lucky ones and fought on for days until they’d been forced to surrender. He’d heard that a few men had made it north to the sea and he hoped his fighting had helped their escape.
Except for some bruises, Alfie was unhurt. He was twenty-five and had enlisted when the war first started in 1939. Alfie’d been brought up in the slums of London’s west end, now a funeral pyre thanks to Nazi bombers. He’d lost an uncle and a couple of cousins in the bombings and subsequent conflagrations, and wanted nothing more than to take out the Germans. He’d killed a few in the fighting but not enough to satisfy him.
Alfie and a half dozen other captured paras, accompanied by three SS guards, had been marching along a road heading towards a prison camp east of the Rhine when an American fighter mistook them for a squad of German infantry. Bullets had plowed through the group, shredding prisoner and guard alike. When the dust settled, he was the only man alive except for a badly injured guard whom he promptly stabbed with the guard’s own bayonet.
“That’s for my family,” he’d muttered. The guards had been overweight garrison types, but they were Germans and SS, and the particular German he’d stabbed had taken delight in beating and harassing the prisoners.
After pushing the bodies of friend and foe into a ditch, Alfie had headed south, hoping to find a place to hide out until the Americans crossed the great river. He didn’t go north, as that was where he’d been captured.
In his opinion, the British army was through, fought out, and there weren’t any more young men left at home to flesh out the depleted ranks. He liked to think that the men in charge of Great Britain’s war effort, Churchill and Montgomery, knew that. However, he did doubt and wonder.
He was able to pilfer enough food at night to stay fed, and he traveled only during the darkness. He also had a Mauser rifle and two Luger pistols for protection, along with one slightly used bayonet, courtesy of his guards. Alfie was a damned good shot and it felt good to have a rifle again, even if it was a German Mauser and not a proper Enfield.
This early evening he’d found a fairly large but dilapidated shed with its door unlocked, a clear signal that it was empty. That was fine by him. He just wanted a place to hide and sleep. He slipped in backwards and immediately felt there was something wrong. He wasn’t alone.
“Shit,” he muttered. No sense being still. Even though it was getting dark, anyone in the shed would have seen him silhouetted against the open door. He carefully turned around, the rifle pointed into the gloom. “Okay, who the hell’s in here?”
There was a shuffling and two shapes stood up and held out their hands to show they were unarmed. They were men, thin beyond gaunt, and they were dressed in striped rags. He recognized the garb from pictures he’d seen. They’d been in a concentration camp and were less of a threat to him than two field mice. He lowered his rifle.
“Either of you speak English?” Alfie asked.
“We both do,” the taller one said, “just not very well.”
Alfie thought the man spoke well enough indeed.
“Do you have any food?” the second man asked. “We haven’t eaten in days.”
Alfie handed them some bread and vegetables he had in a sack. “Just eat slowly. Too fast and you’ll cramp up and die.”
Like dogs they did as told and ate with restraint. In between bites, they told him that their names were Aaron Rosenfeld and Saul Blum and that they’d escaped from a work camp a few miles away. “We were all going to be shipped to Auschwitz and nobody returns from there. It’s a death camp.”
Alfie wasn’t certain what they were talking about, but accepted that they were afraid they’d be killed outright rather than simply beaten to death or starved. They further told him that they had once been university professors and had taught English literature. They had families but hadn’t heard from them since being taken by the Gestapo a year earlier. They quite candidly told him they thought their loved ones were dead.
Shit, Alfie thought, what kind of a fucking war was this? He’d heard of Nazi atrocities of course, but this was his first direct experience with them. What the hell danger were two English literature teachers to Hitler and his fucking Reich?
Aaron spoke. “How far away is the rest of your army?”
Alfie laughed harshly. “Plenty far away. It might as well be on the moon. They’re on the other side of the Rhine and nowhere near it for that matter. The krauts are getting real smart and holding us at bay.”
Saul broke down and sobbed. “Then we’re lost. We can’t hide out forever.”
“Why the hell not?” Alfie said angrily. “I don’t plan on surrendering to the fucking SS or the Gestapo or any other fucking Nazi.”
“Then you’ll protect us?” asked Aaron.
Alfie took a deep breath. What the hell was he getting himself into? It was trouble enough for one man to stay alive, but to be saddled with a pair of useless Jews? Christ on a crutch.
“Yeah,” he said.
Whiteside was livid. “Morgan, just who the hell do you think you are and just how the hell did you think you could get away with such a jackass stunt as buzzing the Eiffel Tower? Thousands of people saw you and your plane was easily identifiable. Somebody even took pictures for the French papers and your ugly face is clearly visible.”
Jack stood at attention and took the butt-chewing he knew he deserved. At least Levin wasn’t involved. Whiteside was only interested in the idiot pilot and that was Jack.
“Sir, it was a dumb thing to do and I apologize for it.”
“And let me guess, you think you can’t get punished because you’re already in combat. Well, you’re wrong. I could drop your worthless ass down to second lieutenant in a heartbeat, or I could court-martial you down to buck private and put you in an infantry platoon. However, since you would likely last less than thirty seconds in the infantry that would be tantamount to murder so I am only going to seriously consider dropping your rank.”
Whiteside took a sip of cold coffee, winced, and glared at Jack. “The French are pissed off because the touchy bastards think you insulted them, which you did. Would you have buzzed the Statue of Liberty or the Washington Monument? Or maybe St. Peter’s in Rome?”
“No, sir.”
“And Ike’s joined the list of pissed off people because the French are spending a lot of time complaining to him about stupid, insensitive Americans, and now he has to spend valuable time solving the problem you created.”
Oh Jesus, Jack thought. It’s gone all the way to Ike? Jack swallowed. That was not what he’d had in mind. “Sir, it was a sophomoric prank. It won’t happen again.”
“Morgan, you are going to get one chance to survive and keep your rank. Do you have a class-A uniform?”
“No, sir,” Jack answered, puzzled. “When the LST got sunk my stuff was ruined. They didn’t give me anything other than fatigues as reissue.”
“Damn. Okay, we’ll scrounge up something for you, because you are going to SHAEF, where you’ll grovel
