The plan: The Luftwaffers had wisely used French labor to cut down the forest around the bridge, so it was basically coverless, nude land on the approach, studded with evergreen stumps that were stout enough to stop all vehicles that ran on tires. Stealth was impossible, too, in the arc lights the Germans had mounted that blazed away all night long. There was no danger from the six 88-millimeter flak guns sandbagged around the bridge, since they were dedicated, meaning permanently mounted in antiaircraft trajectories to defend the bridge from Allied air attack, and so out of the picture tactically, and were unmanned at night, as no Typhoons or Jugs would risk a run in the dark. But there were at least six sentries, a sergeant of the guard and four or five riflemen, at each end of the bridge.
So stealth was out. Rather, in a rattly old Citroen, Leets and his three FFI maquis would approach the bridge and when called to halt at close range open fire. They would shoot the sentries, Gammon bomb the guardhouse, and lay down fire on the men at the other end of the bridge, and Leets would hop out to the center, monkey-climb over, plant the 808, and wedge in the already primed time pencils, and then they’d run like hell to the woods two hundred yards away. If reinforcements from Nantilles got there before they made it to the woods, they’d be dead friggin’ ducks, as the Germans, even incompetent Luftwaffers, could hose them down with MG-42 fire from the guns mounted on the trucks, while the men gave chase with Mausers and Schmeissers.
That’s where the Brens came in. The Brens could drive the trucks back, even destroy them, and scatter the easily frightened Luftwaffers. The whole thing turned on the Brens. The two Brens were the wanted nail that doomed the horse that lost the squad that let down the battalion that defeated the army that ruined the war.
“Great news, chum,” said Basil. “You have Brens!”
“What?”
“Hmm, it seems that Roger had a change of mind, or perhaps an order from higher HQ. In any event, even as we speak, Roger and his two Bren gun teams are setting up on the slope overlooking the road from Nantilles, three hundred yards beyond the bridge.”
“Do we know that for a fact?”
“Chum, if Roger says they’re there, then they’re there.”
“I wish I could actually see the guys.” But he looked at the Bulova he wore upside down on his wrist and saw that it was 0238 British War Time, so it was time to go.
“Okay,” he said, “then let’s blow this son of a bitch.”
“Good attitude. I’ll be with the other boys in the woodline. We’ll lay down fire from our end.”
“You can’t see well enough to do any good, and that goddamn little peashooter”—Leets indicated the Sten Machine Carbine hung around Basil by a sling, a tubular construction that looked as if it had been designed by a committee of very dull plumbers, a 9-millimeter burp gun that fired too fast when it fired at all, and then its bullets did little good when they got there if they got there at all—”won’t frighten anyone.”
“Beets, I can’t help it that their guns are so much better than ours. We make do with what is. We do our bit, that’s all.”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, let’s go then. Batter up!” Leets said bitterly. He stormed to the Citroen for his drive to battle. But then he remembered his manners.
“Sorry, captain. I’m a blowhard, I know. Just venting because I’m scared shitless. Anyhow, thanks, what you did was swell, it was, I don’t know—”
“Stop it, Beets. Just go blow up your silly bridge.”
“Captain, one last thing. Who the hell are you? Where are you from? How do you know so much? What are you doing here? Surely you’re too old, too advanced, too brilliant for all this running around. You should be a general or something. You look forty. Who are you?”
“Long, long story, chum. Blow the damned bridge and we’ll have a chat.”
Enter Millie Beeman. Millie, from Millicent, from the Beemans, you know, the Beemans of the North Shore. Millie was a lovely girl, clever as the devil. She graduated with high marks from Smith but never bragged or acted smart, got her first job working as a secretary at Time in Manhattan for the awful Luce and his hideous wife, spent some time on a Senate staff (her father arranged it), and then when war came, she gravitated toward the Office of Strategic Services just as surely as it gravitated toward her. People knew where they belonged, and organizations knew what kind of people belonged in them, so General Donovan’s assistants fell in instant love with the willowy blonde who looked smashing at any party, smoked brilliantly, and had languid, see-through-anything luminosity in her eyes. Everyone loved the way her hair fell down to her shoulders; everyone loved the diaphanous cling of a gown or blouse to her long-limbed, definitely femalesque torso; everyone loved her yards and yards of legs, her perfect ankles well displayed by the platform of the heels all the girls wore.
By ‘43 she’d transferred to London station at 72 Grosvenor in Mayfair, under Colonel Bruce, one of whose assistants she’d become, and wore the uniform of a second lieutenant in the WACs. She was in charge of the colonel’s social calendar, important since one of the common jests of the time was that OSS actually stood for Oh So Social. She answered his phones or placed his calls, but it was more than that. She also knew the town, in the sense of “knew the town,” and so was able to prioritize. The colonel was hopeless and said yes to every invitation in the days before she arrived on station. She knew who was in, who out, which receptions it was important to be seen at, which could be safely ignored, which generals were in the ascension, which in the decline, which FFI liaison officers could be trusted, which should be avoided, which journalists were helpful, which were not, who could be blackmailed, ignored, betrayed, dumped, manipulated, or insulted and, by contrast, who could be trusted, used, counted on, confided in, who had access, represented the kind of people we like and need, and so forth and so on. She was indispensable, she was ruthless, she was efficient, she was beautiful and brilliant at once, and she was the third-ranking NKVD agent in OSS, the star of INO (Foreign Intelligence Section) who had been trained at SHON, Shkola Osobogo Naznacheniya, the Special Purposes School, in Balashikha, fifteen miles east of the Moscow Ring Road, when everybody thought she was rusticating in the Hamptons.
Millie sniffed something was up at six p.m. that evening, when Colonel Brace’s mood immediately brightened. The issue of the day had been Operation Jedburgh, by which three-man teams of OSS/SOE/FFI agents had parachuted behind the lines to wreak havoc on German communications and transportation lines in the immediate wake of the Normandy show. So far, no good. No teams had hit a target, many had drifted apart in the descent and failed to link up with maquis units whom they were supposed to lead, and several had never acknowledged arrival by radio and were considered combat-lost. It was looking like a washout, and Colonel Bruce knew he was meeting with Sir Colin Gubbins, head of SOE, and that Gubbins would blame the muck-up on the American third of the units. It was so important that the teams do well!
But around six, an SOE liaison informed the colonel that radio intercepts strongly suggested one team was in position and would strike tonight at midnight against a bridge on Das Reich’s route to the beachhead.