A man walked along the narrow sidewalk carrying a basket of haws, red berries that come in May, useful for feeding pigs when there is little else. I saw down a side street the man’s penned hogs and several chickens, which throughout Britain had moved into towns for the duration. At another intersection was a news vendor’s stand. Earlier in the war vendors scrawled in chalk on homemade placards the plane tallies, “122 for 48,” or “45 for 22,” as if the war overhead were a cricket match. Of late the scores had been too gloomy, and this vendor’s placard was blank.
Corporal Markham drove us around a mound of stones, once a small church. Rubble was everywhere, piles of rock, brick, and charred timber. Buildings had been destroyed at random, giving the town a gap-toothed look. Rye had no particular military significance, but the Luftwaffe was still carrying out Baedeker raids, originally in retribution for the RAF bombings of Rostock and Lübeck, now simply to injure British morale. Bath, Salisbury, Winchester, Canterbury, and many other historic sites had been hit, singled out from the Baedeker guide book. On a water tower was a plane spotter, with his binoculars on a strap around his neck. Spotters were nicknamed Jim Crow.
We turned up a hill toward the Mermaid Inn, which had hosted smugglers and sailors for hundreds of years, intending to meet the troops of the newly arrived 40th Field Artillery Battalion. Instead, we drove into a nest of activity on the rough stone street. We slowed for the swarm of soldiers. They wore a mix of uniforms, American Army and British Home Guard, and they were agitated.
The crowd parted before our jeep. The shouting gradually died as the soldiers turned and saw stars on the jeep and recognized the general. Standing near the inn’s door was a man whose hands were tied behind him. Blood was flowing from his nostrils and from a cut above an eyebrow. He was wearing dark wool pants, a stained leather vest, and a blue shirt, part of which had been ripped away and hung to his knees. He was braced by two military policemen carrying rifles at the ready. The British press called American MPs Clay’s Snowballs, because of their white helmets. Next to them was Colonel Ralph Simpson, commander of the 40th. He was reading an army manual with such intensity that he did not look up even as the jeep came within six inches of him.
“Something I can help you with, Ralph?” General Clay asked.
The colonel’s head came up. Vast relief crossed his features. He was a rounded man, with a distended belly and an extra chin. Hitler had made mustaches unpopular in the Allied services, but Simpson bucked the trend. His resembled a black bottle brush, which he carefully trimmed so it did not cover his puffy upper lip. “Sir, my prisoner is an Irishman, caught this morning in a flat in Rye with a two-way radio. I’m having a little trouble convincing my men that we should hand him over for interrogation.”
Someone behind the jeep shouted, “We’ll interrogate the bastard, General. Just give him to us.”
A chorus of assent rose from the crowd.
“You’ve questioned him yourself?” Clay asked.
“He refuses to say a word.”
“How’d he get bloodied?”
“My men say he tripped down the stairs as he tried to escape, sir.”
“You sure he’s Irish?” The general remained seated in the jeep.
“Damn right,” one of the Home Guard called out. “Just look at him.”
The prisoner was a jut-jawed brunet with a cold gaze. His face was the white of paste, and he had a prominent Adam’s apple. I didn’t see anything peculiarly Irish about him, but I’m no expert. Despite urgings from the Ministry of Information to “Join the Silent Column,” rumors were rife that the Irish had teamed with the Axis en masse, and most were in southern England radioing intelligence reports to their German masters. The notion was preposterous. Then again, this fellow was no rumor.
“The bastards don’t know who their friends are,” another Guard added. The Guards wore uniforms identical to the British infantry’s except for the shoulder flashes. “He’s a spy.”
The general asked, “What kind of radio?”
“Here’s his two-way.” A lieutenant from the 2nd Signal Company held up a portable radio and a battery pack, a model the Germans called an Agentenfunk.
“How’d you find him?” Clay asked.
“We’ve got one of the new radio direction finders,” the lieutenant answered. He pointed up Mermaid Street to his jeep. Mounted on a roll bar was a circular antenna on a ball joint. “A new Motorola. We’ve been looking for him for a week. He finally obliged with a lengthy broadcast. The Brits and us broke into his room and found the radio, wired and ready to go, and he was still talking into the microphone.”
“Looks pretty suspicious, all right,” General Clay concluded dryly. He turned to the soldiers and asked loudly, “What are you men proposing to do?”
“The man is a spy,” one shouted. “Working behind our lines, plain and simple.”
Another yelled, “We’re going to shoot him out of hand.”
Several soldiers standing around our jeep nodded vigorously. “Line him up,” one called out.
From the rear of the group another shouted, “Let’s dish out some of what we’ve been taking.” There was loud consent from many of the soldiers.
Clay motioned them to silence. “Let’s think this through, men. G2 will be mighty upset if they don’t get a chance to talk to this guy.”
“Look at him.” An American sergeant jerked his thumb at the prisoner. “He’s going to keep his trap shut right into the grave.”
“Let’s not be hasty here, Sergeant. There’s little difference whether this fellow is shot right now or in a couple of weeks, after Intelligence discovers his story.”
“Bullshit, General,” a soldier yelled.
“Let us have the son of a bitch,” another bellowed.
Clay held up a finger, cutting them off. His words became more abrupt. “I’m not making myself clear, men. This fellow is going to be put behind bars and Colonel Simpson will call G2. Are you following me?”
Borrowing the general’s strength, Simpson straightened himself, “Precisely, sir. Thank you.” He turned to the guards. “Corporal, you and the private here find where the jail is in this town, lock the Irishman up, and post guards.”
The soldiers straightened in unison. One yelled, “Are you shitting us, General?”
Another, with a voice tightened by ferocious anger, “This bastard was working to make sure plenty of us die when his German friends come.”
Fists were raised and hammered in the air.
“We can take care of him without help from you, General.”
“We heard you were a hard ass, General. But you see an Irish spy close up, and you go soft.”
“How many of us will this bastard have helped kill in the next week?”
“Now’s our chance.”
The soldiers pulsed a step forward.
General Clay suddenly stood in the jeep. He pointed sharply at the gunner in the trailing vehicle, then at the sky.
The burst of .30-caliber shells was loud in the narrow street. Soldiers ducked, some dropped to the cobblestones. Others instinctively looked for a Messerschmitt. The Irishman didn’t even wince.
The general pushed out his chest in that unattractive way often captured on the newsreels. Too much like Mussolini, I told him once. He said in a brittle voice, “You’ll learn exactly how goddamn hard I am if this prisoner is harmed. Lock him up.” He swept his gaze over the crowd like it was a gun on a swivel. It found the guards. “You heard me. Take him away.”