Chapter Nine: Crawling With Germans

Jerry picked up his only possessions after nearly four years of fighting for the Resistance. They consisted of his sister's torn Bible, his father's .38 that he had used to kill two SS officers, and one change of clothes that he carried in a small brown leather suitcase. He had accomplished the sweetest of victories in Berlin, but he had seen too many terrible things for a man of his age. The Nazis had stolen his youth. Jerry desperately wanted to get out of France and leave behind his painful past.

He had abandoned his American papers since the U.S. entered the war, and instead traveled under French papers given to him by the Resistance. They arranged for him to be picked up and transported by car from Paris to the small fishing village of Port en Bessin. There a fishing boat would take him across the English Channel to Newhaven, where he would be met and taken to the British Foreign Office in London, 50 miles to the north.

As he and two members of the Resistance, Pierre and Jacques, set out on a cold and clear night of June 4, it should have been a simple thing for the three "fishermen" to return to their village after selling produce in Paris. But they had a growing uneasiness as they neared the coast. The remote area of the countryside was crawling with Germans. They passed battalion after battalion and trucks towing 20mm guns. Jacques said,

"I am from Port en Bessin and I have never seen it like this!" There were thousands of soldiers being transported and the checkpoints became more and more frequent.

The men grew silent as they approached the lights of what was normally a quiet fishing village. Pierre said,

"I don't like this." Jerry felt the same,

"Why don't we pull over to the side of the road?" Pierre didn't hesitate. He swung the car to the edge of the road and turned its lights off.

It was very dark as the men sat and stared ahead of them. They could hear the rumbling of tanks and trucks and see the silhouettes of artillery being driven through the tiny village.

"The invasion . . . they must have details of the invasion!" whispered Jerry. British intelligence had informed the Resistance on June 1, via a coded message on the BBC, of the Allies' invasion of France. However, because Jerry had withdrawn earlier from active work with the Resistance, he had not been privy to the particulars.

To be continued...