The New Confessions

17 The Invasion of St.-Tropez

Dateline, St.-Tropez, August 16, 1944. Yesterday, the South of France was invaded by three hundred thousand men from the U.S. and French armies. Operation Dragoon had begun. A vast armada of over twelve hundred vessels, the largest invasion fleet the Mediterranean had ever seen, assembled secretly off the golden beaches of the Riviera. Thousands of parachutists were dropped inland before dawn. Nine hundred fifty-nine aircraft pounded the coastal defenses on an invasion front that stretched from Cavalaire to Fréjus.…

I paused. I thought I had the tone just about right. I imagined it being read in an urgent “March of Time” voice, which I felt was just the sort of voice required. I did not find journalism at all easy.

I was sitting typing on the terrace of a ruined café situated on the quay at St.-Tropez Harbor. The Germans had blown up and largely demolished the port installations and had badly damaged most of the quayside buildings. The rest of the small ancient town was more or less untouched. The big white hotel — the Hôtel Sube et Continental — seemed to pulse with brightness in the midday sun. The old walls and fortifications of the citadel were sharp and distant against the washed-out blue of the sky. I drained the last of my beer, brought to me by the cheerful patron of the demolished café. Yesterday had been a very curious twenty-four hours.

The invasion force — General Patch’s Seventh Army — had been attacking three sectors of the coastline. Alpha Force was assaulting beaches at Cavalaire and St.-Tropez. Delta Force was concentrating on Ste.-Maxime, and Camel Force was divided between Fréjus and St.-Raphaël. I was assigned to a company of the 17th RCT (Regimental Combat Team), which was going in on Alpha Yellow Beach, the long strip of sand on the Baie de Pampelonne.

There was a heavy mist on August 15, so heavy it looked artificial. As I peered over the gunwale of the chugging LCI as we cruised steadily in towards Pampelonne Beach, I was reminded of that day at Nieuport when I had raised the false gas alarm. I wasn’t sure if that thick line of smog was mist or the dust raised by the bombers and the naval barrage. I suspect that whoever was at the helm was similarly inconvenienced because we landed somewhat off target, to the right of the beach in a small rocky shingled cove. I kept my eyes on Captain Loomis as he led the company off the front of the LCI into the water. It was eerily quiet for an invasion. No one was shooting at us.

I jumped in. The water was cool, thigh deep. I wore an olive-drab combat uniform, webbing with a water bottle attached and a tin helmet. I had painted PRESS across the front of this in three-inch-high white letters. A huge, envelope-sized Stars and Stripes had been badly stitched onto my left sleeve. I held aloft the pack containing my camera, film and rations. As I waded ashore I sensed the water was strangely viscous and unyielding against my thighs. I looked down. Dead fish. Inches thick. Red mullet, gray mullet, monkfish, whitebait, thousands of what looked like sardines, formed a thick piscatorial crust on the water. I sloshed out of the water and clambered across the rocks, following a furious Loomis to where we should have landed. Loomis was a young man, ludicrously proud of his role as a leader of men. He had a snub nose and soft fleshy lips, which made him look oddly effeminate and sat oddly with the constant martial frown that knitted his brows.

Along the length of the cracked, smoking beach to our left we could see the other LCIs depositing their men among the mess of tangled metal anti-invasion fortifications placed just above the tide mark. Now, from somewhere distant I could hear the pop-pop of small-arms fire. Loomis assembled his company and waited for the engineers with their mine detectors to lead us off the beaches. I wandered off through a gap in a screen of umbrella pines to urinate. The cold water had stimulated my bladder and now that the fear of opposed landings seemed groundless I had to relieve myself.

Beyond the pines was a clear patch of sand and some old yellow beach cabanas, rather knocked about by the preinvasion barrage. A sign read TAHITI PLAGE. I pissed up against this and was just buttoning up my fly when a handsome man in a beret, white shirt and blue shorts emerged from behind one of the cabanas. He carried a German submachine gun.

“Hey-oh, Américain,” he said. “What’s new?”

He shook me by the hand and told me in French that his name was Luc, that he was with the resistance and he was going to guide us to St.-Tropez. Then I heard Loomis shouting.

“Todd! Where the fuck are you?”

I led Luc back through the pines to Loomis. He was enraged.

“There’s fuckin’ mines everywhere, asswipe!” he shouted at me.

Luc shook his hand and said, “What’s new?”

Later I took a photograph of Luc, the cabanas and the TAHITI PLAGE sign. I liked to think that I had personally liberated this tranquil bathing beach from the German Army.

Eventually, after taped pathways had been marked through the minefields, the 17th RCT left the beachhead and moved across the scrub and pine copses of the St.-Tropez Peninsula in the direction of the town. The day became very hot. Overhead a Piper Cub spotter plane buzzed annoyingly. By ten-fifteen all firing seemed to have died away. In the woods the air was shrill with the sound of cicadas. From time to time a break in the trees or a rise in the ground afforded a view of the Gulf of St.-Tropez with the Monts des Maures in the background. In the bay sat the vast fleet, the still gray ships with the sun dancing prettily off the silver barrage balloons tethered above them. The rumble of artillery duels came across the gulf from Fréjus and Ste.-Maxime. Thin clouds of smoke rose into the air from burning buildings. I thought that it may not have been the most exciting invasion of the war, but it was certainly the most agreeable. Perhaps I had been lucky after all.

I had never got to London, you see. At the offices of the North American News Association in New York I had requested that I be sent to Normandy. I was initially dismayed when I found that I was instructed to proceed to Ajaccio, Corsica, via Casablanca and Palermo to join the U.S. Seventh Army. I traveled there on a boat filled with dynamite accompanied by two other NANA journalists, Sam M. Goodforth — so his card informed me — chief reporter of the Fort Worth Bugle, and Elmore Pico from the Hearst newspaper chain. Pico, thin and neurotic, later died on the beach at St.-Raphaël. Camel Force, to which he was assigned, saw the fiercest fighting of Operation Dragoon. Pico told me why we were going to Corsica.

“Because we don’t write for friggin’ Life, or Collier’s or McCall’s. We’re not famous; we’re not fuckin’ novelists. We don’t have important friends. All the big guys get to go to Normandy. They go by air. Us schmucks wind up in stinkin’ Corsica!”

He moaned all the way to Casablanca, where he caught dysentery. Goodforth and I reached Corsica in July. Pico caught up with us at the beginning of August. I filed reports for the Dusenberry papers regularly from Casablanca and Salerno, but later I learned they had all been spiked as too boring.

My disappointment over being assigned to the Mediterranean theater was short-lived. As I had hoped, my new job provided me with the peace of mind I had been seeking. It was enough to wear a uniform, to own a tin helmet again. I felt, in a strange way, that the step I had taken had the effect of voluntarily submitting myself to the contingencies of the universe once more. I had stopped trying to steer a course; I was content to be carried by the current. Even dark embittered Pico with his relentless bitching did not irritate me unduly.

By midafternoon of August 15, St.-Tropez was cleared of Germans, most of whom had either fled or surrendered. I stood in the ruined port with Luc and a rather attractive girl called Nadine wearing a revolver in her belt, and watched the prisoners being assembled ready to be marched off to the beach. In front of us was a large group of about 120 men. They were in Wehrmacht uniforms but they looked more Arabic than German. I asked Nadine who they were.

“From the Ost Legion,” she said. “Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia. They don’t even speak German.”

“We’ve got plenty Poles here too,” Luc said. He offered me a cigarette, a French one. I lit it and the sour tobacco reminded me suddenly of Annecy and the first days of my affair with Doon. All at once I was very happy to be back in France, in Europe. We went to a bar and drank pastis. Luc and Nadine were intrigued to learn I was a film director. We took our drinks and sat outside. The bar was in one of the narrow streets back from the port. We sat in shade but the late-afternoon sun burned strongly on the faded-pink, tiled roofs of the buildings. I took big gulps at the aniseed liquor. Nadine had thick curly hair held back from her face with tortoiseshell clips. She was dark-skinned and wore a blue-and-white print dress with neat canvas shoes on her feet. I wondered if she and Luc were lovers. I felt suddenly very sexually attracted towards her, perhaps because she had a gun. I looked at her hand that held her cigarette. Her nails were short and dirty. The way she was sitting caused her right breast to bulge gently over the butt of the revolver thrust in her belt. I at once saw these images as if they were projected on a cinema screen. Her dark mobile face as she pouted skepticism to some point Luc had raised. The careless way she drew on her cigarette; how she raised her chin and kept her eyes fixed on Luc to blow smoke sideways. The pale-yellow paper of the cigarette. The pale-yellow drink. Her breast. The gun. Just for a second or two — the slightest movement of the camera — so much hinted, so much implicit. I remembered Hamish’s friend Kurt, and what he had said to me. I knew then that The Confessions was not over.

I took a photograph of them both and then left them to return to Loomis at company HQ, which was now established in an old villa on the outskirts of town. My kit was there and my typewriter. Loomis had allowed his frown to relax and passed on new instructions, namely that I was to motor up to a place called Le Muy, some miles inland, to cover the effects of the air- and glider-borne landings.

“Seems there’s some colonel in the Five-oh-ninth from San Diego,” Loomis said. “He’s heard you’re here and wants a lot of local coverage back home.” He looked at me curiously. I continually had to remind myself that I was twenty years older than Loomis.

“Where’re you from, Todd?”

“Edinburgh, Scotland.”

“Yeah? What’s your paper called?”

“The Chula Vista Herald-Post. That’s the biggest one I work for.”

“Good God.” He shook his head. “You got a driver and a jeep outside. Why don’t you check with him about tomorrow?”

I went out into the garden. It was overgrown with mimosa, tamarind and lavender bushes. The night was very warm. Across the bay I could see some fires still burning in Ste.-Maxime. The flames looked pretty on the water.

I found my jeep but there was no sign of the driver. I looked round and saw someone crouched over a lavender bush.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Oh yes, sir.”

He stood up. He was tall and well built. I could not make out his features in the dark. His voice sounded educated. He inhaled ostentatiously.

“Have you smelled the air here, sir?” We inhaled deeply together. “Pines, eucalyptus, lavender … intoxicating.”

He handed me a small bunch of lavender.

“Smell that.”

I did. The scent was so strong it seemed as if I had inhaled a fine powder. I sneezed.

“Excuse me, but are you my driver?”

“If you’re John James Todd of the Chula Vista Herald-Post, I am.”

“I am indeed. What’s your name?”

“Private Brown, sir.”

“What’s your first name? And there’s no need to call me sir. I’m a civilian.”

“It’s Two Dogs Running.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Two Dogs Running. I’m a Cherokee. A Cherokee Indian to you. A redskin, in case you were wondering.” His tone was pleasantly, inoffensively ironic.

I didn’t get a proper look at Two Dogs Running until the next day. We rendezvoused at the company HQ villa after I had written and filed my invasion report for the Dusenberry papers. Two Dogs, as I came to call him, was young — in his early twenties — tall and solid looking. He had a classic hooked nose and thin eyes. His black hair had been shaved to a stubbly crew cut.

“Morning, Mr. Todd,” he said. “Another beautiful day.”

We drove off, overtaking long columns of trucks and marching men that were moving inland from the beachhead. Shortly after lunch we were in Plan-de-la-Tour, where a lieutenant in the 157th RCT assured us that the road to Le Muy was clear. There had been a linkup that morning with patrols from the 509th Airborne.

We motored off. It was a badly paved road with dusty verges. The hills round us were covered in scrub and new plantations of pine trees. On either side we could see huddled dun and orange-pink villages, small farms and olive groves. The blue sky above was scarred with thin salty contrails of the Marauders and Liberators flying in from their bases in Corsica and Sardinia.

“You see that air raid last night?” Two Dogs asked. “Spectacular, wasn’t it?”

There had been an air attack on the ships lying off St.-Tropez. The sky had been hot with searchlights and tracers for a good five minutes. Two Dogs told me a plane had been shot down, but I had seen nothing. We bumped along the road. An old lady in black sat beneath an olive tree tending some goats. She waved as we passed. Everything was tranquil and calm; I reflected on how easy it was for the world to swallow up a war.

“You’d pay a lot for a vacation like this,” Two Dogs said.

“Aren’t we lucky.”

“Where are you from, Mr. Todd?”

“Edinburgh. Edinburgh, Scotland.”

“How come you’re working for the Chula Vista Herald-Post?”

“It’s an incredibly long story.” I changed the subject. “Where are you from?”

“New Mexico. Little town called Platt.”

“Really? I made a film in New Mexico earlier this year.”

“You’re kidding. What’s it called?”

“The Equalizer.”

Two Dogs stopped the jeep. “You made The Equalizer?”

“Yes.”

“I saw it! Christ. Just before I came overseas. It’s playing everywhere, congratulations.”

“Is it?” I thought for a moment. I had left New York for Casablanca in mid-June. Eddie must have opened it earlier than he had planned. I felt vague alarm. How come I had to find out about this traveling in a jeep in the South of France?

Two Dogs restarted the engine and we set off again. I listened to him recount various episodes in my film. He had a good grasp of its implications.

“What did you do before you enlisted?” I asked.

“Traveling salesman. Perfumes and cosmetics.”

“Hence the lavender.”

We talked some more: about films, about scents, about Two Dogs’ ambitions for his career. He was a college graduate and the unspoken question hedged itself in between us.

“How come you’re—”

“In the motor pool? They don’t give commissions to pesky red varmints, Mr. Todd.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with being a private. I was one too.”

“No shit? When?”

“The Great War, 1914–18.” My God, I thought, that was only twenty-six years ago! I felt my age clamber onto my shoulders like the old man of the sea. Two Dogs was twenty-two.… We carried on talking as we drove through the hot shimmering landscape. I liked the big dark man with his wry educated views. We discussed The Equalizer further. The invasion. The Riviera. Two Dogs had just asked me if I had read Ernest Hemingway when the jeep broke down.

We had come down out of the hills and were in a small wooded valley with a dried-up riverbed running through it. The Argens Valley, I guessed, consulting my map. I calculated that we were about seven miles from Le Muy. The next bend in the road was obscured by a wood of cork oak trees, their stripped trunks a fresh ocher. Two Dogs checked the engine and said there was something wrong with the fuel pump. I looked at the map once more.

“There’s a small village up the road. If we are where we think we are.”

Two Dogs took his carbine out of the back of the jeep and we set off. It was midafternoon and now, deprived of the early cooling breeze of the jeep’s progress, we felt the full heat of the sun. After half a mile I wished I had left my helmet behind. I carried it dangling from its strap like a tureen and thought seriously about throwing it away. It was very quiet. The metallic sawing of the cicadas only emphasized the stillness.

The hamlet — Castel Dion — consisted of a few houses, some barns and a semiderelict church. There was no prospect of getting our fuel pump repaired here. We walked down the main street. A small patient crowd was gathered at the far end round an overturned lorry. As we approached, an old man advanced to meet us.

“Écossais?” he asked.

I looked at him in frank astonishment. “What?”

“Américains” Two Dogs said, pointing to the flag on my shoulder. The old man led us over to the lorry. The crowd of villagers parted to reveal several dead bodies, some badly scorched. They wore German uniforms but they were swarthy dark-skinned Arabs of the Ost Legion. They had been dead for hours, since the morning, probably. The spilled blood was black, coagulated like treacle. Flies were everywhere. The few inhabitants of Castel Dion seemed incapable of doing anything about this morbid visitation but stare.

“Who did this?” I asked the old man.

“Sept Écossais,” he said. “Les paras.” Then he proceeded to describe the incident with many French gestures and sound effects. “Paf! Pan-pan-pan! Boum! Claque! Finis. Bof!” He dusted his palms.

I knew from the pre-invasion briefing that the only British troops taking part in Operation Dragoon were paratroopers, of the 2nd Independent Paratroop Brigade. I assumed some roving unit had been responsible for this ambush.… But were they Scottish paratroopers?… And I had no idea what to do about the dead men. I consulted Two Dogs, who suggested we get the jeep fixed first. I explained the problem to the old man, who led us back into the village and pointed to a road that led through some vineyards. Ask at the villa, he said. Two Dogs and I set off. Beyond the vineyards was an avenue of cypress trees and at the end of this two stone gateposts — no gate — with a name carved on them: VILLA GLADYS.

“Villa Gladys,” Two Dogs read. “Jesus. Does everything feel normal to you?” He looked at his carbine. “I mean, I’m a terrible shot.… Suppose it’s a trap?” He handed me the gun. “Why don’t you take this?”

“No, no. Absolutely not. I’m never touching guns again. I swore, after the last war — things that happened, you know.” I smiled uneasily. “Look, we’re miles from the fighting. I’m sure everything’s fine.” I was trying not to think of the last time I had fired a gun: 1917. The Salient. My drowning Ulsterman.

We walked cautiously through the gates and down the drive. Here and there discarded parachutes hung in the trees like huge limp flowers, or were draped over the rubble retaining walls of the vineyards like giant dying fungi. Then in a field we saw the splintered wreckage of half a dozen plywood Waco gliders. We turned a corner and there was the Villa Gladys, a small stone château with a roofless round tower. Laid out neatly on the edge of the graveled forecourt were five bodies covered in blankets. An old man holding a rake and an old woman looked aimlessly at them. When she saw us coming she ran into the house and emerged with another old man. Tall and erect, he wore a linen jacket, a shirt with a collar and tie, and baggy canvas trousers and sandals. A fine tracery of burst capillaries reddened his nose and cheeks. Wiry gray hair was badly combed over his bald head. If I hadn’t known better I would have assumed he was English.

“Nous sommes Américains,” I began.

“Thank Christ for that,” he said. “You come to take these chaps away? One of the gliders broke up pretty badly.”

“You’re English,” I said. “Good God!”

He looked at me shrewdly. “And you’re no Yank, I’ll wager. Not with that accent.”

“No,” I said. “No. I’m … I’m Scottish.” I don’t know why but I felt there was something baleful about my nationality that day. Six years in America hadn’t seen so many inquiries about it.

“We had some Scottish paras land on us the night before last,” he said. He gestured at the bodies. “One of them’s there. Fell right into my cucumber frames. Cut his throat. The other chappies cleared off before the gliders arrived.” He contemplated the wrecked machines. “Made a fucking awful mess of my vineyards.” He smiled. “Still, glad to see you. Perhaps you can help me with another problem.”

We wandered round the side of the château past an empty swimming pool. The old man told me his name was Peter Cavanaugh-Crabbe (two b’s and an e). He had bought Villa Gladys in 1902 and had lived there ever since.

“Didn’t you have any trouble with the Germans?”

“Not a jot. Not until this fellow turned up.”

We had stopped outside a small stone lean- to at the end of a barn. The door was bolted on the outside. From inside came a clucking of hens.

“There’s a Jerry inside,” Cavanaugh-Crabbe said, then, with a glance at Two Dogs, he lowered his voice and added, “Though he looks more like an Ay-rab to me. He crept in early this morning — after the eggs, no doubt. Old Lucien there”—he gestured at the rake-toting gardener—“spotted him and locked him in. I don’t think he’s got a gun, but you can’t be too careful.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Take the bugger off my hands, of course. You are soldiers.”

“I’m not. I’m a journalist.”

“Well, what about this fellow? He’s got a gun.”

“Yes, well … you see, our jeep’s broken down.”

“Don’t worry about transport. I’ve got an old Citroën you can comandeer. Give me a chit, then just leave it in Le Muy.”

I looked at Two Dogs. He shrugged.

“All right, then,” I said. I went up to the door of the lean- to and shouted through it in German, “We are American soldiers. Come out with your hands up!”

A voice came from inside: “Kamerad!”

I unbolted the door and stepped back. Two Dogs covered the doorway with his carbine. A couple of hens sidled cautiously out into the sunlight. Then the soldier appeared. He was helmetless, in an ill-fitting, lumpy, bloodstained uniform. Egg albumen glistened thickly on the bristles of his chin. He was a small thick-set man, dark-skinned, with a narrow forehead. He blinked stupidly in the sunshine.

“Hände hoch,” I said. He complied instantly.

“Bastard’s been at my eggs,” Cavanaugh-Crabbe said. “I knew it.”

He went off and drove a very dusty black car with wide running boards out of a barn, into the yard. I wrote him out a receipt for the car and signed it on behalf of General Patch, CO of the Seventh Army.

“I’ll drive,” I said to Two Dogs. “You cover him in the back.”

Two Dogs prodded the soldier — Azerbaijani, I guessed — into the back of the car.

“If you follow that track there between the fields”—Cavanaugh-Crabbe pointed out the route—“you’ll hit the Le Muy — Fréjus road after five minutes or so. Then turn left.”

“Fine,” I said.

“Thanks very much,” Cavanaugh-Crabbe said. “And could you tell the medicos to come and pick up the dead chappies? They’ve been out in the sun a couple of days now and they’re beginning to hum a bit.”

“Certainly.”

“Much obliged,” he said. “By the way, what’s your name? Very grateful.”

“Todd,” I said. “John James Todd.”

He looked inquiringly at Two Dogs.

“Two Dogs Running.”

“Say again?”

“Two Dogs Running.”

“Oh yes?… Well, jolly good.”

I got into the front of the car. Two Dogs slid into the back beside the Azerbaijani. There was a powerful smell of chicken shit.

I waved good-bye to our host and bumped off down the cart track in the direction he had indicated.

“You’d pay a lot for a vacation like this,” I said to Two Dogs.

It took twenty minutes to reach the Le Muy-Fréjus road, much longer than Cavanaugh-Crabbe had estimated. I stopped the car thirty yards short of the junction. I was worried that we had got lost somehow. I got out and looked round. It was still very hot. The dust that had risen behind us hung in the air. I looked at my watch: four-fifteen — it had been a long day.

There was a scuffle in the backseat. Two Dogs shoved the Azerbaijani out of the car.

“Look at this guy’s pockets, Mr. Todd. Something’s bothering me.”

The soldier stood there, his hands half-raised. The two hip pockets of his tunic were dark with old blood. They were buttoned down and bulging.

“Is he wounded?”

“No. Look at his wrists.”

The man wore two wristwatches on each wrist. I told him in German to empty his pockets. He didn’t seem to understand. I reached to undo the flap on one and to my astonishment he slapped my hands away.

“Nein,” he said, taking a pace backwards. He looked nervous, worried. Then, suddenly, he turned and ran into the vineyard.

With a shout Two Dogs was after him. I followed. Two Dogs ran down the aisle of vines, gaining on the soldier easily. He caught up with him on the edge of a small copse of cork oaks and, holding the barrel, he swung his carbine like a club in a wide arc. The butt glanced heavily off the soldier’s head. When I arrived Two Dogs stood over him, gun leveled. The soldier was trying to get up on his knees but kept falling over like a concussed boxer. Two Dogs pushed him flat with a boot. This time the soldier gave up and lay there, flat.

“Check his pockets, Mr. Todd.”

I was out of breath. Dusty sunbeams slanted through the leaves of the cork oaks. The Azerbaijani had a bad gash above his right ear. His eyes were shut, his face was covered in dust and he was moaning slightly. Carefully, with bilious foreboding, I unbuttoned his pocket and reached in. My fingers felt something.

I thought: saveloys, thin German sausages, Azerbaijani biltong.

I pulled out five severed fingers, women’s fingers, old and young fingers, all with rings on them.

I did not scream. I gave a kind of audible shudder, as one does when shocked by sudden cold.

“Jesus Christ,” Two Dogs said.

The man had fourteen ring fingers in his hip pockets. His breast pockets were full of jewelry and more watches. By now I was feeling sick. He was still lying down, moaning slightly.

“What’ll we do?” I asked.

“Maybe we should—”

Two Dogs put the muzzle of his carbine in the man’s left ear and pulled the trigger. The man’s head gave a little jump and then seemed to half-deflate. Then Two Dogs stepped back and fired three shots into his body. Puffs of dust rose from his tunic.

“We’ll say he tried to escape, OK, Mr. Todd?”

“What? Yes, fine. Absolutely.”

We didn’t touch anything. We left the fingers — a small pile of human kindling — beside the body. We walked silently back through the vineyard towards the car. Two of its doors stood wide open. All around us were woods, hills, small fields, vineyards. Some birds soared above in the pale blue sky. Cicadas screeched in the grass at our feet.

Two Dogs patted me on the shoulder.

“Best thing to do. I think we had to do that.”

“What a day,” I said.

“Shall I drive?”

“No, no. Let me. It’ll take my mind off things.”

We got into the car and I started the engine. We bumped down onto what we hoped was the Le Muy-Fréjus road and turned left as instructed. We had gone, I suppose, about four hundred yards when the first bullet shattered the windscreen and there was a metallic punching sound down the side of the car. I felt as though I had been kicked in the thigh and my right foot instinctively drove the accelerator down to the floor. We swerved, plunged off the road into an irrigation ditch. I banged my head and lost focus. My brain was a mist. I felt Two Dogs helping me out.

I stood on the road somehow. Two Dogs kept asking, “Are you all right? Are you all right?” I was aware of a damp heat about my torso. Before I fell over I saw the paratroopers advancing on us and I heard the clear accents of my native country.

“Sorry, Yank. We thought youse was Jerries inna fuckin’ Mercedes. Onyboady hurt?”

VILLA LUXE, June 27, 1972

I set off for the beach today longing for a swim. But I turned back after five minutes. My leg was aching slightly.

If we hadn’t shot the Azerbaijani … if I hadn’t volunteered to drive …

Two Dogs had bruised his elbow. I had taken a bullet through my chest, high up on the right side. It smashed a rib, passed through my right lung and ricocheted off my shoulderblade. The big rectus femoris muscle on my left thigh was almost severed, as if by a butcher’s knife. The two lasting consequences of this accident were a limp, when I was tired, and the ruination of my fine first serve at tennis.

Anyway, that sort of “if only” digression is futile. To indulge in it is to place a blind obeisance in the laws of cause and effect. The cause of my bullet wounds was a trigger-happy Scottish para. Any attempt to trace the line further back is doomed. Could we say that my being shot was the result of Leo Druce’s smear campaign in the English press? In one sense that would be entirely accurate. In another it’s perfectly absurd. It was bad luck. Happenstance. The quantum state breaking into one human life. I bear that soldier no grudge.

I convalesced in a large naval hospital near Washington, D.C. I was well looked after — Eddie saw to that. Fresh flowers every day, the best food. The Equalizer, as Two Dogs had told me, had been a considerable success. I had made some money. Lone Star was buoyant, as was its owner. Eddie had great plans, he told me: next we would make Jesse James, then Kit Carson. We could run the gamut of Western folk heroes. When I left the hospital he invited me to come and stay with him in Los Angeles, but I saw out the rest of the war in Ramón Dusenberry’s San Diego home, slowly and steadily regaining my health. I seemed to function surprisingly well on one lung. I wondered why nature had bothered to double up that organ — perhaps in case you got a bullet through the first.

I was as fully recovered as I would ever be by the end of 1945. Eddie was still urging me to have a look at his script on Jesse James. I pleaded ill health for as long as I could, but then a letter arrived that changed everything and set me on a different course of action.

The envelope that contained it was a curious-looking object, almost obliterate with official stamps and chinagraph markings. It had been sent first to my father’s house and had eventually found its way to me. It was from Karl-Heinz and was dated October 1945.

My dear Johnny,

So sorry to have to ask you for this, but would you lend me some money? One hundred dollars is all that I need and I will be in your debt forever and ever. I know it seems like a fortune to ask for, but I’m told that over there in Hollywood, U.S.A., dollar bills grow on trees in your gardens. Pick me one bunch, please, and send it to me at the Dandy Bar, 574 Kurfürstendamm, British Zone, Berlin.

How are things with me? Don’t ask, my old friend, don’t ask.

A warm English handshake from your old prison guard,

Karl-Heinz

Karl-Heinz was alive. This was the best news. How? By what unlikely chance? Suddenly the lethargy of my convalescent’s life fell away. I knew what to do now. I was going back to work for the Chula Vista Herald-Post.