Read Online MATT HELM: The War Years by Keith Wease - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Keith Wease
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us. Like a normal reverence for human life, and that includes our own human lives. In other words, we were taught that if we gotta go, well, we gotta go; let's just see how much company we can take to hell with us."
While he had been talking, I was visualizing the situation, feeling I'd been there with him. You don't get that feeling from someone who is only teaching theory. There was a brief silence before he continued with the class, when I had the distinct feeling that he had not so much been talking to us as he'd been remembering lost comrades in another place.
And speaking of Karl, he'd been the second of our group to be promoted to instructor status. We spent the entire time brushing up on our German, both in formal classes, which Karl had been quickly drafted to teach, in the field and in our spare time. We'd all been exposed to German at one time or another - apparently that was another criterion Mac used - and were all fluent by the time we graduated. It was what you could call an essential part of working undercover in Germany, or German-occupied territory. We also practiced French and Italian. I'd had German and French in college, pretty much standard with journalism majors, and could speak pretty good Spanish after growing up in New Mexico. As I've previously indicated, I also learned Swedish from my parents, after a fashion. But I seemed to have a mental block when it came to Italian - maybe it was too close to Spanish and I got confused. In any case, Mac never sent me to Italy - I spent the entire war in England, France and Germany.
There were occasional fights, but those were broken up fairly quickly by the instructors at first, and by the rest of us as our training progressed - we were getting too skilled at murder and mayhem to allow a fight to go much beyond the pushing and swinging stage. Somebody could die. Toward the end of the course, we'd pretty much worked out all the petty disagreements and could live with one another - self control was high on the list of subjects taught.
There was one other subject taught during the course. It was considered the most important and wasn't so much a class as an ongoing harassment - my word, not theirs. It was called preparedness or alertness or some such title. The way it was done was this: you'd be walking innocently between buildings at the school, or having a beer at the canteen, and you'd be chatting with an off-duty instructor in a friendly manner. Suddenly, smiling, patting you on the back and telling you what a swell guy you were and how he'd never had a pupil like you, he'd produce an unloaded gun and shove it in your side. At least you hoped the gun was unloaded. At that place you were never quite sure. And it wasn't just the instructors; it could be the guy you bunked with, or the pretty girl at the canteen. Your job was to react and react fast, even if it was Mac himself. If you wasted any time in conversation, you flunked the course.
We'd been taught how to break a strangle-hold, either with a smashing upward drive of both arms - hands locked together - or finger by finger. Somehow, the classroom training made it seem perfectly logical and relatively easy … until someone snuck into your room at night and grabbed you by the neck. The combination of sleep fog and instant unadulterated terror drove home the lesson in a way classroom training would never do.
It made for an interesting, if stressful, two months…
Chapter 8
There's a big mystique associated with seamanship. If you weren't born in a forecastle in the middle of a hurricane and didn't cut your teeth on a marlinespike, you'll never qualify. Well, hell, they told me just about the same thing about horses when I was a kid. The fact is, there are people with vested interests in just about every sport who get a big kick out of making their particular athletic activity seem too difficult for ordinary
While he had been talking, I was visualizing the situation, feeling I'd been there with him. You don't get that feeling from someone who is only teaching theory. There was a brief silence before he continued with the class, when I had the distinct feeling that he had not so much been talking to us as he'd been remembering lost comrades in another place.
And speaking of Karl, he'd been the second of our group to be promoted to instructor status. We spent the entire time brushing up on our German, both in formal classes, which Karl had been quickly drafted to teach, in the field and in our spare time. We'd all been exposed to German at one time or another - apparently that was another criterion Mac used - and were all fluent by the time we graduated. It was what you could call an essential part of working undercover in Germany, or German-occupied territory. We also practiced French and Italian. I'd had German and French in college, pretty much standard with journalism majors, and could speak pretty good Spanish after growing up in New Mexico. As I've previously indicated, I also learned Swedish from my parents, after a fashion. But I seemed to have a mental block when it came to Italian - maybe it was too close to Spanish and I got confused. In any case, Mac never sent me to Italy - I spent the entire war in England, France and Germany.
There were occasional fights, but those were broken up fairly quickly by the instructors at first, and by the rest of us as our training progressed - we were getting too skilled at murder and mayhem to allow a fight to go much beyond the pushing and swinging stage. Somebody could die. Toward the end of the course, we'd pretty much worked out all the petty disagreements and could live with one another - self control was high on the list of subjects taught.
There was one other subject taught during the course. It was considered the most important and wasn't so much a class as an ongoing harassment - my word, not theirs. It was called preparedness or alertness or some such title. The way it was done was this: you'd be walking innocently between buildings at the school, or having a beer at the canteen, and you'd be chatting with an off-duty instructor in a friendly manner. Suddenly, smiling, patting you on the back and telling you what a swell guy you were and how he'd never had a pupil like you, he'd produce an unloaded gun and shove it in your side. At least you hoped the gun was unloaded. At that place you were never quite sure. And it wasn't just the instructors; it could be the guy you bunked with, or the pretty girl at the canteen. Your job was to react and react fast, even if it was Mac himself. If you wasted any time in conversation, you flunked the course.
We'd been taught how to break a strangle-hold, either with a smashing upward drive of both arms - hands locked together - or finger by finger. Somehow, the classroom training made it seem perfectly logical and relatively easy … until someone snuck into your room at night and grabbed you by the neck. The combination of sleep fog and instant unadulterated terror drove home the lesson in a way classroom training would never do.
It made for an interesting, if stressful, two months…
Chapter 8
There's a big mystique associated with seamanship. If you weren't born in a forecastle in the middle of a hurricane and didn't cut your teeth on a marlinespike, you'll never qualify. Well, hell, they told me just about the same thing about horses when I was a kid. The fact is, there are people with vested interests in just about every sport who get a big kick out of making their particular athletic activity seem too difficult for ordinary
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