I found a lieutenant, who had charge of the outfit, and explained the purpose of my visit. He had not been notified of the order for five trucks. There was no telephone communication between his office and headquarters, so all messages had to come by courier, and the courier hadn’t come in that day. He was afraid he couldn’t let me have any trucks before the following afternoon. I insisted that the matter was urgent and couldn’t wait, and, after much deliberating and consulting of charts, he relented. I told him a little something about the expedition for which I wanted the trucks and he showed real interest. He suggested that I ought to have extremely careful drivers. I replied that I should indeed, as we would be hauling stuff of incalculable value.
Thereupon he gave me a harrowing description of the group under his supervision. All of them had been members of the French Resistance Movement—ex-terrorists he called them—and they weren’t afraid of God, man or the Devil. Well, I thought, isn’t that comforting! “Oh, yes,” he said, “these Frenchies drive like crazy men. But,” he continued, “one of the fellows has got some sense. I’ll see if I can get him for you.” He went over to the window that looked out on a parking ground littered with vehicles of various kinds. Here and there I saw a mechanic bent over an open hood or sprawled out beneath a truck. The lieutenant bellowed, “Leclancher, come up here to my office!”
A few seconds later a wiry, sandy-haired Frenchman of about forty-five appeared in the doorway. Leclancher understood some English, for he reacted with alert nods of the head as the lieutenant gave a brief description of the job ahead, and then turned and asked me if I spoke French. I told him I did, if he had enough patience. This struck him as inordinately funny, but I was being quite serious. What really pleased him was the fact that I was in the Navy. He said that he had been in the Navy during the first World War. Then and there a lasting bond was formed, though I didn’t appreciate the value of it at the time.
Eight-thirty the next morning found me pacing the Königsplatz. Not a truck in sight. Nine o’clock and still no trucks. At nine thirty, one truck rolled up. Leclancher leaped out and with profuse apologies explained that the other four were having carburetor trouble. There had been water in the gas, too, and that hadn’t helped. For an hour Leclancher and I idled about, whiling away the time with conversation of no consequence, other than that it served to limber up my French. At eleven o’clock Leclancher looked at his watch and said that it would soon be time for lunch. It was obvious that he understood the Army’s conception of a day as a brief span of time, in the course of which one eats three meals. If it is not possible to finish a given job during the short pauses between those meals, well, there’s always the next day. I told him to go to his lunch and to come back as soon as he could round up the other trucks. In the meantime I would get something to eat near by.
When I returned shortly after eleven thirty—having eaten a K ration under the portico of the Verwaltungsbau in lieu of a more formal lunch—my five trucks were lined up ready to go. I appointed Leclancher “chef de convoi”—a rather high-sounding title for such a modest caravan—and he assigned positions to the other drivers, taking the end truck himself. Since my jeep failed to arrive, I climbed into the lead truck. The driver was an amiable youngster whose name was Roger Roget. During the next few weeks he was the lead driver in all of my expeditions, and I took to calling him “Double Roger,” which I think he never quite understood.
To add to my anxiety over our belated start, a light rain began to fall as we pulled out of the Königsplatz and turned into the Brienner-Strasse. We threaded our way cautiously through the slippery streets choked with military traffic, crossed the bridge over the Isar and swung into the broad Rosenheimer-Strasse leading to the east.
Once on the Autobahn, Roger speeded up. The speedometer needle quivered up to thirty-five, forty and finally forty-five miles an hour. I pointed to it, shaking my head. “We must not exceed thirty-five, Roger.”
He promptly slowed down, and as we rolled along, I forgot the worries of the morning. I dozed comfortably. Suddenly we struck an unexpected hole in the road and I woke up. We were doing fifty. This time I spoke sharply, reminding Roger that the speed limit was thirty-five and that we were to stay within it; if we didn’t we’d be arrested, because the road was well patrolled. With a tolerant grin Roger said, “Oh, no, we never get arrested. The MPs, they stop us and get very angry, but—” with a shrug of the shoulders—“we do not understand. They throw the hands up in the air and say ‘dumb Frenchies’ and we go ahead.”
“That may work with you,” I said crossly, “but what about me? I’m not a ‘dumb Frenchy.’”
For the next hour I pretended to doze and at the same time kept an eye on the speedometer. This worked pretty well. Now and again I would look up, and each time, Roger would modify his speed.