Play@YSDC

September 7, 1942:
I couldn't contain my excitement during the flight to France. I knew it would be dangerous, but I also knew I would get to make a greater contribution to the war effort than I could ever have imagined before I was recruited. What I didn't anticipate was just how quickly it would get dangerous, or in what manner.

With me in the belly of the plane was my fellow SOE trainee, code named Antoine. He was young and bookish, just the sort of person you wouldn't expect to be a secret operative. I had hoped that would protect him once we were on the ground. He had passed the training admirably, scoring better than I had, but he did have a tendency to get nervous. He had never been more nervous than when we approached the drop zone.

"Out you go!" called the RAF airman, opening up the hatch. "Who's first?"

"I...I don't think I can do it," said Antoine, trembling.

"You can do it, mate," I told him, giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze. "It's just like they trained us. Look, I'll go first, okay?" I stood up and strode to the hatch, then stepped into the sky. The feeling of free fall was exhilarating. I was weightless, and glad I hadn't eaten anything beforehand. I slowly counted to ten and then pulled the rip cord. After a delay, the parachute blossomed above me, billowing in the wind, which blew me around as I gradually descended.

I couldn't see above me through the silk, but shortly Antoine began to fall past me, a terrified expression on his face. He pulled his cord too, and he continued to fall past me. "It's not opening!" he cried, clutching in panic at the second cord for his reserve chute.

"No, you have to wait!" I called, but my voice was lost in the wind, and it was too late. He had already pulled it. Then his main chute opened, but before it could expand, so did the reserve chute. The two chutes got tangled together, and he continued to plummet like a rock. I looked away from the ground before he hit.

By the time I landed smoothly on the ground, the wind had caused me to drift some distance away from him. I rushed to his side, but he was already dead. Wiping away tears, I signaled the French Resistance that I knew was waiting to meet us with an electric torch. There was an answering flash, and then a man and a woman materialized out of the trees and shadows.

"I am sorry about your friend," said the woman as she approached. "I am Jeanne Desjardins, and this is Claude Dumas. We must move quickly, before a patrol wanders by. We must dig a hole and bury both him and the parachutes."

"It is too bad," said Claude. "We could have used his help. He shall be missed."

"I am Catherine," I said. "It is good to meet you. I just wish it were under better circumstances. At least he died quickly."

November 9, 1942:
I quickly adjusted to life in occupied France. My cover identity was as a cosmetics saleswoman, which gave me the excuse I needed to travel around. I stayed in hotel rooms as needed, and I had a bicycle with a basket that I used to carry my wares in a suitcase - and under a false bottom, my equipment. I aided the Resistance as a courier, carrying messages, money, and gear between cells. My first real mission came one night two months after I had arrived. Claude Dumas, who was the son of Adolphe Dumas, the cell leader, accompanied me. The Americans had just landed in North Africa, and the Germans were moving troops and vehicles south as fast as they could. In order to delay them from occupying the rest of France, we were to blow up a bridge over a river. This was where my expertise in explosives came in useful.

We slipped beneath the bridge, where I affixed the dynamite to the supports and attached the fuse while Claude acted as a lookout. I had just finished preparing the explosives when I heard the unmistakable noise of motors - lots of them.

"Panzer IVs, a whole column of them!" hissed Claude, joining me under the bridge. "They'll be on the bridge in a minute."

"But it's a five-minute fuse," I said. "They'll be past the bridge before it detonates. I could cut it shorter..."

"I'll do it, and light the fuse."

"But I'm the expert-"

"You've done the hard part already. I can finish the job, and you're too important. Don't waste time arguing, go!"

I ran into the woods on the south side of the river, hiding behind the trees as the lead panzer rolled onto the bridge. When it was halfway across, and the next two were on the bridge behind it, there was a massive explosion that caused the bridge to collapse, sending the tanks crashing into the water. The other panzers on the north bank were stuck. Claude did not return, and I realized that the timing of the explosion wasn't merely luck. The only way he could have timed it so perfectly, especially given his lack of experience with explosives, was to cut the fuse so short that he had not had time to get away. How was I going to tell his father?

December 25, 1942:
Adolphe Dumas had taken the loss of his son more stoically than I had thought he would. It seemed to bother him more that the Resistance was weakened than that he had lost his only son. It must have been because the liberation of France was more important to him than anything else, and that the Resistance was key to that. Jeanne Desjardins had taken it much harder. She had clearly loved him, but I wasn't sure whether or not they had been lovers and wasn't about to reopen a fresh wound by asking.

Christmas was bittersweet, but the Resistance cell had finally accepted me as one of their own. The supper was the best I had ever eaten, in spite of wartime austerity under German occupation. Even though it was a small measure of happiness, we still could feel something ominous in the air. I couldn't help but wonder when my own luck would run out, having lost two comrades in arms already.

January 6, 1943:
It was an ammo dump we were to blow up this time. Jeanne went with me on this mission, and we crept into the German camp at night. We managed to avoid the guards and made our way to the magazine, where I planted the bomb and lit the fuse. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. Then we tried to leave.

As we were climbing back over the fence, a guard spotted us and shouted "Halt!" I leapt from the top of the fence as the sound of a Schmeisser firing a burst at us echoed through the night. I injured my leg upon landing, so that I could not flee. Looking back, I saw that Jeanne lay draped over the top of the fence, her body riddled with bullets. I took out my pistol and prepared to make a last stand, but another guard outside the fence was on me too quickly, and he wrestled the gun away from me.

"Keep her alive!" ordered a sergeant, hurrying up to the fence. "The Gestapo will want to interrogate her."

My heart was filled with terror. The sound of the explosion and the ammunition cooking off were little comfort to me. I wished that I had been able to shoot myself with the pistol before I had lost it, for what awaited me in the hands of the Gestapo would surely be worse than death.

January 7, 1943:
I spent the night in my cell, terrified and unable to sleep. In the morning, the sergeant from the ammo dump came to see me. He did not look happy. "This is all your fault!" he snarled.

"What's my fault?" I asked, confused.

"You blew up the ammo dump! I should get an Iron Cross for capturing you alive. Instead, they're sending me to the Russian Front!"

"Well, you'll have plenty of chances to earn an Iron Cross there."

"Whatever happens to me, at least you'll fare far worse. Do you know what the Gestapo will do to you?"

I nodded, shuddering. "Please...kill me..."

He shook his head. "Even if I wanted to spare you, it would mean my life. At least on the Russian Front I'll have a chance. You won't." With that, he turned on his heel and walked away.

The Gestapo interrogation was everything I had dreaded. All my fears were realized, and then some. To my credit, I didn't break no matter what they did to me, and they did every horrible thing imaginable. I just kept pretending to be a French girl in over her head. They knew I was lying; they could read it plainly on my face. But they couldn't make me tell them the truth. Eventually, they tired of it and sent me to Ravensbruck.

April 14, 1943:
The Gestapo had injured me so badly that I could no longer walk. Ravensbruck was awful, but at least the Gestapo weren't torturing me any more. In April, I came down with typhus due to the unsanitary conditions in which we were held. I know I am going to die very soon, and I don't have much longer, but I am no longer afraid. The worst has already happened to me, and once I am dead my pain and suffering shall end. This world is the closest to Hell I'll ever experience, and Heaven lies ahead of me. I shall never suffer nor sorrow again. Those who died before me - Antoine, Claude, Jeanne - will hopefully be there as well. My faith in Jesus Christ is the only thing that has enabled me to endure everything, and it has not wavered even during the worst of it. I pray that my account will be preserved, and that my story will be told.
Adolphe Dumas mourned for Catherine as if she were his own daughter. He would always remember her fondly, and he made sure her efforts for France were known.

Unterfeldwebel Hans Streicher was killed in action in Poland by Soviet troops during Operation Bagration in the summer of 1944.