古德明英語軍事小故事:盜地圖
On 8 May 1942, a French house painter named Rene Duchez arrived at the offices of an organisation in Normandy which was charged with building Hitler's Atlantic Wall, a colossal system of defences against Allied invasion. He found himself momentarily alone, and seeing a pile of maps on a desk he realised he was looking at a top-secret chart of the Normandy coastline. It showed everything from major fortifications to the positions of individual flamethrowers.
一九四二年五月八日,法國一位叫勒內.迪謝的房屋油漆匠來到諾曼底一家機構的辦事處:這家機構負責爲希特勒建造規模龐大的「大西洋長城」防禦系統,以備盟軍進攻。迪謝有一段短時間無人監視,看見桌子上放了一迭地圖,其中一幅是極端機密的諾曼底海岸線圖,顯示了大型防禦工事以至個別噴火器的位置。Duchez took the map and slipped it behind a mirror on the wall. Five days later, when he had finished decorating the offices, he retrieved the map and smuggled it out of the building in an old paint tin. The map was conveyed secretly to England on board a fishing vessel, and was to prove invaluable to the Allied chiefs of staff planning the D-Day invasions.
迪謝拿起那幅地圖,藏在壁上掛着的一面鏡子之後。過了五天,他把辦事處油漆好了,就取回地圖,藏在舊油漆罐裏,偷偷帶走。那幅地圖由一艘漁船祕密送到英國。後來,盟軍參謀長擬定法國北部登陸計劃,那幅地圖的參考價值無與倫比。
