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 Hitlers 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(guó)一位叫勒內(nèi).迪謝的房屋油漆匠來到諾曼底一家機(jī)構(gòu)的辦事處:這家機(jī)構(gòu)負(fù)責(zé)為希特勒建造規(guī)模龐大的「大西洋長(zhǎng)城」防御系統(tǒng),以備盟軍進(jìn)攻。迪謝有一段短時(shí)間無人監(jiān)視,看見桌子上放了一迭地圖,其中一幅是極端機(jī)密的諾曼底海岸線圖,顯示了大型防御工事以至個(gè)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,藏在壁上掛著的一面鏡子之后。過了五天,他把辦事處油漆好了,就取回地圖,藏在舊油漆罐里,偷偷帶走。那幅地圖由一艘漁船秘密送到英國(guó)。后來,盟軍參謀長(zhǎng)擬定法國(guó)北部登陸計(jì)劃,那幅地圖的參考價(jià)值無與倫比。