古德明英语军事小故事:盗地图

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,法国一位叫勒内.迪谢的房屋油漆匠来到诺曼底一家机构的办事处:这家机构负责为希特勒建造规模庞大的「大西洋长城」防御系统,以备盟军进攻。迪谢有一段短时间无人监视,看见桌子上放了一迭地图,其中一幅是极端机密的诺曼底海岸线图,显示了大型防御工事以至个别喷火器的位置。

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.

迪谢拿起那幅地图,藏在壁上挂着的一面镜子之后。过了五天,他把办事处油漆好了,就取回地图,藏在旧油漆罐里,偷偷带走。那幅地图由一艘渔船秘密送到英国。后来,盟军参谋长拟定法国北部登陆计划,那幅地图的参考价值无与伦比。