And now Ibling and Cabling meet for the first time. This is the first time two of the fictional storyline characters have encountered each other.
And it seems the French resistance is now forming that Anne Marie is a collaborator....
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And now Ibling and Cabling meet for the first time. This is the first time two of the fictional storyline characters have encountered each other.
And it seems the French resistance is now forming that Anne Marie is a collaborator....
Like we said, if Anne Marie survives until liberation she is going to be shot by the French for being a traitor. She seems to be adapting to the German lovers thing way too well.
And to think she started off as a simple French farmgirl outside Strasbourg...
And now she is in one hell of a unknown pickle as she is a C+/B- level of intelligence asset (really useful for confirming other things, not generating a ton of new information, reliable, expendable) where her ultimate controllers can either let her be eaten or use the danger to further ingratiate herself with the Germans. I have said that her best shot of survival is to find a town where she knows no one and then keep on walking for another fifty miles. I may want to correct that to 200 miles.
Driftless
Donor
Is Rolando Cabling in the Philippine Army, or a civilian? Either way, with his severe level of injuries; he probably faces an uncertain future if or when the Japanese take Bataan. Unless he somehow gets evacuated, he's not likely to survive this universe's equivalent of the Death March
Agree,Spain, then. UK.. oh, October 1945, she shows up in London knowing so much.. either a problem or an idea.. she meets in a pub, Ian Fleming...
Driftless
Donor
She seems to be kind of oblivious to the danger she's in too, so she's wading farther into quicksand as the tale unfolds.
The way that wound was described, the most likely outcome for him is that he ends up with a below knee amputation. Nowadays that limb could be salvaged, and be reasonably functional but would take a lot of work. What actually happens depends on what the doctors find when they get in there - arteries cut or not, nerve gone, how much muscle is missing and where. This is just my medical opinion based on experience and the brief description here. If he is lucky and the leg is not as bad as I think he will still need a surgery or three and will be out of the fight for months. He is simply not "valuable" enough to be evacuated to Australia, but once he is stable hopefully he, and other Filipinos who are in recovery mode can be evacuated to another island and blend in with the locals, perhaps eventually to join guerillas.
As far as Ann-Marie goes, now that she has been identified as a collaborator by a local (Parisian) resistance group the clock is ticking. Killing a German soldier or civilian administrator will bring down all sorts of heat the resistance wants to avoid. The murder of a French civilian, well not so much. Making sure the murder looks like a street crime, purse missing, any jewelry gone, maybe coat and shoes gone (rationing you know) and this is a job for the local flics. Maybe they will try harder due to German pressure, but "M'sieu, times are hard, she was in an area where those who are well fed and well dressed are targets. Nous sommes desolés, but we cannot find the perpetrator." There won't be a placard pinned to her body, but the whisper campaign will begin - those who collaborate will pay.
As far as Ann-Marie goes, now that she has been identified as a collaborator by a local (Parisian) resistance group the clock is ticking. Killing a German soldier or civilian administrator will bring down all sorts of heat the resistance wants to avoid. The murder of a French civilian, well not so much. Making sure the murder looks like a street crime, purse missing, any jewelry gone, maybe coat and shoes gone (rationing you know) and this is a job for the local flics. Maybe they will try harder due to German pressure, but "M'sieu, times are hard, she was in an area where those who are well fed and well dressed are targets. Nous sommes desolés, but we cannot find the perpetrator." There won't be a placard pinned to her body, but the whisper campaign will begin - those who collaborate will pay.
That sounds wonderful in theory --- but how? She has effectively no hard currency, no papers to get her over multiple borders, no sponsors and no facilitators to solve the first three sets of problems.
To be honest, if I were to do it, I would try and do the whole lot in one go. Try and procure papers through one emotionally blackmailing one of her lovers, something along the lines of fearing the Resistance is after me, please help. Or join up with (or sleep with) a downed airman, guide him through France to the Pyrenees and hope to cross there. Deal with the lover by arranging a secret rendezvous, cut his throat and pinch his weapons and any cash available. Head south for Spain. At least there is no Resistance there, and plenty of small villages where a farm-girl could earn a living without being caught as a murderess. If I could, cross over to Portugal - the border between Portugal and Spain is large and much is wild, I doubt all of it is patrolled. From there, get to Lisbon, find a forger (Lisbon had every kind of suspect trade at that time), get a new set of papers and take a ship to another nation, the Americas preferably.
Or find a merchant captain to sleep with, given her proclivities.
So she needs to be able to do a Delta Force training mission from a cold start.... that is plausible just extremely unlikely.
She's willing to use her sex as a weapon. Cutting the throat of a drunk German officer while he's asleep in a hotel bed can't be too hard (or even smother him with a pillow). If she can find a downed Allied airman to join up with, he may have a certain amount of useful training, while she can speak French as a native, and read any signs. Over the border into Spain would be my limited objective, Lisbon and beyond would be Best Case Scenario. She can probably vanish into any number of tiny Spanish villages as a farm girl and not be done in by the Maquis.
It is plausible just not very likely. Especially if the action string starts with "cut the throat of a drunk German officer". That initiates way too much attention to a very specific focal point, said officer's known horizontal collaborator. Best case scenario, she gets several hours head start in that scenario. It also takes a degree of ruthlessness that I don't know if she has. If her goal is to get to the Spanish border, the density of Allied aviators who are shot down south of Paris is far lower than the density of escape buddies to the north of Paris and every step south decreases the probability that she runs in a potential escape buddy (someone who has no reason to trust her, no reason to think that she is a net positive, and has significant language challenges).
Plausible as it does not violate any laws of physics but the number of coincidences that are needed for a farm girl with minimal additional training as a spy/operative to make it 100 miles much less the border are very high.
Perhaps.
So, possible action to move her to safety would be to change her appearance as best she can and try and simply meld back into the mass of Frenchmen and women in the countryside.
She'll never see what's coming at her. She just doesn't know. Unless by some miracle somebody tipped her off. Run and hide somewhere in Vichy France. She persuades her German boyfriend to procure the travel permits for her "visit a sick relative" in some town in Vichy. Before leaving Paris Anne-Marie pawns jewelry or whatever she can to get some money. Than goes to Marseille to hide out. But first she needs to be warned somehow.
What a shitty situation for the brave operatives in OTL who were trapped in similar situations.
Regarding Anne-Marie, maybe the best that we can hope for is her lover falls completely in love with her and finds out she is going to be arrested. He then shoots her in her sleep to avoid her being tortured to death by the Gestapo and then shoots himself for the same reason. Personally I hope she makes it but if she is going to die then let it be quick.
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