Journey into Fear

From a cottage window among the grey ruins of Calais, blond, moody Claude Wissocq, 33, stared out into the fog and the darkness. He shivered, then whispered to his mother: "Dreadful things can happen in the fog. There is terror. And it comes in from the east. You've noticed that?"

Big, Strapping Germans. "Claude," his mother whimpered, "don't you think that tomorrow we should go to see the doctor again?" The son struck her angrily. He jumped up to get his Mauser, began to clean and polish, clean and polish. He was a marksman, proud of his success in shooting competitions. When World War II broke out, he had eagerly joined the French army. But all spring and summer in 1940, he marched endlessly over the roads of France, without so much as seeing an enemy to fire at. He returned to Calais to look with the eyes of defeat on the victors, big strapping Germans who manned the great guns that hurled shells across the English Channel into Dover. In the winter of 1942, he decided to join the conquerors. German Waffen SS sent him south to Paris to report for duty.

In Paris he had a change of heart. He came home again. He lived among fears that the Germans would snatch him for desertion, that the Resistance would sentence him for treason. On Liberation Day, Claude disappeared into the sand dunes along the Channel coast. Silent and morose, he lived in deserted German bunkers until the Resistance brought him to trial. He was acquitted.

After that, things should have been better for Claude, but there were other forces to fear. Last week, outside his cottage, Claude heard footsteps. He stepped to the door. A voice called: "We are your friends, Claude. We have come unarmed. We want to talk to you."

Into the Fog. Claude threw open the door, clicked the bolt of his Mauser. In the yard a man shouted, "He's coming with the gun!" Claude fired again & again. Then, screaming, he ran into the fog.

He raced across rubble-strewn back lots. Suddenly, he was face to face with Antoinette Duvernois, who had known him since he was a boy. She shrank back. He panted: "Don't be alarmed! I never fire on unarmed civilians." He ran on, past a staring millworker. "The Russians are after me!" he shouted. Across the railroad yards, he staggered into two bicycle policemen, sank to his knees. Tears streamed down his face. "Mercy!" he sobbed. "The Russians--they are everywhere."

The police took him back to his garden to see the body of Aime Mille, police inspector and one of his callers, whom he had killed. The doctor, to whom his mother had taken him from time to time, had called Claude sane enough. But the doctor had not foreseen, as Claude had, that dreadful things can happen in the fog.

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