Where Eagles Dare

by Alistair MacLean

‘Boss,’ he said diffidently, ‘there are a couple of minor points that occur to me. Requiring elucidation, one might say. First of all, if I didn’t know better I’d say that was a military barracks down by that little old lake there.’ ‘You don’t know better. That is a military barracks down by that little old lake there. And no ordinary military barracks either, I might say. That’s the training HQ of the Jäger battalions of the Wehrmacht’s Alpenkorps.’ ‘Oh, my gosh! The Alpine Corps! If I’d known this I’d never have come along. The Alpine Corps! Why didn’t someone tell Ma Schaffer’s nearest and dearest?’ ‘I thought you knew,’ Smith said mildly. ‘Why do you think we’re not dressed as German sailors or Red Cross nurses?’ Schaffer unzipped his snow-smock, minutely examined his Alpenkorps uniform as if seeing it for the first time, then zipped it up again. He said carefully: ‘You mean to say we’re going to mingle, careless like, with the German Army.’ He paused, looked wide-eyed at Smith’s smiling nod, then went on incredulously: ‘But—but we’ll be recognized as strangers!’