The Girl in the Blue Beret

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  AFTER THE COFFEE, they showed Marshall the back room where he had hidden. Now it was a laundry and storage room, packed full, so that it appeared even smaller than Marshall remembered. He recalled Gisèle crooning to a baby crying in the kitchen. A commotion outside. Someone running down the street. Later, a gunshot in the distance. A fire in the neighborhood, a house burned. Gisèle told him to crawl through an opening in the back of the armoire into a narrow lair behind the wall and not to come out until she signaled. He heard sirens, blasts.

  Now he listened as Pierre and Gisèle explained that the Germans had found résistants three houses from them. They arrested the adults, shut the children in the basement, and set fire to the house. Neighbors rescued the children, and Gisèle cared for the baby until a grandmother in the country could be located.

  “I heard the baby crying,” Marshall said. “I never knew what was going on. But I wasn’t supposed to be told anything.”

  “It was better that we keep you closed behind the armoire!” Gisèle said.

  Marshall remembered hearing about the bombing of the aerodrome at Laon. At night he listened to the German soldiers marching in the streets, singing.

  “Remember the Germans singing at night?” he asked.

  Gisèle shuddered. “That detestable music,” she said.

  15.

  AGAIN AND AGAIN, DURING THE SIX WEEKS OF HIDING IN CHAUNY, he had tried to imagine the crew’s whereabouts. He alphabetized the guys and staged imaginary escape scenarios. On the feather bed in the back room, or stuffed in the little dugout behind the armoire, he wondered if any of the guys stuck together, if any of them had been turned over to the Germans. Maybe they were hidden in the church basement. He imagined a hidden door behind the church organ. He saw Hadley crossing the Channel on a fishing boat—torpedoed. He thought of a hundred ways to escape. And a hundred ways to be captured. He imagined a POW camp.

  He thought about the Dirty Lily’s nose art and how they had all celebrated the artist who painted it, a Molesworth mechanic with a flair for pinups. The crew sprayed beer on the plane to christen her. And they sprayed beer on Webb, who had known a certain Lily in London.

  People came rushing through the field, as if on wings themselves. He guided the Dirty Lily down onto the mud-brown field. She pointed toward the village, a huddled grouping of gray buildings with a deliberate church spire. It seemed that every resident was startled onto the field. They were waving. He saw them even as he was descending. The Dirty Lily stopped short of the nest of buildings at the end of the field.

  Then he was in the woods, away from the field.

  A girl on her bicycle saw him through the trees and signaled to him. She was small and thin, in a light wool coat and scarf. Maybe twelve years old. Or fifteen. Her shoes were heavy and worn. Her bicycle had a small bell. She warned him, “Monsieur, les Allemands!”

  She spoke a little schoolgirl English.

  “Your clothing,” she whispered. “You must hide it. Stay here. I will bring you other clothing.” She put her finger to her lips. “Shh.”

  If she came back, he would ask her which country this was, Belgium or France. He could hear vehicles approaching. The local residents would not be driving, petrol was so scarce. He retreated into the woods as the sounds came closer. The voices and vehicles clustered around the dying plane. Where was Hadley? Hadn’t they run to the woods together? Webb, he thought, was dead. But they had hauled Webb out. Folded next to him in the cockpit, not responding. Blood in his lap.

  “Everybody’s out,” said Hadley, appearing at the edge of the woods. Or maybe he had been there all along.

  “Is Stewart out?”

  “Accounted for.”

  Where was Hootie? Hadn’t he seen Hootie lying pale and lifeless in the field?

  Over and over, in hiding, he replayed the crash scene, wondering if the girl on the bicycle ever returned with clothing for him.

  “I BROUGHT YOU HERE from my cousin Claude’s,” Pierre was saying now. “Do you remember?”

  “Yes, that wild bicycle ride in the dark!”

  “We were on the bicycle together,” Pierre said with a laugh. “You pedaled while I sat on the handlebars.”

  Marshall outlined for the Alberts his erratic journey from the crash in Belgium to their house in Chauny—the farmer with the threatening scythe, the three nights in a barn while the Resistance checked him out, then several nights in the home of the women in black, where he hid in the upstairs room.

  “Then the Résistance took me to Claude’s, but the convoyer who was supposed to meet me there didn’t show up, and they dumped me out in the field! I thought I had been betrayed.”

  “No, that was correct. They didn’t want to be seen with you at Claude’s.”

  “They pointed to the barn, I remember, and I ran through a field in the dark and fell down a couple of times.”

  “And then you were safe in the barn.”

  MARSHALL HAD HIDDEN UP to his neck in a pile of scratchy, dried weeds and grasses, his nose dripping from a sneezing fit. The noise of his breath on the hay was raucous in his ears but to other ears perhaps no louder than a wisp of dried grass rustling. A shadow passed over him, and he heard two voices mumbling angrily in French.

  “Les Allemands,” said the older one, with a guttural spitting sound of contempt.

  “Va-t’en!” the other man said.

  A cat jumped up on the hay and landed virtually on Marshall’s face. The tail swiped his face, and then the cat rubbed against Marshall’s head and purred. In the shadows the men did not see the cat’s discovery. The cat, a bushy, ragged, pied thing like a mop head, drooled on Marshall’s hair, then rubbed its face in it. Marshall didn’t dare free his hand to move the cat, who was purring loudly.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est, Félix? Tu ronronnes comme un train!”

  The lantern whipped toward the corner, and Marshall’s eyes were blinded by the glare. The French voices rose in alarm as he crawled out of the hay, the cat swirling around him. Standing, he held his hands out to the men.

  He had been given a password, a phrase that might be innocuous if these men were collaborators, but meaningful if they were expecting him.

  Carefully, he said, “Il y aura de l’orage demain.”

  “Comment?”

  He repeated the phrase he had memorized.

  “Oui, oui,” they said. He had passed.

  “Je suis américain,” he said haltingly. “Aviateur.”

  “Aviateur?”

  Their excitement purred like the cat. “Chut!” they said to the cat. Be quiet.

  “Je suis un aviateur américain,” Marshall said.

  The older man repeated the French words. Marshall always remembered his own poor pronunciation—a hayseed stab at a phrase that was elegant in a Frenchman’s mouth.

  The older man was Claude, and the younger one was Pierre. They were cousins, Marshall learned later, and the farm belonged to Claude. They wore rugged work clothing, heavy wide-legged trousers and tight jackets. Their clothing was patched, their shoes were dirty, and their berets were heavy and dark. Marshall’s clothing by then was similar, though ill fitting. He still wore his U.S. Army boots and his flying jacket. One of the women in black had ingeniously sewn a layer of coarse linen onto the outside of the jacket.

  Pierre pointed to the house just beyond the barn and touched his stomach, then his lips.

  “Vous avez faim? Soif?”

  Marshall nodded eagerly. Pierre gestured for Marshall to stay hidden in the barn. When Pierre and Claude left, the cat bounded down from the hay and followed them. Marshall thought he heard the men teasing the cat, saying the Germans would catch him and have him for supper.

  Long after dark, Pierre returned, bringing bread, cheese, an apple, a bit of fatty ham, and some wine—a quarter of a bottle. Marshall devoured the food. “Merci, merci,” he kept murmuring.

  In patient, slow French, with some inventive gestures, Pierre explained that the Germans were bivouacked in t
he village a mile away. Marshall could catch some of the words. If they found him hiding here, Claude would be shot—Pierre clutched his heart and drooped for effect—and his wife would be sent away. The American had to be silent.

  After Pierre left, Marshall relieved himself outside, burying his waste like a cat. During the night the cat found him and curled up beside him. Nurse Begley’s woollies warmed Marshall’s neck, and he drifted through sleep, his dreams sending him on bombing raids to Germany. A crashing sound awoke him—the cat, leaping off the hay. Later, the cat crunched his way through a mouse meal. Afterward, Marshall could hear the cat licking his fur. Marshall had not had a real bath since he left England.

  Near dawn, in an adjoining section of the barn, someone snapped a cow into her stanchion. Marshall heard the sound of milking, hard squirts on metal. Through a crevice he saw a woman in a scarf and a heavy coat leave the barn with the pail of milk—and the cat. In a short time, Claude appeared, with a hot breakfast wrapped in a towel in a basket. A boiled egg, some ersatz coffee, some hard bread. Claude had acquired a few English words during the night.

  “Tonight you go to Pierre. The house of Pierre, yes? The son has English. Today—” He made gestures for Marshall to stay hidden.

  Letters from Loretta would keep coming to Molesworth. Here he was, lost, hidden, having dropped from the sky like a bomb.

  “I REMEMBER A CAT at your cousin’s barn,” he said now to Pierre and Gisèle. “Félix.”

  “Félix!” said Gisèle. “I remember old Félix. He was a smart cat!”

  “We were pals,” said Marshall.

  “Why would I remember that cat?” Gisèle said, puzzled. “There were so many.”

  “I must return to school,” Nicolas said, glancing at his watch.

  “I remember you in short pants and a necktie, rushing off to school,” Marshall said.

  Pierre stood to embrace Nicolas. “My son is a great success,” he said. “He is school principal.”

  “He was my professor and translator in ’44,” Marshall said.

  “Your French, Marshall!” said Nicolas. “Now you know our language.

  You have learned well. Please allow me to help you in any way possible while you are here. Au revoir, Marshall!”

  Nicolas drove away, and Gisèle directed Marshall to a divan in the sitting room.

  “Make yourself at home,” she said.

  16.

  MARSHALL SPENT THE AFTERNOON REMINISCING WITH PIERRE and Gisèle. Some retirees might play golf or sit on the porch, but he would drink wine in a French home with people he knew in his youth.

  He ventured, “I know that you were out at night on important missions when I was hiding here.”

  Pierre grinned. “It’s good the Germans were not as observant as you.”

  “I will show you his medals,” said Gisèle, jumping up and rushing from the room.

  The medals were framed under glass—the Medal of Freedom, the Légion d’Honneur, the Medaille de la Résistance, and the Croix de Guerre.

  Marshall examined them while Pierre fetched another bottle of wine. After he had poured the wine, he began, in a disjointed way, to gather his memories.

  “I don’t get to speak of it often,” he said. “You perhaps know that I was the chief of our group here, and I kept the arms for all the secteurs of the region.”

  “In your house here?”

  “Oh, no, no. Gisèle would never permit that. No, a neutral place. We planned the sabotages, and everyone involved had to have invincibility—how do you say in English, innocence?”

  “Deniability?” Marshall said, thinking of Watergate.

  “Oh, the sabotages we planned against the boches! Every day we did the telephone lines. On several occasions we blew up the railroad tracks—and the canal locks.”

  “And the alcohol distillerie,” Gisèle said.

  “Yes. And the bridges on the highways, as well as those across the river. After you left here, we accelerated our clandestine activities, anticipating the débarquement of the Allies.” Pierre sipped his wine and was silent for some moments. “But after the Allies arrived on June 6, things grew worse—open combat with the boches. When the Allies came to Normandy, you understand, the boches were in panic for their marvelous Reich. I delivered all the arms to the secteurs and asked my men to leave their jobs and be prepared for widespread action against the enemy. More than ever, our efforts were necessary. This became very bad, for the Gestapo was on alert against all Résistance activity. This was especially hard for me, for many men came to the house and I had to be ready.”

  “We received a warning,” Gisèle said.

  Pierre had to go underground, to a friend’s house, seven kilometers away, for fifteen days, while Gisèle and Nicolas stayed at home. Gisèle was certain Pierre would be arrested.

  “And you comprehend what this would mean,” Pierre said. Grinning, he drew his finger across his throat.

  “But I was careful. I was thinking up here.” Pierre touched his forehead. “I was a step ahead of the boches. They were strangers here, but I knew the place. I knew what they might do next, where they might go.”

  “He said that again and again, until I maybe believed it,” Gisèle said.

  “You and Nicolas were my eyes and ears, too. You did your part.”

  “I remember Nicolas and his reports,” Marshall put in. “Always busy.”

  Gisèle, twisting her hands together nervously, said, “You will never know this ordeal, Marshall.”

  “It turned out well, chérie!” Pierre said.

  “I was happy to shelter the aviateurs. The rest was horrible.”

  Pierre acknowledged the dangers, but then he laughed.

  After his period underground, he was given another assignment—to investigate in his region of Aisne all the munitions and fuel depots for airplanes, the German army headquarters, and the railways. He had to mark these targets on aerial maps for American bombers.

  “I traveled to Paris three times in two weeks to deliver these maps. They were taken to fields where couriers in small planes from England came for them. This was very gratifying to me. All of it was for bombing by your bombardiers!”

  “Pierre was very brave,” said Gisèle. Pierre squeezed her hand.

  “After Paris, I went into combat again with the Chauny organization, and our task was to prevent the boches from crossing the bridges. After setting the charges, I intended to reassemble my group, who had the weapons we had distributed. But when I set out alone on the Soissons road, I found myself facing maybe a hundred enemy soldiers! I was—how is it said?—shaking in my boots, but I did not reveal this. The lieutenant was only ten meters away. He called to me, and he lifted his rifle and aimed at me. ‘Raus!’ he said. Mon Dieu! But then someone interrupted him and he forgot about me. More and more the boches were disorganized. And so my life was spared!” Pierre smiled broadly.

  “You were a lucky man!” said Marshall.

  “I returned with my men to town, but we could do nothing there, for we were watched. Then two hours later the bridges blew up, and in the confusion we managed to get our weapons out of hiding—just in time to see the avant-garde libérateurs of Patton’s army! The rest of our work was to guide their way through town and to do away with the isolated boche, and to watch the roads to let our Allies make their triumphal advance toward Belgium.”

  Marshall listened intently, “the isolated boche” echoing in his mind. “I want to say something,” he said, lifting his glass. He paused, trying to find words, knowing they were inadequate. “Thank you, Gisèle, for providing so well for me. Thanks to your son, too, for helping me with my French. Thank you, Pierre, all of you, for risking your lives. I propose a toast to you, my second family. Merci beaucoup.”

  Marshall was amazed at himself. He had never offered a toast in his life until this moment. He felt warm from the wine, strangely happy, and slightly askew.

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Nicolas returned, bringing his wife.

&n
bsp; “Angeline wished to meet you, Marshall, so I went home and retrieved her,” he said. Angeline spontaneously gave Marshall a two-cheek kiss. She was sturdy and neat, with a fluffy blue scarf arranged over her blouse.

  Pierre leaned toward Marshall. “My son and his wife have no son. I do not have grandsons to carry my name, but perhaps there is no need.” He lifted his glass. “Again, to your Albert.”

  Angeline brushed her hand against Nicolas’s shoulder. “Don’t forget, Nicolas,” she said.

  “Ah oui.” Nicolas opened a large shopping bag he had brought. “Do you recall, Marshall, that you gave your aviateur jacket to me?”

  “Yes. I was afraid to keep it.” The Alberts had supplied him with warm civilian garments, and Marshall, who was fond of Nicolas, had given him the flying jacket.

  Nicolas pulled the Bugs Bunny jacket from the bag. “Voilà!”

  Speechless, Marshall held his old flying jacket. He caressed the worn leather and ran his hand inside the pockets.

  “I wanted to preserve it for you if you ever came back,” Nicolas said.

  “Nicolas displayed this jacket when we first met,” Angeline said, smiling. “He was very proud of it!”

  “I was the envy of all my classmates after the war concluded and we could spill our secrets.”

  The leather was cracked now. Bugs Bunny still looked sarcastic, his foot on the bomb and the carrot dangling from his hand. “Eh, what’s up, Doc?” Marshall said in the best Bugs voice he could manage, and everyone laughed.

  AFTER GISÈLE HAD SEATED everyone in the small, overfurnished front room, Pierre said to Marshall, “Nicolas can help you find some of those persons who helped to shelter you before you arrived to us.”

  Marshall had told Pierre and Gisèle about some of the nameless people he remembered, and now he told about the family in Paris who had hidden him after he left Chauny. He explained his admiration for the young daughter, who led Allied pilots through the city.

  “It was hard to believe that a schoolgirl would be a guide for American aviators,” Marshall said.