The Girl in the Blue Beret

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  She laid her head on his chest. “Was his body ever found?” she whispered.

  “No. Surely someone will find his dog tag one day. You remember, we kept our dog tags in our boots. Of course, I always imagine I’ll run into him somewhere.”

  “No one is to blame,” she said.

  “C’est la guerre?”

  “Oui.”

  “Understand, I’ve never talked much about this, not since the war. Annette, I know you saw much worse—much worse than you can ever tell me. But you told me a lot, and I—I owed it to you to tell you my own small story.”

  Annette cupped his face in her hands. “Marshall, I think you are a person who has rarely divulged his heart. But now you have. Thank you.”

  He rose and walked a few steps away. She was still sitting on the ledge.

  “Loretta and some of the others made a fuss over me,” he said. “The ‘hero.’ I made it to Spain and back to England when so many others didn’t. But I was no hero. What did I do in the war? Nothing. De la merde. Got shot down, then saved my own ass.”

  He paced a few steps, then punched his fist in his palm.

  “I didn’t even do that,” he added. “You and the others saved me.”

  She started to speak, then tightened her lips and turned her head.

  “There are no heroes,” she said after a moment. “We both got caught. You were shot down, I was deported.”

  She stood, smoothed her lap, and moved the few steps to him. The moon was high now.

  “We were both caught.” He repeated her words.

  “Now, we begin again,” she said.

  Her fingers were so slender, her hand warm in his, her cheek warm on his.

  59.

  “ARE YOU AWAKE?” ANNETTE ASKED, REACHING FOR HIM ACROSS the narrow crevice between their beds.

  “Sometimes I don’t know the answer to that even when I am awake,” he said.

  “Can’t you sleep?”

  “No.”

  “I can’t either. I want to tell you something more,” she whispered. She scrunched across to his bed, bunching back the covers, and snuggled in with him.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Robert. You see, the war brought us closer,” she said.

  “I see. But that is normal, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Maman trusted Robert. She wanted me to be safe, and Robert kept me safe when I went with him to Chauny or to Noyon on the train. At first we played the lovers, a common stratagème, so no one would suspect our mission. But then we found retreats, places to be alone.”

  Even in the dark Marshall could tell that she was glad that he could not see her face.

  “It’s all right,” he said, pulling her closer to him. “I don’t have to know.”

  “It is such a small thing. It is not important. But I want you to know.”

  Her voice was low, the whisper of a secret.

  “On one Friday afternoon, Robert and I went to meet aviateurs at Noyon, but they were not there. There was some slippage in the network. We had made our contact, and then we were told to stay the night in a barn in order to convoy the men the next day. Oh, la la la la, the barn was cold! But we kept each other warm. We did manage to fulfill our duty and guide the aviateurs to Paris the next day. We did our job well, but …”

  “C’est la guerre,” he reminded her softly.

  She was silent for a long moment, her hands pulling at the covers.

  She said, “We would have had a baby—but it wouldn’t grow in me.”

  She nestled her head against his neck, and he encircled her shoulders—clumsily, with the two sets of rumpled covers intruding.

  “I loved Robert, but our hope was destroyed.”

  “But you weren’t destroyed,” he said, feeling her tears. He stroked her hair, trying to soothe her.

  “I was always an optimist, as you know. And I was happy, relieved, that I lost the baby. I could not have had it taken from me and murdered. To lose it naturally, this was more acceptable. But still the ache of loss has never dissolved.” She laughed softly, sarcastically, through sobs. “There was a law encouraging family expansion! But there was no food! And then the deportation. The babies born in France had the rachitisme. I don’t know the English word. It was so cruel. I’m sorry if I trouble you.”

  “It’s O.K. Go on.”

  “Before the war, girls didn’t wander about unchaperoned, but in the war, anything could happen. To misuse my liberty distressed me—the betrayal of my parents. Maman understood, though.”

  “Did you ever tell Robert?”

  “No, I never told him. I didn’t tell Maurice. I was so content to have a husband who didn’t probe or pry, who loved me, who worked for me. I was so glad to have a son and a daughter. I was so privileged.”

  “Did Robert love you?”

  “Bien sûr. I know he did. He promised me … he gave me such gifts. He was artiste, you know. He made the pastel portrait of me that you saw in my salon. It survived the war.”

  She spoke in whispers, into his ear. He stroked her hair, her cheek.

  “When Maman and I arrived at Fresnes prison I was with child, but I did not know it yet. Although I did not have a healthy glow or signs of swelling and bloom that would be natural, Maman soon knew. We lived so closely, and she saw that I did not bleed after we arrived at the prison. On the train out of Paris to Ravensbrück, some weeks later, it pushed from me quickly, with pain no worse than the pain of blisters on the heels, or the frostbite on my nose and fingers. I knew I should have suffered deeper cramps as the little creature tried hard not to let go. But the scraps of food we were fed in prison could not sustain it, and it withered and sloughed from my body. My mother held me as it happened. Later, at Ravensbrück, we learned the fate of the children there. Women had to watch their children starve, or they were forced to see their babies killed. The SS women smashed a newborn’s head against the wall.

  “In the end, I felt that so many children died, my not-yet-made being inside me was only a small loss. Yet it was mine, mine alone, and after we were liberated I still felt its empty little spot inside me for a long time. It is still there.”

  She lay on her side, facing away from him, curved into him closely, and he held her, steadied her shoulders against her sobs.

  “It is very painful to tell you this,” she said.

  “I know. It’s all right.”

  “I want you to know.”

  Annette grew quiet. He had expected more tears, but there seemed to be none.

  AS THEY WAITED for sleep, in each other’s arms, he made a mental survey. The field in Belgium. Henri Lechat’s father shot on his bicycle. The woman who taught him French in a barn. The women in black. Claude blown up in his barn. The cat Félix. Chauny and the remarkable Alberts, still there. Nicolas wearing the Bugs Bunny jacket. Pierre offhandedly taking out the “isolated boche.”

  The valiant Vallons.

  Robert, the ardent youth smuggling costly nutriments to the fallen flyboys.

  Odile ordering the schoolboy to tell his parents to cut down the tree to rescue the airman whose arm was torn off. Marshall tried to reconstruct that incident in his mind. If the parachutist’s arm had really been torn off, he would have bled to death before the tree was down, but the guy lived long enough to ask for a cup of coffee. Marshall could almost feel the excruciating twist at the shoulder as the arm caught on a pine branch and the man’s body flipped.

  Georges Broussine. Annette had told him more about this elusive figure who had himself crossed the Pyrenees more than once. He was a Jew, she said. A Jew in German-occupied France.

  Broussine, the Vallons, the women in black, the Alberts, Odile, Robert Lebeau, the priest, all of them working to save airmen. Now Marshall had to help Annette, even if it meant reuniting her with her sweetheart, Robert. He couldn’t forget the pleasure on Robert’s face when he brought the goose to the Vallons. That eager young face got burnt out, a light gone dark.

  So many thousands of stories. L
ost. Disappearing.

  Webb. The brusque Basque. Hootie.

  He intended to search for Odile’s parachutists somehow. But he wouldn’t leave Annette. Sleep was coming. He would figure it out. He knew he would.

  Annette had sheltered him; now maybe he could assist her. He looked ahead to helping her bear witness. He saw her standing before a blackboard in a classroom, writing essential words for schoolchildren to remember, showing them the symbols. The ration card. The swastika. The cloth number sewn at her breast. She could speak, firsthand, of the unspeakable.

  He could be there.

  A soft peacefulness settled over Marshall. The Dirty Lily was fading away, like a mishap in his youth. But the war itself had grown more real to him—so many new questions, like newly discovered photographs. The decades that followed the war, when he went winging around the world dressed up in a blue suit with a gold-braided cap, seemed like a bubble now—an illusion, a fleeting interlude between the war and his retirement, when he circled back to Europe and to the war and to Annette.

  He thought about James Ford meeting the sweethearts—Annette and Robert—at the Gare du Nord. Marshall could picture the youthful résistants on bicycles, speeding alongside the Seine, laughing, the breeze snapping her Scottish scarf, her blue beret snug on her head, her cheeks rosy. The boy is looking back to make sure the girl is there.

  Le petit Albert, he thought as sleep finally came.

  WHEN THEY WOKE AGAIN, she said, “Are you dreaming?”

  “I don’t know. Are you?”

  “I was remembering the joy I felt when I heard from you, my big American.” She kissed his cheek lightly.

  “Are you warm?”

  “Mmm. After today, we will remember the Pyrenees fondly.”

  60.

  “WE WILL BE IN SPAIN FOR DINNER,” SAID ROLAND, WHO HAD clustered his flock of trekkers at the start of the trail, just beyond the hotel. He issued pairs of metal walking sticks, then gave a brief talk about the old smugglers’ trails, long used to transport contraband. He did not mention refugees or wayward American airmen.

  Their group was small—an Australian in a tam who described himself as a bon vivant, a sturdy couple from Denmark, the Canadian couple, and a French woman with her recently returned big American.

  The climb was not arduous, although the footing was uncertain. Marshall discovered that he needed both his walking sticks for balance on tricky patches of sand and gravel. They were walking on a narrow path through a forest, the light coming through thick growth. Marie was walking point and Roland brought up the rear. Now and then Marshall heard them on their talkie-walkies. He walked close behind Annette, to catch her if she slipped. But she moved with graceful confidence.

  The path ran along a ledge above a stream. Below, two cows were nibbling at tree branches. On the path ahead were more cows, one with long horns.

  “They are peaceful cows,” called Marie to the group.

  “Watch your step,” Marshall said to Annette.

  “This is beautiful,” she said.

  “Are you out of breath yet?”

  “No. I breathe well. And you?”

  “I’m O.K. This is exhilarating.”

  He could hear the flat metal sounds of cowbells, several of them clanking randomly.

  “Listen to the cowbells,” he said. “Strange music.” Familiar music.

  The ground leveled for a time, and the trail narrowed as it passed among boulders spotted with lichen. He remembered the grand rock at the zoo in Saint-Mandé.

  Robert Lebeau was Marshall’s better self. Annette was his better half.

  He put one foot in front of the other. The awkward atonal music of the cowbells grew fainter. He recalled cowbells in the Kentucky mountains, cattle roaming, foraging, their bells like cracked voices singing folk ballads.

  Time was a bellows, opening and closing. He remembered himself as the young boy who first saw a biplane flying above the mountains and wanted desperately to sprout wings. He had watched buzzards and hawks soaring through the valleys and rising over the tops of small green mountains, borne beyond wraiths of fog.

  Now the Canadian couple was chattering about Biarritz and how clean it was, how they hoped they would have a better bed at the hotel in Spain than they had last night. The Australian man was telling Annette about hiking to the top of Pic du Canigou in the Catalan region. There, at the summit, he came upon two men cooking paella.

  “Right on the top!” he cried. “They brought the whole kit and there they were—cooking paella! Unbelievable. Barely standing room on a pile of rocks, and they’re cooking paella.”

  “Mais oui, bien sûr!” Annette said. “Paella is much, much better in the open air.”

  “Why not?” said Marshall.

  After a while, they emerged from thinning trees, and the view opened out. The sun was brilliant, but it gave little warmth here, in the heights. Marshall spotted a glint of snow on a distant peak. Ahead, he could see vague misty clouds swirling in front of dark, enveloping mountain faces. The group spread out on the trail, with their young guides positioned fore and aft. The climb was becoming steeper. At a narrow curve, Roland waited until all the hikers were in sight, and he signaled to Marie. He was leading their formation now, and Marie was Tail-End Charlie.

  Roland advanced around the curve. Marshall was following Annette, her blue beret rising and falling in front of him as they climbed into the haze ahead.

  They were gaining altitude.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THIS NOVEL WAS INSPIRED BY THE WORLD WAR II EXPERIENCE of my father-in-law, Barney Rawlings (1920–2004). He wrote his memoir, Off We Went, in 1994, to leave a record for his family. Our conversations and his book were the springboard for my imagined story.

  I was also inspired by the wartime experience of Michèle Moët-Agniel, who as a teenager was an escort for Allied airmen shot down in Occupied Europe, 1943–44. Her family worked for the Bourgogne escape network and directly assisted Barney Rawlings. Mme Agniel graciously welcomed me at her home in Paris and shared her memories with me.

  I read widely in memoirs by American airmen who were evaders, and I also read books about Europeans who aided Allied airmen. Essential to my story was the captivating diary of Virginia d’Albert Lake. She was one of the few survivors of the slave-labor camp—a satellite of Ravensbrück—outside Koenigsberg-sur-Oder in Occupied Poland. After her release, she wrote a vivid account of the ordeal, published in An American Heroine in the French Resistance in 2006. Michèle Agniel, also a prisoner at Koenigsberg, wrote an emotional account of her return visit to the site (in what is now Chojna, Poland) in 1995. In her conversations with me she recalled the camp at Koenigsberg, which I imagine was far more brutal than she was able to tell me. She refers to Koenigsberg as “Petit-Koenigsberg,” to distinguish it from the Prussian city of Koenigsberg, which became Kalinigrad under the Soviets. She was imprisoned at Ravensbrück and Koenigsberg with three British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents—Violette Szabo, Liliane Rolfe, and Denise Bloch—who were executed by the Nazis as spies. These agents have been memorialized and celebrated for their service to the French Resistance in preparation for D-Day.

  I am grateful for the cooperation, conversation, correspondence, published interviews, reminiscences, and friendship of Michèle Agniel.

  I am thankful also for conversation and the unpublished memoir of Jeannine Fagot, who aided American parachutists in 1944.

  Thanks to other generous friends in France:

  Francis and Marie-Isabelle Agniel, Jean-Marie and Nicole Moët, Elise Agniel, Geneviève Camus, in Paris.

  Jean and Marie-Therèse Hallade and their large, welcoming family in Bichancourt.

  Catherine and Andrew Smith in Cognac.

  Winnie Madden and Philippe Chavance in Paris.

  I am grateful to the residents of Solre-Saint-Géry, Belgium, and its environs who generously welcomed me in 2008. Several of them had witnessed a B-17 crash landing there in 1944—the G.I. Sheets,
co-piloted by Barney Rawlings—and they had assisted the crew, at the peril of their own lives. In 1987, local citizens honored the crew by erecting a handsome memorial at the crash site. Benoit Dorignaux and Françoise Stiernet graciously hosted me during my visit. Roger Anthoine, whom I met elsewhere, told me how members of his family had risked their lives by sheltering two members of the crew.

  The Air Forces Escape and Evasion Society is active in preserving the memory of those times and in honoring the special friendships formed between aviators and their European helpers. I am grateful to members of AFEES, including Larry Grauerholz, John Katsaros, Roger Anthoine, and the late Clayton David, who shared their memories with me.

  In this novel, Georges Broussine (1918–2001) and Dédée de Jongh (1916–2007) are historical figures. Georges Broussine was the mastermind of the Bourgogne network, which sheltered and convoyed more than three hundred Allied aviators to safety. In reading of his brave exploits, about which he was extremely modest, I am in awe of his courage.

  Several books, such as The Freedom Line, by Peter Eisner, recount Dédée de Jongh’s heroism and bravery with the Comète escape line, which she founded.

  My husband, Roger Rawlings, was named for the #3 engine of his father’s B-17, the G.I. Sheets, which crash-landed in Belgium on January 29, 1944, two years before Roger was born. Roger owes his life to the brave Belgians and French who helped his father successfully evade the Nazis. This book owes its life to Roger’s careful eye and loving support.

  Thanks to Jim Alpha for the cars, Roger Rawlings for the airplanes. My sister LaNelle Mason was my enthusiastic companion on several exciting trips to France. Lynne and John Drahan and Catherine and Trevor King were my excellent guides over the Pyrenees mountains.

  I want to thank Millicent Bennett and Beth Pearson at Random House for their tireless attention to the manuscript. My appreciation also goes to Robin Rolewicz, formerly of Random House, for her early encouragement.