Once a Warrior

by Fran Baker

  “Right here, sir.”

  “Thank you, sergeant.”

  Wire cutters in hand, Mike dismounted and headed for the gate. He had to breathe through his mouth to block out the heavy stench of illness and infection that hung over the compound. Hearing about the condition of his fellow soldiers was one thing. Seeing it firsthand was enough to bathe his world a furious red.

  “Sir?” someone behind him said.

  Mike was so focused on freeing the prisoners that he hadn’t realized he was being followed. He stopped just a few steps short of the gate and spun. Then he blinked to clear his vision and found himself facing a bona fide hero.

  The escapee extended his claw of a hand, palm upward. “May I?”

  Mike couldn’t have explained it if he’d tried. Not even to himself. But the sight of that hand pierced his heart like a bayonet.

  “What’s your name, soldier?” he demanded in a voice gone coarse with emotion.

  The former prisoner snapped to attention and clicked his heels. “Walker, sir. Corporal Tim Walker.”

  Mike gave him the wire cutters and a battlefield promotion he would write up later. “Get those men out of that hellhole, Sergeant Walker.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Bedlam reigned as the gate creaked open and the prisoners, free at last, came limping and hobbling out on legs like sticks. The medics rushed forward to carry those who couldn’t walk. More than one rough, tough redleg—Mike among them—had to wipe the wetness from his eyes as the gaunt and grateful survivors said thanks before being loaded into the ambulances.

  Only one man remained behind the barbed wire.

  A spiraling of concern swept down Mike’s spine when he saw him sitting on the grassless ground with his back against the wooden barracks wall and his head hanging in utter defeat.

  His hair was so dirty and matted it was hard to tell whether it was light or dark, blonde or brown. An earpiece was missing from his glasses, a scraggly beard hid the lower half of his face, and his khaki shirt had been stripped of all identifying insignia. He wore a regulation combat boot on his right foot, but the bare and blackened toes of his left stuck out from a swaddling of rags.

  Mike waited until some of the confusion died down, then drew the newly-minted sergeant aside and asked, “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know, sir.” Walker shook his head. “We came in about the same time, but I never got his name. Most days, he just sat like he is now. Then he ate, if they bothered to feed us, and went to bed.”

  “What’s wrong with his foot?”

  “Frostbite. He was missing a boot when he got here, so I assume he lost it in the Ardennes.”

  The medics were too busy tending to the soldiers who’d already left the camp to notice the one who’d remained behind.

  Mike slipped in through the gate, intent on bringing the man out even if he had to carry him. As he crossed the dusty compound, he caught a whiff of something stale and sour and downright sickening. Once he got where he was going, it didn’t take him long to figure out what the smell was.

  The poor guy had pissed in his pants—numerous times, in fact, judging by the stains on the front of his trousers.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said with as much joviality as he could muster, “the Krauts are kaput and you’re free to go.”

  But imprisoned in some hell of his own, the man neither moved nor spoke.

  Mike had seen many a brave warrior lose his nerve or his will to fight back during the hell of an enemy artillery barrage. And he wasn’t ashamed to admit that there’d been plenty of times when he’d thought he couldn’t take it anymore himself. Yet he’d never seen anyone with such a bad case of shell shock before.

  He crouched down beside the stiff and silent figure, then reached over and gently clasped his shoulder, feeling more bone than flesh beneath that tattered shirt. “Can I give you a hand up, soldier?”

  It might have been his comforting touch. Or maybe it was his consoling tone of voice. Whatever, the man slowly lifted his head and looked sideways.

  Mike felt a kick of recognition that almost knocked him backwards as he stared into the familiar brown eyes of the lifetime friend he’d given up for dead.

  “Charlie?” he breathed.

  The man blinked, as if awakening from a trance, and a lone tear leaked out from under the frame of his broken glasses and rolled down his dirty cheek.

  A knot coiled in Mike’s chest and it was all he could do not to cry himself. The filth and the foul odors aside, he grabbed hold of his old friend and wrapped him tightly in his arms. “My God, it’s Charlie Miller!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Paris, France

  “H-he said h-he loved me!” the girl sobbed.

  Anne-Marie had been in no mood for company when she got home from work. Not even her own. She’d been cranky from the June heat, exhausted after being on her feet all day, and frustrated at having had to rebuff the amorous advances of the dozens of fresh-faced American GIs who’d lined up at her sales counter in the Galéries Lafayette to buy a souvenir of “Gay Paree.” Worse, she’d been crushed to discover that yet another week had gone by with no letter from Mike.

  None of which had kept Brigitte Duprée, her neighbor across the hall, from rushing into her room without knocking and promptly bursting into tears.

  “H-he even asked m-me to marry him!” Brigitte cried now, devastated by the tragic turn her affaire de coeur had taken. In her first serious relationship, she had fallen hard for the wrong man—a GI whom she’d met three months ago, while he was recuperating from his battle wounds at the American Hospital in Paris. She’d been writing him long, passionate letters since his return to the front. But with the war over, her erstwhile lover had callously written back to tell her that he was going home without her.

  Sitting on her narrow bed with her arms wrapped around her heartbroken neighbor, Anne-Marie wanted desperately to say something that would ease her pain. And perhaps to dispel some of her own fears where Mike was concerned. Words failed her, however, so she simply tightened her embrace and let the poor girl cry it out.

  “Oh, why did he tell me he loved me if it wasn’t true?” Weeping wretchedly, Brigitte answered her own question. “To get me to go to bed with him, that’s why!”

  At least Mike had been honorable enough not to lie to her, Anne-Marie thought with a small, poignant smile. He hadn’t said he loved her, not even after she’d said it to him. Nor had he asked her to marry him. He’d taken what she’d gladly given. And had given her beautiful memories in return.

  Still, moisture beaded on her own lashes as she looked around the tiny, third-floor room she had rented almost four months ago on the rive gauche.

  It measured five steps exactly from wall to wall. Besides the single bed, a small table with two chairs and an unpainted cabinet in the corner completed the furnishings. Her grandmother’s candelabra sat on the table. Inside the cabinet was the last of the coffee and sugar she had bought on the black market with her American cigarettes. Atop it was the framed picture of Mike—taken, he’d told her in a flat tone, as they’d lain entwined in front of the fire, after the battle for Aachen.

  The room’s saving grace was the window; it overlooked a bend of the Seine River, which shimmered like a silver ribbon beneath the lowering sun.

  Was it only last month, Anne-Marie wondered in amazement, when Brigitte and she had stood at that window to watch powerful floodlights spread a “V” for Victory across the night sky and to listen to the joyful ringing of the church bells all over Paris? Instead of joining the jubilant crowds in the streets, they had celebrated the end of the war by sharing a bottle of wine and singing the “Marseillaise.” A little light-headed then, they had clasped hands and prayed together for the safe return of the servicemen they loved.

  But today, with Brigitte’s sergeant having summarily ended their wartime interlude and Anne-Marie’s lieutenant yet to be heard from since their stolen afternoon in Ste. Genviève, the future looked much gloomier tha
n either of them could have imagined that glorious night.

  “I’m sorry.” Brigitte hiccuped and raised her head.

  “Sorry?” Smiling quizzically, Anne-Marie released her. “For what?”

  “For burdening you with my problems when you have worries of your own.”

  Anne-Marie realized that Brigitte was referring to Mike, but she wasn’t ready to talk about him just yet. Instead, she turned the topic back to her neighbor’s predicament. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know.” Brigitte blinked sorrowful blue eyes at her and shook her head. “What Frenchman would have me after what I’ve done?”

  “And what exactly have you done?” Anne-Marie exploded as the heat and her own disappointment finally got the best of her. “Loved a man who said he loved you!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “A man who lied to get you into bed!”

  “True, but—”

  “Well then, he’s the one who should be ashamed, not you!”

  “I know, but—”

  “But what?” Anne-Marie demanded in a near shout.

  “But will you please let go of my hand before you break it?”

  Anne-Marie didn’t remember taking hold of her neighbor’s hand. Now she looked down and realized that she had it in a bone-crushing grip. Laughing softly, she let go.

  A sniffling Brigitte failed to see any humor in the situation. “What am I going to do?”

  Unable to resist, Anne-Marie reached over to ruffle Brigitte’s wispy black cap of hair. They were the same age, and they had moved to Paris from their respective villages at approximately the same time. For reasons she couldn’t fathom, though, she thought of her neighbor as the younger sister she’d never had.

  “You could always become a zig-zig girl.” She was only teasing, of course, but Brigitte took her seriously.

  “It would serve him right if I wound up walking the streets!”

  “Or you could say ‘yes’ if Pierre Dumas ever works up enough nerve to ask you to have coffee with him.”

  Brigitte’s eyes clouded with confusion. “Pierre Du—the baker around the corner?”

  “He’s a fine man.”

  “You’re just saying that because he always saves you bread.”

  “Not a bad friend to have in a city full of shortages.” Anne-Marie took it as a good sign that Brigitte hadn’t rejected her suggestion out of hand. “Besides, Pierre has asked about you every morning since he saw us together on the street.”

  “He does have kind eyes,” Brigitte conceded.

  “More important, he has a kind heart.”

  Brigitte mulled that over for a moment. “I wonder what he would think of my having . . . been with an American soldier?”

  Anne-Marie waited a beat. “Did I tell you that the girl he was engaged to ran off with another man?”

  “A GI?”

  “Worse, an English officer.”

  “So he’s suffering, too.”

  “Maybe you can ease each other’s pain.”

  Brigitte nodded contemplatively. “What time does he open the bakery?”

  “The line begins to form about five in the morning.”

  “Five?” Normally a late sleeper, Brigitte looked appalled. “But I’ll be all night getting ready to go see him!”

  “Best to get your beauty rest instead,” Anne-Marie counseled.

  “You’re right.” Brigitte spurted to her feet and started toward the door. “I’ll go to bed now and get up at four.”

  “Bring me a croissant,” Anne-Marie called after her.

  “It may be day-old bread by the time I get back!”

  As Brigitte left her laughing, Anne-Marie opened her window to let out some of the heat entrapped in her room. Then she changed out of her work clothes and into a sleeveless blue chemise. Habit had her inspecting her cotton skirt and blouse for wear before she hung them in the shallow alcove that served as her closet. In the small bathroom hidden behind a flowered curtain, she washed her face and pinned her hair up off her neck.

  The terrine she’d eaten at noon still sat like a lump in her stomach and it was too hot for coffee, so she stepped to the window to watch the church spires vanish into the twilight and couples stroll out of the mist to stroll arm-in-arm along the banks of the Seine.

  L’heure bleue, the hour of long shadows and lovelorn hearts, was when the heavy hand of aloneness smote Anne-Marie the hardest. She’d been alone before. When her parents and her brother were killed. And after her grandfather died. But never had she felt as lonely as she did when she thought of living without Mike.

  The nights were the worst. During the day she stayed busy enough with the temporary job she had taken until she started school in the fall. And there was her volunteer work at the reception center, helping to repatriate the French civilians who had survived the German prison camps while trying—fruitlessly so far—to learn the fate of her friend, Miriam Blum. Come the dark, though, she would don her nightgown, brush out her hair and turn off the light. And then, like some old woman whom life has passed by, she would climb into her narrow bed and remember—

  A sharp rap at the door cut into her reveries.

  “Entrez,” she invited over her shoulder, assuming that it was Brigitte again.

  “I hope that means ‘come in’,” a familiar masculine voice said into the dimness of her room.

  Anne-Marie felt a dizzying sense of déjà vu as she wheeled away from the window to see Mike closing her door behind him.

  For a small eternity, she stood where she was, sating herself on the sight of him. Tall and tan and tautly muscled, he looked every inch the conquering hero. His square-cut hair was neatly combed, his face freshly shaved. On the shoulders of his dress uniform gleamed his single silver lieutenant’s bars while a colorful tier of campaign stars and battle decorations lay over his heart.

  He looked so strong. So handsome, standing in her ugly little room. So alive.

  “Mike,” she marveled softly.

  “You were expecting maybe The Hunchback of Nôtre Dame?” he said with a wry smile.

  Her saucy little chin shot up a notch. “Do I look like Esmerelda?”

  That devilish dimple pocked his cheek. “You look like a dream come true.”

  Before she could stop herself, Anne-Marie did something she’d never done in front of him before. She burst into tears. Hot tears that made her eyes feel as if they were on fire.

  “You’re here!” she sobbed. “You’re really here!”

  Alarmed by her loss of control, Mike crossed the room in half the number of steps it normally took her and enfolded her in his arms. His own emotions were dangerously close to the surface. On the one hand, it felt so right to hold her again. To bury his face in her sunlit hair and to fill his senses with her moonflower scent. On the other hand, it terrified him to think that this wouldn’t end the way he wanted it to.

  “Hey,” he said, trying to cheer her up, “I’ve got a bicycle taxi waiting down—”

  “A bicycle taxi!” She lifted her shocked face to his smiling one. “But that must be costing you a small fortune!”

  He shrugged indifferently. “I’ve also got three months’ worth of combat pay in my pocket and a seventy-two hour pass—”

  “Seventy-two hours?” she repeated, both her voice and her heart breaking at the realization that this, then, was how it would end between them.

  His dark eyes speared into her distraught ones. “Do you know I’ve been here for a good ten minutes and you haven’t even kissed me hello?

  Anne-Marie made a painful but practical decision in that instant. She could cry as much as she wanted after Mike left her to go back to America. Until then, he wasn’t going to see another single tear.

  She rose up on tiptoe and drew his head down. No coyness sparked in her eyes when they met his. She was his woman for the next three days and nights, and he was her man. And in the years to come—the lonely years, far ahead and long away—she knew she would look back
on their time together with no regret.

  “’Ello, Mike,” she whispered against his mouth.

  He crushed her against him as their lips melted in an ardent kiss. Their tongues swirled together in an erotic pas de deux. His hands moved possessively over her body, leaving fire wherever they touched, and she could feel his living heart pounding in tempo with hers.

  She clung to him and to the wonder of the moment. He was her first lover, her bien-aimé, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. But lose him she must. The war that had brought them together had been won. He had a home and a family waiting for him back in Kansas City, and she had goals of her own to pursue here in Paris. So instead of worrying about the future, she would simply appreciate the precious present.

  “I thought of you every day,” he murmured.

  “I prayed for you every night,” she admitted.

  Mike smiled, but his brown eyes were shadowed with memories of war that Anne-Marie knew would haunt him forever. “Sometimes in the middle of a fire mission, I’d swear I could see your face in the smoke. Then I’d blink and, poof, you’d be gone.”

  She nodded. “Every so often I’d see an American soldier on the sidewalk who reminded me of you. I’d start walking faster, trying to catch up with him”—now she shook her head ruefully—“only to realize he was a complete stranger.”

  They kissed again, tenderly. And again, deeply. Finally, fighting for breath, they broke apart.

  “Do you want to send the bicycle taxi away and stay here tonight?” she asked him.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  He grinned down at her. “Because I have a surprise for you.”

  “A surprise?” She smiled up radiantly at him. “Oh, but I love surprises!”

  Actually, Mike had several surprises in store for Anne-Marie, but after a cursory glance around her tiny but tidy room, he decided that this was neither the time nor the place to spring them on her.

  “What is this surprise?” she demanded, scarcely able to contain her curiosity.

  “Put on your prettiest dress,” he said silkily, “and I’ll show you.”