Following the Chauvins’ lessons precisely, he stared at the Nazis as if confused, then nodded in sudden understanding, and reached into his jacket pocket for his identification card and the letter embossed with the signature and official seal of the mayor of Soulac-sur-Mer and attesting to the fact that the bearer was town resident Georges Lambert.
The agent scowled at the photo card and the letter and grunted something to his comrade. He leaned over the card, studying it. He glared at Arthur.
In French, he asked Arthur if he was Georges Lambert. Arthur stared back blankly. A beefy man, the German screamed at him to answer.
Again, he looked without expression at the man.
His face scarlet, the Gestapo agent slapped him hard across the face. The crack of the German’s leather glove against his cheek echoed across the chilly plaza.
Arthur winced from the sting, a welt already rising from his cheek to his eye. Still, he said nothing.
From behind him, a man’s courtly voice said in French, “Do you not realize that this man is a deaf mute? He cannot hear you.”
The Nazi who had struck Arthur snapped back, “Who the hell are you?”
The Frenchman stepped between Arthur and the two Germans and carefully produced his photo identification card. “I am Dr. Pierre Auriac. I live here in Moissac.”
“Open your bag, and we’ll see if you really are a doctor.”
Pierre cautiously opened the bag and showed its contents to the pair. The silvery glint of a stethoscope and other medical instruments brought disappointed frowns to both Nazis’ faces.
“May I close it?” Pierre asked. “This man, Georges Lambert, has come to work for a friend of mine on his farm. Since I was in Bordeaux, I was asked to help escort him to the farm. It’s a few miles outside of town. He will spend the night at my home, and I will take him to my friend tomorrow.” 1
The Germans appeared skeptical, but then Pierre provided them the farmer’s name, Jacques Garric, and proceeded to launch into a discourse about the extent of Lambert’s condition. The agents’ skepticism faded to irritation, and as their eyes started to glaze at the flood of medical terms they were hearing, they flung the identification cards and papers at Arthur and Dr. Auriac and ordered them to be on their way.
Both retrieved their documents from the wet cobblestones and walked across the square to Charlotte and Christiane. In silence, the two women and Arthur trailed Pierre through a cold mist to the outskirts of Moissac.
CHAPTER 12
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A NARROW ESCAPE
Arthur, Charlotte, and Christiane followed Dr. Pierre Auriac through the backstreets of Moissac, passing rows of half-timber, half-stone medieval homes. The doctor stopped in front of one of the houses near the walled bank of the Tarn River and a marina where several hulking barges thudded against their docks in the current. Atop a brick riverside warehouse, a large sign with blue lettering read Canal des Deux Mers, the canal between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
Pierre unlocked the ancient wooden door, held it open, and beckoned to the others to step inside. With its whitewashed interior walls and wooden beams so old they appeared almost black, Pierre’s house seemed frozen in the Middle Ages. Then Arthur noticed the collection of antiques and chic furniture that made the open foyer and high-ceilinged living room a blend of modern and medieval.
Walking toward them from the kitchen was a woman with lush, dark hair flowing past her shoulders. She fixed her golden-flecked brown eyes and a welcoming smile on Arthur.
She introduced herself to Arthur as Louisita Chango, Pierre’s fiancée, and gave the airman the now-customary embrace and kiss of each cheek. Instead of another confined hiding place like the Dupins’ annex, she and Pierre led him to a second-floor bedroom with the same style beams as downstairs. Louisita smiled at Arthur again and told him that his stay in Moissac would be brief, just one day and night.
Pierre had told the Gestapo the truth when he said he was bringing “Georges” to the farm of Jacques Garric the next day. Chuckling, Pierre asked Arthur if he had ever worked on a farm.
Arthur replied, “I’m not sure I’ve ever even been on a real farm.”
“Monsieur Garric is happy to host our friends such as you,” Pierre said, “but he will expect you to help out.”
That evening at dinner, Pierre carved a fragrantly spiced roast chicken—“Basque style,” Louisita said—into equal portions for Arthur, Charlotte, Christiane, Louisita, and himself. 1 Louisita spooned generous portions of seasoned vegetables onto everyone’s gleaming china plates, which were decorated with a delicate floral pattern and looked to be centuries old. Reading Arthur’s thoughts as he tried not to wolf down his meal, she told him that it was possible sometimes to get a chicken or a bit of beef and fresher vegetables and fruit. There was no way, Pierre added, that tonight’s meal could have come from their ration cards. One could wait in the ration lines for hours, only to reach the front and be brusquely told that there was nothing left.
It was the same for the two bottles of Bordeaux they savored. Without the black market and vintners’ stashes, the Germans would have seized every bottle in southern France.
For dessert, they shared a few bowls of delicious, gold-hued grapes, Arthur’s hosts laughingly telling him that Moissac was one of the region’s few areas that did not cultivate grapes for wine. Instead, the local farmers grew the chasselas de Moissac grape, famed as a delicacy for all seasons.
The scene was almost dreamlike. With Pierre in a starched shirt, tie, and tweed jacket and Louisita in a lacy white blouse and a small, shimmering strand of pearls, the couple’s refinement was faintly exotic. Both Pierre’s and Louisita’s fluent English reflected their cultured background. That dinner in Moissac belied for a few welcome hours the danger just a harsh knock on the door away.
The distant drone of Allied bombers and the crack of 88 antiaircraft cannons brought everyone at the table back to the reality of war and occupation. Pierre announced that they had to obey the German blackout regulations and turn off the lights. As the unmistakable thumps of five-hundred-pound bombs striking Nazi targets intensified, the others looked at him with silent respect and something else, something between admiration and a form of appreciation. Later, Charlotte Michel would tell Arthur: “One day, aeroplanes [sic] fell down. In the aeroplanes there were men who were fighting for us and who were coming from free countries. You have been the first to bring us this breath of liberty which we missed for ever so long.” 2
His stomach full, and stretched out in a canopied bed with down pillows, Arthur slept better than he had since he jumped into France. When Pierre’s firm knock on the door awakened him at 5 a.m., the last thing he wanted was to climb out of that bed and leave Moissac. He knew he had no choice and pushed himself out of the covers and dressed. For once, his back did not protest.
As Arthur, holding his tattered valise, joined Pierre and the Michels in the kitchen, Louisita was frying eggs in a skillet, and Arthur took a seat at the table. A slab of warm, coarse bread sat on each plate, and Louisita slipped two eggs on Arthur’s plate first. They finished breakfast, and Pierre stood up and nodded at Arthur. Christiane sprang from her seat and hugged him tightly. Charlotte also came over and did the same, tears glistening on the faces of both women.
Arthur reassured mother and daughter that they would see each other again.
Breaking the embrace, Arthur picked up his suitcase. The scent of Louisita’s perfume again wafted around him. She leaned up, kissed his cheeks, and wiped off the traces of her lipstick with her finger.
Arthur felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Pierre. It was time to go.
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Like Pierre Chauvin and Marcel Taillandier, Pierre Auriac owned a motorcycle, though nothing as powerful as Marcel Taillandier’s Gnome. Perched behind Pierre on the 1929 Al
cyon 250-cc bike, Arthur hung on tightly as the doctor skimmed across ice-slicked country roads south of Moissac. He slowed down and stopped at a slope-roofed, dull yellow stone farmhouse indistinguishable from dozens of others the pair had passed. A long barn of the same colored stone stood some thirty yards behind the house.
Jacques Garric, a short, thin man in a wool cap, a drab, patched coat, and trousers tucked into ripped knee-high boots, emerged from the barn, waved, and trudged through a mix of snow and mud to the motorcycle. He and Pierre chatted in French for a few minutes before Pierre told Arthur that Garric understood some English, but spoke it poorly. Around Moissac, few people had any English.
Arthur got off the Alcyon. As he shook the farmer’s hand, he had no way of knowing that behind Pierre Auriac’s polished, calm demeanor lay a man consumed by his rage at the Nazis. In July 1941, his brother, Jean, a professor of medical physics and as patriotic as Pierre, was also a high-ranking member of the Resistance. Arrested by the Gestapo that month, Jean had committed suicide by slashing his wrists before the Germans could torture him. He would not risk being forced to give up his comrades.
Before he left, Pierre explained to Arthur that Jacques would shelter him in the basement, but not because the Garrics did not want him upstairs. It was common practice for local farmers to let field hands sleep in the barn during the warmer months and in the cellar when the weather turned cold. Any other arrangement might cause neighbors to wonder. If the Germans suddenly showed up at the farmhouse, Arthur would have to play his part as Lambert and hope for the best. Garric would say that he had hired Georges Lambert as a temporary field hand but had no idea of his background except that, as his identification card read, he was an experienced agricultural worker.
Arthur’s new cellar lodgings were not as rough as they could have been. As with many farmers of the region, Jacques Garric had placed a cot, a night table, and a small lantern in a corner of the basement. Although it was cold and damp, the space was far better than the woodcutter’s shed near the Barbots’ farm.
Arthur was awakened by Jacques before sunrise, trudged up to the kitchen, and was given several slices of bread, a dried apple, and weak tea by the farmer’s wife. He did not see any children. After they ate, Jacques went to the small living room and returned with a small hunting rifle; in rural areas, the Nazis allowed locals to possess one old rifle or shotgun for hunting. Since no one was allowed to purchase bullets or shells, Garric was limited to any he had on hand or managed to scrounge from neighbors.
Cradling the rifle, Jacques led him into the barn, empty except for straw on the earthen floor and perhaps the largest pile of wood Arthur had ever seen. The farmer pointed to a long handsaw leaning against the pile, which stood nearly six feet high. He handed Arthur the rifle and pulled a long, knotted piece of timber from the stack. He laid it on the floor, picked up the saw, knelt, and spent the next twenty minutes cutting the wood into four pieces. Then he picked them up one at a time and started to build a neat stack opposite the pile. He handed the saw to Arthur, pointed to a thick pair of leather work gloves on a shelf next to the heap, took back the rifle, and left wordlessly.
Arthur jammed his hands into the gloves, dragged a four-foot limb from the top of the stockpile, rolled it onto the floor, got on his knees, and began to saw. In seconds his back was on fire. Gritting his teeth, he kept sawing. Thankfully, he still had a stash of painkillers that Gisèle had given him.
It took him over an hour to do what Garric had completed in some twenty minutes, but Arthur did not stop. Despite the wintry air in the barn, his lungs were burning. His hands began to blister beneath the cracked leather gloves. Still, he continued to saw. At noon, Madame Garric brought him several more heavy slices of dark bread with a light covering of salt and two more dried apples, as well as a chipped pitcher of water and a tin cup.
Arthur lost all sense of time in the dim barn. A shot rang out in the distance sometime after his lunch, and he froze. No others followed. A few minutes went by, and he grasped the saw tight again. The rasps of steel against wood filled the barn.
As dusk began to chase what little light remained, Arthur whipped his head around at the sound of heavy steps against the straw behind him. Garric stood in front of him, grinning, the rifle in one hand, a dead rabbit in the other. He gestured for Arthur to lay down the saw and come into the house.
For the next nine days, Arthur’s routine remained the same. The pile actually began to dwindle. The growls of Nazi armor and trucks from time to time made him pause from his task inside the barn. Each time, however, the ominous noise faded as the vehicles ground past the Garric farm. Few, if any, visitors came to the house.
By the time Garric summoned him from the barn late each afternoon, Arthur was exhausted. His back was adapting to the grueling labor in one way: instead of the near-blinding pain of his first day with the saw, Arthur now felt something between an insistent throb and a dull ache. He passed out from exhaustion by 8 p.m. each night within a few instants of settling atop his cot, the pleasant smell of drying fruit, vegetables, and roots drifting toward him.
On January 16, 1944, Arthur was sawing wood when Garric came into the barn with another man, who was wearing a black turtleneck, a baggy belted overcoat, and a beret. Arthur rose from his knees. Garric nodded, and Arthur followed them to the house, grabbed his valise, counted out several hundred francs that he handed to Garric, and said a quick good-bye to the farmer and his wife.
The stranger warned Arthur in thickly accented English that a neighboring farmer had told the Gestapo that a new and suspicious-looking man was working for the Garrics. The Germans could arrive in minutes or within a few hours. The pair set out on foot, and Arthur followed the man at a near run into the woods and down an overgrown, twisting path deeper into the forest.
Behind them, in the direction of the farm, the slams of car doors, guttural voices, and snarling, barking dogs echoed. Arthur and his guide broke into a full sprint, fighting to stay upright on the gnarled track. They had to keep moving. There was nowhere they could hide if the Gestapo turned their dogs loose in the woods.
Arthur had no idea how long or how far they had gone when the Frenchman suddenly stopped, put up his hand to halt Arthur, and listened for several seconds. Except for their heavy breathing, there was no sound in the woods.
The man turned to Arthur and motioned for him to lean against a tree to catch his breath while he did the same. Suddenly Arthur reached into his coat pocket to make sure he had not left his papers in the cellar or that they had somehow slipped out in the frantic sprint through the woods. His fingers brushed against the stiff identification card and his other documents.
His companion produced a small silver flask, uncapped it, and held it out to Arthur. He grasped it and drank; the warmth of brandy in his throat was welcome. The Resistance fighter took it back, sipped, and returned it to his overcoat. Then he pulled out a .45 pistol, the same as American officers carried.
Hours dragged by as they slogged past the forest’s hulking trunks. He said nothing to Arthur. Arthur just made sure that he never lost sight of the Frenchman’s back.
Dusk gave way to twilight and then nightfall, and still the airman and the Resistance fighter tramped through the snow and brush. His fingers and feet numb from the cold, Arthur concentrated on keeping one foot in front of the other. Neither man could waste a moment thinking about fatigue, fear and adrenaline pushing them forward.
Suddenly the Frenchman halted. Ahead of them was an opening in the trees, and a large, snow-covered field stretched toward the outlines of a town whose medieval shapes loomed even in the darkness.
The Resistance man pointed to the right-hand edge of the town’s outskirts and broke into a run across the field. Clutching his suitcase, Arthur stumbled behind him out of the woods. It was after curfew, and if they were spotted by the enemy, they would be shot down in the snow or dragged off for a worse ending in the hands of
the Gestapo.
Tripping and sliding countless times on the slick field, they neared a four-foot-high stone wall marking the boundary between the farmland and the town’s fringes. The Resistance fighter hit the ground and crawled the final few yards to the wall, sixteen miles from Garric’s home. Arthur followed him. Slowly, the Frenchman lifted his head just high enough to study the door of a stone-and-timber house similar to that of Dr. Pierre Auriac. The door stood slightly ajar.
Quickly and quietly he vaulted the wall, and Arthur followed immediately. They slid across the frozen cobblestones and into the house. The door closed behind them, and Arthur turned to find two women. One was plump and middle-aged, her kindly features creased with concern and relief in the light of the small candle she was holding. The second woman, bathed in the same glow of the candle, was younger, attractive but somehow hard-looking.
The older woman introduced herself to Arthur as Madame Rigal and her friend as Mimi Dumas.
With a smile, she told him he was with friends who would provide him all the comfort and safety they could.
“Welcome to Beaumont-de-Lomagne,” she said. 3
Without a word, Arthur’s guide slipped back out the door and disappeared into the dark.
CHAPTER 13
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TROUBLE IN BEAUMONT-DE-LOMAGNE
As Arthur settled into the annex of Mimi Dumas’s house in Beaumont-de-Lomagne, Mimi and Madame Rigal told him that for the time being, he would remain hidden in the attic. The town was too close to Moissac for him to comfortably go outside. Perhaps Garric had talked his way out of trouble with the Gestapo by convincing them that all he knew about his temporary farmhand was that his name was Georges Lambert, he was deaf and unable to speak, and he had done a good job that he had finished that very day. Even so, the Brutus Network could not take the chance that the authorities might investigate further. Until the Resistance band was certain that no one was looking for the farmhand, Arthur would remain housebound.
The Lost Airman Page 13