The Girl in the Blue Beret

13.



MARSHALL GAVE A LAST GLANCE AT THE NOSE ART BEFORE he ran for the woods. Dirty Lily would have to take care of herself. She was still on fire. Bob Hadley was panting, but Marshall didn’t dare slow down for him. “Come on, come on,” he whispered sharply, urging him into the woods. Marshall wore his leather sheep-lined helmet and his A-2 leather jacket, with his escape kit in a leg pocket. They had shucked their parachute rigging, but the catch on Hadley’s jammed and he had to cut himself loose.

The woods were sparse on the edge, but dense deeper in. The terrain was brushy, with occasional large trees. Marshall scouted for climbing trees. He saw evergreens, a bank of them, and slowed down. When Hadley stopped to throw up, Marshall said the dogs would be after them.

“What dogs?” Hadley said.

“There will be dogs,” said Marshall. “And they like puke.”

“Webb was dead, do you know? He was dead, I could tell.”

“We’re not dead. Let’s go.”

Marshall thought Hootie was dead, but he wasn’t sure about Webb. He knew Grainger’s shoulder had been hit and Campanello’s face was bloody. The Germans would be there soon, scavenging the mangled Fort like buzzards.

The girl on the bicycle had disappeared. She had told him to wait while she went to find civilian clothing, but he had run into the woods. Their squadron mascot was patched onto Marshall’s leather jacket—Bugs Bunny placidly eating a carrot and resting his foot on a bomb. Only two days ago, Marshall had boasted that he was the Scourge of the Sky in brown leather. Now he was a marked target.

The day had turned gray, and they twisted and turned several times in their dash through the trees. Marshall didn’t want to get lost in the woods. They had to seek help from some willing farmer. Marshall groped for his compass, squirreled away in one of his zipper pockets. “North’s that way,” he said, gesturing through the evergreens.

“Are you sure?”

“See the old patches of snow on one side of the tree? That would be north.” He zipped up the compass. “Look at the sun, goddamn it!”

Hadley relieved himself behind a tree. Marshall remembered something from escape-and-evasion class. Empty your bladder and bowels first. You’ll feel better and you’ll be prepared for the next crucial stages of your evasion. He said this to Hadley.

“That’s the only thing I remember from evasion class,” Hadley said. “And I figured tossing my cookies counted. What country do you think we’re in?”


AT SUNSET THEY MADE a shelter beneath the swooping boughs of an evergreen. They nibbled bits of chocolate and Horlicks malted-milk tablets from their escape kits. Hadley wore a heavier B-3 shearling jacket, much warmer than Marshall’s, and with no Bugs Bunny. They huddled together that night in a way Marshall had never expected to do with a man. He couldn’t abide Hadley’s fretting, his restless sleep punctuated with long sighs. The night was bitter, but the low-slung green boughs stopped the wind. Marshall could not identify the trees, but years later when he took his children to get a Christmas tree he decided they were some kind of spruce. Once, Loretta said innocently, “We’d better get spruced up,” and he cringed, remembering his long night in the Belgian woods.

They slept fitfully, and Marshall buried his face in Nurse Begley’s woolly-drawers, inhaling her sweet smell. He berated himself for paying so little attention in evasion class.

During the night, he thought about winter visits to his uncle’s house in the mountains, where he slept with a newspaper-wrapped hot brick. The windows were single-glazed, and the cracks around the windows and doors let in small zephyrs. He slept in a feather bed with some cousins, who sometimes tried to steal Marshall’s brick. There was often tussling over the covers and the bricks. “Stop your squirming,” his aunt would call from across the room. “You’ll let all the hot out.”

In the morning, the sunrise gave them their bearings. Hadley climbed a tree and reported a road leading to a village to the west. To the south was another road, with some farms set back beyond trees and fields.

“South,” Marshall said. “To Grandma’s house we go.”

Soon they emerged from the woods and saw the road, beyond a large field. Hadley insisted on traveling west, to search for a boat across the Channel, but Marshall argued that the only way back to England was south, through France and over the Pyrenees to Spain.

“But we’ll never make it, Marshall. I don’t care what they told us in evasion class. It’s too far, and it’ll be Germans all the way. If we go west and just hide out, sooner or later there’ll be a way to get across the Channel. Or if not, the invasion will be coming soon and we’ll be home free.”

“Germans are here too, Bob. Look.”

Ahead, a convoy of military vehicles was speeding down the clear, wide road. On a smaller, intersecting road, a man with a donkey and a cart plodded along. After studying the silk maps included in their escape kits, Marshall decided they had inadvertently crossed the border and were probably already in France. They continued south, but after an hour of arguing about the best route, they decided to split up. Marshall preferred being alone anyway, making his own decisions, and he was sure Hadley was wrong about the invasion. They parted on a ridge where they could see a clear juncture of west and south.

“Don’t lose your map,” Marshall said. “Put it in your coat lining.”

Thick, tall hedgerows separated the fields, and here and there farmers were at work. He tried to pick his way parallel to the main road, while keeping concealed, hiding in a ditch or among some trees when he heard vehicles approaching.

A truck convoy passed. He could see the German cross on the doors. He didn’t know if he was afraid. He knew he would have to find shelter this evening and each evening to come.

He walked at a fast pace, stumbling over the uneven terrain, keeping close to the trees and behind hedgerows, away from the road. In a thick evergreen copse, he found a stream that seemed clear. He filled his collapsible flask and dosed it with a water-purifying tablet. He rested for a while, thinking it was a good refuge, but Spain was far away, so he rose and stumbled on. He skirted a small village, passing close enough to see a flag flying—the swastika, spidery arms akimbo.

He kept moving till dusk, trudging through the countryside. Now and then he heard voices, but each time he crept away. He came to a large stone barn. He watched a man guide a cow into the barn and fasten the door. He did not see dogs. After sundown, Marshall entered the barn and sank into a pile of hay, exhausted. He ate a tablet of Horlicks and wondered how to milk a cow.

Next morning, he jerked awake. The farmer was standing over him, gripping a raised scythe. Marshall found himself silently maneuvered out the door and across the barnyard. The farmer waved the scythe threateningly, shooing him away. Marshall ran into some nearby trees, regretting that he hadn’t grabbed the cow’s teats during the night for a warm drink. When he stopped to catch his breath, he saw how he was shaking.


IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON. He had walked about eight miles, he thought. He approached a farm with a barn adjoining the house. Behind the barn some rectangular hay bales were stacked in a neat cube. There was an opening big enough to hide in, even sleep. Poking inside, he found a hen’s nest with one egg. He cracked the egg against his knuckles and opened it carefully. The yellow center was beautiful, like a sun sunken in a bowl of honey. He swirled it in his mouth and swallowed. He rummaged around for more eggs, but there were none.

Easter eggs. An incongruous memory came back as he lay amidst the bales. Marshall and his cousins were searching for bright, dyed eggs under the bushes and in the crannies of the corncrib and the cow shed. He was a small boy then. His grandmother saying, Get them all. Don’t waste. But they invariably found an egg a week past Easter, and they ate it anyway, the hard yellow center gone green on its surface.

It was too early to sleep. He carefully left his hiding place. In the barnyard he stared at the pig trough, then the chickens’ water pail. He didn’t want to waste his halazone pills on those. If the farmers were out in the fields, the women would be in the houses, he thought. Slinking behind the barn, he made for the back door of the farmhouse. He knocked once, lightly. A short, middle-aged woman opened the door. Fear flashed across her face.

“Je suis un aviateur américain,” he said in what he knew was a laughable accent. “Please, I need help.”

She put her finger to her lips, then pointed to the barn. “Là-bas! Là-bas!”

He slipped into the barn and hid behind some machinery. She arrived soon, with some milk and a piece of bread, which he wolfed greedily but gratefully. She had a warm face, with wide-set dark eyes. She wore a dark dress and a bonnet. She motioned for him to stay, and then she left. He sank into some loose hay, suddenly exhausted. After dozing for a while, he heard her come in again. She brought some peasant clothing for him—a coat and some balloon pants of a thick tweedy wool. After she left, he pulled the pants over his flying pants and found that they fit well enough. They were short, but his flight pants dropped down like cuffs. Loretta would laugh. The coat fit too snugly over his flying jacket, but he was unwilling to get rid of his leather jacket in winter.

Loretta. When would she know that he hadn’t come back to base? How long would it take him to walk to Spain on back roads, hiding in barns?

The door opened and two middle-aged men speaking in loud voices roused him. He had been told in evasion class that most Frenchmen collaborated with the Germans. There was a reward for turning in downed airmen. Speaking gruffly, the larger of the two men grabbed Marshall by the collar. He wanted proof that Marshall was an American aviateur. Marshall showed him the U.S. Army label inside his flying jacket. Following regulations, he had not brought anything in writing with him. No names, no addresses, no photos. His dog tags were in his boots.

The men scrutinized him carefully, then whispered together, keeping their eyes on him. Leaving, they signaled that he should stay in the barn, and they latched the door behind them. Marshall wasn’t sure what to do. In a few minutes, the woman returned, bringing him another piece of bread, some cheese, and a corked green bottle with some wine in it. She put her finger to her lips and left.

Marshall thrashed in the loose hay, trying to sleep. Later, well after midnight, the two men reappeared, this time with a third man, who shook Marshall’s hand and addressed him in English. He grinned, showing uneven teeth.

“We will help you, but it is necessary to verify your identity and send it to London to determine if you are a spy.”

Marshall relaxed slightly. “Why would I be spying on you in an American flight suit?”

“The best disguise of all, perhaps. Where did you come down?”

“I don’t know. North of here. I don’t know if it was in Belgium or France.”

The interrogator studied him. “You will stay here until it is time to move you.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

The trio whispered to one another, then all smiled warmly at Marshall. The man who spoke English said, “We will move you to where it is safe. There is great risk in sheltering you. If you are not who you say you are, you will be shot. If you reveal who we are, we will all be shot. We will aid you, but only if you can prove to us your identity.”

Marshall volunteered nothing. He suspected that the man knew about the crash. What if he was a German agent? Or a Frenchman ready to capture him and turn him over to the Germans? Marshall was confused. But he knew he needed help. The man told him to remain in the barn, and that someone would be on guard so that he would not get away. “We will take care of you,” he said. Marshall wasn’t sure how to take that.

“Your identity tag, please. We will verify with London.”

Marshall took off his right boot and handed over one of the two dog tags hidden inside. Getting the boot off was a relief, but he pulled it back on. He needed to sleep in all his clothes, ready to run.

The man wrote down something. “We will see if you are a boche.”

He asked a series of questions. The name of his mother, his sweetheart. His height, weight. Marshall realized that a German would have hesitated, his mind running through conversion tables. Reluctantly, he answered.

“What is a cockpit?”

The place where I feel cocky, Marshall thought.

“Who won the World Series last year?”

Marshall was relieved to answer that. He was a Yankees fan.

The questions ended abruptly. He wondered if he had passed the grilling or if he would have to bolt.


IN THE MORNING, a different woman appeared with his breakfast. She was heavyset and wore work garb, a canvas jacket, and clog shoes. Speaking in heavily accented English, she explained that her sister had answered the door the day before.

“This is some real coffee,” she said. “We have saved it for two years, for a special occasion.”

“Thank you.”

She gave him some bread and some jam.

“There is no butter. The boches took our cow.”

The bitterness in her voice made him trust her somewhat.

“How do you know English?”

“I used to know an Englishman.”

“Am I in France or Belgium?”

“France, monsieur.” Her eyes were hazel.

She said, “We will take care of you until the Résistance arrives. You are safe here, but you must stay hiding. Do not make a sound.”

She brought him a jug of warm water, a razor, and a sliver of soap. Later in the day she brought him newspapers and books and kept him company while he ate bread and cheese.

“I will teach you my language, a little. Un peu.”

“I know a little.”

“Say ‘s’il vous plaît.’ Please.”

“S’il vous plaît. I know that much. Merci. I know that.”

His college French had been in books. Pronunciation was guesswork.

“Say my name. Jeannine. Jan-neen.”

“Jan-neen.”

She offered him a French grammar book, and the next time she came, he had reviewed the verb forms. He heard her doing the barnyard chores, feeding the hens and ducks. Her sister cooked him a duck egg, which was delicious. Years after the war, he asked Loretta why she never bought duck eggs. Why always hen eggs? She laughed so loudly. “I never heard of people eating duck eggs,” she said.


HE SPENT THREE DAYS in the barn studying French vocabulary. La table, la fenêtre, le canard. Table, window, duck. Sometimes the words in the lessons were sad. Teapot. Fireplace. Pillow. Tender words that could spontaneously pierce his heart like shrapnel. Jeune fille. Bébé.

“My son is in Germany,” she said. “Say la guerre.”

“La guerre.”

She lowered her eyes. “The boys cannot fight the war,” she said. “They are in the work camps.”

She did not ask about his life in the States or about his plane crash. She brought him a piece of bread fresh from her oven. She had hoarded some flour for special occasions. He savored the bread, its chewiness a challenge.

He rested in the nest of hay. Outside a goose honked. He watched dust motes in the crack of light across the dirt floor; in them he imagined he could see swarms of aircraft. In the night he heard RAF bombers, and soon after daybreak he heard a lone B-17. The familiar sound was unmistakable. He tried to see through the cracks in the barn walls. He couldn’t spot it, and the sound faded. It was another straggler, another crew in trouble. He fantasized being rescued by it. He listened for a crash, but he heard nothing, and he did not mention it to Jeannine.

On the third night his interrogator reappeared.

“We checked you thoroughly with the English authorities, and you are Marshall Stone, of the 303rd Bomb Group. I am happy to say that we will help you get back to your base in England.”

“Excellent. Thank you.” Marshall was elated. The coil inside him began to unwind. “Can I get over the mountains to Spain?”

“I do not know the next stage. I know only one stage.” The man handed Marshall the dog tag. It was still warm from the man’s trouser pocket. Marshall held it tightly in his hand, as if it were a good luck charm and he suddenly believed in magic.

The man said, “Tomorrow you will be driven to a safe house.”


A WOMAN WAS HURRYING up a winding stair. The cramped house had uneven floorboards, perhaps centuries old, with a threadbare carpet. He could see her hand at her bosom, holding her dark shawl tightly together, her black scarf tied beneath her chin. She came swiftly up the stairs, signaling for him to retreat from his room into the hiding closet. Grabbing his bedding, he crawled into the dark, hidden recess, and she pushed a chest in front of the small, low door. Dogs were barking on the street. Several heavy vehicles drove by. After a while, she mounted the stairs again and moved the furniture aside, releasing him.

The room contained one bed. Marshall was shut away like an attic child with nothing to do. On the walls were a crucifix, a picture of the Madonna and child, a pastel landscape of something that looked like misty mountains, and a photograph of a young man in a double-breasted suit. There was no chair, only the chest, the narrow bed, and a tiny mat on the floor. Each morning he heard a certain whistling from the street. Was someone so happy, or was it a signal?

The first morning, a shy adolescent girl brought him down the stairs into the kitchen, where four women in black garb were bent over large wooden bowls. He imagined they were widows or mothers from the first war, women aging with painful memories of young men. The women were working with cheese. The woman who had shown him upstairs the previous evening rose from her work and poured him a cup of coffee from a pot on the wood-stove. The small cup was fiercely hot, and the ersatz coffee was bitter and strong. She did not offer milk or sugar. Through the window he saw a tan mutt, its ears alert, facing the street.

Behind Marshall a low murmur of voices rose as the women resumed their tasks. The tallest of the women spoke to him, and from a cupboard she removed a piece of hard bread and gave it to him. She seemed to be apologizing for the lack of butter.

A heavily dressed man opened the door, and the tan mutt rushed in with him and a woman dressed in pale green. A babble of energetic French followed, and Marshall sensed seriousness but not immediate danger. The man left then, with the dog.

After he ate the bread, Marshall was shown where to empty his chamber pot. The woman in green dipped hot water from a cauldron on the stove into a handled jug, and she gave him something like a dishcloth that he understood to be a bathing towel. There was soap and a razor in the room upstairs. He took the jug and the towel upstairs and gave himself a spit bath. Later he brought down the chamber pot and emptied it. The women looked up from their work, stared at him as he passed through, then bent their heads again.

Marshall had nothing to make the hours pass. Over and over the plane slid into the field. Over and over he ran through the woods, smelling the smoke from the plane. He couldn’t remember when he knew he was afraid. He thought he was more afraid now, looking back.

The red-cheeked boy, dressed in brown baggy pants and a cap. The cigarette. Webb and Hootie lying on the ground. The plane burning.

Everything Marshall owned now was in his pockets. There was the yellow card with a few French phrases to use in case he was shot down in France. The silk map, the first-aid items, the tube of condensed milk. Because he wasn’t supposed to be caught with the map, he worked at memorizing it. It was so intricate, the print so small. He needed better lighting. He sat on the floor against the wall, staring at the blue floral bouquets of the wallpaper. He tried to focus his mind by counting the bouquets.

He heard shouts in the street. He heard a horse clopping along, dragging a cart of some sort. Through the tiny window he could see an arc of the street and a wedge of open field. He could see the traffic pass. Occasionally he saw a group of children walking by. Their spontaneous giggles and laughter charged him with a bit of hope.


IN THE EVENING the women closed the shutters and drew the dark drapes to conceal the candlelight of the kitchen. He was brought downstairs to share a rabbit stew with the eight family members—the four older women, two young girls, and their parents. Reticent, Marshall observed them. His knowledge of French collapsed under the rush of their conversation. He learned to interpret tones if not their run-together words. He saw their skeptical looks, the gestures they made over their food. He could tell when they were talking about the Germans. The Germans apparently took the family’s goose for their Christmas. The Germans gorged on chocolate! Chickens! Butter!

The women in black had an authority that made the girls and their mother cower. There were no young men. The women barely spoke to Marshall, but when he tried to draw them out with his makeshift vocabulary, they modestly but eagerly queried him about America.

“FDR? Connaissez-vous FDR?”

“Shirley Temple?”

No one in the family revealed their names except for the man, Reynard. He was short and slender, with knobby hands. He pulled a leather wallet from his pocket and showed Marshall his identity papers. He pointed to his photograph, his name, his occupation, his citizenship. He flipped through the papers quickly.

“À Paris,” Reynard said. “In Paris you will obtain the fausse carte d’identité.”

“À Paris,” they all said, nodding in assent.

They were saying he would need a false ID card.

Every evening he heard German soldiers marching through the village on night patrol, singing a mournful song that sounded like homesickness itself. Warmth from the evening fire drifted up the open stairway door to his garret. He crept out and sat on the stair.

Sometimes he heard the Luftwaffe overhead, a nasty roar that he could feel in the pit of his stomach.

At night the face in the cockpit of a Focke-Wulf 190 visited him, a fighter pilot who had suddenly, briefly, flown alongside the stricken Dirty Lily. Their planes were so close, like cars on a street.

He replayed his mission, instant by instant. He didn’t want to forget it, but neither did he want to relive its most terrible moments. He was heartsick; he didn’t know the fate of the crew. They had lost the plane.

He had been in England kissing Nurse Begley, and suddenly here he was in a claustrophobic hidey-hole, waiting, waiting, in a house of strangers jabbering gibberish, women in shapeless black garments plodding through their days worrying with food, fragments of food, roots from a cellar. He was a helpless pipsqueak. When he went down to empty his chamber pot one morning, he saw the girls’ mother come in from the garden with a green leaf. She waved it in his face and chattered excitedly.

France didn’t seem as cold as New Jersey, from what he could gauge by the quality of the unheated air, the chill in the house.

He heard voices downstairs during the night, and footsteps ascending the stairs. “Monsieur, monsieur, des Américains! Américains! Aviateurs!”

He opened the door and there stood two men—disheveled, large, haggard, sleepy-looking.

“Des aviateurs!” one of the women in black—the tallest—said. She was carrying a small candle.

“We were shot down,” the taller one said sheepishly.

“You suis américain too?” Marshall asked, startled.

“Yeah boy!” said the other. “I’ve been on the run, like a wild pig rooting around in the woods. Four days. Then I met some friendly guys who took me to a farmhouse and I got grub, and next thing you know I met Pete and they brought us both here.”

“Pete Drummond, 403rd,” the tall one said. “Waist gunner. Our Fort got hit on the way back from Frankfurt, and I bailed out. Let me tell you, that was some ride.”

The woman left, and for a time the flyers filled the room with their stories. Marshall was glad to hear English. Probably one of these flyers was from the Fort he had heard flying low a few days earlier. The guys gabbed until another of the women climbed up to their hideaway.

“Chut!” she said, entering the room with a tray. “Hush.”

She had brought them each a cup of ale and some pieces of bread.

“Man, this cock-sucker French bread is liable to tear out all my fillings,” said Pete.

The other flyer, Nelson Avery, a tail gunner from the 305th, gnawed his bread steadily. “Excuse me, I’m still starving.” He licked the crumbs from his hand. “I don’t know what happened to our plane, our crew. I got out, but it was on fire and I reckon they’re all goners.”

He spoke as if he were talking about a distant event that did not concern himself. His emotions hadn’t registered yet, Marshall thought. Nor had his own. He didn’t know where he was or what he was supposed to feel. It was some small comfort to have two more flyers there with a language in common, but they also intruded on what had been his private garret.

“Where’s your flight suit?” he asked Pete, who was dressed like a laborer.

“I robbed a scarecrow.”

The pants were filthy and ragged, too short, and the sleeves of the jacket rode up his arms, exposing his GI wristwatch.

Marshall joked, “Next time, I’m going to pack a sandwich and a French peasant outfit.”

“Always be prepared, huh?” said Nelson. “Well, the Boy Scouts don’t teach you how to bail out of a blazing bomber.”

“I got the piss knocked out of me when I landed,” Pete said. “When you hit the silk there are two big spurts. First, you’re out the door, WHOOM! Then WHAM! The chute opens. Then you’re falling, like your ears have gone deaf. Or you’re in heaven. Then WHAM-BAM! You hit the ground.”

“It’s so peaceful till you hit,” Nelson said.

Hearing about their flakked and burning bombers and their heavenly parachute descents intrigued Marshall. He almost envied them. They could just float down to the ground, and then they were on their own. They didn’t have to see their crewmates lying dead. He shivered. The Dirty Lily slammed into the ground again.

“What do you think comes next?” Nelson asked Marshall. “Is the Underground going to get us out?”

“You never know who might be friendly or not,” said Pete. “I tried to ask a man on a bicycle for directions, and he just kept going. He muttered some frog grunt I couldn’t understand, but you could tell he didn’t want to be bothered.”

“They’re afraid,” Marshall said. He sipped his ale, trying to make it last.

“But this family is going to help us.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Three days. Every day they say I’m going.”

“I think the invasion is coming any day,” Nelson said. “I kept hearing that on base.”

A step on the stairs. The signal Marshall had learned, the chut! sound and Allo Allo.

The woman had brought two blankets. Pete thanked her. “Merci,” he knew to say.

“Mercy bucketsful,” said Nelson, grinning as he took the blankets.

Marshall understood from the woman’s gestures that Pete and Nelson would have to sleep in the hiding closet, to stay concealed. He helped her move the chest away from the small door. There was some bedding inside.

“Both of us, in there?” Pete said. He and Nelson laughed.

Marshall tried to make them understand the seriousness of the house rules.

“Not a sound,” he said.

“I hope I don’t fart,” Pete said, with a glance at the woman. “She doesn’t understand fart, does she?”

“She’ll know it when she hears it,” Marshall said angrily. “And so will the Germans if they show up here. So knock it off.”

“O.K., O.K.”

“Seriously. No laughing. No snoring. Nothing.”

The woman stayed. She straightened the photograph on the wall.

“That’s her son,” Marshall explained. “This was his room. He was sent off to a work camp in Germany.”

Pete and Nelson made sheepish noises then, and Marshall was glad he had caused them discomfort. He was feeling like a veteran at evasion.

“She wants our cups,” he said.

After the woman left, he reiterated all the cautions. “These folks are laying their lives on the line for us,” he said.

Marshall offered his bed, but the other two would not take it. “We’ll take turns on it if we’re here very long,” he said. “I hope we get out of here in a day or two so we can go get a forged ID. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

His attempt to joke fell flat.


HE LAY ON THE SMALL BED thinking about Webb and Hootie. Hadley was a fool, maybe a POW by now. Chick Cochran, the right waist gunner, had bailed out. Or had he? Hadley said he did. Maybe Chick was in the wreckage. Where were Grainger, Redburn, and Campanello now? They couldn’t have gone far with their wounds. They could be hiding and getting treatment, but if they had to go to the hospital, they might have had no chance at escaping. He knew Ford and Stewart had headed for the woods, in a different direction from Marshall and Hadley. He counted nine. And Marshall made ten.