The Girl in the Blue Beret

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 the 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.